The Tweet Seen Round the 'Verse

This is the titular tweet from Mike Mearls that seemed to shake the D&D community up a little over two months ago.  I debated for a while about whether I had anything to add to the conversation about this- and all the back and forth that has ensued since, but I've elected to throw in my two copper pieces.

There seems to be a lot of debate about what was meant by the text of this tweet.  While there is nothing more quintessentially D&D than a bunch of nerds debating about how to interpret a simple block of text- it seems that a lot of people decided to (willfully) misinterpret this.  Let's review it one piece at a time.

Let's look at this bit first: Mearls is addressing this message to a specific subset of people among his Twitter followers and on the internet at large.  He is addressing people "who insist on gatekeeping."  These people are gatekeepers.  They are people who are interested in keeping new players out of their games and newcomers out of the community at large out of a dislike for things like diversity and inclusivity and/or disinterest in teaching the game to a noob or someone who just wants to try the game out.  If you are not a gatekeeper, then this message is NOT directed at you.  You are also not really a "fan" of D&D and what it has grown to be.

These are the specific gatekeepers that Mearls is addressing.  There are gatekeepers out there that use a multitude of measures to drive people away from the game and the community.  Some of them will tell a newcomer that they are unable to understand the rules (because they are so complex) or that they won't get the rich tapestry of history and legend that has been woven (if they are full of themselves about their homebrew or someone who is deep into the Forgotten Realms/Eberron/etc.)  If you are a gatekeeper that is using the excuse of "rules complexity" or "lore density" to drive away someone that would come to your table and ask "What is this?" or "How do you play?" or "Can I try?" then this message is directed at you.  If you're gatekeeping by any other means, then maybe you'll be address later- but again I feel like I should reiterate: " IF YOU ARE NOT A GATEKEEPER, THEN THIS MESSAGE IS NOT DIRECTED AT YOU."

Now remember folks- this message is about gatekeepers who use the excuse of "rules complexity" and "lore density" to drive people away from the game and community.  Now Mearls ventures to say that those gatekeepers ALSO "have a problem with women in tabletop gaming."  This means that the type of grognard or neckbeard that would try and shoo a woman away from their gaming table- is the type of person that would use the excuse of "rules complexity" or "lore density" to try and convince a woman that she could not play the game.  This DOES NOT mean that women cannot understand or appreciate these things- it ONLY means that these members of the old guard will resort to these things as the excuse for keeping people out.

This whole tweet was aimed at a group of people (gatekeepers) and an even more specific group within that one (that use flimsy excuses about the complexity of the game) to keep the game table from getting diversified (in this case it's women, but I have heard that many others face this kind of crap as well).  If you are offended by this tweet, then you are either a member of the group that Mearls is trying to address- or you are misinterpreting this tweet as fuel for the culture war that seems to spread across the geek communities as it has spread across every facet of our modern lives. In either case: