D&D 5E Should the next edition of D&D promote more equality?

Status
Not open for further replies.

bogmad

First Post
The question then becomes "is going out of their way to include socially-aware materials in their artwork virtuous?" The answer is a clear yes. However, if we flip the question around to be "if they don't go out of their way to include socially-aware materials in their artwork - whether deliberately or not - is that a moral failing?" then the issue becomes more complicated.
I don't think the question flipped around is really applicable. A better question, in my opinion, is "If there are deliberate requests and fervor from the user base asking for more diverse characters, and they (WotC, Paizo, etc) just ignore the issue and pretend it was never raised to retain the status quo, is THAT a moral failing?"

I think the answer to that is fairly self-evident for most.
 
Last edited:

log in or register to remove this ad

Dausuul

Legend
Those who don't care are typically the ones who are already getting things 99% their way. Eg, characters of their skin color are always in the majority. Characters of their gender are shown as strong heroes almost all of the time, and characters of the gender they like to look at are sexed up to please their eye even if they realistically shouldn't be, and offered up as rewards for the strong heroes.

Of course those people don't care. The status quo works for them, and it feels just fine. They don't natively realize that it sucks to be you in this hobby when people of your skin color are damn hard to find in any depiction at all, and people of your gender are consistently portrayed as sexualized objects of gaze even when it makes no gorram sense for them to be tarted up in a come-hither hipshot pose that would look (and be) incredibly stupid and out of place on a male adventurer in the same situation.

There is a very good reason that the people who care do care. I think you would too, if the representations in your favorite hobby were skewed that deeply to not depict people of your skin color and to very largely depict people of your gender as targeted objects of sexual gaze even when there is no good reason for there to be any sexuality in the picture. Or any gratuitous skin showing. Eg, fighting a remorhaz on a glacier. Lingerie is not sane attire in this situation.

I agree with every word of this. My point is that anyone who claims to "not care" about how many black people there are, or whether women are portrayed in a cheesecake way or not, should have no objection to an effort to make D&D art diverse and welcoming to everybody.

Of course, there are a lot of people who claim not to care, but always seem to come up with reasons why white men should dominate D&D art, even though they don't care...
 
Last edited:

TanithT

First Post
Because WotC sticks a lady in a chainmail bikini on their product, it becomes part of some girl's narrative of her own negative body image. It also sells an extra, say, 50,000 books because 13 year old boys who wouldn't otherwise buy it, buy it. These are effects so well documented that they can both be assured to happen, with great confidence.

Do you have any factual documentation to back up those numbers you have such great confidence in?

It's just not as simple as that. You can find sexy art for your book covers, if you are even sure it's going to net you more sales from 13 year old boys than an awesome picture of fighting dragons, without it being stupid. My beef is with the stupid part.

You can show people being sexy in situations where it actually makes sense for them to be sexy, and show them as strong and powerful and highly trained at doing a tough job well when it makes sense to show that. Depicting women as being *stupid* is the problematic part. Wearing a rabbit skin and a couple of soda can pop-top rings into combat is *stupid*.
 

I'm A Banana

Potassium-Rich
Do you have any factual documentation to back up those numbers you have such great confidence in?

I was speaking for the purposes of the simplified example. That said, there's frickin' buckets of research on both of those things, so if you're curious, I'm sure a quick googling will assuage your concerns. Failing that, there's college courses that teach these things better than some goob on a message board can.

Depicting women as being *stupid* is the problematic part.

There's a lot of problematic parts.
 

