General RPG DiscussionDiscussion of all RPGs and non-system-specific topics. DM/GM/player issues, settings, etc. Rules discussion belongs in one the forums below.
Name three female protagonists from fantasy written before 1970.
Even excluding mythology and legends, they're out there, but they're rare...and most of them were in short stories, not novels.
Thinking...Red Sonja appeared in comic form in 1973, inspired by the 1934 Robert E. Howard short story "The Shadow of the Vulture" in the form of the Red Sonya of Rogatino character.
C. L. Moore's Jirel of Joiry is out there as well, dating back to 1934's "Black God's Kiss."
The second book in Ursula K. LeGuin's Earthsea trilogy features Tenar, and was published in 1971.
The Chronicles of Narnia feature several young women in heroic roles, as do, as I recall, the Dragonriders of Pern books.
Despite this, you are far more likely to find a female protagonist in early sci-fi than early fantasy.
Hussar, it's your choice to put such a value on the "RPG" term. Heck, you can insist on calling your preferred mode "wargames campaigns" (as D&D was originally billed) if you like.
However, calling people sexist because they distinguish games in which one plays the role of Oliver Twist from those in which one "plays the role" not even of Charles Dickens but instead (and in a purely functional sense) that of one of a committee of editors writing a story about Oliver Twist is ... just twisted!
It's at least as meaningful a distinction as what has arisen between RPGs and wargames, or any of myriad other taxonomies. As people recognize the emergence of a new form and begin to treat it on its own terms, they naturally tend so to refer to it! The notion that it is somewhere better to remain lost in the shadow of another school seems to me pretty rare in such cases.
Heh, I had to go to the bathroom and cogitate on this to get your point. This is why I asked before. But, I think I get what you're saying.
In your three examples, the first one is a "role playing game" because you are playing the part of Oliver. The second one is a "role playing game" because you are playing Dickens. The third, in your definition is not a "role playing game" because it does not satisfy your definition.
This is precisely my point. You ARE being exclusionary. You are basically saying that there is only one kind of role playing game and those other games, while they may be fine, are not really role playing games. Thus, in the Forgist sense (which I hate Forgisms cos I always use them wrong) Narativist games aren't really role playing games because the players have editorial control.
Me, I figure the umbrella of RPG is a much bigger umbrella and has no problems whatsoever including all kinds of games, including some Euro board games which are pretty damn close to an RPG. Meh, why not include them.
But you, you want to block them out. They're not playing the "true" RPG. This is exactly what I originally talked about. How some in the hobby want to close the doors against anything they personally don't like. That those who don't play the game in a specific, limited way, just aren't doing it right.
__________________ Currently running: Sufficiently Advanced over Maptool. Soon to change. If you'd like to join in a short 3-8 session campaign for various systems, drop by our forums.
I double-dog-dare you to make your game sound super cool without comparing it to other editions. - paraphrased from Umbran.
[Cisgender (IPA: /ˈsɪsdʒɛndə˞/) is an adjective used in the context of gender issues and counselling to refer to a class of gender identities formed by a match between an individual's gender identity and the behavior or role considered appropriate for one's sex.[1] Cisgender is a "newer term" that means "someone who is comfortable in the gender they were assigned at birth."[2] "Cisgender" is used to contrast "transgender" on the gender spectrum.]
My thanks to Proserpine as her post and your response prompted me to look this up...and I learned something!
That's a faulty basis of comparison because males experience appearance oversensitivity in different ways than females. Dudes aren't supposed to be waifs, they're supposed to be strong and athletic so they don't stop eating - they become obsessed with working out. How many dudes have you met that spend 3-4 hrs a day working out when its not related to their jobs?
None.
But you know, I do know a lot of out of waifs. I'm a skinny dude who's never been to a real gym myself. Not being ripped is not an impediment to male self-image, or in finding a mate; the social pressure to look a certain way just is not there in the same degree that it is on women. Men have different pressures to deal with.
