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

[Micah Sweet]

Everyone was already mentally identical to humans. It's hard not to be, when they were written by humans and played by other humans. Xenofiction is hard to do well, and most of the time, people don't really want to think about it that deeply. That's why D&D races have always been "planet of hats" races. Dwarfs are surly, alcoholic miners. Elves are either pretty nature-lovers or pretty snobs. Drow are incredibly evil, but sexy. Halflings are overeating small-town burglars. And so on.

And orcs (and other evil humanoid races) were always the mean, hateful, ugly, stupid, destructive humans who did mean, hateful, ugly, stupid, destructive things. Very few people ever really bothered to actually think about orc biology and psychology.

I read a great 3pp supplement recently that went very in-depth into dwarves, covering psychology, culture, physiology, all that jazz, with an eye towards providing realistic explanations why the standard dwarf is the standard dwarf. Led to some very interesting conclusions.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Where do we draw the line between squires, henchmen and hirelings? My experience with all of the above is that players love naming and describing them, that it's one of the places where even players who aren't normally keen to assert fiction come alive a bit.

I don't know that that impacts your point re: "people as reward", but it's strange to me to see that asserted, for me. That's never been my experience (nor has my experience been that they're assumed to be male/genderless - but equally in 35 years I've never seen anyone "mess" with a squire/henchmen/hireling in a sexual way or whatever, and I know you've seen a lot more of that kind of thing).

My own experience is that the more of them a person has, the more bland and undifferentiated they get. Back in the days when people often grabbed henchmen for utility purposes, they might name the first one but they wouldn't bother with the tenth.

On the other hand the fantasy Briton game I ran a few years ago had a situation where the PCs enslaved some people who'd fought them, and used them for various (non-sexual) purposes, and those NPCs came in with names and personalities and people clearly payed attention to those.

So I think it can go both ways; servants as characters or servants as "equipment".

 

[FrozenNorth]

I don’t agree. That sort of emotionless logic is not human. Perhaps one could imagine some sort of super exceptional humans that would behave that way, but it’s still different when it is a common feature of the entire species.

In my experience, Vulcans very often claimed to be acting based on emotionless logic, but their actions tended to demonstrate that this was a rationalisation at best.

I would further point out that claiming one’s actions are driven by logic as a rationalisation is very common behaviour among internet posters, i.e. humans.

“Facts don’t care about your feelings!”

 

[Steampunkette]

If characters weren't balanced by level, you'd have a point. But an elf who adventures with his human friends is too powerful to adventure with his children. Campaigns are still measured in human generations, not elven ones.

Someone above (sorry, can't remember who) the notion of an elf born on Earth in the Middle Ages could live to the millennium. Think of all the things that elf would have seen. The plague, the Renaissance, the Age of Exploration, the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, the World Wars, the Space race, and the digital age. The idea of one person seeing all the history first hand is mind boggling. Even a young elf has a human lifetime worth of time to master all manner of skills and learning. The idea that a 120 year old elf and a 20 year old human have the same levels, skills and abilities should be farcical! What, did the elf sleep though class for 90 years?!?

So while an elf may live 700 years, the game does nothing with that because it would fundamentally change the nature of the world in ways that would be unplayable.

Anyway, getting off topic. Just saying the idea that any species can be more than a funny costume is aspirational, but not practical.

It was meeeeeeeee!

 

[Bedrockgames]

If characters weren't balanced by level, you'd have a point. But an elf who adventures with his human friends is too powerful to adventure with his children. Campaigns are still measured in human generations, not elven ones.

This is a campaign style issue though. Some groups have mixed level parties (this has been the standard in most of my D&D campaigns). Some like more even level parties, but the solution here is simple: start the other players at a higher to match the elf character, or understand that the other characters are going to have to catch up to the elf so at the start of the campaign the elf character is likely playing a different role than standard party members

Someone above (sorry, can't remember who) the notion of an elf born on Earth in the Middle Ages could live to the millennium. Think of all the things that elf would have seen. The plague, the Renaissance, the Age of Exploration, the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, the World Wars, the Space race, and the digital age. The idea of one person seeing all the history first hand is mind boggling.

