How much, if any, of Appendix N passes the Bechdel Test? [Archive]

Thrudd

2022-09-17, 11:26 AM

I assume asking for the Bechdel test is more generally asking for works of fiction more broadly including a female protagonist or important characters and avoiding misogynistic approaches, rather than the specifics of the actual test, meaning there must be two women talking to each other (as has been stated, a lot of short stories only have one character at all, and old sci-fi and fantasy can be light on the dialogue).

Most of the Appendix N stories, being 50 to 100 years old and older, should probably be approached more as a matter of historical interest. It's sort of silly to hold works of such age to standards you'd expect of authors today, based on values that were still being formulated when this appendix was published in the 1970's. Old works of literature in general can be tricky for young folks who have no understanding of the era in which they were written- but there can still be value in reading them. You read such things with an open mind, understanding that the authors lived in a world where values we today(sometimes rightly) find distasteful to repugnant were commonplace if not acceptable in the social context in which they were written. Reading the stories, even enjoying aspects of them, shouldn't be seen as an endorsement of the misogyny, racism, colonialism and religious mores of those times and authors (who sometimes were more or less of some of these things, even compared to their social context).

When recommending old pulp fantasy and sci-fi stories to young audiences, I would adjust expectations by telling them to bear in mind that these are stories of a different era. You wouldn't read medieval literature or the classics of antiquity expecting anything to pass a Bechdel test (not to compare 20th century pop fiction to classics in terms of cultural import, but the era's values can seem equally remote to children of the 21st century). If you want to read books from this list, you are reading to understand what sort of stories and adventures inspired early D&D. Look for the fun parts, the adventure, the style of prose- understanding there will usually be a male-centric POV, old assumptions of gender roles and behavior, and sometimes even more problematic themes. Reading them is a fun academic exercise; again, emphasize that the reading or recommending of the more problematic works is not an endorsement of the culture from which they arose or the attitudes of the authors.

That said, there are three female authors on Gygax's list, if folks want to read the works of some of the first women to write in the fantasy/sci-fi genre who also inspired D&D. "Andre" Alice Norton, Margaret St.Clair, and Leigh Brackett. I think those who were "missed" by Gygax probably were missed either because he simply hadn't read their work, or because the stories from them he read weren't particularly "D&D" as he conceived it at the time. Or perhaps he just ran out of space on the page, and chose to include the ones he liked the most, and a few just didn't make the cut.

Grod_The_Giant

2022-09-17, 01:08 PM

Wow. The Bechdel Test is odd. A lot of my single author fiction short stories fail, even if the protagonist is female, simply because there’s no dialog. I guess it’s a poor test to apply to short stories…

And I agree that it’s odd to expect from 1st person perspective stories. Like, how many 1st person stories with female protagonists have said MC just sit there silently while two men discuss something (other than a girl)?

It feels like most of the stories should get a “N/A” score rather than a pass/fail, simply by being 1st person, or by lacking dialog.

EDIT: and that’s even ignoring non-binary characters (although, if the MC were “the luggage”, I guess “watching silently” might actually be more likely).
It's by no means a be-all, end-all thing. A work can be sexist as hell and still "pass" the test, and another can be maximally feminist and still "fail" (for example, a story with little-to-no dialogue, like you mentioned). The Bechdel Test is more of an illustration of how low the bar can be than anything else-- does the story have more than token female characters, and do they have roles beyond "love interest?"

KorvinStarmast

2022-09-17, 02:12 PM

The Bechdel Test is A waste of time, and not worthy of serious consideration. :smallyuk:

Devils_Advocate

2022-09-17, 04:49 PM

Suggesting that the Bechdel Test shouldn't be applied to some subcategory of fiction — short stories, first person, no dialog, whatever — implies that it's generally useful but gives misleading results in specific domains. What is it generally useful for?

The Bechdel Test is, first and foremost, a comic strip character's criteria for watching a movie. Because that's seriously the origin. I think that one would be hard-pressed to argue that how frequently movies fail these requirements* illustrates precisely nothing, but we're not talking about something designed to measure anything well. It's literally a joke, or more accurately part of a joke. It's not even really serious social commentary and much more so humorous social commentary.

So, why do so many people seem to talk about the Bechdel Test fairly seriously, then? Probably largely because it's arguably a weak indicator of something for which we lack better measures (https://xkcd.com/2652/). Even better, several different things! In some cases, there may be better measures, but they're not as widely known. Basically, a lot gets made out of this particular metric because of its meme status.

I can understand frustration from people who feel like that interferes with meaningful discourse, but discourse is kind of inevitably shaped by available vocabulary for good or for ill. The solution, of course, is to popularize better metrics for the stuff that the Bechdel Test is often purported (explicitly or implicitly) to indicate.

*In the original context, they are requirements. But they aren't inherently. The phrase "the Bechdel Test" refers to the distinction made. There are lots of different opinions about what, if anything, should be done based on this distinction, but none of the possible responses are part of "the test" in the general sense. Clear?

In this case, how good is the Bechdel Test as a predictor of whether a modern audience will have difficulty with an older work? Probably not very. But is there a better predictor that's equally clear and equally well-known? No? Well, there you go, then.

Mechalich

2022-09-17, 04:49 PM

It's by no means a be-all, end-all thing. A work can be sexist as hell and still "pass" the test, and another can be maximally feminist and still "fail" (for example, a story with little-to-no dialogue, like you mentioned). The Bechdel Test is more of an illustration of how low the bar can be than anything else-- does the story have more than token female characters, and do they have roles beyond "love interest?"

Yeah, also I think the 'not about a man' part of the test is particularly telling with regard to its relevance. It's primarily meant to criticize works where female characters exist but the totality of their purpose is constrained to 'boys,' rather than stories where it happens that two female characters aren't available to have a conversation at all.

Anonymouswizard

2022-09-17, 05:11 PM

does the story have more than token female characters, and do they have roles beyond "love interest?"

I'd say it's a bit stricter than that, a story where a man's two daughters talk about him also fails. It's more accurate to say that their stories do not entirely revolve around men.

And yes, it is intentionally a very low bar, because the point of the test is to show how few pieces of media pass it (whereas a significantly larger proportion pass the Reverse Bechdel Test). How many Star Wars films did it take for one to pass the test? I think Attack of the Clones does, I'm not sure if The Phantom Menace does, and I can't remember if the original trilogy has any women talk to each other at all.

It doesn't have much use as a metric beyond that, it makes a point about how we create media instead of the value of any particular piece.

Randall Monroe's What If doesn't pass the test. It's kind of ludicrous to apply the test to a popular science book, but that's because the intended scope is meant to be small. It's supposed to be applied to a medium which tends towards multiple viewpoint stories generally consumed within a single sitting.

False God

2022-09-17, 05:53 PM

I'd say it's a bit stricter than that, a story where a man's two daughters talk about him also fails. It's more accurate to say that their stories do not entirely revolve around men.

Only in the context that The Father character is the only thing they talk about.

A story can have two named women have a conversation about their father, and have another about their jobs, and another about their favorite flavor of soy sauce. The fiction passes the test because the entirety of their conversations are not about their father.

A story with two named women who talk about their father, and about their father's job, and about their father's favorite foods fails because the entirety of their existence revolves around the father character.
-Which isn't to say this is bad writing. Arguably a great deal the The Handmaid's Tale would fail for obvious reasons. Women find it difficult to have conversations about anything that doesn't involve men, even if those conversations are about subverting the men, or overthrowing the men, or disobeying the men and so on, because the story presents a world that revolves around men. These women still have their own agency, but their agency is specifically highlighted in contrast to the power and agency of the men, which means it fails the Bechdel Test on its face.

But, again, as illustrated by Devils_Advocate, the Bechdel Test is flawed in part by its own simplicity. The popularity of the Test is, as Devils_Advocate rightly suggests, something of a meme, it's short, it's easy to remember and its easy to apply, producing simple, easily digested binary answers.

But the fact that it's flawed doesn't make it useless, it only makes it situationally applicable in being able to shine a light on the most obvious offenders.

If we check out the website https://bechdeltest.com/ which lists movies that pass of fail, the list is quite humorous. The Bob's Burger's Movie passes, as does Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero; but Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore fails, as does Minions: The Rise of Gru and Morbius. Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle passes, while Jumanji: The Next Level fails.

In short, putting only slightly more than no effort at all is all that's needed to pass. Which is what makes the Test useful in its simplicity, the ease of applying the Test showcases the ease of passing it. You can literally have Woman A, Jessica a shopper in a grocery store, and Woman B, Rachel, the cashier, have a 2 second conversation about the discount on pickles and the movie passes, meanwhile every other conversation Jessica and Rachael have can be about men. Whether these other conversations give the two women agency depends on the relevance to the story being told.

But again, the Bechdel Test is only demonstrating that the bar is that low.

Devils_Advocate

2022-09-17, 07:32 PM

I'd say that the OP makes suggestions more than assumptions. Suggestions being like assertions but unaccompanied by any troublesome burden of proof.

Bear in mind that correlation is not causation. If works that fail the Bechdel Test generally present greater difficulty because they tend to be harder to read, that's still correlation, and the test still works as a predictor in a statistical sense. It may well be that simply looking at the age of books is a better predictor, in which case it makes more sense to focus on that.

Alcore

2022-09-17, 08:02 PM

warty goblin

2022-09-17, 09:35 PM

That said, there are three female authors on Gygax's list, if folks want to read the works of some of the first women to write in the fantasy/sci-fi genre who also inspired D&D. "Andre" Alice Norton, Margaret St.Clair, and Leigh Brackett. I think those who were "missed" by Gygax probably were missed either because he simply hadn't read their work, or because the stories from them he read weren't particularly "D&D" as he conceived it at the time. Or perhaps he just ran out of space on the page, and chose to include the ones he liked the most, and a few just didn't make the cut.

Four actually, C. L. Moore is Catherine Lucile Moore. She wrote the Jirel of Jiory stories, whose protagonist is the first female lead in sword and sorcery.

I'm also about 90% sure those fail the Bechdel test, mostly because they're hardly interested in dialog; the first story has I think three speaking roles, and Jirel isn't what you'd call a people person. More like an animate ball of incandescent fury.

Thrudd

2022-09-17, 09:40 PM

Oh, for sure there are a lot more factors than just lack of female representation that may make the early-mid 20th century fantasy/sci-fi difficult to enjoy for modern audiences. I'd say the Bechdel test doesn't even scratch the surface and probably isn't a good measure at all of what may make some of those authors and stories unappealing.

Drakevarg

2022-09-17, 11:50 PM

It's... interesting, how many people get defensive around the concept of the Bechdel Test. Saying it's 'flawed,' or 'pointless' because it can't solve sexism over the course of three datapoints. It's barely a more in-depth study of a work than DoesTheDogDie, but nobody complains about that failing to solve animal abuse. The Bechdel Test is simply an observation, and says more about fiction as a whole than it does about any specific work that passes or fails.

You could apply similar simple tests (about any subject) to a broad selection of media and make similar interesting points through pattern analysis, and they'd be equally uninformative on a case-by-case basis regarding the quality of the work, it just takes note of patterns when broad swaths of media fail to clear a bar sitting on the floor. Like, how many works of fiction casually kill off no-name characters? Could probably make some observations about media in general from the patterns that crop up, but it doesn't mean much in regards to individual works.

Liquor Box

2022-09-18, 03:19 AM

Strange...

My sources say the test is merely two named females talking/interacting with each other regardless of topic. Some of the recent posters seem to be of the impression the females cannot even be thinking/discussing males at all to pass. (truly that doesn't raise the bar too much higher)

What does the Bechdel Test mean to you?

Depending on the answer I might need an apology :smalltongue:

So much needs to be defined before we can all even discuss the same thing. Maddening! I should be mad at the confusion but it is just too funny :smallbiggrin:

The test, as written by Bechdel herself:
1. It has to have at least two women in it;
2. who talk to each other about;
3. something besides man.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bechdel_test

So the base test doesn't require that they are named, but does require when they talk to each other it not be about a man.

I'd say it's a bit stricter than that, a story where a man's two daughters talk about him also fails. It's more accurate to say that their stories do not entirely revolve around men.

That's not true, it doesn't fail because they talk about a man at some point, so long as they talk about something other than a man at a different point.

Cluedrew

2022-09-18, 07:38 AM

Quertus

2022-09-18, 09:32 AM

. (I think a good second pass is to apply the Reverse Bechdel Test; check if there are two male characters who have a conversation about something other than a female character.*)

* I'm not sure how this generalizes for non-binary people.

So, it sounds like a… uh… word… “logic square”, where you’d measure…

……….. A …… Not A
B
Not B

Where A is “passes Bechdel Test“ and B is “passes Reverse Bechdel Test“.

Very little of my writing, for example, falls into “A and not B” or “B and not A” - most of it falls into “A and B” or “not A and not B”. That is with “non-binary” not counting to qualify for A or B (which I think is fair) - so a short story of a conversation between two AI is “not A and not B”.

Anyway, I think that, if there were any interesting statistics to look at here, they would be… what the “Appendix N” logic square numbers look like, compared and contrasted with what their contemporaries that Gygax excluded from that list look like.

And, sure, compared to what a “Playground reading list” (of hopefully similar size) would look like. If we’re building such a beast, I’ll nominate… Tolkien (still the classic).

KineticDiplomat

2022-09-18, 09:35 AM

Grod_The_Giant

2022-09-18, 10:02 AM

I'd say it's a bit stricter than that, a story where a man's two daughters talk about him also fails. It's more accurate to say that their stories do not entirely revolve around men.
True. A fair correction.

