D&D 5E Should the next edition of D&D promote more equality?

[Savage Wombat]

I had to google "scaly llamas". That was a great link.

 

[Sunseeker]

People are way to sensitive about stuff in a fantasy game.
I would love to see a campaign world where the following existed:
> a few kingdoms females could not own land
> an amazonian society where men are only seen as slaves for labor or breeding
> a city with no orc blooded signs posted at the local taverns and stores
> a society that keeps halflings as house servents and sold on slave ships [they take up less space]
> where a church of a good religion persecutes those with alternate sexual preferences or identities
> a kingdom of elves that treat humans as slaves and considers them non people

I'm pretty sure there's a fairly long list of official and unofficial settings, campaigns and adventures where those exist.

 

[haakon1]

You, I, and everyone else can do what they wish in their own campaigns. But, what if you added a gay NPC to one of your towns? For example, a wizard.

Right away, there's questions to answer. Does the wizard try to hide that he's gay, or is he open about it? If he tries to keep it secret, why? What's the attitude of the townspeople towards homosexuals? Perhaps they're cool with it. Or maybe they treat homosexuality as an abomination. NPC groups aren't obliged to depict perfect acceptance. Just considering those questions brings plenty of story possibilities to mind.

Gygax was asked here "why no gay characters in Greyhawk", and he said, essentially: of course there are gay characters, and there always have been! He pointed to Rufus and Burne, the "roommates" who share a castle in the Village of Hommlett.

I think this "don't ask, don't tell" approach makes sense as the default or "official" D&D settings, as it allows any approach to the issue. D&D is a global game, and a lot of cultures just aren't going to appreciate an emphasis on homosexuality in the game. For much of Asia, and parts of the US and other Western countries, that would be an issue they just don't want to deal with. D&D isn't going to be what makes gay marriage happen in a country, or not.

On Rufus and Burne:
http://gaygamer.net/2007/03/top_10_gayest_tabletop_charact_9.html

 

[haakon1]

And even when the core book had an implied setting (Greyhawk in 3e) they had black and SE Asian iconics, despite both not being a part of that setting. It doesn't break the world; heroes are tupically exceptions to th norm.

Greyhawk actually has at least 7 human races. Greyhawk mixes things up enough that it's not precisely that same as real-world races, intentionally, but you can pretty much cover any looks you can think of within the setting.

The major "non-European skin-toned" races (skipping the people of the neighboring continent of Hepmonaland, who are essentially sub-Saharan African and the river-nomad Rhennee who are essentially Roma/Gypsies):

"The Baklunish have skin of golden tones, and straight, fine-textured hair that is universally dark, ranging from dusky brown to bluish-black. Their eyes are usually green or gray-green; hazel and gray eyes are rare. They tend to be long of limb and facial feature, with high cheekbones."

"Pure Flan have bronze skin, ranging from a light copper hue to a dark, deep brown. Flan eyes are usually dark brown, black, brown, or amber. Hair is wavy or curly and typically black or brown (or any shade between). The Flannae have broad, strong faces and sturdy builds."

"The Olman have skin of rich red-brown or dark brown color. Their hair is always straight and black and their eyes dark, from medium brown to nearly black. Olman have high cheekbones and high-bridged noses, a trait less strong in those of common birth. Some nobles still flatten the foreheads of their young for a high, slopping shape that is considered beautiful."

 

[haakon1]

Besides, why are there no gay or lesbian couples? All questions of diversity aside, that ought to screw up verisimilitude for anybody.

I agree, but that's a "fluff" question for the DM of your campaign, not WOTC as the "crunch" writer.

If you read the longwinded write-up of the noble families in my campaign, you'd see I have plenty of gay NPC's in there, some essentially open, others closeted to various degrees.

But the players haven't seemed to notice or care why, for example, the last nobleman they visited was an unmarried 40-something. I have a reason (and in his case, not homosexuality but a tangled heterosexual affair gone wrong/torch song issue with the wife of the neighboring noble, by whom he has an illegitimate son who's the cuckolded noble's official heir), but the PC's never even questioned it. I like to take a "Steve Jobs approach" to DMing, where I'm not satisfied if the stuff the PC's don't even look at doesn't have a good reason for it. (Jobs said in carpentry, even the side of a cabinet no one ever sees should be done right and beautiful.) I don't mind if my players never check the back of the cabinet -- the pleasure is the campaign craftsmanship itself.

That said, I assume most campaigns -- and certainly most parties -- don't really care about the love lives of the NPC's.

If you want gay character in your campaign, do it already. If your goal is verisimilitude, it would indeed seem strange not to have homosexual NPC's, just as it would be strange not to have a tax system and a financial services industry.

That doesn't mean WOTC needs a chapter on any of these topics in the PHB, or adventures in which it's important that the NPC is a tax collector. They shouldn't be prohibited from a plot with a tax collector or banker or money lender, but they shouldn't be pilloried for not writing up 10% of the traveling merchants are actually in financial services and accounting.

 

[haakon1]

Deleting my link on JC Penney's financial flop, as that's already been covered.

