Masculinity at the Table: Untangling the Male Preserve in Indie and Mainstream Gaming
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.33063/ijrp.vi19.1247Abstract
Abstract: With the rise in popularity of tabletop role-playing games (RPGs) comes a larger and much more diverse population of gamers being exposed to the misogyny and sexism prevalent in mainstream gaming systems, such as Dungeons & Dragons (1974), through a male preserve. These values and practices can create unpleasant experiences for players of marginalized communities. We hypothesize that the differences in values and practices between mainstream and indie games allow indie games to serve as a space away from the male preserve in particular, which is characterized by a numeric overrepresentation of straight, White men, and a value system that benefits masculinity over femininity. We further hypothesize that through the process of bleed-out, players can gain a stronger sense of real-world agency when challenging discriminatory behavior. We investigated these hypotheses through semi-structured interviews with tabletop RPG players (n = 9), asking them about their experiences with tabletop RPGs and associated gaming communities. Qualitative analysis revealed themes of violence, racism,
rebellion, and confidence, and suggests that players are interacting with narratives, characters, and game mechanics in order to form resistance to aspects of the male preserve that they find unappealing.
Keywords: gender, male preserve, tabletop role-playing games, mainstream vs. indie games, fantasy racism
References
Allen, Melissa L. 2024. “‘Reset the Counter, Guys!’: A Thematic Analysis of Fan Discourse about Female Players on Dungeons & Dragons Actual Play Web Series.” The Journal of Fandom Studies 12 (2): 159–78. Link here.
Berge, PS. 2021. “Monster Power. Rebel Heart. Gay Sword.” In Interactive Storytelling, edited by Alex Mitchell and Mirjam Vosmeer, 179–92. Cham: Springer International Publishing. Link here.
———. 2023. “The Table and the Tomb: Positioning Trans Power and Play Amid Fantasy Realism in Dungeons & Dragons.” Games and Culture, October, 15554120231204145. Link here.
Boss, Emily Care. 2007. “Romance and Gender in Role playing Games: Too Hot to Handle?” Presentation at Ropecon 2007.
Bowman, Sarah Lynne. 2013. “Social Conflict in Role-Playing Communities: An Exploratory Qualitative Study.” International Journal of Role-Playing, no. 4 (March). Link here.
Bowman, Sarah, and Kjell Hedgard Hugaas. 2025. “Philosophies of Psychological Safety in Analog Role-Playing Game Discourses.” International Journal of Role-Playing 16 (September): 11-33. Link here.
Carlson, Daniel. 2020. “D&D Beyond Bikini-Mail: Having Women at the Table.” Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy 7 (3).
Carter, Chase. 2020. “Dungeons & Dragons’ First Attempt to Address RPG’s Race Problems Disappoints Its Community.” Dicebreaker, November 24. Link here.
Cohen, Jacob. 1960. “A Coefficient of Agreement for Nominal Scales.” Educational and Psychological Measurement 20 (1): 37–46. Link here.
Cote, Amanda, and Emily Saidel. 2024. “15: ‘Race’ and Race: Longitudinal Trends in Dungeons & Dragons Character Creation.” In Fifty Years of Dungeons & Dragons, edited by Premeet Sidhu, Marcus Carter, and José Zagal. The MIT Press.
Crenshaw, Kimberle. 1989. “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics.” University of Chicago Legal Forum (1) (Article 8): 139–67.
Cross, Katherine Angel. 2012. “The New Laboratory of Dreams: Role-Playing Games as Resistance.” WSQ: Women’s Studies Quarterly 40 (3–4): 70–88. Link here.
Data USA 2022. “Data USA: Lewis & Clark College.” 2022. Link here.
Dashiell, Steven L. 2020. “Hooligans at the Table: The Concept of Male Preserves in Tabletop Role-Playing Games.” International Journal of Role-Playing, no. 10 (November), 26–39. Link here.
Dunning, Erik. 1986. “Sport as a Male Preserve: Notes on the Social Sources of Masculine Identity and Its Transformations.” Theory, Culture, & Society 3 (1): 79-90.
Eagly, Alice H., Christa Nater, David I. Miller, Michèle Kaufmann, and Sabine Sczesny. 2020. “Gender Stereotypes Have Changed: A Cross-Temporal Meta-Analysis of U.S. Public Opinion Polls from 1946 to 2018.” American Psychologist 75 (3): 301–15. Link here.
Freeman, Guo, and Nathan J. McNeese. 2019. “Exploring Indie Game Development: Team Practices and Social Experiences in A Creativity-Centric Technology Community.” Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) 28 (3): 723–48. Link here.
