D&D General “‘Scantily Clad and Well Proportioned’: Sexism and Gender Stereotyping in the Gaming Worlds of TSR and Dungeons & Dragons.”

[FitzTheRuke]

I mean for those of you we might call psychologically healthy.

Do we have any of those here on ENWorld?

EDIT: Ninja'd real fast by @Steampunkette - I should have known that the joke would have been made!

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Though 4e desperately tried to make it clear D&D is a team sport and got solidly roundhouse-kicked in the chicklets for it.

Right? That's why I think 3.5E is way more like that. 3.5E is fine with super-wizard soloing stuff whilst the party watched and cheered. 4E wants you to carefully murder the dracolich by using forced movement and reactions from the whole party to make it take a bazillion damage in one round whilst it's stunlocked.

I was genuinely shocked they had the gall to write the kind of stuff they did in Volo and the 'in universe documents' gimmick served to make me genuinely hate the character.

Absolutely!!!! I cannot agree enough. Not only did I feel like it bollocks to defend it as "in-universe", but it made me really want to murder Volo!

 

[abirdcall]

We absolutely can but... I think there's a real difference between something being presented as just "an option", which you can pick, from the menu, and you essentially having to ask the chef to whip up something special and specific, which you have to know is possible, and describe, and so on.

The former is possible even if you're shy, inconfident, new to RPGs, and so on. And people who are attracted to this kind of "torn between two worlds/two sets of expectations" theme are often going to be a little inconfident themselves.

The latter generally requires you to know who you are and what you want and to be pretty confident that this is "a thing" in that universe even if it's never described.

So I think this is an actual, real loss. Not half-orcs as much as half-elves, because the former had a lot of dodgy baggage, but...

I think it could have been a background.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Yeah, I can see that.

It's just tough. The allegory, as it is under 'species', fits to kids of parents of mixed cultures and saying someone is 'half-black' is not okay or accurate even though there are very real consequences and stigma to it.

My oldest son is mixed race. The idea that he's half anything is insulting, tbh. Regardless of anything else, the terminology is problematic. I imagine someone who is mixed race might* be really turned off to read a book with "half" being part of the description of multi-racial humanoids

*I say might, because I know mixed race people who weren't bothered, and those who were. Individuals being individual and all.

 

[billd91]

I love playing Half-Elves and Half-Orcs and occasionally Half-Goblins because it lets me play around in a space of emotional distance and partial social isolation that really encapsulates a specific aspect of my life as a trans woman.

<snip>

Kind of sucks they stole that from me. But also I get it. Still gonna play half-orcs and half-elves any time I get the opportunity to do so though!

It's an interesting thought - with the downplaying of species-based stigmas and enemy-of-civilization/misanthropic humanoid roles comes the removal of a magnet species for players who feel like, are simpatico with, or want to play outcasts in some way to reflect how they feel in broader society.

Of course, this might just put this in the territory of 1) individual campaign flavor curation, or 2) background options and backstories - where maybe it should be?

 

[Mannahnin]

How does this post relate to the portrayal of women in ttrpgs? Seems like someone is venting?

It's a tangent from the discussion of sexual assault and abuse being featured in some people's game sessions back in the day, illustrating a place where it was canonically part of or strongly hinted at in the published game.

I just don't really believe it, because playing from '89 onwards, and talking to players a few years older than me a lot in the '90s, it seemed clear that even back then, a huge number of groups were basically just about like, four ultra-badasses being ultra-badass. And people had some insulting names for that (including me), but like, I don't think "character power fantasy" is at all new. I think in 1E and 2E it was more conveyed by either playing a Wizard and getting past like level 7, or just the DM giving you tons of magic items and/or letting you do very dubious stat generation or both, whereas later on it's been more about optimizing your character and the like. BECMI including Immortals for a reason, too. Don't get much more individual power fantasy than that!

Yeap, Im not suggesting the character power fantasy wasnt there, but nobody can deny that PCs have become more hardy, more important, more resilient to insta-death effects and mis-adventure. The focus has been more and more significant since 3E in my experience.

There's a general shift in the art direction in TSR products from the 70s at least into the 80s, although of course with outliers, like Jim Holloway continuing his trend of depicting characters in comedic trouble.

