Why a tiefling rogue?

Well, here goes nothing; my first attempt at a blog post, as voted for on Twitter.

Anyone who’s known me for any length of time will be aware that there’s a bit of a theme with my Tabletop Roleplaying Game (TTRPG) characters, especially in Dungeons & Dragons and Pathfinder: they’re usually a tiefling, usually a rogue and always one or the other! On the very poll where I ran my first few blog post ideas by everyone, a friend of mine immediately answered; “because you’re trans”, and to quote everyone’s favourite indie game developer “of course she is“. But that begs the question: what’s made this combination of character options so compelling to an autistic trans woman, all the way from her “egg” (slang for a trans person who’s not yet realised they’re trans but aware something’s not quite right with their self image) days in 3.5th Edition Dungeons and Dragons (3.5e) to the present? Let’s start with some definitions.

What’s a rogue and what’s a tiefling?

The chances are you know what a rogue looks like. The rogue is a classic fantasy archetype; in early D&D, they were the Thief. A career criminal who’s turned their Geoff Manaugh approved talents to helping the party bypass the many traps and hazards along their way (and cutting a few throats, D&D being rather combat heavy as TTRPGs go). In the stereotypical triumvirate of “Fighter, Mage and Thief” they complimented the fighter’s head-on fighting with cunning tricks, and the mage’s wisdom with street smarts (put a pin in that, it’ll come up in the next section). That they were a former (or not) sneak thief was treated as a given; to the point they could never have a lawful alignment (and when the lawful/chaos morality system had a good/evil axis thrown in, they were “usually evil”, and couldn’t be good).

Later editions loosened the restrictions, meaning rogues (as they were called by 3rd Edition D&D) can still be con artists and cat burglars, but they could just as easily be smooth talking diplomats and parkour enthusiasts (and in science fiction, computer rog- …I mean hackers can wear whatever coloured hat they please). The iconic rogue for 3e was even a jolly halfling burglar in the vein of Bilbo Baggins. Their key ability in D&D has always been the sneak attack (or backstab, as it was called in Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, and “strike silently from behind” before then), giving them bonus damage to distracted or unaware foes, but the array of skills they have access to make them one of the most flexible classes to build a character with (second only to the bard).

Tieflings are a lot easier to nail down. Characters with demonic ancestry can be found all over classical mythology, and heroes with bad PR for sporting horns and a tail can be found in every genre that’ll take them. In D&D, they first appeared in the Planescape setting (my first experience with a tiefling rogue was the delightfully snarky Anna, a recruitable party member in Planescape: Torment). Initially their ancestry manifested as random demonic traits (the Player’s Handbook even came with tables to roll on), however in contrast to the rogue class, the tiefling player race lost a lot of player defined options. Come 4th edition D&D, they adopted the stereotypical “red horned devil” look (for tragically capitalistic reasons relating to how miniature heavy 4e was; incidentally, get another pin out for this one). 5th edition rolled this back a little (formalising the fact that players were already rolling tieflings with skin every colour of the rainbow anyway), and also clarified that the delightfully devilish aspects of their being can come into their family from making pacts (or picking the Abyss as a nice holiday location one too many times). Their main traits, as of 5th Edition D&D (5e), being innate magical abilities (which vary, but always include resistance to fire) and having a deeply unsettling aurora that makes people less inclined to trust them (we’ll get back to this later).

Going Rogue With Gender

You might recall that I mentioned that the traditional fantasy party is the Fighter, Mage and Thief; a combination so fundamental, it has a TV Tropes article. There was an assumption, in days gone by, that this would be three gentlemen…or perhaps two gentlemen, one magically inclined and the other more physical, and their scoundrel friend. Naturally, this couldn’t last, and writers of tabletop RPGs and other fantasy works decided to do what I did myself not too long ago, and add a bit of oestrogen.

So the dynamic shifted to another classic type of trio that was popular in the 80’s and 90’s; two boys and a girl, and would you believe it, this was usually the rogue (second only to the mage; very rarely, and unjustly, the fighter)! You could speculate endlessly on the reasons for this trend (writers were more comfortable with women combatants who could dodge and weave instead of getting punched? Artists preferred drawing women in light armour? Girls were just smarter and better at picking locks?), but unlike these dagger and bow toting ladies, it was hard to miss.

