So I was talking with Emily Care over PM, and I was regretting that I hadn't waited a bit later to write Girls Don't Roleplay for my RPGnet column, because I feel (and several people mentioned this when the article came out) that I only really addressed the tip of the iceberg. Issues of women in roleplaying inevitably relate to issues of representation in general, whether it's representation of women, minorities, other cultures, etc. And those issues or representation go beyond roleplaying to embrace all media.

In any case, what brought these issues back to the forefront for me was Edward Said's landmark book Orientalism, which I've finally gotten around to reading. I'm only through the introduction, but I can tell that this is one of those texts that tends to reaffirm what one always suspected. Let me drop a few quotes, so you can see where I'm coming from:

Edward W. Said wrote: Orientalism is premised on exteriority, that is, on the fact that the Orientalist, poet or scholar, makes the Orient speak, describes the Orient, renders its mysteries plain for and to the West... The exteriority of the representation is always governed by some version of the truism that if the Orient could represent itself, it would; since it cannot, the representation does the job, for the West and for the poor Orient.

...The things to look at are styles, figures of speech, setting, narrative devices, historical and social circumstances, not the correctness of the representation nor its fidelity to some great original... There is no such thing as a delivered presence, but a re-presence, or a representation. The value efficacy, strength, apparent veracity of a written statement about the Orient therefore relies very little, and cannot instrumentally depend, on the Orient as such. On the contrary, the written statement is a presence to the reader by virtue of its having excluded, displaced, made supererogatory any such real thing as "the Orient."

Hey,

I found your article interesting, and this post too. One thing though, while, I was reading that article and this post, something seemed to tug at me. It was this:

#1 -- Hands-Off: Group X knows their own tastes. Let them write their own games, based on what they want to play.
#2 -- Hands-On: Everyone has complex tastes. Write your own games, based on what you want to play.

The exteriority of the representation is always governed by some version of the truism that if the Orient could represent itself, it would; since it cannot, the representation does the job, for the West and for the poor Orient.

It's quite possible that the "voiceless" actually do have a lot to say and they are saying it. The problem may just be that nobody's listening.

1. Don't Speak from the Outside. Give voice to your own ideas and beliefs, not those of someone else. You can provide a forum for someone else to say something, but don't upstage them.

2. Your Game is a Polemic, Not a Model. Forget accuracy; argue for a specific worldview. If people don't want to live in that world, they'll drift your game in another direction, construct their own world to live in, or play another game with another worldview.

3. Setting Can Be As or More Important Than System. This is especially try in rules-lite, high-trust, and freeform games, but goes for all others as well. The Forge should be more open to addressing issues of setting and the complexities of transmitting a polemical worldview to players of your game.

Hi Jonathan,

Excellent subject.

A major point of roleplaying is identification with the character. It IS noticed when characters you identify with are absent or represented according to someone else's strange ideas of them.

I have been fortunate to play mostly with groups of color, either as the majority or as the whole. And universally, no matter the set of players, either ethnic groups were added to a setting, the ones available were defined if they had no real definition before, or the definition was completely reworked to something folks felt more comfortable with.

A notable difference is that when playing groups not ethnically dominant, arguments would crop up similar to the Sim/Nar debate about samurai, except replace samurai with asian, black, latino, etc. "That's not how asian people are!" "Um, not all asian people are the same...", etc.

I suspect it can only be similar for women in regards to gender.

Unfortunately, I don't have any solid advice to give to designers in regards to representation of race or gender. Leaving folks absent is wack, misrepresenting them according to a shallow viewpoint is wack, and giving folks a brief 2 sentence description that boils down to, "Oh, yeah, and the Asian people live on THIS continent" is wack as well. So far, the best answer to date is to acknowledge folks existance, but not to overdefine them, that has been our personal take on it.

Chris

Ravien wrote: I think girls should start making their own games and stop expecting men to make them for them, or else stop complaining. I read some of those forums on RPG.net and all I see is a bunch of people wanting the industry to change for them. ...If girls make games that appeal to girls, more girls would play.

If they talk, obviously, people listen.

I wouldn't say to forget accuracy. The more a game accurately reflects us, the more we can identify with our characters and the world.

...but setting is far easier to generate on-the-fly than system, and so system is more valuable.

Hey Jonathan,

Very interesting post. (And great, thought-provoking quotes from Said.)

2. Your Game is a Polemic, Not a Model. Forget accuracy; argue for a specific worldview. If people don't want to live in that world, they'll drift your game in another direction, construct their own world to live in, or play another game with another worldview.

Do you think My Life with Master is a polemic? My advice to James West regarding his game, The Stranger, was:

Narrativist games aren't about what you can learn from the designer, or from the system, but what you can learn from each other. Create a conversation, and you might end up advancing an agenda. Focus on advancing an agenda, and you fail to create a conversation.

