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

[Mishihari Lord]

Over what term? I'm a value investor with a fairly long-term investment horizon. I own Habro stock. What I want from WotC is to maximize the ROI over the life of the product (say 5-7 years), and lay the groundwork to maximize the ROI in D&D 2020, 2030, etc. I know that white heterosexual males are a shrinking demographic (here, page 21) in the United States. I don't believe WotC can maximize the ROI catering to that demographic alone.

I think WotC has done a good job over the past few years with art direction regarding Magic: the Gathering. There seems to be a good balance between strongly portrayed males and females, as well as maintaining a good racial/ethnic mix. I think it would be wise for Jon Schindehette to look to M:tG as an example of what to do, more so than Paizo, IMHO.

Your initial question is actually a really good one. That's something I asked my professor (in a top-10 MBA program, no less) and he couldn't give me a good answer. Public companies typically operate with a pretty short horizon, they'll maximize profits over a few years with not too much weight given to future conditions.

And to clarify, I'm not saying in my post above that WOTC should maximize profits despite other considerations, I'm saying that I think they will, and what I think they'll do to get there.

 

[Obryn]

Why does a sorceress and a barbarian, both equally partially nude, mean something different except because guys like looking at half naked women whereas women are shown not to be as visual, sexually speaking, as men? The only reason the babrarian isn't as "sexualized" is because people aren't as sexually attracted to the half-naked barbarian due to his appearance as they are the sorceress. There's really no countering that, so long as you treat the both equally sexually or non-sexually in art-style.

That's not really the case or the context.

If you're looking historically - and you can even look at toys like He-Man - shirtless guys with huge muscles are there to appeal to men (or in He-Man's case, boys), not women. If you check the poses, they're not sexualized - they're dominant, powerful, etc. Shirtless Conan isn't shirtless to sell more Conan books to women.

The blog The Choice was talking about earlier was one both [MENTION=87695]TanithT[/MENTION] and I linked to, upthread. The Hawkeye Initiative. It takes poses of over-sexualized women in comic book art and replaces them with Hawkeye. It's pretty brilliant and makes its point almost instantly, IMO.

It's not about who's attractive, who finds whom sexy, etc. It's a simple question - who is the art meant to appeal to?

-O

 

[Jester David]

Over what term? I'm a value investor with a fairly long-term investment horizon. I own Habro stock. What I want from WotC is to maximize the ROI over the life of the product (say 5-7 years), and lay the groundwork to maximize the ROI in D&D 2020, 2030, etc. I know that white heterosexual males are a shrinking demographic (here, page 21) in the United States. I don't believe WotC can maximize the ROI catering to that demographic alone.

Your initial question is actually a really good one. That's something I asked my professor (in a top-10 MBA program, no less) and he couldn't give me a good answer. Public companies typically operate with a pretty short horizon, they'll maximize profits over a few years with not too much weight given to future conditions.

And to clarify, I'm not saying in my post above that WOTC should maximize profits despite other considerations, I'm saying that I think they will, and what I think they'll do to get there.

Of course, D&D the RPG is just one part of D&D the Brand, which includes video games, board games, and might soon include movies. And D&D is a very small part of WotC, dwarfed by MtG.

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.

 

[Obryn]

Hate this post all you want, Obryn, but I speaketh the truth and you know it.

I will, because it's a completely terrible post and wrong on pretty much all statements of fact. You're speaking from a position of privilege, and one of the hallmarks of that is the luxury not to examine your privilege too closely. You've decided to take up that luxury, and seem pretty keen on keeping the privilege, too.

"He" is no longer considered acceptably gender-neutral. But it's easy for you to believe it is. The only truth you're speaking is between the lines here, and I don't think it's the truth you think it is.

-O

 

[Jester David]

Small comment.

I have played in two different D&D groups that were 3/5ths women players (3/6ths if you include the male DM). The overlap in both was myself and my wife but other than that there were many other females. The dynamics of both groups were excellent and I loved the 3-to-2 ratio and felt it contributed to a fun play experience.
As such, some of the best gamers I have rolled dice with have been female.

They not only have every right to play the game, but also every right to experience the game without feeling uncomfortable or that they are somehow an ignorable secondary audience.

***

Race is a trickier subject because it overlaps with potential lore. You don't want to assume people will have an SE Asian or Persian analogue in their world, to say nothing of NA Latinos, or Amerindians.
Paizo has an easier time as their PC iconics are based out of their world of Golarion that has multiple human ethnicities, but other worlds lack this. Greyhawk for example has three whites (Oerids, Suel, and Flan) and Arabic (Baklunish) but lacks a black race.

