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

[Tia Nadiezja]

The nature v. nurture argument is still ongoing. That said, even if you're wired towards more traditionally masculine or feminine gender aspects, it is still society who is defining what is or is not a masculine or feminine gender role. If you throw out society's role in setting the boundaries for what is or isn't gender identity, then gender identity becomes meaningless as a term because there's nothing to identify with, everyone is just themselves. Which wouldn't be a wholly bad way to do things, but as we are biologically wired to categorize things for ease of information storage are unlikely to ever do that.

People are mixing up gender identity and gender expression.

Gender identity is easy. When people ask you what your gender is, what feels right to say? Male? Female? Neither? Both? Different at different times? That's gender identity.

Gender expression is performance of gender - and sexual orientation, and other parts of who you are. Gender expression is where we get ideas like "butch" and "femme" from. And it can interact with gender identity in ways that are deeply unpleasant.

The main form of gender dysphoria I suffer is social - not being recognized as a woman hurts. A lot. I'm by nature very femme - I like to dress in very girly pretty cute things. I'm really glad I am so femme, because while being recognized as a woman is frequently difficult for me, it's borderline impossible in many places for butch trans women.

 

[TheCosmicKid]

Relevance to gaming: Gender identity isn't a thing that simply disappears if a society happens to have no masculine/feminine distinctions, so when worldbuilding, you can't realistically just handwave it away by declaring that your society doesn't have any of those distinctions or discriminations. Some players may not care. Others may feel very, very, strongly about that one.

We're talking about fictional universes where the humanoid races are not evolved mammals but directly created by the gods, and their bodies and minds may well honestly be governed by the balance of the Four Humors or some other magical unscientific theory. The PHB paragraph on gender (you know, the one that this whole 90-page conversation is allegedly about) mentions that some elves may be hermaphroditic, which is not medically possible for humans in real life, and the implication that heavy facial hair is normal among female dwarves is another suggestion that bodies can work differently over there. If the DM has a model of how sex/gender/etc. functions which does not square with the latest real-world science on the subject, I do not think that's exactly a shattering blow for verisimilitude. Not in a world where Mind Flayers are a thing.

(Although you do want to be careful, because sometimes outdated psychological theories can be inadvertently hilarious. The Freudianism in Frederik Pohl's Gateway, for instance.)

 

[Shasarak]

Were the PCs sexless mannequins?

Well one PC is a Warforged and the others are Elves, so yes sexless mannequins.

 

[Wik]

This is emphatically not a good article on the subject. It is on practically every level an object lesson in how not to write. It's full of fiery rhetoric, progressive buzzphrases, and easy generalizations, but gives no names, quotations, or any other specifics that might actually be persuasive to a layperson -- it's written entirely to preach to the choir, and like a lot of choir-preaching just comes across as nasty and offputting. It is, in short, shooting its own case in the foot. Try this instead: Misogyny: The Sites. No nastiness needed, just facts.

Sure, fair enough. I found a quick little blurb, it hit the main points, without being super annoying (at least, not to my own ears).

 

[Wik]

This seems to be the crux of the issue: are you just saying how you would run your table, or are recommending/requesting/insisting that all tables run the same way?

I guess I see it as advice, more than anything else. Advice bigger than just D&D. If you're the type of person who can look someone in the eye and say "no, your gender choice, sexuality choice, or ethnicity do not fit in with my idea of what's fun at a table", well, you should rethink that.

I mean, obviously GMs CAN do whatever they want at their table. It's a free world. But SHOULD they? I don't think so. If that means that the GM has to rethink how dragonborn gender works so that a PC can play a intersex dragonborn paladin (which has recently happened at my table), well, so be it. It's better to rethink a fictional game than to step on someone's imagination... and if you're also going to be stepping on some pretty fundamental ideas on big real-world issues, well, that's kind of not cool.

Yeah, sometimes it's remarkable how the "Say Yes" DMing philosophy can pay off. It's almost like you're cheating. You're getting your players to do half the work for you, and like it!

"Say yes whenever possible" is, in my experience, just a great way to live life. Sometimes it can be hard, but it leads to places you'd never think you'd ever be.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

...which makes them gatekeepers. What did you think that term meant?

I'm not questioning this. I'm questioning [MENTION=61529]seebs[/MENTION]' claim that "women are not putting any special extra effort or research into writing men convincingly". The cultural expectation that we sympathize with male characters does not imply that women do not have to put any special extra effort into it. Indeed, the complaint about this cultural expectation, the call for more female characters, is usually based on the premise that they do. Hell, the first problem with the claim is just that it speaks of "women" (and "men") categorically, without quantification. Let me make a counterclaim that is a little more precise and, I hope, does not strike anyone as wildly radical: many women find many men to be puzzling, just like many men find many women to be puzzling. Now let me expand on that with another claim that may be a little more contentious: the people who don't find their opposite numbers puzzling are the ones who are better at looking past sex and recognizing that the same basic emotions, desires, and motivations are pretty much common to all humans. (And then there are people like me who are equally oblivious around everybody. )

I honestly doubt they'd notice the difference.