I do know many, many women who have struggled with eating disorders at some point in their lives. And that's just the ones who have confided that information to me. Not everyone is ok discussing bouts of mental illness, so I'm sure there's a lot more instances of it in people that I know, that I am simply unaware of. I've never heard of anyone hiding their gym-going habits.
I've written more egalitarian settings in the past. Heck, my last one, which was partly a parody of swords and sorcery conventions, complete with deliberate sexism and racism had stronger female NPC's. What gets my goat is that in the setting where I didn't think about gender roles, in automatically made the world about guys (in a manner of speaking).
I remember that female players of mine who complained about perceived institutional sexism in my regular Gygaxian medievalesque campaign world, had no problem with sexism when I ran a short Conan campaign for them. In fact they relished playing butt-kicking barbarian women who rapidly acquired nubile young male companions.
I haven't read the whole thread yet, but this hit me as I finished page three and I wanted to get it out.
Gaming is a male dominated hobby. That's factually true. So, it can't really avoid being sexist - when 4/5ths of your audience is male, you're going to cater to that audience. That's not so much sexism as just business.
However, trying to claim that there is no gender bias in the fans is not true IMO. Think about it for a second. When did the demographics of gaming change? When the Storyteller system came out. Vampire did far more to make the hobby accessable to women than D&D ever did.
Yet, even today, we have posters, multiple posters, telling all and sundry that storyteller, or narative to use the Forgism, games, "aren't really roleplaying". They're not "true" roleplaying games. They should be called something else, since, after all, anyone who plays these games aren't actually engaging in role playing.
I've seen posts exactly like that multiple times just in the past few weeks, never mind in the dark ages of the early hobby times.
So, how can that not be considered sexist and exclusionary? When male gamers publicly argue that the games that female gamers often prefer aren't "real" rpg's and don't really belong, how can that not be considered sexist?
Vampire-style 'storyteller' RPGs are just regular RPGs with a stronger emphasis on plot (which can become railroading), mood & feel, rather than exploration/challenge. If they differ from D&D it's in placing more emphasis on how your PC feels, rather than what they do. They're still 'I am a vampire', just like D&D's 'I am a Fighter'.
These White Wolf 'Storyteller' RPGs have nothing to do with Forge-ist Narrativist games, which are arguably not RPGs because the 'players' are more like authors or directors creating a story from Premise.
Human nature makes male brains and female brains different (on average, saying nothing about an individual).
It's important to keep both those points in mind - (1) that men and women are different on average and (2) some women are more like men, and some men are more like women, in various ways.
For some reason many people deny one of these, either claiming that women are inherently the same as men, or that women are inherently all different from men. For instance, women have about 1/10 the violent crime rate of men, which is very important information to know if you're walking a city street at night. At the same time, some women are more violent than some men.
Re testosterone making you better at math, seems unlikely. In my school in Northern Ireland, I was in the top class for math, and it was 90% girls. So was the top class for English. Only in Physics & Chemistry was there anything like sex parity. Cultural factors may have been at work in the girls doing so much better at math than the boys. OTOH male and female brains certainly are somewhat different.
1. Do you advocate that D&D should continue to focus its inspiration on traditional fantasy (Tolkien, Moorcock, Lieber, etc)?
What does "etc" mean to you? How wide are the horizons of your "traditional fantasy"? I submit that the "focus of inspiration" in D&D originally, to the limited degree that such a focus is readily identifiable, was the Western reaches of the perennial Ocean of Story. Look at the list of monsters in Volume 2; the majority go back centuries, if not millennia. There are creatures (or at least interpretations thereof) such as the vampire and the walking mummy (and Dunsany's Gnoles) that are more modern, and "blobs" more modern still ... but most have roots in Mediterranean or European mythology and folklore. Do I think that D&D should be cut off from those roots? No! I would rather see continued the process of including more figures from the ancient and ageless stories of the world. Unfortunately, those are not anyone's "intellectual property" -- so I hardly expect Hasbro to have the interest in them that the hobbyists who created D&D had.
