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

[TanithT]

If you want to talk 'economically winning strategy', throwing controversy in the mix isn't the way to do it. Those 'solid range of genders and orientations' aren't exactly selling points outside of an extreme minority of whom most don't play such games and is extremely controversial to a large enough of the potential market that it could end up being the thing that finally throws the D&D brand on the sword. The only reason for them to do it would be to push forward a sociological movement because it would in absolutely no way be of any benefit from a marketing standpoint. It could only hurt them.

You keep saying that, and Pathfinder keeps having a larger and still increasing market share. Kind of puts holes in that line of reasoning.

Do I think their popularity is solely due to being willing to have gay, bi and trans iconic characters and some racial diversity? No. But clearly it isn't hurting them at the bank, where people have been voting with their dollars and buying more of their product.

 

[Shemeska]

The absence of having having any content such as sexual orientation in a game where it doesn't belong isn't catering to anyone. Last I checked under NPCs and monster descriptions it doesn't identify them as being heterosexual or any sexual orientation for that matter.

Few people are going to suggest overtly sexual material in the game. But it's small things like casually mentioning that a male paladin is in love with another man, or that a queen has a female consort. Either it's a small bit of flavor text to add depth to a character, or if it's handled in more depth it's something related to a module's plot, or a plot hook within a setting book.

If you want to talk 'economically winning strategy', throwing controversy in the mix isn't the way to do it. Those 'solid range of genders and orientations' aren't exactly selling points outside of an extreme minority of whom most don't play such games and is extremely controversial to a large enough of the potential market that it could end up being the thing that finally throws the D&D brand on the sword.

I don't have numbers for this, but I expect that most people in the D&D audience by and large don't care, so long as there's something in there for them, and stuff they don't want isn't luridly illustrated and pushed on them (which is where fantasy art in D&D and elsewhere tends to push cheesecake massively as it is). But in terms of just admitting that racial and sexual minorities exist within a game world and include female characters on equal footing as males can really make the game more attractive to them. They'll be happy. And the people that will be unhappy or offended... well they're probably going to be protesting D&D for having demons and devils. But I'm probably treading too close to real world territory here.

 

[TanithT]

I expect that most people in the D&D audience by and large don't care, so long as there's something in there for them, and stuff they don't want isn't luridly illustrated and pushed on them.

You mean, like gratuitous cheesecake art? Yeah, that would be nice if it stopped being the default setting. I don't see that happening, so I'll settle for equal time for sexualized male depictions and more reasonable settings for both. Eg, not where it's stupid.

 

[variant]

You keep saying that, and Pathfinder keeps having a larger and still increasing market share. Kind of puts holes in that line of reasoning.

Do I think their popularity is solely due to being willing to have gay, bi and trans iconic characters and some racial diversity? No. But clearly it isn't hurting them at the bank, where people have been voting with their dollars and buying more of their product.

Pathfinder is still largely an unknown property made by a small company. D&D is more than a pen and paper game. It includes videogames, a high number of novels, boardgames and soon to be more films. The brand name is also iconic which means it has a giant spotlight on it. Also Wizards of the Coast and its parent company Hasbro is an extremely large company. Anything they do in Dungeons and Dragons has far more repercussions than just to the D&D RPG. If they tried to push forward with what you want, it could cause all of their properties to come under a negative light. If they try and it fails hard, they may just decide D&D pen and paper is a liability to the company as a whole. It especially becomes tricky when there are shareholders and their opinions hold a lot of weight.

 

[Alzrius]

I don't think you'll find broad agreement on that.

And here I thought I was very close to building a consensus.

By that logic, to stumble and accidentally cut someone with scissors you are holding is morally equivalent with deliberately stabbing them.

I doubt few here will buy that. The difference is strongly ingrained in our system (and thus concepts) of justice, which is strongly tied to our moral codes. First degree murder is not the same as manslaughter. Slander and libel require knowing and deliberate acts, and so on.

I've heard that particular counterargument before, and I'll admit it's a compelling one. I've thought a lot about it, and come to the conclusion that - even overlooking the difference between morality and justice - there is a deontological difference between stabbing someone and stumbling and accidentally cutting them.

