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

[I'm A Banana]

A sampling of female characters I've played:

• A dorky House Sivis scion, a gnomish artificer who related better to machines than people and created robot friends.
• An Athasian minstrel of exotic and fragile beauty (race: eladrin) who used her beauty to manipulate others into protecting her...but who was more than capable of slipping a poisoned blade between a few ribs if need be.
• A thri-kreen gladiatrix who was utterly loyal to her sorcerer-queen, who had "wives" from her victories in the ring, and who didn't understand fleshy sexuality or the interest in it, seeing it as a vulnerability and a weakness to develop affection for another.
• A "human" who was touched by elemental energies of the rain (race: genasi) who was once expected by her isolated tribe to bring water back to Athas, but who left the village and left them all disappointed in her (at least in her mind) when she failed, who used gambling and alcohol as a way to shirk her responsibilities and express her anger at a world that let her down.
• My "triple vampire" Elvira, Mistress of the Night, who was played as something of a spoiled rich girl who saw mortals - men and women alike - as mere interesting playthings.
• 4e Hamadryad Swordmage (whose name escapes me at the moment, she wasn't played for that long) who was actually the spirit of the greatsword she wielded after it had hit a tree. Kind of naive and wide-eyed about the world, a bit of a neophyte adventurer.

Three of those were in Dark Sun - I think I was reacting, in part, to the strong "testosterone" vein in that setting with the pulpy Sword & Sorcery vibe encouraging big muscles and strong characters and XTREME BIOLOGY and other things that pretty much indicated the setting was RATED M FOR MANLY. I tend to enjoy playing counter-intuitive characters.

I don't think any of them were too stereotypical. Though airheads, manipulative schemers, and naive neophytes made an appearance, they weren't those things BECAUSE they were women, and they had a lot of context (which is sometimes all you need). Playing cross-gender without going into 100% Stereotype Mode is probably mostly a function of overall maturity - I probably wouldn't trust middle schoolers or 8 year olds with the same level of "ability to make this actually human," though depending on the kid, maybe. I also would give more props to a character played in multiple sessions over a long period of time - things that would be stereotypes in one session can become character traits that exist in context with other character traits over many sessions.

 

[Chaosmancer]

This strikes me as a very fraught claim. What's the sample text? Was there one text or many? How long were they? What was the subject matter(s)? Who wrote them? Was it one writer or many? Size of subject pool? Blind or double-blind? Etc.

I'll admit to not knowing these things. Been years since the class where we learned it, and the study was not the focus of the class, more of a side note to make a point.

I also don't have the time or energy to scour the internet for exacting details.

I agree that we should be much more open as to what it means to be female or male, or feminine or masculine, but we aren't even close to a consensus of what those words mean now and many many people have very strong, deeply ingrained beliefs on the matter. My major point was that some people would see their character as not adequately role-played because they don't feel they can cross the gender divide.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

What does this even mean? There is no one "women's personality" or "men's personality". The range of individual personalities is wayyy broader than whatever statistical difference may exist between the sexes. No matter how "manly" you act, there are plenty of real-life women who act that way -- and I'd wager that many of them, if you met them, you would not even find remarkably tomboyish. So my advice is not to sweat it. Just play your character as you imagine him or her.

Fun fact: Ripley in Alien was written with no first name or defined gender in the original script. Cast Sigourney Weaver, and all of a sudden people are writing analyses about how the film allegorizes the contrast between female (Ripley) and male (xenomorph) sexuality and all other manner of gender-based navel-gazing. There's not that big a difference between men and women -- it's just that people see women and then look for a difference.

To be fair, the original script of a movie and the final script are sometimes only loosely related.

Also, some people believe in "death of the author."

But yeah, that's a fun fact.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I didn't make use use the phrase "realistic facets of life". If you meant "fictional facets of life" you might have chosen that phrase instead?



So you're doubling down on "fiction movies reflect reality".

No, they do not. They reflect an extremely amped up, exaggerated, intentionally hyperbolic fictional setting that has enough ring of reality to hopefully not take you completely out of the narrative. They portray things in a manner so that they hope you will THINK that's how you might react in such a crises - with no care for whether humans actually tend to react that way.

If you want to know how people react in crises, cite to footage of real people reacting to real crises. Do not pass off fiction written by a writer paid to write an exciting thrilling drama/sci-fi action-packed adventure flick as a good reflection of reality. In fact you cited specifically "Disaster Movies" and "Alien Invasion Movies" as your two examples - so we're in Michael Bay territory. Those are not relevahnt.

You keep fixating on your dislike of disaster movies instead of actually interacting with the point, but ok.

I have friends and relatives who survive Katrina, and 9/11. This is an aspect of life that even the worst disaster movies accurately reflect. People run first to loved ones, call them, talk about their worries concerning them. If you mean to argue that isn't true, you are wrong. A large percentage of my friends and family have served in the military, and the same is true there. They talk about their girlfriends, parents, little siblings, etc. every cop I know does the same.
The point, as I said before, is that real people talk about these things, and identity and preference are unavoidably part of that. Any fiction that avoids those topics is extremely unrealistic in a way that fantasy isn't supposed to be. It's nonsensical.

Also, suggesting that Michel bay represents disaster and invasion movies in general is a narrow view at least, and dishonest at worst.

 

[Lanefan]

I'd like to be a devil's advocate for people who cannot defend their own positions. It is very possible that the DM in question had the "men can't play women" rule for a good reason.

Perhaps. What we don't know is whether the rule held true the other way: what happened if a female player wanted to run a male character?

Lan-"if I've got a character concept in mind during roll-up that would work equally well with either gender, sometimes the gender is decided by dice"-efan

 

[Lanefan]

I also would give more props to a character played in multiple sessions over a long period of time - things that would be stereotypes in one session can become character traits that exist in context with other character traits over many sessions.

