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

[Charlaquin]

Adults aren't the much less impressionable. Look at the 'joker' subculture, or all the people that think a movie literally called American Psycho is a handbook on how to be cool, look at how podcasts and tiktoks convince people of the absolutely dumbest things.

Well, yes, but those folks are past the point that they’re going to learn the critical analysis skills to avoid these pitfalls. The precious window of neuroplasticity has long since closed on them, and we mostly just have to learn to live in a world we have to share with them.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Hence why I said that the takeaway is not “don’t tell stories with flawed protagonists” but “teach young impressionable people how to think critically about the media they consume.”

I basically agree with this

 

[TiQuinn]

Well, yes, but those folks are past the point that they’re going to learn the critical analysis skills to avoid these pitfalls. The precious window of neuroplasticity has long since closed on them, and we mostly just have to learn to live in a world we have to share with them.

Ooof, can't agree with that. I'm seeing this cut across a lot of age ranges.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Well, yes, but those folks are past the point that they’re going to learn the critical analysis skills to avoid these pitfalls. The precious window of neuroplasticity has long since closed on them, and we mostly just have to learn to live in a world we have to share with them.

I dunno, I think while neuroplasticity is definitely a thing, people can still be taught after the point. I sure was.

But I'm right there with you on teaching media literacy. It's... terrifying seeing how people approach media these days.

Like D&D for example...

 

[Bedrockgames]

Yeah, there's a lot of movies and books like this from really obvious ones like "Fight Club" to stuff that can fly under the radar like "Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World". And often, the main character is meant to be satirical or for the audience to identify with them but still realize how broken they are, and the latter falls completely flat.

I think Fight Club came out in an unfortunate year for what it was trying to achieve. I remember seeing it in the 90s, and the intent seemed pretty clear to me. But post 9/11 especially as you had things like MMA culture becoming big (which I was myself part of), I saw a lot more people taking the film literally. If you read the book it is obvious the author was also pretty familiar with that culture himself (he says something about GNC style vitamins only a person who has taken them would understand for example). So that probably muddied the waters too if people had read the book

Mafia movies take the cake here.

These are near and dear to my heart. I think a lot of people miss the fact that many of them are black comedies

 

[Charlaquin]

I dunno, I think while neuroplasticity is definitely a thing, people can still be taught after the point. I sure was.

They certainly can be, but it’s an uphill battle. And really, the problem has less to do with neuroplasticity and more to do with adults being much less willing to have their worldviews challenged. Yes, adults absolutely can learn to develop better critical thinking skills. But they have to want to do so, and the vast majority don’t.

 

[Remathilis]

Hence why I said that the takeaway is not “don’t tell stories with flawed protagonists” but “teach young impressionable people how to think critically about the media they consume.”

So much easier said than done, especially in a world where entertainment is dumbed down to the lowest common denominator and people unironically say "I just want to check my brain and enjoy it" when consuming media. We don't give tools for media literacy that are needed for critical thought, and that it's not necessary when all you want is to turn on Netflix and veg to whatever is on the screen.

 

[abirdcall]

Oh, I meant "Different from Humans" not "Different from other Settings", specifically.

But yeah. I love the idea of dwarves being -constantly- overstimulated by human environments and understimulated by the foods so they prefer the foods they're used to from home and oh crap I just accidentally made dwarves into autistic caricatures.

... damn it.

Well. Guess I need to try again on Dwarves. Though I still like the food-poisons thing!

2) Dwarves: Curious. Not just about the sky and trees and nature, or about craftsmanship on the surface, but about EVERYTHING. You don't live in a cave system for 300+ years without constantly investigating everything in your environment to find out what's tasty, what's murderous, and what's just neat to look at. Sure it means a lot of younger dwarves die in cave-ins or overdose on underdark mushrooms or fall into hidden ravines... But the ones that make it through their childhood tend to be incredibly knowledgeable and wise. And often have a variety of scars each with an important story to tell. "I lost the tip of this finger when a cave-scorpion snatched it off! And this one I lost to a woodworker's saw I was curious about. And I got this scar when I fell into a blind ravine and gashed myself fiercely on a stalagmite, below!"

Right?! I think that's actually a really clever thing.

Also they'd be SUPER SCARED of feeding humans their food because what ISN'T poisonous? Salt? Humans can't have salt! It's a rock! They don't eat rocks like we do!

I actually like the original write up. I did think of autism and I could see where that could turn into caricature but it didn't read that way to me. Only if it is really leaned into.

I think if they were to also be highly monotropic and only sociable with other dwarves (the latter definitely not) then it would be a problem to me.

But then I'm just one person and someone else may not like it.

It is cool to have some over stimulation representation.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I mean… a lot of autistic people get characterized in exactly that way. I am not autistic myself, but I do tend to act more on careful reasoning than on emotion, as a learned behavior due to some pretty rough formative experiences where acting on emotion had very negative outcomes. I think we should be very careful about characterizing the actions of characters that look, walk, and talk like humans with slightly restricted or exaggerated elements as “inhuman,” because chances are there are more humans than you think who do act in similar ways. Sometimes due to cultural differences, sometimes due to cognitive or developmental differences, sometimes due to individual differences. But the range of human behavior and expression is incredibly broad, and it’s very rare that a fictional species’ behavior and expression actually falls outside of that range.

Like, take the excellent post @Steampunkette made about ways to roleplay elves, dwarves, and halflings inhumanly. It was clever and inspiring, and all of the suggestions in it could make for great roleplaying advice. But none of it is really inhuman. Sure, the lengths of time in the elf suggestions or the poisonous spices in the dwarf suggestions are exaggerated. But crippling boredom is a real human experience, often tied to depression and other mental illnesses. Steampunkette herself caught that the dwarf characterization was ultimately an autistic stereotype. The Halfling suggestions sounded like they could have been describing my partner, who has severe social anxiety.

My point is, any way you might try to characterize a humanoid species as alien is bound to fall within the range of the human experience, because that’s what we’re all drawing from to inform our fiction. Therefore, the idea that if orcs (or whatever other fantasy humanoid species) have a rich, diverse range of experiences and expression, they’ll just be the same as humans doesn’t hold water to me. Every fantasy humanoid species is the same as humans. We can exaggerate or restrict elements to create a bit of exotic flavor, and I think it’s fun and interesting when we do. But we shouldn’t let the fear of them seeming “too human” stop us from giving them rich, diverse, interesting ranges of experience. If “alien” has to mean “homogeneous,” then I don’t want my fantasy species to be “alien.”

I think your standard is unreasonable. I feel that by your logic I could just conclude that my dogs are basically mentally merely really stupid humans. When I talk about different species having different mentalities, I don't mean they would be constantly having thoughts that no human could possibly conceive. These are humanoids, and often basically hominids. They will have a lot of similarities to humans. But their baselines can be different. A species evolved from small prey animals will probably have rather different outlook than ones evolved from carnivorous apex predators. And we don't need to be perfect about this, but I think it is a big part of appeal of RPGs, that we can try to portray such things.

 

[Umbran]

Please. Just stop.

Mod Note:

No. YOU stop.

You seem to have gotten the idea that you should police this thread, especially on matters of inclusivity.

We have established processes for this. You trying to control what people say is inappropriate, so you are done in this discussion.

In the future, if someone seems to you to be breaking the rules of the site, you should report them, rather than take it on yourself.