In the former act, you're violating the negative duties (e.g. do not perform acts of harm). The latter act, however, is the person coming to harm as the result of circumstance, the same as if a tree branch just happened to break off when they're under it; it's not, from a moral standpoint, considered to be an action on your part.

To put it another way, I think that the idea of saying that the two scenarios are equivalent is a consequentialist argument (e.g. "the results of what happened are that the person was stabbed; how they ended up stabbed is immaterial") rather than a deontological one. When I said "Whether it's done deliberately or not has no bearing on the question of how moral an action is or is not," I was attempting (poorly, I realize now) to say "whether the consequences are those that were deliberately sought, or came about as an unexpected result, is irrelevant, because we're focusing on the act itself and not the consequences."

That said, I suspect that something done completely involuntarily, such as the stumble-and-stab scenario, may not rise to the level of being considered an "action" for the purposes of deontological ethics. In this regard intent would matter, but only if it existed or not; what the intent actually was would be irrelevant.

(I anticipate that some people might say that this sounds like me moving the goalposts; it's not meant to be that. I'm evolving my position on this as the thread continues, which is sort of the point of having a debate - it allows you to change minds, chief among them being your own.)

Yeah, I'm not buying that intent has no bearing on the question of how moral an action is or is not. The act of saying or using a word is not in and of itself moral or a bad thing... but the intent behind saying or using certain words makes their usage a bad thing.

In other words...Umbran pretty much sums it up for me. In fact in some cases I'd argue the intent is more important than the action itself.

The act of speaking is not, as you noted, an action that in-and-of itself has either virtue or fault. However, that doesn't change depending on the "intent" of the speaker (particularly since that intent is impossible to judge anyway; you can't know what another person intended to do, and you can't know that they're being truthful if they tell you what their intent was).

Ergo, the intent is not only unimportant, but can never be considered the most important thing.

That why I noted that it's not really about morality. Virtue and fault don't enter into it. I'm not talking in terms of right and wrong. I'm not referencing morality, or what kind of person anyone is. Value judgements of good and bad are far, far beyond the scope of what I'm referring to.

Systems of morality vary, the world's complex, and ENWorld really isn't the place to discuss whether someone is a good person or not. So I'm not really talking about right and wrong.

I'm referring to simple cause and effect.

In this case, then, we're having two different discussions, to the point where we're talking at each other, rather than to each other.

I'm referring to trying to figuring out if something (in this case, the lack of adding inclusivity) is immoral or amoral. I'm not interested in what the causes (which I perceive to be the intent) or effects (the consequences) are. I believe that the question of right or wrong is found in the act itself, and I wanted to have this discussion and debate to help figure out my own position in greater detail (and hopefully grant insight for someone else in the process).

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.

WotC must act under the knowledge of these effects, and must use the moral code of each decision-making employee there to determine for their own purposes whether or not these effects are good or bad. Which is only going to represent one local view of that (one view shaped by similar life experiences, given the economic, cultural, racial, and sexual homogeneity of those making the decision).

Rather than amoral, the choice is polymoral, and includes within it good and bad effects that vary with moral weight depending upon one's personal, subjective measure of morality. Which is why I can't really say if it's objectively good or bad (though I can make a judgement based on my local morality).

Which is what I mean by neutrality being impossible. Your choice will have consequences, and those consequences will likely be both bad and good, but you cannot abrogate yourself of the responsibility of considering both of those categories of consequences just because you cannot attain complete accuracy. Quite the opposite: you must consider them all the more, the greater potential for bad and good they have.

Should D&D5e promote more equality? Well, here's the cause and effect. Here's the things that will happen if they do, if they don't. Rather than not consider the effects of their actions, they need to consider their effects from multiple angles, to come to terms with how different moral codes and dominant cultural modes will judge them (hence, branding). No one can tell you if they are "right" or not for you and your values of right, but they can tell you if they are "right" or not for their own values of right, and therein lies how one harmonizes oneself with a greater cultural mode.

Leaving aside the issue of your citing documentation without actually producing it (which I disagree with in general, rather than as any particular method of impugning the specifics of what you're saying), I think your argument here has contradicted itself, simply because you first posted that you weren't talking about morality, or right and wrong, and then you immediately start talking about "polymoral" choices that "include good and bad" that have "moral weight" to them.

You don't want to talk about morals...so then you talk about morals.

