D&D 5E After 2 years the 5E PHB remains one of the best selling books on Amazon

On the paragraph in question, it was not written just for LGBTQ players, IMHO. It was written for all players of the game in order to widen everyones perspective on what is acceptable. We know that acceptance of minorities by the majority has been an ongoing struggle for many years. This paragraph is a reminder of that struggle and puts everyone on notice that there are many acceptable ways of playing a character and we should be tolerant.

That's a good thing IMO and should be celebrated.

Sorcerers Apprentice said:

Hmmm, that's the first time I've heard of "game changer" used that way. Do have any texts at hand where the phrase is used like that?

The point of "changing the game" is that all players are affected and have to change how they play, meaning that those that can adapt fastest can get Ahead, while previous leaaders may fall behind if they are slow to change. The phrase usually doesn't refer to a literal "game", but to industry, politics etc.

Click to expand...

I've seen it used a lot for things that affect subsets of users, like adding non-color cues for colorblind users. So it radically alters the way the game plays for those people. Sometimes it's for everyone, sometimes not so much. It's more a statement about scope of impact than anything else; a friend gave the example of: if you allow pawns to move up to 10 squares in any direction and capture all enemy pieces next to them, and make this a new rule in football, it is not a game-changer even though it affects everyone.

Bagpuss said:

I think it has some influence, but hardly what you would call a game changer, more a gradual and logical progression as more people from minority groups move into positions of influence.



No, but there is a difference between encouraging (via more inclusive art work and the like), catering to your existing audience (art work that reflects the European roots of the game) and explicitly discouraging people from playing which I've not seen occur in any published material, or at any game table I've sat at or convention I've attended.

Would you say Luke Cage or Spike Lee movies explicitly discourages white audiences from watching?

Click to expand...

First, couldn't care less about the nit picking over the term "game changer".

That out of the way, your response seems tangential to what I asked. Do you recognize that act of inclusiveness add up to make a trend of increased inclusiveness? Having answered that, do you agree or disagree that that trend impacts how welcome people feel in the hobby?

Because the thing is, if all you look at is what happens at tables you game at, you are missing most of the picture. For the rest, you have to actually listen to the diverse groups of people telling their stories of not feeling like DnD was "for them", because it was entirely (or close enough as to make no difference) full of white, male, cishet heroes.

Your stories of playing with POC, women, and LGBT people don't negate those stories, in any way. No one anywhere is claiming that no one but white cishet dudes ever played DnD before 1990, or whatever. That just isn't a claim being made. What people are saying is that the hobby is growing, in part, due to a more directly and explicitly inclusive approach, and that we all know people who were interested but felt unwelcome, or who used to play but got tired of the misogyny, homophobia, etc and lack of representation, and who have come back, because those things have improved.

Trying to claim that the concerted efforts of publishers to be more inclusive has had nothing to do with that is just silly. None of this happens on its own. It happens because people try, and succeed, to make it happen. And media is a huge part of that.

As for Luke Cage and Spike Lee, of course not. You're comparing things that are entirely different. Context changes things, and the context of a single show that is about almost entirely black characters is very different than one "white people" show in a never ending avalanche of popular media whiteness.

Luke Cage is something different from anything Marvel has done before, from what anyone has done before, really. Not since the 70's has there been an action hero type story like this that was entirely about black people, in a black community, with no need or desire to be saved by some white kid, and rather a lot of that stuff in the 70's was so full of caricaturised stereotypes meant to make white people laugh enough to throw more money at it, that it hardly counts.

Spike Lee and Luke Cage are about and for black people, and that is good. Because so much of media only includes black people as sidekicks and bad guys, or people who need saving by the white hero, and usually if there is a black person with a speaking role, they are the only one, as if two would be just too many, etc.

Lwaxy said:

3. No one needs to be told what chars they can and can't play. It should be obvious we can be whatever we chose and can portray in a sensible fashion. But please don't attempt a gay Vulcan who is secretly in love with the genderfluid Klingon - no, just no! It needs to stay within the frame of the world. And if I decide my world has no gay dwarfs, then play an elf or someone straight. If in my world there are no female knights (especially not ones wearing high heeled armored boots - I can't unsee the abominations just seen in the Dragonlance core book) then I won't make an exception for you. You may however start a rebellion about the latter.

Click to expand...

I have a loss for words, so I'm just going to quote the post.

"No one needs to be told what chars they can and can't play."

Followed by:

"in a sensible fashion"
"But please don't attempt"
"And if I decide"
"If in my world"
"I won't make an exception for you."

I sure am glad there is a passage in the PHB which states that a broad spectrum genders and sexualities are represented in the game world.

ad_hoc said:

I sure am glad there is a passage in the PHB which states that a broad spectrum genders and sexualities are represented in the game world.

Click to expand...

My game world, my rules. If Dwarves are incapable of being 'female' (biologically, socially, mystically, spiritually, etc), then... well... as Lwaxy says "You can play something else, but not that" (paraphrased).



Isn't it great that there is literally no one in this thread telling people how to run their games...

Lwaxy said:

If in my world there are no female knights (especially not ones wearing high heeled armored boots - I can't unsee the abominations just seen in the Dragonlance core book) then I won't make an exception for you.

Click to expand...

Just as a little bit of history the high heel were original practical footwear some were designed to keep butchers feet out of the offal on the floor, others to protect the finer part of the shoe from dirt.

In the ninth century, Persian horseback warriors wore an extended heel made for keeping feet from sliding out of stirrups. This kept riders still when they needed to stand up and shoot arrows. So knights in high heels isn't actually that stupid.

doctorbadwolf said:

I literally didn't bring anything new into the discussion with that post.

Click to expand...

Agreed, and that's a bad thing. If your post brings nothing new, and is otherwise objectionable to people, it's probably not a post to be proud of making.

The post you quoted is about why inclusion in media matters, and responding to people who dismiss the testimony of people who it has mattered to because the people they know have never expressed feeling that way or experience that. It's a response to the idea that inclusion isn't a big deal, or that "one paragraph" isn't, as if that paragraph exists in a vacuum, when actually it is part of a continuing trend, and that trend is a huge deal. And that trend includes the cool black guy with the scimitar in the phb, and any number of other things. The issue isn't just about gender and orientation. The paragraph is there because LGBTQA people are harder to represent with pictures.

They need to do better still, in terms of representing those people, and people with disabilities, in adventures and other story text.

Click to expand...

Acting like I didn't understand your point and that you needed to explain it to me again, as opposed to actually considering my response, makes it worse.

I get it. I fully and completely understand where you're coming from. Now, take a moment and consider someone else's views. How about we not talk about politics on a board where politics as a topic is banned expliciting in the board rules, and where people have objected for good sound reasons to the ongoing mention of politics in what was otherwise a fairly "happy" thread?

Mistwell said:

How about we not talk about politics on a board where politics as a topic is banned expliciting in the board rules.

Click to expand...

But, but everything is political.

Bagpuss said:

But, but everything is political.

Click to expand...

And problematic!