And I think this describes My Life with Master. Definitely the game scopes the conversation...but the polemics are delivered by the participants during play.

Paul

Paul,

Very interesting point. Especially considering something that came to me the other day. I was telling a buddy about the 24 Hour RPG Challenge and he asked "So you have to design a System and a Setting in 24 hours?" My answer was "There are two ways to design an RPG: 1. A System and a Setting. 2. A System and a Premise." I didn't think anything of it at the time, but now that i've sat back it's an interesting dichotemy (and probably merits discussion in its own thread.

Most Narrativist games present a Premise instead of a Setting as far as i can tell. I would say that every Premise is a Polemic. Basicly stating a Premise is a statement that that Premise is interesting and/or important to address. That is a worldview that you are presenting.

However, you bring up a really interesting point that playing a game (especially a game designed to address a Premise) generates even greater polemics because the players further define their Worldview to each other. The fact that they are all playing is (hopefully) an indicator that they agree with the basic statement "This Premise is worth our time to address." In actually addressing said Premise they argue for, or against, the Worldviews that they present to one another.

I think that makes sense... However, i'm pretty well known for incoherent babbling so i may not be making any sense...

Thomas

Paul, I think MLwM is certainly polemical in the way I mean here, which is: "this is the way this game is supposed to be played." I keep thinking back to GM section, where you specifically describe the kind of pacing and aggressive scene framing that you want. I was originally talking about polemics and worldviews mostly to refer to settings, but in MLWM the setting and system are so tightly intertwined that I don't think you can really seperate them. You couldn't use MLwM to explore different kinds of relationships; it's all about a twisted master-servant relationship; that's what the system is built to do. And you certainly seem to have very clear ideas about how to structure and explore that relationship.

I think the conversational aspect that you're talking about comes from an openness to new ideas and trying new things. I play MLwM and, over the course of play, I'm reponding to the polemic that you put forth in the game. You say "frame scenes aggressively" and I try to figure out how to do that, even if I'm unfamiliar with it. I already feel like I'm in conversation with Vincent's "Dogs in the Vineyard" and I haven't even played it. I just keep interacting with various components in my head and mentally responding to what Vincent is arguing for.

In fact, come to think of it, the people to whose work I respond the strongest are those who have a very clear idea of what their game is supposed to do and argue for it all the way through the game, in system, setting, writing, pictures, graphic design, whatever. Because they're clear about what they want, I can be clear in my response to it. Now, I certainly wouldn't ever have created anything like MLwM or Doggies, but that's the great part. I get to play inside other people's twisted worldviews! But that's only possible if they argue them for me and show me how they make sense, to them.

I also agree with LordSmurf that the magnifying glass effect of "see this here? play a game about that!" is quite polemical in and of itself, which is why broad, diverse, unfocused games aren't nearly as polemical. D&D and Exalted certainly say some things about how they should be played and what their worldview is, but it's often a mixed message sent by scores of authors and pages and pages of mixed material.

I never get what these sort of posts are about. They usually try to be tread carefully in so many areas I can't see the goal for the PC.

Is it about getting bums on seats? Personally I see the female demographic as a great untapped resource.

Or is it about man-woman respect and politics and how we can cover that?

"Oh no, its a bit of both"

Oh man, I think any attempt to cover both at the same time is like trying to swollow a spring bock whole. Unless your head can dislocate into eighteen seperate pieces like a anaconda, your not going to manage it. (God I loved using that wacked analogy there!)

Personally as a male I'd like to concentrate on what I estimate would get those bums on seats. Of course anything I say would have some girl or even guy come in and say 'that's not true', never mind the fact that one can't really say anything about guys, as a man, and be true either.

Callan,

I like your analogy, and I think you’re 100% right about one thing – we need to make sure we’re clear on what this thread is about, otherwise it could very, very quickly splinter and get way off track.

But I think the whole “PC” thing a) dismissive and b) a red herring.

a) It’s a way of saying, “I can’t be bothered to listen to what you’re saying and take it seriously. With one swift acronym I can pack it up and sweep it away.” I’d submit that once it gets brought out, it adds nothing to the quality of a discussion.

And b) it’s particularly unhelpful here. While Jonathan’s post is framed by "women in gaming," I think he did himself a bit of a disfavor by using it to frame his post. Because I don’t think it’s really the main point of this thread, but I do think it’s most likely to be the thing people latch onto to jockey for political cache about. (Jonathan, let me know if I’m reading you incorrectly here, and you really do mean to focus on that issue.) I think it’s just an example, a concrete starting point, a frame for introducing and getting at the main point, which Ben gets to at the end of his post and which Chris, Paul, and Thomas have all replied to directly. And that point is summed up at the end of the first post:

So I guess I have three main points here:

1. Don't Speak from the Outside. Give voice to your own ideas and beliefs, not those of someone else. You can provide a forum for someone else to say something, but don't upstage them.