I will say that I disagree with the examples you posted, since the question of "cause and effects" seems to be (as you posed it) more concerned with the consequences of actions rather than the nature of the actions themselves. This is a system of morality that I strongly disagree with, because I find that it leads to all sorts of issues with the ends being more important than the means, and responsibility for unintended and unforeseeable consequences resting with the person who perpetrated the cause.

A person who publishes an image of a woman in a chainmail bikini is not at moral fault if a girl viewing that incorporates it into her body image to negative effects. The publication of artwork is, in and of itself, an amoral action. What might happen, even if it's extremely likely, is beyond the nature of the act itself, and so the act cannot be found to be immoral, though it can be found to be without virtue.

It only becomes more complicated if one's moral code doesn't include a requirement in it to be aware of your own social standing.

Any such moral code would have difficulty giving any moral guidance to anyone who is in a society, and thus the recipient of several layers of social complexity. So, kind of useless as a moral code, given its complete inability to accurately prescribe an action one should take in the circumstances that most people find themselves in.

It'd be like dance steps for a rattlesnake, defying the reality of the situation it's supposed to be used for.

To be clear, "social standing" is a reference to social class and similar systems, such as caste; I don't think that's what you were trying to invoke (though as you did invoke it, you are now responsible for the consequences of doing so ).

The problem with your argument here is that it's based completely on the results of the actions you take, so when the results of your actions confound your expectations (e.g. what happens isn't what you expected or intended), then you find yourself after the fact becoming a bad person based on the actions you thought would produce greater good. By that logic, for example, if you save the life of someone who then goes on to kill people, you are responsible for those deaths as a consequence of saving the person who would then do something morally wrong. Give

Given that, the after-the-fact situational nature of the moral code you're prescribing causes it to become absolutely useless, having no ability to determine if the action you're undertaking is moral or not until after it's been completed and its effects weighed. To use your metaphor, it's like trying to make a rattlesnake dance because it might work, and you won't know until you see the results of trying.

Far more useful, I say, is a moral code that isn't subjective based on what might happen, but rather on what you actually do.

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?"

The question is easily flipped around, since it's perfectly valid to ask if not doing something virtuous is immoral or amoral. The question of whether or not they're doing it based on popular request doesn't enter into it, to my mind, since that goes more towards their intent, which as mentioned previously cannot be judged anyway. How moral an action is or is not doesn't depend on its popularity.

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

By that stance, Paizo will give us epic-level rules soon...but I don't think that's going to happen.

 

[Obryn]

Except all that you want should be done by you in your campaign. After all, as you say, it's personal.

We're talking about a rule book for a game. Any implied setting is sparse and/or completely invented.

If you want all humans to have blond hair in your setting you can. If you want female warriors to be rare, I guess that's your decision to make.

The art in the core rule book should be inclusive not just of the players, but also the sorts of games they'll be running. Which means more diversity showcases the system's flexibility.

-O

 

[Jester David]

We're talking about a rule book for a game. Any implied setting is sparse and/or completely invented.

If you want all humans to have blond hair in your setting you can. If you want female warriors to be rare, I guess that's your decision to make.

The art in the core rule book should be inclusive not just of the players, but also the sorts of games they'll be running. Which means more diversity showcases the system's flexibility.

-O

And even when the core book had an implied setting (Greyhawk in 3e) they had black and SE Asian iconics, despite both not being a part of that setting. It doesn't break the world; heroes are tupically exceptions to th norm.

Plus, in a world building section there should be all kinds of different heroes with different armour and garb: Asian, African, Amerindian, Incan, etc.

 

[billd91]

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.

Could it be because they get that interest squashed out of them in their earlier education? That's where I saw the drop off in girls interested in those topics. They went from smart and competent in grade school to basket cases in middle school. And I'm pretty sure it wasn't because they simply weren't interested in the subjects. Something else was going on. Needless to say, we've been working against that tendency with our daughter. She's a high school freshman now, loves math, and wants to be an engineer.

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.

It may not be 50/50 but it's not as far off as you seem to think. Current trends in free form online role playing are also encouraging.

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

"As we know"? Cite your data otherwise our best guess is that you're blowing a lot of BS.