(I think a good second pass is to apply the Reverse Bechdel Test; check if there are two male characters who have a conversation about something other than a female character.*)
That almost feels like a normalization to cancel out media primarily oriented around romance, though I'm not sure if it would be more appropriate to use "men talking about women" or "any two characters talking about romance with a third party."

* I'm not sure how this generalizes for non-binary people.
I'd say that having a prominent nonbinary character is the equivalent of Kirk shooting the Kobayashi Maru machine--you pass the test on a higher level by blowing up the underlying workings.

Do a bunch of works from the 1970s and earlier pass a modern implicit ideological sounding board about inclusiveness built around "the old works were bad for not being as inclusive as we think they should, look how hard they fail?"

Kind of a self answering question, isn't it?
A better way to look at it would be "these old works are more male-dominated than we remember them being."

False God

2022-09-18, 10:08 AM

Do a bunch of works from the 1970s and earlier pass a modern implicit ideological sounding board about inclusiveness built around "the old works were bad for not being as inclusive as we think they should, look how hard they fail?"

Kind of a self answering question, isn't it?

The Bechdel Test has nothing against older works, and some of them do pass (regardless of if they are on Appendix N or not). And it's not really about being inclusive either(because the women are already being included). It's about agency, which I would think the average D&D-er would be kinda big on. It's about asking if the characters who have already been included are being treated as real people, or not.

That said, if modern fantasy gaming is still deriving it's primary inspiration from works written 50 years or more before most of it's players were born(or self-referentially drawing inspiration from prior versions of itself which are based on said works), maybe it's worth looking at the resultant game instead?

So does D&D 5E pass the Bechdel Test?

Anymage

2022-09-18, 11:26 AM

PhoenixPhyre

2022-09-18, 11:29 AM

Alcore

2022-09-18, 11:59 AM

I do find the test as pointless...

So a story passes... what does that mean? Nothing.

Meet Bob, a misogynist and sexist who is an adventurer. He spends the first two thirds of the book killing monsters and having his way with damsels. Then while recovering for the final act while impersonating a mummy over hears the maids (Alice and Claire) talking about troubles with sewing. It now passes the test.

He uses knowledge from the maids to defeat his rival and comes to the last monster in the book. Smitten with her he takes Darla home to be his wife. She is thrilled with the idea and like a man who treats her as a woman.

A happy ending for the monster girl

A happy ending for Bob (who is otherwise a terrible person by modern standards)

And passes the test. Since it lacks modern sensibilities might still be difficult for young modern audiences.

Book 2 could be more plateable starring Allice...

Drakevarg

2022-09-18, 12:53 PM

The real question: is it flawed to assume it says anything as a whole about a form of media it has been applied to?

I can see multiple ways in which that could easily be the case. Obviously in its original form, it measures something very real: a (fictional) persons preference and rule. But extending that to assume it says anything "as a whole" seems riddled with issues, and merely an attempt to appear rigorous, without actually being rigorous.

That's leaving aside any assumptions specific to this thread that members of the undefined 'young modern audience' actually care about the thing it appears at first glance to be measuring.

Edit: This is my first real thoughts on this Test. I can see the appeal of this one, but my instinct is not to trust results published in scientific journals were actually done rigorously, that they need to be questioned and verified. Let alone believe a meme-based statistic shows something meaningful. :smallbiggrin:

You can say something about something as a whole without it being an especially meaningful observation. Again, that's asking a lot of three datapoints. One could make the observation that most books are written on paper, or that most of genre fiction involves violence in some capacity. While true, that really only takes note of the fact that that's what a book is and that stories are usually about conflict, and violence is one of the simplest forms of that.

All the Bechdel Test and its reverse note is that fiction is usually centered on males. While that's an observation worth making, it doesn't actually say anything beyond that. Expecting it to, being upset that it doesn't go into further nuance than that, or expecting it to actually state any conclusions from that data, is again asking a lot of three datapoints. It's not flawed, it's just there, and a lot of people are weirdly defensive about it.

Thrudd

2022-09-18, 02:35 PM

I'm assuming that asking about the Bechdel test is a shorthand way of asking which of these old stories and authors might turn off some people with their dismissive or objectifying attitudes towards women and lack of female characters with agency. The same people would probably be turned off by other common features of early 20th century fiction, like casual(or overt) racism, "othering" of non-western people and cultures, etc.

These are seemingly the sorts of things that the OP thinks will make things "tricky" for some readers. I think what likely makes them more tricky for young audiences is the style of language/prose, the pulp short story or novella format of many of them, the pacing and voice. Modern readers are used to extensive world building and epic stories which progress through multiple tomes over 500+ pages each, often with deep focus on characters. It is expected that all mysteries will be solved, questions answered, and dramatic/narrative arcs fulfilled. Some of the pulp short stories can feel incomplete to people expecting modern fantasy- instead they are getting vignettes of mood and action, thrown into strange environments with little explanation, often ending without much explanation. Characters don't always develop or change.

False God

2022-09-18, 02:37 PM

A game system, not being a work of narrative fiction, cannot meaningfully have the test (assuming the test is itself meaningful in it's appropriate sphere) applied to it.

That is, attempting to apply the test to the system is a category error.

Then apply the test imperfectly. There are campaign modules which contain narrative fiction. There are books and comics based off the latest edition. There are TV shows based off tables that play the game.

This really isn't difficult. But every other post in this thread is just throwing their arms up in the air and declaring the test useless because it isn't an exact match to the specific kind of fiction they want to talk about. Which is, irritatingly, the definition of Cherry-Picking. The fact the test is simplistic and imperfect is not an argument against it's application. It's an argument to understand the sort of results we see when it is applied.

If NOTHING from 5E passes, not the short stories in the rulebooks, not the tables that play the game, not the narrative elements in its campaign books, not the books and comics based off its lore; then we have a problem. The most likely answer is that some things will pass, some things won't, and some things need not apply. Analyzing the results of this data will determine, at a very basic level, whether Appendix E has had any influence on D&D past it's predecessor Appendix N.

Appendix E quite frankly, may not be all that much of an improvement itself. Because like D&D, it will likely draw its influence from older works of fantasy fiction and as well. Which turns the whole thing into a sort of circular loop where in very little actual development occurs.

Drakevarg

2022-09-18, 04:19 PM

While I think it's likely a correct statement about fictional media based on personal experiences, it's not clear to me that the Bechdel test is really demonstrating that. That could be a flaw with it, that it doesn't really successfully demonstrate it.

I do think you need the contrast between the Bechdel Test and its inverse to really get the point across. So in that regard you could certainly say the test by itself is, if nothing else, incomplete.

And leaving out other uses of it around the web, in the OP, it's attempting to be used to attempt to demonstrate more than that.

Attempting to build an entire house with just a screwdriver and coming up short is not exactly the screwdriver's fault.

Witty Username

2022-09-18, 04:59 PM

KineticDiplomat

2022-09-18, 06:01 PM

At the literalist, and irrelevant level, of course. Any two female PCs or NPCs could reliably talk about the best way to fight whoever/whatever in the course of normal play.

At the ideological level, pretty self evidently 5E subscribes. There's no Stat line difference in the most literal sense, almost all the official settings are replete with female rulers, heroes, gods, and on, and while the odd matriarchy makes it in, even the most supposedly misogynistic societes seem to be comprised mostly of "rebellious ass kicking women who defy the norm" as far as players are concerned. It seems to explicitly defy the "Cersei Lannister and Brienne of Tarth - turns our physical traits do affect abilities and social reception" concept. Beyond the mere issue of sex, the entire edition has been accused of converging on the rubber-forehead alien effect because of how little it wants race, sex, etc to affect gameplay.

Beyond that, it's a nerdy power fantasy about mostly kicking the **** out of people and monsters to achieve your goals in a variety of ways that seem the coolest to you. The actual execution is a mediocre combat system bolted on to a MMORPG-looter loop, but thats the theory. I dare say there is going to be a large degree of heteronormativity in both the audience and the type of stories it ends up telling most of the time.

Drakevarg

2022-09-18, 06:09 PM

I dare say there is going to be a large degree of heteronormativity in both the audience and the type of stories it ends up telling most of the time.

I have absolutely no idea what you're on about.

icefractal

2022-09-18, 07:01 PM

I have absolutely no idea what you're on about.If you had a module that was: "Princess Examplia has disappeared just before her wedding to King Somebody, throwing both royal houses into chaos and putting their planned alliance in jeopardy. Some say she's been kidnapped, others that she rejected the marriage and fled. Investigate!" ... then nobody would bat an eye, because that sounds like a pretty classic adventure hook.

If it was "Prince Exemplio" instead, there'd be a lot more controversy and some people would definitely be complaining about "shoehorning politics into what should just be a fun game".
Hence, heteronormative. Not at the system level, but in terms of a portion of the community large enough to make a lot of noise online.

Drakevarg

2022-09-18, 07:12 PM

Hence, heteronormative. Not at the system level, but in terms of a portion of the community large enough to make a lot of noise online.

In my experience, the amount of noise a portion of community makes online is practically inversely proportional to their actual population.

Witty Username

2022-09-18, 07:17 PM

That sounds like a more general comment on fantasy and RPG community spaces than a comment specific to D&D, though.

Also, I am not sure it applies as damsel in distress plots have been drifting out for a while now as far as I can tell. Specific to D&D I can't actually think of one in the 5e modules (though that might be lack of familiarity).

Cluedrew

2022-09-18, 07:23 PM

So, it sounds like a... uh... word... "logic square", where you'd measure... [the logic square] Where A is "passes Bechdel Test" and B is "passes Reverse Bechdel Test".Yes, but don't put yes or no in each section, put a proportion in there. That is the proportion of some group of works that pass the test in there (in this case the works would be all of your stories). Because it is not actually very useful on an individual story basis. The Bechdel Test is incredibly east to get false positives (it is weak evidence) and it is very possible to get false negatives. The same can be said of the Reverse Bechdel test. So for a single work just go in and discuss whatever you are using the test to check.

Mechalich

2022-09-18, 07:29 PM

Appendix E quite frankly, may not be all that much of an improvement itself. Because like D&D, it will likely draw its influence from older works of fantasy fiction and as well. Which turns the whole thing into a sort of circular loop where in very little actual development occurs.

D&D's most important influence, at this point in its history, is itself. Specifically it draws heavily on its own novel line and fantasy works directly inspired by D&D. The most important source for 'what D&D is supposed to feel like' is the Dragonlance Chronicles, and the second most important is the Drizzt Saga. Drizzt absolutely passes the test, it has many, many conversations of various drow priestesses talking to each other, and I'm pretty sure Chronicles does as well (Laurana has several viewpoint chapters, I believe she talks to another female character in at least one, but I haven't actually read the books in ages). The influence of Chronicles, Drizzt, and many of the earlier D&D novels in other settings (especially FR) on modern D&D, and even modern fantasy in general is pretty clear.

5e also represents a significant break with D&D's own past. For the most part the same group of designers and writers worked on D&D from the mid-1980s through 2008 - when most of the old talent jumped ship due to the 4e debacle. The people in charge of D&D now are part of a new design and management team who have broken with the past in very significant ways. In fact, I strongly suspect that most of the people currently working for the D&D division at WotC have never read any substantial number of the appendix N works - just as I suspect many of the people on this forum and in this very thread haven't (which is not meant to be derogatory in any way, those works are old, often hard to find, and weren't to everyone's taste even when they were initially released, never mind today).

PhoenixPhyre

2022-09-18, 07:39 PM

D&D's most important influence, at this point in its history, is itself. Specifically it draws heavily on its own novel line and fantasy works directly inspired by D&D. The most important source for 'what D&D is supposed to feel like' is the Dragonlance Chronicles, and the second most important is the Drizzt Saga. Drizzt absolutely passes the test, it has many, many conversations of various drow priestesses talking to each other, and I'm pretty sure Chronicles does as well (Laurana has several viewpoint chapters, I believe she talks to another female character in at least one, but I haven't actually read the books in ages). The influence of Chronicles, Drizzt, and many of the earlier D&D novels in other settings (especially FR) on modern D&D, and even modern fantasy in general is pretty clear.

5e also represents a significant break with D&D's own past. For the most part the same group of designers and writers worked on D&D from the mid-1980s through 2008 - when most of the old talent jumped ship due to the 4e debacle. The people in charge of D&D now are part of a new design and management team who have broken with the past in very significant ways. In fact, I strongly suspect that most of the people currently working for the D&D division at WotC have never read any substantial number of the appendix N works - just as I suspect many of the people on this forum and in this very thread haven't (which is not meant to be derogatory in any way, those works are old, often hard to find, and weren't to everyone's taste even when they were initially released, never mind today).

Personally, I have read many of those works...and realize that at this point, the influence of Appendix N (and even Appendix E!) on D&D is...minimal. Tolkien? Yeah, no. At most the names of the races, a few tropes (which have changed significantly since his days) and the fuzziest idea of halflings (who have changed since). Conan? Hah hah don't make me laugh. Fafrhd and the Grey Mouser? Yeah, no.

As you say, the biggest influence on modern D&D is basically D&D. And this current group doesn't seem like they have very firm attachment to D&D in previous editions (including 5e), to be quite honest. At least not thematically. Is that a good thing? :shrug: decide for yourself.

Psyren

2022-09-19, 10:10 AM

Morgaln

2022-09-19, 10:44 AM

Ionathus

2022-09-19, 11:27 AM

The Bechtel test is a curious requirement to raise by murder hoboes.

