Tanya Colleen DePass | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | 1973 (age 49–50) |
| Years active | 2014–present |
Tanya DePass (born 1973), also known by her username Cypheroftyr, is an American journalist, activist and streamer. She is the founder of the non-profit organization I Need Diverse Games, which she established in 2016.
DePass grew up in a poor family in Chicago. [1] She has been a fan of tabletop and video games from her early childhood. [2] She has recalled that "games were another way to flex my imagination. I loved reading, and I treated it as an extension of being able to read and go to these different places – in games you can literally visit another world... It was an escape, it was relaxing, it was formative"; she stated that she learned Black and queer characters were only given "incidental" roles and that "people who look like me" were not "full character[s]...who get to save the world". [1]
DePass has written articles on topics of diversity, feminism, and race, for publications including Polygon and Vice, [2] and provides diversity consultation services to game development studios and organizations. [2] She is the programming & diversity coordinator for OrcaCon and GaymerX. [3] DePass is the editor of Game Devs & Others: Tales from the Margins (2018), an anthology of essays from games industry professionals and players who felt marginalized by the industry. [2] [4] Additionally, she is a 2020 Annenberg Innovation Lab Civic Media Fellow at USC. [5]
DePass is the co-developer for the Fifth Season RPG, based on N. K. Jemisin's Broken Earth trilogy (2020). [6] [7] Her work has been featured in the Victoria and Albert Museum's Design/Play/Disrupt exhibit. [2]
Online, DePass goes by the username Cypheroftyr. [8] She is a streamer on Twitch, where she has faced harassment. [9] In 2020, during the George Floyd protests, DePass ran a charity stream to raise funds for The Bail Project—the stream raised over $140,000 USD in a single day. [10] [1]
Fireside Magazine, for which DePass was the special features editor, was nominated for a Hugo Award for Best Semiprozine in 2019. [11] In 2020, the Diana Jones Award was devoted to "Black Excellence in Gaming", with the committee awarding two dozen black people in the industry specifically, including DePass. [12] Kotaku named DePass one of their 4 "Gamers of the Year" for 2020. [13] She was also named one of the inaugural Future Class at The Game Awards 2020. [14]
Her work to make the industry more inclusive has been highlighted in the film Game Changer, directed by basketball player Tina Charles. [15] [16] [17] The short documentary premiered at Tribeca 2021.[ citation needed ]
In 2014, DePass used the hashtag #INeedDiverseGames while responding to a statement from Ubisoft claiming that it would not be feasible to animate female characters for the upcoming Assassin's Creed game. [2] [18] [1] DePass has said she is "sick of games where I don't get to be the hero". [19] Despite pre-dating the controversy, the hashtag became particularly popular during the Gamergate harassment campaign, when it was one of several used in anti-Gamergate tweets. Tweets using the hashtag were primarily those sharing positive messages about a desire for increased diversity and broader representation in video games. [20]
DePass founded a non-profit using the name I Need Diverse Games in August 2016. [2] [18] [21] The organization, based in Chicago, [18] aims to support visibility and access for underrepresented people within the video games industry, and is funded through Patreon and fundraising campaigns. [18] One of the organization's initiatives is to provide financial support and passes to video game conferences such as the Game Developers Conference. [18] As of 2020, I Need Diverse Games was sending about two dozen people to the Game Developers Conference each year. [22] The organization also runs seminars on diversity at other games industry events, and highlights the work of underrepresented people. [2] [22]
DePass plays Dungeons & Dragons in the Rivals of Waterdeep actual play livestream, which features a cast of people of color. [23] [24] The show began in 2018 in Chicago as an official Wizards of the Coast production, broadcast on the official Dungeons & Dragons Twitch channel. [25] She is also the creative director of the Cortex actual play series Into the Mother Lands. [26] [27] In 2021, DePass became a player in The Black Dice Society , a Ravenloft themed Dungeons & Dragons actual play show on the official Wizards of the Coast channels. [28] [29]
Dungeons & Dragons is a fantasy tabletop role-playing game (RPG) originally created and designed by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson. The game was first published in 1974 by Tactical Studies Rules, Inc. (TSR). It has been published by Wizards of the Coast, now a subsidiary of Hasbro, since 1997. The game was derived from miniature wargames, with a variation of the 1971 game Chainmail serving as the initial rule system. D&D's publication is commonly recognized as the beginning of modern role-playing games and the role-playing game industry, and also deeply influenced video games, especially the role-playing video game genre.
Ravenloft is a campaign setting for the Dungeons & Dragons roleplaying game. It is an alternate time-space existence known as a pocket dimension or demiplane, called the Demiplane of Dread, which consists of a collection of land pieces called "domains", brought together by a mysterious force known only as the Dark Powers. Each domain is tailored to and mystically ruled by a being called a Darklord who is forever trapped and surrounded by magical mists surrounding the domain. Strahd von Zarovich, a vampire in the original AD&DRavenloft I6 module 1983, became the first Darklord, both ruler and prisoner of his own personal domain of Barovia. The story of how Count von Zarovich became darklord of Barovia was detailed in the 1993 novel I, Strahd: The Memoirs of a Vampire. As originally established in the Ravenloft: Realm of Terror boxed set known as "the Black Box" released in 1990, the Ravenloft campaign setting was located in the Ethereal Plane. As a physical manifestation of that plane, lands, monsters and even people were created out of the mysterious mists, and the realm acted as a prison where one could enter or be transported, but means of escape were few. Other Ravenloft Domains and Darklords were eventually added in various AD&D 2nd edition products establishing a core continent attached around Barovia which could be traveled to by others if their respective lords allowed entering or leaving their borders; while some Domains remained isolated in the mists and were referred to as Islands.
