That paragraph

For those of you who don't know what "that paragraph" is:

"You don't need to be confined to binary notions of sex and gender. The elf god Correllon Larethian is often seen as androgynous or hermaphroditic, for example...You could also play a female character who presents herself as a man, or a man who feels trapped in a female body, or a bearded female dwarf who hates being mistaken for a male. Likewise, your character's sexual orientation is for you to decide."

That's from the D&D Next rules. Its all the talk right now in RPG circles. I don't understand why. We are talking about a fantasy game, right?

Although I have never (knowingly) played with a gaymer before, its not from exclusion. All of my friends (and I have a lot of gay friends, at least for small-town-middle-America) are welcome at my home table, and all are welcome at my convention table. Period. D&D to me as a child was an escape from the bullying I faced as a poor kid in a rich, private, Catholic school. It is supposed to be a refuge from the senseless anger around us in our real world lives. Its a place where we, the outsiders, get to do the attacking, and feel comfortable about it. We get to be the heroes.

We play for different reasons. But, why we play doesn't matter. What we learn about ourselves as humans does. Maybe, that one paragraph will change one person's anger to tolerance. That would be worth the ink.

RPGs have since the beginning allowed us to explore who we may want to become. I am not sure it needed to be spelled out in black and white.Kudos, to WotC for doing it anyway. I hope that paragraph brings attention to the RPG world. And congrats on the whole lot of free publicity.

(written at 530 in the morning, so take any grammar, punctuation, flow or other mistakes with a grain of salt)