Celebrim
Legend
You're adding that yourself. I never said that. I said default D&D wasn't - as claimed - medieval Europe.
Well, as long as we are going to be semantic about it, the person you were responding to did not, as you claim, say D&D was medieval Europe. He in fact said, "D&D is patterned after medieval Europe", which is arguably quite as true or untrue as the claim that "D&D is a fantasy world of magic and dragons and elves." depending on how generous we are going to be in our understanding (which is apparently not much). Certainly the default setting of D&D is a fantasy world of magic and dragons and elves that is patterned after medieval Europe. Elves and dragons are after all features of fantasy medieval Europe, things that the medieval may have believed weren't fantasy but a real if rare and usually unseen part of their world. The hobbits and the elves are patterned after Tolkien's grand fantasy conception of middle earth, which is inarguably inspired and patterned after Medieval Europe and medieval epic romances. Neither of you however qualified your statement with 'default' or 'most usual'.
Yes, you do have to make D&D medieval Europe, but whatever setting you choose you have to make that too. You have to either homebrew or buy a setting book. Either way, you are making the world. There are published guides for playing D&D as a Viking campaign, or as a Roman campaign, or in bronze age Judea, or in Victorian Europe, and many many other besides. Is 'Masque of the Red Death' not D&D? And if it is D&D, then it is inarguably true that D&D is not "a fantasy world of magic and dragons and elves."
D&D is far more than that.
Again, you're adding stuff from your own mind; that didn't come from me. I was just responding to someone who told us D&D was medieval Europe.
Ok fine. So tell me what you think anyway. Is it inarguably sexist for a character burner/builder to generate different results for men and women?
What your campaign setting is is your business. But equally, you can't pronounce "D&D is playing evil goblins in a vast multicultural space empire spanning all of space and time". The very best you can say is that your campaign is.
And equally the very best you can say is "my campaign is a fantasy setting with dragons and elves". That's not even true of every published setting for D&D, much less homebrews. So if the originally poster was taking too much of short cut by saying D&D is patterned after medieval Europe, your focusing on that particular phrasing I think very much misses the point. Let's have a frank and open discussion about sexism in gaming, so long as you are allowing this thread to be open, and not a frank discussion about semantics and the meaning of the word 'is' and 'we'.
By 'we' I mean those of us participating in the thread. Do we stand by the conclusion that it is inarguably true that a published setting or rules set with a character burner or builder that generates different results for men and women is sexist? Is that something we all could endorse as obvious, and can we all agree that anyone who disagrees is self-evidently sexist? Because ultimately by raising the cry of 'sexist' we are passing moral judgment. You've closed threads before because the cry of 'sexist' was raised over issues like this. This is your house, and you are participating in the thread. I'd like to know what you think.