2. Your Game is a Polemic, Not a Model. Forget accuracy; argue for a specific worldview. If people don't want to live in that world, they'll drift your game in another direction, construct their own world to live in, or play another game with another worldview.

3. Setting Can Be As or More Important Than System. This is especially try in rules-lite, high-trust, and freeform games, but goes for all others as well. The Forge should be more open to addressing issues of setting and the complexities of transmitting a polemical worldview to players of your game.

Leaving folks absent is wack, misrepresenting them according to a shallow viewpoint is wack, and giving folks a brief 2 sentence description that boils down to, "Oh, yeah, and the Asian people live on THIS continent" is wack as well. So far, the best answer to date is to acknowledge folks existance, but not to overdefine them, that has been our personal take on it.

I think you have admirably stated what i was thinking Rich.

I would further add that i read Jonathan as saying "First, recognize that RPGs are abstractions and that they can never be 'objective' because (just as in news) you spin all information to fit your worldview. Second, since everything in your design will be biased, recognize and accept that bias is okay and unavoidable. Third, since bias is okay and will be there anyway you should use it intentionally, figure out what polemic view you are putting forward in your game and then make everything support that polemic."

I could be off base, but that's what i'm seeing here. Essentially, designing a System that supports a polemic view (like: Swords are really cool) and failing to design a Setting or Premise that also supports that same polemic results in a game that could be much better than you've made it. As much as possible, every mechanic and setting vignette should reinforce the polemic position of the game.

I'm sure Jonathan will let me know if i'm misunderstading him.

Thomas

Thanks for keeping us on-track, Rich. I think you and Thomas both nailed what I was trying to say about polemics. It's interesting too that point #3 is basically "Setting Does Matter" :) I hadn't noticed that before...

Rich Forest wrote: "How do you let other groups speak through your game?" I mean, practically speaking. I'm probably not going to answer that question right now. Jonathan, tag, you're it.

Hi Jonathan,

After some digestion and thought, here's some more things that had occured to me;

"Hokey for hokey is ok"

If I play Ninja Burger, then I understand that it in no way represents asian people in a real sense. Likewise with Feng Shui. Both games make it abundantly clear that they are not to be construed as "realistic" or "meaningful" in any sense. Although it is interesting to note that the only game I've seen apply stereotypes for pulp/humor factor universally is octaNe. It's interesting to note that these games generally poke fun at the stereotypes, but are not really opening the conversation to more meaningful discussion about them(and that's fine, given the sorts of games they are).

"The law of...close enough..."

Other games attempt to grab real world cultures and slap them into fantasy settings. When doing this, they tend to claim immunity from misrepresentation by "Oh, but this isn't Earth!", though everyone knows that the game is about Samurais, Aztecs, Babylonians, or what have you. This is often a fine line to walk where the cultures can be close enough to open an interesting sort of discussion through play about what each culture may be or not be, but it can just as easily slide into "No, that's how these people ARE..." issues as well.

Prime example being Heroquest's Glorantha, although stuff like Legend of the 5 Rings also sits here too.

Here's some ideas to consider:

•Directed Reference

Instead of "summarising" a culture or group, try referring folks to the actual culture(and general history time) itself. "Check out 14th century China, you can read these books and here's some webpages..."

•Dispelling myths

Often the two biggest myths I personally have seen in play are "Everyone in a culture is like THIS", and "Women are abused at every turn of the way". The first one is sort of a simple minded offshoot of "racial alignments" and other such things, while the second is what happens when people get less than a smidgen of knowledge and construct a whole worldview on it. Both often need clear text explaining the variability of circumstances, and exactly what's going on in terms of society in Setting. Fulminata does a pretty good job of explaining women's roles in this regard.

ªWhy are we doing this again?

Most people decide they want to include other cultures mostly out of "cool factor", not any actual reason. "Of course we have to have an East, otherwise where will the ninjas come from? And the katanas that cut everything in half?"... "Yeah, there should be a jungle full of 'natives' who summon things and do weird voodoo", etc.

It's also pretty telling that women are never addressed for "cool factor" but normally left completely out of the limelight, except the one or two cultures that are typically created to be the amazon/matriarchial society to contrast to the rest.

Most of the games I'm very cool with are very clear from the start what they're including and WHY, not simply a fanboy potpourri of "oooo! Cool!". I suppose this is right in with Setting supporting CA instead of detracting from it.

Chris

Jonathan Walton wrote: It was the "we've done a lot of reading and tried to make this as accurate as possible, but there's also a lot of stuff that we just made up" approach, which is problematic because you don't know what things they're claiming are "accurate" and what things are "made up." Better, I think, to not try for accuracy at all.

