First-Person or Third-Person Perspective for your supplements?

[DragonLancer]

I prefer First Person. It reads better for one thing.

 

[mhacdebhandia]

Except for arguments from English majors who point out that rogue is singlular and they is plural.

AVOIDS ARGUMENTS.

Your statement is no longer true, unless you happen to be a prescriptivist. In which case it's still untrue, but at least it's known why you believe it.

"They" is a perfectly acceptable gender-neutral singular pronoun in English as she is spoke.

I happen to be an English major myself.

 

[mhacdebhandia]

Full disclosure:

I dislike first-person writing because I don't like the assumption it seems to carry that the player will necessarily identify with their character to the extent that "You gain evasion" is accurate.

 

[shilsen]

Second person. Takes less space and easier to use with precision.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

I'll strongly disagree with that. As an English Major, using a male pronoun for a subject of ambiguous or no gender is tantamount to telling women to "get back in the kitchen." This is coming from the professors; you know, those guys and gals with the PhDs. I tend to take their word on things like this.

I go with Richard Dawkins on this subject. You can't please everyone. If you use only the female pronoun, you get in trouble. If you switch between male and female, you get in trouble and you confuse the reader. If you use the male pronoun you get in trouble. But there is at least a precedent for using the male pronoun as indicating neuter. Sometimes I'll switch between them.

FWIW, Dawkins assumes (for whatever reason) that his reader is female. So he actually would prefer to go with the female pronoun, but he's been sent nasty letters by feminists for doing so. You can't win, so go with the solution that draws the least amount of attention to your style, and put a caveat at the beginning of the publication about how you're not trying to exclude blah blah blah.

Edit: also, using "he or she" everywhere is dumb and bloats the word count. It's also simply not how it's done in English. Better to use the colloquial but grammatically incorrect "they," IMO, and I'm usually a bit of a grammar nazi.

 

[mhacdebhandia]

At what point do colloquialisms cease being grammatically incorrect?

Thackeray and Shaw used it; that's pedigree enough for me.

 

[lukelightning]

This is totally disingenuous. "Those guys and gals with the PhDs" are trying to make a political issue out of nothing.

I'll strongly disagree with that. As an English Major, using a male pronoun for a subject of ambiguous or no gender is tantamount to telling women to "get back in the kitchen." This is coming from the professors; you know, those guys and gals with the PhDs. I tend to take their word on things like this.