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

[Steampunkette]

What I have in mind is more like single woman in an ensemble who has to be relegated to "the Chick," which often means putting a lot of tropes onto a single character. But creating a more diverse cast also means that there is not just "the Chick" who has to be all things "feminine" to the audience. Instead, there get to be differences between female characters and different tropes that permit a greater diversity of characterizations. Katara in ATLA, for example, was pretty much "the Chick" in Season 1. But the introduction of many more female characters in Season 2 - Toph, Azula, Mai, Ty Lee, etc. - meant not only that we got to see different types of female characters, but also that Katara could stop being relegated to just "the Chick" in the line-up.

Sure. It can also help in the Artwork section where the VAST majority of depictions of female characters are as various male sexual fantasies. (Though it would probably require either flooding the market with artwork or stopping sexy artwork from being produced since you're not making up ground for 50-100 years if sexy artwork keeps getting produced alongside the non-sexy artwork)

But that doesn't address the -rest- of the problems involved in women's representation within the environment.

If there's more female characters in the piece and most of the "People as Reward" are still female characters then the expectation is that, regardless of the reality, those other female characters may -also- be "People as Reward" (I.E. Save the Day, Marry the Princess/Farmer's Daughter/Nun/Whatever trope means adding more Princesses just means more potential wives)

If sexual harassment happens between the guards and female members of the party because the culture of the evil city is one which allows or even encourages sexual harassment of female characters, more characters get sexually harassed, not less.

If Orcs do raids on human settlements and kidnap all the pretty women to assault them and breed half-orcs, adding more pretty women to the settlement doesn't stop the raiding and assaults. And the threat of rape as motivation of heroics remains intact.

If swatting the backside of buxom barmaids remains the standard and calling out "Are there any girls there? If there are girls there I wanna dooo theeeeem!" while looking for Mountain Dew is accepted then no amount of additional female characters in the setting will reduce the negative impact of that situation.

Additional representation helps, but you've also got to address the other socially reinforced aspects of sexism within the narrative to make the space welcoming for women.

(And also do this for issues of Race on which I've got no leg to stand, LGBTQIA+ inclusion, and disability access as well)

 

[Staffan]

Will there be setting books?

They have announced setting books for FR. It remains to be seen whether they do them for more settings, and whether those potential books will be remakes of the 2014 setting books or if they'll tread new ground.

 

[Frozen_Heart]

This covers two of my big problems with most "but make them alien" requests.

The vast majority of fantasy races see more or less the same spectrum of light that humans do, and while low-light vision is helpful, it only works out to about 60', so it's not exactly They feel comfortable in the same range of temperatures, they eat more or less the same foods, they have more or less equivalent palates (possibly being slightly more or slightly less sensitive, but what one finds spicy, most will also recognize as spicy), they spend loosely equivalent amounts of time sleeping. They're bilaterally-symmetrical, bipedal, plantigrade, mammalian, viviparous, capable of sweating, have five digits per hand/foot, etc., etc.

The one thing that actually makes some races genuinely pretty alien compared to humans is never actually given meaningful attention in D&D, and that difference is lifespan. Lifespan differences should make dwarves and elves very different from orcs, humans, dragonborn, etc. Instead....it's basically written off as "yeah they just take life at a slower pace but are otherwise the same."

But because those two races have some of the longest history in D&D, we're never actually going to get truly alien elves and dwarves. This makes complaints that anything new (dragonborn are the commonly-cited example) is reducing D&D to "rubber forehead aliens" deeply frustrating, because it already was! It's just that the two most egregious rubber forehead aliens get grandfathered in, but anything with the temerity to not be included in Tolkien's work must jump through a dozen hoops just to get rejected anyway for not being alien enough.

Real, outright xenofiction levels of portrayal would not an interesting RPG make.

My favorite depiction of sapient species with vastly different ways of thinking and interacting with the world is a piece of work called Serina.

It has interesting twists like some sapients only being able to learn for their first year of life, or not being able to exist with others of their own species. Some are unable to use tools due to the lack of anything to manipulate with. They're all vastly different sizes, and all look completely different from each other.

And yet despite these differences so vast that it's literally like comparing a guppy to a canary, these species are able to coexist and build a civilisation together.

