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Topic: Yes, MORE on religion and role playing
Started by: Librisia
Started on: 2/7/2004
Board: RPG Theory


On 2/7/2004 at 2:41am, Librisia wrote:
Yes, MORE on religion and role playing

Salutations,

At the urging of my genius game designer spouse, I recently read Mr. Lehrich's article on RPGs as ritual. I was inspired to post my own article to all of you for perusal.

Learning from the criticisms leveled at Mr. Lehrich’s paper, let me make a few clarifications.

Bricoleur is the term used for someone who engages in bricollage. That is, someone who uses available elements in new and innovative ways. By Levi-Strass’ own definition of bricollage, bricoleurs are not professionally trained in whatever discipline they happen to be dabbling. Hence, they are hobbyist innovators.

Thematic Apperception Test Stories: In this study conducted by Carol Gilligan (cited in the bibliography), she showed pictures of various scenes (a man standing looking over a lake, a young woman being pushed by a young man on a tire swing out in the country, etc., etc.). She asked people to look at the pictures and then make up a narrative about what the viewer thought was happening in the picture. What Gilligan found was that men made up these weird, paranoid stories about how the men in the pictures had been jilted, would be jilted, had just killed their girlfriends ... or how the women in the pictures had just finished knifing their boyfriends before going off to nip lunch with his two-timing best friend. I have to say, based on Gilligan’s study, that you men are a bunch of strange, sad creatures. No wonder we can’t all get along.

I wrote this 4 years ago as a final paper for a class I was taking. It overlaps Mr. Lehrich’s article in a number of ways. I am trained in ethnography (recording and interpreting people’s thoughts and experiences about certain subjects, usually people from other cultures). This paper is, I suppose, an ultimate anti-colonialist ethnography. The subject interviewed is myself, though I don’t detail the particulars of experience that brought me to many of the statements and conclusions.

I’m sure Mr. Lehrich will feel that this is “the most dubious sort of anecdotal data.” *hee hee* It is the job of the ethnographer to get the insider’s story. I just happen to be the insider this time. I am also ideologically opposed to Mr. Lehrich in that I am quite postmodern and believe that objectivity is a nice idea, but doesn’t actually happen in the real world. That just means we have to be aware of our biases and state clearly the position from which we are theorizing.

I think what follows could be useful both as a support and a critique of Mr. Lehrich’s article. I also think it will be useful for the game designers out there in understanding what it is about gaming that discourages women from playing. Maybe it will only reinforce the stuff y’all already know and have talked about.

I look forward to your comments and critiques.

http://www.galileogames.com/RPGNeoPaganpaper.pdf

Cheers!

Krista White

P.S. (Hey, Vince! Say hi to your wife and kids and rat drawing brother. This article is simply the academic "proof" of the subject I brought up at WhatsisCon in NY last November.)

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On 2/7/2004 at 5:10am, clehrich wrote:
RE: Yes, MORE on religion and role playing

Krista,

First of all, one point of clarification from me:

I am also ideologically opposed to Mr. Lehrich in that I am quite postmodern and believe that objectivity is a nice idea, but doesn’t actually happen in the real world.
I don't buy objectivity either, in the slightest. But I do think that it is inappropriate to transform the recognition that objectivity is non-functional into an excuse for colonialism, i.e. for going out and telling the natives that they're stupid and "doing it wrong." My only reason for keeping the spheres separate is to keep my constructive agendas from tainting my analyses. I think you are careful about this as well; frankly, I don't think we have any ideological disagreement here.

And you can take your dubious anecdotal data and.... :)

Seriously, though, I quite liked the article, but it appeared to me to deal with RPG's primarily in their older, "traditional" mode. That is, the foundation for description seems mostly based on things like D&D, although there are mentions of VtM as more likeable for women. But these days there are a lot of quite different games that simply don't buy into a lot of the old assumptions, or at least claim not to, and by this model should be more approachable for women. I'd love to see a longer, more detailed version that takes into account especially some of the developments in gaming that the GNS model 'round these parts calls "Narrativist."

Around here, you would I think also find a significant sample set of women with very broad experience of gaming, who might be able to give you insights that your necessarily constrained data-set can't provide.

Second, I do think you generalize Neopagans primarily from those who identify themselves as Wiccans or something of that sort; although this isn't popular among Wiccans, I think you have to take into account things like Chaos Magick, Satanism (as in the Church of Satan), and so forth, which would give a broader sense of the totality of the movement. Have you read Tanya Luhrmann's book, Persuasions of the Witch's Craft? You might also look at Ronald Hutton's The Triumph of the Moon. Luhrmann is an anthropologist who did fieldwork among British Neopagans, while Hutton is an historian of a fairly classic social-history stripe. Their work might deepen and enrich your arguments. Wouter Hanegraaf's book (title I don't remember, but will find if you care) is also very good, and might help as well.

Essentially where this left me was wanting more. In addition to a more detailed study, taking into account a broader range of both RPG's and Neopagans, I'd like to see a more intensive analysis of circle work and RPG play; I wonder whether this might not produce deeper comparative results. This is something I'd consider doing myself, except that I don't have any first-hand data on circle work, and besides I'm not an ethnographer and don't really know what I'm doing there. Someday, maybe....

A very minor note: I'm pretty sure Margot Adler spells her name with one "d."

On Adler more deeply, I believe there are much more recent editions of Drawing Down the Moon, and I wonder whether her data has remained constant for finding Feminism the #1 attraction or reason to get into Neopaganism. What I've been reading seems to suggest that this may be shifting considerably, but it's been kind of a background interest for me so I'm not sure. I think Hanegraaf has some stuff on this, though.

As I say, I quite like the article's general gist, but I think at this point it's a little sketchy in terms of especially its RPG data. The Forge might provide a deeper sample set, if you're interested in further work in this area.

Thanks for posting the essay!

Chris Lehrich

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On 2/7/2004 at 5:01pm, Librisia wrote:
Neo-Paganism, Women and Role Playing

Yes, this is very basic, not in depth at all. At the time, I was simply racking by brain to try to come up with something that was suitable as a final paper for the semester.

I'm aware of Edwards' work. I have a much wider experience with roleplaying than you realize. I actually hate D&D as a system and a game world.

The most useful bit about this article for the purposes of folks on the Forge would be, I think the section involving Carol Gilligan.

The edition of _Drawing Down the Moon_ I used was the most recent version. I never got the sense that she was going to repeat her survey - which would be incredibly useful.

I think from a statistical standpoint, Wiccan-type Neo-Pagans probably make up the majority. My own inclination is to categorize Neo-Pagans into three groups: Revivalists (Wiccans, Asatruists, Greek Revivalists), Synchretists (those who practice more than one religion simultaneously) and We're-Really-Trying-to-Test-Social-Boundary-ists (including Satanists and, I assume, Chaos Magickists - don't know much abou the latter).

No, I agree, this is VERY limited, and I would expand it more if I weren't trying to hold down a job and study for comprehensive exams and still have a family all at the same time.

My understanding from my spouse's summaries is that most discussions of women in role playing on the Forge get bogged down in the details of stereotype and such - and fail to focus on why the hobby is so male dominated. I think Gilligan is a place to start.

As I said, the statistics in this are old - but that's because there aren't any new statistics to be had. It would be useful to the hobby if folks who held cons started to do male/female headcounts at their events (at the very least).

White Wolf's games are, I concur, more attractive to women because they are narrativist. Yes, yes, I know people here object to that because it pigeonholes women into a "touchy-feely" roleplaying stereotype. I like a good knock-down, drag-out with the supervillain occasionally. BUT THAT'S NOT WHAT KEEPS ME COMING BACK FOR MORE.

I think what might lie behind many of the objections to saying women prefer narrativist gaming (connected to the ideas of relationships in my own paper) could be two things that YOUR paper touches upon:

Women aren't taken seriously as gamers by many: I recently had an archetypical experience with this, where the group (all male), was tested out by my husband, and when they all came to play at our house and I expressed intrest, they found it amusing AND did everything they could within and without game play to discourage my participation.

In this last instance, had it not been for the fact that my children need me, I would have happily gone to jail for assaulting each and every one of these assholes with my son's aluminum baseball bat. By consensus, my husband and I did the sociall acceptable thing instead - we quit playing with them. Besides, our gaming style is narrativist/simulationist in nature. These guys were definitely firmly gamist.

"Get to the point, you old cow," you're saying to yourself. Well, my point is, that I suspect that consciously or not, the women on this list fight the idea that women gravitate toward narrativist games because the game culture at large won't take them seriously if they don't exhibit a wide range of gaming styles. I don't feel uncomfortable making a broad generalization like this because A. I'm a woman too, and all of the women I know who game are also more attracted to the narrativist style of gaming; and B. I'm past the point in my own feminism of having to try to prove that generalizations and stereotypes aren't synonymous.


Let's ask all the women on this list, honestly, the following set of questions (I'll answer them, too, in the interest of forthright ethnography):

How were you introduced to role-playing games?

I was introduced to the hobby by my best friend's brother's best friend. I loved it. (BTW, the GM was definitely narrativist) In fact, my best friend and her brother stopped playing long after I did. I only stopped playing because I went out on a date with the GM, and I was too immature at the time to feel comfortable dating someone who was 3 or 4 years older than I was. I was 12 or 13, give me a break. When I wouldn't go out on a second date with him, I lost the only way I knew of playing D&D (the only game that existed at the time). So my experience is almost a complete inversion of Fine's analysis. (see my paper if you want to know who Gary Alan Fine is and what he was saying. That's a not-so-sneaky way of trying to force you all to read my paper.)

What is it you like most about role playing?

I like to try on new identies. I like to play characters who can do things I cannot, or who can do things I would like to be able to do. I've had superheroines in Champions and the Marvel system. I've played Scorpion Clan Courtiers in L5R. I've played Harrowed gunslingers in Deadlands, I've played town blacksmiths in Burning Wheel, I've played epic Sirkan knights in the Legend of Yore. I've played 5ft long space cockroaches in a space game adapted from Marvel. I've been a lovestricken Torreador sculptress in Vampire. I even played a male (WAY out of character for me, no pun intended) ex-Navy Seal vampire hunter in the White Wolf universe. The point is, the characters I've loved the most have either been female archetypes of my ideal self, or cathartic outlets for things I'd been trying to work out psychologically (the space cockroach).


Here's the REAL point of this ethnographic exercise: If all you ever played again were "dungeon crawls," (in whatever universe or system), where character interaction was always going to be kept at a minimun, would you still love role playing games? Be honest, ladies.

Hell no. In fact, I'm so far from the gamist side of the galaxy that I can't even stand to crunch the numbers anymore to make up characters. All that character creation nonsense (we hates it forever) just gets in the way of my roleplaying. I come up with a character concept and say to the GM "here's what I want to do." The GM gives me a range of choices and I tell her what I want (are you strong, are you tough, are you really smart?). I let other people deal with those annoying numbers. I've got too much to do with my life to bother with an aspect of the hobby I find tiresome. You want to know one of the reasons I think a lot of women like WW so much? Because they can fill in little dots and they don't have to deal with crap that looks like a statistics class. Statistics are for gamists and simulationists. If the other folks I hang with want to do a "kill the monsters, grab the treasure" thing to blow off steam, I'll happily sit in the living room and socialize with them while I quilt and they play the game. I have no interest in participating in purely gamist scenrios anymore, because they don't touch on what interests me: the relationships my character has with other characters and the social structure of the game universe. Done waving my narrativist flag now.

Wow, I digressed a lot. A fine talent I have. Back to my paper - I wholeheartedly agree with the majority of your criticisms, Mr. Lehrich (right down to my embarassing mis-spelling of Margot Adler's name). That paper is really just an introduction for a longer, more in-depth study. But I think it could be useful if people were to take the bits they like and leave the rest.

Krista

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On 2/7/2004 at 7:44pm, Christopher Weeks wrote:
RE: Yes, MORE on religion and role playing

Hi Krista,

I'm completely unstudied on ethnography and the like, so you may have to bear with me a little on this. But I have some doubts and questions after reading your paper, some of which are for you and some for anyone.

When discussing the "goals or purposes" of the gamers and neo-pagans you assert that they're different, but the description of the goals makes them sound the same. The key to my take on this is that "spiritual allegiance" is a leisure activity. If you think that's incorrect, can you elaborate on why? I'm not convinced that "attempt[ing] to forge a religious belief system" is actually a different thing than "act[ing] out fictional scenarios." I mean, they have a distinctly similar feel to me. Specifically, see this thread for a suggestion of how gaming helps one forge a moral belief system -- which isn't really so different, is it?

If I got the count right, there are three different points in which you assert rampant misogyny in role-playing games as an apparently obvious fact. So what I'm wondering is this: Am I just completely oblivious? Does everyone agree with the stance that gaming as a pastime and an idustry is overwhelmingly misogynistic? And could I get a few examples of how this misogyny is expressed?

My summary of page five is that you think fat dorks game so they can pretend to be thin and popular and that's the same thing (somehow) as Gygax suggesting people game to explore exciting situations that are not otherwise available. Is that what you meant? The assertion that there is some deep psychological motivation going on behind gaming is at one point supported by the idea that the fun of gaming "does not account for the copious amounts of time and financial resources that gamers put into their hobby." I wonder if you're not reading too much into this. How do you analyze stamp collectors or dollhouse furniture craftspeople? Gaming is the cheapest of my hobbies. It also makes me wonder about the various comparisons you draw between neo-paganism and gamers and which of them simply apply to all social group interactive settings. One in particular that you cite later in the paper is cultural construction.

When I was reading about the attraction of neo-paganism to women for the ability to become spiritual leaders, it occurred to me that it might be more important to women (generally) to have access to that role than it is to men, because of the differences in the role of group socialization between men and women (if you're willing to grant that such differences exist). It seems particularly backward, if there's anything to this idea of mine, for religious institutions to be patriarchially governed. I wonder why that hasn't reversed over time.

I'm uncertain of the meaning of internal v. external reality. I'm specifically thinking of "Playing the role of priestesses in a religion which foceses on the femaleness of divinity is an empowering experience for women. It allows them to integrate the internal reality of womanhood with the external reality of religion..." What makes one internal and the other external? And why isn't the same phenomenon experienced in role-playing games?

How is the sense of "spiritual power" different from the imagined power that RPGs focus on?

I'd be interested to hear the evidence that supports Gilligan's assertion that men find the "web of relationships" threatening and are thus not interested in neo-paganism.

Toward the end you note that "it seems that the very form each activity takes is tailor made for the sexes that dominate them." I wonder what, if any, the causal relationship is. Are they thay way because of the sexual predominance, or vice versa?

Chris

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On 2/8/2004 at 12:50am, cthulahoops wrote:
RE: Yes, MORE on religion and role playing

Hi,

Hmmm... an interesting article, and an interesting read. Mainly because I know next to nothing about paganism. I'd suggest that by directing the questions on this list only at women you're creating data, so...

How were you introduced to role-playing games?


My cousin [male] bought me D&D for Christmas, and two of school friends [male] were also playing.

If all you ever played again were "dungeon crawls," (in whatever universe or system), where character interaction was always going to be kept at a minimun, would you still love role playing games?


Hell no.

(I've skipped the second question because I'm not sure I have a point to go with the answer.)

My point is that men are in most cases brought into roleplaying by a web of relationships just as women are, and that many men would give exactly the same answer to the second question as you did.

The fact that more women are introduced into roleplaying by their boyfriends, than men by their girlfriends is a simple, natural consequence of the fact of that roleplaying is male dominated.

In the essay you quote:

No women he encountered had come to gaming on their own; they began gaming because a boyfriend brought them in to it.


He clearly hasn't looked very far. I know women who've come to gaming through: individual friends (both male and female), groups of friends, university societies, relatives and of course boyfriends. And of course, men come through the similiar links. (Though, I'm not sure I know examples of the last.)

Women aren't taken seriously as gamers by many: I recently had an archetypical experience with this, where the group (all male), was tested out by my husband, and when they all came to play at our house and I expressed intrest, they found it amusing AND did everything they could within and without game play to discourage my participation.


Ouch. I like to think that groups I have known are more welcoming and appreciative than this. The main problem, imo, being the pirana effect - which seems to be an highly unfortuanate but natural effect in a male dominated group. (I'm curious as to whether the reverse occurs in female dominated groups.)

Anyway, that's just one piece of your essay that seemed out of place to me. I've only read it quickly so I hope I'm not taking things out of context too much.

Adam

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On 2/8/2004 at 1:11am, Christopher Weeks wrote:
RE: Yes, MORE on religion and role playing

I should have included this above...

cthulahoops wrote:
No women he encountered had come to gaming on their own; they began gaming because a boyfriend brought them in to it.


He clearly hasn't looked very far. I know women who've come to gaming through: individual friends (both male and female), groups of friends, university societies, relatives and of course boyfriends. And of course, men come through the similiar links. (Though, I'm not sure I know examples of the last.)


I wasn't introduced to RPGs by a girlfriend, but I was by another female -- my mother. In '79ish, my mom read about D&D on college campuses in the paper (might have been Parade magazine, but also might have been local). She was interested and thought it would be good for us. It was.

Chris

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On 2/8/2004 at 2:36am, clehrich wrote:
Re: Neo-Paganism, Women and Role Playing

Krista,

Your points on Neopagans seem plausibile; I'm sorry to hear that Adler hasn't updated her data.

On the issue of women in gaming, however, I think we're talking past each other a bit. For example:

Librisia wrote: White Wolf's games are, I concur, more attractive to women because they are narrativist. Yes, yes, I know people here object to that because it pigeonholes women into a "touchy-feely" roleplaying stereotype. I like a good knock-down, drag-out with the supervillain occasionally. BUT THAT'S NOT WHAT KEEPS ME COMING BACK FOR MORE.
I very much doubt that the remark about pigeonholing and so forth would arise here in that way. Not because we're all super-sensitive, or something, either: it's just that (1) I think WW games are usually read as Sim, by the GNS model; (2) I do not think that Narrativism is usually read as "touchy-feely"; and (3) Narrativism has nothing to do with quantity of combat. This is what I mean about your models being a little older, and why I'd be interested to see what would come of a reconsideration based on Forge data, female and otherwise.