I agree with point 3, I think that for most gamers setting's a far better way of "saying something" than system which I think is haphazard in its effectiveness. Indeed, if you look at french RPGs traditionally rules have taken a seat signficantly further behind setting on the flight to publication. The result is great themed games like INS/MV.

However, I have a real issue with your first two points...


"Don't Speak From the Outside" - Why not? authors frequently write books about viewpoints other than their own, examining and evaluating other groups either directly or indirectly. Your approach, if I'm reading you correctly, would not allow for people writing games about belief systems other than their own... so In Nomine's satirical take on catholicism and fascism (and the links therebetween) would be undoable for you unless it's written by a catholic. The perspective of an outsider can be equally valid. I also think that this creates tensions with your second point...

"Your Game is a Polemic not a Model" - Again... why not? your argument is that models are inherrently inaccurate so there's no point in attempting to model. Well glossing over the fact that models in physics allow accuracy down to 10 decimal places and modelling gave you the computer you're reading this on I don't see why this should be the case.

Consider games like GURPS Ice Age or the fictional game discussed in Cryptonomicon where the point of the game is to try and simulate primitive human existence. By modelling certain aspects, especially imperfectly, you're saying things and expressing ideas. In fact, I'd say that by arguing for a certain worldview you are in fact making certain claims to accuracy. You're saying THIS is how these societies functionned, THIS is what was important to these types of people, THIS is what life was like for them, THIS is a basic fact about human nature/politics/metaphysics.

Charitably viewed I'm not sure where a polemic stops and a model begins and uncharitably viewed I think you're wrong as models still have value in this hobby... even if its just models of TV and literary genres like pulp or 80's cartoons.


So if you're interested in games that express ideas, whether they're feminist or orientalist or whatever, I don't really agree with your conclusions.

Rich,

Oooh, I don't think I ment that by PC. To the original poster I meant 'my filter is overloaded and I haven't sifted what you want out from all the careful wording I'm wading through' and I also meant that in terms of anything I contribute that someone else can come and sweep my words away because bang, I said something about a demographic I'm not part of.

So is it about getting more chixxors into gaming or about not being polemic in general? Scuse the mildly inflammatory word (if it is inflammatory for you or any other reader)

As for this whole polemic thing, isn't that the default? I mean, no one works with some hive mind consensus...weve all got some rough estimate of how everyone else does things and what everyone else believes. But we don't actually work from some shared file.

The thing is, that isn't a general wisdom. It reminds me of an anecdote my partner said. She said that once she found out that school reports were the subjective product of each teacher, she was shocked.

People do this polemic thing mostly because they, in so many words, believe in one true source for all school reports/whatever their talking about. That martial arts thing the first poster mentions is a really good example. You get the students just idolising their teacher and never thinking that he's just a man who's formulated what he says from his experiences, rather than from some central core of truth. And on top of that, if the teachers words are fairly reliable (ie, they are quite practical), the person repeating them may have selective memory of what was said, but thinks they got it all perfectly.

I run into guys like this fairly regularly on other forums, who post on how this just isn't done right. You try to suggest that hey, maybe just adopt that game worlds way of doing it for awhile as your own idea of what is right is just as subjective. And they completely don't get it, moving on to explain in detail how they are right/what they know is the true source and thus the source you use.

Asking for less polemic writing is good, IMO. But I believe you'd need to explain why it’s a good idea…and many would be so shocked at the idea that they just wont absorb it.

Not to mention the ironic fact that it’s a good thing not to do, because of people believing in core truths and thus seeing something polemic as a source of agitation. So, because many people believe in a core truth on a subject, you need the person who's interested in writing on the topic, the writer, not believing in any core truth on this topic he's passionate about enough to write about.

Noon wrote: Asking for less polemic writing is good, IMO. But I believe you'd need to explain why it’s a good idea…and many would be so shocked at the idea that they just wont absorb it.

These quotes are out of order, because they make more sense in my mind in this sequence, for purposes of this post.

Ben a.k.a. Ravien wrote: Now I know that there have been a few games made by girls, and some of these have been successful. Great! Now make more! We do.

Because here's the perfect solution.

Jonathan Walton wrote: The Forge should be more open to addressing issues of setting and the complexities of transmitting a polemical worldview to players of your game.

Lord Thomas Smerf wrote: I guess what i'm getting at is: If you really want to address a social issue, make sure you do your research. Do research as if you were going to write a book or a published academic paper. If you fail to do this then you are merely presenting the issue as you see it . Not that that is a bad thing so much as it is limited. Your game may teach people what you think about it, but awareness of your view is not awareness of the issue itself.

M.J.

I pretty much agree with everything you said, i will take it point by point.