So what? Did I just latch onto the fact that the only girls in the stories and games I enjoyed were usually rogues (sometimes wizards)? Well, growing up, the GNC (gender non-conforming) characters I’d seen were always the outsiders; they were punks, goths, grungy hackers, and in fantasy settings they carried a dagger. Put simply, rogues have a certain androgyny to them. Rogue men can rock eyeliner or stubble. Rogue women can run the whole gamut from conventionally attractive cat-burglar to “wait, you’re a girl?”. Hoods are unisex, and you can wear what you want beneath them. It would be a long time before I saw an actually trans character, but this was the next best thing.

4th edition D&D was far from a better thing (in some players’ eyes). Paizo Publishing saw all those disaffected 3.5e fans, and realised they only needed a new setting (the D20 System Reference Documents being free to licence — this probably also lead to the “SRD” for 4e being so restrictive it was unusable, making a lack of third party content another nail in its coffin)! The setting in question (Pathfinder; sometimes affectionately known as D&D 3.75e, as it just further balanced the 3rd Edition D&D D20 system) was written from the ground up, and introduced a lot of more modern sensibilities and diversity (albeit, only at the behest of writers who were allegedly being treated less than kindly by management). There were several canon queer and trans characters in the setting’s lore and pre-written adventure paths, but the one that really stuck out to me was Anevia, from the Wrath of the Righteous adventure path (and, as of 2021, its video game adaptation). Anevia was a rogue, and casually included in (but more importantly not in any way connected to) her tragic backstory was the fact she was trans, and had been given a potion that magically shifted her sex after a lifetime of just having to pass without trace. As a millennial egg, at the time, there were no trans characters anywhere (even as recently as the early 2010’s). Sure, a lot of D&D media I’d consumed as a teenager had included characters who’d accidentally put on a “cursed” item and found themselves the opposite sex. A scenario so common throughout D&D media that even parody comics like Nodwick and The Order of the Stick referenced it…but someone other than me would be happy about it? Actually seek that out? Despite these mindblowing revelations, I was far from surprised the first trans character in a mainstream TTRPG was a rogue.

If I had to say what the most frustrating thing about my transition’s been, it’s the unrelenting pressure to be feminine. It wasn’t something I was unaware of (aside from having to constantly resist the opposite and being able to infer what was coming, I had the second hand experiences of the cis girls and women in my life to draw from), but my dreams of finally living as a GNC woman after missing the chance to grow up as a tomboy were quite thoroughly dashed. First when, after a few days of finally being gendered properly, I was mistaken for a cis man after an electrolysis appointment, and spent the rest of the day silently trying to avoid crying. Then subsequently when my mum (who had been completely supportive of my coming out and transitioning), was mortified that I’d dyed my hair since she’d last seen me. Society can accept (grudgingly) a gender non-conforming cis woman, and (albeit while looking for excuses to change its mind) trans women, but gender non-conforming trans women are a step too far.

When I was rolling Grounded, the tiefling rogue I play in a streamed D&D campaign (and as of writing, hasn’t been killed off, despite my habit of wandering away from the rest of the party), I told some friends I was rolling a trans character. One piped up and asked why I’d want to play a trans woman, when I could just “be” a cis woman in the game without all that baggage. The fact of the matter is that I like being trans just fine; it’s having my womanhood questioned that I can’t stand. Obviously, there’re other things about rogues that appeal to me (such as the methodical approach stealth brings, the power trip that comes from attacking someone from the shadows, the excitement of bypassing a lock or trap or climbing a wall and other such “A Burglar’s Guide to the City” nonsense…the list goes on), but the way your average roguish woman is able to be very much read as a woman, while being as, well…roguish as she pleases will forever be my white whale and go-to power fantasy. Having that validated by the game mechanics is a can of metatextual worms, but it certainly gives me what I want.