Your experience of not being taken seriously because of your sex is, I think, not at all uncommon, as you say. I too would be very interested in a deep exploration of why it happens, as well as why it's perceived as happening so often (not the same thing). But I don't think this sort of parallel-block structuring of RPG styles and gender/sex styles is likely to work. Just a guess, but I doubt it, and I think that this preliminary gesture to downplay data from Forge women --
I suspect that consciously or not, the women on this list fight the idea that women gravitate toward narrativist games because the game culture at large won't take them seriously if they don't exhibit a wide range of gaming styles.
-- is likely to skew your data pretty wildly.

For example:
A. I'm a woman too, and all of the women I know who game are also more attracted to the narrativist style of gaming;
By the GNS model, anyway, you and the women you know are at least equally attracted to Sim gaming, i.e. White Wolf. It would be interesting to know why you mark WW as Nar, however.

In the interest of open-ended enthnography:

How were you introduced to role-playing games?

My brother heard from male friends in elementary school that they were cool, and my mother bought us the AD&D Player's Handbook and DMG. I loved it, my brother didn't, so my gaming was very irregular and low-key until I got to college.

What is it you like most about role playing?

Interacting with my friends in a way that seems to promote a lot of laughter, bizarre invention, and general weirdness; I particularly like doing this when I can also spend out-of-game time thinking about the game world and my character, imagining stories about them and so forth (not usually combat stories).

Here's the REAL point of this ethnographic exercise: If all you ever played again were "dungeon crawls," (in whatever universe or system), where character interaction was always going to be kept at a minimun, would you still love role playing games? Be honest, ladies.

Absolutely not. I do like this sort of thing once in a while, but not often.

--

My point is that you now have 2 data points suggesting that the "REAL point" question is not going to produce the stereotyped data you expect. I think that if you'd done these questions 15 years ago, however, the data would have come out a lot more like you expect. Consequently I think an update would drastically change the basic premise of the argument.

And why do you keep calling me "Mr. Lehrich"?

Chris Lehrich

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On 2/8/2004 at 2:38pm, Thuringwaethiel wrote:
Re: Women and Role Playing

Greetings

I've been lurking here for some months now, too lazy to write. But since I as a "RPGirl" belong in the target group of this query, I feel obligated to come out of the closet. Besides, this works pretty well as an introduction, too. Two Giant Green Fruit Flies with one strike, or something..

Librisia wrote:
How were you introduced to role-playing games?


My parents bought an early version of MERP to my brother as his 13-year birthday present. I was 14 then. He started as a GM, and I was his first "guinea-pig". Awful hack'n'slash it was, we couldn't even figure out the rules properly, but the feeling was something magical. We were familiar with Tolkien's texts already, maybe that helped. And Middle-Earth is still my favourite genre. Systems come and go, however.

Maybe a point of interest: whereas our player group was heavily gamist, with strong simulation undercurrent, I managed to "sneak in" narration even as a player, and later as the GM. Sometimes others thought it great, sometimes not. Usually they thought it crazy, especially when I had a suicidal or uber-noble character. But couple of guys took notice, my brother f ex, and I felt our sessions were overall fairly "high quality" (whatever that means), considering the lack of experience.

What is it you like most about role playing?


Playing alter egoes of myself, playing characters utterly alien to my real self, playing in environments I find interesting (fantasy and middle-ages among others), acting, constructing stories without fully knowing what happens next, social and psychological simulationing/experimenting, painting mental pictures of various moods.. Secondary goals are puzzles, tactical challenges and action. Good story and good character above all! :)

I also think that most of these, if not all, go very well when GMing, too.

If all you ever played again were "dungeon crawls," (in whatever universe or system), where character interaction was always going to be kept at a minimun, would you still love role playing games?


I think that would be the end of the "love affair" then. One night stands, maybe. Classic dungeon crawling is to me first and foremost a tactical exercise and action fun. It's okey, and I do it, but to me it is very primitive form of roleplaying. It doesn't give me enough.

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On 2/8/2004 at 4:13pm, greyorm wrote:
RE: Yes, MORE on religion and role playing

One of the comments I found intriguing, in an odd way, was the contention that women are generally looked down upon in gaming groups, or not taken "seriously" as gamers.

I have to say this has never been my experience. When my wife first began playing (back before she was my wife), everyone quickly accepted her into the group. In fact, she quickly asked if she could GM a game, and her first session doing so was afterwards met with gushing praise; we all agreed that her GMing was superior. I note the game was also a very standard Gamist dungeon-crawl.

The first female in our high school gaming group was likewise respected by everyone in our group and quickly became one of the regulars, both in game play and outside it (our group tended to do things together outside of gaming).

I don't feel, and I know for a fact -- based on numerous statements made by both ladies in conversations later -- neither of these two feel or ever felt that they weren't taken seriously by the otherwise all-male gaming groups they joined.

Most recently, I was the second male in an otherwise all-female group for a number of years, and my own group held a larger female-to-male ratio (though it has evened out more in the past few years).

What I'm saying is that I'm rather surprised about the proposed regularity of this attitude towards women, as in almost twenty years of gaming I've never run into that behavior. Not that I am calling you a liar, Krista -- there are certainly things which might explain it -- I just find it strange that I've never encountered an apparently widespread phenomena in that time.

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On 2/8/2004 at 5:15pm, John Kim wrote:
RE: Yes, MORE on religion and role playing

Christopher Weeks wrote: If I got the count right, there are three different points in which you assert rampant misogyny in role-playing games as an apparently obvious fact. So what I'm wondering is this: Am I just completely oblivious? Does everyone agree with the stance that gaming as a pastime and an idustry is overwhelmingly misogynistic? And could I get a few examples of how this misogyny is expressed?

I'm not the original poster, but I can easily point to examples -- they are, as Krista says, rampant. For example, "The Greenland Colony" was a D20 module by Avalanche Games nominated for the Origins award (along with two others in the same series), and widely recommended on the net as bringing D20 to sophisticated historical gaming. I bought it (a rare buy of D&D material) because I thought it might be of some use for my Vinland campaign. You can read my review of it at http://www.darkshire.net/~jhkim/rpg/reviews/greenlandsaga.html

Of course, this is an egregious example which I immediately reacted to. But you can find trends within related books. For example, in The Lord of the Rings RPG from Decipher (cf. http://www.darkshire.net/~jhkim/rpg/lordoftherings/ ) not only are all of archetypes or sample characters male -- all of the sample players are male as well.

When women are included in the game, they tend to follow negative patterns. Picking a random game, off my shelf, I grabbed "Deadlands". Out of 12 archetypes, three are female: "Buffalo Girl", "Pinkerton", and "Saloon Gal". Let me compare for you the text of "Buffalo Girl" and "Gunslinger" (a similar male archetype):
Buffalo Girl
...
Hindrances: Big Britches -3 [Deadland's version of Overconfident],
Curious -3, Heroic -3, Intolerance -1: Feminine women
...
Yee-hah! I'm the wildest thing this side o' the Pecos. I'm a whip-crackin', butt-kickin', pistol-packin' gal o' the plains.
I've seen some ornery lookin' critters out here in the West, and I aim to rope me a few. Maybe I'll catch one and sell it to a rodeo or one o' them newfangled zoos. Or maybe I'll just stuff the durn varmint and mount it on my wall.
'Course, I don't actually have a wall. The wide open prairie's the place for me.
Quote: "Yee-hah! Outta my way, boys!"

Gunslinger
...
Hindrances: Enemy -1: Someone's always out to prove he's faster than you, Heroic -3, Vengeful -3
...
I was brought here because I'm the best. You draw that pistol, and I'll show you what I mean.
You think you're bad news? I've seen things that would make you wet your pants. Now put that gun away, kid. And do it real slow like. The only live gunslingers are jumpy gunslingers.
Walk away. You don't have to prove anything. And I've got enough notches on my pistol already.
Quote: "Are you going to skin that smokewagon or whistle Dixie?"

OK, so superficially these are both tough characters based on the same number of points. But there are a ton of things to notice. The male gunslinger emphasizes his past experience (notches on his pistol), while the female buffalo girl emphasizes what she intends to do and her overconfidence. Note how the Buffalo Girl is intolerant of feminine women, and the text goes out of its way to point out that she is homeless -- denying her femininity. Further, her quote emphasizes her pushiness and relation to men, rather than action on her own.

I find this sort of thing constantly strewn throughout my RPG collection, and I generally avoid things which look misogynist.

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On 2/8/2004 at 5:44pm, John Kim wrote:
RE: Yes, MORE on religion and role playing

Hi,

Just curious, I opened another book: Last Unicorn Games' "Star Trek Roleplaying Game" (the original series one). There are 15 one-page sections of fiction: one at the start of each chapter. In those, about a dozen Starfleet characters appear. Of these, two are women. I'll include the complete sample text where female Starfleet characters are mentioned.

The first is on page 25:

...Open a channel, Lieutenant."
Lieutenant Danna complied, not without a certain nervousness. First-contact situations were fraught with peril. The six-inch scar on her left thigh was testament to that, a souvenir of the ship's first brush with the Matapedians. Everything had worked out okay in the end, thanks to Captain [Achilles] Diamond's quick thinking. Moments like this still made her edgy, though.

The second is on page 263:
"Shall I open communications, sir?" Communications Officer Thursen's voice quavered slightly with the anticipation of announcing the arrival of the Yorktown.
"Wait until we're through the Ring, Lieutenant," Captain Foster advised. "It won't hurt us to get a little closer to our destination."
Thursen lowered her head to hide the slight flush that reddened her cheek. She wondered if her eagerness to take a more active role in the approach made her seem even more of a new recruit than her shipmates. She admired Lieutenant Vashenka's composure and Helmsman D'wara's complete concentration. Sometimes she thought her graduation from the academy was a fluke. She wondered if the others felt the same way.


Frankly, I think this text speaks for itself. The male characters all have lots of heroic action beating aliens and so forth, while the females shiver with fright and nervousness when asked to open communication channels.

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On 2/8/2004 at 6:20pm, james_west wrote:
RE: Re: Neo-Paganism, Women and Role Playing

clehrich wrote: And why do you keep calling me "Mr. Lehrich"?


... when it's probably -Dr.- Lehrich :-) ... Seriously, though - we do tend to be on a first name basis around here.

John's examples are interesting, but it occurs to me that the clear sexism in them could be ascribed to accord with the source material rather than to the attitudes of the gamers (both Star Trek and Westerns are inherently sexist.)

However, I think that the consensus of opinion, and probably the truth, is that gaming used to be a substantially male-dominated passtime, with female players the exception, and has grown towards more even representation with time.

Further, the extent to which women weren't taken seriously in gaming probably precisely parallels the circumstances and extent to which they're not taken seriously in every other endeavour; this doesn't at all seem to be a gaming-specific social phenomenon.

Finally, while there are clear gender differences in preferred activities in every sort of leisure pursuit, I suspect, and others' experience tends to confirm, that the level of self-selection necessary to engaging in role-playing in the first place greatly overrides these differences.

- James

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On 2/8/2004 at 6:45pm, clehrich wrote:
RE: Re: Neo-Paganism, Women and Role Playing

james_west wrote: Further, the extent to which women weren't taken seriously in gaming probably precisely parallels the circumstances and extent to which they're not taken seriously in every other endeavour; this doesn't at all seem to be a gaming-specific social phenomenon.
I don't know about that. Obviously it's all anecdotal evidence, but my feeling is that an awful lot of female gamers do continue to put up with the "just the GM's girlfriend" thing in a way that isn't quite so strongly true in other spheres of life. In high school and college, this might be kind of a continuation of what we might call the "geek effect": since it does seem as though most nerd-types (I include myself) were a little later to blossom in terms of having success with the opposite sex, and since most seem to be male, I would think that this discomfort might extend as projection, in that the male nerd's discomfort and lack of success with women would play out in male-nerd-dominated gaming as a sphere in which such a player is dominant and he can feel that he's better than the women around. But that's cheap pop-psychology, based on weak anecdotal evidence.

I do think that the issue of sex and gender roles in RPG's is something that deserves serious analysis, longitudinally, but I'm not at all sure how one would go about doing this. I made a little stab at a theoretical basis in my Ritual essay, and Krista's essay works on similar issues (but I think is a bit dated) from a different theoretical perspective. Still, I do think this is an important question that ought to receive a good deal of closer attention. I'd also like to see it addressed head-on in game design, but that's probably just me.

Chris Lehrich

P.S. "Dr." Lehrich always feels to me like you're talking about my dad, who's a medical doctor. Chris will be fine, unless you take a class from me, in which case it depends on the institutional standards of decorum.

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On 2/9/2004 at 3:25am, Librisia wrote:
Replying to eveyone, all at once

Howdy, All!

(Woo hoo! I just figured out the quote thingie!)
Chris:

When discussing the "goals or purposes" of the gamers and neo-pagans you assert that they're different, but the description of the goals makes them sound the same. The key to my take on this is that "spiritual allegiance" is a leisure activity. If you think that's incorrect, can you elaborate on why?


Well, I think it has to do with your own personal involvement with religion. I would guess from your question that you are a secular individual - meaning that you don't consider yourself a member of any religion and (I'm spitballing here), that you perhaps even think religion is kinda dumb in general.

Religion, to those who practice it, is more than leisure. It's not something I do with my spare time 'cause I'm bored or I think it's fun (You might imagine how much I DON'T want to go to mass some Sundays). Unlike gaming, I could NOT walk away from religion, ever. It's as much a part of my own makeup as my feminism or my other personality traits.

Gaming can be a profound passtime - no doubt about it. HOWEVER, there is more at stake when someone is involved with religion than with gaming. I suppose the best analogy I could make is one concerning the love one has for one's spouse and the love one has for one's children. I never thought I would be able to love anyone more than I loved my husband. Then I had kids, and I was profoundly shocked at how much I didn't know about love before that. For people who are open to and have religious experiences, religion is like the kids and gaming is like the husband. Love having my husband around, makes my life more fun, better in so many ways. But if I had to make a choice between walking away from him or my kids, there's no question that the hubby would go. Does that make ANY sense to you? I'm not sure I can quantify it more without about a week's worth of consideration.

Chris:
Am I just completely oblivious? Does everyone agree with the stance that gaming as a pastime and an idustry is overwhelmingly misogynistic? And could I get a few examples of how this misogyny is expressed?


Obviously, the answer here depends upon how you take the question. Do I experience misogyny in the gaming groups I play with - yes, but on a VERY SUBTLE LEVEL. This is not the kind of "we hate you" thing that went on the group I cited as an example in my second post. These people are my friends, and I love them. The stuff I'm talking about, for the most part, are the subtle things that women get exposed to every day that pass as "normal" in our culture. Mr. Ki - I mean John's point is a particularly good example of the kind of thing I'm talking about. And the fact that roleplaying bases itself on sexist genres (Star Trek, LotR, you name it), still doesn't excuse it.

Chris:
My summary of page five is that you think fat dorks game so they can pretend to be thin and popular and that's the same thing (somehow) as Gygax suggesting people game to explore exciting situations that are not otherwise available. Is that what you meant?


A lot of people who game are fat dorks. I'm one of them (both fat and a dork). Are all gamers fat dorks? No. Are all gamers fat? No. Are all gamers dorks? That depends on who you ask. I would say, actually, that all gamers are geeks, but then I don't think being a geek is such a bad thing.

Based on my "anecdotal data," *hee hee* I WOULD say that a great many gamers - myself included - are, to varying degrees, somewhat socially dysfunctional (wow, could I have qualified that any more carefully?). I can't put my finger on the quality, but there is something ... well ... kinda geeky about almost - no, really, it's all of us.

In speaking frankly with people I've gamed with for years, they have all admitted that being able to do those out-of-the-ordinary things and having desirable traits as a character makes them feel somehow better about themselves. What it does, I think, is help us negotiate *what we don't like about ourselves* that is mirrored for us in mainstream culture. So, the letter of your assumption is correct, but not the spirit. I'm just being honest about what I see in myself and others. I apologize for the offense it seemed to give. That really wasn't my aim.

Chris:
When I was reading about the attraction of neo-paganism to women for the ability to become spiritual leaders, it occurred to me that it might be more important to women (generally) to have access to that role than it is to men, because of the differences in the role of group socialization between men and women (if you're willing to grant that such differences exist).


I definitley agree that men and women are socialized differently. The ideas "Man" and "Woman" are culturally constructed categories. Can you clarify why you think it would be more important for women to want access to spirital leadership roles from a "nurture" standpoint?

Chris:
I'm uncertain of the meaning of internal v. external reality. I'm specifically thinking of "Playing the role of priestesses in a religion which foceses on the femaleness of divinity is an empowering experience for women. It allows them to integrate the internal reality of womanhood with the external reality of religion..." What makes one internal and the other external? And why isn't the same phenomenon experienced in role-playing games?



I think it is. The "internal" reality is the way we think about ourselves - tied very closely in my usage with self-esteem. The "external" experience of being female is a collage of all the cultural images we are given every day about what it means to be a woman and what we should want and feel, and how we SHOULD LOOK (I think this is the biggest pressure women face socially) and act. I saw a great bumper sticker once that summed it all up: Feminsim is the radical notion that women are people. PEOPLE. People who can be depicted as powerful, adventurous and any other adjective you might want, rather than only ever being considered the frigid ghosts of Tolkien or the quivering, wet-thighed yeomen of John's last Star Trek example.

Tell me this: If it were Aragorn who faced the Witch King of Angmar in Jackson's movie, would we ever have seen him looking like he was going to pee his pants the way Eowin did? No. He would have had the same look of grim determination he did all through the other two movies. Eowin had to look like she was going to barely be able to pull it off, no matter how much she said "I fear neither pain nor death" beforehand. THAT is the external reality that constantly tells me that, because I have a vagina and breasts, I can never be as epic a hero as the people who have penises.

Chris:
How is the sense of "spiritual power" different from the imagined power that RPGs focus on?


Because spirituality, for those who experience it, is so much ... MORE. It's really a matter of degrees. What if God were important to you, yet you felt left out of the spiritual experience because all of the "official" characteristics of God always left you thinking God was nothing like you at all? Suddenly finding that God "looked" like you, too, would be one of the most uplifting experiences of your life.

What I'm saying about gaming being able to help us negotiate the external and internal realities is the same as for religion, but to a much less intense degree. There is part of everyone that is James Bond - otherwise the books and movies never would have been so popular. What gaming does is let the James Bond *in you* come outand be recognized by others - which equalizes the external reality that you really are not James Bond.