1. Collaboration

I totally agree. In fact i was sort of getting at that with my "research" and "interview" stuff, but i never really made this conncetion. On that topic: can anyone think of a game that was co-written in this way? One in which an expert on a subject collaborated with an experienced game designer to produce an game (generally) or an RPG (specifically)? This is clearly something different than liscensing.

2. Asking for help regarding Setting

Another good point. One i am not entirely sure i am able to answer. It seems that it should be rather straightforward, but i have not really seen question of this type over in Game Design. Part of the problem may be that some people (like myself) just had not thought of Setting as being something that should intentionally promote your Worldview. It will be interesting to see if threads addressing Setting begin to show up more often.

3. How do you know you've done enough research?

Good question, i hope i can answer that. Basically i think that the answer is highly dependant upon the goal of your game. Assuming that you are ariming for as "accurate" a game as you can get, i would say that the answer is the same as if you had asked that question of a book. The answer is somewhat fluid.

Is that helpful at all? I'm not sure i actually answered the question.

Thomas

It's all well and good to point to the earliest games and say that they were designed by men, so women should also start cold. On

Perhaps then the perfect solution would be that if someone who is a game designer is really interested in a particular issue that involves the identities of some group of people of which he is not a part, he should seek to collaborate with someone who has first-hand experience as a member of that group and would be interested in attempting to convey some of that through a game design.

I do not see this as the point at all. As i read it the point is not so much a case of writing non- or even low-polemic material so much as it is recognizing that we generate polemic material. Essentially, recognizing that we are not actually producing "objective" work allows us to make better games... That's how i see it anyway...

Ravien wrote: Ok.... so we recognize our games are not-objective....so what? Most intelligent people who've past puberty recognise that their own opinions and thoughts and life experiences are entirely subjective (well, I HOPE most intelligent people recognise this). But how does this recognition help?

Ravien wrote: Just make a topic on RPG.net about "accurate combat mechanics" and see how many replies you get.

Plenty of interesting stuff here,

Research is my first haven, so I’ll start there. How much is enough? Well, we all have to answer that question for ourselves. But I think there’s another question that we should start asking before we even start the research, and that is, “What’s worth researching?” Sure, it seems obvious, but I mean it seriously. "What parts of the game play experience do I, as designer, want to contribute to? What is this game about? What do the characters do? How do I want to impact play?” And then use that to guide your research, but also be ready to change your initial ideas based on what you come up with in the research. That's step one for me, and I guess I stop researching when I have to. Actually, I should probably research less, if I'm answering the question truthfully. Because I'm not very good at finishing game designs. I'm great at researching them.

So on to the question of getting better representations, and allowing people to represent themselves through your game. You might say, “I want to have interesting and varied portrayals of group X, let’s say ‘Chinese Rock Musicians.’” We’ll use Jonathan’s specific example here. So ok, how do you get that? Well, of course, there’s research. But that’s going to have its limitations. I like some of the other ideas, like M. J.’s point about the possibilities for collaboration. I don’t know that much of this has been done, and I can see obvious practical reasons why, but it’s an interesting possibility. I suspect it’ll be dependent on who you know who is interested enough in gaming to want to collaborate, though, as far as that goes. I don’t see a lot of possibilities for roping my unsuspecting friends who aren’t interested in gaming into the job of acting as “expert witnesses.” You could ask people to look over your manuscript and give feedback, of course, and the internet is good for that sort of thing.

So let’s turn our attention back to a game about Chinese Rock Musicians. The next question, before we get into the thorny question of how to let them represent themselves through your game, is why do you want to write a game about Chinese Rock Musicians in particular? (Remember, this is only an example, so insert your own “This game is about X” here, and don’t limit yourself to just representations. Also, Jonathan, I don’t expect you’ll have answers to these questions right off – don’t feel pressured to answer them in this thread just because I’m asking them. I’m just exploring.) What makes this different than just a game about rock musicians? Is it the political situation in China? Is it an apparent clash between rock and roll and your image of Chinese culture? Is it that you think Chinese Rock music is cool? (And then, of course, that’s not enough, so what’s cool about it?) What is it? Why does it have to be about these folks in particular, this game? And is this even going to work well in the medium of RPGs? I don’t have answers to these questions, and they’ll have different implications for whatever game you’re working on.

The point is that this kind of careful self-reflection can only improve your game. It will sharpen your focus if you force yourself to justify everything you include. All this is what Chris is talking about when he poses the deceptively simple seeming question, “Why are we doing this again?” Because answering it, really, is not so easy. Many people have a very hard time getting beyond “Because it’s cool” or “Because that’s how the world works.” So I don’t think it’s obvious. I think it has to be something you address explicitly in your design. And if you settle for the easy answers, you’re doing your eventual game a disfavor. None of what I’m saying is probably particularly new, but I think it bears repeating.

