He said, she said

Which default pronoun do you prefer?

  • He

    Votes: 62 72.9%
  • She

    Votes: 23 27.1%

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delericho said:
Hang on a second, are we missing a trick here? I for one haven't yet met my hawt gamer chick, and they definately seem thin on the ground.

If the game brings in an influx of female gamers via an equal use of 'she', and by toning down or eliminating the cheesecake, why is that a bad thing?
I'm not doing without my cheesecake just so you can get a girlfriend! :)
 

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Crazy Jerome said:
Having spent some time writing notes for my Arcana Evolved campaign, which features the genderless mojh, I vote for more than two pronouns. Specifically, not only should they add a genderless race, they should also add a hive race referred to in the plural. Then they should alternate "he", "she", "it", and "they" in the general rules text. This will contribute little to understanding of the rules, but will provide hours of entertaining bashing of the poor editors.

"OMG YOU NOOB! You called the Bugfolg a he. IT'S A HERMAPHRODITE YOU MORON!" Yeah, I can totally see that. :D
 

Kae'Yoss said:
Es? It? "It puts the lotion in the basket"?

In German, we at least have an indefinite pronoun: man. It can be translated into you/one or something like that.

So "Man sagt, er habe magische Kräfte" means "They say it has magic powers.", "Kann man so sagen" means "You can say that!" And so on. It's quite useful at times.

The direct analogue of German man is one, such as "one should take care not to point the crossbow at people unless one means to kill them", but it isn't terribly "pronominal" as in that repeated usage causes the head to hurt, which doesn't happen with actual personal pronouns.

That said, if we had to pick either he or she and stick with it, I'd stick with "she", as it brings to my mind visions of pretty girl adventurers instead of bearded, sweaty, scarred menfolk. Altogether, a much more pleasant experience... :p
 

Abisashi said:
A mixture, like in 3e, would be good (I didn't vote).
Ditto.

Xyxox said:
I can't vote as I prefer s/he.
I reaaaaaaaly don't like that. English used they as a genderless pronoun once upon a time, and it's made a resurgence in recent decades. I'd much rather a return to they than s/he.
-blarg
 

If the game brings in an influx of female gamers via an equal use of 'she'

I have a hard time believing that any woman anywhere ever decided to play D&D because it uses the word "she".

And personally, I voted he.
 


D&D might not bring in any women gamers by using "she" as a pronoun in its books, but if it drives away the guys who insist that "he" is the only possible correct pronoun and that any use of "she" is evidence of some kind of politically correct conspiracy against men, well, that might bring in women gamers.
 

hexgrid said:
The English language is constantly changing. Even if what you say is true, there's no reason it has to stay that way.

English might have changed over the course of time, but I guarantee you that you would fail or get deducted on a college paper if you use she as a neutral pronoun. It is just bad grammar.
 

takasi said:
You are using a "3E mindset". Do they know there will be iconics? Assuming a pronoun is used where the gender is not defined, which do you prefer to see? If you don't care then don't vote, but the poll is to see, of those who do care, which one they prefer to see over the other.

And yes, the original question does not match the poll. It's for freeform discussion, and the real topic of the thread. The poll is a side note.
This isn't realy a "3E" mindset, since I would argue this very thing is a good argument for having Iconics in 4E, and, based on a certain thread in WotC 4E forum, Iconics are most likely in.

Also, I didn't care, so I didn't vote. What can I say?

Also, for anyone interested in the he/she gender neutrality thing, I suggest looking at the linguistic notion of a subject being "marked" in a language, and the universal tendency towards a marked female gender across human language. It is pretty interesting.
 

"They". It was the gender-neutral pronoun in Shakespeare's time; that's good enough for me.

However, I also like the system they already use - refer to members of a class with the pronoun corresponding to the iconic character belonging to that class.
 

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