Chris:
I'd be interested to hear the evidence that supports Gilligan's assertion that men find the "web of relationships" threatening and are thus not interested in neo-paganism.


Don't get me wrong: there are TONS of men in NeoPaganism. It just seems to be a 60-40 split in favor of women. Gilligan puts examples from the tests she gave in the book. But she has also since said that her model was overly simplistic - Just as the article I posted is overly simplistic and broad. I don't think, overall, that should I (or someone else) do more in-depth work, much of what I said in the article will be vindicated. Of course I would say that, though, wouldn't I?

I don't think many men are interested in NeoPaganism for the same reasons women are. In terms of gaming, what everyone seems to be saying is that the population of female gamers is greater than my initial 8-15%. It may even be 60-40 (in favor of men) - though I think that's way generous. Of course, I don't have any proof to back that up. I'd LOVE to see someone give me that hard data and say "HA! 40% of women are gamers. Take that!" My personal experience lends me to believe that it's 15-20% AT MOST.

Chris:
Toward the end you note that "it seems that the very form each activity takes is tailor made for the sexes that dominate them." I wonder what, if any, the causal relationship is. Are they thay way because of the sexual predominance, or vice versa?


I think it's vice-versa. And the calls for feminist game design in these discussions (and articles), tells me that, for many reasons, gaming will remain male dominated until things change.

Adam (regarding Falk's thing about women coming into gaming through boyfriends)
He clearly hasn't looked very far. I know women who've come to gaming through: individual friends (both male and female), groups of friends, university societies, relatives and of course boyfriends. And of course, men come through the similiar links. (Though, I'm not sure I know examples of the last.)


No. And that is an excellent point. Gaming is spread TOTALLY by word of mouth, which relies on webs of relationships. However, whether or not women continue to game has a lot to do with the group dynamic and the kind of game that gets played. Continuing participation in NeoPaganism depends upon the ... a lot I won't go into here because this is a gaming discussion. :-) But men come into the hobby MOSTLY thorugh other men. Women come into the hobby MOSTLY thorugh men (no matter their relationships to them). My own example is a direct inversion of Fine's own work (which, you should know, was done in 1982). That is certainly a funciton of the hobby being male dominated. So that's another point I would consider when re-writing the paper.

clehrich (since he doesn't want me to call him Mr. Lehrich and there's another chris I'm responding to here - THAT's why I tend to use last names)

I very much doubt that the remark about pigeonholing and so forth would arise here in that way. Not because we're all super-sensitive, or something, either: it's just that (1) I think WW games are usually read as Sim, by the GNS model; (2) I do not think that Narrativism is usually read as "touchy-feely"; and (3) Narrativism has nothing to do with quantity of combat. This is what I mean about your models being a little older, and why I'd be interested to see what would come of a reconsideration based on Forge data, female and otherwise.


I need to re-read the GNS model stuff about sims again, but I was not saying that combat can't be a part of narrativism. It's just not a focus, and it usually has to do more with character motivations *and* (correct me if I'm wrong), is often fudged in favor of story (though it can make a GREAT part of the story when someone dies unexpectedly).

Are you sure narrativism isn't read as touchy-feely? People need to take it like a man when they can't climb that mountain or kill a bad guy, right? Really - I'd like to hear everyone weigh in. I'll come back to why I consider WW narrativist - I'm not sure I think simmulationist should be a category at all.

clehrich
But I don't think this sort of parallel-block structuring of RPG styles and gender/sex styles is likely to work. Just a guess, but I doubt it, and I think that this preliminary gesture to downplay data from Forge women --Quote:
I suspect that consciously or not, the women on this list fight the idea that women gravitate toward narrativist games because the game culture at large won't take them seriously if they don't exhibit a wide range of gaming styles.
-- is likely to skew your data pretty wildly.


I'd LOVE to be proven wrong! Get every gaming woman you know to answer my questions. But ALSO look at the thread in the "Actual Play" forum called "Why Do We Do It?" It tends to support my hypothesis about women's gaming preferences. I'd be willing to bet that MOST gamist are men. But hey, bring on the data, baby!

greyorm:
What I'm saying is that I'm rather surprised about the proposed regularity of this attitude towards women, as in almost twenty years of gaming I've never run into that behavior. Not that I am calling you a liar, Krista -- there are certainly things which might explain it -- I just find it strange that I've never encountered an apparently widespread phenomena in that time.


No, in the groups I've played with, I have had overwhelmingly good experiences, else I would not have continued to play. I was taking this point from clehrich's article and using it to support my own work. It struck a chord that led me to hypothesize that women might object to being called "narrativist" because they don't want people to think they can't "play like the boys." So, please, continue to post things that prove this hypothesis wrong. I just want to hear what everyone has to say. It would be nice to be right, but I'd rather hear the stories. Let me ask you this: Have you ever witnessed a situation where women weren't taken seriously as gamers? If so, please tell the story(ies) (this is an official add to my other three ethnographic questions).

James:
John's examples are interesting, but it occurs to me that the clear sexism in them could be ascribed to accord with the source material rather than to the attitudes of the gamers (both Star Trek and Westerns are inherently sexist.)


(Mr. West, is that really your name? If so, cool! And where in Colorado are you? We moved to Way Darker NJ from Ft. Collins 6 years ago.)

Are there any examples of gaming genres that aren't sexist? If not, that means that the hobby as a whole is sexist, though I don't think gamers hate or are out to kill women. They simply don't realize how sexist the hobby is, or where that sexism lies, even within themselves. This goes for some of my dearest friends as well. If they knew how much the "internal reality" of women did not match the "external reality" that is constructed in gaming, I think they would be shocked (and hopefully ashamed).

That of course, begs the question, 'If gaming is so sexist, why do women game at all?' For the same reason women still participate in the Abrahamic religions (Christianity, Judaism, Islam) - because what they get out of it is rewarding enough to put up with what they don't like about it. That doesn't mean they think it shouldn't change, however. Please, women on the list, chime in to chastise or support. :-)

clehrich:
this might be kind of a continuation of what we might call the "geek effect": since it does seem as though most nerd-types (I include myself) were a little later to blossom in terms of having success with the opposite sex, and since most seem to be male, I would think that this discomfort might extend as projection, in that the male nerd's discomfort and lack of success with women would play out in male-nerd-dominated gaming as a sphere in which such a player is dominant and he can feel that he's better than the women around.


Your "geek effect" hypothesis fits right in with another aspect of Gilligan's analysis and gaming: that the group of gamers is a safe place for men, and they can foist off their "web of relationships fear" on the game scenario, leaving them free to bond with the other men. When women get brought into game situations where the men are insecure and hostile to the presence of women, it may be because the presence of a woman destroys the "male bonding sphere" and the larger web of relationships they distrust has now been brought back into the metagame situation.

Whew. Thanks for the feedback, y'all!

Krista

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On 2/9/2004 at 8:15am, M. J. Young wrote:
RE: Yes, MORE on religion and role playing

Krista, as I read your questions and answers for the ladies, it appeared to me that you were somehow assuming that there was a baseline of male answers against which you could compare them--but I think that baseline is illusory. In any event, you need to distinguish "women who roleplay" from "women at the Forge who roleplay", in which case you would need a baseline of "men at the Forge" answers. After all, if (as is often suggested) there is a strong narrativist bias here, it would be seen in the women, but also in the men, and that would invalidate any suggestion that women generally were more narrativist than men, because it would demonstrate either that your questions produce narrativist answers from everyone or that the Forge is a self-selected group of narrativists.

Thus please permit me to answer your questions.

Krista a.k.a. Librisia wrote: How were you introduced to role-playing games?

My wife read about Dungeons & Dragons in a then-recent issue of Psychology Today. We were big Christian fantasy fans, particularly Tolkien and Lewis, also MacDonald, Williams, and others, and this sounded like a game that might let us create adventures that felt like the books we liked. I will note that we'd already tried the Lord of the Rings Bookcase Game and found it wanting (a strategic board game akin to a wargame in many ways). We had a gaming group consisting of ourselves and another couple with whom we played card games, board games, wargames, as well as the then cutting edge Atari video games (he worked for GTE, who made the chips, and there was an in-house black market in copies of new games). Someone found a copy of the blue box original edition basic set, and I was assigned to learn to play the game and teach everyone, so that made me the dungeon master.

Over the months that followed we moved to OAD&D, and also picked up games of Metamorphosis Alpha, Gamma World, Star Frontiers, and Traveler, but I was always the DM for D&D.

So I found out from my wife, and we started playing together with no one who had ever heard of the game before, two girls and two guys. The group grew and changed over the years, but almost everyone who played in that particular group came to us as a couple--one guy and one girl, together, either married (as we were) or seriously connected (as the other couple in our group). There was no particular pattern to which member of the couple hooked up with us--sometimes I'd mention it to a guy I knew, sometimes my wife mentioned it to a girl she knew, and always they came as couples. So I don't really have that experience of unbalanced gaming from the early days.

I did see an imbalance in a later group in the mid eighties, but it's easy to explain that. I was approached by a couple of young teenaged boys, maybe thirteen or fourteen, who wanted help learning to play D&D, and somehow I got roped into running it for them for the next several years. Being young teen boys, they were generally uncomfortable around girls and didn't invite girls to their weekly gaming session; we had a couple of them show up, always younger sisters of the boys playing (never girlfriends), and we picked up maybe three older guys (out of about thirty or forty players) who either were single or were connected to girls who weren't interested in gaming, so that group was strongly male in its orientation (although quite a few of the guys played female characters).
For her second question, she wrote: What is it you like most about role playing?

I'm like you; I love character interactions, trying new people, being someone different. In fact, one of the interesting things to me about Multiverser is that starting as myself I become a lot of different people doing different things--sort of discovering who I might be and who I could never be.

I also like discovering new things; I love the feeling that I'm finding out things about a strange world that others didn't find. I like tinkering, trying to see what a world is like and whether I can change it from inside.

Of course, I run more games than I play, so I also like creating all those strange places and watching others discover them.

I can play a good gamist game, and enjoy it thoroughly, but I don't like it when the challenge level gets too high, because I really don't like losing and have to recognize that the possibility of losing is the price of winning. So I only really like gamist games when I'm sure I can win.
Finally she wrote: If all you ever played again were "dungeon crawls," (in whatever universe or system), where character interaction was always going to be kept at a minimun, would you still love role playing games?

No. I know few if any players who would--and perhaps even more to the point, whenever we do play so-called dungeon crawls, they're laced with much more.

In the last game, my eldest son had set up a scenario in which a group of orcs who had been quietly living in caves for generations were suddenly raiding elfish villages for no apparent reason. I came in on the second game session, playing a half-elf ranger/cleric who was an acquaintance of one of the other PCs. The party leader was a bloodthirsty fellow (the character, not the player) who just wanted to kill orcs, any excuse would do; but I started getting people asking why the orcs, after so many years of quiet, had become violent. Had the elves wronged them in some way? What was happening?

We went into their caves, and after a fight we took one alive and questioned him. The answer to the question was that there was someone behind the orcs, someone very powerful who was making them fight. With that information, we decided the orcs were innocent victims in this situation, and we needed to get past them to reach the true villain--but at least we could get some help from the orcs, who didn't like the situation any more than we did.

I don't play Doom or any first-person shooter; I'm not interested in whacking monsters (although I will play whack-a-mole once in a while). In a role playing game, that's mostly a mechanical exercise. I'm interested if there is some level of tactical involvement, strategic decisions that make a real difference in outcomes, but it will only hold my attention so long.

I am one of the most diverse role players I know; I play gamist, narrativist, and simulationist games all the time. However, dungeon crawls aren't even terribly interesting gamist pursuits, in most cases.

I should also mention that the last dungeon I designed that really grabbed people was not a gamist challenge but a simulationist exploration: it was filled with strange wonders to explore and try to understand, and not really a lot of monsters or challenges. People loved it, though. It kept surprising and intriguing them. Sure there were monsters, but part of the fun was in not knowing when you were safe and when you were threatened.

Dungeon crawls are beginner games. If I asked you whether you would ever read poetry again if Mother Goose was the only book of it you were allowed to read, or ever draw again if you were only allowed to use half inch thick kindergarten crayons in five colors, or ever do puzzles if six-piece wooden cutouts in frames were the only ones made, you'd probably say no. I would. If you can't advance beyond the beginner mode, anything gets dull. Sure, you can have fun in the beginner mode once in a while, but once you've outgrown it you're going to want more to hold your interest.

*****

On the female characters issue, yes, there were a lot of "males are better" ideas floating around in games; but that wasn't always the case. Just to grab a few fragments from D&D--

• Drow females were not only more potent than drow males, they were more potent than nearly any other player character race; were it not for the assassin out to get you caveat, they probably would have dominated play rather quickly in many games.• Several pantheons were headed by female or androgenous characters. Amaterasu Omikami is one of the few Lawful Good pantheon heads in the old Deities & Demigods book, and one of the more potent. Corellon Larethian, of the Elfish pantheon, is trans-gendered.• Probably the most powerful player character in any D&D game I ever ran was a female elfin fighter/magic-user played by a girl.



As an aside, it is official Roman Catholic doctrine that God incorporates within one self all that is male and all that is female; the division of man into male and female is a splitting of the one image of God, and the uniting of man and woman into "one flesh" is a restoration of that image in one creature. I don't have any citations handy, but this issue came up on the Christian Gamers Guild list a few months back, and someone contributed some solid references at that time. (I'm not Catholic.) That's more for your personal benefit than anything else.

Now here's a peculiar point. I was a nerd in high school, but I'd never heard of role playing games. In my last years of high school, I came to be very popular, particularly among female members of the freshman chorus, as I was one of the best musicians in the school so I was always impressive in that situation. I went to college with a great deal of confidence, and persuaded a lot of people that I was someone talented and respectable. I got out of college and wound up an on-air personality at a contemporary Christian radio station, with a lot of people who thought I was Someone. There was no nerd or geek stigma clinging to me at that point.

It was only after that that I even heard of role playing games, and I instantly fell in love with them. I had already proven myself and overcome all that negative stuff, quite publicly.

I think this has not been sufficiently explored. People see that the majority of role playing gamers are geeks, and they therefore include that we are attracted to such games because they enable us to overcome that geekiness in our own minds; but what if rather there is something about role playing games that appeals to people, which also tends to make them geeks?

Let me tell you a not-so-secret but oft-overlooked point about people. People like to do that at which they are good. I became an excellent musician because when I sang people noticed and praised me for my singing. I hated sports because, having suffered a terribly debilitating disease in my preschool days, I had no ability at them and people laughed at my futile efforts. If you are good at something, you will probably enjoy doing it; if you like to do it, you will do it more often; if you do it more often, you will get better at it.

Role playing games attract people who are good at the things that are useful for playing such games--imagination, intelligence, creativity, mathematical ability, tactical reasoning, spatial reasoning, relationship skills, these are some of the things that can be part of good roleplay. Obviously none of us excel at all of them (very few guys excel at relationship skills, and spatial reasoning seems to favor guys rather strongly, in general). Now, in junior high the things that make one "not a geek" among guys are generally athletic ability--something that's not particularly useful in role playing games. Thus RPGs would tend to select people who were good at the things RPGs favor, while attracting fewer of those who were good at athletic activities. Particularly in that age bracket, there is also a stigma in which "cool" people do not associate with "uncool" people, and thus those whose athletic abilities get them in with the "cool" crowd are less likely to hang around with those who are "uncool"--who already have a higher probability of being the ones involved in RPGs. So part of it is a who-your-friends-are thing, and part of it is a where-your-strengths-are thing.

We don't play RPGs because we're geeks; we are geeks and we play RPGs because of other factors that commonly lead to both.

Anyway, that's my inclination.

I apologize that I have not yet read your article; I'm really swamped at present, and have not yet read Chris' or even (hate to admit it) Ron's latest. And just to make my life difficult, my ISP went screwy for an hour tonight, so I've been stuck trying to get done here and get to bed for--well, too long.

What part of NJ are you in, and is there any chance you'll be at Ubercon in Secaucus end of the month? I'd love to meet people.

--M. J. Young

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On 2/10/2004 at 1:35pm, Thuringwaethiel wrote:
RE: Yes, MORE on religion and role playing

Apologies beforehand, because I have a feeling my following comments may sound quite edgy..

M. J. Young wrote:
On the female characters issue, yes, there were a lot of "males are better" ideas floating around in games; but that wasn't always the case.


I don't think anyone said every single popular system was utterly 100% trough-and-through misogynist. I believe the point was something along "too much sexism" and that indicates (to me) that although there might be good things, they are too few and far between. A couple of good examples do not comfort me if the overall feeling is hostile, openly or not.


Just to grab a few fragments from D&D--

• Drow females were not only more potent than drow males, they were more potent than nearly any other player character race; were it not for the assassin out to get you caveat, they probably would have dominated play rather quickly in many games.• Several pantheons were headed by female or androgenous characters. Amaterasu Omikami is one of the few Lawful Good pantheon heads in the old Deities & Demigods book, and one of the more potent. Corellon Larethian, of the Elfish pantheon, is trans-gendered.• Probably the most powerful player character in any D&D game I ever ran was a female elfin fighter/magic-user played by a girl.



The second point is valid (and a happy surprise to me). But what I've heard about drows, they are described as utterly evil species, much worse than your average "licensed to kill" orcs and kobolds. And they are a matriarchal community, lead by strong females. The message? Third point has more to do with that single gamer group than with the system. Of course individuals can see through the flaws of the system and go their own way, but why should the system have those flaws at all? And many, maybe most gamers won't bother. They just continue the flawed tradition.

About the "geek issue" I agree with MJ enough to keep my mouth shut..

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On 2/10/2004 at 9:30pm, Mike Holmes wrote:
RE: Yes, MORE on religion and role playing

Thuringwaethiel wrote: But what I've heard about drows, they are described as utterly evil species, much worse than your average "licensed to kill" orcs and kobolds. And they are a matriarchal community, lead by strong females. The message?
And they're black, too. Had that struck you at all? The evil elves are the ones that are black.

All terrible. But all the result of men doing the writing who'd been canalized by society to put these things in. That doesn't exonerate them. But it means that you won't see any change in RPGs until you see a change in society. You won't change anyone's mind on this level. That is, you won't get people to stop putting mysogynist (or racist) stuff in books until you educate them that it's a bad thing to do in general.