I think the most interesting direction, to me, is to think of it from the standpoint of letting the players explore how they represent the world through your game. And that’s been explored in Narrativist facilitating games in particular, I think, but hasn’t been (and doesn’t have to be) limited to them. The game system and setting and color, etc., all these elements are setting a framework for what the game will eventually have to say, and for the ways that it influences what can be explored.

Callan, sorry if I misread what you were saying with the “PC” thing. Pet peeves can be blindingly fierce, and that’s one of mine, so I probably missed your real point :-) Now, to answer your questions about polemics in games, hm, here’s my take on it. I agree pretty much with what Thomas is saying. For me, the point isn’t that game designs should be less polemical. (Although maybe it’s the term “polemical” that’s tripping things up here. I’ll stop using it.) Ok, so for me, it’s not that we should try to be “neutral” in our game designs. We should realize that they’re only giving a limited view of the world, I mean let’s face it, even the most detailed game design only presents a grossly limited view of its game world. So the point is, we should recognize not only that we have a limited view, but that our games can present even only a limited aspect of our limited view, so we might as well go ahead and say what we want to say, and we should be ready to hear what other people have to say about the claims we've made through our game designs. If I include rules and setting materials in my game and somebody comes out and says, “Hey, why is that even in there? You’re saying X about Y.” Then my reaction shouldn’t be, “No, I’m not, you don’t get it.” It should be, “Hm, where’d that come from? What is it in the game that lead to that? Ok, now is it a fair point?” Because I might have put something in does have implications I don’t like, in retrospect, or that I didn’t recognize. I could’ve been wrong about it. But then again, the person who is leveling the critique could be wrong too. I’m fallible, but so are other people, so I need to give their questions serious consideration. But I don’t have to agree with them in the end, or change my final game, if after considering it honestly, I still prefer to do it my way. So it’s about doing it my way, admitting that I’m doing it my way, and being clear about why I’m doing it a certain way. And of course admitting that I might have gotten it wrong.

Ben, I’m inclined to agree with Thomas about the fallibility thing. It’s one thing to admit that we’re fallible in a general, out of context way, but it’s another thing entirely to actually recognize it when we’re in action, especially when we have a ton of effort or emotion invested in something, in this case a game design. Callan’s examples about martial arts are relevant here, as are (as Thomas has pointed out) the importance of debates about accuracy on RPG forums, or hell, the multitude of fierce debates about just about anything that you can find in chatrooms and forums all across the internet.

Now here’s something I’m not saying – that everything that everyone believes is true because they believe it, and I respect their beliefs. That is in complete opposition to the idea that people make mistakes, that they’re fallible, which is absolutely essential to all of my points, and I think to the premise of the entire thread. If I claim that everyone’s beliefs are equally true, I can’t say that beliefs are fallible, and I can establish no basis for making any kind of claim at all. I can respect someone’s beliefs without accepting that they must be true. It’s easy to confuse the thornier issue of “truth is complicated” with the strong-strain claim “there is no truth.” The point is, what is “true” is a thorny issue in a lot of cases, and in a game design, well, forget it. Nobody is going to cover everything in a game design. So we’re left with the question of what’s important.

What I haven’t done yet, that I probably should have, is point to other relevant threads. I’m just going to point to one, and a very recent one at that -- this thread and the related discussions that led up to it and followed it are complementary to Jonathan’s points. I’m just going to mention one little bit of the discussion that I think is complementary, that answers the question, “So what?” All RPGs are incomplete. Hugely so. That means that by putting anything in the game, I’m saying as author, “This is the part of your gaming experience I want to influence.” Right? I mean, system, setting, etc. etc. – whatever pieces I include are my “polemic,” to use the term Jonathan started with. (I know I said I was going to stop using it. Bah.) These are the “What this game is about, and what’s real here in this game.” They’re my contribution. For me, that’s a kind of “Yeah, I knew that, but I never really knew it” kind of insight. I mean, I can hear it over and over again, but do I remember it when I’m designing something? Well, that part’s not so easy.

That’s why I like to think of these issues, that is the issues raised in this thread, and in the thread started by Ben Lehman that I just linked to, and in Ralph’s “Sacred Cows” thread, and all the way down through the ages to the stuff raised by Ron’s “System Does Matter” all as a kind of designer’s checklist. Ok, I just drafted a game. Next, I can ask myself, about every single thing I put in that game, “Why is this in here? Why is this, of all things, the part of play I chose to include as the part I want to influence? And while I’m at it, what parts of play do I want to influence that I haven’t talked about in the game? Why not? How can I put them in there?” And so on.

So that’s the “So what” of the thread, at least for me.

God, I gotta stop joining in on these things. I have a problem with being concise. :-)

Rich

Whoa! I'd completely forgotten to provide this link for anyone who's interested: Trollbabe, feminism, and the chainmail bikini.

