UK Games Expo - Bring Pride To The Table
I’ve played D&D for all of my adult life. Dungeons and Dragons is a massive, expansive world full of wonder and imagination, and there are so many other games out there with even more strange new worlds to discover. While I style myself as an explorer of new and interesting things, I almost exclusively play as a half-elf pretty boy in almost all games - so, as part of pride month, I thought I would spend some time exploring and finding out what people with far cooler ideas than me do with the analogue medium. I got the chance to go to the UK Games Expo in Birmingham and meet some of those creators and highlight the work they do.
Friends at the table!
…
Wait that is already someone else’s thing…
Awfully Queer Heroes
Awfully Queer Heroes were the first team I came across - showcasing their D&D supplements that included everything you would usually expect from a tabletop module, with the added addition of races with specified sexualities, queer-themed spells and droves of spectacularly gay content. Kel (Centre, They/Them) has created four queer-centric D&D books and manages Awfully Queer Heroes around a full-time job. Em (Right, She/Her), also known as “Skald of Shenanigans”, also produces TTRPG content in the form of pocketbooks that include traps and puzzles.
Included in their line-up was ‘The Sunblade Pantheon’, a supplement that includes over seventy spells, sixty-five subclasses, eight races, eight feats and six gods.
Speaking to these creators was an awesome experience - they had an amazing passion for the things they create and were more than willing to speak to me about the wild world of being queer in TTRPGs.
*extreme Yu-Gu-Oh voice*
Fabulous! And I move my wig to the defense position!
Drags 2 Riches
Drags 2 Riches is a deck-building game themed around Drag Queens and building a career on the drag circuit. It has everything you would expect from a drag-themed game - puns, outfits and sass.
The game itself is a love letter to Drag as an art form and is a wonderful representation of queer culture in an easily accessible format. The game is currently on Kickstarter and is close to reaching its goal. What I loved about this work is it proves that really anything can be made into a game, which is especially awesome when it comes to queer topics - I passed by the stall a few hours after my first encounter and saw loads of people playtesting the game, and I like to think for many of those people it could be their first introduction to that part queer culture.
Hi Jack!
Adventuring with Pride
Adventuring with Pride is a D&D-focused venture, creating D&D content themed around queerness. Its current releases, such as Adventuring with Pride: The First Outing and Adventuring with Pride: Queer We Go Again are queer-themed D&D supplements written and created by Jack Dixon (pictured leff, He/Him), with artwork from Abbigayle Bircham (@abbiesart on Twitter) and Katerina Gorinskaia (@leo_lenti_art on Instagram).
Adventuring with Pride takes from all areas of queer culture, including drag and kink. Another edition of the queer-inclusive series, Adventuring with Pride: A Queeros Journey, was fully funded on Kickstarter and reached 800% of its funding goals. Jack, pictured above, gave me some awesome insights into queer roleplaying - I then accidentally blanked him on Twitter, which was my fault for trying to reply inside the faraday cage that is Birmingham Airport, sorry Jack!
I have an inkling Squiddo Game is pretty cool… That’s a squid pun.
Bad Squiddo Games
Bad Squiddo Games was the one that almost got away - I initially did not get the chance to meet Annie Norman, the owner of BSG, but was convinced I should come back when she was around, and I am so glad I did. Bad Squiddo Games creates physical pieces for TTRPGs, with one of their main products being realistic femme figurines. In speaking to Annie, they told me about their origins as a war gamer, and how they wanted to create minis that told the stories of both women and queer people throughout history.
On display at the Bad Squiddo Games was a massive array of figurines from all of history, including Vikings, World War Two and the modern era, as well as fantasy characters and pieces. They also specify that their work is not “a crusade against the chainmail bikini”, but rather works to give more choice to people who want to play feminine characters.
Bad Squiddo Games is a venture that works with many different artists and sculptors, all of whom are listed on their website.
Annie was also a wonderful person to talk to, and everyone working the stall was friendly and so enthusiastic about the work they were doing.
This is just deeply cool. Gamers are awesome.
Hatchlings Games
Hatchling Games was an addition suggested by the awesome people running Awfully Queer Heroes - Hatchling Games produces content for all ages with the intent of teaching British and American sign language to players as they play the games. They featured a brilliant range of artwork and products, and they operate as a non-profit venture, working closely with the deaf community to create their games.
The main thing I took away from UKGE was that these ventures all came from grassroots creators. A majority of the people I spoke to rely on the goodwill of crowdfunding supporters or create their works around full-time occupations. The queer representation I found came from individuals who wanted to create and build themselves into the communities they already loved, be that wargaming, D&D, or board games. These people have worked to make queer, disabled and women’s representation into a part of analogue games, and that is a brilliant thing. The fact that this all came from people in the community with years of experience as gamers, and the success they have had, shows that these communities are becoming welcoming and inclusive towards all kinds of people.
