Masculinity and D&D: TTRPGs Can Help Curb Toxic Masculinity

Introduction: How did we get here? 

I love tabletop games, I feel like that’s well known if you’re a reader of this content, and my writing or if you know me personally. It’s my biggest hobby, creative outlet and stress relief, which is the case for many people out there. For many others, that’s not the case in regards to what this community is and what it has historically been. For context, the TTRPG space - which is largely populated by Dungeons and Dragons - has historically been a war-gamey community. It was filled with dudes who just wanted to have their army of elves kill an army of orcs and move on with their lives. As the years have gone on, the games have shifted to be more narrative focused and all about character development (which I think is great and it’s why I love these games). As we branch more into the world of playing complex characters, you can imagine that complex emotions come up. As that’s occurred, more and more toxic men have popped into this community and I feel it’s my civic duty as a white man in America to check my own privilege and use this platform that I’ve created to fix some problems. 

What the heck even is toxic masculinity? 

Toxic masculinity is a concept that is rooted in men being trash - an idea that I’ve grown to love over the years. At its easiest to understand, toxic masculinity is a set of rules that men follow to show their dominance, aggression

and lack of emotions. If you’ve seen Barbie (and you’re not a brick), you understand that the Kens started being toxically masculine at the climax of the film and the Barbies had to fight back on that and teach them that it’s okay to not be this way again. Don’t worry though Ken, we ALL wish the patriarchy had more to do with horses and less to do with putting down women.

A term that originated in the 1980’s from a psychologist who was critiquing his father’s aggressive parenting style, toxic masculinity has caused real problems for our world. Men who engage in these behaviors without the accountability from their friends and family are men who in general (and putting it bluntly) suck. When men start branching into toxic masculinity and following other people in society like Andrew Tate and other meninists, they generally become more violent and emotionally stunted over time. Let me push my glasses up a bit as I say that when our standards of masculinity become rooted in aggression and believing that feeling all of our complex feelings is bad, men become terrible to be around and nobody will want to. Okay, glasses going back down now. Let’s chat a bit about how it shows up in our lovely TTRPG community!

No really, your tiefling rogue is a bad person. 

As I mentioned earlier, TTRPGs have historically been a community for men, or masculine presenting nerds to gather and build friendships through. Stop and think for a second, when you hear the term “nerd” what comes to mind? I’d argue lots of folks think of a scrawny man with glasses and hell maybe even a pocket protector. This idea has permeated to gaming culture and in particular TTRPGs with the rise of things like Stranger Things bringing back this resurgence of Dungeons and Dragons. Don’t get me wrong, having a group of men is not a bad thing - in fact, my current group is mostly people I was in a fraternity with in college! The issues arise when we give into these toxic standards because in our fantasy worlds “it’s not real and there’s no consequences.” In the past it’s been seen that this community is very anti-women and marginalized other communities that aren’t just straight white men (meant to be taken derogatorily). When you tell someone that this world is fake and you can play a character with a story that they wrote, and suddenly the world is their oyster and it’s your job to save it from the giant dragon who wants to destroy it, of course you’re going to get some behaviors that may not be allowed in reality, that comes with the territory. The Issue is when these behaviors become so commonplace that they change how you behave in real life. If you know me, or even if you read my work, you know I’m a huge proponent of frequent role play building emotional intelligence (EQ). In fact, there’s tons of research that shows people who frequently role play get to grow in ways of creativity, empathy, patience, determination and resilience - all indicators of high EQ. I bring this up again because EQ is what combats these toxic behaviors in our daily lives. What if you played a tiefling rogue who was a tragic loner and had to watch his parents die, but you combined that story with the cleric who is an aspiring therapist? That’s the best of both worlds right? Practicing good behavior over and over again builds neural pathways that will make it easier to rely on when you have these situations come up in your day to day life. When we let people gather together and create relationships and test things, they either grow by learning what’s not acceptable - even in a make believe girly pop world, or they reinforce their bad behaviors. Idk about y’all but I choose to believe we can make that first one happen WAY more often. 

How do we stop it? 