Jonathan, as the current artist for the Trollbabe comic, I think you'll be especially interested.

Best,
Ron

I think it's a good idea to avoid the common intellectual fallacy of overemphasizing the diffrences between groups. I remember reading an article in some magazine about girls and videogames. One of the girls they interviewed summarized the problem perfectly. She said (and I'm paraphrazing here), "I'll play it if it's good." You're not going to draw more women into the hobby by making games "for girls." You're going to draw more women into the hobby by making better games. For people. Period.

As far as the issue of representation goes. While I agree it would be difficult for a white American male to represent Asia or Africa without innacuracy or prejudice, it would be no more difficult a task than presenting medieval Europe (which everybody who ever picked up a copy of D&D seems to think they can do). In fact, it may even be easier. I think it's safe to say that all the white, American males on this board have more in common with a modern-day Japanese person (be they male, female, or otherwise) than they do with some random English peasant from circa 1450 AD. Why is it impossible to write honestly about the one, but not the other?

I think it's a bad idea to make any game about a specific group of people unless there's a very good reason to do so. The game about Chinese Rock Musicians is a good example. I can understand why someone might want to make a game about Rock Musicians. It's a cool proffession that most people don't get to experience. There's lots of potential drama, what with travelling around, booking gigs, corrupt managers, etc. But why are they Chinese? Is the game set in China? If so, why? Do you want to explore the Chinese government's reaction to rock musicians, or the way an essentially capitalistic proffession adapts to a "communist" society? If so, you don't need to be Chinese for that. After all, oppression knows no color. If the game's not set in China, the question's doubly important. Are Chinese rock musicians any different than rock musicians of other ethnicities? Probably not. Probably the only difference is how other people react to them. If you highlight this in the game, than the game's not really about the Chinese rock musicians so much as it is about the society that surrounds them.

I guess what I'm saying is this. In 99% of the cases, gender or ethnicity really don't matter. What's more important in an RPG context is what the people do. If you highlight issues of race or sex in a game, it should be done for a reason, not just to be "inclusive." After all, most systems are flexible enough for players to make a female or black or gay character if they really wanted to.

Final thought: any time you write an RPG, you're probably writing about things with which you have no experience. It's a mistake to think of writing about other cultures as a special type of inexperience. The only difference between writing a game set in Asia and a game set in America is the location. If your characters don't act like real people, they're both going to suck.

I think it's a good idea to avoid the common intellectual fallacy of overemphasizing the diffrences between groups.

It’s one thing to admit that we’re fallible in a general, out of context way, but it’s another thing entirely to actually recognize it when we’re in action, especially when we have a ton of effort or emotion invested in something, in this case a game design.

LordSmerf wrote:

Noon wrote: Asking for less polemic writing is good, IMO. But I believe you'd need to explain why it’s a good idea…and many would be so shocked at the idea that they just wont absorb it.

I do not see this as the point at all. As i read it the point is not so much a case of writing non- or even low-polemic material so much as it is recognizing that we generate polemic material. Essentially, recognizing that we are not actually producing "objective" work allows us to make better games... That's how i see it anyway...

Thomas

Ben a.k.a. Ravien wrote: As I mentioned before with the writing example that white people related to but were then shocked when they discovered it was written by a black person, it's not a matter of there actually being a difference between the groups, it is a matter of there being a percieved difference. As long as girls think that guys are the only ones making games, they will have a preconception that the games will be ill-suited to their liking. I know this is a sweeping generalisation, so don't try to pick me up on it.

The fallacy isn't something that gets in the way of solving the problem, it is the problem....

Of course, objectively, the differences between "male games" and "female games" will be practically zero, but that's not what matters. What matters is that outsiders can see that there may be a section of the gaming hobby which they believe will be more oriented towards and enjoyable for themselves.

I think it's been mentioned before that there are (or at least in the past were) male authors of romance novels who always used feminine pen names for their publications, because women (as a market demographic) did not want to believe that a man could understand romance well enough to write something they would enjoy reading.

Ben, the sum of what you've said seems to suggest that what I need to do in future supplements is to indicate that they were written by Becky Simpson, Lyson Mlambo, and Lee Takano, and I'm going to break down the gender and culture barriers because it will be perceived that these works were produced by a woman, a black man, and an Asian. It has nothing to do with the content or structure of the game at all.

In any case, if it's only the perception that design is dominated by white males that makes others think it a white male hobby, then it has nothing to do with design, and we can all move on--there's nothing happening here, just an accident in which we thought something was happening.

I am not one of those who thinks that female designers or black designers or Asian designers would make significantly different games per se; but I don't think it's reasonable to say that there aren't different approaches that would appeal to different groups. I just don't know at this point what they are.

