D&D 5E After 2 years the 5E PHB remains one of the best selling books on Amazon

[ad_hoc]

This twitter thread explains why the gender paragraph matters, and why representation matter, and why purposeful inclusion matters.

Its rough, because it's a response to the news that a trans kid killed himself after the nurses caring for him refused to stop referring to him as a girl, while he was on suicide watch...because being a teenager sucks enough, and being a trans teen sucks a lot more. The language isn't safe for work, fair warning.

https://twitter.com/magsvisaggs/status/783864318253273088

Here is a Twitter post that is on the nose:

https://twitter.com/BrailSays/status/782792220030054400

 

[Jester David]

Nope, not wrong. Wrong to expect others to change for them though.

No it's not.
We do it all the damn time. ALL THE DAMN TIME.

We wear pants. We don't pass loudly gas in public. We don't pick our nose and wipe it on a wall. We don't visibly ogle members of the opposite sex, push to the front of lines, take things without paying because we want them, or a billion, billion other small social courtesies or social actions each day. All done to keep society going, because we're civilized human beings and not chimps.
Yeah, it sucks holding in that awkward fart. It can even hurt. But you act like a grown up and wait until you hit the washroom, or at least pick an empty place. You go off to the corner feigning a sneeze, let fly, and hope the smell doesn't carry.

What's acceptable changes all the time. Standards change. We no longer refer to black people as "coloured" or people with learning disabilities as "retards" or refer to female coworker and "chick" or "doll".


You either participate in the society and change with the times, or the world moves on and you become that cranky old racist grandpa.

Don't like the way your FLGS treats you or others? Start your own store, or find and support one that one that acts in a manner you approve of.

That's completely ridiculous. If you go into a McDonalds and don't like how the staff treats you, you talk to the manager. If the manager does nothing, you don't start your own McDonalds, you just don't go there. If there's no other fast food place in town, then you just don't eat fast food...

Which is what's happened so far: they don't go into stores or participate in the hobby.

Which is kinda the point. There's this wide audience of people who are not being served by the hobby as it is, who are not involved but could be. People who would enjoy gaming. We can either make changes to out behavior to welcome them and grow the hobby... or not and let the hobby slowly shrink and die.

To WotC it's a no-brainer: double their audience and potential sales. That's not even a debate.

And ideally businesses should act like ing businesses. The owner should look at female or LGBTQ clients and say "hey, their money is just as good, I should make my store a safe place and this make more money." However, most gaming stores are not run like good businesses. Because the owners are gamers first and business owners second. They're doing it because it's something they love and a dream, not necessarily because they're good at it and have a MBA.
Plus, it's a lot of times this stuff isn't seen. White, cis, male game store owners might not notice the offensive behavior or little details that can game a store feel unsafe. Which is why we talk about this: so game stores know and can make a decision: make changes (and potentially more money) or not. You give them the knowledge to make the choice.

To the fans it's more of a debate as it requires rethinking our behavior. But it comes down to a question: what do we value more? The hobby we love or being able to act how we've acted until now?

For me it's not even a question. I like D&D more.
I've changed my behavior before. Numerous times. What was acceptable at age 4 totally didn't fly when I went to grade school. And how I acted in jr. high was borderline sociopathic. And if I continued to act like I did during college... I'd be fired and facing a divorce.

The only time you stop changing, learning, and growing is when you die.

 

[jasper]

...

I have no idea if any of these folks spoke directly to the various topics we've been discussing, but I suppose it's noteworthy to mention RPGPundit's "Arrows of Indra" game was (as far as I know) the first RPG game cover to feature a transgendered person on the cover.

I just look at the cover. I do not see it.

 

[aramis erak]

I guess I watching the wrong you tubes. I seen GenXers and Baby Boomers.

FTF, I'm seeing everything from 13-70+... tho' the retiree crowd are few.

Since I don't watch most gaming podcasts, i can't say what I'm seeing on there, but the OSR casts I'm seeing all make me feel old, and I'm a couple years from completion of the 5th decade.

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

So since we are going with the SJ type themes is there any evidence that adding in a paragraph in the PH did increase sales or any of that? Not saying it did or didn't but has WOTC put out any data stating that minorities or others have started buying more books?

 

[Mistwell]

So since we are going with the SJ type themes is there any evidence that adding in a paragraph in the PH did increase sales or any of that? Not saying it did or didn't but has WOTC put out any data stating that minorities or others have started buying more books?

I think it got mention in some articles written by people who likely would not have had the game on their radar but-for it popping up somewhere as including something about those issues. And therefore it probably got some more exposure. I don't think it's in the top ten reasons it's selling well, but that doesn't make it meaningless.

 

[Mistwell]

I just look at the cover. I do not see it.

The magic user in the image is transgendered and mentioned in the book. It's slightly more complicated than that as it's borrowing from ancient India mythology and third gendered mythology there, but yeah the magic user ("siddhi").

 

[Bagpuss]

What matters is not forcing someone to pick a gender, especially from a binary perspective, and have their stats change based on their choice.

Besides the sex you chose would determine any physical stat changes not the gender.

D&D's scale isn't really refined enough to warrant a stat difference IMHO, at least not for humans.

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

I think it got mention in some articles written by people who likely would not have had the game on their radar but-for it popping up somewhere as including something about those issues. And therefore it probably got some more exposure. I don't think it's in the top ten reasons it's selling well, but that doesn't make it meaningless.

That's cool, and I'm sure it had some effect to be sure. And more people playing D&D is a good thing.

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

Besides the sex you chose would determine any physical stat changes not the gender.

D&D's scale isn't really refined enough to warrant a stat difference IMHO, at least not for humans.

Just no point for it really in a game like this.