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2. Do you believe that new fantasy has anything to add to the hobby? And, if so, what?
What it has been adding from the start: sources of inspiration. If memory serves, the appearance of the rust monster and several others was based on some little plastic toys from China; comic books and television shows, knicknacks, a shower curtain ... all sorts of things have been grists for the mills of imagination in adding bits to D&D.
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3. Do you believe that D&D, as it was originally created, borrowed heavily from traditional fantasy sources (as well as others such as myth and whatnot)?
See #1 above.
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4. I believe that by focusing the hobby on certain genre titles and writers, specifically traditional fantasy writers, it narrows D&D's appeal to women. Would you agree or disagree?
I believe that this trend -- which I have seen ever more prominently starting late in the 1E era (with Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms) -- lessens D&D's appeal to a wide variety of people. As to DL in particular, though, the effect I saw at first hand was brisk sales of the novels to females (and others!) not much interested in the game products. It may be that the trend in fact attracts more than it turns off. On principle, I hypothesize that WotC's rules-heavy approach probably has the opposite effect. From a commercial standpoint, at least from the perspective of such a large and diversified firm as Hasbro, it may be more profitable to maximize appeal to a focused demographic than to weaken that by strengthening a more diverse appeal. It does not seem to consider my cash (or that of others it has turned away) "green" enough. Fortunately, there are creative minds ready (whether for profit or for free) to supply what demand they can.
Actually, stuff like this is really, REALLY hard to test impartially.
One of my best friends from college is now a doctoral candidate in psychology, and he's done a lot of work on "stereotype threat" (if I remember the term correctly) in male vs. female testing like this.
The basic observation is that, if you're measuring how well females do at a stereotypically male-dominated subject (as, mathematics), they will score measurably worse if they take the test in a room mixed with male subjects, or with a male proctor.
Like I said, really REALLY hard to measure.
That stereotype threat is real, does not mean that there are not underlying differences in group performance too, though. You can increase performance gaps by telling people that they're part of a poor-performing group right before they take the test. That is not the same as saying you can eliminate performance gaps by doing the reverse.
Despite this, you are far more likely to find a female protagonist in early sci-fi than early fantasy.
A clear distinction between the two, in particular a mutual exclusion, did not (from what I saw) figure in D&D of the 1970s-80s -- but it seems to have become rather entrenched in some quarters of today's D&D fandom.
I haven't read that blog, so I can't speak for it.
Please check out these slides from Stephen Pinker. He's a psychology professor at Harvard, or was the last time I looked.
Of course, they're slides from a debate. So you can check out the other side, too.
But there is a long, famous history of studies showing sex differences in cognitive ability.
It's often considered Politically Incorrect to talk about it, though...
A friend of my family is Paul Erwing, who did a famous study with Richard Lynn finding a 3 point IQ gap between adult British men & women. Which is a Politically Incorrect finding - but in any case it's really a very small gap compared to the large variations you find between different nations & ethnies, and is dependent on the weighting assigned to different elements (verbal, visuospatial) in the test.
On principle, I hypothesize that WotC's rules-heavy approach probably has the opposite effect.
Yes, I've seen this first hand at my games club. The crunch turns off players who want to play a role without worrying about all the tactical optimised square-counting and powers use. Some of those are male*, but IME a high proportion of female gamers feel that way.
*Including me - at any rate, I think the crunch is way OTT. I can do my own PC's action in a few seconds, but having to weight 15 minutes for the next guy to do his super-optimised turn is really annoying.
So? You're going to need more evidence than that to claim that the thread is sexist, let alone that it's VERY sexist.
I think that's my claim originally. And to me, its obvious that Witch Girls is sexist because it caters exclusively to one gender. But what I was trying to say was that in this case, this is a GOOD THING. It is empowering. And from this, I want to infer that sexism is only bad when we take offense at it.