Why am I so confident that it's not related to something intrinsic to RPGs? Because there are better RPGs out there at about the rate that there are better people out there in society. And you'll note that newer RPGs get better all the time, as the public has improved. Many RGPs, I'd even go do far as to say are subject to the feminist agenda - at the very least they're willing to make the slight bow to it and alter their text in the politically correct manner. In Hero Quest, they state that generic players are refered to as male, and Narrators as female. What are they saying there about power structures?

I agree; nothing intentional. But, again, I don't think there's an agenda to the earlier work either.

My suggestion? Use your capitalist weapon, and vote for the better games with your dollar. Then play them. That's how to change it from the inside, if there's any way.

Mike

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On 2/10/2004 at 10:32pm, Valamir wrote:
RE: Yes, MORE on religion and role playing

...errr...
am I understanding this right?

Because the Drow are pigmented black, have a matriarchal society, and are evil this is evidence of racism and sexism in RPG history?

I don't think PHP allows a font size big enough for me to type the word "nonsense" as emphatically as I'd like to.

Its a good thing that wearers of goatees and sharp little mustaches aren't a vocal minority or we'd be crying foul on Snidely Whiplash too.

Crimminy...

If you stare at a potato long enough, sooner or later you'll see the face of Elvis. But in the end...its just a damn potato.

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On 2/11/2004 at 1:49am, greyorm wrote:
RE: Yes, MORE on religion and role playing

Librisia wrote: Based on my "anecdotal data," *hee hee* I WOULD say that a great many gamers - myself included - are, to varying degrees, somewhat socially dysfunctional

Honestly, everyone is socially dysfunctional to varying degrees. I haven't met one human being who isn't in some manner. So, I don't know that I would label any specific group as "socially dysfunctional" because they all happen to share a hobby, or even say that gamers as a whole are more (or less) socially dysfunctional than the rest of society.

Eowin had to look like she was going to barely be able to pull it off, no matter how much she said "I fear neither pain nor death" beforehand. THAT is the external reality that constantly tells me that, because I have a vagina and breasts, I can never be as epic a hero as the people who have penises.

That scene annoyed me a great deal...ok, ok, I thought it sucked -- I mean, come on, it was Eowyn, a woman of Rohan and a shield maiden! She KNEW how to use a sword. The scene simply didn't match the book at all, which is what ruined it for me, and even failed to highlight the earlier establishment about her ability with a weapon from the second movie!

However, my wife and her friend seemed to like it a lot, and cheered when Eowyn finally put her sword through the Witch King and said her line. She also (jokingly) pointed out that it was a woman that slew the Witch King, instead of a "helpless man." Hrm, I'm going to have to ask her if she even considered the "stumbling, helpless woman" part of it.

I need to re-read the GNS model stuff about sims again, but I was not saying that combat can't be a part of narrativism. It's just not a focus...is often fudged in favor of story. Are you sure narrativism isn't read as touchy-feely? People need to take it like a man when they can't climb that mountain or kill a bad guy, right?

No insult intended, because the concept does take a bit to get, and the terms are non-intuitive, but I think you need to reread the model again -- you're committing some of the "major misconceptions about GNS categories" ideas in your statements.

Narrativism has nothing to do with downplaying combat, or its importance (see TROS, frex), or fudging what the dice produce as results in order to adhere to a "story" (ie: aesthetic or desired outcome). Narrativism is about exploring issues, not producing a story, or character interaction, or characterization/acting, though it is regularly confused as such.

Here, I think, is the best way I can explain it (something I recently developed while thinking of what to reply and why I keep seeing this mistake repeated):

It occurs to me that, as a generality, women seem to prefer the theatrics of games, whereas men appear to prefer the tactics.

That is, most gamers appear to consider interaction with NPCs and PCs (ie: lots of talking, playing out personality conflicts, etc.), characterization (ie: character acting, posing, reacting to situations in-character) to be what is generally referred to as "ROLE-playing" (as opposed to "ROLL-playing," which is also generally derided and looked down upon).

Since ROLL-playing they assume does not have anything to do with stories, then (logic follows) that the ROLE-playing must be story-oriented. But this is wrong; neither of these is more or less Narrativist -- both are pretty straight Sim in most cases.

That is, theatrics are not inherently Narrativist. Playing a character, talking in character, getting all emotional and angsty (to pick on Vampire for a moment), and interacting with other personalities is not Narrativism.

Let me ask you this: Have you ever witnessed a situation where women weren't taken seriously as gamers? If so, please tell the story(ies) (this is an official add to my other three ethnographic questions).

I can honestly say "no." When I said I'd never run into it, I meant it!
That's why I found it so odd!

Hrm, well, wait, I can give one example: there was one player in one of the groups I GM'd a number of years ago whom was scorned and muttered about privately regarding her ability as a gamer and (both player and charatcer) behavior. The player was a woman.

However, given the circumstances, and the fact that the muttering was coming from both men and women, and one young, gay male, I don't believe that our not taking her seriously and rolling our eyes when she played had anything to do with her sex.

She was flighty (ie: didn't appear to pay much attention to what was happening in the game; or if she was trying, couldn't keep anything straight), had a habit of changing her character sheet on the fly and without notice (cheating), notably lied about herself as a person by way of serious contradiction a number of times (ie: she was a writer -- no, a school-teacher -- no, a cruise line entertainer -- and "no memory" of having told us the other things). I don't want to say she was a bad person, because she was always pleasant, but all of this, particularly the last, didn't lead to much trust among the group of her. I doubt her sex had much to do with that, however.

that the group of gamers is a safe place for men, and they can foist off their "web of relationships fear" on the game scenario, leaving them free to bond with the other men. When women get brought into game situations where the men are insecure and hostile to the presence of women, it may be because the presence of a woman destroys the "male bonding sphere" and the larger web of relationships they distrust has now been brought back into the metagame situation.

Hrm, that's really interesting...I think you are perhaps on to something regarding the group being a safe place for a specific type of guy: sort of like a bachelor's club. When male member A brings his engaged to the club, the other men feel betrayed/shown up/abandoned.

I think, however, this can happen very easily with women, as well; and, IME, women in the same situation are equally as vicious as men, but to the other woman of the group (ie: "What's he doing with HER?" "She's so fat/stupid/ugly/adjective." "I can't believe her, bringing that guy here...", "What does she see in him?" etc.) though often perfectly cordial to the guest. Their displeasure tends to result in treatment of the other woman differently during the interaction, as more cross and judgemental than would otherwise be the case.

(Ok, where do I get my data? I'm one of those guys women seem to love to make into "one of the girls" -- yes, I'm "that guy", you know, the guy who during high school all the girls were friends with, but wouldn't date. Oh, the emotional scars! -- so I hear it all, as an honorary female.)

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On 2/11/2004 at 1:56am, greyorm wrote:
RE: Yes, MORE on religion and role playing

In reply to Mike's statement, black is the color of "evil" in Western culture, and was long before modern racial (skin color) issues even came onto the scene. It is a cultural holdover that has nothing to do with marking dark-skinned people as evil or trying to culturally oppress them. Rather, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

Ainur Elmgren has a few things to say about this issue regarding Tolkien, and the fact that he made his orcs black. I don't necessarily agree with everything she states, but it is worth a read, I think.

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On 2/11/2004 at 4:44am, clehrich wrote:
RE: Yes, MORE on religion and role playing

No, I'm with Mike on this one. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, to be sure, but sometimes it isn't.* If you don't like his Drow example, here's one that seems oddly to confuse Americans (in my experience) but which Europeans seem to see instantly. Of course, this is totally anecdotal data, but...

In Star Trek: TNG, they introduced a new species/race/culture, the Ferengi. They were short and bald, had hook-noses and snaggle-teeth, and were 100% totally focused on money all the time. Furthermore, they had an entire culture founded upon a vast and complicated legalistic text, which was all about rules of acquisition.

Now for some reason, a lot of Europeans, as well as myself and a few Americans, all seem to read this as (unintentionally, to be sure) a really crass Jewish stereotype. I mean, every single element here is a classic. But lots of folks will swear up and down that we're over-reading.

Again, take Phantom Menace. Is it just me, or did this seem to be Battle of the British Colonies? Hong Kong vs. the Jamaicans, with the English looking on and not helping much.

I'm totally with Mike on the Drow. Considering that AD&D monsters were all graded into alignment, i.e. whether you were allowed to kill them just for existing, what's a little sexism and color-racism here and there?

Chris Lehrich

*During one show of You Bet Your Life, Groucho encountered a woman who said she had 9 children. "Nine children?" he exclaimed in some horror, to which the woman replied, defensively, "Well, I love my husband." Groucho retorted instantly, "Madam, I love my cigar, but I take it out of my mouth once in a while." He got in a lot of trouble about that.

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On 2/11/2004 at 6:24am, John Kim wrote:
RE: Yes, MORE on religion and role playing

Mike Holmes wrote: But all the result of men doing the writing who'd been canalized by society to put these things in. That doesn't exonerate them. But it means that you won't see any change in RPGs until you see a change in society. You won't change anyone's mind on this level. That is, you won't get people to stop putting mysogynist (or racist) stuff in books until you educate them that it's a bad thing to do in general.

Why am I so confident that it's not related to something intrinsic to RPGs? Because there are better RPGs out there at about the rate that there are better people out there in society.

OK, I partly agree with this -- that it is a matter for education. However, I emphatically disagree that "education" has to mean, say, sitting down in a classroom for a course entitled "How To Not Be Racist".

RPGs can be educational -- just as movies and novels can be. Art (especially pop art) is hugely influential in social attitudes. Like other forms, RPGs can be and indeed are a forum for discussion moral and social issues. So, for example, when I played a woman in a Lord of the Rings campaign, it forced the players to think about issues of women's roles. When Jim decided to play a homosexual in my new James Bond 007 campaign, that also forced the other players to consider issues of sexual orientation.

So I guess I'm saying you can change people's minds on this level. Now, it isn't mind control -- if someone is really set in their opinions than playing an RPG isn't going to change it. But they can learn things and be exposed to new ideas through RPGs.

Mike Holmes wrote: Many RGPs, I'd even go do far as to say are subject to the feminist agenda - at the very least they're willing to make the slight bow to it and alter their text in the politically correct manner. In Hero Quest, they state that generic players are refered to as male, and Narrators as female. What are they saying there about power structures?

I agree; nothing intentional. But, again, I don't think there's an agenda to the earlier work either.

Hmm. There are several games which use this approach that seem pretty anti-feminist -- notably Last Unicorn Games' Star Trek and Decipher's Lord of the Rings RPG which I gave text examples of earlier in this thread. I don't have HeroQuest, but this same pronoun convention was in Hero Wars. The feminist agenda (if any) of female GM seems balanced by the fact that the set of sample players and PCs are all male (Rick/Kallai, Peter/Rollo, and John/Rurik in HW).

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On 2/11/2004 at 6:39am, clehrich wrote:
RE: Yes, MORE on religion and role playing

John Kim wrote:
Mike Holmes wrote: But it means that you won't see any change in RPGs until you see a change in society. You won't change anyone's mind on this level. That is, you won't get people to stop putting mysogynist (or racist) stuff in books until you educate them that it's a bad thing to do in general.
RPGs can be educational -- just as movies and novels can be. Art (especially pop art) is hugely influential in social attitudes. Like other forms, RPGs can be and indeed are a forum for discussion moral and social issues. So, for example, when I played a woman in a Lord of the Rings campaign, it forced the players to think about issues of women's roles. When Jim decided to play a homosexual in my new James Bond 007 campaign, that also forced the other players to consider issues of sexual orientation.
This is something I touched on in my Ritual essay. I do think that a feminist game, for example, is possible, and would mean something quite a bit different than changing the pronouns around. It would be a game, probably Narrativist by GNS, in which the Premise centered around gender issues, specifically of women. I think that such a game would have interesting social effects, because if done "hard" -- that is, not mincing around feeling good about ourselves -- we the players would be forced to confront deep social issues on a very personal level. One possible result would be a greater consciousness of the social divides in our society, resulting in a potential for activism outside of the gaming context.

This is only a notion, you understand, but I just don't think gaming has to be limited to preexisting conventions and acceptance within the gaming group. I mentioned (in the essay) the example of a rape scene. This could be a powerful thing, forcing everyone to examine very deeply their feelings about rape and its meaning. But as a rule, Social Contract conventions are brought in to prevent this sort of thing; the argument is that conflict or personal assault of this sort is necessarily bad for the gaming dynamic. If you want to be extreme about it, imagine a rape scene in which both characters are PC's. Again, as a recent thread has shown, there is a common (though not universal) acceptance that this can never be good gaming. So long as this is accepted as true, there is really no possibility for gaming to break out of its narrow social role as "fun" and actually have a transformative effect politically.

I guess it's the same claim that Artaud and the like made about theater: until we break out of the script that says "you can do this but you absolutely can never do that," we can't really make this art form challenge us or anyone to the deepest levels.

Chris Lehrich

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On 2/11/2004 at 7:55am, M. J. Young wrote:
RE: Yes, MORE on religion and role playing

Mike Holmes wrote:
Thuringwaethiel wrote: But what I've heard about drows, they are described as utterly evil species, much worse than your average "licensed to kill" orcs and kobolds. And they are a matriarchal community, lead by strong females. The message?
And they're black, too. Had that struck you at all? The evil elves are the ones that are black.

The drow as a race were indeed evil; but I was addressing them as a player character option, and they were not any more limited in alignment than any other character race. The minotaur of Krynn was also generally evil, if I recall correctly, but player characters could be good. Hengeyokai were the only player character race for which alignment was strictly dictated--you had to be the alignment that matched the animal (or the animal that matched the alignment). My point was that one of the most powerful player character choices was female drow.

As to them being black, well, if they live underground and thrive by stealth, it would make sense that they would be dark so as not to reflect so much light, and so hide better in the shadows. Being black was one of their advantages, as it gave them very high numbers on surprise rolls, quite beyond what was afforded normal elves.
John Kim wrote:
Mike Holmes wrote: Many RGPs, I'd even go do far as to say are subject to the feminist agenda - at the very least they're willing to make the slight bow to it and alter their text in the politically correct manner. In Hero Quest, they state that generic players are refered to as male, and Narrators as female. What are they saying there about power structures?

I agree; nothing intentional. But, again, I don't think there's an agenda to the earlier work either.

Hmm. There are several games which use this approach that seem pretty anti-feminist -- notably Last Unicorn Games' Star Trek and Decipher's Lord of the Rings RPG which I gave text examples of earlier in this thread. I don't have HeroQuest, but this same pronoun convention was in Hero Wars. The feminist agenda (if any) of female GM seems balanced by the fact that the set of sample players and PCs are all male (Rick/Kallai, Peter/Rollo, and John/Rurik in HW).

I agree. In Multiverser, we did not use this "feminine pronoun for the referee" notion (which was popular with White Wolf) because we always found it jarring to read in the text of other games. Languages descended from Proto-hittite use the masculine pronoun when the antecedent is "person of unknown or unspecified gender"; the feminine pronoun means "female or feminine" antecedent. Whenever I'm reading anything and it says "she", I immediately think, "she who?", not because of some sort of misogynist attitude but because my linguistics training tells me that "she" must refer to a specific individual, and "he" may refer to a generalized concept of unspecified gender.

At the same time, although we didn't use many examples in the text, we used female player characters in quite a few of them.

The character file in the appendix includes three (very individual) women and seven men (and a boy and a dog); however, these characters were all developed by players during playtest, and were selected as those who had had the most impact on the development of the game concept--and since a large part of that playtesting was done while E. R. Jones was in the army, a disproportionate number of the available players were male. So our pool was skewed up front.

I think that there are discriminatory actions that do not reflect attitudes as much as habits; these certainly need to be corrected, but it doesn't mean that those who have these habits are themselves prejudiced. At the same time, there are also sensitivities which are quick to impute such attitudes in the strangest places.

In Verse Three, Chapter One, one of the protagonists met a group of brightly colored bird-like bipeds, and befriended them; she became aware that they lived in a rather tense relationship with another group of feathered bipeds, dark-feathered creatures across the lake. When she was joined by a second protagonist, a young black man who is sensitive to race questions, and mentioned this to him, he immediately struck on the fact that these birds were segregated by the color of their feathers. It had never occurred to her, and she assumed that they were different species altogether. He said she didn't notice it because she was white. Is it more prejudicial to fail to notice that the birds were divided by color, or to assume that someone failed to notice it because they weren't black? If the people who designed the drow made them black to make them visibly distinct from standard elves in a way that would make them better suited to an underground environment, is it more prejudicial if they didn't realize the supposed racial connection, or if we assume that their not having noticed it means they innately brought forward their cultural prejudices?

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

--M. J. Young

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On 2/11/2004 at 7:59am, John Kim wrote:
RE: Yes, MORE on religion and role playing

clehrich wrote: there is a common (though not universal) acceptance that this (strife) can never be good gaming. So long as this is accepted as true, there is really no possibility for gaming to break out of its narrow social role as "fun" and actually have a transformative effect politically.

I guess it's the same claim that Artaud and the like made about theater: until we break out of the script that says "you can do this but you absolutely can never do that," we can't really make this art form challenge us or anyone to the deepest levels.

I don't agree with this. Indeed, I think that "fun" entertainment is much more important politically. For example, I would say "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" has had much more political impact than an un-fun arty work like, I don't know, maybe "Boys Don't Cry". On the one hand, cathartic entertainment is sort of status-quo conservative in its effect -- but clever efforts can manipulate within the system. Essentially, "Boys Don't Cry" is preaching to the converted. The people who go to see it aren't likely to be transformed by it because they are the type who will go to see an art film about a cross-dressing woman who gets shot.

I would say the same thing about games. I picture a cool political-agenda game being one where people have fun and don't think about it as transformative, educational, unfun experience. Instead, there would be a bunch of small questioning moments within the narrative.

I have been pondering about doing this in my James Bond campaign. It is set in 1984, which is a interesting period compared to now. The Soviets are in Afghanistan and various groups are helping out mujahedeen like Osama Bin Laden to fight them. Saddam Hussein is fighting Iran with aid from the U.S. and others. I am pondering having James-Bond-ian adventures which relate to helping out these causes. It would be subtle, only slowly or later would the players realize what their characters are aiding -- and it could be dismissed as a joke, but it would I think be a joke which would stay in their minds.

