24 thoughts on “Hey Gauntleteers!”

  5. John Henry Gatekeeping is super common in the hobby. Not just in how convention organizers and game devs can refuse to have certain styles of games at their cons or develop those games or give them bad reviews without playing or experiencing the game. Gatekeeping also exists in the way I’ve been told I can’t play RPGs because I’m a woman. It exists when we don’t provide accessible spaces or inclusive spaces. And it exists in how our community invalidates each other and thus causes barrier to entry to the community for those wanting to be in the community, but are told what they want to play isn’t welcome.

    Not everyone has the ability to just play the games they want to. As much as it would be amazing for everyone to have that option, the community doesn’t always provide that. I’ve heard countless people say “I want to try this story game but my players will only do D&D” or other similar things.

  6. John Henry Gatekeeping is super common in the hobby. Not just in how convention organizers and game devs can refuse to have certain styles of games at their cons or develop those games or give them bad reviews without playing or experiencing the game. Gatekeeping also exists in the way I’ve been told I can’t play RPGs because I’m a woman. It exists when we don’t provide accessible spaces or inclusive spaces. And it exists in how our community invalidates each other and thus causes barrier to entry to the community for those wanting to be in the community, but are told what they want to play isn’t welcome.

    Not everyone has the ability to just play the games they want to. As much as it would be amazing for everyone to have that option, the community doesn’t always provide that. I’ve heard countless people say “I want to try this story game but my players will only do D&D” or other similar things.

  7. John Henry​ Did you actually read Kate’s post? Because yeah, gatekeeping is a thing that happens all the time. I’ve personally been on the receiving end of it more times than I can count

  8. John Henry​ Did you actually read Kate’s post? Because yeah, gatekeeping is a thing that happens all the time. I’ve personally been on the receiving end of it more times than I can count

  9. It might be helpful to separate the experiences of people who principally play games with the people who also create them (or who do things like produce podcasts or organize conventions). My comments here are mostly focused on that latter, more “professional” group…

    I was on the judging panel Kate is talking about, and I will say that I also felt uncomfortable with some of the conversation that was happening. A couple of people on the panel had a lot more status than I did and they were very much setting the agenda for what counted as an RPG. As a result, there was a huge number of games that were probably getting a less than fair shake. And so, in that sense, the gatekeeping effect was preventing a number of worthy games from advancing in the contest. It had nothing to do with merit, and everything to do with the definitions these higher status people had created. It probably won’t shock anyone to learn that many of those games that didn’t get a fair shake from the panel turned out to be games written by women or were about experiences that aren’t often represented in the hobby. That’s not to say the panel was actively discriminating against certain kinds of designers (we didn’t know the identities of the authors) but the gatekeeping that was going on had that effect.

    And so I think the status of the person doing the alleged gatekeeping is a really important part of the analysis. When certain people voice their opinions on the internet, it’s simply more difficult to ignore them. I don’t consider myself an “industry” person, and so a lot of what I’m saying here doesn’t affect me personally, but it definitely bugs me that we have given such a small group of people, mostly men, the power to make or break people who want to get involved in the industry side of the hobby.

    NOW, having said all of that, I do think to a certain degree people should make their own rain in the hobby. The hobby is still small enough to where, with a bit of grit and work, you can carve out a space for yourself, gatekeepers be damned. I say that as someone who built the Gauntlet with very, very little support from the big players.

  10. It might be helpful to separate the experiences of people who principally play games with the people who also create them (or who do things like produce podcasts or organize conventions). My comments here are mostly focused on that latter, more “professional” group…

    I was on the judging panel Kate is talking about, and I will say that I also felt uncomfortable with some of the conversation that was happening. A couple of people on the panel had a lot more status than I did and they were very much setting the agenda for what counted as an RPG. As a result, there was a huge number of games that were probably getting a less than fair shake. And so, in that sense, the gatekeeping effect was preventing a number of worthy games from advancing in the contest. It had nothing to do with merit, and everything to do with the definitions these higher status people had created. It probably won’t shock anyone to learn that many of those games that didn’t get a fair shake from the panel turned out to be games written by women or were about experiences that aren’t often represented in the hobby. That’s not to say the panel was actively discriminating against certain kinds of designers (we didn’t know the identities of the authors) but the gatekeeping that was going on had that effect.

    And so I think the status of the person doing the alleged gatekeeping is a really important part of the analysis. When certain people voice their opinions on the internet, it’s simply more difficult to ignore them. I don’t consider myself an “industry” person, and so a lot of what I’m saying here doesn’t affect me personally, but it definitely bugs me that we have given such a small group of people, mostly men, the power to make or break people who want to get involved in the industry side of the hobby.

