The Toxicity of Anti-Gatekeeping Hysteria

Re-publish.

Nobody likes a gatekeeper, particularly in the Tabletop Role-playing hobby. It's a hobby that is entirely perpetuated and refined by the active participation of multiple perspectives coming together to create opportunities for great experiences. In this light, the hobby is actually harmed by the omission of participants.

I'm a relative newcomer to the hobby. I started with 5th Edition D&D after my wife and I were invited to play by a 2nd edition veteran who felt his drive rekindled by Critical Role. It wasn't long before the DM bug bit me. Then I started looking into other systems, then game design, and finally, I fell into the OSR.

By the time I joined RPG Twitter, I occasionally ran into this term: "Gatekeeping." It's meant to suggest that one is trying to keep people out of the hobby. It's naturally levied toward people who say things like "women aren't good at D&D," "if you can't handle ______, you shouldn't play RPGs," and other various exclusionary statements. This is Gatekeeping, and it's total horse shit.

Let me be clear: RPGs are for everyone. I would like to see the hobby grow and bring people together. I believe that RPGs contain the potential to build bridges between people who otherwise might have no ground to share in common with each other. This is not at all mentioning the myriad other reasons we come to the table rather than turning on a screen.

But RPG discussion on Twitter has a problem: Anti-Gatekeeping Hysterics.  Somehow, "Gatekeeping" went from trying to edge people out of the hobby to criticizing particular methods of play that you don't like. This has culminated in people being terrified of making value judgments on role-playing techniques for fear of being pelted with the dreaded G-word.

Fuck that. I'm tired of all the platitudes. Everyone is always belting out "who am I to judge," "if it works for them, it works for them," or my personal favorite, "that is a valid way to play." To all of the aforementioned: NO SHIT. You might as well be saying nothing. We know all of this is subjective. We know that this is a DIY hobby and that you can do absolutely anything and it's perfectly "valid."

Let's talk about what we like and what we don't like without these useless platitudes. Let's try to find what works and what doesn't work for various modes of play, with various table needs, in various systems. Let's stop pretending that there aren't inefficient ways to do things in this hobby and that we need to nod and clap at everything people do.

Let's help people run better games. By criticizing bad ideas, offering better ideas, and learning from our mistakes. I'm not saying anyone should go out there and throw pies in people's faces for the joy of it, or to insult people. I'm saying we should look at what people are doing and not hold back genuine discussion out of fear that people might take exception to it.

And for fuck's sakes, if someone says something unnecessarily rude unintentionally (like I'm apt to do), don't lose your shit. Try to get clarification before lighting pitchforks and grabbing torches.

Good gaming, all.