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Best RPG Company for Inclusiveness?
- Thread starter Morrus
- Start date
KirayaTiDrekan
Adventurer
Are you asking in terms of what they include in their products or their policies regarding employees, official forums, and such? Or both?
WotC and Paizo are making progress on the former but could still use some work on the latter. Posthuman Studios is doing well on the latter from what I've read.
WotC and Paizo are making progress on the former but could still use some work on the latter. Posthuman Studios is doing well on the latter from what I've read.
TrippyHippy
Hero
I think that White Wolf made the most inroads during the 1990s - being careful about imagery and language, but also by the very fact that the genre they were pursuing was something more appealing to women especially. They changed the culture of gaming somewhat.
These days, most gaming companies make more efforts, so it’s hard to see who stand out.
These days, most gaming companies make more efforts, so it’s hard to see who stand out.
good question. Product inclusiveness isn't the same as Employer inclusiveness. Though I can't imagine a sexist boys club employer producing products that better behaved than "not sexist"
Additionally, we likely can't see how bad a work environment is. Who knew that WotC was a orgyfest company?
So, as consumers of products, I suspect Morrus's question is aimed at the consumer side of things, i.e. are the products inclusive or off-putting to certain demographics.
I would say Posthuman Studios, hands down. Green Ronin publishing had Blue Rose so I think they deserve a mention as well. If memory serves, I would say Pinnacle and various Savage World settings tend to show people in very Heroic situations, although they can sometimes be "sexualized" I think there's an equal number of male/female models included.
WayneLigon
Adventurer
Chaosium. Their mega-adventure for Call of Cthulhu 'At Your Door' is set in a fictional city that's a spiritual cross between LA and San Francisco. As such, it has a couple of gay characters (a lawyer and his young roommate, and a couple of young Wiccans), and it simply presents them as they are with nothing calling attention to them or treating them as something unusual. They did this in 1990, a year before Vampire: The Masquerade was published and it was, as far as I know, the very first depiction of gay characters in an RPG. Over the years, many of their various modern Earth NPCs were from varied cultural and ethnic backgrounds.
Neonchameleon
Legend
For games, nothing I'm aware of comes close to Buried Without Ceremony/Avery Mcaldando (notably Monsterhearts). But that's one independent game designer. I'm afraid I don't know about the companies themselves.
Neonchameleon
Legend
Except for the case where they called themselves out within the book itself due to the source material (The Dresden Files)
Celebrim
Legend
The church I attended yesterday has people from 137 national backgrounds that speak 80 different languages worshiping shoulder to shoulder every Sunday. I dare suggest that in terms of inclusiveness of people of widely disparate socio-economic backgrounds and widely disparate ethnic backgrounds and widely disparate skin colors, no organization or group of people of a similar size comes even close. Yet I'm inclined to think that your definition of inclusiveness would tend to mean material that would exclude the entire group.
Is it reasonable to assert that if you mean your material to be inclusive, that it ought to be sensitive to what people believe rather than merely superficial things like what they look like?
Is material inclusive if it doesn't sensitively depict religious beliefs, or fails to sensitively depict sexuality? Suppose the game universally depicted members of one religion - say Islam or Hindu - in a negative light? Would that be inclusive? Suppose it used an overt pastiche of an extant religion as the basis of its cosmology? What about including the Hindu pantheon along side all the rest in the Deities and Demigods as just another mythology? Why was Hinduism in there? Was it simply because it was hard to imagine anyone today as being polytheistic?
What does it mean to be inclusive? Does it mean simply to try to attract a wide audience? Or does it mean to overtly depict a particular viewpoint so as to make those that hold that view point particularly comfortable?
In other words, do you by "inclusiveness" merely mean, "Makes me feel comfortable?"
For example, someone mentioned Monsterhearts. This game is inclusive of what and to whom? I have a hard time imagining that it is widely accepted that a game which portrays sexuality as merely a social weapon to manipulate other people and promiscuity as normal and expected behavior is broadly inclusive. For that matter, the subject matter that the game draws from is hardly without narrow stereotyping (which I felt only highlighted by the chargen and the artwork it used, note for example the preponderance of females that are overtly sexual objects), some of which is egregious enough that I think you'd see even some agreement between myself and say a radical feminist - which is something like me and Hussar being on the same page.
I would imagine most people I know would be deeply uncomfortable with such a game and acting out its precepts. I'm fairly sure that a game that mechanically coded the reverse set of morals would be denounced as insensitive and discriminatory regardless of how racially and ethnically diverse its characters were.
Is it reasonable to assert that if you mean your material to be inclusive, that it ought to be sensitive to what people believe rather than merely superficial things like what they look like?
Is material inclusive if it doesn't sensitively depict religious beliefs, or fails to sensitively depict sexuality? Suppose the game universally depicted members of one religion - say Islam or Hindu - in a negative light? Would that be inclusive? Suppose it used an overt pastiche of an extant religion as the basis of its cosmology? What about including the Hindu pantheon along side all the rest in the Deities and Demigods as just another mythology? Why was Hinduism in there? Was it simply because it was hard to imagine anyone today as being polytheistic?
What does it mean to be inclusive? Does it mean simply to try to attract a wide audience? Or does it mean to overtly depict a particular viewpoint so as to make those that hold that view point particularly comfortable?
In other words, do you by "inclusiveness" merely mean, "Makes me feel comfortable?"
For example, someone mentioned Monsterhearts. This game is inclusive of what and to whom? I have a hard time imagining that it is widely accepted that a game which portrays sexuality as merely a social weapon to manipulate other people and promiscuity as normal and expected behavior is broadly inclusive. For that matter, the subject matter that the game draws from is hardly without narrow stereotyping (which I felt only highlighted by the chargen and the artwork it used, note for example the preponderance of females that are overtly sexual objects), some of which is egregious enough that I think you'd see even some agreement between myself and say a radical feminist - which is something like me and Hussar being on the same page.
I would imagine most people I know would be deeply uncomfortable with such a game and acting out its precepts. I'm fairly sure that a game that mechanically coded the reverse set of morals would be denounced as insensitive and discriminatory regardless of how racially and ethnically diverse its characters were.
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