Emily Care wrote: "Do" use both pronouns in examples of play when refering to players, gms and all game participants. (This one makes a difference for me when I read a game, at least.)

My trick is pretty easy, and hopefully fair to both sexes: I always assume, when writing, that the players - unless otherwise stated in an example - are male, and the GM female. I do this because - to be honest - the male pronoun is more used and easier for me to remember to use when writing a game. The GM, however, strikes me as a powerful role (socially, as well as in the game - the GM usually organizes the game), and so by using the feminine pronoun for it, I manage to try to treat both sexes equally.

Exceptions do apply: I used one iconic female character for all of Paladin. The reason was simple: I created a character, liked her very much, though she was a great character, both dramatically and as a female, and so I used her for the whole game. You'll notice that she's in nearly every piece of art, as well.

I do avoid use of the male-specific pronoun; once you stop thinking of it as "normal" it is justas jarring to find a woman referenced without the appropriate antecedent. I also note that people using the male pronoun often switch inconsistently; i.e. they would adress a haridresser whose genmder has hitherto been unspecified as she, even though their own system indicates they should use he.

I just wanted to mention that I was intrigued to see the alternative definition thread had three different default pronouns in use; male-only, female-nly and plural.

contracycle wrote: I just wanted to mention that I was intrigued to see the alternative definition thread had three different default pronouns in use; male-only, female-nly and plural.

Le Joueur wrote: Does that make you eyes 'trip' as though there are typographical errors?

Some people are put off by the "they" technique, especially when the anteceedent is patently singular. But there are ways around that if you aren't lazy.

This example:

At this point the gamemaster should make sure they aren't stepping on anyone's Mystiques. The importance of validating a Persona's Mystiques cannot be overrated. If it loses its Mystiques, why would a player want to play their Persona?

At this point the gamemaster should make sure not to step on anyone's Mystiques. The importance of validating a Persona's Mystiques cannot be overrated. Players rarely like playing a persona without Mystiques.

Le Joueur wrote: Since about the time Vampire: the Masquerade came out, I've struggled to reach the gender neutral pronoun in English: the plural.

People using "they" as a gender-nuetral singular pronoun makes me insane, but not quite as insane as people misusing apostrophe's [sic].

I use female pronouns almost exclusively, and I blame Douglas Hoffstadter.

-Vincent

Unfortunately this question has no solution, and has been argued about for decades.

While it is true that at some point in the history of the language, "he" was used to refer to a person of unspecified gender, it can be argued that this assumption is no longer valid for modern English. However, I'm not going to get into that debate.

A few months ago I did some research on this subject, and here's a summary of what I discovered:

Some people use "them" "they" and "their" as a gender-neutral alternative. i.e. "If you love someone, set them free."

Of course, grammar-hounds object to this because it violates the rules, i.e. "someone" is a singular subject and should have a singular pronoun "he" or "she".

Of course, that particular "rule" originated in the 1800s when scholarly writers tried to make English adhere to the rules of Latin grammar. (This period also originated the "rule" that sentences must not end in prepositions, BTW.)

Are the Latinate rules valid? Well, at this point that's a moot question because they've been around and have been adhered to in scholarly circles so long that they have become a part of the language. As a result using "they", "them", and "their" as singular pronouns will jar the eyes of some readers. (Despite the fact that in speech, these pronouns are used as singular all the time.)

Some advocate the use of invented singular gender-neutral pronouns. The only ones I can remember at the moment are "ey", "em", and 'eir" (remove the "th" from the plural pronouns) but there are several others out there. As to how widespread the usage of these is, I don't know. Whether or not this approach is valid depends on who you ask.

Then, of course, there's the tried and true (but IMO really annoying) "he/she", "him/her", etc.

In the end, the only thing a writer can do is pick the least of the myriad possible evils, and be consistent with it.

Gareth: Yes, it makes my eyes trip. In fact, it does more than that. It makes me go "ACK! NOE! BAHD GRAMUR! BAD GRAMUR!"

Mike Holmes wrote: Some people are put off by the "they" technique, especially when the anteceedent is patently singular. But there are ways around that if you aren't lazy.

The 'it' thing makes my eyes flip out and kill. The overuse of plurals does to - sooner or later, it's used incorrectly. (There's always 'one,' but 'one rolls the dice to find out characteristics' makes you sound like the Game Design Zen Master.)

Mike nailed it with a technique I use often, and can't believe I didn't mention earlier: just don't use pronouns unless you're referring to a specific person. Saying, "The player does..." is just as easy as "He does..." or "she does...".

Well, I'm going to agree with Fang, even few others do. Maybe that says something. Oh well, yes, you can rewrite sentances to avoid using a pronoun (which is kinda the point), but that tends to hurt the text flow, and become irritatingly redundant. I never liked 'it', but the random switching never bothered me, at least no more than text totally devoid of pronouns would.



Probably there is no solution, although I like Clinton's idea, any females want to comment on it, as to how acceptable it is?