The Bechdel Test isn't a test. It's a conversation starter. Technically it's not even that, it's just a punchline from a comic strip that got legs because for some reason, people really responded to it, can't imagine why...

In works of this kind, passing the test is basically nothing more than a measure of the gender of the protagonist: if the protagonist is female, the test is more or less automatically passed, while if the protagonist is male, it's difficult to pass the test because it requires two women to have a conversation while the protagonist basically just stands there and listens.

I get what you're saying - it's less likely if the protagonist is male, because the protagonist will be involved in the lion's share of conversations. But I think you're underselling how often side characters have a conversation while the protagonist remains mostly passive. Every book I've read in recent memory features at least one instance of the protagonist spying on a conversation, or dozing while other characters talk in the next room, or just plain listening to other people talk about whatever without chiming in.

Granted, maybe that was different in old fantasy sword-and-sorcery paperbacks, and the story was more main-character-driven and they never overheard a conversation they didn't join. But I think it's more likely that there were still plenty of side conversations between side characters even in those books.

Do a bunch of works from the 1970s and earlier pass a modern implicit ideological sounding board about inclusiveness built around "the old works were bad for not being as inclusive as we think they should, look how hard they fail?"

Kind of a self answering question, isn't it?

Oh, give me a break. "Works that don't pass the Bechdel Test are sexist and bad" has been a strawman from day one. Debating whether a given work "passes" is interesting and sometimes informative, but meaningless in evaluating the work's biases. But conversations always get stuck on the specifics of the "test", because it's easier to nitpick a pithy observation than it is to actually engage with the idea the observer was pointing to.

The Bechdel Test is a simple litmus (in that it's a painfully low bar for most modern works of fiction to clear) but it's also flawed/misleading as an absolute way to benchmark the feminist bona fides of a work or set of works. For example, Alien fails it (unless the xenomorph is female I suppose), while Bikini Car Wash passes.

Personally I'm a bigger fan of the Sexy Lamp Test. (https://fanlore.org/wiki/Sexy_Lamp_Test) Also flawed, but does not automatically fail single-female-character works and the like.

Echoing everything here. Well said.

Also, while we're discussing feminist aphorisms, I saw more than a few posts here breaching Lewis' Law :smalltongue:

Didn't know about that one :smallbiggrin: Thanks for the introduction!

Quertus

2022-09-19, 11:34 AM

Yes, but don't put yes or no in each section, put a proportion in there. That is the proportion of some group of works that pass the test in there (in this case the works would be all of your stories). Because it is not actually very useful on an individual story basis. The Bechdel Test is incredibly east to get false positives (it is weak evidence) and it is very possible to get false negatives. The same can be said of the Reverse Bechdel test. So for a single work just go in and discuss whatever you are using the test to check.

… sure? Which means, we’ve probably had a communication breakdown at some point.

If you had a module that was: "Princess Examplia has disappeared just before her wedding to King Somebody, throwing both royal houses into chaos and putting their planned alliance in jeopardy. Some say she's been kidnapped, others that she rejected the marriage and fled. Investigate!" ... then nobody would bat an eye, because that sounds like a pretty classic adventure hook.

If it was "Prince Exemplio" instead, there'd be a lot more controversy and some people would definitely be complaining about "shoehorning politics into what should just be a fun game".
Hence, heteronormative. Not at the system level, but in terms of a portion of the community large enough to make a lot of noise online.

Yeah, but… … … oh, that’s probably your point. :smallredface:

Sounds like the work of the same evil princess that kidnapped the beautiful dragon. :smallsmile:

Indeed. :smallsmile:

But does she want to marry Exemplo herself, or feed him to the dragon? Or something Far more sinister? Investigate!

D&D's most important influence, at this point in its history, is itself. Specifically it draws heavily on its own novel line and fantasy works directly inspired by D&D. The most important source for 'what D&D is supposed to feel like' is the Dragonlance Chronicles, and the second most important is the Drizzt Saga. Drizzt absolutely passes the test, it has many, many conversations of various drow priestesses talking to each other, and I'm pretty sure Chronicles does as well (Laurana has several viewpoint chapters, I believe she talks to another female character in at least one, but I haven't actually read the books in ages). The influence of Chronicles, Drizzt, and many of the earlier D&D novels in other settings (especially FR) on modern D&D, and even modern fantasy in general is pretty clear.

5e also represents a significant break with D&D's own past. For the most part the same group of designers and writers worked on D&D from the mid-1980s through 2008 - when most of the old talent jumped ship due to the 4e debacle. The people in charge of D&D now are part of a new design and management team who have broken with the past in very significant ways. In fact, I strongly suspect that most of the people currently working for the D&D division at WotC have never read any substantial number of the appendix N works - just as I suspect many of the people on this forum and in this very thread haven't (which is not meant to be derogatory in any way, those works are old, often hard to find, and weren't to everyone's taste even when they were initially released, never mind today).

I second the motion to have… I mean, I agree that Dragonlance Chronicles and the Drizzt Saga are chief contributors to modern D&D. And they pass the B. Test? Which… might just indicate that they’re younger than appendix N… so I’m not sure a conclusion can be drawn from such data.

Personally, I have read many of those works...and realize that at this point, the influence of Appendix N (and even Appendix E!) on D&D is...minimal. Tolkien? Yeah, no. At most the names of the races, a few tropes (which have changed significantly since his days) and the fuzziest idea of halflings (who have changed since). Conan? Hah hah don't make me laugh. Fafrhd and the Grey Mouser? Yeah, no.

As you say, the biggest influence on modern D&D is basically D&D. And this current group doesn't seem like they have very firm attachment to D&D in previous editions (including 5e), to be quite honest. At least not thematically. Is that a good thing? :shrug: decide for yourself.

I guess that the extent to which they are valuable in understanding modern D&D might be likened to the extent to which you can learn meaningful things about a person by watching home videos of their childhood. That is, it depends on the viewer.

The Bechdel Test is a simple litmus (in that it's a painfully low bar for most modern works of fiction to clear) but it's also flawed/misleading as an absolute way to benchmark the feminist bona fides of a work or set of works. For example, Alien fails it (unless the xenomorph is female I suppose), while Bikini Car Wash passes.

Personally I'm a bigger fan of the Sexy Lamp Test. (https://fanlore.org/wiki/Sexy_Lamp_Test) Also flawed, but does not automatically fail single-female-character works and the like.

Also, while we're discussing feminist aphorisms, I saw more than a few posts here breaching Lewis' Law :smalltongue:

Oh joy, two more things for me to learn. Hmmm…

Lewis’ Law: “comments on feminism justify feminism”? That could be taken several ways. Simple blurb has failed me. So, more digging… “pro-feminist internet content inevitably draws sexist reactions from men”? I mean, this being applicable would require there to be feminist content in this thread. Much like the original tier list, the Bechdel Test and its applications seem more like “moron content” than “feminist content” (that is, as used, it most often has zero to negative value); even then, there’s no calls to use the test beyond the ones I’ve made, I don’t believe. And any negativity I’ve noticed has been just directed at the faults in the test (or uses thereof); claiming otherwise is either fallacious, or indicative of greater perception and reading comprehension than I possess. Which, like the Bechdel test, isn’t a very high bar…

Sexy Lamp Test: Google, you have failed to give me a sound bite blurb! More digging… “if the character has no impact on the plot, and could be replaced by a sexy lamp, they fail the sexy lamp test, and are the victim of bad writing”? So… every character in a Railroad campaign is, according to the sexy lamp test, a victim of bad writing? Ahahahahahaha, I love it! :smallbiggrin:

From now on, we should stop talking about “railroads” and start talking about “sexy lamp shade failures caused by bad writing”. (Color blue to taste?)

Psyren

2022-09-19, 11:47 AM

Sexy Lamp Test: Google, you have failed to give me a sound bite blurb! More digging… “if the character has no impact on the plot, and could be replaced by a sexy lamp, they fail the sexy lamp test, and are the victim of bad writing”? So… every character in a Railroad campaign is, according to the sexy lamp test, a victim of bad writing? Ahahahahahaha, I love it! :smallbiggrin:

From now on, we should stop talking about “railroads” and start talking about “sexy lamp shade failures caused by bad writing”. (Color blue to taste?)

Well yes, exclusively railroading your players is "bad writing" in a collaborative medium. It may or may not be related to their characters' gender however.

Quertus

2022-09-19, 01:25 PM

Well yes, exclusively railroading your players is "bad writing" in a collaborative medium. It may or may not be related to their characters' gender however.

Oh, I didn’t see anything in the SLT that made it in any way gender specific. It appeared to work perfectly fine for Attack Helicopters, literally or figurative.

Hmmm… it also didn’t specify how much of a main character the character had to be… I can think of a lot of “extras” that fail the SLT.

Psyren

2022-09-19, 01:44 PM

Oh, I didn’t see anything in the SLT that made it in any way gender specific. It appeared to work perfectly fine for Attack Helicopters, literally or figurative.

Hmmm… it also didn’t specify how much of a main character the character had to be… I can think of a lot of “extras” that fail the SLT.

That's kind of the point - that sort of bad writing can indeed apply to anyone. Historically however, it is and has been much more likely to be applied to female characters across various media. Both the BT and the SLT were thought experiments designed to get people to think about that concept more consciously, even if they have flaws of their own.

In short, literally anyone can be objectified, but the conversation doesn't end there.

Willie the Duck

2022-09-19, 02:32 PM

That said, if modern fantasy gaming is still deriving it's primary inspiration from works written 50 years or more before most of it's players were born(or self-referentially drawing inspiration from prior versions of itself which are based on said works), maybe it's worth looking at the resultant game instead?
So does D&D 5E pass the Bechdel Test?

Personally, I have read many of those works...and realize that at this point, the influence of Appendix N (and even Appendix E!) on D&D is...minimal. Tolkien? Yeah, no. At most the names of the races, a few tropes (which have changed significantly since his days) and the fuzziest idea of halflings (who have changed since). Conan? Hah hah don't make me laugh. Fafrhd and the Grey Mouser? Yeah, no.

As you say, the biggest influence on modern D&D is basically D&D. And this current group doesn't seem like they have very firm attachment to D&D in previous editions (including 5e), to be quite honest. At least not thematically. Is that a good thing? :shrug: decide for yourself.

Fundamentally, I was going to say what PhoenixPhyre said. Appendix N was simply the genre fiction that Gygax read which got him excited about fantasy gaming. The. End. There are plenty of components of proto-D&D, oD&D, and AD&D which clearly violate one or more principle of many or all of these works in favor of gamist concerns whenever or whereever necessary. If anything, they are useful in understanding (for example) where D&D trolls came from (Three Hearts and Three Lions) if you were expecting norse-myth or Tolkein- or similar, or why Thieves have this focus on using scrolls and wizardly magic items as a side-benefit (Fafrhd and Grey Mouser).

As for the Bechdel Test, I agree with those that have said (in aggregate) that it is simply the start of a conversation, that there are any one of a million ways to break it (since it wasn't meant as a be-all and end-all of a conversation), and that it's striking how readily people get defensive about it. At the same time, OP's question also isn't all that useful without a huge amount of added nuance on top.

Vahnavoi

2022-09-19, 02:37 PM

Metastachydium

2022-09-19, 02:39 PM

One of the more rigorous simple tests for whether women are present & relevant is "does the story still work if everyone changes sexes?"

Justice for Reservoir Cats!

137beth

2022-09-19, 03:28 PM

I thought the main potentially valuable information you could get from the Bechdel Test (aside from it being a punchline to a comic strip) would be to take a sample of popular works and compare how many of them passed the Bechdel test with how many passed the reverse Bechdel test.

Suggesting that the Bechdel Test shouldn't be applied to some subcategory of fiction — short stories, first person, no dialog, whatever — implies that it's generally useful but gives misleading results in specific domains. What is it generally useful for?

The Bechdel Test is, first and foremost, a comic strip character's criteria for watching a movie. Because that's seriously the origin. I think that one would be hard-pressed to argue that how frequently movies fail these requirements* illustrates precisely nothing, but we're not talking about something designed to measure anything well. It's literally a joke, or more accurately part of a joke. It's not even really serious social commentary and much more so humorous social commentary.

So, why do so many people seem to talk about the Bechdel Test fairly seriously, then? Probably largely because it's arguably a weak indicator of something for which we lack better measures (https://xkcd.com/2652/). Even better, several different things! In some cases, there may be better measures, but they're not as widely known. Basically, a lot gets made out of this particular metric because of its meme status.

I can understand frustration from people who feel like that interferes with meaningful discourse, but discourse is kind of inevitably shaped by available vocabulary for good or for ill. The solution, of course, is to popularize better metrics for the stuff that the Bechdel Test is often purported (explicitly or implicitly) to indicate.

*In the original context, they are requirements. But they aren't inherently. The phrase "the Bechdel Test" refers to the distinction made. There are lots of different opinions about what, if anything, should be done based on this distinction, but none of the possible responses are part of "the test" in the general sense. Clear?

In this case, how good is the Bechdel Test as a predictor of whether a modern audience will have difficulty with an older work? Probably not very. But is there a better predictor that's equally clear and equally well-known? No? Well, there you go, then.

May I put some of this in my extended sig?

Most of the Appendix N stories, being 50 to 100 years old and older, should probably be approached more as a matter of historical interest. It's sort of silly to hold works of such age to standards you'd expect of authors today, based on values that were still being formulated when this appendix was published in the 1970's.
This is a very strange take. The main idea for the Bechdel Test was inspired by Virginia Wolf's A Room of One's Own (1929), which predates much of the literature in Appendix N. It later became known as the "Bechdel Test" because Allison Bechdel turned it into the punchline for a comic in 1985, which was less than a decade after the publication of AD&D.

