Yesterday, the Age of Theer Kickstarter campaign launched and I, of course, backed it because over the past year, I’ve fallen so in love with roleplay gaming.
Dungeons & Dragons was something I was aware of growing up but never got involved in. It’s hard to when you are directly excluded/judged or you feel unsafe, and that was my experience as a female nerd. Not just in regard to D&D, but fandoms like Star Wars and even my beloved Doctor Who.
Don’t even get me started on comic books.
Shortly after I started writing, a huge fight blew up over gatekeeping in science fiction publishing. Women into sci fi shows were dubbed “fake geek girls”. We were – are – grilled about fandom minutiae and if we don’t “pass” we get ridiculed. As both a fan and a writer of sci fi I’ve come under attack from men who want to keep me out. Out of fandom. Out of publishing. They’ve wanted to take something I loved doing from me, calling me things that I can’t repeat and would prefer to forget.
So when I discovered Todd Stashwick during Star Trek Picard, his nerdery was a weird pull/push because usually guys that into sci fi/fantasy/whatever are the ones giving geek girls the side eye or outright hassling us. Safe to say, I approached with joviality masking a fair amount of caution.
Thankfully, it wasn’t warranted, but I think that worry, that caution, shows how badly my experiences affected me and, in a lot of ways, still do. It took finding WWDND and playing my first D&D game to properly light a fire in me.
But all this is why I’m backing Age of Theer – because the vibe that Todd Stashwick and David Nett wanted to cultivate is one that evokes the excitement of 70s/80s TTRPGs but excludes the gatekeeping that was so rife back then. Todd calls it “putting new wine into old bottles” and I love that idea so much.
I love that Theer has inclusivity built in from the very beginning. That everyone is welcome at the table. It’s somewhere I don’t feel unsafe or judged, and I cannot put into words how important that is to me.
And honestly, it just looks really fun.