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On 2/11/2004 at 10:23am, contracycle wrote:
RE: Yes, MORE on religion and role playing

M. J. Young wrote:
I think that there are discriminatory actions that do not reflect attitudes as much as habits; these certainly need to be corrected, but it doesn't mean that those who have these habits are themselves prejudiced. At the same time, there are also sensitivities which are quick to impute such attitudes in the strangest places.


Whats the distinction between a habit and a prejudice? I can;t see one - you're either doing it or you're not. A huge quantity of such discrimination occurs precisely habitual and non-deliberate because the person has never bothered to investigate the idea. To disntinguish between "habit" and "prejudice" is only to let them off the hook and validate the behaviour as harmless after all.

Yes, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and sometimes an iconically homicidal black matriarchy is just a homicidal black matriarchy. Theres not much "reading between the lines" necessary here and I c\nnot see the drow as defensible, really.

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On 2/11/2004 at 1:06pm, S'mon wrote:
RE: Yes, MORE on religion and role playing

Re the Drow - to me they clearly aren't based on white male American stereotypes of black American culture, at any rate. They're matriarchal because they're based on notions of spiders, where the female eats the male after mating.

I'm not sure how recent the notion of the colour black representing evil is. I think in western culture black has represented death for a good while, and death easily becomes associated with evil.

The Ferengi = Jewish notion may be because Europeans are much more conversant with anti-Semitism than modern Americans are. I don't think it has any grounding in the writers' intent, I think Rodenberry & co in creating the Ferengi were intending to satirise US-style free market robber-capitalism. The STTNG Federation as conceived by Rodenberry is apparently communistic.

Edit: probably worth mentioning that Tolkien's orcs are based off fear of the British urban proletariat - they're black from the soot. :)

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On 2/11/2004 at 1:12pm, montag wrote:
RE: Yes, MORE on religion and role playing

contracycle wrote: Whats the distinction between a habit and a prejudice?

A predjudice is wrong by definition, a habit is an action. Habits may be judged this way or that by others, but they are not wrong in themselves, without an external point of reference. Predjudices on the always wrong, otherwise we'd be talking about opinions.
Alternatively you might distinguish them in that habits are actions, behaviour, whereas predjudices are positions, mental stances. So you got (mobile/immobile) and (behaviour/mind) as two further dimensions.
Hope this helps.


Re: Ferengi: Me and my fellow German Star Trek fans and viewers have always considered the Ferengi a neither particularly subtle nor particularly clever criticism of American style capitalism. It never even crossed my mind to consider the Ferengi might be a caricature of Jews. So either everyone's innocent or Anti-Americanims beats Anti-Semitism any day. ;)

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On 2/11/2004 at 2:56pm, Librisia wrote:
Yeah, what y'all said

Valamir, greyorm, M.J.

Sure, a cigar is just a cigar. But when you keep choosing the same KIND of cigar over and over and over and over and over and over, the cigar becomes a symbol of the way you view the world, no matter what the "origins" of your choice of cigar might have been. Fact is, if blackness as a marker of evil didn't fit with the racist agenda of U.S. cultural enterprise, it would have ceased to be used. Don't fool yourselves. Just because black was the color of the Judeo-Christian devil before slavery of Africans started as a business, that doesn't mean it didn't suit the slave trade's goals nicely. It did, in fact. As in written/spoken language, the meaning of symbols changes over time.

This also applies to M.J.s Proto-Hittite pronoun usage. Sorry, but He and She both mean specific individuals now - your training may make you more sensitized, but that is not the current language usage. Your example only heightens my own argument about the external/internal reality split in U.S. culture at large and gaming in particular

Nice one on the sooty proletariat in Tolkien, S'mon. Let me add to that reading: How many upper class people of African descent do you think there were in England in the 1940's-50's? :-)

I think M.J.'s Verse Three, Chapter One example actually takes an earlier point further (I'm sorry, I can't comb over the posts anymore to remember whose it was); more women in rping are needed to weed out sexism. Feminism (though I have not couched it in these terms) is about fighting injustice. So, what we need is a more balanced OVERALL DEMOGRAPHIC in rping to help improve it (as well as Mr. Kim's political usage of the game - you go, boyeee!).

I don't know how you handled that bird people situation, M.J., but it would have been an excellent way for the group to continue to explore the issue of racism with the help of the young black man in your group. He was right. She didn't see it because she was white. That's life. What would be racist in this situation is to fail to acknowledge the young man's point of view. I think in the U.S. (and maybe elsewhere) we perpetuate "isms" (racism, sexism, homophobia..ism) because we are too freaked out by our participation in those attitudes to own them and work to change them.

So the "cigar is just a cigar" argument fails here, because obviously, to myself and others in this discussion, it's NOT just a cigar anymore. It's difficult, but stop taking it personally. Why not ask us to help you understand why it's not just a cigar? By getting defensive and saying, "well I'M not sexist/racist/homophobic!" you're not necessarily worsening the problem - but you aren't being part of the solution, either.

In a general state of agreement with Kim and Lehrich's latest posts: Many of you don't see the problem with the examples regarding gaming here because the gaming industry is a mirror of yourselves, and what you see reflected in the mirror looks like yourselves. What many of us see in that mirror is distorted and maimed because all of the reflections given back in that mirror tend to look like YOU (white, middle class, male, heterosexual). Not only do we need feminist game design, we need womanist game design (African-American women's issues), we need Africanist game design, we need Queer game design... the list goes on.

I think it's possible, Lehrich, to have these kinds of game designs - or as Kim illustrated, to use current games to further these agendas.

*steps down off the soap box*
Sorry, I just can't get away from calling people by their last names. An academic habit, I suppose. Y'all will just have to put up with it. :-)

greyorm, yes, I DO need to go back and reread the gns stuff. When I do, I will happily post my corrections to my own statements so far. So, bear with the mistakes until I get to it, please ... :-)

montag, I think it's valid to say that the Ferengi can be read as both a Jewish charicature AND as an indictment of U.S. capitalist practice.

I intend to put up an ethnographic survey in the not too distant future. Taking into account input from this discussion, I think doing it off the forge would be most useful. I would be happy to have help constructing the survey, because I don't think it has to exclude data that would be of use to others here (and elsewhere). I'll start another thread to get that going so we can hash it out.

Krista

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On 2/11/2004 at 3:44pm, contracycle wrote:
RE: Yes, MORE on religion and role playing

montag wrote:
Alternatively you might distinguish them in that habits are actions, behaviour, whereas predjudices are positions, mental stances. So you got (mobile/immobile) and (behaviour/mind) as two further dimensions.
Hope this helps.


Its the behaviour that is damaging, not the mental opinion. Anti-racism must attack the behaviour, not implement Thought Control. Discriminatory behaviour cannot be excused merely because it is habitual; equally, seeking to identify and label someone as a Bad Person is wholly beside the point. Its the actions that matter.

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On 2/11/2004 at 4:02pm, S'mon wrote:
Re: Yeah, what y'all said

Hi Librisia/Krista.

Re the colour black, I think you're putting the cart before the horse. I have never seen anyone but anti-racists use the connection between black as the 'evil' colour and 'black' as a skin colour to argue that people classed as racially black are 'evil'. White racists don't do that. If they did, Hitler wouldn't have dressed his SS in black shirts. Black is seen as the scary, 'cool' colour - black trenchcoats, black Goth outfits, black leather biker jackets. However hard you try, the colour and its association with darkness, fear & badness simply doesn't have a racial connotation per se.

From what I know* of racially sensitive Americans (ie, Americans who are attuned to the racial classification system of their culture, consciously or subconsciously), when they look at someone and decide if they're going to classify them as 'black', 'white' or Hispanic they look primarily at things other than skin tone - hair and especially facial features. You can be classed as 'black' in the USA while having a skin tone lighter than most 'whites'.

Tolkien came from south Africa originally. Despite that, from what I can tell he shared the concerns of his era and his country - primarily Class not Race. Class is still very important in the UK, although I think this is lessening. In the USA it's much less important, and Race is much more important. I guess it can be hard for Americans to appreciate that racial questions are less important in many other countries, and of course racial classifications are very different. No European truly understands the American concept of Hispanic or la Razza for instance (I know I don't!), which is particularly tough on Spaniards & Portugese visiting the Americas...

*I'm white male British, married to an American from Tennessee.

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On 2/11/2004 at 4:27pm, S'mon wrote:
RE: Re: Yeah, what y'all said

Librisia wrote:
Fact is, if blackness as a marker of evil didn't fit with the racist agenda of U.S. cultural enterprise, it would have ceased to be used. Don't fool yourselves.


Colours have connotations - black is evil, scary, cool.

I don't think the connotations of black as a colour bear any resemblance to racial prejudices, though. Racial stereotyping from white culture I'm familiar with would typically be that 'blacks' are violent, aggressive, stupid and possibly lazy. Also more guilt-free and readier to enjoy life. In fact these stereotypes are more like traditionally associated with the colour red - the colour of fire and blood. Black-as-the-evil-colour if anything connotes values closer to steretypes about 'whites' - cold, calculating, villainous.

Of course people can perceive things differently; I'm only discussing the 'internal aspect' of racist 'white' cultural associations. Someone classed as racially 'black' may see the cultural association of colour black=evil as being applied to them. I'm just arguing that that association simply doesn't exist in the minds even of white racists.

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On 2/11/2004 at 5:23pm, John Kim wrote:
RE: Re: Yeah, what y'all said

Librisia wrote: Sure, a cigar is just a cigar. But when you keep choosing the same KIND of cigar over and over and over and over and over and over, the cigar becomes a symbol of the way you view the world, no matter what the "origins" of your choice of cigar might have been.

It's a good point. It is the pattern which is important, not any particular case. For example, I think that condemning the Drow in particular isn't quite right. It's just one black-skinned matriarchal culture which happens to be evil. It could be an interesting contrast to the good matriarchal cultures, and the good black-skinned races in D&D. Except... Where are they? Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't see them. I think this is the significant point, not a single example of Drow in isolation.

Librisia wrote: What many of us see in that mirror is distorted and maimed because all of the reflections given back in that mirror tend to look like YOU (white, middle class, male, heterosexual). Not only do we need feminist game design, we need womanist game design (African-American women's issues), we need Africanist game design, we need Queer game design... the list goes on.

I think it's possible, Lehrich, to have these kinds of game designs - or as Kim illustrated, to use current games to further these agendas.

Well, I'm a little wary of the word "need". I would like to have such games because I think they would be fun to play (in the sense that I think diversity adds interest). I know of many others who feel the same way. However, I don't think it is right to demand this of any game designers or publishers. It is up to the people who make such games to show that there is a demand.

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On 2/11/2004 at 5:34pm, James Holloway wrote:
RE: Re: Yeah, what y'all said

Librisia wrote:
Let me add to that reading: How many upper class people of African descent do you think there were in England in the 1940's-50's? :-)Krista

Probably just Haile Selassie.

As for the idea that certain types of play have traditionally appealed more to female players than others*, I think that (based on limited anecdotal evidence, of course) that's probably true. The stumbling block is coupling it with a GNS category. Take out the word Narrativist and you're probably all right.

* In the aggregate, of course. In fact, I know plenty of female players who are grotesque power-mongers, but if I had to guess at the proportion of the total population I'd say it's lower.

John Kim makes a good point about stereotypes of women in games, but I have to say that this is probably dependent on the game and the writer. The Deadlands example sounds like it's specifically based on Doris Day in "Calamity Jane." There's hardly any of that kind of thing in, say, Call of Cthulhu, even though it set in a very sexist society, probably because "manly" pursuits like fighting and what-all aren't really emphasized in the game as being very important.

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On 2/11/2004 at 8:52pm, C. Edwards wrote:
RE: Yes, MORE on religion and role playing

Librisia wrote: So the "cigar is just a cigar" argument fails here, because obviously, to myself and others in this discussion, it's NOT just a cigar anymore. It's difficult, but stop taking it personally. Why not ask us to help you understand why it's not just a cigar? By getting defensive and saying, "well I'M not sexist/racist/homophobic!" you're not necessarily worsening the problem - but you aren't being part of the solution, either.


I'm not M.J., but I'd like to address this issue.

I realize that there are things some people view as "cigars" and others view as "not just cigars", and I understand their reasons for doing so. The thing is, those reasons criss-cross the spectrum from "paranoia", "persecution complex", "oblivious white hetero male", "minority sympathizer", and a whole host of other points of view.

So, while you can point at , say, the whole Drow concept and say "that is NOT just a cigar", there is actually a very good chance that to whoever created the Drow, and to those who encounter the concept, they are just a cigar. No projection of racial or gender bias needed to exert itself for such an invention.

I simply don't think that we do the issues of race and gender prejudice any favors by insisting that imaginary constructs, such as the Drow, that may or may not have stemmed from some bias and have many possible explanations outside of bias, are definitely "not just cigars". That's just taking a straw man (or Ferengi) and beating it repeatedly to make a ruckus. I think the whole issue deserves a more substantive approach.

Oh, and as for the meaning of symbols changing over time. Yes, they do, but not for everybody.

-Chris

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On 2/11/2004 at 8:54pm, C. Edwards wrote:
RE: Yes, MORE on religion and role playing

*edit: multi-post

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On 2/11/2004 at 8:54pm, C. Edwards wrote:
RE: Yes, MORE on religion and role playing

*edit: heh, seems I posted in triplicate.

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On 2/11/2004 at 9:49pm, Valamir wrote:
RE: Yes, MORE on religion and role playing

Chris, Amen

In fact, I find taking legitimate important issues like racism and sexism and homophobia and trying to search for and claim evidence for them everywhere, including in adolescent RPG munchkin fantasy characters...simply cheapens the whole thing, and makes it much easier for nay sayers to point and say "see how ridiculous those people are".

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On 2/11/2004 at 10:44pm, Mike Holmes wrote:
RE: Yes, MORE on religion and role playing

Uh, just to be clear, I was being a tad facetious. Or rather, I don't see the problem with Drow. Hence my terse "All Terrible" was meant to be sarcastic (I didn't think a winkie emoticon would make sense there). For all you short memoried people, we've actually been over this point before in spades. My personal opinion, FWIW, is, like I said above, that people are probably unneccessarily reacting to these things. Moreover, my overall point was that it's up to you as an individual to decide what's offensive and what's not, and vote with your pocketbook.

John, I didn't say where any such education would have to take place. Nor even that it should. Just that this is where the ground up solution would have to come from in general terms, if one thought there was a problem.

I don't care what y'all think about whether drow are a racist portrayal or not. Won't affect my play, either way. And I don't see what you can do about these things if they do turn out to be problematic, other than changing your buying habits. To each his own.

Mike

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On 2/11/2004 at 10:50pm, John Kim wrote:
RE: Yes, MORE on religion and role playing

Valamir wrote: In fact, I find taking legitimate important issues like racism and sexism and homophobia and trying to search for and claim evidence for them everywhere, including in adolescent RPG munchkin fantasy characters...simply cheapens the whole thing, and makes it much easier for nay sayers to point and say "see how ridiculous those people are".

I agree with you that concluding from an isolated fictional creation like Drow is silly. I'm curious about whether you agree with my earlier examples, though, where I (for example) looked at all cases of female characters appearing in the Last Unicorn Games Star Trek book -- or in adventures like "The Greenland Saga".

I'm also not sure what your point is about adolescent munchkin fantasy is. In my experience, adolescent munchkin fantasy is frequently quite sexist -- often obviously so. I don't see how this is a terribly controversial point. It's like saying that beer commercials are sexist. Now, it is socially much more important whether, say, company CEOs are sexist rather than whether 13-year-old boys are sexist. But I think it is ridiculous to try to argue that sexism doesn't exist in adolescent fantasies.

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On 2/12/2004 at 1:05am, Valamir wrote:
RE: Yes, MORE on religion and role playing

I'm curious about whether you agree with my earlier examples, though, where I (for example) looked at all cases of female characters appearing in the Last Unicorn Games Star Trek book -- or in adventures like "The Greenland Saga".


Here are my thoughts on those.

1) I'm real hesitant to take a couple (or even a dozen) exerpts from a book and draw a broad conclusion that they are evidence of endemic sexism. I'll grant you they deserve a raised eyebrow but barring more compelling evidence I'm inclined to conclude that at the end of the day, its just a potato after all.

2) I believe that a source book (movie, novel, whatever0 that is attempting to emulate original material (historic or literary) should endeavor to do so faithfully. Looking back on OST you see alot of females of questionable nerve who stood in the shadow of stronger male characters. So IF one is going to point fingers, start with the original but I can't blame the new for being faithful to the old.

3) Sex sells. Saying sex sells, and capitalizing on the fact that sex sells IMO does not constitute sexism. Call it bad taste. Call it capitalist greed compromising artistic integrity, but I don't consider successful sales tactics to be any sort of -ist. The marketers job is to sell product. The strategy might be pathetic, but if it sells then the marketer did their job.

I find what Avalanche did with their covers abhorrant. Not for any of the often cited "demeaning to women" reasons that get thrown around. No, I think they were demeaning to the authors. While not of the calibre of GURPS as far as historical research goes, there was still some solid background there put into a more easily digestible bite size ready for adventure format that really could have been a top drawer product line. If I had been an author of one of those books, I'd have been insulted that they felt the need to sell my word via cheescake rather than on its merits.

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On 2/12/2004 at 1:44am, M. J. Young wrote:
RE: Yes, MORE on religion and role playing

Habits versus prejudices.

People have habits; it is a function of our mental and physical processing that makes it possible for us to accomplish things in this world: most of the things we do, we do because we have trained ourselves to do them that way. We don't think about them when we do them, and we learned them at some point for reasons which made sense at the time.

I'm an asthmatic; cigarette smoke is crippling. I consider very rude for people to smoke around me. If they ask if I mind, I try to explain that I do mind, because it doesn't take much exposure to the smoke to leave me gasping for breath. On the other hand, I don't think that people are being rude if they're sitting in the smoking section of the restaurant puffing on their cigarettes and the smoke drifts my direction. These are strangers; they have no idea that they're potentially endangering me, and have no intent to be rude. Now, if they were specifically blowing their smoke into the non-smoking area, that would be rude.

If I do something that offends you, even if I do it repeatedly, I need to be told that my habits are offensive, and given the opportunity to attempt to change them. If I'm doing something for reasons that offend you, that's different.

