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

[GSHamster]

To m'knowledge, that's how 3.x handled it. The wizard entry uses "she" because Mialee is female, etc.

I remember 3E using "she" as the default pronoun all the time. I thought that was fine, and even adopted it for my own writing.

Ironically, in my profession (software dev), using "she" as the default makes things clearer because the vast majority of people you would cite or refer to are male. Thus the word "he" almost always references a real person. Probably not a good sign, but just a side-effect of using "she" as the default that I noticed.

 

[TanithT]

For me, anything but "he" as a generic pronoun is very jarring. I was trained in traditional proper English, so if I see "she" used as a generic pronoun I always have to stop a moment and think "who?" since in my training that always refers to a specific person. It made reading some of the D&D books kind of painful.

Yes, and? For me, the consistent use of 'he' with no female pronouns in sight sends the message that I don't count and I don't matter, and that I am being deliberately excluded. So how do you weigh some people finding it jarring versus other people finding it exclusionary?

When I say I don't think that it's a good idea to keep focusing solely on the presumed demographic of the horny heterosexual male teenager, I'm not talking about morality. I'm talking about marketing. I don't think the brand is positioned to do well in the long term if it deliberately keeps its market of appeal narrowly targeted and fails to take lessons from other (and currently much better selling) brands that are wisely going after a much wider demographic to build a loyal player base.

 

[Jacob Marley]

It's very likely Hasbro doesn't care much about what D&D does as long as it's not generating bad publicity. D&D has negligible impact on Hasbro stock, and shareholders have little reason to care.

This depends on your investing philosophy. My financial education began in the 90s with professors who were strong adherents to the Peter Lynch school of investing: invest in what you know/understand the company's "story" and focus on fundamentals. I have worked in this industry since 1997. I don't invest in Hasbro because I play D&D and I don't make decisions on buying/selling Hasbro stock based on D&D - that's silly. However, D&D is still a piece of the pie and what WotC does with D&D adds to the overall Hasbro story.

 

[GSHamster]

When I say I don't think that it's a good idea to keep focusing solely on the presumed demographic of the horny heterosexual male teenager, I'm not talking about morality. I'm talking about marketing. I don't think the brand is positioned to do well in the long term if it deliberately keeps its market of appeal narrowly targeted and fails to take lessons from other (and currently much better selling) brands that are wisely going after a much wider demographic to build a loyal player base.

Just because you keep saying this doesn't make it true. Consider the opposite perspective, that there's no point in chasing customers who will never buy your game. It's better to focus and nurture your core audience, and not alienate them. And one way of alienating them is to indicate that you consider other audiences more valuable.

For example, one could look at 4E as an attempt by WotC to expand the market to the MMO and videogame players. Many older roleplayers felt alienated by this approach, and the market split.

Would it be great if WotC could change D&D and attract more women? Of course it would. Would the changes you are proposing actually attract significantly more women? I don't think it is likely. As long as D&D carries a social stigma/taint, women--especially young women--will not play D&D in significant numbers. But there is pretty much nothing WotC can do to remove that stigma.

 

[variant]

Yes, and? For me, the consistent use of 'he' with no female pronouns in sight sends the message that I don't count and I don't matter, and that I am being deliberately excluded. So how do you weigh some people finding it jarring versus other people finding it exclusionary?

When I say I don't think that it's a good idea to keep focusing solely on the presumed demographic of the horny heterosexual male teenager, I'm not talking about morality. I'm talking about marketing. I don't think the brand is positioned to do well in the long term if it deliberately keeps its market of appeal narrowly targeted and fails to take lessons from other (and currently much better selling) brands that are wisely going after a much wider demographic to build a loyal player base.

Using she instead he is jarring because it is just poor English. If people did that during their English classes, whether high school or college, they would have tons of red marks on their papers.

 

[Ichneumon]

I wholeheartedly believe that WotC should go to town on promoting a wide range of races, genders and sexualities to the world of D&D. The overall feel of the genre can only be improved by a polychrome approach. Let's see black dwarves, brown halflings, oriental changelings, and homosexual characters & couples presented in D&D products without any fuss. It would also be good to have a character sheet option for indeterminate gender alongside 'male' and 'female'. For example, intersex, transgender, or whatever the term du jour is.

While I wondered whether D&D's target demographic would reject a product with minimised cheesecake, I've decided that the consumer who'd refuse to buy D&D solely because a lightly chained female fleshbearer wasn't plastered all over it doesn't exist, for all practical purposes. Those who claim a lack of cheesecake is a dealbreaker will inevitably renege in the end if D&D itself is good enough. Tacky art is only needed to sell bad quality products. High quality products sell themselves, and a broad mix of humanity's shades directly boosts the quality.

