D&D 5E 5e's new gender policy - is it attracting new players?

[Wik]

Sorry. Only explanation I can think of is that the quote tag for one of your posts somehow got stuck in my clipboard and so I was pasting that instead of the proper quote tag for Tia. I've made extra sure it won't happen this time!

'sall good. Guess it happens - kinda weird though.

 

[Xvartslayer]

D&D is so bad it's a wonder that anyone who isn't a knuckle-dragging, misogynist, racist, homophobe, can even crack open one of the rule books without turning into a black pudding, weeping and quivering in the corner. Think of the children, and other sensitive persons.

If those who know better than you and I don't ban the books, the covers should at least be wrapped in plain brown paper and come with a Surgeon General's warning! Trigger-warnings anyone? If people want to buy this material they should be forced to get it from some sleazy guy in a trench coat down some back alley. Cash (or barter) only!

"Want to play a fantasy role-playing game?" Well that line has certainly earned me a few slaps and disgusted looks over the years, although come to think of it, there was that cute redhead who wondered, "Do I have to wear a costume?" But, I digress ...

Hello!?!? Wake up people and get with the Program!!!

D&D and the typical player are so offensive and awful I don't know where to even begin ...

Think about your typical D&D adventure: A group of players meet in a tavern (are under-age players even allowed to do that??), on the edges of civilization and venture into the untamed wilderness to kill monsters and savages for the glory of their deities, or their kingdoms, or greed! Might makes right! There are so many brutish, inferior races and creatures in Dungeons and Dragons for players to kill it becomes hard to imagine them as anything but The Other. It's blatant colonialism and imperialism. A proxy race war! Diversity only exists for the players to exterminate. If Leni Riefenstahl were filming the D&D movie it would look like Triumph of the Will set in Faerûn!

Just look at the PHB - players choose their Race before they choose a class! So much for judging by the content of our character eh? MLK is rolling over in his grave...

You ever notice all the plusses humans (read: White Male Imperialists) get to add to their attributes? That's no accident. Those greedy dwarves who crave gold? If that doesn't set your anti-semetic radar buzzing you need to report to sensitivity training. Elves, gnomes, half (not three-quarters or two-thirds)-lings, Tiefling the Devil race ... Half-orcs? WOW, what can you say there? Rape culture anyone? There's just too much to racially deconstruct with a postmodern enlightened mind I'll need to do a graduate school thesis.

You want to discuss Class Warfare? Just read this forum. Warlord anyone?

The new multi-cultural pictures? That little blurb about the new gender policy in fifth edition? Greedy corporate lip service! It's just the exception that proves the rule! Like that Drizzit Drow character (Or however you spell it, I can't do weird foreign names). Poor guy – he's rejected by all: too good to be accepted by his own people, misunderstood, an outcast. Yeah, right ... as if we can't see through that ruse!

Don't even get me started on the Drow ... Hello? Underdark = Under Class. Black skin = Evil. And they're slavers to boot! Ha! Sweet Home Alabama now there's a clever twist! Plus the Drow have that whole 'Queen of the Spiders', caught in Her web, matriarchal, psycho-sexual torture thing going on (Side Note: nothing wrong with BDSM, it's a valid lifestyle choice, the original FRPG) but it just perpetuates all the misogynist stereotypes against strong, powerful women. Out Of The Abyss is just code for The War on Women.

The earlier editions of D&D are even worse - I can't define pornography for you, but I know it when I see it! Remember all the pictures of naked and topless females in the old books? It was so bad I used to have to hide them under my bed so my Mother wouldn't see. Remember that illustration of the Succubus? Wow, that kick-started the teenage hormones didn't it? Woot!

What? Right. I'm offended. I need to make a saving throw.

You should immediately report to voluntary sensitivity training. Attendance is mandatory.

 

[billd91]

Really? So it's getting worse than it was five years ago, when gay people couldn't marry? Or ten years ago, when DADT was the law. Or 20 years ago, when racism was much worse than today? Or 60 years ago, before civil rights?

Things are progressively (see what I did there?) getting better every day. We aren't slipping, we're improving. Don't take my statement as thinking that everything is hunkydory, but it's definitely moving in the right direction and at a good clip.

Danger of slipping? Hell yes and there are areas in which it has been happening. The SCOTUS gutted the Voting Rights Act and I don't exactly see a rush to replace the parts they voided. Meanwhile, certain state legislatures are finding ways to hamper voting among groups that tend to vote against the ruling parties. African-American churches are being burned by arson. Hate groups have been growing in number through most of the 21st century so far.

 

[Jessica]

Cities in general are relatively progressive. But when nobody actually shows up to vote, bad things happen.

That nobody showed up to vote, though, shows the depth of a lot of problems. Trans folks are going to keep getting hurt if our allies (we make up less than 1% of the population; we literally CAN'T win political fights by ourselves) don't care enough to show up.

EDIT TO TIE INTO TOPIC: And that's a fair bit of why representation is important. It's part of what gets the people not directly affected by these things thinking about them - a rather large part. Trans folks are, like I said, less than 1% of the population; we can't arrange things so everyone knows and loves an out trans person in their own lives. We need the media - we need television, we need film, we need video games, we need tabletop games. We need D&D.

Reading the comments to any story on the HERO vote is horrifying. All that hate. :/

 

[billd91]

Reading the comments to any story on the HERO vote is horrifying. All that hate. :/

There's a reason that when people get upset talking about gamers being so fractious over things like D&D editions, I tell them they probably don't want to check any political sites or any comments sections for political articles. That's way more disheartening about humanity.