On a thread some time back, I used the word "Oriental" to describe people from the Far East generally, and someone said that was a very offensive word to use--"Asian" would be better. I had no idea that Asian people were offended by the designation "Oriental", but if they are, I'm certainly going to make an effort to change my usage. That's the difference between a habit and a prejudice.

Does that make sense?

--M. J. Young

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On 2/12/2004 at 2:03am, John Kim wrote:
RE: Yes, MORE on religion and role playing

Valamir wrote: 1) I'm real hesitant to take a couple (or even a dozen) exerpts from a book and draw a broad conclusion that they are evidence of endemic sexism. I'll grant you they deserve a raised eyebrow but barring more compelling evidence I'm inclined to conclude that at the end of the day, its just a potato after all.

Well, I'd be happy to provide more data. I did try to address this by showing all fiction text portraying females rather than just excerpts. I can provide further text, of course. There are also female characters included in six of the 37 mechanics examples in the rules (again, this is complete throughout the book, not selected cases). Two of these (pages 87 and 93) are examples of taking medical problems as disadvantages. Three of them (pages 101, 103, and 161) have the character making a perception or sensor check -- never combat or an active role. The sixth (page 104) is this:
Nurse Purvis uses her own Charm skill to resist Ensign Genchoks' romantic overtures (i.e., his attempt to use Charm on her), since they wouldn't make a good couple -- his blue skin tone clashes with her uniform.

I can of course type in the other five examples as well. Give me a little time.

Valamir wrote: 2) I believe that a source book (movie, novel, whatever0 that is attempting to emulate original material (historic or literary) should endeavor to do so faithfully. Looking back on OST you see alot of females of questionable nerve who stood in the shadow of stronger male characters. So IF one is going to point fingers, start with the original but I can't blame the new for being faithful to the old.

OK, here I disagree. First of all, I despise literal adaptation. A movie which portrays scene by scene exactly what is in the book is dull and pointless. The idea that you can and should just present the old without any of your own ideas is abhorrent to me. There can and should be new ideas which inform and comment on the old. All of the good RPG adaptations (like all good adaptations in general), in my opinion, have changed their source.

Second, if you write it, you should be prepared to stand by your work. People can and should judge you for it. If you don't like it, don't write it -- or at least write about how you don't like it.

Valamir wrote: 3) Sex sells. Saying sex sells, and capitalizing on the fact that sex sells IMO does not constitute sexism. Call it bad taste. Call it capitalist greed compromising artistic integrity, but I don't consider successful sales tactics to be any sort of -ist. The marketers job is to sell product. The strategy might be pathetic, but if it sells then the marketer did their job.

Here I totally disagree with the underlying logic. Again, you are responsible for what you do. For example, I may act in a racist manner to get ahead -- say by subtlely making slurs against someone whom I are competing for a job with. The fact that I successfully benefitted from this doesn't make the act any less racist. Racism and sexism are always motivated by self-interest. You disempower another in order to gain power for yourself.

That said, I don't think sex is sexist. For example, I would say that Buffy benefits from sexiness, but the show at least has a definite feminist agenda. It is a choice whether to show competant, liberated, sexy women or trashy cheesecake. Now, it may be that the cheesecake sells better because of who you are marketting to -- but that just goes back to my point above.

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On 2/12/2004 at 2:05am, Thuringwaethiel wrote:
RE: Yes, MORE on religion and role playing

Valamir wrote: In fact, I find taking legitimate important issues like racism and sexism and homophobia and trying to search for and claim evidence for them everywhere, including in adolescent RPG munchkin fantasy characters...simply cheapens the whole thing, and makes it much easier for nay sayers to point and say "see how ridiculous those people are".


I don't know about others, but I've never been hard pressed to find those aspects in just about any part of life. No need to search when things are thrown at one's face. Not hard to claim foul when one is hurt to tears day after day. Of course being female makes me more "tuned" when it comes to sexism, whereas racism doesn't "stick out" that much (I'm white). Still I am not stupid enough to claim that racism does not exist, or arrogant enough to say it's not a big deal.

Yes, there are those who cry "wolf, wolf" until no one cares. It is easy to label any feminist or race activist with that, when you don't want to talk about the issues. But remember the end of the story? There was a wolf, and it came.

Furthermore, this is a RPG forum. A design forum. A theory forum. I thought here one could analyze the existing games, adolescent munchkin or not. I thought some people here want to create games that no more are clones of the adolescent munchkin tradition. If you don't see the problem, or do not care, please let the rest of us discuss about it in peace.

RPGs are a dear hobby to me. I tend to "wander around" searching interesting ideas etc. If I encounter something unappealing, am I not allowed to address it? Some have questioned what makes girls roleplay and what drives them away. I'm providing my share of answers.

John Kim wrote:
I agree with you that concluding from an isolated fictional creation like Drow is silly.


I'm not sure if this is directed to me, but if so, let me refute the claim. I wasn't concluding anything from the drows (I could, but didn't get there yet). Drow females were brought up as an example of strong female characters. I pointed out that the culture behind them, controlled by them, is (one of) the most evil in the world. Yes, PCs can be aligned otherwise, but that means they are the expections, rebels, outcasts, fugitives. As a baseline, drows are evil. And the strong woman = evil woman is ages old sexist stereotype.

No, one can't make wide assumtions based on drows alone, but one can't present them as an example of equality between sexes (or races), either. I wouldn't use a Middle-Earth half-orc as a favouring example of mixed races. (They have good abilities, and they're described as something of an abomination to creation itself.)

I was tired to begin with, and these issues are not light to me. Going to sleep. Apologies for typos and bad english.

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On 2/12/2004 at 2:37am, Valamir wrote:
RE: Yes, MORE on religion and role playing

Yup, you and I disagree on a number of funamentals John

Movies portraying historical or literary events should endeavor to be as literal to the source as possible given the difference in medium. To do otherwise is IMO the height of hubris. The idea that some hollywood screenwriter can somehow "improve" upon a work of literature that stood the test of centuries is completely ludicrous to me. If you want to deliver a different "message" then come up with unique material. Don't take existing material and twist it into something else and then call it "artistic vision". I call it "too damn lazy to come up with completely new stuff and trying to cash in on someone else's fame"


Further I completely and utterly disagree with your definitions of racism or sexism being about depowering others in order to gain power for self. That's not an -ism. That's life. The proof is in your own example. If you compete for a job by using slurs against your competition...you may well be an untrustworthy, backstabbing, treacherous SOB. But its completely immaterial what gender or race your competition was.

Being a back stabbing SOB, makes you a back stabbing SOB. If by chance your target was black, that doesn't suddenly make you racist. To say it does is the very definition of inequality. Under this logic being a backstabbing SOB against a white guy means you're only guilty of a single offense. But if one then says its racist if against a black guy they've made it two offenses. As if somehow being horrible to a minority is a worse crime than being horrible to someone who isn't.

Being a horrible person is being a horrible person. Just because the target of your behavior feels that they belong to a "disempowered group" doesn't suddenly make you an -ist. You're still just a horrible person being horrible.


Are there legitimate issues that still need to be solved before all people are equal. Absolutely.

But too often words like "misogynist" or "racist" or "homophobe" have nothing whatsoever to do with helping solve that problem, and everything to do with one group using labels as a lever to gain power over another group. At this point these words become just another form of hate speech no different than nigger or faggot or dago.

NOT that I'm in anyway saying anyone on this thread was using them like that. But I do want to make the point that this is why I do not simply accept carte blanche every time someone (well intentioned or ill) says "aha...evidence of -ism". Real life doesn't ever fit into such nice neat little labels.

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On 2/12/2004 at 3:34am, Rich Forest wrote:
RE: Yes, MORE on religion and role playing

Ralph,

I think you’re overstating the case a bit on your refutation of John’s example. I don’t know how you can reasonably argue that the gender or race of the competition is immaterial when racial slurs have been made. I mean, how can you argue that race isn’t important if race is being used as a weapon? I’m really kind of stunned by the argument. I don’t think John was saying that whenever someone is horrible to a black person to get a job, whenever someone backstabs a woman to get the advantage, that it must be racism and sexism. But if someone uses racial slurs (or anti-woman slurs) as part of the package of gaining advantage? Yup. Sorry, I don’t see how you can argue that there is no racism or sexism there. Even if the person making the slurs doesn’t believe them (and I question this possibility as well), they are still contributing to the greater problems of racism and sexism in society.

I think one thing that you keep repeating, that is worth repeating, is that it’s important not to overstate the case. You’re pointing out where it seems to you that people are overstating their cases. That is fair enough—from the standpoint of argumentation, it’s possible to lose the audience by going at things too strongly. But I think you need to realize that you may be doing the same thing. No one here is making arguments that are purely reasonable and rational and apolitical.

And this is where I also have to note that I agree with you on what you said about power. Labels like misogynist, homophobe, etc. are used as labels to gain power over another group. Power is the issue here, and I think it would be disingenuous of someone to fight against prejudice and pretend that it isn’t about gaining power. Of course it’s about power. And here, I think, is where we come to a kind of sticking point. These issues are highly politicized, highly charged. People have power to gain here, and people have power to lose. And frankly, it’s just hard to talk reasonably about. Ralph, you seem to be arguing that (correct me if I’m overgeneralizing) humans disempower others to gain power for themselves. This is natural human behavior. It’s just the way things are. Is it fair to say that you think it’s a bit naïve not to recognize this as just something humans do? I’m not sure it’s possible to argue with “that’s just how people are,” except to say, “maybe it isn’t, or maybe it doesn’t have to be.” There are, as you pointed out yourself, some fundamental disagreements here, and this may be one of them. I don’t know that we are going to all agree on “how people are,” or what “natural behavior” is. So some people are going to disagree perhaps on philosophical grounds that you won’t accept. And likewise, some people aren’t going to buy your arguments because they won’t accept the philosophical grounds that your arguments are built on.

Rich

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On 2/12/2004 at 4:54am, clehrich wrote:
RE: Yes, MORE on religion and role playing

Valamir wrote: Movies portraying historical or literary events should endeavor to be as literal to the source as possible given the difference in medium. To do otherwise is IMO the height of hubris. The idea that some hollywood screenwriter can somehow "improve" upon a work of literature that stood the test of centuries is completely ludicrous to me.
Unless you're discussing some RPG based on Dante or something, I'm not sure what this has to do with anything. Setting aside putative centuries of approval, if you make an RPG of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, you change the message, simply because you change the medium -- the medium is, to a significant extent, the message. When you choose to take on the Star Wars RPG, if you limit yourself to representing precisely and only the universe and focus and purpose presented in the films, then you limit players to playing the movies. This seems pointless. If, on the other hand, you divorce the universe background from the particular plot, you radically change the message and point: you can tell tales of horror, viciousness, and grimy vile behavior with that universe; you can do Film Noir with that universe. But George Lucas will sure as hell think you've changed his message.
Further I completely and utterly disagree with your definitions of racism or sexism being about depowering others in order to gain power for self. That's not an -ism. That's life. The proof is in your own example. If you compete for a job by using slurs against your competition...you may well be an untrustworthy, backstabbing, treacherous SOB. But its completely immaterial what gender or race your competition was.
Let me try this differently. If you try to backstab someone on grounds that he's black, what you're doing in fact depends on the people you're dealing with -- apart from this one guy -- having racist tendencies. Otherwise the whole operation is pointless. Now if it works, you have at least encouraged the other folks to be racist, if not in fact even more so than they already are. How is this not racist behavior? Is that worse than simply backstabbing someone by lying about him? Yes. I have no problem saying that this is more vicious, because you in effect trash everyone associated.

It's as though you said, "This guy not only is a thief, but he's black too." Of course that's two crimes; if you'd just said, "He's a thief," that would be bad behavior, but to add "and of course you hate all black people, right?" adds a second piece of bad behavior.
But too often words like "misogynist" or "racist" or "homophobe" have nothing whatsoever to do with helping solve that problem, and everything to do with one group using labels as a lever to gain power over another group. At this point these words become just another form of hate speech no different than nigger or faggot or dago.
No, to be sure, such terms can be used as inverse versions of the same. To the appropriate audience, you can say, "And he's a racist" and have it stick pretty well, and that's also horrible. You know what? It's also racist. As you say, it cheapens the nature of racism such that racism becomes a yes/no, binary reality, which it simply isn't.

In other words, to claim either that all blacks are bad or that all prejudice (in a literal sense of pre-judgment) is bad is necessarily discriminatory. Is this solvable? No. Is it something we should work on? Yes. Is it something we should be sensitive to? Yes. Is it something we should readily denounce when promulgated as "family entertainment" in Hollywood? Yes. Is it a problem in RPGs? Yes.

I just don't understand why the fact that there are multiple kinds of discriminatory behavior and multiple kinds of approaches to eliminating it makes it acceptable for a given text to say, "Hey, we're not racist, we just think that black characters ought to be shiftless and lazy; but you know, it's a fantasy world, so it doesn't count."

Chris Lehrich

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On 2/12/2004 at 5:02am, John Kim wrote:
RE: Yes, MORE on religion and role playing

Valamir wrote: Movies portraying historical or literary events should endeavor to be as literal to the source as possible given the difference in medium. To do otherwise is IMO the height of hubris. The idea that some hollywood screenwriter can somehow "improve" upon a work of literature that stood the test of centuries is completely ludicrous to me. If you want to deliver a different "message" then come up with unique material.

Yup, I think this is a fundamental disagreement. Just to explain my position a little better... To my mind, if you don't have anything to say, then you shouldn't talk. This applies equally to original works and adaptations. A movie adaptation that has nothing to add to the original book is a waste of time. Rather than going through all that work, the creators should just tell people to read the book. You should only make the movie in the first place if you have something to say different than what is there from reading the book. That doesn't mean it is "better" than the book, just that it has to say something new or there is no point in making it.

The same thing for me is true of RPGs. For example, I am running a James Bond 007 campaign now with a homosexual protagonist (among others). As Chris Lehrich put it, Ian Fleming would likely be turning over in his grave. I consider this a fine thing. A similar impulse lead me to make a female PC for our Lord of the Rings campaign. This should probably get split out into a separate topic if we want to talk further.

Valamir wrote: Further I completely and utterly disagree with your definitions of racism or sexism being about depowering others in order to gain power for self. That's not an -ism. That's life. The proof is in your own example. If you compete for a job by using slurs against your competition...you may well be an untrustworthy, backstabbing, treacherous SOB. But its completely immaterial what gender or race your competition was.

Er, yes it is, IMO. It is material because by definition it is easier to pick on the disempowered, the people who aren't popular or numerous. Suppose I'm a white person in the turn-of-the-century Southern U.S. My job is threatened because a black person may do it cheaper. So I ride out with the KKK, go out in the black part of town, and lynch some to keep them in line. My job is now protected.

According to you, I'm not being a racist. I'm just picking on blacks because they happen to be an easy target to pick on. I'm a horrible person, but I could just as easily have picked on someone else. I'm saying that's what racism is!!! Racism isn't a separate behavior from self-interest. It is a form of self-interest. By promoting the interests of your race over other races (which is always expressed on individuals), you help yourself.

This is pretty thoroughly off-topic, though, so I won't post any more on it.

(Editted to fix syntax)

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On 2/12/2004 at 5:07am, clehrich wrote:
RE: Yes, MORE on religion and role playing

Oh -- somehow I missed Rich's post, probably because it starts page 4. What he said. 100%.

One other clarification or confusion. Suppose we design a game in which all black characters (and let's make sure that all characters are black or white) are shiftless and lazy, but have rhythm; all female characters are weak and sentimental and inclined to hysteria, and also not basically very logical.

Is this game racist and sexist? Not necessarily. Suppose the point, in fact, is to force everyone to grapple with the force and absoluteness of these stereotypes; that's the Premise, if you like. Is that racist and sexist? Again, not necessarily, and apparently not by intention. Indeed, it seems that the intention might be the opposite.

Will it be labeled racist and sexist by some folks? Of course. For the same reason, Life of Brian was labeled blasphemous, despite the fact that Jesus actually appears in the film doing the Sermon on the Mount quite straight, making the point that Brian is not Jesus.

In other words, it's certainly true that claims of racism and sexism can be used as political weapons against the undeserving. Does that mean that all unintentional racism is OK? Is it perfectly OK that Jar-Jar Binks is a grotesque mush-mouf slur on feet?

If you look around on the web, or in the first Boondocks book, there is a Boondocks cartoon (by Aaron McGruder) which has Jar-Jar doing a Step'n Fetchit routine, complete with watermelon and o-tay. A later strip has Jar-Jar as Black Panther, having read The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon and so forth. Is this unfair?

Chris Lehrich

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On 2/12/2004 at 8:32am, S'mon wrote:
RE: Yes, MORE on religion and role playing

I own Avalanche Press's 'Greenland Saga', I'd definitely agree that it comes across as sexist in several parts. The author would claim this was 'dealing with historical reality', but there's a-historical sexism there too IMO.

Re the quote from the Star Trek game, it seems like a faithful rendition of the 1960s source material; the sexism is exactly that inherent in the TV show's portrayal of female characters - pretty advanced for the time, I'd definitely say, but definitely portraying females as weaker and more emotional than their male counterparts.

Re the Drow - Gygax created them for the World of Greyhawk. He also created the Sueloise, a race of pale-skinned, blond-haired humans known for their villainy, scheming, cowardice and racism. Their Scarlet Brotherhood secret order uses a Nazi-like symbol. I haven't heard any complaints about this racist stereotyping of Nordic types or whatever, not that their culture bears any great deal more resemblance to real-world cultures than the drow does. The Scarlet Brotherhood are one of my favourite villains.

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On 2/12/2004 at 11:05am, pete_darby wrote:
RE: Yes, MORE on religion and role playing

With reference to the trek book... Is there any text at any point that says anything along the lines of "Okay, this is representing late 60's US TV. The cutting edge of it, at times, but still late 60's US. So women have jobs... as glorified stenographers and receptionists. And all look hot in mini-skirts. We have a rainbow nation on board, but with the white, middle class, hormone on legs in charge.

"This may bug you: if so, change it. But we've decided to maintain the attitudes of the time in the game, warts and all. To do otherwise would be to produce "Classic Trek, but done the way we want it!" which we see as a waste of the license."

For some, that won't excuse, but without anything like that, we don't know whether these were genuine design decisions, or the natural attitudes of the designers.

