D&D (2024) (+) New Edition Changes for Inclusivity (discuss possibilities)

[TheSword]

Loved that show! Not sure a parody of another story that d&d is influenced by counts though

 

[Aldarc]

Time to bring back Blue Rose.

It was updated by Green Ronin for their AGE system.

 

[Maxperson]

I'm sorry, but, this is easily disproven.

Prior to 2015 and the release of 5e, the demographics of D&D was virtually entirely white, male and young. This wasn't something that people made up. It is a fact.

Tons of gamers who were white, young and male in the 70's and 80's still played in 2000's and were not young anymore.

Now, after 2015, we see a massive surge in female gamers for the first time in the games history. We see a surge in various minorities playing the game. To the point where last I heard, we're about 40% female gamers now? Something to that effect.

So, if the game was so welcoming to outsiders, so completely without hate or prejudice, how do you explain that for the first forty-five years of its history, until the publishers actively started honestly changing the books to be more welcoming and less offensive, the hobby was overwhelmingly white and male?

Because it was not socially acceptable. It was still a "nerd/geek" game until then. It slowly became main stream and people who were not interested in it before became interested in playing D&D. I had multiple groups that tried to get women to play D&D from the 1990's through the 2000's and got turned down time and time again. A few women tried it and then left, because they didn't like it. Once D&D became basically main stream, with the help of shows like Stranger Things and Big Bang Theory, a lot more women tried the game.

 

[Alzrius]

Tons of gamers who were white, young and male in the 70's and 80's still played in 2000's and were not young anymore.

Make note of the WotC RPG market survey that Wizards of the Coast conducted in 1999. According to it, among the U.S. population ages 12 to 35, 19% of the people who played tabletop RPGs on a monthly basis were female. It also noted the following conclusion:

Second, it is clear that female gamers constitute a significant portion of the hobby gaming audience; essentially a fifth of the total market. This represents a total population of several million active female hobby gamers. However, females, as a group, spend less than males on the hobby.

 

[jmartkdr2]

Your expectation of a canine playable race raises an interesting point. At what point should it be a reasonable expectation that a person’s preferred race should be made available to them because of inclusivity.

If dog humanoids don’t exist in common literature, film, or myth, should the writers be expected to conjure them fresh from the ether.

Maybe it’s better that if it feels that important to you, someone could easily publish a canine, vulpine or bovine race on DM Guild. Or maybe play a toned down lycanthrope.

I don't think you'll find any animal-person hybrid concept that doesn't exist in literature (all media) somewhere. But I digress - the answer here is to make a 'build your own race' tool that gets balanced-enough results to fit with the existing races. Then I can play a Honey-Badger person that fits my idea of what that means without needing to homebrew from scratch. Because, and I know this will come as a shock to some people, homebrewing something balanced is not trivially easy. If it was, there would be no bad homebrew.

That's an easy-ish answer to one area of potential exclusion. Kind of like renaming certain things - calling barbarians berzerkers is slightly less colonialist and slightly more accurate to what the class is all about, so let's do that.

 

[Deset Gled]

You may not be aware of it, but there are two things in that statement that are offensive. First you group all furries into a narrow stereotype ( fursuiters ), and then dismiss their concerns as frivolous and unimportant..

You are literally complaining about the fact that your preference isn't the most statistically optimal choice, and then claiming that it means I'm being offensive and not inclusive. Yes, I dismiss that as frivolous and unimportant.

Furthermore, I do not recognize "furry" as a protected class.

 

[roger semerad]

Your expectation of a canine playable race raises an interesting point. At what point should it be a reasonable expectation that a person’s preferred race should be made available to them because of inclusivity.

If dog humanoids don’t exist in common literature, film, or myth, should the writers be expected to conjure them fresh from the ether.

The answer of course, is the point where WotC sees more profit coming in than it would cost them to develop it. It would be nice for them to do it out of the goodness of their heart, and maybe that can factor in when deciding where the line is, but in the end WotC is most concerned with money.

You are literally complaining about the fact that your preference isn't the most statistically optimal choice, and then claiming that it means I'm being offensive and not inclusive. Yes, I dismiss that as frivolous and unimportant.

Furthermore, I do not recognize "furry" as a protected class.

The dismissive and offensive part of that statement was the idea that a magical hat that superficially adds the appearance of a furry over an existing race was an adequate solution to the problem. In hindsight I should have made that more clear. The ability score thing is just a disagreement.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

The problem is:
Where do you draw the line...

After eliminating allignment, you can discuss ability scores, next is racial abilities, because they are stereotypical...

I don't want to stop inclusiveness, but at aome point you need stereotypical assignments or you have to throw the whole fantasy settings over board.

Probably you have to divide between cultural and biological differences first and then see what works.

 

[jmartkdr2]

The problem is:
Where do you draw the line...

After eliminating allignment, you can discuss ability scores, next is racial abilities, because they are stereotypical...

I don't want to stop inclusiveness, but at aome point you need stereotypical assignments or you have to throw the whole fantasy settings over board.

Probably you have to divide between cultural and biological differences first and then see what works.

That's always one of the tough questions.

(For ability scores - I don't find the inclusivity argument for changing them very strong, but I do think loosening them up results in greater character diversity with few downsides so I'm all for that change.)

For example: I really don't like the idea that any class should work with any ability score. "You can play whatever you want" is one of the more annoying sales pitches for DnD, because you always need to fit both the game and the table, and some classes leaning on certain ability scores is part of that. If you want to play a wizard, you gotta be smart. If you want to play a not-smart magic user, there's other classes for that. I'm all for getting rid of silly restrictions (ie bards can't be lawful) but not all restrictions are bad for the game or exclusionary.

 

[Remathilis]

I think people are mixing up inclusiveness (be accepted for your differences) with homogeny (everyone being equally good at all things). It's ok if dwarves are better fighters than elves or halflings are stealthier than orcs if they all have a niche. It's quite another to say orcs are inferior to dwarves, elves, and halflings in all things but destruction.