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​Her Story:

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Heather first found her way to TTRPGs as part of the "Stranger Things" craze in 2016. She was working as a high school English teacher, and her student teacher at the time introduced her to Dungeons & Dragons (D&D). Later, that year, she began playing with a group of co-workers (long live the Nonames!), and she hasn't stopped since.

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Heather played at various D&D tables both virtually and in-person for the next several years but found herself too often in spaces where she felt unsafe or unsupported. She ended up in several situations where players were using the game as an excuse to play out violent power fantasies, and it left her wondering if TTRPGs were actually right for her. While she loves a good combat, she found she was much more interested in the creative storytelling aspect of the game. Luckily, in early 2022, she was offered a spot in the Inspired Roles & Roleplaying Discord community, and it was here that her love for TTRPGs really took off. Heather played at a few tables, but more importantly, she found a group of fellow gamers with whom she finally felt safe. She ended up becoming a Dungeon Master (DM) and even joined the leadership team as the Community Manager for over a year.

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As Heather began to run her own games, she found that her background as an educator, creative writer, and queer woman of color really pushed her to rethink the worlds that she was building. She started studying the movement to decolonize games, and she discovered that there was a whole lot more to TTRPGs than just D&D. Between her own research and her experiences attending PAX Unplugged in 2023, Heather discovered the importance of things like safety tools and learned incredible new TTRPGs such as Coyote and Crow, Kids on Bikes, and Avatar Legends. Most importantly, she came to understand that there are QTBIPOC folx in TTRPG spaces worldwide doing the work to make tables more welcoming spaces. With this newfound understanding, Heather realized it was time to move on from her existing gaming spaces and find something new, though she genuinely wasn't sure what that would look like. Several months later, inspired wholly by the support and love of those around her, Worlds 4 All was born.