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

[Crimson Longinus]

It's usually the opposite because the other designs get rejected in testing, not just by male-identifying players, but also by female-identifying ones. You can also see this in the choices of races that female-identifying players play - they're usually ones which are conventionally attractive - there's definitely no preference for unconventional looks.

A good example of rejected in testing is WoW in fact - in the beta, the female trolls were hideous and stooped like the male trolls, and Blizzard's frat-nerd culture bros thought this was cool/funny "lol look at those saggy boobs" etc. - but players, of both genders, really did not like it, so they changed it.

Though personally I was not fine with all the male options looking hideous either. I could not play a male character in WoW until they added Blood Elves, and I’ve switched to Final Fantasy XIV since.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

One of the best for it was Wildstar, which was made by a bunch of Ex-Blizzard Devs who thought WoW was becoming too casual. They made their gendered races pretty interesting in their variety without it being "Monster and Human girl". Though the Mechari and Granok definitely both did the "Exaggerated Secondary Sex Characteristics" thing.

(I also particularly like that the girl aurins are taller than the boy aurins! It's a cute detail)

WildStar could have had it all if it wasn't for the insane belief that WoW was "not hardcore enough", or more specifically, "WoW should be more like it was in TBC" (particularly insane in 2014!). They literally set it up so that, in order to raid with a guild, you had to spend about 2-3 months grinding the endgame hardcore. This was demented because they didn't factor in that players often drop out due to RL issues, new games coming out, going back to other games, and so on, so they created an essentially nearly-impenetrable wall by mirroring and then wildly exaggerating TBC's endgame design. This meant they had a big and solid-looking initial population, but the attrition was horrific, and people just didn't want to grind for literally months just to be "allowed" to play with their friends.

Kind of the opposite to GW2, which set things up so the endgame was very easy to enter and very casual, and then GW2's own playerbase decided to become the world's biggest elitist wankers, and make endgame opportunities very hard to find and the endgame increasingly exclusionary (which had got pretty bad even within two years of release). Sometimes you just can't win, I guess! At least GW2 is still with us, though I'd kill for a GW3 which returned to GW1-style gameplay.

 

[Charlaquin]

Elven lifespans cause so many worldbuilding and roleplaying problems… Personally, I stole a concept from Dragon Age to resolve this issue (though it’s also used in World of Darkness for vampires instead of elves): long periods of, essentially, hibernation. Sure, elves may exhibit negligible senescence, but they tend not to remain active for much longer than an ordinary mortal lifespan. The ennui of having seen everything, combined with the pain of seeing all their mortal friends and loved ones die, tends to drive elves to retreat into their trance after about a century or so. Then they spend several decades just meditating until enough time has passed for the world to have changed significantly since they were last in it, so they can re-enter it with fresh eyes. Sure, your elf character can be 1,000 years old or whatever, but it’s been less than 100 years since their last long sleep, so they only have a normal mortal lifespan’s worth of experiences fresh in their memory.

This is also where I get my origin for ghouls. Elves who spent too long in trance and lost their conscious sense of self, awaking nearly mindless and so malnourished they’ll eat literally anything they can sink their teeth into.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Which ultimately is "it's the way it is because that's how it's been".

I personally have grown to like that orcs are now a PHB race. It's forced me to face my own bias ("orcs are for slaying, not playing") and put them in a place where they exist not as canon fodder but as a people.

I am saying both are perfectly fine. They are fictional beings, not real. So I don't think it is an issue if people like having them more evil or baddass because that has worked in the past, or if they want to open them up to more possibilities. I don't see either approach as being superior. They are just different approaches, scratching different gaming itches. As for what the present PHB should be, I don't have an issue with orcs being effectively like other races and be whatever alignment the player wants. I just don't have a problem with the opposite approach either

 

[Steampunkette]

WildStar could have had it all if it wasn't for the insane belief that WoW was "not hardcore enough", or more specifically, "WoW should be more like it was in TBC" (particularly insane in 2014!). They literally set it up so that, in order to raid with a guild, you had to spend about 2-3 months grinding the endgame hardcore. This was demented because they didn't factor in that players often drop out due to RL issues, new games coming out, going back to other games, and so on, so they created an essentially nearly-impenetrable wall by mirroring and then wildly exaggerating TBC's endgame design. This meant they had a big and solid-looking initial population, but the attrition was horrific, and people just didn't want to grind for literally months just to be "allowed" to play with their friends.