This holds true regardless of gender or anything else. Quite often a character - any character - starts out with a personality built around one or two stereotypes, then if it lasts its personality grows and develops from there.

One example: A CG/CN part-Elf named Appppil, my attempt to make a 1e Illusionist in a 3e game. Her rolled stats at start were less than stellar (15 Int and net bonus of +1 overall), so I stuck the 7 she ended up with into Wisdom and decided to play her like a spellcasting valley girl - with one exception: if it had anything to do with illusionary spellcraft she was all over it. In all honesty I didn't put much thought into her to begin with as the initial over-under on her lifespan was about 3 sessions, or less than a real-world month.

She lasted 7 years.

During that time her personality slowly morphed from a valley girl to a heart-on-her-sleeve happy-go-lucky type and then to the party's mother hen; and in the process she also became a pretty decent caster while in effect growing up and maturing through adventuring. That said, she also won our annual award for most entertaining character 3 times and came second twice. And yes, she was flirty.

Another example: A LN human with a long Roman name who usually just goes by 'X' (the letter, not the number 10). This one's a magic-user, forged in the Hestian (Roman) legions and bent on bringing civilization and comfort to the world - by force if necessary. She has her eye on the Senate one day, even the Emperor's throne perhaps, and is very much no-nonsense and down-to-business. However, in-game events have forced her to take a long hard look at herself (and not be very happy with what she sees) and now it's only her sense of duty that keeps her adventuring at all: there's a world to save, and she's all too aware that she probably has more information on how to save it than anyone else and that most of her companions either wouldn't understand it or would fail to do anything useful with it.

Her over-Lawfulness has certainly softened over the years (she's been going for quite some time) as have a few of her attitudes: she's been flirted with on occasion and turned them all down flat, to the point where her party think she's asexual. This isn't true - it's more that she feels like she just doesn't have time for the distraction - and she's fonder of some of her party than any of them realize (though she still sees most of them as uncivilized barbarian louts).

X is one that could have worked just as well as male or female; I chose female to see how her ambition might play out in a Roman-like society. As fate would have it, though, this version of Rome treats men and women equally...but in an ironic twist they don't like magic-users, so I get to play out the same sort of thing from a different angle.

Lan-"from a very recent Speak With Dead: caster - 'Do you want to come back to life?' X - 'Only because duty compels me to.'"-efan

 

[Tia Nadiezja]

You keep fixating on your dislike of disaster movies instead of actually interacting with the point, but ok.

I have friends and relatives who survive Katrina, and 9/11. This is an aspect of life that even the worst disaster movies accurately reflect. People run first to loved ones, call them, talk about their worries concerning them. If you mean to argue that isn't true, you are wrong. A large percentage of my friends and family have served in the military, and the same is true there. They talk about their girlfriends, parents, little siblings, etc. every cop I know does the same.
The point, as I said before, is that real people talk about these things, and identity and preference are unavoidably part of that. Any fiction that avoids those topics is extremely unrealistic in a way that fantasy isn't supposed to be. It's nonsensical.

Also, suggesting that Michel bay represents disaster and invasion movies in general is a narrow view at least, and dishonest at worst.

Speaking as a survivor of Katrina myself, this is the case.

Speaking as a lesbian and a human being... the people around me know that I am a lesbian. They know it without me saying how lesbian I am or how many girls I want to bang, because in everyday situations people talk about their families and so my girlfriend or wife gets mentioned, either by name or by relationship. Staying closeted is a lot more work than just avoiding putting on the rainbow button we all magically wake up having in our closets.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Speaking as a lesbian and a human being... the people around me know that I am a lesbian. They know it without me saying how lesbian I am or how many girls I want to bang, because in everyday situations people talk about their families and so my girlfriend or wife gets mentioned, either by name or by relationship. Staying closeted is a lot more work than just avoiding putting on the rainbow button we all magically wake up having in our closets.

I might go so far as to say that a character in fiction who DIDN'T think about their loved ones - their relationships and romantic attachments - during impending doom would be borderline unbelievably inhuman. Like, I can accept dragons and elves and magic and my suspension of disbelief isn't shaken, but accepting that a person in crisis doesn't think about the people closest to them is...harder. Loving my wife and child is part of who I am in public.

Quite often a character - any character - starts out with a personality built around one or two stereotypes, then if it lasts its personality grows and develops from there.

I've seen that happen to a lot of drunk Scottish dwarves.

 

[seebs]

On the topic of gender differences: Consider height. If you have a hundred men and a hundred women, sampled at random, the average height of the men will be higher. Now, assuming roughly the same population averages as the US, if someone is 5'9", what does that tell you about their gender? Basically nothing. You can't tell male from female by height. But the difference is still there statistically.

But if someone's 5'4", you have a moderately strong suspicion that they're more likely female than male. If you collect enough other data points, even though none of them are absolute proof, you can end up with reasonable certainty.

Same thing tends to happen with personality traits. If you have enough data about a person, you can be moderately confident (though probably not certain) whether they're male or female.

Also, in general, women are quite consistently able to write men convincingly. You can't be a woman in most cultures and not know how men behave and think. It is very easy to be a man in most cultures and be very ignorant of how women behave and think.

 

[Sunseeker]

Also, in general, women are quite consistently able to write men convincingly.

I want to focus on this statement for a moment, because I think we're missing an element here. There's a certain level of "the man behind the curtain" here because unless a given authors makes a lot of public statements on how they do their research, we really don't know how much energy a woman author puts into making sure they write a man convincingly.

Aside from that, I think the bar for a "convincing man" is lower than it is for a "convincing woman". That's a huge social issue but generally speaking the one-dimensional action here is considered an acceptably convincing portrayal of a man.