 

[TiQuinn]

I'm glad we've moved past always evil orcs, but I'm worried that it's swung the other way. Everyone is mentally identical to humans, rather than having species which think and act in an entirely different way.

Even in suggesting that other sapients should think differently to humans has been equated to racism, due to how irl racists like to claim that other ethnic groups don't think in the same way.

Thinking differently is kind of tricky because at the end of the day, the player is human and tends to react as a human would - not an elf or a dwarf. I can’t really recall any time someone did not revert back to basically just having their elf become a human with pointy ears or a dwarf become a short stocky human with a beard. And as far as fantasy racism goes, at least for a few editions, the game was still perpetrating the elves hates dwarves and dwarves hate elves trope despite these being different races.

 

[AnotherGuy]

If there's more female characters in the piece and most of the "People as Reward" are still female characters then the expectation is that, regardless of the reality, those other female characters may -also- be "People as Reward" (I.E. Save the Day, Marry the Princess/Farmer's Daughter/Nun/Whatever trope means adding more Princesses just means more potential wives)

I'd argue People as Reward is predominantly male rather than female. Think henchmen and hirelings, squires, captors turned henchmen ...etc
I will give you save and marry, but honestly how many characters marry?

If sexual harassment happens between the guards and female members of the party because the culture of the evil city is one which allows or even encourages sexual harassment of female characters, more characters get sexually harassed, not less.

If Orcs do raids on human settlements and kidnap all the pretty women to assault them and breed half-orcs, adding more pretty women to the settlement doesn't stop the raiding and assaults. And the threat of rape as motivation of heroics remains intact.

If swatting the backside of buxom barmaids remains the standard and calling out "Are there any girls there? If there are girls there I wanna dooo theeeeem!" while looking for Mountain Dew is accepted then no amount of additional female characters in the setting will reduce the negative impact of that situation.

Additional representation helps, but you've also got to address the other socially reinforced aspects of sexism within the narrative to make the space welcoming for women.

If the numbers of current female roleplayers as a % of the total playerbase are to be believed (being 40% as I've seen some mention), then I'd say the hobby is doing pretty well in making it a space for welcoming women.

EDIT: I'm not sure which DMs are exploring the sexual assault with mass rapes and kidnappings you imply to above but my female player was happy to have her henchman massage her character's feet during long rests. I think women players, just like male players can appreciate the buxom barmaid and handsome young male as a comedic trope.

EDIT: And let me not even get started on our super witty gay player in our group.

 

[Aldarc]

Sure. It can also help in the Artwork section where the VAST majority of depictions of female characters are as various male sexual fantasies. (Though it would probably require either flooding the market with artwork or stopping sexy artwork from being produced since you're not making up ground for 50-100 years if sexy artwork keeps getting produced alongside the non-sexy artwork)

But that doesn't address the -rest- of the problems involved in women's representation within the environment.

If there's more female characters in the piece and most of the "People as Reward" are still female characters then the expectation is that, regardless of the reality, those other female characters may -also- be "People as Reward" (I.E. Save the Day, Marry the Princess/Farmer's Daughter/Nun/Whatever trope means adding more Princesses just means more potential wives)

If sexual harassment happens between the guards and female members of the party because the culture of the evil city is one which allows or even encourages sexual harassment of female characters, more characters get sexually harassed, not less.

If Orcs do raids on human settlements and kidnap all the pretty women to assault them and breed half-orcs, adding more pretty women to the settlement doesn't stop the raiding and assaults. And the threat of rape as motivation of heroics remains intact.

If swatting the backside of buxom barmaids remains the standard and calling out "Are there any girls there? If there are girls there I wanna dooo theeeeem!" while looking for Mountain Dew is accepted then no amount of additional female characters in the setting will reduce the negative impact of that situation.

Additional representation helps, but you've also got to address the other socially reinforced aspects of sexism within the narrative to make the space welcoming for women.

(And also do this for issues of Race on which I've got no leg to stand, LGBTQIA+ inclusion, and disability access as well)

I'll be honest. It feels a bit like you are unnecessarily quibbling with a fellow queer just to score more internet points. It's not really doing you any favors or somehow making me agree more with you. If anything, it's rubbing me the wrong way. You are of course welcome to respond, but as I am not interested in getting dragged into a pointless argument over this matter or ruining an otherwise favorable opinion of you, I will not be engaging with you on this further.

