By Las Vegas PRIDE Magazine Staff

While most apps are asking LGBTQ+ people to date, swipe, flirt, or scroll, one queer founder is asking us to adventure.

Rachel Dove, openly lesbian founder, storyteller, and D&D player, created Dungeons Not Dating, a first-of-its-kind platform designed to help LGBTQ+ gamers find safe, inclusive, values-aligned tabletop groups.

The app officially launched on January 31, 2025, on both Google Play and the App Store, and has already earned attention from multiple national outlets. Dove placed second out of 100 companies on Season 17 of The Blox, and she’s been featured on Legacy Makers; but this story is more than a startup win.

This is about a queer woman, building a better table, because she once couldn’t find one.

“There had to be a better way.”

Dove discovered Dungeons & Dragons through a relationship and played a campaign for two and a half years. When the relationship ended, suddenly she wasn’t just single — she was without a party.

So she started searching.

Roll20. Reddit. Facebook groups.

Rachel Dove (Photo by Bart Levy Photography)

“It was exhausting having to apply to games I would never get into and having just to sit back with fingers crossed,” she recalled.

One group finally accepted her — all men. Their greeting?

‘Oh, good! A girl! You can relax, and we’ll tell you when we need you to seduce something.’

That moment was the spark.

“I knew there needed to be a better, safer, and more inclusive way to find a high-quality gaming group.”

The truth about queer gaming spaces

Queer representation exists in D&D content. It exists in modules. It exists on streams.

“But the reality,” Dove says, “is that it’s still not always safe for queer, and specifically trans, folks to put themselves out there online in a widely cis-het male community.”

Unless your friend group plays D&D already, she explained, “it is harder now, more than ever, to find a table where you are genuinely accepted and respected — not just tolerated.”

So Dove built a platform — where your character leads the way

Dungeons Not Dating uses a character-forward model. When you swipe through profiles, you see the character a player wants to bring to the table — not their photo, not their age, not their location.

That privacy, Dove says, is intentional.

The app also allows players to select value tags — such as LGBTQ+, BiPOC, Trans Rights, BLM, and more — so users can match with people who share their principles.

And behind the scenes, the app includes automatic flagging for slurs/derogatory terms, as well as complete reporting and blocking tools.

“We’re not trying to make just another LFG tool,” she says. “We’re building the table we needed.”

Building belonging — and surviving setbacks

Early development was hard. At one point, Dove was left with undeliverable code and tens of thousands wasted.

So she rebuilt. With new developers. And Version 2.0, a polished, re-engineered experience, launched in March 2025.

How did she keep going?

“I know I need to do whatever is necessary to keep this project alive for those who need it. Community can be life-saving.”

She says that when she walks into the tech world, often the only queer woman in the room, it helps to remember: “Sometimes it is okay to be the only thorn in a room full of roses. A thorn’s job is to protect something valuable.”

Why TTRPGs are queer magic

For many queer people, tabletop roleplaying games offer a rare freedom: the chance to try on identities, genders, presentations — safely.

Dove shares that she explored gender expression in-game before she ever could in the real world. “D&D allowed me to create a male-presenting, gender-fluid character. I got to see how it felt to be treated as he/him or they/them,” she says. “Without that means to explore myself without the societal consequences, I might still be questioning my gender identity.”

That freedom to try on, to imagine, to discover, is part of the power she wants more LGBTQ+ gamers to access.

What’s next?

Dove is now preparing the platform’s next major revamp, shaped by nearly a year of community feedback.

“The updates will allow for a smoother matching process and a better understanding of those you are matching with, through added personality and value tags,” she says.

A broader marketing push is also underway to scale the user base and increase match likelihood.

Dungeons Not Dating is not a dating app. It is a belonging app. It is the place where LGBTQ+ creators, neurodiverse players, quiet nerds, queer weirdos, adventurers, spellcasters, and dungeon delvers can find each other — not to hook up, but to build worlds.

To roll the dice. To hear “you are welcome at this table.” To find found family, in fiction and in real life. And that, in our community, is the most powerful magic of all.

Learn more at: https://www.dungeonsnotdating.com/

Download the app: Google Play | App Store

This article was originally published as a digital exclusive for the 2025 Holiday Issue of Las Vegas PRIDE Magazine, which can be read in its original format here.