“Growing up with games was sort of my pathway to self exploration. Building my own competence. Role-playing allows you to explore identities that are not your own, but also to maybe form your identity better, with less of the fear that you’re gonna be judged because you’re not playing yourself, you’re playing a character and so you can experiment with how your voice may sound, and who you are. And as a brown kid growing up in a deeply white set of schools and communities, I felt alienated constantly and really, really had a hard time with it. It was very, very painful for me growing up. And role playing games were one of the few refuges along with books that I could find that gave me my own space and my own voice and to experiment. But all of these role playing games were like made by older, white men that had no context of my lived experience.”
— Ajit George