Now, I agree that male forms in English are as neuter a pronoun as the language has and is likely to have for some decades to come. I think the alienation that some people feel over that has as more to do with the reader being sensitized to the topic as an issue than any intentional attempt to exclude. That said, Wizards hit on an excellent method of inclusion, capable of cutting through both the alienation and the backlash (present company, apparently, accepted), by keying the use of the gender pronouns to a specific context - the sex of the iconic character. They didn't refer to 1 in 2 paladins as a "he" or a "she", they defined the iconic's sex and then used the appropriate gendered pronoun.

 

[bogmad]

In the former act, you're violating the negative duties (e.g. do not perform acts of harm). The latter act, however, is the person coming to harm as the result of circumstance, the same as if a tree branch just happened to break off when they're under it; it's not, from a moral standpoint, considered to be an action on your part.

Circumstances matter however. If for example you're repeatedly putting someone under a heavy rotten treebranch and you keep placing a guy underneath it, you might be culpable.

To put it another way, I think that the idea of saying that the two scenarios are equivalent is a consequentialist argument (e.g. "the results of what happened are that the person was stabbed; how they ended up stabbed is immaterial") rather than a deontological one. When I said "Whether it's done deliberately or not has no bearing on the question of how moral an action is or is not," I was attempting (poorly, I realize now) to say "whether the consequences are those that were deliberately sought, or came about as an unexpected result, is irrelevant, because we're focusing on the act itself and not the consequences."


Ergo, the intent is not only unimportant, but can never be considered the most important thing.

It seems you're concentrating on the solely on the action, not the consequences, but the rest of us I think are having a discussion about both of those things, and the complicated interplay between them.

And, you're entitled to if you really think actions in a vacuum without intent or consequences are the only thing worth evaluating.
I could throw out a whole lot of philosophical writing explaining my own position from a purely Objectivist position(if I had one), but it might it might not be the best way to convince everyone my position is the right one.

By that stance, Paizo will give us epic-level rules soon...but I don't think that's going to happen.

You're right, a question's morality doesn't depend solely on it's popularity. Ignoring a group saying "I want epic rules, and you're ignoring me!" is arguably less immoral than ignoring a group saying "You're depictions devalue my basic humanity." [Now the extent of how true that second group's claim is open to discussion sure, but that's a separate argument]

But you may disagree.

 

[Alzrius]

Circumstances matter however. If for example you're repeatedly putting someone under a heavy rotten treebranch and you keep placing a guy underneath it, you might be culpable.

It's not a question of the circumstances in that regard; I was positing that an action taken involuntarily doesn't rise to the level of being an action, for purposes of moral evaluation. Actively placing someone somewhere doesn't meet that criteria.

It seems you're concentrating on the solely on the action, not the consequences, but the rest of us I think are having a discussion about both of those things, and the complicated interplay between them.

The point of deontological ethics (insofar as I understand it) is that it looks to try and determine the morality of an action based on the act itself, rather than the intent of the actor or the consequences of the action.

And, you're entitled to if you really think actions in a vacuum without intent or consequences are the only thing worth evaluating.
I could throw out a whole lot of philosophical writing explaining my own position from a purely Objectivist position, but it might it might not be the best way to convince everyone my position is the right one.

It's not a question of it being in a vacuum or not. The question of trying to figure out the morality of something is, I believe, based on the action that is undertaken, rather than the (impossible to ascertain) intent, or the (impossible to pre-evaluate) consequences.

You're right, a question's morality doesn't depend solely on it's popularity. Ignoring a group saying "I want epic rules, and you're ignoring me!" is arguably less immoral than ignoring a group saying "You're depictions devalue my basic humanity." [Now the extent of how true that second group's claim is open to discussion sure, but that's a separate argument]

But you may disagree.

I disagree in that the question here isn't if something is "more or less" moral, immoral, or amoral than something else. For the purposes of the discussion, I want to know if something is right, wrong, or neither, not how much. I acknowledge that media is doing good if it promotes social virtue, but what if it does not? Is it lacking in virtue and also containing fault (e.g. it's bad), or divorced from questions of right and wrong altogether (e.g. having neither fault nor virtue)?

Most people here seem to be of the opinion that if you aren't doing good, then what you're doing is bad. I think that's true in some circumstances (e.g. duties), but not in others (e.g. supererogatory actions).