Thread by @SecretGamerGrrl

So it seems like today is a day where a lot of people are sharing experiences working for a certain company and ways that that might suck if you're queer or a woman. I definitely don't have the sort of stories a lot of people do, but I was absolutely around to witness plenty of

the over the top things higher profile people have been bringing up. So screw everyone trying to discredit them, and there's a special place in hell for the many people I see trying to discredit them by reviving ridiculous old nazi playground rumors about people from 7 years ago.

Anyway, if I'm just talking personal experience, mine there mostly just involves having my foot repeatedly slammed in the door.

It's weird to get into how long I've worked in the RPG industry because technically I think it's "since the 90s" or so, but I made a clean break when I

transitioned. Stuff I worked on under my deadname and people I worked with do not get to come and play anymore. I started over from the bottom with a blank resume in like 2014, 2015, somewhere in there, getting some general encouragement to pester someone at this company I'm not

explicitly mentioning in this thread because I don't want people dragging it out years from now or something. Anyway the basic path laid out for getting in doing freelance was, talk to X about going some real barebones gruntwork stuff filling in monster stats and extra mechanical

options in the like, prove you have a good handle on things and can hit a deadline, then someone should mention you're reliable to Y, who handles the work assignments for the sort of thing you actually want to get into doing.

And sure more than reasonable. I set about doing that

and I'm reasonable sure it's all OK. Nothing really eye catching because it's all stuff on the very technical side of things and any interesting flavor I work into something is likely getting cut to fit art at the last minute or whatever, but hey. This is just showing X and Y I'm

meeting a standard. Except there was just some restructuring right after I turned that over and neither X nor Y are in those positions anymore. It's Z and W, and they have no notes on me. And then there was more restructuring, and more, and more. Very unstable industry, games.

So here I am a number of years later with my work in I dunno, over a dozen books I think just at this one company, but I'm not sure anyone I've ever worked with as a developer on those is still even on staff at all except for this one assignment that kinda fell through in edition

swap chaos, so with that angle I'm fairly sure I'd still be starting from rock bottom and who knows who I'd even e-mail?

Meanwhile, for a while, I was applying for an actual on-staff position, which you know, would help keep people from forgetting who I am and make the work more

consistent and pay at least minimum wage. The freelance stuff is one-off contract work you see, paying X cents a word, where X varies but is generally always "obscenely insultingly low next to any other form of paid writing that exists," especially with this company, and in some

cases I had to wait literally over 2 years to even get those checks. Problem with the full time staff jobs though is that while I had plenty else on my resume there was a consistent sticking point I recall seeing of having some minimum amount of experience with the Organized Play

side of things. And... yeah, so the thing there is I'm a trans woman.

See, with RPGs, there's playing games in the usual way, where you have a group of friends sit down and play a game together all relatively casually, and then you have Organized Play, where following more rigid

standards some people make some characters and go to like conventions and promotional in-store events and such where very specific and again rigidly laid out adventures are run and there's extra accounting and signing off on record sheets so you can drag the same character around

to different events and play in different random pickup games with total strangers.

Now, again. I am a trans woman. Playing RPGs in large public venues and random game stores is not generally something I am going to do, because that is the absolute perfect recipe for ensuring I

deal with constant extreme harassment and bigotry in an environment where I have to sit there and take it all with a smile. And the semi-fan organizational end of that particular company's Organized Play bit has also had some incidents with harassment higher up the chain I'm told

so, that never worked out (which... I guess spared me from getting hit on by a creep then snubbed then fired then stuck without a job in one of the highest cost of living parts of the country).

The other option, and really the only way anyone ever actually gets work in games, is

of course "networking." Which is kind of code for "go to GenCon and go to bars and have some drinks with people who can offer you jobs and get them to like you."

So, first off the fact that I DO NOT drink is a pretty big barrier there. Being trans is another. I believe I've told

the story before yes of when I was at GenCon, and someone had the bright idea to organize a little side event, privately inviting "all the women" in attendance to network without having to deal with getting hit on by creepy dudes, and I got snubbed? That was fun. And just being a

woman who isn't into men in an industry that's nearly all men with plenty of loose grips on consent is also not great. Which isn't to say I haven't done face to face networking at cons. I don't want to name names but there's a few industry people who have made time to meet up at

these things (generally now formerly of that company) both before and after I got myself to a place where I feel at all comfortable being seen in public, and thanks a ton for that, but I'm still not getting my career off the ground that way, you know?

And then of course there's

not-so-face-to-face networking, which is... a BIT better? I'm on I think fairly friendly terms with I'd say a significant portion of the portion of the tabletop game industry that has a presence on this site, but I'm also highly radioactive and nobody wants to be seen near me.

You can't even look up my CV. Search for "Violet Hargrave" and you get a bunch of weird stalker garbage (and probably a ton of twitter accounts to report for impersonation for that matter). If you do find a database listing credits on things most of those have had nazis go in and

wipe my name off everything I've worked on, and I don't think any list any accurate contact info or anything. Ask around about me here and you are REAL likely to run into someone "highly respected" who will tell you with a straight face that I'm like a nazi or a child molester or

I murdered their best friend, because smearing random trans women with horrific lies is the internet's favorite pastime.

And I don't wanna even get into the whole laundry list of weird discriminatory crap involved when I was briefly involved with someone's livestreamed campaign,

sorta for that company except to say it kicked off with a debate on whether I should be forced to play a male character because someone didn't think my voice sounded sufficiently feminine and "people might be weirded out" and things only got worse and more humiliating from there.