    NOW, having said all of that, I do think to a certain degree people should make their own rain in the hobby. The hobby is still small enough to where, with a bit of grit and work, you can carve out a space for yourself, gatekeepers be damned. I say that as someone who built the Gauntlet with very, very little support from the big players.

  11. I find trying to define what a Game is as pointless as trying to define what Art is. You either get a broad definition that allows literally everything (Art is what hangs in a museum / A game is anything that calls itself a game) – which undermines the whole purpose of a definition – or it is so narrow that it is obviously wrong.

  12. I find trying to define what a Game is as pointless as trying to define what Art is. You either get a broad definition that allows literally everything (Art is what hangs in a museum / A game is anything that calls itself a game) – which undermines the whole purpose of a definition – or it is so narrow that it is obviously wrong.

  15. John Henry I definitely hear you on that, but I also think people will have different experiences depending on their level of involvement in the hobby. I consider myself to fall more on the “fan” side of the equation, too, but I can still see how gatekeepers affect people who are more deeply involved, to the point where we might label it as an injustice (I’ll set aside the experience of convention attendance, since that is something I am only just getting back into myself). Kate organizes a huge convention every year, and so her perspective on gatekeeping is going to be really different than yours or mine. She interacts with game designers of varying levels of status and success on a fairly regular basis, and so her viewpoint in this regard is pretty valuable.

  16. John Henry I definitely hear you on that, but I also think people will have different experiences depending on their level of involvement in the hobby. I consider myself to fall more on the “fan” side of the equation, too, but I can still see how gatekeepers affect people who are more deeply involved, to the point where we might label it as an injustice (I’ll set aside the experience of convention attendance, since that is something I am only just getting back into myself). Kate organizes a huge convention every year, and so her perspective on gatekeeping is going to be really different than yours or mine. She interacts with game designers of varying levels of status and success on a fairly regular basis, and so her viewpoint in this regard is pretty valuable.

  21. Agreed. One of the reasons I really like the Gauntlet is that, in my limited vision of it (the podcasts), you all don’t engage in the OSR vs Storytelling vs Whatever bullcrap that I run into a lot of places.

    (Edit: Looks like I missed a lot of the debate above when I posted this. Apologies for my awkward comment.)

  22. Agreed. One of the reasons I really like the Gauntlet is that, in my limited vision of it (the podcasts), you all don’t engage in the OSR vs Storytelling vs Whatever bullcrap that I run into a lot of places.

    (Edit: Looks like I missed a lot of the debate above when I posted this. Apologies for my awkward comment.)

  23. A few comments on your post:

    “But when we start pointing at games and saying “not a game” we’re limiting what a game can be”

    I guess you mean the game “pointed at” is limited as to what it can be, yet on closer inspection I’d say the “game doing the pointing” is the one that ends up limited. The moment someone stops looking at other games they stop growing as designers and their games with them.

    “Instead of having our definitions of what games are expand, we’re trying to limit wha[t] games are by sticking to outdated and frankly impressively limited definitions.”

    I wouldn’t say that we limit what games are by “sticking to outdated and frankly impressively limited definitions”, I’d say we end up stuck in outdated and limited definitions because we limit what games are. Change, evolution and improvement comes from an open and free exchange of ideas. Our once novel and impressively broad definitions can quickly become outdated and impressively limited definitions soon after we stop taking new ideas in. The real long term damage of gatekeeping is to the game and/or game-group doing the gatekeeping. This in turn affects the industry as a whole as it moves forward a lot slower than had there been no gatekeeping among groups.

  24. A few comments on your post:

    “But when we start pointing at games and saying “not a game” we’re limiting what a game can be”

    I guess you mean the game “pointed at” is limited as to what it can be, yet on closer inspection I’d say the “game doing the pointing” is the one that ends up limited. The moment someone stops looking at other games they stop growing as designers and their games with them.

    “Instead of having our definitions of what games are expand, we’re trying to limit wha[t] games are by sticking to outdated and frankly impressively limited definitions.”

    I wouldn’t say that we limit what games are by “sticking to outdated and frankly impressively limited definitions”, I’d say we end up stuck in outdated and limited definitions because we limit what games are. Change, evolution and improvement comes from an open and free exchange of ideas. Our once novel and impressively broad definitions can quickly become outdated and impressively limited definitions soon after we stop taking new ideas in. The real long term damage of gatekeeping is to the game and/or game-group doing the gatekeeping. This in turn affects the industry as a whole as it moves forward a lot slower than had there been no gatekeeping among groups.

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