I was sent a link to a post on the D&D subreddit (/r/dnd). The contents of the post aren't important, but my eye was drawn to the header. A beholder with the LGBTQIA++ BIPOC Trans flag and multicolored rainbow eyes.
To the mods and members of that subreddit, about Dungeons & Dragons, THAT'S the most important thing?
Also, of course, "No AI" is in the top 5 rules.
I know there are quite a few tabletop players here--is the entire community like this? I haven't played in some 20 years, and the last time I did it was mostly nerdy and edgy white and asian dudes. What happened??
I play D&D and Warhammer. When I tried to find people I work with to talk shop with I found a ton of people at my store play D&D, almost all of them are the college girls that work in the softlines departments. Warhammer is a different story, the only other person I found who plays it is my boss who emigrated here from the UK, and the only other people who've even HEARD of it are the nerdy guys (and 1 chick who heard about it from Henry Cavil. Dear nerdy celebrities, please STOP talking about your hobbies, you're drawing in the normies and ruining it for the rest of us!).
So from my personal experience, and looking purely at the community: D&D is a lost cause, you can still enjoy it if you homebrew some stuff and carefully choose your group but the community is now primarily women and theater guys. Warhammer is still primarily nerdy guys.
It helps that Warhammer is comically expensive. Women aren’t interested in spending that much money on something other than themselves.