Today is the first day of Metatopia 2017. I always feel very…hesitant about Metatopia.
(NOTE before I go any further: if you are an organizer of Double Exposure, I am not talking about Metatopia per se. I am talking about my entirely personal feelings about attending Metatopia. Metatopia, like all the Double Exposure cons, is competently organized and largely pleasant. So please save your fire for someone else.)
Here’s the thing: I don’t feel like a member of the roleplaying game community. Point blank. I never have. The Gauntlet exists entirely because I felt the strong need to make a community where I feel personally accepted, and then I happily discovered it’s a place where other people also feel comfortable, and that’s great! But I find the RPG community at-large, particularly the indie community, to be 1) cliquish, 2) white af and 3) very unforgiving of mistakes and/or poorly chosen words (this is particularly the case if you are a person of color who steps out of bounds; I’m an easy example, but you can look to Mark Diaz Truman and others for evidence).
So…I’m going to be at Metatopia. I don’t have much on my game schedule, and I’m not on any panels (see my parenthetical above about being a person of color in RPGs). If you see me, please come say “Hi.” I am not a bad person. I am a really good person, actually, and there’s a strong chance I’d like to get to know you.
