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

[seebs]

Nobody is dying because of a paragraph in a D&D book, it previously wasn't exclusionary. That there is more representation now is a good thing, but people weren't excluded just because they weren't represented.

That is simply not how human social processing works.

It has become more explicit recently but all sorts of people have always been welcome before, nothing in the industry has ever explicitly barred anyone from playing.

They've never been explicitly barred from playing, but they've absolutely been explicitly barred from being characters in games, and that has been quite reasonably taken as a hint.

Individuals in the hobby might exclude people from their groups based on their prejudices (not that I have ever seen any evidence of this), but I doubt a paragraph in D&D manual is going to make them more welcoming if they weren't before.

If you can sincerely say that you've never seen any evidence of people being excluded from groups based on prejudices, I put it to you that perhaps you are too far from the question to have any relevant experience, and should defer to the people who have had these experiences and seen these things happen, as they have some conceivable way of knowing what they're talking about.

 

[Remathilis]

It depends on what you mean by "seriously interested". If the rulebooks give the impression that the gameworld does not contain a certain sort of person, than a real-world person of that type might not become seriously interested, precisely because s/he assumes that the gameworld, and hence the game, is not something for him/her.

No, the gameworld never gave the impression of exclusion, merely it never felt the need to spell out the inclusion. D&D is a game where you can pretend to be an elf, a half-devil, a dragon-man, a servant of Thor, a cultist of Cthulhu, or any number of fantastical archetypes. However, it doesn't let you be gay or trans or anything other that CIS because it lacked a paragraph saying so before 2014?

I certainly know people who are "seriously interested" in movies or TV shows and will choose not to watch ones that have no people of colour in them, because they're sick of engaging with fictional works that they are not invited to imagine themselves a part of.

Newsflash: They're not seriously interested. They are watching with racial blinders on. You're basically saying that people who lack representation cannot enjoy fiction of another area. Because nobody outside of India watches Bollywood. Nobody outside of China watch Wuxia. Nobody outside of Japan watches Anime, and nobody outside of America watches Hollywood blockbusters.

If you know people who refuse to associate with a work of fiction because it doesn't look like them, buy them a mirror. They'll never get bored.

Which, to me, makes @doctorbadwolf's and @ad_hoc's reports of similar responses to D&D in relation to sex, gender and sexuality very plausible.

I've gamed with members of the LGBTQ community. I know other people who have as well. They never felt they needed to be binary gendered or straight because the rulebook lacked explicit permission. I've seen straight players play gay PCs. I've seen female players play males PC and male players play female PCs. I've seen bisexual males and females (hell, *I* played a bisexual male tiefling once). I don't think any of them needed a paragraph giving them permission.

Similarly, I doubt the DM I met at a game-day in College who was very homophobic (he wouldn't let a male play a female PC in a one-shot because "that's gay") would change his mindset because his 5e PHB says its okay to be non-traditional.

So to me, the paragraph is welcomed but not the gamechanger some think it is.

 

[Remathilis]

If every picture shows adventurers, and background characters, as northern European whites, that can generate an implication as to whom the game designers envisage being part of their world. If prospective audience members who are sensitive to that cue - because they find it hard to project themselves into the gameworld as northern European whites - take the hint and deal themselves out, well the fiction is just achieving its apparent goal.

Ya know, I really hate to bring this up, but...

Most D&D is kinda focused around Northern-European white mythology.

D&D is a game where Paladin, Druid, and Bard are all specific classes, but samurai, shaman, or yogi are not. Its a game which has rapiers and longbows on the weapon list, but not tulwars or atl-atls. Its a game where the "historical" pantheons include Greek, Norse, and Celtic but not First-people, Chinese, or Indian. Its a game with ice-giants, nymphs, and banshees but not Wangliang, Shita, or Quinametzin. Even in worlds not married to mimicking European post-feudal eras (like Dark Sun or Planescape) its hard to not see the European origins of the game. Non-European settings (like Maztica, Kara-Tur, or Al-qadim) were niche products that haven't seen support in decades (and probably would smack of cultural appropriation if they were produced today).

The question is, is a few dark-skinned faces in the art and a few nodding references to other cultures (like monks or oni) enough to overcome the Eurocentric focus D&D has?

 

[seebs]

I've gamed with members of the LGBTQ community. I know other people who have as well. They never felt they needed to be binary gendered or straight because the rulebook lacked explicit permission. I've seen straight players play gay PCs. I've seen female players play males PC and male players play female PCs. I've seen bisexual males and females (hell, *I* played a bisexual male tiefling once). I don't think any of them needed a paragraph giving them permission.

There's a large gap between "need X" and "might benefit from X".

Similarly, I doubt the DM I met at a game-day in College who was very homophobic (he wouldn't let a male play a female PC in a one-shot because "that's gay") would change his mindset because his 5e PHB says its okay to be non-traditional.

So to me, the paragraph is welcomed but not the gamechanger some think it is.

What I don't get is:

If some people report that it has been a game changer for them or people they know, and other people say it hasn't been a game changer for them or people they know...

How on earth do you get to the conclusion "this definitely cannot be a game changer"? We know that it can be, because it is for at least some people. No one was asserting that this automatically changes everything in every possible game, yay, homophobia is over. But it definitely has effects in a lot of the edge cases.

 

[seebs]

Not when it is strangers, certainly not hugely, and especially not when you don't think your in the wrong.

There are a lot of people for whom even a complete stranger sending them a death threat is indeed hugely upsetting. So far as I can tell, they're the majority.