 

[Remathilis]

Yes because elves and orcs served polar opposite uses in fantasy fiction.

Orcs were there to explore the distilled worst aspects of humanity, what man would be like without the laws and rules of civilization to keep his base instincts in check. So clearly the half-orcs were going to be the result of rape during warfare.

Elves were immortal (or at least very long living) fae creatures of romance, arts, and a fictional tool to represent what humanity could aspire to, but also warning about becoming too detached, logical and aloof (see also Vuclans "space elves"). So half-elves were going to be children of tragic love between immortal elf and human.

Neither race are meant to cover the range of human emotion or experience.

I can't understand why people are so confused by this.

The issue though is that the analogy breaks down because elves are a PC race.

If D&D elves are supposed to be aspirational, they shouldn't be a playable race. If they embody the good and noble rather than the full experience of human emotion, then they are alien and unplayable. it's already hard enough to get into the mindset of a species that lives a century before becoming an adult, let alone one who spends decades studying things like art or magic. They should be like celestials, pure and good with occasionally notable stories of those that fell to darkness.

But D&D has always treated them as pointy eared humans. With the full spectrum of alignment, motivation and emotion. Heck, two of the three iconic elf types are the "noble savage" elf and the "corrupted decadent" elf. They don't represent the Tolkien idea of humanity near perfected, they have the same range of emotions and experiences as humanity.

So why shouldn't orcs?

 

[Remathilis]

If swatting the backside of buxom barmaids remains the standard and calling out "Are there any girls there? If there are girls there I wanna dooo theeeeem!" while looking for Mountain Dew is accepted then no amount of additional female characters in the setting will reduce the negative impact of that situation.

Can I just butt in and say I love that the Dead Alewives still get referenced? Did you ever hear the second one (it was far less popular)? It's got relevance to this conversation about how women were welcomed in the community.

Plus, you will never sing Fly By Night correctly again.

 

[Steampunkette]

I'd argue People as Reward is predominantly male rather than female. Think henchmen and hirelings, squires, captors turned henchmen ...etc
I will give you save and marry, but honestly how many characters marry?

Squires I'll give you. Henchmen and Hirelings are almost never characters within the story. They just kind of exist in the background as a presumed male but ultimately genderless workforce that, if we're honest, barely gets mentioned at all in most games outside of "They're back at camp" or something similar.

However there's no expectation that you're going to bone down with your Squire -or- your Henchmen, so it's not really the same expectation at -all- with the People as Reward structure.

Whereas with wife/concubine/farmer's daughter/etc that expectation is present. So they're not exactly comparable.

If the numbers of female roleplayers are to be believed (being 40% as I've seen some mention), then I'd say the hobby is doing pretty well in making it a space for welcoming women.

That's a lot of couching for less than half when half the population (give or take) is women. Though it is, certainly, doing better than it was in the 70s and early 80s. It's a process that people are working toward. But it's also clearly not done, yet.

I'll be honest. It feels a bit like you are unnecessarily quibbling with a fellow queer just to score more internet points. It's not really doing you any favors or somehow making me agree more with you. If anything, it's rubbing me the wrong way. You are of course welcome to respond, but as I am not interested in getting dragged into a pointless argument over this matter or ruining an otherwise favorable opinion of you, I will not be engaging with you on this further.

I apologize for coming across as quibbling to 'score internet points'. That's not my intent.

My intent is to maintain that there is, and has been, an environment that tends to be hostile for women in the gaming space from various vectors for which there is no single solution. That it's a complex problem with different aspects to be addressed.

 

[AnotherGuy]

But D&D has always treated them as pointy eared humans. With the full spectrum of alignment, motivation and emotion. Heck, two of the three iconic elf types are the "noble savage" elf and the "corrupted decadent" elf. They don't represent the Tolkien idea of humanity near perfected, they have the same range of emotions and experiences as humanity.

In The Elves of Alheim they are described as taking their time to complete tasks as they see no reason to hurry because of their longevity. Dwarves view them seekers of ephemeral pleasures. They are said to seek out merriment and fun in all things and have little empathy for the other races. It is quite a different take to your Tolkienesque and other established D&D settings.