Gorgoroth

Banned
Banned
D&D pronouns being 50-50% male-female pronouns seems a little like pandering to me, frankly. It's simply unbelievable that most battle forces inspired by medieval combat parties would follow modern labour hiring standards. Think Game of Thrones, women are tough and can be knights or warriors or leaders or killers, but most often, they aren't on the front lines for very obvious reasons. Now D&D is not Game of Thrones, and I want as many women to enjoy this hobby as possible (or at least tolerate it), I just think they've already done quite enough since 3.0 already. It was odd at first, seeing so many "she's" and hers in front of descriptions of knights and barbarians and so on, but after you get over that, you still must admit it is a little contrived to imagine a 50-50 split in every party of male to female characters, let alone players, to warrant the IMO extreme and very obvious way the authors are trying to bring an old-boys-club into the 21st century. I just don't see want authors of adventures to feel the need to walk on eggshells and portray warmongering orc tribes as being PC and respecting women, for example, because it might offend someone's sensibilities. Game of Thrones is terrific in this sense, and a model to follow. Women are strong and bold and fierce, sometimes, and men can be cowardly and cry and frail too, but 99.9999% of the time, knights and soldiers are men, and are the first ones to have their guts torn out on the battlefield. This is true in history as well, so it's no wonder our fiction reflects that. It is what it is. Fantasy doesn't need to conform to reality, and shouldn't, but there is a certain...contrivedness about trying to PC everything. I like strong female characters, but don't want sanitized adventures or text blocks that are so redacted as to not risk offending anyone, ever, because that is an impossible task. Tons of stuff offends me, I vote with my dollars. To follow that credo, if a gender-neutral "he" offends, perhaps boycotting the 99.99999% of human literature would be a better place to start than a hobby in which the stakes are so low.

I had to literally bribe and beg my last two girlfriends to even try D&D....let's face it, this game doesn't, and probably never will have broad appeal across all demographics. Being PC is good, but being overly PC is just annoying. Somebody, somewhere, will get offended by good literature. Tons of critiques of Games of Thrones are centered around its medieval depiction of women's roles in society, failing to grasp : that's the point. It's actually far more progressive than the actual middle ages were, even all the torture and violence and small-mindedness and bigotry had nothing on the real thing. Let's all be happy that we can laugh about it now.

Nobody's gonna die over a few pronouns or hurt sensibilities.
 

TanithT

First Post
I was speaking for the purposes of the simplified example. That said, there's frickin' buckets of research on both of those things, so if you're curious, I'm sure a quick googling will assuage your concerns. Failing that, there's college courses that teach these things better than some goob on a message board can.

All true, but if you cite numbers and great confidence in them, it's generally on you to back that up. Suggesting that anyone who questions your assertions should just google it seems disingenuous.

Yes, sex sells. But we don't have the numbers on how much it does, or where it does, nor on what happens when the sex isn't stupid. In particular we don't have those numbers for this industry, to the best of my knowledge.
 

Shemeska

Adventurer
I had to literally bribe and beg my last two girlfriends to even try D&D....let's face it, this game doesn't, and probably never will have broad appeal across all demographics.

Have you considered that there might be a reason for that lack of appeal? For most of the game's history it has been produced for and marketed to a niche of teenage boys, with the design and art direction catering rather specifically to that niche with chainmail bikinis, topless succubi, etc. I think it's important for the game's future expansion, and for other reasons as well, to move beyond that.
 

TanithT

First Post
Nobody's gonna die over a few pronouns or hurt sensibilities.

Translation: "I like the status quo just fine. Male heroes and male pronouns should stay the default because that's just how it's supposed to be. I don't want to make any effort to be inclusive of women in this hobby. Oh, and no women seem to want to play this game with me. I wonder why that is?"

Mod Note: Please see my post... which is now going to be several pages off onwards... ~Umbran
 
Last edited by a moderator:

bogmad

First Post
Nobody's gonna die over a few pronouns or hurt sensibilities.

True.
Would you NOT buy a game, just because a fantasy game's standard rulebooks (which might not assume a default Northern European setting) use 50-50 percentages of male/female pronouns, and a variety of ethnicities, in an effort to reach as diverse a market as possible?

Do you think that would hurt sensibilities enough to prohibit sales?
Is outreach equivalent to pandering?
 

I'm A Banana

Potassium-Rich
TanithT said:
All true, but if you cite numbers and great confidence in them, it's generally on you to back that up.

Right, like I said, it was more for the purposes of the example. Like, "Assume this is true (because it likely is true enough)".
 
Last edited:

Status
Not open for further replies.
Remove ads

Top