D&D 5E 5e's new gender policy - is it attracting new players?

[Sunseeker]

And that's fine when they're left blank. But they aren't always. People don't often notice references to heterosexuality, but they are always there when you look for them.

To be fair, everything is always there when you're looking for it. Because that's how the human brain works, we see what we want to see.

 

[SuperZero]

In our games, there is no barkeeps wife, or any of that unless there's a significant reason for the plot to be so.

So there is, then. Of course there is. There couldn't not be.
Also, the conversation was about published things.

There are gay players in our games, and none of them seem to have these issues you do, demanding to have X amount of call outs, even when it's not relevant at all.

Exactly no one said that. What was that about a Strawman argument?

They don't play the game to talk about their sexuality any more than anyone else. They're there to kill things and take their stuff. I know it must be shocking, but most of the gay people I know (which is a lot, like I said I'm a member of my PRIDE group and live in Portland) are regular people no different than anyone else. And most people in general don't play D&D to place an emphasis on their sexuality.

And as has been said, the existence of gay people does not place any more emphasis on sexuality than the existence of straight people.
I'm not the one suggesting there needs to be anything special. I've actually specifically stated that I don't often go for much sex or romance in RPGs. But I had a PC who was widowed, once. And in a modern setting that didn't involve wandering the world, there's been a few current partners--partially because establishing that as an existing background element showed I wasn't interested in romantic subplots. I established orientation as part of avoiding sex or romance in the game.

When I made that Animal Farm quote, I made it because Dire Bare is making a double standard, saying that by saying a group that doesn't talk about sex at all only is detrimental to GLBT by telling them they're not welcome. Which is bull, and fits that quote perfectly.

You ignored the context, then. And the explanation.
That quote does fit perfectly.

To be fair, everything is always there when you're looking for it. Because that's how the human brain works, we see what we want to see.

I'm talking about people overlooking something that's there because of how normalized it is. Kind of the opposite of that.

 

[Sunseeker]

I'm talking about people overlooking something that's there because of how normalized it is. Kind of the opposite of that.

But your claim was that it is there when its not written to be there, so you're implying it's there.

It's the difference between say:
Bobbi asked Jenny to join him at the movies for a date and she agreed.
and
Bobbi and Jenny went to the movies for a date.

The former explicitly states the heterosexual nature of the relationship. The last one only does if you assume that they are opposite sex based on their names.

Besides that, the brain looks for patterns, it does this to aid in information categorization. That's why we often read things to say something they aren't actually saying.

 

[Galendril]

As a gay man, I agree with the OP that I like WOTC's inclusiveness statement. However, I'm not upset there are no openly LBGT characters in their published works. Honestly, there is not that much published material in 5e and secondly, I don't think it would add to the plot in any that are out.

For example, the revelation that Dumbledore was gay did not enhance nor detracted from the Harry Potter novels for me.

As a DM (and player), if I want there to be an LGBT character in a game, I'm perfectly capable of creating one myself.

 

[TheCosmicKid]

If you want to have a setting where all of these fantasy elements openly exist and nothing else about culture is the same... that can be internally consistent, but you've already got something majorly unrealistic. I think it can handle a few female guards. Unlike elves, women actually exist.

I said some groups use the game to "play out the myths and legends of past cultures". As [MENTION=18182]Dire Bare[/MENTION] pointed out, "realism" in the context of this conversation means something different than complete historical accuracy; it means maintaining the suspension of disbelief. The goal here is to be "realistic" with respect to the myths and legends, not to the actual history. The players aren't looking to jump into the actual Dark Ages -- they're looking to jump into the literary world of Sigurd or King Arthur. Just as the players in The Dresden Files aren't looking to jump into the real world -- they're looking to jump into, well, The Dresden Files. And in these worlds, both elves and women (and even elf women!) actually exist.

Maybe some examples from contemporary fantasy would help illustrate what I'm talking about.

Good example: J.R.R. Tolkien. His Rohirrim are Anglo-Saxons, institutionalized sexism and all, because he wanted to let his imagination loose in the world of Anglo-Saxon literature, and a world where women warriors are as normal as men would not look much like that world. But he also wrote a female character who is fed up with being sheltered and rides off to commit some acts of righteous violence. Eowyn's story arc would not work in an egalitarian culture; much of the drama arises from challenging implicit assumptions made by the male characters (and perhaps the audience). The sexism is a part of the narrative, even though the narrative obviously isn't endorsing it.

Bad example: Robin Hobb. In Assassin's Apprentice, there are female characters who, like Eowyn, chafe at being confined to their chambers and not allowed to lead lives of action. But there are also female guards, including the guard captain. The juxtaposition is jarring and inconsistent. It doesn't work for the story.

Good example again: Jim Butcher. His Alerans are based on Romans, but their social, political, and magical circumstances are completely different. He's not going for a Roman legend theme (it's actually more Pokémon-versus-Starcraft). Women in Alera matter-of-factly hold positions at all levels of power, and the female deuteragonist is a badass secret agent. Their gender is consistently unimportant in-universe and unimportant to the story.

You don't have to emulate historical cultures in D&D. If you want to run an original, Alera-like culture where women guards are unremarkable, great! But you can also run a more historical, Rohan-like culture where gender roles are sometimes a plot point. This is sometimes desirable because it allows you and your players to tell different stories than otherwise. The key things to remember are simply: (a) apply cultural norms consistently to maintain suspension of disbelief; (b) play women characters (and men too) as individuals informed by their culture rather than as robotic slaves to their culture; and of course (c) don't make anyone at your table feel uncomfortable or unwelcome.

 

[Sunseeker]

I'd like to make a few personal points.