Moreover, the Bechdel Test doesn't penalize a work for being old: some Shakespeare plays "pass" the test, while plenty of 21st century works fail.

Mechalich

2022-09-19, 05:05 PM

Fundamentally, I was going to say what PhoenixPhyre said. Appendix N was simply the genre fiction that Gygax read which got him excited about fantasy gaming. The. End. There are plenty of components of proto-D&D, oD&D, and AD&D which clearly violate one or more principle of many or all of these works in favor of gamist concerns whenever or whereever necessary. If anything, they are useful in understanding (for example) where D&D trolls came from (Three Hearts and Three Lions) if you were expecting norse-myth or Tolkein- or similar, or why Thieves have this focus on using scrolls and wizardly magic items as a side-benefit (Fafrhd and Grey Mouser).

I think Appendix N is also a useful illustration that the kind of fantasy that was being written in the 50s, 60s, and early 70s was different from what would come after. The appendix lists a lot of Sword & Sorcery, much of it quite dark, and heavily tilted towards the short story or novella format. There only a small number of high or epic fantasy full-length works listed (Amber, LotR, Three Hearts and Three Lions).

That changed shortly after D&D came out, and when fantasy exploded in popularity through the 80s and 90s it was epic fantasy that dominated. Some of that, such as Shannara, was sort of a 'back to Tolkien' movement, but a huge part of it came from D&D itself, especially Dragonlance Chronicles. That trilogy alone sold millions of copies in the 1980s, a stunning achievement for the time. D&D also changed to reflect this with FR, a much more high fantasy oriented setting than Greyhawk or other early experiments, quickly gaining dominance as the most popular one shortly after it was introduced.

Thrudd

2022-09-19, 05:35 PM

This is a very strange take. The main idea for the Bechdel Test was inspired by Virginia Wolf's A Room of One's Own (1929), which predates much of the literature in Appendix N. It later became known as the "Bechdel Test" because Allison Bechdel turned it into the punchline for a comic in 1985, which was less than a decade after the publication of AD&D.

Moreover, the Bechdel Test doesn't penalize a work for being old: some Shakespeare plays "pass" the test, while plenty of 21st century works fail.

yeah, true, that was not well stated. What I ought to have said is "most of these stories are written by men who grew up prior to the 1950's, you can probably guess how they will measure up to today's standards." I guess I was making a jump in logic in assuming what the OP was actually asking for, rather than limiting my thought to just the Bechdel test. What they really wanted to ask, imo, is "how many of these stories have antiquated portrayals of women that people might find unenjoyable." - which, as everyone has stated, is not something the Bechdel test can actually tell you. If their main concern is that there are women in the story with speaking roles, then the test will be sufficient, otherwise it doesn't say much.

Cluedrew

2022-09-19, 05:52 PM

Personally I'm a bigger fan of the Sexy Lamp Test. (https://fanlore.org/wiki/Sexy_Lamp_Test) Also flawed, but does not automatically fail single-female-character works and the like.Does it apply to works at all? I think I know this one from other contexts and doesn't it work on characters?

… sure? Which means, we’ve probably had a communication breakdown at some point.OK, is that "I already knew that part" or is there something else that is missing, because I can't fix it off of just that.

Quertus

2022-09-19, 06:02 PM

OK, is that "I already knew that part" or is there something else that is missing, because I can't fix it off of just that.

Fair. I was and am too scatterbrained to evaluate it at the moment beyond “I knew that; if you were posting that because you thought I didn’t (or, more importantly, read something I wrote to have indicated or have been indicative of the opposite), then we’ve likely had a breakdown in communication”.

I, admittedly, initially only considered the possibility of the parenthetical.

Make more sense? Or should I get some sleep?

Cluedrew

2022-09-19, 06:22 PM

To Quertus: I didn't think you didn't know, because I didn't know either way. Plus it seemed to be something the thread in general was having trouble with it so I decided to reiterate the point just for safety. It doesn't say a lot about a work, so collect up results, compare them with the reverse Bechdel test or your expectations. Which is actually how I first encountered it, someone explained the test to me and asked me to guess the proportion of blockbuster movies that pass the test. I did and then they gave me the actual number.

I have since forgotten both numbers, but I remember my guess was very wrong.

Thank you for joining me on this short trip down memory lane.

gbaji

2022-09-19, 06:23 PM

I think in general we also have to realize that Gygax was primarily looking at fiction sources which detailed the environment, genre, and mechanics of the kinds of fantasy setting he envisioned. It was about a reading list to provide ideas for DMs for writing adventure plots, and traps, encounters, weapons, magic, opponents, mystical beasts, curses, etc. I doubt he was looking much at character dialog, which is what the Bechdel Test focuses on.

Having said that, I recall a long time ago, when first encountering the Bechdel Test, also thinking that it was a bit silly and not terribly relevant. And when assessing a single story, it does have some serious flaws. However, it is an interesting tool to use to look at broader aspects of storytelling as a whole, and to what degree male characters tend to dominate as the primary focus of those stories, with female characters often relegated to being essentially an appendage to the male character(s) actions. It's not about "this story" or "that story", but "look at how many stories all have this same aspect to them".

And yeah. It can be a bit eye-opening when you start looking around at stories that we might otherwise view as "perfectly normal", and realize how few of them have female characters who operate independently of a more dominant male agency. Now, to be fair, the test is flawed in that it fails to address the fact that many settings for stories may themselves be in time periods or locations where such male dominated factors existed. So a female protagonist may be forced (due to setting) to interact primarily with male characters. In fact, a lot of fiction where the point is to show this problem (and where said problem is an obstacle that the female character has to fight and overcome) actually fail the test itself.

I think it's also important to make a distinction between stories that are more focused on action/events than interaction/dialogue. The former, pretty much regardless of the main character(s), are less dependent on dialogue, so passing or failing is less significant as well. If you have a story where it's a lot of folks talking and interacting socially, and you're failing the test, that is something to look at, even if just in terms of character choices in the work itself. I do find it interesting, however, how many sci-fi films do actually pass the test (despite often being action/event focused), while other more character and dialogue driven films do not.

So yeah. More of a conversation starter IMO. Trying to place strict "this is good/bad" assessments as a result is problematic. It can also lead to tokenism if taken literally and applied by aspiring writers, which is also not a great thing. If you intentionally wrote an extra piece of conversation between two characters just so you can literally pass the test, you're kinda missing the point.

Also, at the risk of circling back to an earlier point, a lot of fantasy settings themselves are modeled after time periods in which male and female societal roles were more biologically driven than they are today. Modern medicine has changed the equation to a massive degree. So I think that holding societies without those advantages to the same standard can be problematic. I tend to give stories in older historical settings a heck of a lot more leeway than ones that are set in relatively modern times.

warty goblin

2022-09-19, 08:08 PM

Witty Username

2022-09-19, 09:11 PM

One of the more rigorous simple tests for whether women are present & relevant is "does the story still work if everyone changes sexes?" or "does the story still work of everyone is cast as male?"

Wouldn't that disqualify just about everything that isn't a social commentary?
I ask because I thought women and men being treated as equally capable was a positive, which this measure appears to disqualify.

Or is this more of a larger social context type thing, where a story can pass this test by way of transgression (would be generic but a gender swap makes it stand out)?

Psyren

2022-09-20, 12:03 AM

Does it apply to works at all? I think I know this one from other contexts and doesn't it work on characters?

I can't really parse your question but you appear to be asking for an example? Crank (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rvYrVTnSWw) is one of my go-tos for the SLT.

Vahnavoi

2022-09-20, 02:10 AM

Wouldn't that disqualify just about everything that isn't a social commentary?

How was this not answered by the second paragraph of my post?

The fact that you even need to ask that suggests that you think any degree of reference physical realities of being female counts as social commentary.

To be fair, that's not an absurd position to take. But it puts the bar for what qualifies as social commentary very low - so low that any work that omits such details must also be social commentary. After all, how is the omission of such details NOT a comment on what the author and by extension their society cares about?

I ask because I thought women and men being treated as equally capable was a positive, which this measure appears to disqualify.

Treating women and men as physically interchangeable is a very naive take on what treating them as "equally capable" means and not the extent of what the test measures. This said, if for some reason you find value in them being interchangeable, you'd still do the exact same test. You'd just be looking for a particular result.

To elaborate a bit more, a lot of early feminist fantasy, Dragonriders of Pern or Earthsea (Tehanu especially) as examples, aren't simply concerned with women doing the same things as men tradtionally do and value. They are concerned with giving focus and credit to traditionally feminine pursuits. Later feminist works differ, but they differ in a way that signifies an internal division within feminism.

Or is this more of a larger social context type thing, where a story can pass this test by way of transgression (would be generic but a gender swap makes it stand out)?

It's not quite that simple, but it is one of the things the test is usually sensitive to, yes. Metroid (the original one) would be a good example. 99.9% of gameplay doesn't care of Samus Aran's sex and the reveal of it can only be (could only be) a shock against a background where people just don't expect the heavily armored space warrior to be a woman. If your reward at the end would've been a man in speedos, it wouldn't have been anything of a twist.

---

Is this considered passed if the answer is Yes or No?
And why? (Whichever it is.)

Mu.

Compare and contrast:

Me: "You can test a material's strength by hitting it with a hammer and seeing if it breaks."
You: "Is this test considered passed if the answer is Yes or No? And why?"

The test measures a thing; what you do with that measure is another question. The most interesting results are often found in details of how the change does not work, or, if the changes do work, in observation of how the story jumps into another genre entirely as a result.

KorvinStarmast

2022-09-20, 08:31 AM

Early S&S isn't really a genre long on talking in general. There isn't much expository speech making and the stories aren't really about relationships. The action is either external and physical, or internal and psychological, and they aren't resolved by conversation. That's a good observation, which would make test mostly irrelevant. @Vahnavoi: good points on LeGuin and McCaffrey.

Ionathus

2022-09-20, 09:57 AM

Treating women and men as physically interchangeable is a very naive take on what treating them as "equally capable" means and not the extent of what the test measures. This said, if for some reason you find value in them being interchangeable, you'd still do the exact same test. You'd just be looking for a particular result.

To elaborate a bit more, a lot of early feminist fantasy, Dragonriders of Pern or Earthsea (Tehanu especially) as examples, aren't simply concerned with women doing the same things as men tradtionally do and value. They are concerned with giving focus and credit to traditionally feminine pursuits. Later feminist works differ, but they differ in a way that signifies an internal division within feminism.

I haven't read Earthsea - it's actually next on my list. I love everything I've ever read of Le Guin though.

Worth mentioning that Le Guin was also pushing even harder on the idea of what gender even means at the same time with her sci-fi: The Left Hand of Darkness (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Left_Hand_of_Darkness) in particular comes to mind, and that came out at roughly the same time as Earthsea (my god, she really wrote like she was running out of time, huh?).

Yes, indeed the people in it are androgynous, but that doesn’t mean that I’m predicting that in a millennium or so we will all be androgynous, or announcing that I think we damned well ought to be androgynous. I’m merely observing, in the peculiar, devious, and thought-experimental manner proper to science fiction, that if you look at us at certain odd times of day in certain weathers, we already are.

Mu.

Compare and contrast:

Me: "You can test a material's strength by hitting it with a hammer and seeing if it breaks."
You: "Is this test considered passed if the answer is Yes or No? And why?"

The test measures a thing; what you do with that measure is another question. The most interesting results are often found in details of how the change does not work, or, if the changes do work, in observation of how the story jumps into another genre entirely as a result.

Very well said. I think this is a very good summation of any of the "tests" discussed in this thread - Bechdel, Sexy Lamp, or otherwise.

Liquor Box

2022-09-20, 07:51 PM

The Bechdel Test is a simple litmus (in that it's a painfully low bar for most modern works of fiction to clear) but it's also flawed/misleading as an absolute way to benchmark the feminist bona fides of a work or set of works. For example, Alien fails it (unless the xenomorph is female I suppose), while Bikini Car Wash passes.

Personally I'm a bigger fan of the Sexy Lamp Test. (https://fanlore.org/wiki/Sexy_Lamp_Test) Also flawed, but does not automatically fail single-female-character works and the like.

Also, while we're discussing feminist aphorisms, I saw more than a few posts here breaching Lewis' Law :smalltongue:

The problem with the lamp test is that is so open to interpretation that is becomes entirely subjective (unless you interpret it strictly, in which case any character who speaks cannot be a lamp because lamps can't talk). If you asked two people (even people with a similar outlook) to watch 20 films and say how many passed the lamp test, there's a good chance you';d get a different answer. You may as well just state your opinion on whether a piece of media without trying to reference it to a test.

The bechdel test, as much as it may not be a very complete measure of female representation, is at least largely objective (albeit with room for disagreement on close calls). As such, an assessment of how many movies pass or fail the bechdel test has some meaning. More I would say than just someone stating their opinion (whether tied to the lamp test or not)

Cluedrew

2022-09-20, 08:01 PM

I can't really parse your question but you appear to be asking for an example?No I mean The Bechdel test applies to works (the whole book/movie/show) while the lamp test seems to be aimed at a single character. Could this character be replaced with a lamp, or a notebook containing the important information, or a button connected to the right device? Can you apply the lamp test to the entire work?

Ionathus

2022-09-20, 11:08 PM

The problem with the lamp test is that is so open to interpretation that is becomes entirely subjective (unless you interpret it strictly, in which case any character who speaks cannot be a lamp because lamps can't talk). If you asked two people (even people with a similar outlook) to watch 20 films and say how many passed the lamp test, there's a good chance you';d get a different answer. You may as well just state your opinion on whether a piece of media without trying to reference it to a test.