Kind of the opposite to GW2, which set things up so the endgame was very easy to enter and very casual, and then GW2's own playerbase decided to become the world's biggest elitist wankers, and make endgame opportunities very hard to find and the endgame increasingly exclusionary (which had got pretty bad even within two years of release). Sometimes you just can't win, I guess! At least GW2 is still with us, though I'd kill for a GW3 which returned to GW1-style gameplay.

I'd kill for Wildstar to return under a new dev team who erase the overly complicated and stratified end game entry requirements.

Wildstar's style and themes were so -enchanting- to me. I played tons of alts in RP communities, there. But that wall killed it while the RP community was just trucking along having our fun, the world collapsed around us!

 

[Bedrockgames]

I think that's aspirational, but not really based in reality. People play elves as pretty humans most of the time because trying to get into the mindset of a different species is hard when you control the narrative, less so when you don't and are reacting to it. Would an elf view a human tyrant as a threat or a nuisance to be outlived? A human as a peer or a pet? What does hours mean to a person who can devote years to an endeavor? The game isn't set up to measure time in decades, and an elf is no smarter, experienced or learned than a human 100 years their junior.

They are thought experiments and the point is to engage the thought experiment as you are doing here to the best of ones ability. If it falls short for you, that is fair, but I have been in a lot of campaigns where the fun was doing things like thinking of how a long lived being would view an immediate political problem.

And campaigns can last hundreds of years long. If you haven't been in one where time has progressed like this, I can see where you are coming from. But lots of people run lengthy, multigenerational campaigns. And you can always elapse time too (you can one campaign and maybe the next one is set two hundred years later, but you are playing the same elf).

 

[Steampunkette]

This is also where I get my origin for ghouls. Elves who spent too long in trance and lost their conscious sense of self, awaking nearly mindless and so malnourished they’ll eat literally anything they can sink their teeth into.

Both this idea and your previous post are some -immaculate- world-building vibes.

I also like the idea of a hibernating Elf being a prime target for various monsters and evil forces, so they're heavily guarded by the community. But when a community fails, you get Vampires and Demon-Elves and stuff in mass numbers!

 

[Thomas Shey]

I just think that offering basically nothing is boring and bland, and will not stimulate imagination. Even if one would disagree with the default portrayal of particular species and would choose to change it for their game, at least it would offer and starting point, and introduce the idea that the species should be somehow defined and distinct. I just don't see the point of fantasy species that are just a skin and some barely meaningful rules-widget.

Frankly, I think the approach where you have a few sample nonhumans and a system for constructing new ones to suit a particular campaign is better, but its more heavy lifting than most game systems (including pretty much all in the D&D adjacent sphere) seem to want to bother with.

 

[Charlaquin]

Both this idea and your previous post are some -immaculate- world-building vibes.

I also like the idea of a hibernating Elf being a prime target for various monsters and evil forces, so they're heavily guarded by the community. But when a community fails, you get Vampires and Demon-Elves and stuff in mass numbers!

Thank you so much! My worldbuilding is not terribly original, since I mostly just steal ideas I like from other fantasy settings, but I like to think I have good taste in what elements I pick.

RE: slumbering elves being guarded by the community, yes! That was my thinking as to how slumbering elves can survive for decades or centuries this way. Both being guarded, and also having their basic needs seen to. I imagine some sort of nutritious liquid being dribbled into the near-comatose mouths of sleepers on a daily basis to keep them from starving. It’s the failure to maintain this upkeep that usually leads to ghouls.

 

[Aldarc]

I'd kill for Wildstar to return under a new dev team who erase the overly complicated and stratified end game entry requirements.

Wildstar's style and themes were so -enchanting- to me. I played tons of alts in RP communities, there. But that wall killed it while the RP community was just trucking along having our fun, the world collapsed around us!

I only got into the game late in its life cycle when it switched to Free-to-Play, but I always had an interest in the game, especially as someone who loves science fantasy.