D&D 5E Mearls' "Firing" tweet

[Argyle King]

If the person making a game or directing a movie or writing a book or whatever produces a good product, I'll enjoy the product. That's true regardless of gender, race, sex, etc...


As far as guys being jerks... there are enough reports of it happening that I assume it does happen, but I can't say I've ever seen it as a common occurrence among any of the groups with whom I've played. Maybe I just have a habit of picking friends and gaming groups who aren't dbags?

 

[Mistwell]

I think you’re failing to see that he’s criticizing a group not for being interested in A and B, but because they use A and B to try and prevent others from enjoying what they enjoy. Mearls has no problem with dense rules or detailed lore. So those are not the important factors at play.

I didn't fail to see that. I understand he has issues with people who do that. I was responding to your claim "it's white boys who play and so they want other white boys to play with them", and not his claims. He made no claims about race what so ever, for example, so I think it's pretty darn obvious my reply was to what you said, not Mike Mearls....even if my literally quoting you and using your language in reply didn't make it clear to begin with.

It’s the gatekeeping that he’s criticizing, not the tools used to gatekeep.

Yes and no. He's saying people who gatekeep with rules, are also the people who are sexist to women, and that a primary tool they use to be sexist to women is that rules tool. And I am disputing the premise of "People who gatekeep with rules are also the same people who are sexist to women". I don't think there is any more overlap between those two sets of people than "People who role play a lot" for example. I just don't think there is a correlation, and I have yet to see anything other than anecdotes to back up the claim there is one.

Now...I just threw out the comment about the traditional demo of D&D from the old days to illustrate the connection that you failed to see. I don’t attribute such behavior to all or most long time players who fit that description.

Let me see if I follow you here - you don't attribute that behavior to all or most of those players, but you claimed I failed to see a connection to them? You appear to be disputing yourself. There was no connection - you JUST said there was no connection so why are you concerned I failed to see a connection that was not there?

But if you don’t think that there are some old grogs who think D&D is “being dumbed down for the masses” who also don’t want women involved in the hobby....

I didn't say i don't think some exist. I said I don't think the two are related. I don't think behavior A causes B, or is found more commonly along with B than other factors. Just because some people exhibit both A and B doesn't mean A and B usually run together. And I don't think anecdotes which were directly prompted by Mike Mearls and then self-selected to respond to him about that very topic are representative of a general connection between the two.

I will ask again because I have yet to get a response, from anyone, on this aspect. Are you saying you have never seen people behave in a sexist manner towards female players in an RPG by use of role playing (like hitting on women in the game, or having their PC be intentionally gross to make a female player feel uncomfortable)? And if you have seen it, then why isn't it entirely possible sexism towards women in gaming isn't correlated to liking dense rules and lore, but instead can be found with all sorts of players whose only real common denominator is they're all behaving in a sexist manner and who use whichever aspect of the game they otherwise happen to prefer (dense rules and lore, a tendency to try and keep the game insular, role playing, powergaming, rules lawyering, dominating people's turns, whatever) as their tool of choice? I don't think any particular player-preference correlates with sexism. I think sexist people use whatever player-preferences they happen to have.

 

[Gradine]

Hiya!

Hiya!

1. I don't care that the new hire at WotC has XX chromosomes. I do care about if she's going to produce something I like, can use, and will buy. The only thing that can determine that is time, and her. I am a bit skeptical based on what I've heard about her lack of direct RPG DM'ing experience. But...I am hopefully optimistic.

What you've heard about her lack of direct RPG DM'ing experience is baseless speculation by people who've demonstrated their skepticism does seem to relate to the individual-in-question's gender.

2. Can somebody, anybody, please point me to a good description of just what "toxic" means in regards to the uses it has been use in this thread? I get that it is generally a "negative connotation" or "not a good thing"...but what defines if a person is "toxic"? Anybody? Beuler? ... Beuler? ... Beuler?

Not that anybody should need this defined for them, but basically it means being horrible to other people in a way that drives them out of the hobby. It's usually behavior backed by misogyny, racism, or some other kind of bias (whether conscious or unconscious). It doesn't necessarily have to be; people who scare away newbies by criticizing their character choices as "sub-optimal" could be defined as toxic as well.

3. My experience in regards to the "boys club" or "no girls allowed" stuff in RPG/Gaming is simple: Never encountered it. As in, never. Zero. My wife (Yen-Wang-Yeh rest her soul) joined in a couple of other gaming groups when we were just dating/going out. She never expressed anything along the line of "the don't want/like me because of XX". She did leave a couple of those groups because the people playing them were either using RPG'ing as an excuse to get drunk/high, or because they were extreme "Munchkins" (as we called them [powergamers who cheat] back in the day). So...yeah. I'm not seeing any sort of barrier to gaming for anyone other than people who have barriers to general social behaviour and capability. (e.g., the type of people who you wouldn't want to hang around with anyway).