The bechdel test, as much as it may not be a very complete measure of female representation, is at least largely objective (albeit with room for disagreement on close calls). As such, an assessment of how many movies pass or fail the bechdel test has some meaning. More I would say than just someone stating their opinion (whether tied to the lamp test or not)

I agree that the SLT is even foggier a distinction than the Bechdel Test - though that is also quite foggy if you push on it.

A few years back, I actually went to the actual Bechdel Test website/archive - not sure if it's still around. Lots of interesting debate on each entry for whether that specific entry passed or not. There would be a lot of "well, are they REALLY talking about the male main character here, even if the actual words are different? Can the first 5 sentences count, even if they start talking about men after that?" type discussions.

More than anything, that highlighted to me how it's a very fuzzy test that breaks down under scrutiny or an attempt to solidify the fast-and-loose rules. The fact that people had to debate whether 4 lines was enough to count was, indeed, the point.

I feel like the SLT is much the same: doesn't really make sense as a "test," even less so than the BT. Makes much more sense as just a thought experiment to keep in mind the next time you watch a movie.

Psyren

2022-09-20, 11:49 PM

No I mean The Bechdel test applies to works (the whole book/movie/show) while the lamp test seems to be aimed at a single character. Could this character be replaced with a lamp, or a notebook containing the important information, or a button connected to the right device? Can you apply the lamp test to the entire work?

I'd say it's character-focused because the idea is that every character in a work should serve a purpose beyond "eye candy" or "love interest" or "fridge bait." That's regardless of gender - though again, historically, one has been the victim of such writing a great deal more than the other. Making sure every character in your story has something narratively important to do (or removing/compositing them if they don't) is a pretty low bar. Megan Fox in the Transformer movies is an example, as is Blake Lively from Green Lantern, and I would argue that Christine in the first Doctor Strange qualifies too despite there being a much stronger female character in that movie (The Ancient One)

The problem with the lamp test is that is so open to interpretation that is becomes entirely subjective (unless you interpret it strictly, in which case any character who speaks cannot be a lamp because lamps can't talk). If you asked two people (even people with a similar outlook) to watch 20 films and say how many passed the lamp test, there's a good chance you';d get a different answer. You may as well just state your opinion on whether a piece of media without trying to reference it to a test.

The bechdel test, as much as it may not be a very complete measure of female representation, is at least largely objective (albeit with room for disagreement on close calls). As such, an assessment of how many movies pass or fail the bechdel test has some meaning. More I would say than just someone stating their opinion (whether tied to the lamp test or not)

I'm aware the Bechdel Test is more objective to apply, but that doesn't make it inherently superior to a subjective test. We could sit around all day bringing up questionable passes from the BT like Twilight and American Pie, as well as movies with strong female characters that nevertheless fail like Gravity and Arrival, but I'd rather not dismiss either test. Again, their goal is to be conversation starters, and they both succeed at that, even if one has to engage one's gray matter a little bit beyond applying the test itself.

137beth

2022-09-21, 11:44 AM

yeah, true, that was not well stated. What I ought to have said is "most of these stories are written by men who grew up prior to the 1950's, you can probably guess how they will measure up to today's standards." I guess I was making a jump in logic in assuming what the OP was actually asking for, rather than limiting my thought to just the Bechdel test. What they really wanted to ask, imo, is "how many of these stories have antiquated portrayals of women that people might find unenjoyable." - which, as everyone has stated, is not something the Bechdel test can actually tell you. If their main concern is that there are women in the story with speaking roles, then the test will be sufficient, otherwise it doesn't say much.

That's a fair point. And yeah, probably most of Appendix N has antiquated portrayals of women.

gbaji

2022-09-21, 08:56 PM

That's a fair point. And yeah, probably most of Appendix N has antiquated portrayals of women.

To be fair. They have pretty antiquated portrayals of men too.

And are more often than not set in fantasy settings where what exactly qualifies as "antiquated" is almost entirely irrelevant anyway. I'm reasonably certain that the percentage of the modern readers of any of these books who have actually strapped on their weapons and armor, snuck through the pre-dawn foggy swamp, climbed into the hidden storm drain of the evil enemy's castle, killed their guards and guardian monsters, then dropped down upon them just in time to stop their ritual sacrifice to their evil deity is somewhere very near the vicinity of zero. Whether that heroic character is male or female (or whether the enemy is) and what sort of conversations they have along the way (and which sex those people are as well) kinda takes second fiddle in the "this isn't a realistic/acceptable portrayal relevant to modern socio-normative interactive relationships" aspect of the works in question.

Now the absurd portrayal of actual gravity in the film Gravity on the other hand... (seriously. Don't get me started). And yeah, that actually bothers me far far more than the fact that there isn't a second female character to talk to. So sometimes (most of the time?), you do just have to take the purpose and setting of the work into account IMO.

Mechalich

2022-09-22, 04:18 AM

To be fair. They have pretty antiquated portrayals of men too.

Honestly they have antiqued portrayals of everything because they're, well, antiques. Pretty much everything on that appendix is at least 50 years since first publication and a lot of the better known stuff - Conan, Lovecraft, Tolkien, etc. - is pushing the the century mark. There's lots of old stuff in these tales. For example, Howard setup the Hyborian Age of Conan as a sort of 'pre-Ice Age' environment when the world was differently shaped prior to massive flooding and sinking of continents because continental drift and plate tectonics were dubious and controversial science unknown to the public back in the 1930s when he was writing. There's all sorts of stuff ranging from architecture to clothing to food choices that match neither modern scholarship or modern media trends regarding the sort of pre-industrial societies fantasy settings tend to emulate.

Psyren

2022-09-22, 11:44 AM

To be fair. They have pretty antiquated portrayals of men too.

And are more often than not set in fantasy settings where what exactly qualifies as "antiquated" is almost entirely irrelevant anyway. I'm reasonably certain that the percentage of the modern readers of any of these books who have actually strapped on their weapons and armor, snuck through the pre-dawn foggy swamp, climbed into the hidden storm drain of the evil enemy's castle, killed their guards and guardian monsters, then dropped down upon them just in time to stop their ritual sacrifice to their evil deity is somewhere very near the vicinity of zero. Whether that heroic character is male or female (or whether the enemy is) and what sort of conversations they have along the way (and which sex those people are as well) kinda takes second fiddle in the "this isn't a realistic/acceptable portrayal relevant to modern socio-normative interactive relationships" aspect of the works in question.

Now the absurd portrayal of actual gravity in the film Gravity on the other hand... (seriously. Don't get me started). And yeah, that actually bothers me far far more than the fact that there isn't a second female character to talk to. So sometimes (most of the time?), you do just have to take the purpose and setting of the work into account IMO.

The point though is that "antiquated portrayals of men" still allow them to be power fantasies for an assumed male audience, with agency and complex arcs that don't have to rely on reductive tropes. It's the difference between, say, a story about Theseus being a hero vs. a story about Ariadne being discarded when her usefulness to the male hero runs its course.

gbaji

2022-09-22, 09:26 PM

The point though is that "antiquated portrayals of men" still allow them to be power fantasies for an assumed male audience, with agency and complex arcs that don't have to rely on reductive tropes.

This assumes that the audience's enjoyment of the work is primarily based on their own ability to self identify with the main character(s) *and* that said identification is primarily (or even significantly) dependent on sex/gender alignment with said character(s).

The point in my second paragraph is that these characters share so little in common with modern readers already, that the sex of those characters is also somewhat irrelevant. Does a modern 10 year old boy really identify more with Conan (for example), than a modern 10 year old girl? Imagine if no one told them that the sex of the main character actually matters in any way at all. Should this really affect the girl's enjoyment of the work more than the boys (heck, is it wrong that we might assume/expect it would)? Or do we just let her enjoy her childhood and run around swinging a stick at imaginary enemies with her imaginary sword just like the character in the book does?

In stories in such fantasy environments, the environment and characters themselves require so much "only in my imagination can I be like this character" association already. I'm not sure how much value there is in creating yet more ways in which we, the readers, are not like them. Obviously, there's a lot more to this topic as a whole, but I'm trying to keep it to game/genre specific areas. I will say, however, that in fantasy settings there is the potential for us to be pushing our own modern sex/gender stereotypes into the genre where it's not always needed or useful. The female rogue is going to have more in common with a male rogue in the party than the party's female paladin, right? Personality, actions, events, choices, skills, class, level, etc are going to be far more relevant to the character's identity than a "M" or "F" on the sheet. At least, in most RPGs we play. Yet we often assume that the consumer/player of content in the same genre is utterly unable to form identity associations unless that M/F value aligns properly.

I think that can be problematic too. But on a positive note, I do love that RPGs actively encourage players to RP outside their own identity, including sex/gender identity. It's a really good thing and encourages thinking outside of one's own personal perspective. So somehow, despite a dearth of female characters in the list of works mentioned earlier, many many players, regardless of their own sex/gender have taken that game, and even from its very early days, gone forth with their own imaginations to play a wide variety of different characters, all of which are different than they are, and in most cases, in which sex/gender was just one of many aspects of the "different than I am" player/character dynamic.

So yeah. I think the results (for the most part) have been overwhelmingly positive in this regard.

JadedDM

2022-09-22, 09:47 PM

Your entire point seems to hinge on the idea that the only reason for a story to have fleshed out women with agency is in case a woman is actually reading the story, which...isn't the case at all. Also, you seem to have narrowed the scope to protagonists specifically, even though the Bechdel Test refers to any and all named female characters in a story, not just the lead one(s).

tomandtish

2022-09-22, 10:26 PM

One of the more rigorous simple tests for whether women are present & relevant is "does the story still work if everyone changes sexes?" or "does the story still work of everyone is cast as male?"

Even this isn't without its quirks. For example, I recall Alien was purposefully scripted so that any person could be cast in any role. So applying the test to Alien leads to the conclusion that the story doesn't care all that much about women or their presence - any feminism is coincidence of casting. Meanwhile, a lot of traditional stories that care a lot about who gave birth to who are very sensitive in this regard, even if otherwise women do nothing of note.

The Alien example bounces back and forth among people. There was a note on the script that said "The crew is unisex and all parts are interchangeable for men or women". However, all parts were written he/him. I personally think the note takes priority, but some argue that the he/him meant there was a preference.

Incidentally, I believe Alien fails the test, since Ripley and Lambert have no conversations by themselves. It's always part of a larger conversation. Still an awesome movie though.

Psyren

2022-09-22, 10:54 PM

This assumes that the audience's enjoyment of the work is primarily based on their own ability to self identify with the main character(s) *and* that said identification is primarily (or even significantly) dependent on sex/gender alignment with said character(s).

Enjoyment, no. Marketability to overwhelmingly male executives, producers, and decision-makers - yes.

Vahnavoi

2022-09-23, 01:36 AM

The Alien example bounces back and forth among people. There was a note on the script that said "The crew is unisex and all parts are interchangeable for men or women". However, all parts were written he/him. I personally think the note takes priority, but some argue that the he/him meant there was a preference.

*Groan*

I was about to comment on this anyway due to Left Hand of Darkness being mentioned, but this touches on the same topic.

Unpopular opinion of the day: English-speakers pay disproportionate amount of attention to third person pronouns.

Like the script of Alien, Left Hand of Darkness was also criticized for using he/him instead of something else for its ambisexual characters. I've read Left Hand of Darkness several times, and this would've never occurred to me as relevant criticism of the work. Why? Because I've only read the novel as a translation, in a language that has just one third person pronoun. So this supposed flaw of the original is entirely fixed in translation.

This also brings to mind a discussion panel about queer readings of Tolkien's work. One of the panelists observed that young children of our country sometimes imagine Merri and Pippin as girls when reading the book. Why? Again, I think the reason is linguistic: any pronoun-based evidence for gender would be erased in translation to my language and Merri and Pippin are more similar to local girls' names (Meri and Peppi, specifically) than they are to local boys' names.

This suggests another test, which is admittedly more difficult to perform than others, as it requires multi-linguality:

1) begin with assumption that gendered pronouns are used for convenience of spoken language and don't actually transmit useful information.
2) translate the text you want to examine to any language that lacks gendered pronouns
3) see how readers of the translated text conceptualize gender and sex of characters in the text.

Some examples of results to look for:

A) Low confusion, low variance - "everyone knows Merri and Pippin are men": individual readers quickly decide gender of the characters and these decisions match the original intent of the text; the characters have strong, identifiable gendered traits that are apperent without relying on weak linguistic evidence.
B) Low confusion, high variance - "Merri and Pippin are girls": individual readers quickly decide gender of the characters and nothing in the text challenges their opinion, but it can be noticed that between reader, there is no consensus, and the results don't always match intent of the original text; the characters are not strongly gendered and in absence of weak linguistic evidence, other factors rise to prominence. BONUS ROUND: see if the gender(s) an individual settles on match their own, or see if the interpretation varies by cultural sphere.
C) High confusion, low variance - "SAMUS ARAN IS A GIRL???" : individual readers quickly decide the gender of the characters to be opposite of original intent AND have their opinion blatantly challenged or contradicted by later parts of the text; the characters are in open defiance of gender norms and would be assumed to be of different gender if not for explicit information.
D) High confusion, high variance - "I can't tell if this character is man or woman": individual readers remain undecided over gender of a character, no consensus forms even within a cultural sphere; the characters don't have identifiable gender in absence of weak linguistic evidence.