Now I'm wracking my brains for the DS9 episode where Sisko states he doesn't want to enter the Holo-nightclub based around the 60's nightclub, because he sees it as legitemizing the endemic racism of 60's culture, however it's been "whitewashed" for the holo-suite.

BTW, I always read the Ferenghi as arabic racist stereotypes (especially given the etymology of "ferenghi" from, iirc, a mid-eastern term for foreigner).

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On 2/12/2004 at 11:37am, S'mon wrote:
RE: Yes, MORE on religion and role playing

Re your comment the Trek game - that sounds a bit over-laboured to me. I doubt there was a conscious design to abide by the norms of the setting - surely that's always the default assumption anyway? I'd think if they had decided to change those norms, that would be more worthy of comment.

That said, I suppose in design notes on a Trek game it might be worth mentioning the apparent changing roles of women in Star Fleet from eg the Pilot episode, where a woman can be Number One - the first officer - without it apparently being unusual, to the sexism, miniskirts and more limited equality of the classic TOS era, to the political correctness and men-may-not-be-sexual-aggressors era of TNG, and so on.

Of course the latest show 'Enterprise' raises particular problems since being a Berman/Braga show the society it presents has far more in common with DS9 and Voyager than it does with older Trek. It could be treated as a bad 'historical' late-24th-century holo-tv show set back in the 21st century, I guess, importing totally ahistorical norms of conduct into the era. >:)

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On 2/12/2004 at 12:00pm, pete_darby wrote:
RE: Yes, MORE on religion and role playing

Well, looks like with the Trek issue, we're back to the advice of "if you're working within a genre, you better damn well know and state the conventions you're using." Assuming "everyone will know what's conventional" looks like it's leading to thematic train-wrecks in ST, Glorantha and (name your favourite setting here...)

I doubt very much that the examples of inherent sexism within ST:TOS:RPG were accidental. There've been far too many discussion I've seen including the designers where they've been immensley proud of how the conventions of TOS, compared to TNG, they've included in each book. And they're not guys who'd pass up the chance to re-inforce the conventions of their chosen genre by any means necessary.

But why would it be "over-laboured" to state your conventions? I couldn't think of one setting that wouldn't benefit from it. I'm trying.

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On 2/12/2004 at 12:19pm, S'mon wrote:
RE: Yes, MORE on religion and role playing

pete_darby wrote:
I doubt very much that the examples of inherent sexism within ST:TOS:RPG were accidental. There've been far too many discussion I've seen including the designers where they've been immensley proud of how the conventions of TOS, compared to TNG, they've included in each book. And they're not guys who'd pass up the chance to re-inforce the conventions of their chosen genre by any means necessary.

But why would it be "over-laboured" to state your conventions? I couldn't think of one setting that wouldn't benefit from it. I'm trying.


I suppose it doesn't do any harm to take an explicit look at the setting from the outside in. The controversial upcoming Starship Troopers game from Mongoose is apparently going to do something like this with regards to the politics of the setting, and I look forward to seeing how it works.

I guess, I just don't find it surprising that in basing a game on a setting, the game should adhere to the explicit and implicit conventions of that setting, and not deem it worthy of comment. I expect a Conan RPG to present the in-game cultures and attitudes as sexist but allow for powerful female fighters (beautiful and scantily clad, of course). I'd expect a Gor RPG to present all the female characters as simpering slave-girls. I'd expect a TOS Trek game to present female Star Fleet officers as generally competent but less sure of themselves and more emotional than their male peers - and beautiful and miniskirted of course. I would also want it to let me play a wholly competent, more severe, less feminine 'Number One' type female officer, though, especially in the pre-TOS era of rollneck sweaters. I'd expect it to let me play a Vulcan, but have to put up with constant racist cracks about my species from the human crewmembers. And so on.

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On 2/12/2004 at 3:15pm, Thuringwaethiel wrote:
RE: Yes, MORE on religion and role playing

S'mon wrote: I expect a Conan RPG to present the in-game cultures and attitudes as sexist but allow for powerful female fighters (beautiful and scantily clad, of course). I'd expect a Gor RPG to present all the female characters as simpering slave-girls. I'd expect a TOS Trek game to present female Star Fleet officers as generally competent but less sure of themselves and more emotional than their male peers - and beautiful and miniskirted of course. I would also want it to let me play a wholly competent, more severe, less feminine 'Number One' type female officer, though, especially in the pre-TOS era of rollneck sweaters. I'd expect it to let me play a Vulcan, but have to put up with constant racist cracks about my species from the human crewmembers. And so on.


Funny. To each their own, I guess, but I've so often heard RPGs been described along the lines "be what you want, do what you want" as opposed to literature, movies and other "immobile" mediums. Examples of variability and innovation are common. Call me naive, but somehow I then expect to find rules that support the variability and innovations. Of course when I read a book about Conan or Gor, I know what to expect. But if I play a RPG of Conan or Gor, I want to play it my way. If the system does not support this, it's trash. IMO, of course, but if someone wants to sell me his (pronoun intentional) game system, he'd better take heed.

My first system, ICE's MERP, allowed orcs and trolls as PCs, listed unflattering things about "good" cultures and presented different sexes and races in balanced light. Not a perfect system, mind you, far from it, but several important issues were as they should be. Of course the group makes the game, but the system may be either an aid or an obstacle. (MERP is an obstacle when it comes to number-crunching, but helps creating the atmosphere.)

Yes, I have a point here. Good luck finding it..

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On 2/12/2004 at 4:09pm, S'mon wrote:
RE: Yes, MORE on religion and role playing

Fair enough. I know when I GM'd WEG's Star Wars RPG, a lot of my players wanted to play Imperials, which the game as written didn't support. This didn't annoy me though - I expected a Star Wars RPG to be about playing galactic freedom-fighting heroes, not Captain Piett's struggle for advancement within the Imperial Navy. So I adapted the game-as-written to run the kind of game we wanted to play, with lots of intrigue and backstabbing inside the Imperial military, and occasional scuffles with Rebels (including the Rebel PCs). It worked fine.

A tie-in game that tried to ban me from subverting the genre - for this Trek example, say by playing someone like Majel Barrett's 'number one' character as a Federation starship captain in the Kirk era - would be at most mildly annoying, possibly a bit ridiculous if it contravened the setting's 'background norms'. IE: In TOS Trek we don't see female starship captains, but the general feel of the setting implies they must exist (albeit as a minority), so it'd be stupid to say players couldn't play one. Likewise in STTNG, for a long time every StarFleet admiral portrayed onscreen was an African-American woman, but presumably there must be white, male and nonhuman Admirals within Star Fleet.

OTOH in a game set in real medieval Europe I'd be ok with the designers saying that all Knights Templars are male, or somesuch. It'd be my choice if I wanted to take this historical RPG and have ahistorical female knights as PCs or NPCs.

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On 2/12/2004 at 4:46pm, pete_darby wrote:
RE: Yes, MORE on religion and role playing

Okay, I'm quite explicitly not saying that an RPG rule text should state "Thou shalt not have strong women" to reinforce conventions, just they should state the conventions, not assume that "everyone knows them."

That way, you know what's an assumption of the setting that may or not be true in specific cases, which are hard-and-fast demands of the setting. Which leads to empowerment of players, not vague oppression by the implied gender roles rife in the rules.

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On 2/12/2004 at 4:46pm, Mike Holmes wrote:
RE: Yes, MORE on religion and role playing

Damn, I gotta watch those off-hand remarks.

What does all this have to do with religion in RPGs again?

Mike

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On 2/12/2004 at 4:55pm, clehrich wrote:
RE: Yes, MORE on religion and role playing

Mike Holmes wrote: What does all this have to do with religion in RPGs again?
We've drifted a bit, certainly, but one of the central arguments of Krista's article depends on her reading of RPG's as significantly sexist. What I now wonder, though, is what Krista thinks of all this debate about racism, sexism, and so forth, and whether and how that affects her argument.

Chris Lehrich

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On 2/12/2004 at 6:31pm, John Kim wrote:
RE: Yes, MORE on religion and role playing

Mike Holmes wrote: Damn, I gotta watch those off-hand remarks.

What does all this have to do with religion in RPGs again?

Well, the original topic was Krista's paper -- which has nothing to do with religion in RPGs (i.e. what your PC believes), but rather is about religious practice (specifically Neopaganism) as compared with RPG practice.

This should probably be split at the point. There are two points of relevance here: (1) Librisia/Krista noted Neopaganism has many social similarities with RPG, except that Neopaganism is female-dominated while RPGs are male-dominated. She was interested in ethnographic studies of why. There should probably be a new thread for this. (2) Religious practice is about real-world beliefs, even if they involve dressing up and role assumption. For example, a religious practice may include storytelling such as parables -- but that story has a goal in the real world beyond just being fun to hear. I think this line of thought has been picked up in Feminist Game Design.

Forge Reference Links:
Topic 9738

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On 2/12/2004 at 6:46pm, Ron Edwards wrote:
RE: Yes, MORE on religion and role playing

John's right.

Let's split those two topics into separate threads (start'em, whoever's interested) and let this one be done at this point.

Best,
Ron

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On 2/12/2004 at 11:15pm, S'mon wrote:
RE: Yes, MORE on religion and role playing

pete_darby wrote: Okay, I'm quite explicitly not saying that an RPG rule text should state "Thou shalt not have strong women" to reinforce conventions, just they should state the conventions, not assume that "everyone knows them."

That way, you know what's an assumption of the setting that may or not be true in specific cases, which are hard-and-fast demands of the setting. Which leads to empowerment of players, not vague oppression by the implied gender roles rife in the rules.


That seems reasonable. :)

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On 2/13/2004 at 10:30am, contracycle wrote:
RE: Yes, MORE on religion and role playing

Valamir wrote: In fact, I find taking legitimate important issues like racism and sexism and homophobia and trying to search for and claim evidence for them everywhere, including in adolescent RPG munchkin fantasy characters...simply cheapens the whole thing, and makes it much easier for nay sayers to point and say "see how ridiculous those people are".


And I regard dismissing such reports as apologetics for the behaviour identified, always ready with some spurious projection of how these folke are "seeing it everwhere", making a spurious appeal to a spychological pathology in order to undermine the claim. Classic ad hominem tactic.

Being a horrible person is being a horrible person. Just because the target of your behavior feels that they belong to a "disempowered group" doesn't suddenly make you an -ist. You're still just a horrible person being horrible.


How very convenient. So there is no such thing as racism, just horroibleness, and therefore there is no problem that needs to be resolved. After all, academic research into discrimination cannot possibly be describing anything that really, actually exists.

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On 2/13/2004 at 10:37am, contracycle wrote:
RE: Yes, MORE on religion and role playing

M. J. Young wrote: Habits versus prejudices.
If I do something that offends you, even if I do it repeatedly, I need to be told that my habits are offensive, and given the opportunity to attempt to change them. If I'm doing something for reasons that offend you, that's different.


Exactly so. And if the habit is to perpetuate a racist stereotype, whether carried out maliciously or unconsciously it is offensive and should be tackled. Therefore, the "debate" about whether or not X was MEANT in a deliberately offensive manner are totally irrelevant - the tpoic would be raised regarldess of the intent, because of the behaviour.

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On 2/13/2004 at 1:22pm, Valamir wrote:
RE: Yes, MORE on religion and role playing

So there is no such thing as racism, just horroibleness, and therefore there is no problem that needs to be resolved.


Right. If an action directed at a minority is horrible and should be stopped, then that same action directed at a member of the majority is equally horrible and should be equally stopped. The important thing here is the horrible behavior. "Racism" is nothing more than some group recognizing that horrible behavior spills onto their group more often than it spills onto another group. There is absolutely no way that this is a "problem that can be resolved". Only time and the passing of generations can reform public sentiment. You can't legislate morality and you can't legislate away hate.

What you can do, is make sure that the laws that protect the majority are evenly applied to all. Remove the overt, government sponsored, institutionalized aspects of oppression and then wait. As disparate groups live and work and play together without legislative obstacles (like enforced segregation,) standing between them, then each generation will draw closer together.

It is a long process but too many people are impatient and want to experience "perfect equality" today. It is my observation, however, that dwelling on these issues down to the minutia serves less to "resolve" them and more to highlight the differences between people, build walls around communities, and stir up resentment. There comes a point where the more you push against the injustice, the slower the injustice will change.

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On 2/13/2004 at 1:50pm, contracycle wrote:
RE: Yes, MORE on religion and role playing

Valamir wrote:
Right. If an action directed at a minority is horrible and should be stopped, then that same action directed at a member of the majority is equally horrible and should be equally stopped. The important thing here is the horrible behavior. "Racism" is nothing more than some group recognizing that horrible behavior spills onto their group more often than it spills onto another group. There is absolutely no way that this is a "problem that can be resolved". Only time and the passing of generations can reform public sentiment. You can't legislate morality and you can't legislate away hate.


I vehemently disagree. Racism is more than just individually horrible behaviour, becuase it is articulated in a broad sociaety, as part of that societies values. If a society imposes a segregationist law, then it is insufficient to write this off to horrbleness; for one thing, this means that you have to then brand this whole state as "horrible". Is that even plausible, that like Gomorrah or wherever it was, not one good person could be found in the whole state?

Secondly, you have to deal with the fact that someone exhibiting such "horribleness" is seldom unsiversally horrible. I'd have to admit, some of the best people I've know were racist scum; how to reconcile this phenomenon? It all smacks too much of the portestant obsession with personal morality to me; the issue is the way society works, not naming and shaming the bad apples. A law that obliges certain people to sit at the back of the bus can be abolished without indicting anyone of Thought Crime, and an attempt to do so is not an attempt to denigrate the personal moral purity of the people who introduced it in the first place.

And this is why it is an Issue when a work of art is produced and released into the public domain. The artist frankly has no alternative but to decide whether or not they will align themselves with or against the prevailing sentiment, because any adressing of the human condition for the local audience will have to touch upon it.


What you can do, is make sure that the laws that protect the majority are evenly applied to all. Remove the overt, government sponsored, institutionalized aspects of oppression and then wait. As disparate groups live and work and play together without legislative obstacles (like enforced segregation,) standing between them, then each generation will draw closer together.


By no means; I regard this as Utopian pie in the sky, as if all you have to do is change the rules and everyone magically toes the line. Becuase although the state may impose certain restrictions and limitatyions, these are implemented with the consent and collusion of the real people on the ground. Certainly, tackling institutional discrimination is absolutely necessary, and it certainly is not the case that discriminatory legislation can simply be left in place and everyone can agree to "move on"; but this only removes the most formal and overt forms of discrimination and leaves unaddressed how the spirit, rather than the letter of the law, will be interpreted. And it is in that arena that the role of the artist in confronting an audience, of the political agitator with a reformist agenda, of the oppressed in asserting their equality, are the mechanisms by which the problem can be addressed.


It is a long process but too many people are impatient and want to experience "perfect equality" today. It is my observation, however, that dwelling on these issues down to the minutia serves less to "resolve" them and more to highlight the differences between people, build walls around communities, and stir up resentment. There comes a point where the more you push against the injustice, the slower the injustice will change.


Which it seems to me is what the prevailing orthodoxy always claims in an effort to undermine the reformers and to wish them out of existance. It is an attack on the methodology because the goals are unchallangeable, even though what this "solution" proposes is that efforts to to change the prevailing sentiment and social forms should be suspended - i.e., the situation of disparity should be preserved. Needless to say, I consider this proposition to be wholly unacceptable and hopelessly naive; society is composed of individuals and their actions, and it is only by taking these issues on directly and making the conscious effort to solve them that any progress will be made.

I think racism and sexism definitely exist as a discrete phenomenon; writing them off as horribleness neither explicates nor proposes a resolution of the situation, it merely attempts to normalise it.

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On 2/13/2004 at 2:50pm, Librisia wrote:
What Krista Thinks

This is simply a quick update. I'm currently in the middle of Edwards' article, and am formulating a GNS descriptor of why I think women aren't as attracted to the hobby as men - though GNS isn't the only part of my hypothesis. I'll probably be able to post tomorrow or the day after (Saturday or Sunday in the U.S.)

I will reiterate something that was said on the Feminsit Game Design thread - how nice it is to see fellow hobbyists tackling these issues - not just feminism.

Back to you with a revised hypothesis,

Krista
(p.s. Can someone tell me how to do that 'link to the other thread' thing? Html just ain't my cup o' tea)

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On 2/13/2004 at 3:59pm, Valamir wrote:
RE: Yes, MORE on religion and role playing

I'm having trouble reconciling statements like:

contracycle wrote:
Racism is more than just individually horrible behaviour, becuase it is articulated in a broad sociaety, as part of that societies values.


and

the issue is the way society works,


with

society is composed of individuals and their actions


You seem willing to use "society" as a big homogenous thing when it suits you to say that racism is not simply individuals being horrible to each other, and then turn around and say no, you have to tackle each individual seperately when it suits you to promote that agenda.

You can't have it both ways. You can't argue its a "societal problem" when someone points out that the solution lies with individuals, and then argue its an "individual problem" when someone proposes societal changes.

Racism is either some thing that exists in a level above the individual, or its some thing that resides within the individual. I believe it resides in the individual and is a combination of personal belief, misinformation, and ignorance of other peoples.

These are not things that can be changed by proselytising. These are things that are changed when people live and work and play side by side.


If a society imposes a segregationist law, then it is insufficient to write this off to horrbleness; for one thing, this means that you have to then brand this whole state as "horrible". Is that even plausible, that like Gomorrah or wherever it was, not one good person could be found in the whole state?


I have no idea what you're trying to say here. If such a law gets passed a law than the people who passed it were wrong, and the people who allowed it to be passed were wrong. Here again you are throwing around "society" as if its some entity that has its own existance.

As I made a point of saying that it is exactly this kind of institutionalized barrier that we *should* work to bring down.

But the other side of it is equally wrong. If a law passed to restrict the rights of a minority in favor of the majority is wrong, than a law passed to restrict the rights of a majority in favor of a minority is equally wrong.


Secondly, you have to deal with the fact that someone exhibiting such "horribleness" is seldom unsiversally horrible. I'd have to admit, some of the best people I've know were racist scum; how to reconcile this phenomenon?


A statement of such obviousness I'm uncertain what your point is.


By no means; I regard this as Utopian pie in the sky, as if all you have to do is change the rules and everyone magically toes the line.