Do you have a dog or cat? Is it male or female? Its behaviors are informed by its sex, to be sure. But they are much, much, much more informed by the fact that it's a dog or cat. Male dogs chase squirrels; female dogs chase squirrels. Male cats scratch posts; female cats scratch posts. And so on. And there's a wide variance for individual personality, as well. Now, to the animal itself, its sex and the sex of other members of its species is a really big deal (especially if it's not spayed or neutered). But from our outside perspective... not so much. That's where alien scientists would stand with regards to us, unless like in Star Trek they bear a fantastically improbable resemblance. We notice (and even invent) differences between men and women because we're hard-wired to be hypersensitive to them. They don't because they aren't.

There are strong socialized differences between human genders, which are incomparably more noticeable than gendered differences in most mammals.

As for gatekeepers, you have misunderstood what that word means. A mutual arrangement between equal parties does not have gatekeepers. A gatekeeper is someone who stands in a sort of metaphorical bottleneck as THE authority on who may pass and who may not. It is an inherently unequal relationship. Two participants in an equal, mutually consensual arrangement cannot be gatekeepers, by definition.

By chance, have you read the study which showed that white people are less competent to read the emotional signals of people of color, than the other way around? Do you honestly think the same isn't true for men and women?

 

[Lanefan]

If you're the type of person who can look someone in the eye and say "no, your gender choice, sexuality choice, or ethnicity do not fit in with my idea of what's fun at a table", well, you should rethink that.

OK. Now, what about: "one or more of these choices does not fit in with the game world as envisioned and-or designed"? Example: if in my world the Gnomish culture as designed (and clearly stated upfront) says only female Gnomes go adventuring and an adventuring male Gnome is likely to be scorned (or worse) if it ever encounters any other Gnomes, do I allow male Gnome PCs or just ban them? And if I do allow them, and the scorn comes, is it then a "don't say I didn't warn you" moment?

In other words, is it wrong to make some PCs culturally or racially harder to play? Some classes (Assassin being the most notable) are already similarly harder to play, by comparison.

"Say yes whenever possible" is, in my experience, just a great way to live life. Sometimes it can be hard, but it leads to places you'd never think you'd ever be.

As can the philosophy "limitation breeds creativity".

At the start of my current campaign all PCs had to be a) Human and b) of the same ethnicity (Greek-equivalent). I did this intentionally, to set an early tone of what sort of culture the game would be set in and to drive home the fact they were starting in a place where non-Humans weren't always very welcome. What this meant was that if someone had their heart set on playing an Elf right from puck drop they were SOL; they'd have to wait a while. Is this wrong?

Lan-"as soon as the party got out into the field and started turning over characters (at a frightening rate!) I opened it up to other races and ethnicities more like a standard game"-efan

 

[rollingForInit]

I giggled at that typo too. LOL

I'd say the crux of the issue isn't about how to run tables at all. The crux of the issue is how the game is presented to tables. It's been mentioned several times before that modules and setting material feature couples, and thus some degree of sexuality. We've come a long way in presenting minorities and whatnot in the game and perhaps it isn't a bad idea to toss a couple of LGBT bones in there as well.

At least, that's the argument as I see it.

You might just have posted the single most sensible post in the entire thread.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

Oh please, we are in the XXI century. Now the straight boys can play videogames with female characters like Lara Croft or Faith Connors (Mirror's Edge).

And the magical girls is is very popular manga/anime subgenre. I guess lots of girls may like to play female spellcaster characters.

 

[aramis erak]

No rescuing a princess? None of the NPC's had significant others, ever? Note, he did include sexuality or gender in that, so, one or the other. Your PC's were all genderless individuals who never once made any sort of romantic comment (of varying levels of maturity) towards an NPC? No half-whatever characters? It's pretty hard to escape any reference to gender and/or sexuality in an entire campaign.

The number of campaigns where romance &/or sexual identity was in any way a plot element, over 35 years of play: 2 traveller, 4 pendragon, 1 D&D, 1 AMSH, 1 Arabian Sea Tales. Of over a hundred (mostly short- 1-3 months) campaigns. Until the last 5 years, 3 campaigns going at a time was my standard. I'd say I averaged 12 campaigns per year over 30 years, and 4 per year for the last 5. Of these, only 4 post-date my children

Others where gender mattered, but sexuality didn't: 1 more pendragon campaign, 1 Arabian Sea Tales, 4 L5R campaigns, 2 Blood and Honor campaigns, and 1 TOR campaign (but only because players made an issue of it - one took a female dwarf.) Note that Pendragon, L5R, Arabian Sea Tales, and Blood and Honor are all set in settings that explicitly are sexist; female characters have to be chaperoned in L5R and B&H because of Japanese/Samurai era setting, AST requires it because it's middle eastern quasi-historical, and Pendragon because it's dark ages (with rapid progression to middle ages).

The rest? It doesn't matter if they are rescuing a prince or a princess unless they are either trying to seduce said royal. Which they didn't. Simply put, no one in my groups really wants much of a romantic angle, and I don't make one, and most settings have no inherent gender biases.

So, about 17 of 120 campaigns.

Oh, and the players who made romance an issue? In pendragon, it's the rules... But in all the other cases, it was gay males making issues of it.