I will say it annoys me that lots of important NPC's in modules are not "well motivated" and don't have details of their background filled in. For example, the Baron in WOTC's "The Speaker in Dreams" (a 3e module I'm currently running) is described thusly:

"The climax of the adventure comes when the characters head to the keep to confront the baron himself. ... the baron is unmarried, but his younger sister, Eriana, shares the manor house, along with with her husband, Friedan, and their four children. ... Baron Euphemes is a striking man, standing 6 feet 6 inches tall. He has distinctly noble features, a regal bearing, and an excellent physique. He wears an ornate breastplate, greaves, and a leather skirt, carries a fine steel shield bearing his family crest (an eagle), and wears a splendid longsword at his side. A coat of rich purple velvet trimmed with sable completes his attire."

That's probably more detail about him than most major NPC's get, but it would be helpful to know more about his personality and relationships in running him.

If fear of saying this "might be gay" character is gay is what we're talking about, yes, I'd be in favor of being clear from the author on who a specific NPC is and what motivates him, including what relationships are important to him.

 

[Libramarian]

Statistically speaking, true...for the real world. But just like we don't have large, fire-breathing dragons in the skies over Boulder, Co, we don't have to slavishly follow the satistics of the RW for humans in a fantasy realm.

(Hell, D&D humans already have another characteristic RW humans don't have: the ability to successfully have viable offspring with creatures of extremely different species.)

I think the mathematics of the normal distribution is one of those basic real world things that would have to also be true in a fantasy world for me to relate to and care about it. Like fire is hot, water is wet, and such.

If you're going for a similar but different argument, that one could think of female PCs as being selected less randomly than male PCs, I would be more amenable to that. I guess that would be how I would justify the absence of gender-based mechanical differences.

If we wanted to get realistic, we could include all kinds of stat modifiers: sex, social status, nutrition, genetics, Pre-adventuring career & training, lazy person vs driven, etc.

But like so many other things, D&D abstracts things greatly, and gives a single main stat modifier based on race and another based on age, and leaves it at that. Arbitrary? Sure. Other games DO include some of those factors. But most of them don't have the same level of abstraction as D&D.

Furthermore, if we do add the Str mod for men, we have to do other gender-based modifiers that favor females. Do we really want gender modifiers that make men less accurate shooters or less pain tolerant just so we can have them be stronger than women? And how would we do some of those?

"Pain Tolerance" sounds like something Con based. But Con also controls things like endurance & resistance to fatigue. Accuracy is a Dex based thing, but playing a stringed instrument like a guitar also requires "dexterity"...and male players dominate the list of "fastest guitar players" in the world.

Introducing gender based stat mods in the interests of statistical accuracy would be, as I stated, a fools game. D&D stats are too abstracted for something like that to work.

Eh, I'm not sure gender-based mechanical differences would be so out of touch with the level of abstraction present elsewhere in the system. They make sense to me in the context of 1e at least, where you also have mods based on age. They don't strike me as wildly out of sync with the rest of the game.

That's one of those "technically true, but will still get you slapped at a party" arguments. It displays a stunning lack of sensitivity to the issues at hand. I believe other discussions on these boards have shown that while cross-gender play is possible, most of us don't want to play that way.

I'm not insensitive to the feelings of other gamers--that's why I ultimately don't like gender-based character restrictions. I was simply pointing out an inaccurate and misleading statement as such. This is not a retort I would make to a player at the table who didn't like the mechanic.

Given a strong desire to play same-gender, such restrictions then do become player-restrictions.

The truth is somewhere in the middle.

Now, that's a bad argument in this debate. Making female players play across gender just to get the same mechanical advantage of the male players playing their own?

Not making an argument in favour of gender-based mechanical discrimination. I was just pointing out that it's an exaggeration to equate female character penalties with female player penalties. I make the same comment when people say LFQW is unfair to fighter players.

 

[TanithT]

Not making an argument in favour of gender-based mechanical discrimination. I was just pointing out that it's an exaggeration to equate female character penalties with female player penalties.

I can not think of any better way to send the message to women that this game is not for them and they are not welcome at the table than to explain as to how they have to roleplay as men unless they want to be handicapped in game play.

 

[Libramarian]

I would say I am in favour of more sex & romance-related content in general (compared to the current status quo, not saying the game should become pornographic).

I think if you try to completely desex the game you're throwing away a huge opportunity to interest new young gamers. Sex appeal is ubiquitous in other forms of fantasy media (e.g. Twilight).

I think it's more important to diversify the sex appeal of the game, rather than to reduce the elements that appeal to young straight males (cheesecake).

Broaden the game's appeal, don't reduce it.

I have no problem with the depiction of homosexual relationships in the game.

That being said I do find some of the poses and outfits that attractive female characters wear (e.g. The Hawkeye Initiative poses, chainmail bikinis) to be cliched and silly.

I can not think of any better way to send the message to women that this game is not for them and they are not welcome at the table than to explain as to how they have to roleplay as men unless they want to be handicapped in game play.

I can think of a few things that would be more exclusionary than that but I agree that that's undesirable.

 

[billd91]

Not making an argument in favour of gender-based mechanical discrimination. I was just pointing out that it's an exaggeration to equate female character penalties with female player penalties. I make the same comment when people say LFQW is unfair to fighter players.

That is not even close to an equivalent situation. I'm flabbergasted that you can't seem to understand that.