See my earlier post above. It's great that you've never personally witnessed or experienced such gatekeeping yourself. Seriously, consider yourself blessed. Do you believe that because you've never seen/experienced yourself, it must not exist at all? Do you believe the people who have been, for years, constantly sharing stories describing their interactions with other gamers who have made them feel unwelcome, based on their race, gender or other identity charistics? Do you happen to believe that each and every one of those people are either (a) lying, or (b) misinterpreting behavior because they're being too sensitive?

4. There is no #4. There is only Zule.

I'm not actually sure who the Keymaster is in this situation? Is it Mearls?

 

[Eltab]

Given that the term "sexist" is usually aimed at "all men", not "that jerk standing right there", I would stay FAR away from using it to describe part of a group of individuals who share some interest.
The others will hear what you connotate-ed, not what you denotate-ed, and get mad at the un-deserved insult.

 

[billd91]

3. My experience in regards to the "boys club" or "no girls allowed" stuff in RPG/Gaming is simple: Never encountered it. As in, never. Zero. My wife (Yen-Wang-Yeh rest her soul) joined in a couple of other gaming groups when we were just dating/going out. She never expressed anything along the line of "the don't want/like me because of XX". She did leave a couple of those groups because the people playing them were either using RPG'ing as an excuse to get drunk/high, or because they were extreme "Munchkins" (as we called them [powergamers who cheat] back in the day). So...yeah. I'm not seeing any sort of barrier to gaming for anyone other than people who have barriers to general social behaviour and capability. (e.g., the type of people who you wouldn't want to hang around with anyway).

You may have been lucky. But the behavior has been a bit uneven. From accounts I've read, one of the most targeted groups for hostile gatekeepers in recent years has been cosplayers, and if that's not something you've been into, then you may have been a little less likely to encounter it.

 

[redrick]

Given that the term "sexist" is usually aimed at "all men", not "that jerk standing right there", I would stay FAR away from using it to describe part of a group of individuals who share some interest.
The others will hear what you connotate-ed, not what you denotate-ed, and get mad at the un-deserved insult.

Pretty sure sexist is generally used to refer to specific people or specific things.

When just talking about men in general, the phrase is "men are the worst!" But even this is often directed more at some men than others.

 

[Parmandur]

Hiya!

1. I don't care that the new hire at WotC has XX chromosomes. I do care about if she's going to produce something I like, can use, and will buy. The only thing that can determine that is time, and her. I am a bit skeptical based on what I've heard about her lack of direct RPG DM'ing experience. But...I am hopefully optimistic.

2. Can somebody, anybody, please point me to a good description of just what "toxic" means in regards to the uses it has been use in this thread? I get that it is generally a "negative connotation" or "not a good thing"...but what defines if a person is "toxic"? Anybody? Beuler? ... Beuler? ... Beuler?

3. My experience in regards to the "boys club" or "no girls allowed" stuff in RPG/Gaming is simple: Never encountered it. As in, never. Zero. My wife (Yen-Wang-Yeh rest her soul) joined in a couple of other gaming groups when we were just dating/going out. She never expressed anything along the line of "the don't want/like me because of XX". She did leave a couple of those groups because the people playing them were either using RPG'ing as an excuse to get drunk/high, or because they were extreme "Munchkins" (as we called them [powergamers who cheat] back in the day). So...yeah. I'm not seeing any sort of barrier to gaming for anyone other than people who have barriers to general social behaviour and capability. (e.g., the type of people who you wouldn't want to hang around with anyway).

4. There is no #4. There is only Zule.

^_^

Paul L. Ming

To point one, part of the oddity is that there is reason to my knowledge to doubt that she has DM experience.

 

[Parmandur]

Kate Welch Tweeted today about the table she is DMing at ECCC:

hey... wanna play D&D with me at ECCC?? two tickets left at my table at https://t.co/yTvNyRpbRD (and one ticket left at [MENTION=13127]chrisp[/MENTION]erkinsDnD's table if you're into that or whatever)

So, she is a known DM in the Seattle D&D community.

 

[FrogReaver]

Thread TLDR all.

Have we determined if Wotc hired the woman because her credentials or because she has the most credentials of any woman they could find?

 

[3catcircus]

To point one, part of the oddity is that there is reason to my knowledge to doubt that she has DM experience.

So what?

In my profession, I want people who have experience with one thing but I'm happy to take people who have experience in a different, but equally challenging thing - because they have proven that they grasp the big picture of large, complex engineering problems and that they can be trained.

This is the same type of situation. They hired someone to be a designer (a "look at the big picture, ask what-if questions, come up with an idea, and hand it off to the developers to turn it into game mechanics" type of role). WotC likely considers that she has proven experience doing that. It isn't for random people on the internet to second-guess their hiring practices. When a product with her name on it comes out, feel free to critique it.