Is it sexism for a man to hold open a door for a woman? Yes. Is it bad? It might be if done in a condensating manner, but generally it is just polite.
From this, I want to move on to say that "boys club" gaming can also be ok. Its not likely to recruit women into the hobby, but that's not making it bad or evil.
Of course, we all take offense at different things. There are people who take offense at Witch Girls or Boy's Club gaming. I don't want these people to win out - that would feel oppressive to me - but I think they have the right to say what they want and to be countered and debated and hopefully proven wrong. Ideas need to clash. That's how societies grow and values evolve and what makes threads like this one worthwhile.
__________________ Carl Cramér
Member of the Netbook of Feats review board.
I've read the thread. A lot of interesting discussion.
I agree that the current incarnation of the rules is not particularly sexist, and that the current artwork and marketing of D&D, while perhaps not perfect, is certainly worlds better than it has been in the past.
But why does the "boys' club" aspect of D&D persist? Why still such a gender imbalance among players - 80/20 in Rouse's best case scenario?
When I think about this, I have a hard time disentangling general gender relations in society at large, including instutionalized sexism, and the specific reputation of D&D and its impact on small group dynamics of gamers and how encounters between gamers and "outsiders" play out. This has been touched on tangentially in this thread but not really drawn out, I don't think.
For a number of reasons, not least the sexist 70's-era tropes from the roots of the game, D&D got tagged in the mainstream as an activity for geeky guys. That may be starting to shift a bit, but it's inevitably going to lag behind whatever changes have taken place in the rules and marketing. Thinking about potential new, young players, I think that just raises a big barrier to entry for girls and young women.
In a nutshell, to the extent that D&D is perceived as "uncool", those numberless teenage hordes who above all else desperately want to be cool will avoid it. There are of course just as many boys as well as girls who fall into this category, but add in the preconception that D&D is a boy's club, male pursuit, and I think the repellent effect will be stronger for girls.
Then, back to the young males who are actually playing. When they encounter an "eww, you play D&D, how stupid!" reaction from a "cool" peer girl, it's going to make them feel defensive. They may expect all girls will have the same attitude and seek to exclude them to protect themselves from further hurt feelings. Thus, the "boy's club" perception may be pushed further towards reality. It's a pernicious dynamic, a self-fulfilling prophecy.
These are of course generalizations, not universal truths, but they do conform with some of my experiences. Again I'm talking in particular about younger players here - I think as players get older and generally less insecure, this dynamic eases. Anecdotally, women seem to have greater representation as the demographic gets older.
Finally, that sort of "you're lame" - "no, you're lame!" in-group/out-group dynamic forming around D&D does not always or exclusively break along gender lines. Not by any means. I just have a feeling that it's common for it to play out that way. Who knows, assuming that I'm not totally off base here, this might well be reflecting deeper sexist dynamics of the larger culture in the end.
An interesting litterary case here is Orlando Furioso, published in 1532. It is the apex - and travesty - of the chivalric novel. While it has mainly male knights and female enchantresses, there are several strong female knights in it, as well as gender-transformations and love both homo- and heterosexual. And interracial/religious too, for that matter.
In Sicily at least, these stories are very much alive in the local puppet theaters. See them if you go there!
Anyway, what I wanted to say is that literature has cases of gender-role breakdown (or egalitarianism as we'd say today) long before modern times.
__________________ Carl Cramér
Member of the Netbook of Feats review board.
For example, it doesn't hold water at all at young ages. They won't admit it, but teenage boys are massively preoccupied with their "look."
Very interesting. I thought my son was the only one - but he openly admits it. Out of his clique, he is the only one to have a good appearance, wears after shave and has his hair all perfect. Maybe that is why he has 3 girlfriends.
__________________ Barbarian: "I'm going to run the door down with my shoulder."
DM: "Ouch, that hurt you."