Hardly. People don't magically change. That's my entire point. They aren't going to magically change when someone passes a civil rights law. They aren't going to magically change when someone calls them a racist. They aren't going to magically change when activists hold rallies and give speeches. They aren't going to magically change when a minority family moves in next door.

There is absolutely nothing you can do to make them change. The only thing you can do is make sure the laws don't favor anyone over any one else and that those laws get equitably applied. After that, the change can only come at the individual level over the course of time...even, as I say, generations.




even though what this "solution" proposes is that efforts to to change the prevailing sentiment and social forms should be suspended - i.e., the situation of disparity should be preserved.


Completely incorrect...and rather insulting actually.

Take for an example a typical ethnically diverse apartment complex here in America. Most of the people who live there are in their 30, 40s, 50s, and 60s. Their formative years were the 1940 to 1970s. As a general rule (broadbrushed to be sure) that complex is going to be self segregating. The Indian families will interact with the Indian families, the Chinese with the Chinese, the Blacks with the Blacks, Whites with Whites, and so on.

Now drive past the local elementary school, where you see an entire rainbow of young children, playing, laughing, eating, and learning together.

Fast forward 30 years when its those children living in the ethnically diverse apartment complex. I would argue that the degree of self segregation in that complex at that time will have declined dramatically. These people grew up in an ethnically mixed environment. They are more comfortable with other cultures traditions and mores. They will interact with each other more commonly and more deeply on average then preceding generations have.

And it is in that way that racism will disappear. Not by passing laws swinging the pendulum too far the other way. Not by ongoing in your face activism. Not by continually pointing out every little piece of anything that may be offensive to some group. And not by pointing fingers and labeling this person or that work "racism".

You can call that naive if you want. I call it inevitable. There is no way that todays racists are going to be able to stop it. The melting pot will do the job better than any number of marches or speeches or laws ever could as long as we give it time to work. Its working. It has been working. It continues to work. We just need to recognize that and avoid doing things that will slow the process down. And by that I mean things that divide and seperate and stir up resentment.

The first generation will hate, the second generation will ignore, the third generation will embrace. As long as there aren't barriers in place to stop it, that's the way its always been.

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On 2/13/2004 at 4:38pm, C. Edwards wrote:
RE: Yes, MORE on religion and role playing

I agree wholeheartedly, Ralph.

Valamir wrote: There is absolutely nothing you can do to make them change. The only thing you can do is make sure the laws don't favor anyone over any one else and that those laws get equitably applied. After that, the change can only come at the individual level over the course of time...even, as I say, generations.


I'd just like to point out that this doesn't disclude taking action in order to make sure laws and rights are instituted equally, such as women's right to vote.

Personally, I find the belief that society, or any particular individual, can be forced into a non-prejudiced stance to be fairly naive. That kind of change is a slow, naturally occuring process, as Ralph points out. What we CAN do is what Ralph already suggests. Insure that our laws and rights are equitable and enforced in an even handed manner.

-Chris

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On 2/13/2004 at 4:41pm, james_west wrote:
RE: Yes, MORE on religion and role playing

Valamir wrote: Now drive past the local elementary school, where you see an entire rainbow of young children, playing, laughing, eating, and learning together.


As an interesting aside, I recall reading recently that youth gangs in LA are far less racially segregated than they used to be (gangs are apparently becoming less based on race). Unfortunately, can't reference that for you.

However, this thread does seem to have acquired massive drift...

- James

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On 2/13/2004 at 6:30pm, contracycle wrote:
RE: Yes, MORE on religion and role playing

Valamir wrote:
You seem willing to use "society" as a big homogenous thing when it suits you to say that racism is not simply individuals being horrible to each other, and then turn around and say no, you have to tackle each individual seperately when it suits you to promote that agenda.


Obviously. You tackle crime by making it illegal publicly and generally, and the practical measure is reserved for those who actually commit it.


You can't have it both ways. You can't argue its a "societal problem" when someone points out that the solution lies with individuals, and then argue its an "individual problem" when someone proposes societal changes.


I did't exactly - the contraduction between tyhe individual and nsociety is illusory, because of course society is composed of lots of individuals. Any social measure proposed necessarily implies ehavrioural changes on the part of individuals - but proposing change on the part of individuals does not necessarily imply a change by society. The second form - moralism and condemnation - is singularly ineffective at solving the social level problem.


Racism is either some thing that exists in a level above the individual, or its some thing that resides within the individual. I believe it resides in the individual and is a combination of personal belief, misinformation, and ignorance of other peoples.


OK, I think 90% plus is social, mixed with private opportunism. I mention again the remarkable coherence with which children follow the same religion as there parents - whither, then, "personal belief"? People do not appear in a vacuum and their personal beliefs are almost always prior social constructs.


These are not things that can be changed by proselytising. These are things that are changed when people live and work and play side by side.


I think that answer is too easy; in Ireland the catholic and protestant communities live side by side, but all that happened was a greater or lesser degree of covert segregation. People knew which were the catholic schools and which the protestant schools; non-mixing is/was "voluntary". And YET at the broad level everyone could agree that the viuolence was endemic and it had to stop. I agree the principle is sound, but it takes much more than just proximity - it also takes argument.


I have no idea what you're trying to say here. If such a law gets passed a law than the people who passed it were wrong, and the people who allowed it to be passed were wrong. Here again you are throwing around "society" as if its some entity that has its own existance.


Society does have its own existance at certain levels - we all belong to a particular state and carry that states passport. "There is no such thing as society" is IMO discredited Thatcherite dogma.

But what I was getting as it that it is insufficient and implausibvle to say they were wrong, or more accurately, just universally horrible. It defies rationality IMO to suggest that a whole demographic were all universally moral failures just because they disagree with me about a particular issue, no matter how committed to it I am. It seems to me much more likely that within those millions are rational and thoughtful people; to apply the idea that they are all personally horrible is just another form of typological argument, just usually based on nationality rather than ethnicity. Its even directly contradictory to the statement that there is no such thing as society. Furthermore, its useless as a practical criticism, because the counter-argument is so easy to make: they just turn round and call me wrong and morally bankrupt.

But the other side of it is equally wrong. If a law passed to restrict the rights of a minority in favor of the majority is wrong, than a law passed to restrict the rights of a majority in favor of a minority is equally wrong.


Whereupon I say "Yes, thats true, but affirmative action is not such a law" - that being the practical solution this argument (which I consider intellectually dishonest) is almost always directed at.


Hardly. People don't magically change. That's my entire point. They aren't going to magically change when someone passes a civil rights law. They aren't going to magically change when someone calls them a racist. They aren't going to magically change when activists hold rallies and give speeches. They aren't going to magically change when a minority family moves in next door.


Agreed. But then I said from then outset, the point is to chnage the behaviour, not to impose Thought Control. I don't care WHAT they think as long as they do not behave in a discriminatory manner. When someone passes a civil rights law, racists do not magically change, but now if they act in a racist manner in violation of the law, they can be arrested, tried and sentenced.

As I tried to convey, making that argument which can cause minds to change is the realm of politics and art.


There is absolutely nothing you can do to make them change. The only thing you can do is make sure the laws don't favor anyone over any one else and that those laws get equitably applied. After that, the change can only come at the individual level over the course of time...even, as I say, generations.


Your first part of the above implies that such is probable or plausible or advocated, which I refute. The second I think is wholly insufficient. If change can only come over generations, and we do not change the way the oiur society is ordered, then we are directly saying, whether we like it or not, that those who suffer now will have to continue to suffer. To my mind, that is not adequate, but even worse: its not my consent you have to win, but that of those who suffer.


Completely incorrect...and rather insulting actually.


I've made some remarks above which I would like to discuss under this remark. OK, I acknowledge that you found that insulting, and my find some remarks above further insulting; but I ask that you acknowledge from my perspective that the suggestion for example that anti-racist law is itself racist is something I take as insulting, or the statement that highlighting these abuses serves only to drive them deeper.

And this brings me back to one of my previous remarks - even when I see people behaving in a manner I feel is racist, or pandering to or defending or propogating racism or sexism, I do not feel it necessary or or useful to damn the person and all their works as "horrible". I can stake a step back from that and ask about the context and compare it to other things by this person and develop from there an opinion on whether they are just horrible IMO or merely mistaken. Approaching the problem as a social, ideological one is IMO the more constructive method than pious indignation.


Now drive past the local elementary school, where you see an entire rainbow of young children, playing, laughing, eating, and learning together.


This, actually, I take as one of the primary indicators that racism is a social ideology rather than any naturally emerging phenomenon. As I understand it, children seldom show much interest in these details; but often, even children who behaved in this manner behave in a racist manner as adults. I contend that this indicates that behaviour is a socialised one, a trained one, and that a society can unlearn it if it chooses to do so. The first step to doing that however means: not propagating the existing material that currently teaches it.

Which, I believe, was rather the issue of the original point - whether or not RPG's are challenging or propagating. I present the chainmail bikini as Exhibit A.

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On 2/13/2004 at 7:24pm, Valamir wrote:
RE: Yes, MORE on religion and role playing

If change can only come over generations, and we do not change the way the oiur society is ordered, then we are directly saying, whether we like it or not, that those who suffer now will have to continue to suffer.


That's what I don't understand about your posts. I am entirely in agreement with the concept here. I've not said that we "shouldn't change the way our society is ordered". The repeal of segregation laws changed the way society was ordered. The right to vote changed the way society was ordered. The Equal Opportunity and Equal Housing Acts changed the way society was ordered. These are all good changes. Its only when changes like this are in place, that the generational forces I discussed have a chance to work.


that anti-racist law is itself racist is something I take as insulting, or the statement that highlighting these abuses serves only to drive them deeper.


That stems largely from your own assumptions I'm afraid. I'll give you an example of the sort of "equality promoting" law I find abhorrant.

Back when I was in college I was witness to a number of bar fights (in or out of a bar, you know the kind of confrontations I'm talking about). Young testosterone charged males + alcohol leads to such things fairly regularly. On about my junior year the school issued a new set of "anti hate crime" rules in conjunction with the local legislature. Later that year I got to see the rule in action.

I was out and a guy a kind of knew got into a typical wrestling and punching brawl with another guy. The usual, they were both drunk, being jerks and started swinging. Ordinarily this would have lead to an assault charge, largely trivial since the fight was mutual, perhaps a disturbing the piece misdemeanor and maybe a disciplinary notice from the school.

Afterwards, however, it was discovered that the other guy in the fight was homosexual. I was there. There was no gay bashing involved in the fight. It was just a straight up stupid drunk guy ego thing. But thanks to the new laws any hetero on homo assault was automatically upgraded to a hate crime. The guy got 30 days in jail and expelled.

This is what I detest. If he'd beaten the snot out of a straight white guy the charges would have been minimal. But because the other guy happened to be gay (or black, or jewish, or asian, or any of the other groups "protected" by this law) the punishment was much worse. This is simply wrong, period; and is the kind of thing that simply causes resentment which then negatively impacts legitimate race related legislation.

And this brings me back to one of my previous remarks - even when I see people behaving in a manner I feel is racist, or pandering to or defending or propogating racism or sexism, I do not feel it necessary or or useful to damn the person and all their works as "horrible". I can stake a step back from that and ask about the context and compare it to other things by this person and develop from there an opinion on whether they are just horrible IMO or merely mistaken. Approaching the problem as a social, ideological one is IMO the more constructive method than pious indignation.


And that is because you are a thoughtful reflective person (as are all the participants in this thread) which is why we've had this discussion without it deteriorating into something ugly. But that makes you a minority also. Because the kind of behavior you describe is NOT the type of behavior typical to discussing issues of bigotry in the general populace.

I contend that this indicates that behaviour is a socialised one, a trained one, and that a society can unlearn it if it chooses to do so. The first step to doing that however means: not propagating the existing material that currently teaches it.


Of course, most behavior is taught. But the message of tolerance and acceptance is already being widely disseminated, its not like the civil rights movement is still struggling to be heard. I disagree with your conclusion about propating such material. I fully believe that its perfectly fine (in fact, I'm tempted to say its a good idea) to allow the "material that currently teaches it" to propagate, for three reasons.

1) Because while such material is dangerous when viewed in a vacuum as the only source people are exposed to, when forced to stand up side by side with more rational material it is more easily seen for ridiculous nonsense that it is. Racist propaganda shouldn't be rooted out and burned. It should be set side by side with everything else so people can see first hand how stupid it is.

2) Because censureship is probably the most insidious evil a government can allow to be committed on its people. And institutionalized peer pressure to cease and desist certain behavior is just another form of censureship. In fact, in some ways its a worse form of censureship because its really easy to think you're doing the right thing while doing it.

3) Because there is a point where raising public awareness about problems and issues stops being informative and eye opening and starts being irritating;like waving a red flag in front of a bull. All social interaction is an ongoing tacit negotiation between parties. Pissing the other guy off when you're trying to get them to see things your way is just counterproductive. I don't think you and I really disagree on this, rather I think we probably have different ideas of where that line is and how frequently issues of embedded bigotry need to be raised and addressed and how frequently they should be allowed to slide so as to give people time to figure out the answer on their own without pissing them off and building resistance to the cause you're trying to promote.

To bring this back to the point where I started voiceing my frustration on this thread, the idea of going back to point fingers (damning fingers or not) at elements found in roleplaying games (especially when most of those elements are a reach to begin with) is for me well on the "unnecessary" side of that line.

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On 2/13/2004 at 10:28pm, Librisia wrote:
RE: Yes, MORE on religion and role playing

Mr. Mazza, I think the things that might have offended you here regarding role playing could be symptomatic of the, "I'm tired of being criticized" reaction. This is an understandable, human reaction. Many of us have it regarding any kind of prejudice when we are considered a member of the grop doing the oppressing.

I used to be freaked out about the possiblity about being considered racist. Then I had a personal experience that made me realize I COULD NOT GET AWAY FROM MY RACIST TENDENCIES. That experience made me own my own racism. As a result, I've stopped taking things personally when people begin to debate the topic of racism, and I am able to better empathize with and understand their point of view, even when the people talking say things that you would consider too "far out." I am now able to be more vigilant about my unthinking racist attitudes. Accepting my racism, and being willing to acknowledge it has made me (I hope) less racist. Whether you or anyone else on this list might have such an experience regarding sexism is not for me to say or accomplish.

I do not think it is either righteous or justified for you to try to stop people from criticizing the patterns of racism/sexism/homophobia that DO exist in the hobby. I read what you were doing as an attempt to shut down the argument by saying discussion you find outrageous actually harms the goals of the debate. You don't have to agree with the examples given or find the debate valuable, but talking about such things might be helpful or enlightening to someone who had never thought about them before.

To sum up: While each of the examples of sexism in gaming given here may not indicate intentional sexism/misogyny on anyone's part, the TOTAL PATTERN of these things indicates that those stereotypes of women are alive and well in the hobby. This is one of the reasons I surmised in the paper that women are a minority in gaming. The messages they get from game book texts and the play of other players can turn them off because it is a message that, at the least can make a woman uncomfortable and at worst can make her feel that others consider her less human.

Let me clarify what I mean by the play of other players. It can be an overtly hostile group like the one I described elsewhere that I experienced. It can also mean that the players, who are otherwise friends, might perpetuate harmful stereotypes *without even realizing it* during the course of play, either through the scenario being run or through the way their characters deal with female npcs or pcs in the game. My point is that these things can turn women off to gaming, and so they are staying away from the hobby in droves.

These aren't the only reasons, as I'll explain when I've finished working up my revised hypothesis.

Krista

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On 2/13/2004 at 11:02pm, Bankuei wrote:
RE: Yes, MORE on religion and role playing

Hi folks,

As someone deeply interested in both gaming and social justice, I'm going to point out that the issues here are way up on the hierarchy, and just as rules and techniques cannot fix a broken social contract, neither can the game fix the social issues.

As designers, we CAN portray different ethnicities and genders in a fair, inclusive, positive, and most importantly, well rounded manner. We CAN highlight the issues of social injustice through the conflicts presented in our games. We CANNOT ever make sure that someone "gets it", just as any playwright, author, or director cannot make sure that anyone "gets" a movie. In the end they either agree, disagree, understand, or fail to understand.

I agree that social issues pour into our gaming. Although I think we're overstepping the scope of what a game can do. I think if we focus more on what actually is within our ability, we will produce some solid results.

Chris

PS- For anyone interested in something which does work very well on the social level of increasing awareness:

http://www.peoplesinstitutewest.org/pages/381387/

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On 2/13/2004 at 11:10pm, C. Edwards wrote:
RE: Yes, MORE on religion and role playing

Librisia wrote: Mr. Mazza, I think the things that might have offended you here regarding role playing could be symptomatic of the, "I'm tired of being criticized" reaction. This is an understandable, human reaction. Many of us have it regarding any kind of prejudice when we are considered a member of the grop doing the oppressing.


So, nothing Ralph has said has any relevance because he doesn't belong to any group you consider to be a "victim"?

Librisia wrote: I do not think it is either righteous or justified for you to try to stop people from criticizing the patterns of racism/sexism/homophobia that DO exist in the hobby. I read what you were doing as an attempt to shut down the argument by saying discussion you find outrageous actually harms the goals of the debate. You don't have to agree with the examples given or find the debate valuable, but talking about such things might be helpful or enlightening to someone who had never thought about them before.


Now nothing he's said is relevant because he doesn't agree with you?

This may come as a surprise to you, but without opposing opinion what you have is not actually a debate, it's a love-in where everyone gives each other hugs and kudos for agreeing with one another. That's the most harmful situation I can imagine if you actually want to accomplish such important goals.

People who are in agreement for the overall need for change are going to disagree on methodology, and that's all right, but saying that a dissenting opinion renders the speaker irrelevant and harmful is complete nonsense.

-Chris

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On 2/13/2004 at 11:51pm, John Kim wrote:
RE: Yes, MORE on religion and role playing

Er, people??

Ron already said to close this thread and split it into subtopics. I started a thread on Gender/Racial/Other Bias in RPG Texts. Also, while I am happy to debate about feminism and racism, discussion here should focus on RPGs. (I would suggest something like the Orkut group "Let's Argue About Feminism" as a general forum.

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On 2/18/2004 at 2:47am, Librisia wrote:
Final Word?

I've posted my revised hypothesis on [URL=http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=9841]Male Dominance in RPGs

Cheers,
Krista

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