Although, personally, in most of my homebrew fantasy worlds I default to pale elves and dark humans to contrast between the two and allow for some lovely mocha half-elves.

 

[bogmad]

It is simply absurdist pandering and a transparent ploy to sell more books. Which, as we know, largely failed.

Did it sell less books because of all this "pandering?"
Do you think they actually had a meeting where they pitched "if we use 'she' more we'll see a radical 5% markup in sales"? My guess is some more "Star Trek-like" guy probably thought it might be nice to throw a bone to people who wanted such a move to be made, and the number crunchers didn't care either way.

Honestly, I don't care or get offended by seeing "he" as the dominant pronoun used. I don't really get or throw around the term cisgendered either, but I don't get irate and defensive when I see it used. It's a pretty nice ride, being a straight white guy. If someone who's grown up being sh** on gets a little defensive I'm not going to double down and declare I'm an aggrieved party and they need to shut up.

 

[Jester David]

It's called having some perspective. D&D books cannot, and will not, and should not be here as a vehicle for some orwellian progressive social renaming of gender-neutral pronouns in its books.

First, it's Orwellian. Proper noun.
Second, Newspeak removes synonyms and antonyms not pronouns.

For some reason women are less interested in physics and math at the university level, despite being provably just as able in those topics. They simply aren't interested. It's the honest truth.

Which is the result of societal views of gender and has been changing.
Remember your statement in five years when it's taking you a single minute to fully charge your cellphone.

Same thing with D&D. I will stand by this : I doubt that no matter how Star Trek-like we ever become, this particular hobby, in this particular manner of playing, for whatever reason not related to offputting sexist or degrading imagery or over-use of "he" in books, will never be 50-50.

Never is a long time.

If you think so, you clearly need to look around more at the gaming stores.

In both of my two favourite comic/game stores there's a girl there half the time. They work there.

There are some really cool geek girls out there, but they are far and few in between, and calling every 1 in 2 paladins in the PHB a "she" will do LITTLE OR NOTHING to change that. How do I know this? Because they already did so, thirteen years ago, with 3.0. I know there are gamer girls out there, and I'd love for there to be more, but it WAS pandering to use "she" half the time. She is not gender-neutral. I've read thousands of books and not in a single one of them did some author begin a sentence describing a soldier or a knight as "she" without context. It is simply absurdist pandering and a transparent ploy to sell more books. Which, as we know, largely failed.

There was one woman at the first GenCon. She's now the CEO of Paizo. Having been at the last GenCon I can tell you there was a heck of a lot more than one. I've personally known well over a dozen female gamers. And by "know" I mean sat at a table and rolled dice with, and I'm not including online figures.

This number is only growing. The ratio is changing. Slowly but surely. It's not fast, but the hobby hasn't exactly been growing speedily with males either in the last decade. Just because there wasn't an instantaneous revolution is no reason to give up and abandon that potential audience, let alone cast the current players out to the wolves.

Nothing worth doing is easy, and making D&D a game that accepts people of all races, creeds, and genders is something very worth doing.

 

[Mishihari Lord]

I will, because it's a completely terrible post and wrong on pretty much all statements of fact. You're speaking from a position of privilege, and one of the hallmarks of that is the luxury not to examine your privilege too closely. You've decided to take up that luxury, and seem pretty keen on keeping the privilege, too.

"He" is no longer considered acceptably gender-neutral. But it's easy for you to believe it is. The only truth you're speaking is between the lines here, and I don't think it's the truth you think it is.

-O

The question of course is "acceptable by whom?" I don't think I've encountered too many people who wanted to promote alternate pronouns since I left college. I suppose it depends on what group of people is your world.

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.

 

[Obryn]

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.

The key is that "he" isn't actually generic. Neither is "she."

There's been a whole ton of research on the topic. Or at least, there was until it became an accepted fact a few decades back. Whenever "he" is used generically - like, "When a person is driving a car, he had better buckle his seat belt" - and you ask a reader to tell you about the person, you'll hear that the person is male, not female (and not neutral or abstract).

I'm not arguing for free swapping between paragraphs about a single topic; that's clumsy. Nor am I arguing for any of the rather jarring neologisms people have come up with for gender-neutral pronouns. Simply put, as near as I can tell, pronouns in an RPG book never need to be used generically. If you have an iconic for your class, use that pronoun. If you have examples of play, use those pronouns. (And a good amount of the time, you don't need pronouns at all.)

-O

 

[GX.Sigma]

Simply put, as near as I can tell, pronouns in an RPG book never need to be used generically. If you have an iconic for your class, use that pronoun. If you have examples of play, use those pronouns.

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

For comparison, Magic: the Gathering strictly uses "he or she."