Ravien wrote:
It's not only a perception: there actually is an objectively identifiable male dominance, but it is the perception of this which is problematic, not the fact itself. Because the perception carries with it concepts of how different the dominant group is to the individual, and how the hobby must therefore not appeal much to them. So no, it's not an accident, and yes, there is something happening here, but it's not happening here, it's happening in the minds of others --the minds of those people we are trying to bring into the hobby.

How do you know this?

What you are describing is a thought process in your head. So you THINK that is what they are thinking. How do you KNOW this is what they are thinking?

It seems like a cheap dodge to me.

Ravien wrote:
I hope it's the psychology degree I'll be paying off for the rest of my life, and the hundreds of hours of my life I've lost reading social cognition and other relevant papers.

But in two words, it's called "Machiavallian Intelligence", and in three words, it's called "Theory of Mind".

Ummm, sure, whatever. Care to explain what, exactly, I was dodging?

Sounds like a cheap dismissal to me, being that you didn't raise a single counter-argument, and instead, simply stated the obvious --that what I say is simply what I think, and not necessarily the *Objective Truth*-- as if this somehow discredits what I say. Gee, I can't get one by you can I?!

Now, if I've simply misinterpreted your post, and what you were trying to ask in a very round-about way was "can you provide references?", then sure, I can.

But a)it's a pain in the ass to do so, especially given that this isn't an assessable essay, and it's a pain then too, and b)expecting me to reference everything I say is rather ludicrous, and certianly not something expected of anyone.

If you'd like some references, then PM me, and I'll rummage around some online journals, but all I'll be able to give you are the references, you'll have to use your own sources to find the papers (and this is part of the reason referencing what I say is both pointless and annoying).

Ben and Gareth, back off from one another. This isn't a place for snippy back-and-forth, especially not with one-line retorts.

Everyone, please focus on the thread topic. Your role here is to provide insight, not to figure out who's winning some kind of competitive exchange.

Best,
Ron

Ahh, so as I suspected, I was not misinterpreting you.

Which of those papers carried out a systematic study of female roleplayers such that you can assert with confidence you know what the issue is here? I mean, how do you know its this particular issue and not some other issue. Please cite.

This tells you that people may not honestly explicate their thinking; how does this support the specific claim you have made?

Actually engaging with the situation. I suggest you have merely constructed a rationalisation as why you shouldn't, along the same lines as your own argument.

Well, if I can show you have not the slightest evidential basis for your claim, as you admit, yes I can and have dismissed it.

Not at all; I don't call for supporting evidence for every statement by any means. But I think your analysis is completely arse-backwards and am trying to determine if you have any reason for advancing this claim other than you find it comforting.

I shall do so right away; I'm very intrigued to discover so much rigorous academic work has been carried out on the psychology of female roleplayers.

Ooops, sorry, X posted with Ron. My bad. Let's just say I'll wait a few days before posting here again to make up for it.

-Ben

Ravien wrote: You know damn well that there are no published studies on ANY roleplayers, let alone female perceptions of them.

Ravien wrote:

Which of those papers carried out a systematic study of female roleplayers such that you can assert with confidence you know what the issue is here? I mean, how do you know its this particular issue and not some other issue. Please cite.

You know damn well that there are no published studies on ANY roleplayers, let alone female perceptions of them. And you know as well as I the reason: roleplaying numbers simply aren't even 1/10th the size they'd need to be to warrant researchers investigating them and perceptions of others about them.

John Kim wrote: I'm currently reading a notable study, namely the book by Gary Alan Fine, "Shared Fantasy: Roleplaying Games as Social Worlds" (University of Chicago Press. 1983. ISBN: 0226249433).

John Kim wrote: But frankly, I don't think any such study is ever going to be the "final word" on the subject. There are just too many variables, and RPGs as well as outside perceptions of them are too diverse to get any kind of final word on.

Hey Guys,

I think this thread has degenerated beyond my ability to resurrect it and bring it back to the topics I was originally interested in. I was just really busy for a few days and haven't had time to post or help respond to some of the important stuff you all were bringing up. My fault. Apologies. I'm about to start a new thread in Indie Game Design that will be a different way of getting at these issues, hopefully one that will be less easy to divert into dangerous territory.

It actually bothers me quite a bit that the gender issue is so touchy for people, such that it always becomes the focus of attention, even when it's only part of the picture. Makes me wonder about Rebecca Borgstrom publishing all her early work as "R. Sean." Was that decision influenced by a desire to avoid the whole issue? Maybe she just didn't want people noticing her gender. It always ends up becoming personal, even when it's a bunch of guys talking about it (maybe even especially in those cases).

Anyway, thanks for some provocative thoughts. I'm done with this thread, though, I think, and will try to pursue these issues in other ways.