Garcia, Antero. 2017. “Privilege, Power, and Dungeons & Dragons: How Systems Shape Racial and Gender Identities in Tabletop Role-Playing Games.” Mind, Culture, and Activity 24 (3): 232–46. Link here.
Hugaas, Kjell Hedgard. 2024. “Bleed and Identity: A Conceptual Model of Bleed and How Bleed-Out from Role-Playing Games Can Affect a Player’s Sense of Self.” International Journal of Role-Playing 15 (June): 9-35.
Kawitzky, Felix Rose. 2020. “Magic Circles: Tabletop Role-Playing Games as Queer Utopian Method.” Performance Research 25 (8): 129–36. Link here.
Kemper, Jonaya. 2017. “The Battle of Primrose Park: Playing for Emancipatory Bleed in Fortune & Felicity.” Nordiclarp.org, June 21.
Latorre, Óliver. 2016. “Indie or Mainstream? Tensions and Nuances between the Alternative and the Mainstream in Indie Games.” Anàlisi (54) (June): 15. Link here.
Leonard, Diana J., and Tessa Thurman. 2018. “Bleed-out on the Brain: The Neuroscience of Character-to-Player Spillover in Larp.” International Journal of Role-Playing (9) (December): 9–15. Link here.
Lim, Meghan, Adriana Carollo, Serena A. Chen, and Gianluca Esposito. 2021. “Surveying 80 Years of Psychodrama Research: A Scientometric Review.” Frontiers in Psychiatry 12: 780542. Link here.
McHugh, Mary L. 2012. “Interrater Reliability: The Kappa Statistic.” Biochemia Medica 22 (3): 276–82.
Montola, Markus. 2010. “The Positive Negative Experience in Extreme Role-playing.” In Proceedings of DiGRA Nordic 2010: Experiencing Games: Games, Play, and Players. Stockholm, Sweden, August 16.
Muñoz, José Esteban. 2009. Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity. NYU Press. Link here.
Reinbold, Lotte. 2021. “Lines and Veils, and Other RPG Safety Tools, Open up Tabletop Roleplaying for Everyone.” Dicebreaker, April 29, 2021. Link here.
Roll20. 2022. “The ORR Group Industry Report Q4 2021.” Roll20 blog. Link here.
Silver, Eric. 2021. “Dungeons & Dragons Has an Antisemitism Problem.” Hey Alma. January 28, 2021. Link here.
Stang, Sarah, and Aaron Trammell. 2020. “The Ludic Bestiary: Misogynistic Tropes of Female Monstrosity in Dungeons & Dragons.” Games and Culture 15 (6): 730–47. Link here.
Stark, Lizzie. 2012. Leaving Mundania: Inside the Transformative World of Live Action Role-Playing Games. Chicago Review Press.
Stenros, Jaakko, and Tanja Sihvonen. 2015. “Out of the Dungeons: Representations of Queer Sexuality in RPG Source Books.” Analog Game Studies 2 (5): 71–92.
Taguette. N.d. “Taguette.” App.taguette.org. Link here.
Trammell, Aaron. 2014. “Misogyny and the Female Body in Dungeons & Dragons | Analog Game Studies.” October 6, 2014. Link here.
Trammell, Aaron, and Nikki Crenshaw. 2020. “The Damsel and the Courtesan: Quantifying Consent in Early Dungeons & Dragons.” International Journal of Role-Playing (10) (November): 10–25. Link here.
Usman, Max, Diana J. Leonard, and Irene Hilman. 2026. “Forged in the Dark and Into the Light: An Exploration of Indie Games as Tools of Personal and Social Transformation.” In Playing Outside the Mainstream: Essays on Indie Tabletop Role-Playing Games, edited by Stephanie Hedge. McFarland.
Warmelink, Harald, Casper Harteveld, and Igor Mayer. 2009. “Press Enter or Escape to Play Deconstructing Escapism in Multiplayer Gaming.” In Breaking New Ground: Innovation in Games, Play, Practice and Theory. Proceedings of DiGRA 2009.
Winardy, Gary Collins Brata, Eva Septiana, and Santy Yanuar Pranawati. 2024. “Emotional Experiences in Online, Text-Based Tabletop Role-Playing Games.” Simulation & Gaming 55 (5): 812–36. Link here.
Wizards of the Coast. 2024. Dungeons & Dragons Player’s Handbook. Wizards of the Coast.
Yessler, Reagan, and Bethany Craig. 2024. “Dungeons and Dragons: Gender, Race, and Power in the Fantasy and Storytelling Space.” GeoHumanities 0 (0): 1–9. Link here.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2026 Irene Hilman, Alula Hirst, Wescott (Scooter) Flanagan, Diana J. Leonard
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
