D&D (2024) Comeliness and Representation in Recent DnD Art

[Faolyn]

Why do you need evidence of the creator's intent, here? The reality is that machine-people and transforming people inherently give options for people who don't fit into traditional gender roles ways to express that in gameplay. What's Keith got to do with that?

Baker has actually written a few blog posts about this sort of thing, like this one.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Because Baker won a contest, otherwise he would be a nobody on DMs guild. Authorial intent matters.

I don't see why it matters in this specific instance? Like, especially in game design, sometimes things work differently in action than they were intended to in development.

Because someone identifies as a toaster does not make all toasters ones and only ones right.

If you're trying to find out who is "right" in this game of make-believe you've already lost the plot, friend.

Would it surprise you straight men like warforged? Would a non sex feel offended by that?

Do you have any evidence that it would be offensive or surprising? I don't see any in this thread, anyway.

We have people here offended by not having teiflings being persecuted so the player can not be persecuted in game.

I don't know that I've seen anyone be "offended." Some folks prefer the persecution story. I tend to prefer that, too, and for me it's about encountering tieflings for the first time in Planescape and part of the fun of their story being how other people judged them for their appearance and parentage. I'm also fine with not every tiefling having that narrative, though I'd be bummed if that narrative was erased, 'cuz that's a meaty little RP hook.

Why not create a race FOR the gender issue. Warforged have no gender, but unless memory fails me, they have no souls also.

Are warforged then gingers?

You can't game-design a safe little playground for the sensitive snowflakes who take offense at gender ambiguity. It's in the game. It's in the players. It's in the designers. It's part of the world. It's a BIG part of the genre. It always has been.

One could build one's own group around a consensus not to bring it up, I guess, if that was important to you for some reason.

So just because someone may identify with something, you got to be careful to make sure they do not then think they own it and nobody else can use it.

I'm cisgender and heterosexual, and I'm playing a genderless asexual autognome at the moment. Nobody stopped me. I don't even know how they would stop me.

Ebberon was not created as some part of any culture war. It was made to win $10,000 if my memory of these forums 20 years ago serves me correctly.

Not fitting into a gender binary isn't part of a culture war. It's just how some people are. It's not new or surprising. It's been true about people for as long as people have been people. And ESPECIALLY in fantasy and sci-fi, it's something that is often explored through these stories, for as long as there have been myths and legends.

Whatever the designers' intent, they're designing in a world that includes nonbinary people, and so it makes sense that a game mechanic that allows those people to express that side of themselves might see frequent and enthusiastic use by those people. What's wrong with that?

You identify as a banana. Who is allowed to sing "peanut butter jelly time", only you?

What's so scary to you about people having fun playing with gender in a fantasy RPG?

 

[Older Beholder]

Warforged have no gender, but unless memory fails me, they have no souls also.

Looks like you're wrong about this one too.
From Keith's blog:

"A Warforged can be healed, and they can even be poisoned, though it’s not easy. Warforged have feelings, and while this is something that’s debated in Eberron itself, the fact is that they have souls; the real mystery is where those souls come from."

Link here

 

[Charlaquin]

We have people here offended by not having teiflings being persecuted so the player can not be persecuted in game.

We absolutely, unequivocally, DO NOT have that. At all.

 

[Incenjucar]

Fiction grants us many ways to engage in things which are not true. Sometimes we want to feel the satisfaction of being able to fight that which makes us suffer and sometimes we want to feel the relief of not having to deal with that which makes us suffer for once. Either is valid.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Warforged have no gender, but unless memory fails me, they have no souls also.

Your memory does fail you. Warforged canonically do have souls (possibly stolen ones), that is what makes them different and playable.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Your memory does fail you. Warforged canonically do have souls (possibly stolen ones), that is what makes them different and playable.

I'm not convinced your PC not having a soul makes them unplayable. Seems like an odd thing to say.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I'm not convinced your PC not having a soul makes them unplayable. Seems like an odd thing to say.

Sure (there is a background for a soulless PC in one of James Ohern’s things on DMG). But the whole shtick of warforged is they have souls and therefore are not just robots .

 

[Faolyn]

I'm not convinced your PC not having a soul makes them unplayable. Seems like an odd thing to say.

Especially since in 1e, orcs and elves didn't have souls.

 

[Cadence]

Especially since in 1e, orcs and elves didn't have souls.

They did however make for a very spirited choice of character though!