Of course, inverse of this test can be equally amusong: take a text written in non-gendered language and translate it to a language with grammatical gender. See how that changes perception of characters. I know, for instance, that whether some animals in Aesop's fables are perceived as male or female, and consequently which kinds of actors are cast in those roles in adaptions, sometimes varies based on grammatical gender of the words for the animals.

Quertus

2022-09-23, 10:45 AM

This is a good example of changing norms.

He/Him was still the default pronoun for gender neutral at the time positions where it could in theory also be she/her at the time.

Why did you correct yourself? (Sounds like there’s something here for me to learn!)

*Groan*

Unpopular opinion of the day: English-speakers pay disproportionate amount of attention to third person pronouns.

Cool, I get to play the part of the Ignoramus! :smallcool: So… what, exactly, do you mean by “disproportionate”? How would speakers of other languages respond if someone used “wrong”-gendered endings, or “wrong”-gendered … uh… connective thingies? La petite garçon / un petit filette? How do English speakers differ in their response / processing?

Like the script of Alien, Left Hand of Darkness was also criticized for using he/him instead of something else for its ambisexual characters. I've read Left Hand of Darkness several times, and this would've never occurred to me as relevant criticism of the work. Why? Because I've only read the novel as a translation, in a language that has just one third person pronoun. So this supposed flaw of the original is entirely fixed in translation.

This also brings to mind a discussion panel about queer readings of Tolkien's work. One of the panelists observed that young children of our country sometimes imagine Merri and Pippin as girls when reading the book. Why? Again, I think the reason is linguistic: any pronoun-based evidence for gender would be erased in translation to my language and Merri and Pippin are more similar to local girls' names (Meri and Peppi, specifically) than they are to local boys' names.

Yeah, I always figured Mary and Pippi were “supposed to be” girls, too. :smallbiggrin:

This suggests another test, which is admittedly more difficult to perform than others, as it requires multi-linguality:

1) begin with assumption that gendered pronouns are used for convenience of spoken language and don't actually transmit useful information.
2) translate the text you want to examine to any language that lacks gendered pronouns
3) see how readers of the translated text conceptualize gender and sex of characters in the text.

Some examples of results to look for:

A) Low confusion, low variance - "everyone knows Merri and Pippin are men": individual readers quickly decide gender of the characters and these decisions match the original intent of the text; the characters have strong, identifiable gendered traits that are apperent without relying on weak linguistic evidence.
B) Low confusion, high variance - "Merri and Pippin are girls": individual readers quickly decide gender of the characters and nothing in the text challenges their opinion, but it can be noticed that between reader, there is no consensus, and the results don't always match intent of the original text; the characters are not strongly gendered and in absence of weak linguistic evidence, other factors rise to prominence. BONUS ROUND: see if the gender(s) an individual settles on match their own, or see if the interpretation varies by cultural sphere.
C) High confusion, low variance - "SAMUS ARAN IS A GIRL???" : individual readers quickly decide the gender of the characters to be opposite of original intent AND have their opinion blatantly challenged or contradicted by later parts of the text; the characters are in open defiance of gender norms and would be assumed to be of different gender if not for explicit information.
D) High confusion, high variance - "I can't tell if this character is man or woman": individual readers remain undecided over gender of a character, no consensus forms even within a cultural sphere; the characters don't have identifiable gender in absence of weak linguistic evidence.

I never played… Metroid? All I knew was the name. Sam, a guy’s name (I’d never heard it as an abbreviation for “Samantha”), plus the male ending “us”. About the only more masculine names I’m aware of are “Brutus” and “Guy”. Yeah, I was shocked to hear that Samus was a girl! So, great example.

I’m confused, however, that your #4 doesn’t show parallel confusion: “everyone imagines a different gender, and is confused that anyone else ever thinks otherwise” would seem to match the pattern established thus far.

Of course, inverse of this test can be equally amusong: take a text written in non-gendered language and translate it to a language with grammatical gender. See how that changes perception of characters. I know, for instance, that whether some animals in Aesop's fables are perceived as male or female, and consequently which kinds of actors are cast in those roles in adaptions, sometimes varies based on grammatical gender of the words for the animals.

*Error* attempting to gender the attack helicopter animals has caused a Fatal error to occur. Rebooting.

gbaji

2022-09-23, 01:55 PM

Your entire point seems to hinge on the idea that the only reason for a story to have fleshed out women with agency is in case a woman is actually reading the story, which...isn't the case at all.

I was responding to a post in which that seemed to be the assumption being made:

The point though is that "antiquated portrayals of men" still allow them to be power fantasies for an assumed male audience, with agency and complex arcs that don't have to rely on reductive tropes.

I examined whether a female reading the work would have any less ability to identify with the "power fantasy" of the character.

Also, you seem to have narrowed the scope to protagonists specifically, even though the Bechdel Test refers to any and all named female characters in a story, not just the lead one(s).

It's funny, because I thought of that while writing (and put a (s) ending in at one point planning to expand on it), then realized my post was long enough by far anyway, so just left it with an exploration of main characters. Again though, given that this was about "power fantasies for an assumed male audience" and given the story lists we're given (not a lot of well developed or focused on secondary characters in most of the stories), it seemed most relevant to examine that case first.

The same can absolutely be said for secondary characters as well. I guess my question is: Does the absence of direct discussion of secondary characters change my point? Why not actually respond to what I said instead of saying "well, you didn't also talk about <some other group>".

Would the points I made be different for other characters in a work anyway? If you think so, then that's a valid critique. But your critique seemed to just consist of saying I didn't talk about other types of characters, but without any examination or claim by you that other characters would have any different impact in terms of interpretation and identification by a reader.

Or do you think it would?

Psyren

2022-09-23, 02:02 PM

I was responding to a post in which that seemed to be the assumption being made:

I examined whether a female reading the work would have any less ability to identify with the "power fantasy" of the character.

Actually no, you examined whether their "enjoyment" would be impacted. It's quite possible to enjoy a work or series of works that maintain a particular status quo, and nevertheless wish for other works to be created that evolve it.

gbaji

2022-09-23, 03:49 PM

Sorry. Missed this in my earlier post. I'll address here.

Enjoyment, no. Marketability to overwhelmingly male executives, producers, and decision-makers - yes.

This is an excellent point. Although it does skew our assessment of the authors of pasts works a bit (specifically on the appendix list in question), since we can't really know for sure if there were so many male dominated themes/characters because that's just what the author thought or liked personally, or if their publishers forced them to fit into what *they* thought were "proper" representations for characters in that genre.

I was considering the audience as the readers only, but obviously readers alone aren't the only, much less primary, factor influencing how characters are portrayed in stories.

Actually no, you examined whether their "enjoyment" would be impacted. It's quite possible to enjoy a work or series of works that maintain a particular status quo, and nevertheless wish for other works to be created that evolve it.

Sure, which I suppose loops us nicely back to the Bechdel test (and other similar tests). And also back to my earlier point that it's less valuable to use as a critique of past works as it is just a general view/measurement of a body of works that one may then decide to make an effort to do things differently. I also think there is some difficulty objectively even determining that some things are "better" or "worse" as well based on that measurement. Which is kinda where I was going with my earlier post.

Ultimately, while we might seek to "evolve" works within a given genre/art, I do think it's valid to consider that our own biases are influencing our own interpretations of such works today just as much as other people's biases did in the past. In different ways, but they're always there. I suggest (perhaps humbly, perhaps not), that it's a bit arrogant for us to assume that ours today are innately "better". Then again, you used the word "evolve", which, despite popular assumption, does not actually presume "into something better". it's just something changing.

I would counter, however, that to a great degree, "enjoyment" is arguably the only real measurement of art. And it's different for everyone. So I'm always hesitant towards attempts to measure art (of any form) and pass judgement on it based on said measurement. Obviously, we're also considering here how that may influence readers in terms of how they run/play RPGs (at least that's my assumption for this topic). And, as I pointed out in my earlier post, despite said tilting towards male dominated characters in a lot of those old fantasy stories, the actual players of RPGs have, for the most part, managed to adopt a pretty bewildering array of RP of characters that are massively "not like me", with sex/gender being one of the least significant factors. And, again for the most part, have not allowed sex/gender to be a major element in terms of the "powerful heroic nature" of said characters they have played.

So, despite seeming to "fail", and perhaps some might argue "should be improved", the outcome of these works on the audience (Gygax's intended audience and purpose towards showing people how to build/roleplay in these environments), seemed to do no harm at all. So we might be looking at a case of worrying about what might happen instead of looking at what actually did. Could there have been more female characters in those old stories? Absolutely. Did their absence cause generations of RPG players to strictly place all their male characters in the heroic lead roles and their females into either damsel in distress or evil sorceress roles? Um. Not so much. If anything, the opposite seems to have happened. IME, RPG players were far far more likely to look outside (and play outside) so called "traditional gender roles" than the general public around them. And were certainly ahead of the curve in terms of comparisons to actual media at the time (seriously. Look at shows from the 80s and 90s, and then ask folks like me who were playing at gaming tables at the time what things were like).

PhoenixPhyre

2022-09-23, 06:58 PM

TexAvery

2022-09-23, 08:06 PM

I just finished the first book in one of the sub series of Mercedes Lackey's Valdemar novels. Now the author is not some old-school bigot--two of the main characters are gay, women have leading roles (and in fact were the protagonists of many books), and overall she's very woman-empowerment-centric.

The book still failed the test. Why? Because the viewpoint characters were male, so any reported dialogue involved them or other mixed groups. So you never had a female only conversation.

My informal sense of this (my sister is, shall we say, an outspoken fan of the BT) is that books have a much harder time passing it just due to books generally having less dialog overall. It seems the BT was first floated in that comic as about movies, which makes much more sense.

I think the original Bourne books would barely pass the reverse BT. Little dialog, lots of description, lots of italicized internal thoughts.

Who else saw Death Race 2050, with the two women having a conversation in Bechdel's Bar?

Psyren

2022-09-23, 09:15 PM

I was considering the audience as the readers only, but obviously readers alone aren't the only, much less primary, factor influencing how characters are portrayed in stories.

Trust me, I know.

I would counter, however, that to a great degree, "enjoyment" is arguably the only real measurement of art. And it's different for everyone.

Meaning there's no real (or at least objective) measurement at all. So they might as well strive for inclusivity and redressing the balance.

So, despite seeming to "fail", and perhaps some might argue "should be improved", the outcome of these works on the audience (Gygax's intended audience and purpose towards showing people how to build/roleplay in these environments), seemed to do no harm at all.

There are literally people speaking openly about how Gygaxian portrayals have harmed them, and modern creators directly acknowledging they have seen this firsthand. (https://dnd.wizards.com/news/diversity-and-dnd) I therefore find the "no harm at all" conclusion... odd... to say the least.

Vahnavoi

2022-09-23, 10:51 PM

Cool, I get to play the part of the Ignoramus! So… what, exactly, do you mean by “disproportionate”?

The criticisms aimed towards Left Hand of Darkness and Alien's script should serve as examples of what I mean. In both cases, the criticism is aimed at "default male" assumption despite the texts specifying they are not, in fact, talking about men specifically.

In other languages with multiple pronouns, either there's a default that no-one bats an eyelid at, or the entire problem fails to exist because there is a widely accepted equivalent of singular "they". Then there's languages like mine where neither grammatical gender nor gendered pronouns exist. Hence "you used the wrong pronouns!" is not a criticism that occurs, especially not in cases like the works mentioned where the text itself makes it clear that the default is used out of convention, not to convey information.

But this is just the tip of the iceberg. Let's go back to singular "they". On paper, this is already a thing in English. The most common counter-argument against using it is silly, considering the same word is used for singular and plural second person pronoun as well. Using singular "they" should be about as controversial as putting milk in coffee. Instead, English-speakers have devoted a lot of energy coming up with and advocating for new third person pronouns.

This becomes curious when you consider the use case for third person pronouns. Third person pronouns are chiefly used by other people about a person who is not present. Hence, the concern cannot be primarily about how people talk to you. It is about how people talk about you. The English-speaking world has, in a short time, become very concerned about what third person pronouns imply about a person when that person is not around.

And it is the English-speaking world, because when you look at, say, social media profiles, when people feel the need to specify their pronouns, it's in English. Not, say, Swedish, French, Spanish, Japanese or some other language with gendered pronouns. Even when the people involved speak or are Swedish, French, Spanish, Japanese etc..

Properly substantiating that last part would require a statistical study of some sort. It's not given my observation is without error. Maybe Spanish or French kids have become overly interested in reinventing their languages over in TikTok. But this is how the state of things looks to me.

How would speakers of other languages respond if someone used “wrong”-gendered endings, or “wrong”-gendered … uh… connective thingies? La petite garçon / un petit filette? How do English speakers differ in their response / processing?

Going beyond pronouns veers into a bunch of different topics. Generally, speakers of languages with grammatic gender understand it is somewhat arbitrary, so screwing up gendered words may mark you as an outsider (non-native speaker), but they do not take offense to it (in contrast to, say, one getting upset at people talking about one using wrong pronouns).

At the same time, I hope it's obvious how screwing up sentence construction or mixing up construction and inflection of multi-syllabic nouns is different from mixing up which single-syllable pronoun one is using.

AdAstra

2022-09-24, 06:27 AM

The criticisms aimed towards Left Hand of Darkness and Alien's script should serve as examples of what I mean. In both cases, the criticism is aimed at "default male" assumption despite the texts specifying they are not, in fact, talking about men specifically.