Freeing up old preconceptions grants the possibility of colorful new concepts. For example, humans and human-like races don't need to be the only gay beings. Other monsters, such as dragons, can be gay as well. A group of adventurers could encounter a mated pair of dragons who are two males or two females. It may seem a minor detail, but it makes the gaming experience richer. Another long-held assumption is that drow must be black. Gary Gygax invented that attribute, but nearly forty years on there's no need to adhere to it blindly. White drow are a plausible option, and could look quite stunning in the right artist's hands. An in-game justification could be that the Underdark is a huge place and, while the first drow discovered were black, white-skinned drow can exist in other areas.

Plenty of women like D&D, or have the potential to like it. They would undoubtedly appreciate seeing the art consistently depict women as competent, dressed to suit what they're doing and not simply there to pander to male fantasy.

 

[haakon1]

On the ethnicity front, considering that even in RW Europe, there were traders & mercenaries present from all over the world, a bit of visual diversity is justified on those grounds alone.

I've got a few visions of that occur to me:

-- Not quite medieval, but in the early days of the Age of Exploration, some Africans and American Indians did visit European courts.

-- Morgan Freeman's Moor in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves

-- "We three kings of Orient are" in the Bible (and the old Christmas Carol I'm quoting). I've traditional seen them depicted as one white, one black, and one Asian. I assume that's quite an old image, possibly medieval. And they were "magi", so they're awesome.

 

[haakon1]

I'd do this with humans and the "half" races, but not with Dwarves, Elves, or Gnomes.

Dwarves need to look Scottish, and Elves need to look Orlando Bloom.

Gnomes can be whatever -- probably like no particular human race is best.

"Alien" populations with human racial mixes make no sense to me in Star Trek, for example.

 

[variant]

I wholeheartedly believe that WotC should go to town on promoting a wide range of races, genders and sexualities to the world of D&D. The overall feel of the genre can only be improved by a polychrome approach. Let's see black dwarves, brown halflings, oriental changelings, and homosexual characters & couples presented in D&D products without any fuss. It would also be good to have a character sheet option for indeterminate gender alongside 'male' and 'female'. For example, intersex, transgender, or whatever the term du jour is.

While I wondered whether D&D's target demographic would reject a product with minimised cheesecake, I've decided that the consumer who'd refuse to buy D&D solely because a lightly chained female fleshbearer wasn't plastered all over it doesn't exist, for all practical purposes. Those who claim a lack of cheesecake is a dealbreaker will inevitably renege in the end if D&D itself is good enough. Tacky art is only needed to sell bad quality products. High quality products sell themselves, and a broad mix of humanity's shades directly boosts the quality.

Freeing up old preconceptions grants the possibility of colorful new concepts. For example, humans and human-like races don't need to be the only gay beings. Other monsters, such as dragons, can be gay as well. A group of adventurers could encounter a mated pair of dragons who are two males or two females. It may seem a minor detail, but it makes the gaming experience richer. Another long-held assumption is that drow must be black. Gary Gygax invented that attribute, but nearly forty years on there's no need to adhere to it blindly. White drow are a plausible option, and could look quite stunning in the right artist's hands. An in-game justification could be that the Underdark is a huge place and, while the first drow discovered were black, white-skinned drow can exist in other areas.

Plenty of women like D&D, or have the potential to like it. They would undoubtedly appreciate seeing the art consistently depict women as competent, dressed to suit what they're doing and not simply there to pander to male fantasy.

So throw out legitimate world building and add in sexuality where it hasn't been before to promote a sociological movement? Seriously?

 

[TanithT]

Just because you keep saying this doesn't make it true. Consider the opposite perspective, that there's no point in chasing customers who will never buy your game. It's better to focus and nurture your core audience, and not alienate them. And one way of alienating them is to indicate that you consider other audiences more valuable.

What I say should not be taken as absolute fact any more than other people's confident assertions about chainmail bikinis on a cover selling 50,000 more copies of a book than dragons. You should look for yourself at what the market is actually doing.

I've seen Paizo employees tell egregious homophobes on their boards not to buy their product while everyone else pretty much stood up and applauded. And hey, check out their current market share. Ain't suffering.

The stereotype of RPG's as having to be marketed with gratuitous sex to horny, nerdly virgin teenage boys with no other social outlet is outdated, and frankly an embarrassment. I don't think that image is a net marketing asset in this day and age, and I do think there is a growing market segment that welcomes more diversity and representation in the hobby, and financially rewards the companies that offer it.

I think this because that's the direction the dollars and demographics are demonstrably going right now. You don't have to believe it because I say it, but it is worth taking a look at other companies' business models in terms of handling diversity, and how that is working for them. I'd have to say, pretty well.