Thief: "We'll, I'm opening the lock then..."
DM "Sorry, no such luck."
Wizard: "Darn, I'm all out of spells."
Fighter: "Fighter & Barbarian pick up an old tree to use as a ram aaaaand... here we go!"
DM "The door is as steady as it looks, unfortunately. Loud noise and a tree on top of you is all you get"
Paladin: "Out of frustration, I grab the handle and rattle at the door."
DM: The unlocked door opens with a squeak and you stumble into the room - now roll for your balance."
Players: "You know you suck?"
DM: *snicker*
It's important to keep both those points in mind - (1) that men and women are different on average and (2) some women are more like men, and some men are more like women, in various ways.
For some reason many people deny one of these, either claiming that women are inherently the same as men, or that women are inherently all different from men. For instance, women have about 1/10 the violent crime rate of men, which is very important information to know if you're walking a city street at night. At the same time, some women are more violent than some men.
I've always found this misleading as, I believe, the difference between individuals within a gender is greater than the difference between the averages. So the averages tell us nothing useful about the capabilities of a population of a gender.
We have social norms that are a far greater influence than the minute differences between body chemistries. We are far more alike than different.
__________________ Pablo El Vagabundo
"Mercy!? You want MERCY? I'M CHAOTIC NEUTRAL!!!"
I've always found this misleading as, I believe, the difference between individuals within a gender is greater than the difference between the averages. So the averages tell us nothing useful about the capabilities of a population of a gender.
I think that statement is wrong. If "the difference between individuals within a gender is greater than the difference between the averages" means "the average man is more X (eg, violent) than the average woman, but some women are more X than the average man" then it's just a restatement of what I just said. And it does not then follow that "the averages tell us nothing useful about the capabilities of a population of a gender".
Eg: On average, women are less strong and aggressive than men. OTOH, some women are stronger and more aggressive than the average man. From this fact, many others follow, such as the disparity in violent crime rates I mentioned.
When dealing with groups of people, knowledge about the averages is very useful. When dealing with individuals, it may be misleading (hence why stereotyping has a bad rap).
So, it is not true that "the averages tell us nothing useful about the capabilities of a population of a gender" but it is true that "the averages are not determinative of the capabilities of an individual among that population".
Edit: If the statement is a claim that differences between the population averages are trivially small compared to the average difference between two randomly chosen individuals from the whole population, that would depend on what factor we're talking about. It would not be true of eg upper body strength. It may be true of other factors, such as propensity to violence. Yet where that factor is normally distributed, even a small difference can have big effects at the tails. Because few people commit violent crime, a small decrease in average propensity to aggression among a population can result in a big decrease in committing of violent crime.
@ S'mon, I agree with everything in your post above.
However - there is always a however, eh? - the reason that I think the averages tell us nothing useful is because I cannot use the averages to tell me anything about an individual. They maybe useful for governments in planning or for doctors or for other prefessional planners than need to take these factors into account when making discions that will affect a large population of people. I dont think I spelt this out clearly in my previous post.
But for me on a day to day basis these averages tell me nothing about the mental capabilites, physical or emotional state of a person that I only have the race or gender off.
In my job I have to go regularly meet people that I have no met before. I usually have a name and maybe some extra details about them. I can usually guess gender and maybe race - to some extent - from the name, but knowing these details does not help me at all, until I've met and assessed them personnally. Then I'd have a good idea about some of there capabilities.
That is the only point that I wish to make. I'm not claiming that these average differences do not exist, just that the majority of people should forget that they do as they are of no use to them at all. Preconceptions like "men cant multitask" or "blondes are dumb*", maybe they are founded on some averages somewhere, but are really useless in day to day life
*this is a silly example, no offence intended to any blondes out there.
__________________ Pablo El Vagabundo
"Mercy!? You want MERCY? I'M CHAOTIC NEUTRAL!!!"
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