In other languages with multiple pronouns, either there's a default that no-one bats an eyelid at, or the entire problem fails to exist because there is a widely accepted equivalent of singular "they". Then there's languages like mine where neither grammatical gender nor gendered pronouns exist. Hence "you used the wrong pronouns!" is not a criticism that occurs, especially not in cases like the works mentioned where the text itself makes it clear that the default is used out of convention, not to convey information.

But this is just the tip of the iceberg. Let's go back to singular "they". On paper, this is already a thing in English. The most common counter-argument against using it is silly, considering the same word is used for singular and plural second person pronoun as well. Using singular "they" should be about as controversial as putting milk in coffee. Instead, English-speakers have devoted a lot of energy coming up with and advocating for new third person pronouns.

This becomes curious when you consider the use case for third person pronouns. Third person pronouns are chiefly used by other people about a person who is not present. Hence, the concern cannot be primarily about how people talk to you. It is about how people talk about you. The English-speaking world has, in a short time, become very concerned about what third person pronouns imply about a person when that person is not around.

And it is the English-speaking world, because when you look at, say, social media profiles, when people feel the need to specify their pronouns, it's in English. Not, say, Swedish, French, Spanish, Japanese or some other language with gendered pronouns. Even when the people involved speak or are Swedish, French, Spanish, Japanese etc..

Properly substantiating that last part would require a statistical study of some sort. It's not given my observation is without error. Maybe Spanish or French kids have become overly interested in reinventing their languages over in TikTok. But this is how the state of things looks to me.

Going beyond pronouns veers into a bunch of different topics. Generally, speakers of languages with grammatic gender understand it is somewhat arbitrary, so screwing up gendered words may mark you as an outsider (non-native speaker), but they do not take offense to it (in contrast to, say, one getting upset at people talking about one using wrong pronouns).

At the same time, I hope it's obvious how screwing up sentence construction or mixing up construction and inflection of multi-syllabic nouns is different from mixing up which single-syllable pronoun one is using.

In my experience, neopronouns these days aren't being created as a catch-all gender neutral pronoun, they're mostly people choosing things for themselves that they want to be referred to by. "They" seems to have settled pretty comfortably into common, though not universal parlance as a third-person singular for either ambiguous or neutral gender.

For French, there actually is a movement to introduce gender-neutral pronouns, and there are quite a few floating around. The Dictionnaires Le Robert for example added one recently. But that country tends to get protectionist about its language so there's pushback, including bans (you don't have an entire organization dictating what words are okay because you don't care about it). The Swedish gender-neutral pronoun "hen" is also recent, and an interesting case in that Swedish grammatical gender has basically nothing to do with men or women, both words use the same grammatical gender.
https://theconversation.com/no-need-to-iel-why-france-is-so-angry-about-a-gender-neutral-pronoun-173304

https://www.babbel.com/en/magazine/swedish-hen

Attempts to actively suppress the development of language demonstrates pretty clearly that said development is occurring.

Vahnavoi

2022-09-24, 07:58 AM

In my experience, neopronouns these days aren't being created as a catch-all gender neutral pronoun, they're mostly people choosing things for themselves that they want to be referred to by.

That's congruent with what I mean when I say "The English-speaking world has, in a short time, become very concerned about what third person pronouns imply about a person when that person is not around". Wanting personal pronouns is historically and linguistically odd and recent. I used to know exactly when and where the philosophy and ideology of it was come up with, but it's been roughly ten years since I read up on that so the information has slipped my mind.

Cluedrew

2022-09-24, 09:15 AM

Meaning there's no real (or at least objective) measurement at all. So they might as well strive for inclusivity and redressing the balance.Which is one of the interesting things about The Bachdel Test is that it is (mostly*) objective. Of course that leads to the fact it doesn't produce directly useful information on its own. I think the simplest thing you can do to get some more meaningful results with it is to compare it with The Reverse Bechdel Tests over a lot of works. I believe it was originally meant as a thought experiment or conversation starter though, at least that is how it was presented to me.

* There are of course some edges people disagree about, but the broad strokes are simple checks where you look at a work and go yes/no.

TexAvery

2022-09-24, 11:21 AM

Let's go back to singular "they". On paper, this is already a thing in English. The most common counter-argument against using it is silly, considering the same word is used for singular and plural second person pronoun as well. Using singular "they" should be about as controversial as putting milk in coffee. Instead, English-speakers have devoted a lot of energy coming up with and advocating for new third person pronouns.

Ehh...

It may be a thing on paper (and I do now know it has been a thing for some time to at least some degree), but asserting that it should be "normal" is begging the question - I was raised with it being explicitly incorrect (long before pronouns were a sociopolitical thing), which is the sort of thing that makes it very hard to accept on a sudden declaration. As for the second person plural "you", that is stupid enough that one of the few good things about living in in the cesspool known as Texas is the acceptance of "y'all" to remove that ambiguity. Of course, while I say it's an obvious improvement to the language that all should readily adopt, using it outside of the South brands the speaker as an ignorant hick. Because that's not racial though, the judgement is generally accepted.

And people have enthusiastic support for and opposition to other grammatical pedantry with no sociopolitical consequences at all. Easily, the Oxford comma and number of spaces after a period cause much digital ink and blood to be spilled, but unless second-spaces are a demographic so underrepresented I haven't even heard of it, my favor for them is not a position of social justice but aesthetics. As is my opposition to the singular "they", as regardless of its supposed age, I never encountered it until well past when my linguistic sensibilities were set. In fact, I encountered the newly-forged third-person-neutral pronouns first ("xi" and "xir", I think). Saying that everyone like that is just covering for bigotry is inaccurate, but a very convenient and dismissive argument.

But of course, I drink my coffee black as all people who actually like coffee do.

Yakk

2022-09-24, 12:40 PM

If you think the Benchel test gives bad results, a variant for a collection is the Benchel ratio.

Let F equal the number which:
1. It has to have at least two women in it;
2. who talk to each other about;
3. something besides man.
let M equal the number which:
1. It has to have at least two men in it;
2. who talk to each other about;
3. something besides a woman.

Then do F/M.

... I suspect the denominator is going to be close to the number of books here.

icefractal

2022-09-24, 03:40 PM

, but asserting that it should be "normal" is begging the question - I was raised with it being explicitly incorrect (long before pronouns were a sociopolitical thing), which is the sort of thing that makes it very hard to accept on a sudden declaration.
People were raised with the Earth being the center of the solar system, but that wasn't a good reason to stick with it.

But that's a fact, rather than a matter of convention, one might say. True, so here's a more recent and comparable example:

The initial concept of HTML was that it would only describe content, with the details of appearance left up to the individual browser. By this philosophy, CSS is "doing it wrong" on a fundamental level. Regardless, that's not how the web works now - things change, and that includes language.

Quertus

2022-09-24, 05:43 PM

TexAvery

2022-09-24, 05:55 PM

People were raised with the Earth being the center of the solar system, but that wasn't a good reason to stick with it.

But that's a fact, rather than a matter of convention, one might say. True, so here's a more recent and comparable example:

The initial concept of HTML was that it would only describe content, with the details of appearance left up to the individual browser. By this philosophy, CSS is "doing it wrong" on a fundamental level. Regardless, that's not how the web works now - things change, and that includes language.

Yes, and starting with a scientific fact and attempting to use that to frame your point weakens your post.

The second one is still flawed, but I will at least engage with it. You're right, CSS is... often doing it so wrong on a fundamental level that I use StopTheMadness to load custom CSS overrides on many pages because their developers are bad people who should feel bad. Adding a display:none to things like autoplay video containers and intrusive modals that have taken over modern web design like a plague starts to make the web usable again in the torrent of dark patterns over the past few years especially. I also use it to help my sister increase the contrast on pages where some UX person run amok has decided that gray-on-gray is a wonderful idea.

A better example in this arena would be the heavily-dynamic JS/ TS/ Angular-most-of-all web pages that look like a web page but behave very differently and do things like break the Back button. I apparently have to live with it, but I do not like it, and probably never will. No amount of browbeating and "get with the times" is going to make me like it. Ditto for "mobile-first" and "let's use 18 unnumbered screens of data entry for a form".

And language changes, sure, obviously. That's a nothing argument - the people making it always mean that language changes in the way that they want. It never means, for example, that the language has changed and the singular "they" was a mistake we have learned from and will correct. It never means that "guy" has continued its evolution and is now gender-neutral. It is an assertion of "what I say goes, and what you say doesn't".

I should have known better than to step into this sucker's thread, of course.

Satinavian

2022-09-25, 02:02 AM

There are literally people speaking openly about how Gygaxian portrayals have harmed them, and modern creators directly acknowledging they have seen this firsthand. (https://dnd.wizards.com/news/diversity-and-dnd) I therefore find the "no harm at all" conclusion... odd... to say the least.There is not a single account of seeing harm done first hand there.
Honestly, it is mostly marketing drivel, considering the two book they hold up as example of their changes are about Eberron which already was a setting where all the mountrous humanoids had unique cultures and the concept of good/evil races was basically abandoned and the other is Wildemount which is Critical Role's thing and presumably contains their views.
So they were basically publishing books with less traditional portrayals of drow and orcs anyway and used that to make noise about their supposed values.

Now, i do like these ideas. The lack of (or at least downplay of) simplicistic good/evil dynamics and conflicts and even more races was one of the reasons i always liked Eberron a lot. And it is certainly not bad to be more carefull with racial stereotypes either.

But that is not a proof of harm done. Pretty far from it.

And back to topic : When i started out with fantasy literature, it also annoyed me quite a lot how rare female protagonists where and what kind of roles female nonprotagonists got. In that regard the current literature has improved quite impressively. And not only there. While Sturgeon's law is still valid overall, i would say the best of current fantasy novels have most of the old appendix N beat.

But does the fact that women are kinda less impressive in Appendix N say anything about Gygax' personal tastes ? No. He might have listed as many good books with female protagonists, had they been available in this genre. We do know that he didn't like nonhuman protagonists all that much or settings that were not human centric. But i am not aware of any preferrence against women.

As for the Bechdel test itself : Well, is has its uses. But i would argue it to be pretty unsuitable to certain genres or foems. Most importantly to short stories that don't to feature a lot of characters or conversations to begin with and where often the only reason the BT or the reverse BT gets passed is when the protagonist has the qualifying conversation. To a lesser extend this is also true for works written strictly in first person perspective.

Psyren

2022-09-25, 02:37 AM

Um… my reading comprehension skills are, as ever, somewhere between “suspect” and “terrible”, but… I didn’t see anything in the linked text to differentiate it from mindless reactionary drivel. That is, I saw “here’s what we’re doing”, but no “why” to back your claims that people have been hurt by what Gygax read, by what he encouraged people to read, or even by anything connected to those readings.

There is not a single account of seeing harm done first hand there.

If you see it as "mindless" i.e. that corporations make public pronouncements like that for no reason, then I certainly won't be able to disabuse you of such notions. Thankfully however, I don't have to.

Satinavian

2022-09-25, 02:57 AM

If you see it as "mindless" i.e. that corporations make public pronouncements like that for no reason, then I certainly won't be able to disabuse you of such notions. Thankfully however, I don't have to.Oh, they certainly have reasons.

Every company is always customer-friendly, diverse, welcoming, environmentally conscious, against discrimination of every kind, safety-conscious, has carefully chosen suppliers holding up the same values, green and sustainable and whatever else marketing says might be seen positive at the moment. Words are cheap.

In this case they have noticed to score some points with the anti-discrimination movements by doing something they were planning to do anyway, namely making an Eberron-book and following the Eberron tradition in there. They could have made the very same statement in 2004 when Eberron came out first, but it wouldn't have gotten attention then.

Psyren

2022-09-25, 03:17 AM

Oh, they certainly have reasons.

Every company is always customer-friendly, diverse, welcoming, environmentally conscious, against discrimination of every kind, safety-conscious, has carefully chosen suppliers holding up the same values, green and sustainable and whatever else marketing says might be seen positive at the moment. Words are cheap.

In this case they have noticed to score some points with the anti-discrimination movements by doing something they were planning to do anyway, namely making an Eberron-book and following the Eberron tradition in there. They could have made the very same statement in 2004 when Eberron came out first, but it wouldn't have gotten attention then.

You're right, they could have come to this realization in 2004. But as the saying goes, "the second-best time is now."

Satinavian

2022-09-25, 04:01 AM

You're right, they could have come to this realization in 2004. But as the saying goes, "the second-best time is now."
No, 2004 would have been a bad time for that. The failure of Barbie Benetton was still fresh enough in everyone's mind and people didn't believe that diversity themes would move product. Now is a better time to play this card if you want to sell books.

That aside, i think, we should go back to Appendix N, the Bechdel text, portrayals of women and maybe Gygax instead of discussing what a company making a game i haven't played in one and a half decade says in marketing statements about portrayal of race.

Liquor Box

2022-09-25, 06:35 AM

I'm aware the Bechdel Test is more objective to apply, but that doesn't make it inherently superior to a subjective test. We could sit around all day bringing up questionable passes from the BT like Twilight and American Pie, as well as movies with strong female characters that nevertheless fail like Gravity and Arrival, but I'd rather not dismiss either test. Again, their goal is to be conversation starters, and they both succeed at that, even if one has to engage one's gray matter a little bit beyond applying the test itself.

Twilight and American Pie both pass your lamp test as well. In both cases the female characters have speaking roles, and lamps cannot speak. It's a meaningless test. Applied literally, only occasional fringe movies (I'm not sure i can think of any off hand) fail. Applied how I am guessing you mean it to apply, it means nothing different to "does each person subjectively like the roles of female characters in the film", and if that is what you are getting at why not ask that?

