As one who lost their community of D&D playing nerds with WotC's Adventurer's League, I am incredibly eager to experience D&D 5th Edition through the digital experience of PC gaming. There is a part of me that is worried about the state of game development as an industry and the role of qualitative research within the development process given the number of creatives working hard in a collaborative setting. The tabletop RPG has long been the most queer friendly gaming experience as the rules came down to whatever best serves the group. Dragon Heist and the upcoming Tasha's Cauldron of Everything represent WotC responding to research and criticism into the state of D&D today. With Beamdog's Enhanced Edition of BG, Dorn was a reasonable shot at opening up the world to frames of desire beyond the normative experience of the original.
On the level of narrative development, I was wondering how Larian handles the sheer multiplicity of experiences required in gaming. The fiction literature community makes use of professional sensitivity readers to provide development criticism of how a narrative responds to the representation of marginalized communities. There is also a sizable community of game studies scholars researching games and communities focused on gender, race, and sexuality. With a game as big as BGIII with a property as big as D&D, my concerns are primarily circulating around diverse voices and experiences that are particularly paramount for me. A part of me is worried that such research and editorial work is not standard practice in game development and with everything else involved in development, such concerns do not get addressed because it is not a developmental priority.
