The ‘no-rush’ approach: Queering time through slowness in Dungeons & Dragons

This article identifies the queer potentials of slow play by analysing the results of seven semi-structured interviews with players of the tabletop role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons ( D&D ). During interviews, players acknowledged that a key element of playing D&D was slowness: they took their time exploring locations, engaged in lengthy turn-based combat sessions and had in-depth discussions. Here players and their characters move slowly, in what I term ‘slow play’. In playing slowly, players created a queer experience of time through a resistance to heteronormative temporal orders defined by productivity and linear progression. I focus particularly on how interviewees wandered away from pre-established goals to produce a method of play that delayed resolution and formed new spatial locations. Ultimately, I contend that slowing down the pace of play queers time through its resistance to normative play movements.