Opinion editor’s note: Strib Voices publishes a mix of material from 11 contributing columnists, along with other commentary online and in print each day. To contribute, click here.
•••
The last time I played Dungeons & Dragons I was in high school, and the Dungeon Master was a Goth boy who wouldn’t make eye contact with girls unless they had +3 charisma and brought their own dice. I lasted two rounds, got eaten by a gelatinous cube, and decided that maybe my imagination was better suited to creative writing.
So you can imagine my surprise when I learned that in the Twin Cities, a Dungeons & Dragons community was not only thriving but flourishing into something akin to a grassroots movement. And not in a “let’s go to Comic-Con and talk about elves” way — no, this was something deeper, livelier and, dare I say, revolutionary?
The Minneapolis-based organization is called Dragons, Dungeons & Drinks, and yes, the name implies exactly what it sounds like: storytelling, dice rolling and community bonding — often over mocktails or the occasional mead. It was founded by Renee, a relationship therapist by day and fantasy world-builder by … well, also day, and sometimes night. Renee is joined by Marcus Sheeler, a marketing manager whose straight, white, cisgender résumé would typically make him an unlikely co-owner of a queer-centered gaming collective. But here’s the plot twist: It works.
What they’ve created is more than a game night — it’s a sanctuary where the only lines that matter are drawn on a map, and everyone agrees to fight the dragon, not each other. The Dragons, Dungeons & Drinks gaming is a joyful, noisy, welcoming experience, where queer folks, nerds, introverts, extroverts and people who haven’t played a board game since “Candyland” come together and become adventurers. It’s a space that Renee describes as “queer-coded,” which, for those unfamiliar, means the values of the LGBTQ+ community are embedded into the structure — radical inclusion, empathy and safety.
When I asked them if the group was exclusively queer, Renee smiled and said, “No, but it’s definitely built for us. Everyone’s welcome. You just have to be respectful.” Marcus chimed in with a term I hadn’t heard before but immediately loved: radical diversity. It’s not diversity as performance or checkbox, but a lived commitment to building spaces where everyone — especially those historically excluded — can belong.
The numbers are impressive. What started as four events in a year has grown into a thriving network of more than 1,500 adventurers. They host regular adventures, run happy hours, board game nights, and even family-friendly, sober programming at the Twin Cities Pride Cultural Arts Center. And yes, they bring D&D to the people — in haunted malls, at Pride festivals, and just last month they held their first adventure in Duluth. Their five-year plan? Expand community-driven D&D hubs to Chicago, then across 1,000 miles of America. It’s ambitious, but so was Frodo leaving the Shire.