Jeremy Crawford named Gayming Icon at Gayming Awards 2024
Gayming Magazine is honored to reveal that Jeremy Crawford will be named Gayming Icon at the upcoming Gayming Awards 2024 airing on June 25th, 2024, as part of IGN’s Summer of Gaming and on Gayming’s streaming channels.
Jeremy Crawford is the lead rules designer of Dungeons & Dragons at Wizards of the Coast. He is the lead designer of the new 2024 Player’s Handbook, and he led the design of Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything, Monsters of the Multiverse, and the 2014 Player’s Handbook. He has also co-authored numerous other D&D books since joining Wizards in 2007.
Jeremy is also one of the Dungeon Masters of the live-play show Acquisitions Incorporated, and he was included in Out Magazine’s Out100 for 2021.
Speaking to Gayming about being named Gayming Icon, Jeremy said: “It’s an honor to receive this. I have so often, working on D&D and other role-playing games, had my fellow members of the LGBTQ community in mind because role-playing games for me as a child were a place to safely explore identity and to see these wonderful stories where people with many different identities could come together and face challenges as one. So it has always been very meaningful for me to really connect my work in RPGs and D&D specifically with our lives as queer people.”
When asked about what joining our group of Gayming Icons means to him, he said: “So much of our large found family as queer people is about us lifting up each other and looking out for each other. So I love joining this party of adventurers as we queer creators continue our work and look for ever new ways to really lift up our fellow members of the broader queer community.”
Jeremy went on to talk about the importance of LGBTQ representation in games and the industry saying: “My introduction to D&D way back when I was in elementary school, was queer from the start. Not just because it was me playing, but because I was introduced to it by my sister, who is herself a lesbian. For me, the game was always a place for us to feel at ease about trying on different characters, having our characters explore gender identities as well as romances that maybe, at the time, we didn’t feel safe expressing in the real world, but we felt comfortable exploring in the context of a role-playing game.”
“I think for people in general, whether they’re queer or not, RPGs are a place to play, not just in a fantasy world or a science fiction world or a superhero setting or whatever the setting is, it’s also a chance for anyone, no matter their background, to try on different parts of themselves. Because whenever we play a character, whether it’s a hero or a villain or something in between, there’s a little bit of ourselves in that character. It’s a chance for us to shine a light on parts of our own psyche we don’t normally get to explore while getting to partner with our friends who are playing with us as they engage in the same thing; and through the alchemy of all of us doing this together, we create a story.”
“So in a way, I’ve always viewed role playing games as just in some ways being inherently queer, because so much of it is about bravely exploring identity in a community which is so much a part of our experience as queer people.”
Jeremy Crawford joins past Gayming Icons Robert Yang, Tanya ‘CypherofTyr’ DePass and Ashly Burch.
You can watch Jeremy accept his award and find out who wins the remaining nine categories at the Gayming Awards, on June 25th at 11am PT/2pm ET/7pm UK across the IGN channels and Gayming’s Twitch, TikTok and YouTube.
For more information about the Gayming Awards, visit gaymingawards.com
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