Count Strahd von Zarovich is a fictional character originally appearing as the feature villain in the highly popular Advanced Dungeons and Dragons adventure module I6: Ravenloft. Later, this character and his world would be explored in follow-up modules, novels, and the Ravenloft campaign setting. Within this setting, Strahd is the first and best-known of Ravenloft's darklords. He is a powerful ancient vampire. He is also a master necromancer, a skilled warrior, and the unquestioned ruler of the domain of Barovia.
Rob Heinsoo is an American tabletop game designer. He has been designing and contributing to professional role-playing games, card games, and board games since 1994. Heinsoo was the lead designer on the 4th Edition of Dungeons & Dragons (2008), and is co-designer of the 13th Age roleplaying game along with Jonathan Tweet. He has also designed and contributed to role playing, miniatures and card games, and a computer game.
Mark Meer is a Canadian actor, writer and improvisor, based in Edmonton, Alberta. He is known for his role in the Mass Effect trilogy, in which he stars as the voice of the player character, Commander Shepard. His voice is featured in a number of other games from BioWare Corp., notably the Baldur's Gate and Dragon Age series. Meer stars as the voice of the player character William Mackenzie in The Long Dark from Hinterland Studio. He also works in animation, providing the voice for several characters in a series of cartoon shorts produced by Rantdog Animation Studios, and the voice of Horse in the Captain Canuck web series starring Kris Holden-Ried and Tatiana Maslany.
Laura Curtis Hickman is an American fantasy author, best known for her works in game design and fantasy novels cowritten with her husband, Tracy Hickman. She was one of the first women to write and publish a tabletop adventure.
Michael Mearls is an American writer and designer of fantasy role-playing games (RPGs) and related fiction. He was the senior manager for the Dungeons & Dragons research and design team. He co-led design for the 5th edition of the game. He also worked on the Castle Ravenloft board game, and various compendium books for 3rd, 4th, and 5th editions Dungeons & Dragons.
Critical Role is an American web series in which a group of professional voice actors plays Dungeons & Dragons. The show started streaming partway through the cast's first campaign in March 2015. Campaign one ended in October 2017 after 115 episodes, and campaign two started in January 2018 and ended in June 2021 after 141 episodes. A number of one-shots were aired in the hiatus between the two campaigns. After campaign two was completed, the spin-off limited series Exandria Unlimited aired from June 2021 to August 2021. The third campaign premiered on October 21, 2021.
Amanda Hamon Kunz is an American game designer known for her work on the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game and other d20 role-playing game products.
Jessica Price is an American writer, editor, designer and producer of video and tabletop games; she is known for her work on the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game and Guild Wars 2. She is also known for speaking about sexism in the gaming industry.
Roll20 is a website consisting of a set of tools for playing tabletop role-playing games, also referred to as a virtual tabletop, which can be used as an aid to playing in person or remotely online. The site was launched in 2012 after a successful Kickstarter campaign. The platform's goal is to provide an authentic tabletop experience that does not try to turn the game into a video game, but instead aids the game master in providing immersive tools online. The blank slate nature of the platform makes integrating a multitude of tabletop role-playing games possible.
Waterdeep: Dragon Heist is an adventure module for the 5th edition of the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game. It is the first part of the Waterdeep storyline and followed by a second adventure, Waterdeep: Dungeon of the Mad Mage.
Curse of Strahd is an adventure book for the 5th edition of the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game. It was released on March 15, 2016 and is based on the Ravenloft module published in 1983.
Rivals of Waterdeep is an American actual play web series, with a podcast adaptation, where the cast plays Dungeons & Dragons using the fifth edition ruleset. It is set in the Forgotten Realms campaign setting and the show's Dungeon Master changes each season. The show premiered in June 2018; the show's thirteenth season ended in August 2022. It is one of the longest running official Dungeons & Dragons web series.
Gayming Magazine is a British, UK-based online LGBTQ video gaming magazine. They are the first video gaming website dedicated to the LGBTQ community.The site was launched in June 2019 with the aim of connecting the LGBTQ and video gaming communities, and has launched virtual Pride events. In 2021, the magazine hosted the world's first LGBTQ+ gaming awards ceremony, Gayming Awards, with the most recent event having taken place in 2022.
Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft is a sourcebook that details the Domains of Dread from the Ravenloft campaign setting for the 5th edition of the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game.
Actual play, also called live play, is a genre of podcast or web show in which people play tabletop role-playing games (TTRPGs) for an audience. Actual play often encompasses in-character interactions between players, storytelling from the gamemaster, and out-of-character engagements such as dice rolls and discussion of game mechanics. The genre emerged in the early 2000s and became more popular throughout the decade, particularly with the 2015 debut of Critical Role, an actual play webseries featuring professional voice actors.