Recent Dragon Mag Article Pulled?

[Mark CMG]

I read on Facebook that "a recent Dragon article was pulled by WotC after it offended a number of people" and wondered, can anyone could clarify with some details?

 

[frankthedm]

I read on Facebook

That sounds like reputable news source. J/K

Found some chatter on a live journal page.

Supposedly it was an article by "Uri Kurlianchik" Here is another article by that author that is still up. http://www.wizards.com/DnD/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4tut/kids4

Supposedly this was the article that got pulled img163.imageshack.us/img163/8852/kids7screenshot.png

 

[Mark CMG]

That sounds like reputable news source. J/K

Found some chatter here: kynn.livejournal.com/1346778.html

Supposedly it was an article by "Uri Kurlianchik" Here's one still up. Dungeons & Dragons Roleplaying Game Official Home Page - Article (D&D Kids: Punishment)

Supposedly this was the article that got pulled img163.imageshack.us/img163/8852/kids7screenshot.png

He writes a lot of Teaching Kids Gaming/RPGs type articles -

Uri's Notebook

 

[vagabundo]

I thought it was a pretty decent article. Newsflash girls and boys tend to be different. You can take what he says as observations and use them not to stereotype people - "but your a girl you HAVE to like the drama", but as a way to cater for girls and boys that exhibit those characteristics. He could have relabelled the girls and boys bit, but that seems a little overly PC to me.

The only criticism I have is the title of the article, should have been just "kids at the table", and maybe putting in the disclaimer at all, it immediately gets some people in the mood to be offended.

I actually thought it was one of the better articles on DDI, since I now have a little girl (who is nearly 1) I've been thinking about when I can start DMing some DND for her.

 

[Aberzanzorax]

After having read the article, he tries hard to mention that he's making generalizations throughout and that they are not true of every male or female child.

Fair enough...these are stereotypes/generalizations and we should take them as such.

I'm not sure how that's helpful advice for gaming with kids though. Better would have been to list, say, 4-6 "player types" and, if he wanted to cover gender at all, mention if a given player type is more likely to be male or female.

If WotC wants to tackle gender issues, or gaming with children, I'd think that they'd seek out someone who actually knows something about gender issues or children beyond just their own observations. I'd be interested to read an article from a child psychologist, particularly focusing on what concepts in gaming children can understand at different ages (my son is 5).

Am I outraged? Not at all. I don't even think that WotC should do background checks on their writers. I'm actually pretty impressed that when it came out how the writer was pretty myogynistic on his google blog that they pulled the article. Kudos WotC!

 

[Traveller From Afar]

Oh yeah I heard about this guy, he was all over twitter a while back. Some piece of work tbh.

 

[S'mon]

Firstly, it was actually pulled because the writer turned out to be precisely the most wrong person in the universe to write about girls and D&D

*eek* the quotes start off fairly mild - opposing Feminism is like opposing any other political ideology IMO - but then... Let's just say I no longer have any interest in defending him. And if I were WoTC I wouldn't want him writing articles for my magazine; certainly not articles on teaching D&D to children. I wouldn't want him teaching D&D to my son. It would be one thing if he wrote it as a dumb adolescent 10 years ago and has clearly grown up since, but those are apparently from this year.

 

[S'mon]

I thought it was a pretty decent article.

Yeah, I can't actually see anything wrong with the article...

 

[S'mon]

If a girl wants to play a slender eladrin ranger, that's fine, but a DM shoudln't go, 'Ah, you're a girl? Then here's your slender eladrin ranger sheet.'"

The last time a female player asked me to pre-generate a PC for her (a few weeks ago), she asked for a female Half-Elf Ranger. In terms of what pregens to bring to the table, I think including a female elf/half-elf/Eladrin Ranger PC is a good idea. Just like with male players, a lot of new male players want to play something like Regdar - big, strong male warrior with a large two-handed weapon. Although my 4-year-old son seems to prefer bows & arrows, maybe he'll play an archer Ranger when he grows up.

 

[Asmor]

My understanding is that a very vocal minority complained that it was stereotyping women, and someone on LJ cherry picked some (admittedly pretty damning) quotes from the author on some social network (not sure where they came from) to paint him as a misogynist.