I'm the same and yet you seem to think majority of people will be hugely upset by it? Do you have any evidence for that?

I see your problem here. People generally assume they are much more typical and representative than they actually are. You're on the outer fringes of the response curve, and you're assuming that's fairly normal. It's not. It's extremely atypical.

If you want evidence, I guess I'd start with "read some psychology texts". That, or look at how people define, describe, and discuss online harassment and the like. People in general find being hated very distressing, even if the person hating them is obviously an idiot.

 

[Bagpuss]

They've never been explicitly barred from playing, but they've absolutely been explicitly barred from being characters in games, and that has been quite reasonably taken as a hint.

Give me one explicit example of being barred from playing any a trans, homosexual, PoC or any other minority character in a game.

Clearly over the years without an explicit invitation (through art direction, or paragraphs in the PHB), minority players have joined the hobby, many of which have now risen to be active in the industry and now are designing games more suited to what they want to see. That's why we are seeing a change now, because it takes time for change to happen.

Is it any wonder back when the majority of writers and players were men of White European ancestry that things were written with similar people in mind? It's like asking why Spike Lee's films tend to be feature black people, or Bollywood films feature Indians. Now we are seeing a greater diversity in the writers we are seeing greater diversity in subject matter and the people it appeals to. It's just a natural progression.

If you can sincerely say that you've never seen any evidence of people being excluded from groups based on prejudices, I put it to you that perhaps you are too far from the question to have any relevant experience, and should defer to the people who have had these experiences and seen these things happen, as they have some conceivable way of knowing what they're talking about.

On the contrary I say I've seen no evidence of exclusion, not because I've not seen minority players at all, all those I have seen have been included and playing. This is over 30+ years of attending conventions, playing in large societies at Universities, in towns and cities and in several home games. I have no doubt exclusion goes on, but generally from what I have seen of this hobby if someone shows an interest people tend to welcome them with open arms, they are more than happy to spend the time to introduce new players.

If you only listen to views confirming a particular experience, then you get an unbalanced view that that is happening all the time. If you try to silence voices just because they don't confirm your opinion you end up living in an echo chamber that just amplifies whatever problem you see beyond what is realistic.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

That is simply not how human social processing works.



They've never been explicitly barred from playing, but they've absolutely been explicitly barred from being characters in games, and that has been quite reasonably taken as a hint.



If you can sincerely say that you've never seen any evidence of people being excluded from groups based on prejudices, I put it to you that perhaps you are too far from the question to have any relevant experience, and should defer to the people who have had these experiences and seen these things happen, as they have some conceivable way of knowing what they're talking about.

"None of the women I know have been charged extra or otherwise ripped of by mechanics assuming they don't know better, so I'm pretty sure it's a made up problem."
"No black people I know have been harassed by racist cops, I'm pretty sure the ones who claim to have been just didn't cooperate."

Folks, if you refuse to believe people on this stuff, because you've never seen it, and assume that the people you know would tell you if they had experienced it, you are willfully ignoring evidence so that you needn't confront your worldview.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Also, if you think that people who won't watch Hollywood movies that depict the world as completely white and het are just watching with blinders on, you don't know a damn thing about race relations and representation. They want to watch that stuff. They are just as nerdy as you, just as interested in shows about space or movies about elves. They also have life experiences very different from yours, in ways that make it fricken exhausting to watch another movie set in New York or a space station in the far future, or whatever, where everyone is white, strait, ablebodied, and cis.
Especially when so many of the shows and movies with POC either feature a token stereotype, or some white dude saving China, or some such nonsense.
they want to watch, read, and play the media, and it isn't too much to ask that that media represent the actual diversity of the audience, nor is it unreasonable to decline to purchase media they otherwise would because it's lack of representation is one more example in a sea of examples of people like hem being erased from both history and popular culture.

 

[Remathilis]

What I don't get is:

If some people report that it has been a game changer for them or people they know, and other people say it hasn't been a game changer for them or people they know...

How on earth do you get to the conclusion "this definitely cannot be a game changer"? We know that it can be, because it is for at least some people. No one was asserting that this automatically changes everything in every possible game, yay, homophobia is over. But it definitely has effects in a lot of the edge cases.

The plural of anecdote is not data.

You (or people you know) may have found the paragraph welcoming and allowed them to pursue the hobby because of it. The counterpoint is that the game wasn't non-inclusive before that point either, because there were non-CIS players and characters who played before that paragraph saw print. Your example does not cancel out mine and vice-versa. It would take a lot of market research and evidence to suggest to me that the paragraph had a sizable influence on the gaming community and its acceptance (and such evidence would have to be causational, not merely corollary from larger acceptance of LGTBQ in society) for me to think that single paragraph was "a game changer."

 

[Bagpuss]

How on earth do you get to the conclusion "this definitely cannot be a game changer"? We know that it can be, because it is for at least some people. No one was asserting that this automatically changes everything in every possible game, yay, homophobia is over. But it definitely has effects in a lot of the edge cases.

Having an effect in edge cases isn't a "game changer", to be a game changer it has to be an event or idea that has a significant shift in the current way of doing or thinking about things. That's why we don't feel it is a game changer.

It just explicitly states what has been going on a most tables for a very long time, and isn't likely to change the tables that have GMs that won't allow cross gender characters. Some people might feel more welcome but it doesn't actually change how the game is played for the vast majority.

To be fair few GMs I've come across that don't allow it claim it is because men just play stereotypes of women, and vise versa as they can't relate to the experience, rather than because "it is gay". Like I can't relate to women who I see every day, but I can relate to being a dwarf or a elf?