I prefer to spend a lot of time not worrying about it. If someone is put off because I used a male pronoun for the neuter case, their list of objections about a man who likes straight wiskey, straight women and large guns is probably going to be too long to overcome.

Not being able to change the situation, I choose to save my worry for the things I can change (like my lousey grammer).

Mike Holmes wrote:
Essentially, there is never a reason to include a pronoun if you don't want to. So don't. Just rewrite the sentence without them. This is, to my knowledge, the best writing solution of all.

Thanks for the support, guys, but I've not made myself clear. First, just replacing the pronoun with another term rarely works. It only works if there was no need for the pronoun to begin with.

A sentence that needs to be fixed such as this:

When the GM makes decisions, he should make them consistently.

When the GM is makes decisions, the Game Master should make them consistently.

When GM's make decisions, they should make them consistently.

The GM should ensure that all decisions are consistent.

Bob Originates a Complication.

Bob calls for a Complication.

As the Originator of the Complication, Bob...

Cross posted with Tom. Funny post.

To clarify, the problem only occurs when there is a non-specific anteceedent. Thus a senence about Rufus Xavier Sarsaparilla has no need of "fixing". Just use he.

Mike

Hello,

Is there any reason to apply this topic to the subject of role-playing in particular? If so, I'd like to hear it. If not, then I'm happy to file it in the category of Larger Issues that Happen to Include Role-playing, and Beyond the Scope of the Forge.

Best,
Ron

Heres a few quick reason:

1)It could possibly relate to the gender imbalance in the hobbie, or at least be a contributing factor.

2)I think it is somewhat more important in RPG's than other activities for two reasons.
a)RPG's are a social activitie, i.e. they depend on the interactions of a group.
b)RPG's are primaraly learned by reading, as opposed to most other organized social activities, such as sports, or card games, which are primaraly taught. Yes, you can teach RPG's, but it's less common. Most serious gamers have read a game book at some point, thus the presentation in the book can affect peoples perceptions and hence the social interactions in the group.

I also have a reason for the relevance, and a reason for why to use Mike's approach (other than the gender-neutral reason).

Mike's approach typically constructs sentences of fewer characters...which will help in printing costs and conciseness (both very important to rpgs, IMHO).

I personally find it difficult to create any flow with the method (it always seems to come out sterile feeling and choppy)...but I suck at writing.

The nouns-a-plenty approach is just poo in my opinion; sentences get long, redundant, and confusing.

Ron--Having started the thread, my thinking was that this aspect of pronoun use had become problematic in writing role playing games particularly. Although I have encountered it elsewhere, V:tM's use of "she" for their "storyteller" is still jarring to me. I pretty much have my answer; but I at least wanted to raise attention of those planning to write games in the future to the fact that this is a problem. Some of the solutions put forward are good.

Clinton--I think it's fine to use "she" for the referee if it is periodically reinforced with some identifier that brings back the notion that the referee in all examples and instructions is female. With role playing game books this may be more important, as many of them tend to be used as reference, often without reading them through first, and the antecedent problem can crop up because of jumping in to the middle of the section.

Fang--Yes, inappropriate plurals are equally jarring.

I will say that I'm trying to deal with this. One of the aspects of writing a novel is that I have to remember to drop the rules I use when speaking and especially writing normally in order to sound more conversational. I rarely end sentences with prepositions, and the narrative of the novel doesn't do that either; but the characters do so with some frequency, because otherwise their speech would sound as stilted (I prefer erudite) as mine. People often complain about RPG books "riddled with grammatical and spelling errors" (to the point that it was one of the positive things said by critics of Multiverser that it was not); often, though, they mean those grammatical errors which particularly annoy them, and not the ones they would ordinarily overlook. Often in my reading when I trip over a preposition at the end of a sentence, or the misuse of a pronoun, or some other common error, my mind staggers a moment trying to put the sentence into a grammatically correct form before I'll continue reading. Maybe if you're a poet trying to put emphasis on the idea in a line that's a valid technique; but if you're trying to communicate information, you don't want readers tripping over your text. I'm also bugged by "it" when refering to a person, although I can see some use in refering to characters (even there, it's a bit weak--isn't the sorcerer a person?).

Mike is right; and I certainly use that pronoun-reductive approach often (as well as a number of other approaches, such as "one", or altering the antecedent to be plural so that the plural pronoun is correct). But what works for single sentences sometimes becomes awkward in longer paragraphs. At some point, you're going to have mentioned the referee enough times in the sentence that "he" (or some substitution) becomes nearly mandatory. Giving exemplery identity to these impersonal identifiers ("Mary is the referee; she rolls the dice") gives you a new antecedent; otherwise, assuming the referee is "her" is at least jarring.
I have little hope that White Wolf will amend its policy; but then, I'm not one of their big customers anyway. I do hope that those of you diligently working on the games of the future will bear in mind that those of us with the educations of the past would like to read them.

--M. J. Young