 

[rollingForInit]

Okay say WOTC goes with this suggestion:
Are the PC-obsessed equality-police roleplaying community going to statistically analyse the number of masculine/feminine/transgender/homosexuals/heterosexuals/physically or mentally handicapped/colour-skinned/religious/atheist/height-challenged/not-slimmed...etc NPCs referred to in the adventure paths and modules and compare this to a perceived acceptable reality/medium? Are we ever going to be satisfied?

Generally those of us who belong to minorities tend to be happy to have anything relevant. Not every character has to be homosexual/transgender/bisexual/anything-else-in-the-minority. That would be silly. If WotC actually went with the suggestions and introduced a character with a same-sex spouse here, and maybe a character here and there that deviates from the norm in others ways, then no, most people would be content not to statistically analyse things.

In short, we'll be happy when we actually feel we aren't being ignored. You really ought to chill if the idea of including these things in games upsets you.

 

[Sadras]

Generally those of us who belong to minorities tend to be happy to have anything relevant. Not every character has to be homosexual/transgender/bisexual/anything-else-in-the-minority. That would be silly. If WotC actually went with the suggestions and introduced a character with a same-sex spouse here, and maybe a character here and there that deviates from the norm in others ways, then no, most people would be content not to statistically analyse things.

In short, we'll be happy when we actually feel we aren't being ignored. You really ought to chill if the idea of including these things in games upsets you.

It doesn't upset me I didn't convey my tone/thoughts well enough in my original post.
Read my posts a page or two down.

My only issue was that we are so hard to please and yes its the nature of forums to whine, but when (and I'm pretty confident we will) include non-hetero NPCs, we will find other reasons to whine as we always do and I'd rather not have us comparing the number of 'minorities' within real life to the number of minorities represented within D&D in some sort of statistical model. It doesn't seem like everyone on this 'social push' is exactly agreeing on the quota or how it should be implemented anyways.

When I play D&D - it is my escape with my friends from the 'crap of life'. Being completely honest, as your typical white hetero male with very much the same table - the personal benefit I see from including characters of diversity is to spice up my stories, surprise my players and offer interesting twists. It is really not about the 'good fight.'

HOWEVER

Like many eloquent posters have said before me, if this inclusion helps to bring a smile to a person or increases the player-base, I'm all for it. We certainly enjoyed it when Big Bang Theory or Community acknowledged D&D in their episodes, so, yes we should do the same for the LGBT community.

EDIT: One last note, and I'm sure people will throw some anecdotal evidence at me, but I have the impression that the D&D playerbase on the whole is not close-minded or bigoted in anyway against the LGBT Communities. I'm pretty sure our geeky crowd is rather liberal and all-accepting. Hell, we are a minority ourselves.

 

[Tia Nadiezja]

It doesn't upset me I didn't convey my tone/thoughts well enough in my original post.
Read my posts a page or two down.

My only issue was that we are so hard to please and yes its the nature of forums to whine, but when (and I'm pretty confident we will) include non-hetero NPCs, we will find other reasons to whine as we always do and I'd rather not have us comparing the number of 'minorities' within real life to the number of minorities represented within D&D in some sort of statistical model. It doesn't seem like everyone on this 'social push' is exactly agreeing on the quota or how it should be implemented anyways.

When I play D&D - it is my escape with my friends from the 'crap of life'. Being completely honest, as your typical white hetero male with very much the same table - the personal benefit I see from including characters of diversity is to spice up my stories, surprise my players and offer interesting twists. It is really not about the 'good fight.'

HOWEVER

Like many eloquent posters have said before me, if this inclusion helps to bring a smile to a person or increases the player-base, I'm all for it. We certainly enjoyed it when Big Bang Theory or Community acknowledged D&D in their episodes, so, yes we should do the same for the LGBT community.

EDIT: One last note, and I'm sure people will throw some anecdotal evidence at me, but I have the impression that the D&D playerbase on the whole is not close-minded or bigoted in anyway against the LGBT Communities. I'm pretty sure our geeky crowd is rather liberal and all-accepting. Hell, we are a minority ourselves.

Your last paragraph is pretty wrong. Gaming in general is actually not terribly inviting to... well, much of anyone, which is pretty awful.

I've generally been lucky. I've dealt with very few problems - but when I've had a problem, it has been compounded by the general tendency of gamers to rally around familiar, charismatic individuals (who usually, incidentally, were the causes of the problems - in my old hometown, there was an immenselt popular DM with a habit of sexually harassing women and chasing anyone who called him on his behavior out of the community entirely - and being backed up on that by a ton of his players. There's also how rarely those in the community NOTICE bad behavior if it's not directed at them or their specific demographic group.

 

[Sadras]

Your last paragraph is pretty wrong. Gaming in general is actually not terribly inviting to... well, much of anyone, which is pretty awful.

Maybe, perhaps my rose-coloured perspective about the RPG community is because of what I have experienced on Enworld and that might be providing a certain bias. IME, the only time where D&D is not terribly inviting is due to a difference in playstyles between the various participants OR if we have a full table, and both those issues have nothing to do with sexism or bigotry.

May I ask, when did that issue with that DM occur? Also one bad experience doesn't make it the norm. amongst the playerbase.
Do you honestly think the majority of the RPG community is sexist and bigoted?

 

[Warmaster Horus]

D&D itself cannot have a 'policy' about this. They can espouse what they want. It's the players themselves that make the game.