Pronouns in D&D - How should gender be handled?

[MerricB]

As part of my project, I'd like to hear your opinions on pronoun usage. The way I understand it there are 4 main strategies for handling pronouns.

There are at least five.

Here's how AD&D handled it: It used "he or she". Or "you".

A few excerpts:

"Character class refers to the profession of the player character. The approach you wish to take to the game, how you believe you can most successfully meet the challenges which it poses, and which role you desire to play are dictated by character class (or multi-class)"

"This class of character bears a certain resemblance to religious orders of knighthood of medieval times. The cleric has an eight-sided die (d8) per level to determine how many hit points (q.v.) he or she has. "

"In any event, your character created, personified, and established will be ready to adventure once equipment is purchased and relations with other player characters are settled. If player characters are not immediately available, or if they are not co-operative, it is advisable that men-at-arms be hired."

"Once a henchman is brought into your character’s service, it will be necessary to pay a wage plus support and upkeep. Your referee will inform you as to such costs. When a henchman accompanies your character on adventures, he or she must be given a portion of treasure, both money and magic, just as a player character would. However, the share can be lesser, for all of the henchman’s expenses are paid for by his or her master or mistress. Naturally, it is a good idea to give o henchman as much treasure as possible, for in that way the henchman gains experience points."

I much prefer the AD&D 1E way of handling it.

Cheers!

 

[Argyle King]

I propose that 5th Edition has a Wondrous Item called The Deck of Many Pronouns.

 

[Mishihari Lord]

I prefer the generic masculine. I find anything else very distracting. "She" is always supposed to refer to a specific person so when it's used as a generic I always stop and think "who?" Using female example characters and the appropriate pronouns is of course fine.

 

[ClarenceInWonderland]

At least in the English spoken around here, I’d suggest that generic "his" is more archaic or ultra-formal than sexist. "Is there anyone outside waiting to hand in his paper" is very old-fashioned to my ears, use of "their" is more correct in my variety "Is there anyone outside waiting to hand in their paper". I don’t picture the speaker of the former as sexist, just weirdly formal.

In the same sense that English tossed the polite/casual differentiation in second person pronouns: "thou"=informal "you"=formal/plural, around here we’ve pretty much finished the change in third person pronouns "he"=masc. only, "she"=fem only, "they"=generic/undefined/plural. It’s a trend in English to depluralize plural pronouns.

With the loss of plurality in second person, it seems that speakers wanted some way to indicate plurality, so we have a diversity of solutions: you guys, y’all, youse, yins, you lot, etc. etc. I’d say a similar thing will happen with 3rd plural pronouns: I say "those guys" for plural "they" probably more often then not.

The changes in English pronouns have less to do with political correctness than just change, that’s what languages do. Singular anaphoric "they" has been around since the 14th century so it’s got a fine pedigree and is perfectly acceptable for D&D.

 

[Olaf the Stout]

Put me firmly in the "don't care" category. There are a number of things I have an opinion about when it comes to D&D, but this is a total non-issue for me. If they use the male or female pronoun it will make no difference to me.

 

[Libramarian]

I honestly don't understand how anybody can be confused by it. What's the confusing part? I can imagine it would be if the same example was switching the genders of the subjects within itself; that would be bad writing indeed. But nobody ever did that in the 3E or Paizo books, and I can't imagine they'll do that in D&D Next either.

Maybe not literally confusing, but distracting.

And while not technically wrong, singular "they" just sounds silly.

It really doesn't, to me. I have to agree with [MENTION=6749732]ClarenceInWonderland[/MENTION] above, I think at this point using "his" as a generic pronoun actually sounds weirder in everyday conversation than "their". The change has already occurred.

 

[Ilja]

I voted "They" as a generic, but it's a combination...

1. Avoid personal pronouns where it doesn't sound forced.

2. Use they when discussing a non-specified character, and even more importantly, when discussing players In many cases where writers typically write "he" or "she", it could work equally with both singular they and plural they. I think plural they is the way to go when possible, simply because it's a group activity and anything that reinforces that feeling is great.

3. Use the appropriate pronoun when discussing a specific, defined character. At least if their gender is clearly noted; for example characters I kinda like having gender ambiguous ones.

Aaaand for me in my writing it's 4. Default to female characters. Why? Because I'm so goddamn tired of the male standard and even if 100% of my characters where female, it would still not make a dent in the statistics in the genre, where nearly all are male. And it's not like males will feel alianated from the hobby, if they don't like my stuff there's still 134345234234 other adventures that will cater to them...

The hobby is far from inclusive, and some people like it that way, they like it being their little boys club. Language then becomes an important way for them to show their anti-women politics, staunchly defending the male standard "because of tradition", and claiming any other opinion as "political correctness", as if their stance where apolitical or marginalized.

I'd like the hobby to be inclusive, because I want more people to play with. That is my political stance, and yes, I think it's correct. Language is of course just one piece of this (other major parts where the RPGs themselves matter are art, adventure design, NPC design etc), and I'm not in any way saying people defaulting to male pronoun because of being used to it are being deliberately exclusive sexists, but there is no reason to actively defend the status quo when it has landed us in such an excluding environment.

EDIT: And on distractions, I recently bought Citadel, the card game, and it was really obnoxious to read because not only did they default to "he" all the time for players, it also used it when it really wasn't necessary.

 

[Zhaleskra]

I'm becoming fond of "you", though that might be uncomfortable immersive for some, and "your character".

I also admit to not liking making role playing games mainstream. Maybe it's because I enjoyed little statements like "you have to be smart to play those games" even though I know they aren't true. Basic math, a little algebra now and then. Yeah, it's good at getting more players in general, but exacerbates getting more players for a specific game.

 

[was]

I have always liked alternating them

 

[Random Bystander]

As long as the text is reasonably gender-neutral, there should be no reason to care.