Roleplaying games (RPGs) are one of the most popular ways to experiment with your own stories. Unlike most computer games they are designed to be customisable. You can choose your character, your race, your skills, your weapons and your future. Playing in a group of people with a games master (GM) your characters explore a fantasy world.
But unfortunately for girls and women the fantasy worlds of roleplaying seem to share some of the worst characteristics of this one. This fantasy space is a male fantasy in which the men are armoured and the women go to battle in their underwear. For people of colour fantasy worlds are even more problematic. The glamourous “good” races like elves are typically described as whitefolk and it’s ugly conniving “bad” races like orcs and goblins who have skin tones of darker hues.
What’s worse is that many female roleplayers think there’s nothing wrong with this. One woman writes:
“Think about all of the fantasy, sci-fi, and comic book images of characters. The guys look tough and the girls look sexy. That’s how it is, and that’s how it should be.” – Misty
That’s how it is, for sure. But it’s not how things should be. If toughness is the province of one gender and sexiness the other everyone is impoverished. Imagine if the boot was on the other foot. What if the women got the armour and the men the armour: could Batman take himself seriously in the outfit Fernacular has sketched? (See more reimaginings here)
And if the sexism argument doesn’t move you what about the racism one? Are you comfortable with people of colour being portrayed as brutish monsters and white people as civilised high races? No, I didn’t think so.
Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) is one of the most successful roleplaying franchises and the company that produces the game guides, Wizards of the Coast, is preparing for a new edition. A friend of mine has launched a petition to be sent to their CEO asking for artwork which reflects the diversity of the real world.
You can sign the petition here: D&D should be for everyone, not just white men.
I have written three 
Perhaps the author has other projects on the go. George R R Martin and his fan base fell out with each other over the fans demands for more Ice and Fire novels and their criticism of Martin for working on anything else. On the one hand I completely appreciate (and share) their frustration, on the other hand writing cannot be produced on command.
Perhaps the author doesn’t know how to finish the books. After a gap of seven years this is entirely a possibility for me but it’s not been tested. I had a plan for how to finish these books and I remember a lot of it and I even have notes towards them. But with each year that passes it becomes less likely that I will complete the series if only because my writing evolves and I might be danger of pastiching my own style in returning to an earlier one. These are the risks of series fiction and why I now concentrate on novels which don’t depend on sequels.