Different games will have different levels of inclusion. Sometimes worlds are cold and cruel and full of stupid, bigoted people. In a fantasy setting though, such people tend to take a more xenophobic bent before they take a sexual-orientation bent. Gay humans are still humans, unlike those dirty, nasty dragonborn! Sometimes worlds are warm and welcoming, full of cosmopolitan people. Sometimes worlds are mercantalist and don't care who or what you do as long as you have enough coin to make your problems go away. Different settings will treat different groups of people differently, it's just one of the challenges that exists in that given world that players will have to deal with, be they elf, tiefling, gay or transgender or all of the above.

I'm not interested in an IRL political debate at the gaming table. I eat breathe and otherwise live politics. I'm interested in a good, fun game. A good, fun game will have some politics, but if players don't want to delve into them I will downplay them. If players do, they may tackle social and political issues of the game instead of tackling the magical, violent or otherwise physical elements of the game. But I'm not there to debate IRL issues. If Kingdom A treats homosexuals poorly players are welcome to engage in a fight for equal rights as much as they are welcome to literally fight the king for rulership of the kingdom if they feel it is an issue they wish to resolve.

Some of my earliest D&D games were with a gay male couple in a town that was pretty tolerant. They didn't make a big deal of being gay and I played a heterosexual woman (i'm a white, straight male), I didn't make a big deal about that either. In fact I don't even know if any of their characters even had orientations that's how not brought up the issue was.

I think, in all this talk of tolerance, acceptance and so on, people forget that one of the easiest solutions to the problem is to just treat everyone like an equal human being. We don't need to analyze the appropriate solutions to IRL problems in a TTRPG.

 

[ddaley]

Sure. But I slightly disagree.

Women used to not make up a large portion of D&D players - and we can partly blame the rules text and the art for that. Now, while the game is still male dominated, those numbers are changing. And we can see the same thing in many other industries - by trying to be more inclusive in how you present the product, more people can get interested.

And really, why aren't there more gay npcs? More lesbian npcs? I realize that the sexuality of an npc is often not discussed because it's not important, but why not hint at it more? I mean, pathfinder has been doing this since issue #1.



Sure. But what I'm saying is this - by advising that I was running an open table, I drew in new players. So, is D&D, by being much more open than they have been in the past, beginning to draw in from a more diverse group of players in the LGBTQ community?

I'm not at all sure of the numbers. It'd be interesting to find out, and I'm sure there's a blog somewhere that has some cool data.

How do you know that more npcs are not gay? Just because a module doesn't call it out doesn't mean that they are not gay. I don't recall modules pointing out that certain characters are heterosexual either. In my opinion, I think pathfinder went too far in trying to make those issues too central to the story. I play with my kids and don't really want to be having to have those discussions during our game nights. I would rather keep sexual orientation out of the game as much as possible.

As far as women in gaming, I haven't seen that as a problem. Maybe it is just the groups I have played in, but we have usually had one or more women in our groups going back to the mid 80s. My wife plays with us today. I am not sure that the problem is with the art or the way that the books are written... but rather just more men are interested in these fantasy settings. Even though my wife plays D&D with us, she is much less likely to say, go see Lord of the Rings or similar movies. The setting just isn't as interesting to her.

 

[MechaPilot]

With a size somewhere between 1.2-6.8% of population it's a fringe thing (just as being a D&D player is a fringe thing). That's not slagging it, just stating it's relative commonness. Even in the most open and diverse metropolitan areas it's below 15%.

Size doesn't matter. . . when talking about treating people with human dignity. Also, I should point out that even in the most open and diverse places, there are still pressures (familial, religious, professional, etc) on people not to be "out." And, that doesn't account for people who just don't realize that they are LGBT. Some people have heterosexuality and their biological gender so impressed on them by society that they don't even think to question those things even when they feel like something's wrong.

 

[MechaPilot]

I think if you want to coherently run the standard Medieval Europe Lite campaign setting, the culture probably needs to have just a touch of gender inequality. It's simply not going to look like the European Middle Ages without traditional gender roles assigning men and women different clothing and different jobs in day-to-day life.

Medieval Europe Lite? Does that have 99%, 50%, or 2% of the calories of the original?


That sounds like a joke (and it partly was), but it's also a metaphor. Just as there are varying degrees of pseudo, there are also varying degrees of light. So, while I'm willing to agree that the standard D&D setting is Medieval Europe Lite, you'd probably find both of us granting different percentages to how Medieval Europe the standard D&D settings are.

I do think that most people who play D&D (not just players, but DM's as well) have not studied medieval society. They may well look to fiction and the culture they come from to at least fill the gaps in their own knowledge. I also think that some people simply take medieval to refer to the tech level and/or to the feudal structure of lords and vassals.

 

[Gnarl45]

And I say, again, the thing I said in the first place that you're supposedly responding to:
Characters can very often be described without mouentioning anything about orientation. This is fine. Good, even. However, it is not always the case. When "NPC's spouse" and "NPC 1 has a thing for NPC 2" and "those two are married" and "the NPC is a sucker for a pretty face and is easier to influence by human, elf, or half-elf women" do come up, not every single one of them need be straight.

Fair enough. It's not like D&D worlds have anything in common with medieval Europe anyways so you might as well.

I'm not the one trying to come up with "alternate models" where LGBT people can exist.

It wasn't an alternative model. It was a historical example of a society that praised homosexuality. I was trying to understand what you meant by "including them". But you made it clear now. You just want them to be casually included as if they weren't a big thing. Kind of like having half the rulers be women and 20% of the knights with dark colored skin.

..did you look at what I was responding to?
LGBT people are an invisible minority. Don't assume we're not there.
(Not that I've never seen straight people discussing gay people like we're a hypothetical even when they know we're there; that was fun!)

I was only saying there is no such thing as "gay looking dude" or a "straight looking girl".