Rainbow Coloured Tieflings

So now we’ve established that I’m all about that rogue life (from safely behind my character sheet), what about my favourite humanoids? Comics have never been my media of choice, but tieflings are very much like The X-Men. Marvel’s team of “mutants” whose struggles protecting a society that constantly undermines their humanity (which has been more than once meta-fictionally undermined by Marvel arguing they aren’t human for tax purposes) are treated as a stand-in for any and all oppressed groups (for better or worse, as an awkward attempt to reference “trans panic” murders can attest).

Tieflings can be seen much the same way in D&D. There’s a reason “tiefling rogue” is up there with chaotic good drow rangers as the edgy character template. Their 5e lore notes:

MET WITH MISTRUST

Ignorant people tend to be suspicious of tieflings, assuming that their infernal heritage has left its mark on their personality and morality, not just their appearance. The reality is that a tiefling’s bloodline doesn’t affect their personality. They are gifted with magic from the infernal realms but chart their own course in life.

D&D Beyond, https://www.dndbeyond.com/races/7-tiefling

…and the same box in the hard cover Player’s Handbook goes further, titled “Mutual Mistrust” and going into detail on the prejudice they face (and how it often drives them to evil; likely the detail that caused the change — the “marginalised villain’s going too far in lashing out!” trope needs to disappear for good).

While not every table wants to grapple with such issues (the campaign I rolled the aforementioned Grounded for outright has a “no fantasy racism” rule), tieflings are easy to portray as stand-ins for many different minorities. In addition to the obvious racism metaphor (thanks to D&D awkwardly calling sentient species “races”, very much showing its age), the lore can be read in other ways.

Tieflings can be the children of two other tieflings, but they can just as often show up unexpectedly in the families of other humanoids, and can often face rejection. Their presence somehow feels wrong to those prejudiced against them. They seek one another out and form their own communities. All traits that resonate with both the trans and autistic realities of my life. The idea that tieflings are inherently queer is so common in LGBTQ+ friendly D&D groups that it scarcely needs explaining (and even if it did, that sentence is pretty much the long and short of it). That tieflings are neurodivergent is a less common interpretation, but it certainly speaks to me.

Combine this coding with the sheer aesthetic choices that come with technicolour horned devils (the core rules say tieflings come in red…but some rules catch on better than others) and you have the other half of my favourite character option.

An Edgy Power Fantasy?

So, I’ve explained how tiefling rogues make me feel seen within the setting of a TTRPG, but what’s left? The answer can be found in the characters I was playing before I realised I could be trans…

In the same campaign there’s a side campaign, DM’d by one of the other players. In that campaign, the character I rolled is Fi, a loving tribute to the kinds of adventurers I played as an eggy teen. Fi is a young tiefling ranger, who wears a cloak and all around tries to look far more edgy than they are (in spite of their loving middle class family); they are also nonbinary. The former should be self explanatory (it’s a simply parody of my own gritty teenage power fantasies), and the latter is a tribute to the fact all my D&D characters were nonbinary before I realised that was a thing. Intrigued by the many ambiguously gendered characters I’d experienced, I usually gave the same trait to my my own creations. Completely unaware that simply being the gender you preferred, (regardless of the validation of the people around you) was an option. I ultimately came out as agender for a while (when this gap in my knowledge was filled), then finally came out as a trans woman both online and in real life. My TTRPG characters have effectively charted this, as I graduated from “my character’s gender’s a mystery” to “none is the correct answer” and finally “she’s a trans woman”. As an aside, you’ll note that Fi is specifically nonbinary and fairly certain of themselves. While it’s true that being agender was a stepping stone for me, the idea that it isn’t an identity in its own right is a cliché I’d rather avoid.

Since I started playing D&D again, in 5e (being one of the 3.5e fans who jumped ship to Pathfinder), every single one of my characters (with one exception) has been a tiefling, and only two haven’t been rogues, and all of them have been trans women or nonbinary. I have also refused to play (to myself; it’s not as if anyone was forcing me) an unironically edgy tiefling rogue. Don’t get me wrong, a good angsty character can be fun, but I’ve ultimately come to the conclusion that my ideal power fantasy is a character who can be openly trans, at odds with the society around them (even if it’s from being slightly quirky) and still happy.