Older D&D art tends to depict more adventurers in groups, and in situations where they're about to be ambushed or killed, or in the process of getting their butts kicked or otherwise in scary situations from monsters or traps where they DO NOT appear to be in control. Later D&D art tends to have more pieces with individual characters, especially facing the viewer as opposed to facing some danger, and in both individual features and group scenes the art tends to depict the characters as more powerful and in-control.

It's not universal by any means, but it's observable and noticeable. Although I would tend to put the fulcrum point somewhere around the Hickman Revolution of the mid 80s rather than at 3rd ed, though some grognards do point to the 3E PH, with all its depictions of individual iconic characters facing the reader. Which would explain why you didn't notice it, since the transition had mostly happened already by '89.

 

[Remathilis]

It always seemed so unnecessary to me. Same assumption was usually not made with half-elves. (I know of the original backstory of Tanis, but that was an exception.) In my current setting different species cannot crossbreed, but they certainly often manage to coexist more or less peacefully and interspecies romances do happen.

Half-Elves were the idea of the better elven race breeding down with humans to create inferior elves. Which is why elves scorn them (they are haughty and detached, so an inferior elf who will die before a real elf reaches maturity is not worth considering) and humans react with awe and fear (they are others, have alien brains and supernatural powers, they not like us).

The half-elf story is one of being viewed as inferior by one parent, superior by the other, and disliked by not hated by both. The biggest difference is that elves are chaotic GOOD, therefore most half-elves were the result of consensual trysts rather than assault. Again, the classic version is that the half-elf is raised with the human parent (often the mother) while elf dad is not around much or at all. It's the narrative of the noble lord and the peasant girl who bore him a bastard child,, but with pointy ears.

Did all half-elves have that origin? No, of course not. Happily married elves and humans living in communities where such unions are blessed became more common, as did the idea of half-elves as true breeding species. It was much more successful than half-orcs because elves were a good-aligned PC race and orcs and evil monster type. It was much easier to envision humans and elves living in peace than humans and orcs. Still, the "drama" of the race usually hinged on being between two worlds rather than part of one blended one. I wager more half-elves had one or more elements mentioned above than not.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

We'll find out when the 2024 Monster Manual hits and Orcs are described in it as rapacious monsters, again.

One of my current games has a player playing an Orc, and yet I'm running an old adventure, and the orcs in it are villains. The players keep making the joke (they mean it ironically, but it's still a bit questionable, I think) that he's "one of the good ones".

At least we've been calling out the racism inherent in the idea that all orcs are bad.

Now, in my head-cannon (which will bear-out in the story) the orc villains are not just "orcs" - they're "orc raiders" (which is probably what we'll get in the upcoming MM) - Orcs that are following in the "old ways" or the "old gods" but also that have been manipulated by "new leadership" - that is specifically lying to them about their motivations. Their new "warchief" is actually a foreign agent who is working to cause trouble between the orc clans and the "human" settlement and achieve other goals, none of which have anything to do with leading the orcs to a better position for them in their society.

 

[Steampunkette]

It's an interesting thought - with the downplaying of species-based stigmas and enemy-of-civilization/misanthropic humanoid roles comes the removal of a magnet species for players who feel like, are simpatico with, or want to play outcasts in some way to reflect how they feel in broader society.

Of course, this might just put this in the territory of 1) individual campaign flavor curation, or 2) background options and backstories - where maybe it should be?

Background stuff definitely works... but you still need some kind of framing device to build the allegory.

"Raised in a Different Culture" doesn't quite work 'cause people who are adopted into various cultures kind of have that, but also depending on when you were adopted it's just "Your Culture", because it's the only one you've known.

You could just kinda go with "Outcast" or something... but that has a -whole- other set of baggage tied to it which doesn't fit the "Trapped between two worlds" vibe I'd be looking for in a character.

I dunno. It's hard.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

It's an interesting thought - with the downplaying of species-based stigmas and enemy-of-civilization/misanthropic humanoid roles comes the removal of a magnet species for players who feel like, are simpatico with, or want to play outcasts in some way to reflect how they feel in broader society.

Of course, this might just put this in the territory of 1) individual campaign flavor curation, or 2) background options and backstories - where maybe it should be?

That's a really good question because a lot of people (including me some of the time) absolutely feel attached to more outsider-y characters, and when all characters are being depicted as Jolly Insiders with Happy Families and Healthy Friendships, I see how that's cool, but it's also kind of... narrow. I think background options might be good but 5E made them a major locus of character power, unfortunately.