Toxic masculinity and fantasy worlds go hand in hand. There is always going to be a metaphor for certain species and a real group of people on Earth. I’ve been thinking a lot about how we combat toxic behaviors in these games and I keep coming back to the same analogy, one I’d use for my students that I work with in my day job. Picture a classroom, you have your teacher, and all of the classmates, maybe you even have a student teacher but let’s leave that out for now. Now, the teacher is the Gamemaster, they are in charge of the lesson plan for the day, and at the end what they say goes. Can you guess who the players are? That’s right, the students! It’s the teacher’s job to facilitate and ensure the learning objectives are accomplished, but that onus is also placed on the students to actually learn and practice whatever math formula or social studies analysis is happening that day. Let’s pivot back to our RPG. The GM is in charge of placing times for the players (the students) to practice and make decisions, but if the players don’t actually do anything, nothing will be accomplished! 

Now bring back toxic masculinity and how we hold each other accountable. If the teacher checks someone’s behavior but their best friends echo the behaviors and don’t also make a change, nothing is accomplished right? It’s the same in game. If your paladin believes wholeheartedly that women belong in the kitchen, that may be a little messed up to say in front of the GMs partner who plays at your table. Now I understand, that may just be a character trait you have because of a traditionalist society they grew up in or whatever, but why not also make that into a goal of theirs to fix? Maybe your human paladin has never made friends with people who aren’t humans, so when they do they dive in headfirst and become best friends, potentially even lovers with that dragonborn in your party. This is how we build those neural pathways that I’ve talked about. By substituting dragonborns with literally any other group in our real life, we can learn how to behave and interact with those that are different from us. Think about how much easier it sounds to play the character that is Danny compared to just living. You get to act and do cool things that your character would do in a RPG. 

It’s no secret that toxic masculinity focuses a lot on gender roles and men interact with women, but what does it even look like in practice? To me, positive masculinity in a TTRPG can look like so many things, but what comes to mind the most is having your character sitting around the fire on their nightly watch and simply talking about something they're scared of, or how much they value their friends and just being Vulnerable. Toxic masculinity can start off being very similar, but instead of being vulnerable and admitting that you’re afraid, you feel that you’re better than the others and they shouldn’t be looked at in the same way because they’re scared. Put yourself in the shoes of one of the women that may be at your table for a moment and really think on this one. How would it feel to hear that your friend thinks they’re more worthy of being a hero simply because they aren’t scared of getting burned alive by a dragon? That sounds like it sucks and kills the mood that your GM worked SO hard to create in the first place…ugh you’re a loser. 

My simple solution to the problem is to just add more women to your game, both in canon and around your table, sounds easy right? Invite any and all friends you have to join this community because here’s the secret folks (please read the following in a Donald Trump impression) women want to play D&D too. I know, it’s crazy, couldn’t have ever made that connection (okay, you can stop with the Trump vocal work - you did great bestie!). When you have more feminine/feminine identifying NPCs, please I’m begging you, make them NORMAL people. Don’t you dare make every single lady a sex object who just wants to fawn over the party or some imaginary jiggle physics simulator, they can be just regular people. Maybe the queen of your country is power hungry because she inherited the most powerful city in all of the world, I mean we all know Queen Elizabeth was that way. Maybe the barkeep is a woman, not because cooking and pouring ale is “women’s work” but because she had a dream her whole life to build an inn that took care of all who passed by because she wanted to drive tourism in her small town. I’m sick and tired of misrepresenting women in fantasy media. Not all of them have massive chests and barely wear armor and were just made for sex, that’s now how the world works and that’s certainly not how your TTRPG world should either. 

The Epilogue

At the end of the day, it’s up to you and your table to determine how and when you’re going to challenge these beliefs. I was reading an article about masculinity and tabletop roleplaying games to prepare for this rant/informational post and it really got me thinking. In particular, the line “The desire for a space to be inclusive and welcome does not make it so” messed me up for a few hours. I mean seriously like laying in bed staring at the ceiling, just pontificating bro. Simply having a desire to make these things a reality, doesn’t in turn make them one, you need to lock in and put in the work to get it done. Don’t let all the pressure be on your GM, take some responsibility and check your friends when they start doing problematic stuff in game, I bet they won’t be upset with you telling them that burning down that orphanage was kinda really f***ed up. In that same paper, it was stated that men value diverse groups and prefer to play with diverse groups, diverse in this case meaning inclusive of women, non-binary friends and any other presentation of identity that someone may have. As your friendly neighborhood GenZ DMG writer, I can say without a shadow of a doubt that having a group of friends to roleplay with that is diverse has made me a better human, boyfriend, partner and overall man than I ever imagined it could have. At the end of the day, I love these games, I love this community and I want it to exist for a long time. Right now, I think it needs some help to be more socially conscious and ensure that all who interact with it feel safe and included. Be nicer y'all!