I find this exciting and interesting to think about in a setting. It isn't a problem, it is a feature of playing elves as long lived beings.

Even a young elf has a human lifetime worth of time to master all manner of skills and learning. The idea that a 120 year old elf and a 20 year old human have the same levels, skills and abilities should be farcical! What, did the elf sleep though class for 90 years?!?

This is a gaming conceit. There are setting explanations but it is to justify the game mechanic. I am fine with this as it is a thorny problem. But I am also open to other approaches

So while an elf may live 700 years, the game does nothing with that because it would fundamentally change the nature of the world in ways that would be unplayable.

Yes much of this is relegated to roleplaying (which is fine, I think RP is the most important part of it). But elves do have other abilities and bonuses humans don't. Again, this is a thorny area because it presents balance issues. I'd be fine with elves starting out with more ablates personally and balancing it out some other way. But people like a degree of parity so I understand why they they hand wave. Again it isn't a perfect simulation. There are areas of the game where it will be more or less challenging but it still works for me.

Anyway, getting off topic. Just saying the idea that any species can be more than a funny costume is aspirational, but not practical.

Again I don't think you make much headway when you tell people they arent' experiencing the game they have experienced. Species/Races can definitely be more than just humans in funny costumes, especially if you are giving them attribute bonuses and penalties, actual longer life spans, abilities like resistance to Sleep and Charm, infra vision, etc

 

[payn]

These are the only two I can think of, really!

Monkey Bone is great!

 

[FrozenNorth]

“Incel gets a jerkass genie” and “horny animator’s bizarre fever dream” sure were movies he was in

True, but at least in Bedazzled, he didn’t get the girl and his arc was understanding that being “nice” didn’t entitle him to the affections of anyone in particular. I also liked the film’s conception of the Devil more than in “Oh, God!” and the original “Bedazzled” as it makes clear that the Devil plays a necessary and complementary role to God, not an antagonistic role.

Not perfect, but baby steps for the 2000s.

 

[Charlaquin]

True, but at least in Bedazzled, he didn’t get the girl and his arc was understanding that being “nice” didn’t entitle him to the affections of anyone in particular. I also liked the film’s conception of the Devil more than in “Oh, God!” and the original “Bedazzled” as it makes clear that the Devil plays a necessary and complementary role to God, not an antagonistic role.

Not perfect, but baby steps for the 2000s.

It helped that Frazier’s character was always the butt of the joke. But, having been a sexually frustrated “boy” at the time, I can say the message definitely didn’t come across that way to me. It was only in retrospect that I recognized he was the one in the wrong. Which is always a risk with flawed protagonists. I think the lesson here though is not “don’t tell stories with flawed protagonists,” it’s “teach young, impressionable people how to think critically about the media they consume.”

 

[Bedrockgames]

It helped that Frazier’s character was always the butt of the joke. But, having been a sexually frustrated “boy” at the time, I can say the message definitely didn’t come across that way to me. It was only in retrospect that I recognized he was the one in the wrong. Which is always a risk with flawed protagonists. I think the lesson here though is not “don’t tell stories with flawed protagonists,” it’s “teach young, impressionable people how to think critically about the media they consume.”

I just saw it as a goofy comedy and not anything to aspire to. And certainly not a place to get theological lessons or moral lessons lol

 

[Thomas Shey]

Vulcans have entirely human patterns of thinking though. I mean, the text claims they don’t, but you never really see that reflected in their actions. Because as it turns out, most writers are human, so they end up writing characters that behave like humans. Maybe with some restrictions or exaggerations, but those still inevitably fall within the range of human behavior and expression.

As depicted, Vulcans have some physiological differences that are usually glossed over, minor telepathic capabilities that they use with care, and a cultural tendency toward suppressed emotions based on the fact they're actually overemotional and that's historically caused a large number of problems they'd like to avoid. The net effect is the latter is the only element that gets any airplay (the depiction has actually been that if you get away from the latter two elements they don't think that differently from humans, its just both of those have some profound social impact).