I get that you don't see Bechdel Test as a complete answer to whether a show adequately represents women - but I don't think it's supposed to be that. It is only supposed to be a tool to highlight those that don't, and it works for that purpose in all but a few niche movies.

I agree that the SLT is even foggier a distinction than the Bechdel Test - though that is also quite foggy if you push on it.

A few years back, I actually went to the actual Bechdel Test website/archive - not sure if it's still around. Lots of interesting debate on each entry for whether that specific entry passed or not. There would be a lot of "well, are they REALLY talking about the male main character here, even if the actual words are different? Can the first 5 sentences count, even if they start talking about men after that?" type discussions.

More than anything, that highlighted to me how it's a very fuzzy test that breaks down under scrutiny or an attempt to solidify the fast-and-loose rules. The fact that people had to debate whether 4 lines was enough to count was, indeed, the point.

I feel like the SLT is much the same: doesn't really make sense as a "test," even less so than the BT. Makes much more sense as just a thought experiment to keep in mind the next time you watch a movie.

I don't that accurately describes the bechdel test website - lots and lots of movies either obviously pass or obviously fail. It is only some (and a pretty significant number admittedly) where there is discussion, and even then some of the interpretation seems to me to be quite strained goal seeking.

It's true though that it has some ambiguity though, but that is true of any test anywhere outside mathematics. Yet we still use this type of test in society for all sorts of roles (eg they are used a lot in law).

I think you are right to recognise that the ambiguity in the bechdel test is of a different degree to that in the lamp test. The bechdel test can be applied to pretty clearly classify most movies with general consensus (at least on the bechdel website), but I very much doubt that is true of the lamp test.

I guess it's fine as a thought experiment, instead of as a discussion piece useful to a forum discussion like this, but why wouldn't you just say "do the female characters have a good role"? I just don't see what the lamp test adds to a subjective assessment.

There are literally people speaking openly about how Gygaxian portrayals have harmed them.

Really? In all the discussions, many involving you, of traditional DnD portrayals I don't think any one has linked anyone saying those portrayals have harmed them. Can you post links?

Quertus

2022-09-25, 10:56 AM

Regardless of their value or lack thereof as metrics, all this discussion has gotten me to evaluate my own writing.

Because of this, I’ve concluded that one of the pieces I’m most proud of (least embarrassed about?) has some… issues. To be fair to the piece, it wasn’t planned that way, and these issues wouldn’t have been present had I been a better writer / better roleplayer / better person. But I’m not. So I had to cut several of the female-to-female conversations, because one of the female characters was beyond my ability to write to my satisfaction. She’s a way better person than I am, and I found I just couldn’t write her dialog believably. This fault in myself has left the piece woefully unbalanced, in ways that very much go against my intent in writing it.

Perhaps equally bad, while, to my mind, the female characters accomplish a lot more than their male counterparts, I can see how a reader might think that I’m downplaying their accomplishments, and not just in a “social commentary” way.

And I hadn’t noticed this before this thread, owing both to such being all but unthinkable from the initial “pitch”, and to my concern about other angles.

Also, if we had wanted to paint Gygax as a monster who offends our modern sensibilities, we needn’t have gone so far as to have said that he encouraged people to read works of fiction with strong male gender bias in both settings and dialogue. Merely “he encouraged people to read” would have sufficed.

Color blue to taste.

mindless drivel.

marketing drivel,

Great minds. Nuff said. :smallcool:

JadedDM

2022-09-25, 03:29 PM

But does the fact that women are kinda less impressive in Appendix N say anything about Gygax' personal tastes ? No. He might have listed as many good books with female protagonists, had they been available in this genre. We do know that he didn't like nonhuman protagonists all that much or settings that were not human centric. But i am not aware of any preferrence against women.

Well, you could always go straight to the horse's mouth (https://imgur.com/a/Lolb9nA) for that.

Liquor Box

2022-09-25, 05:52 PM

Well, you could always go straight to the horse's mouth (https://imgur.com/a/Lolb9nA) for that.

Do you take him saying that he thinks women generally do not enjoy games as much as men to mean that he has a preference against women? That's not what I think he is saying in the link.

JadedDM

2022-09-25, 09:48 PM

He thought women didn't enjoy D&D because their brains weren't wired for it. Which is pretty ridiculous, as lots of women enjoy D&D.

Liquor Box

2022-09-26, 01:03 AM

He thought women didn't enjoy D&D because their brains weren't wired for it. Which is pretty ridiculous, as lots of women enjoy D&D.

Even if that were an accurate expression of his sentiment, it still wouldn't mean that he does not like women, or does not like woman characters.

Mechalich

2022-09-26, 01:04 AM

He thought women didn't enjoy D&D because their brains weren't wired for it. Which is pretty ridiculous, as lots of women enjoy D&D.

Lot's of women enjoy D&D now, but in the 1970s and 1980s when Gygax's influence of D&D was particularly strong (his influence was already on its way out by 2e AD&D and the rise of FR) the number of women playing D&D, both in absolute terms and in proportion to the number of men playing the game was puny. Of course, at the time D&D was hardly unique in this regard as the entire TTRPG space was incredibly male dominated. That changed, beginning in the 1990s, but it didn't change because of anything D&D did, it changed because a tiny studio run by a group of people with beliefs at least as kooky as those of Gary Gygax came out with a game called Vampire: the Masquerade.

VtM absolutely kicked the crap out of D&D in the 90s, to the point that TSR went bankrupt and D&D was, for a brief period, not the #1 TTRPG on the market. And female gamers (and lets be honest, the male games who wanted to get with said female gamers) voting with their wallets was a big part of that. When WotC acquired the franchise they made significant changes in presentation and marketing to make the game considerably more gender neutral and drew inspiration from significantly more contemporary sources both as a deliberate break from the Gygaxian past and as a natural recognition of the evolution of fantasy over 25 years (the d20 system was, after all, used to produce a Wheel of Time TTRPG, a world of Warcraft TTRPG, and other adaptations of contemporary fantasy).

Liquor Box

2022-09-26, 01:14 AM

Lot's of women enjoy D&D now, but in the 1970s and 1980s when Gygax's influence of D&D was particularly strong (his influence was already on its way out by 2e AD&D and the rise of FR) the number of women playing D&D, both in absolute terms and in proportion to the number of men playing the game was puny. Of course, at the time D&D was hardly unique in this regard as the entire TTRPG space was incredibly male dominated. That changed, beginning in the 1990s, but it didn't change because of anything D&D did, it changed because a tiny studio run by a group of people with beliefs at least as kooky as those of Gary Gygax came out with a game called Vampire: the Masquerade.

VtM absolutely kicked the crap out of D&D in the 90s, to the point that TSR went bankrupt and D&D was, for a brief period, not the #1 TTRPG on the market. And female gamers (and lets be honest, the male games who wanted to get with said female gamers) voting with their wallets was a big part of that. When WotC acquired the franchise they made significant changes in presentation and marketing to make the game considerably more gender neutral and drew inspiration from significantly more contemporary sources both as a deliberate break from the Gygaxian past and as a natural recognition of the evolution of fantasy over 25 years (the d20 system was, after all, used to produce a Wheel of Time TTRPG, a world of Warcraft TTRPG, and other adaptations of contemporary fantasy).

Also, Gygax prefaces his comments with the words 'by and large'. So he is not saying no (or almost no) women enjoy gaming, he is just saying that generally fewer women enjoy gaming than men.

I don't know if it is true nowadays, or historically, that fewer women game then men. If it is true, we can only guess whether it is something inherent to women that makes them less likely to game, or whether it is societal factors (or a mix of both). But even if Gygax was wrong about it, it had nothing to do with whether he liked woman generally or as characters.

Satinavian

2022-09-26, 01:17 AM

Well, you could always go straight to the horse's mouth (https://imgur.com/a/Lolb9nA) for that.
He is just salty because he couldn't keep his female players, not even his daughters, interested in the game and because all his attempts to make products aimed at female customers fell flat. As at this time others didn't noticeably better in this regard, he just concluded that this was because women were different from his usual audience and not interested.

That is nothing but the general mistake of extrapolating too much from anecdotical evidence. But the text did in fact illustrate that he tried to bring women into the game and embrace them as customers. He was not excluding them here at all, he was just really bad at getting them to play.

But how does that have anything to do with whether he would have included fantasy works with female protagonists into his appendix N, had he had the option ?

Anymage

2022-09-26, 04:24 AM

VtM absolutely kicked the crap out of D&D in the 90s, to the point that TSR went bankrupt and D&D was, for a brief period, not the #1 TTRPG on the market. And female gamers (and lets be honest, the male games who wanted to get with said female gamers) voting with their wallets was a big part of that...

TSR going under had less to do with White Wolf popping up as an underdog, and a lot more to do with mismanagement. TSR was competing with itself way harder than anybody else in the TTRPG space was.

(the d20 system was, after all, used to produce a Wheel of Time TTRPG, a world of Warcraft TTRPG, and other adaptations of contemporary fantasy).

The d20 system came about through an unprecedented amount of playtesting and market research. It was then made available for free to anyone who wanted it. Those plus name recognition were a huge part of what made it the lingua franca for any fantasy-ish game that came out around that time.

I do think a case could be made that the d20 system has a wider appeal than Gygax's habit of cobbling up different resolution mechanics for different tasks. Still, how widely appealing a rules engine is should come after you ask how to get people curious in the first place. D&D as actually played in the 80s might be less broadly appealing than current D&D, but there are different reasons why Stranger Things and Critical Role managed to pull in players to a degree that ET and the D&D cartoon didn't.

Mechalich

2022-09-26, 04:54 AM

TSR going under had less to do with White Wolf popping up as an underdog, and a lot more to do with mismanagement. TSR was competing with itself way harder than anybody else in the TTRPG space was.

TSR was massively mismanaged, true, but the management at White Wolf was hardly better. I mean, they managed to go bankrupt twice in the 2000s. VtM really did produce a sea change in who operated in the TTRPG space and what those games were intended to do.

I do think a case could be made that the d20 system has a wider appeal than Gygax's habit of cobbling up different resolution mechanics for different tasks. Still, how widely appealing a rules engine is should come after you ask how to get people curious in the first place. D&D as actually played in the 80s might be less broadly appealing than current D&D, but there are different reasons why Stranger Things and Critical Role managed to pull in players to a degree that ET and the D&D cartoon didn't.

d20, and 5e even more so, was designed to make D&D more accessible to a younger audience - the Stranger Things kids are kids (especially at the start) - and that's hugely important. WotC made a deliberate decision to try and introduce the hobby to preteens in a way that had not previously been the intent. Interestingly, this happened at roughly the same time that YA fantasy became a big thing. Appendix N doesn't include any YA references because YA simply did not exist when Gygax came up with the system.

Vahnavoi

2022-09-26, 04:55 AM

Well, you could always go straight to the horse's mouth (https://imgur.com/a/Lolb9nA) for that.

As noted, these statements consists an entirely different topic from virtually anything else in this thread. Furthermore, the truth or falsity of the relevant claim(s) is up in the air untill we have statistically significant amount of brain scans from people who play tabletop roleplaying games.

"But a lot of women play tabletop games now!"

So? Even if only 1% of women globally are capable of enjoying tabletop roleplaying games, that works out to 39 million potential players, out of 3.9 billion available.

Really, tabletop roleplaying is niche enough, and the number of people large enough, that one could propose males playing tabletop roleplaying games are neurologically different from males who do not, and it wouldn't even be surprising if this was borne out by statistics in some way. It's just, as far as I know, the data required for the relevant comparison to be made does not exist in anyone's hands.

Trask

2022-09-26, 09:00 AM

In the early days of RPGing it was still a very niche and nerdy thing. Only a small amount of the population is going to actively be interested in something like that. Nowadays D&D is pushed to forefront of pop culture and so it has more widespread acceptance. The social conditions of the 70s and 80s were such that a typical nerd was far more likely to be a man or boy. These observations are probably what led Gygax to make his observations, correct or not.

Also lets not be too hard on the guy, he was a product of his time after all. He did show a high degree of social awareness when it came to his worldbuilding, as in the World of Greyhawk he explicitly disdains any concept of "racial purity" in the Flanaess and set up the Flanaess' history such that the cultural landscape could be quite diverse between the European-coded Oeridians and African-coded Flan, just to name two. This is something that Faerun still struggles with. Also some of Greyhawk's most iconic bad guys are N*zi-coded monks with dreams of world domination. So he wasn't quite the nasty bigot that people like to say he was.

Vahnavoi

2022-09-26, 10:23 AM

Social acceptance of a thing is entirely distinct from deriving enjoyment of a thing. Don't confuse your metrics. The estimates for number of people who actually play tabletop roleplaying games range from 10 to 50 million. The estimated sex ratio is between 4 to 2 males per each female. So at best 1 out of 235 women actually enjoys tabletop roleplaying games enough to play regularly or at least to leave a mark in statistics.

The absolute number of hobbyists has room to grow large because the absolute number of people world-wide is very large. That's not sufficient to proclaim a hobby is enjoyable to a common person, nor that there are no statistically notable physical differences between sexes. Those remain up in the air.

gbaji

2022-09-26, 01:06 PM

Meaning there's no real (or at least objective) measurement at all. So they might as well strive for inclusivity and redressing the balance.

Are we doing that because we're an external observer trying to create some standards for the art itself? If so, that puts us back into "we're trying to generate an objective measurement" category.

Or are we doing that because we want to see character portrayals in the art that more closely align with "us" (the readers/viewers/players)? In which case, we loop right back to the assumption that a work (stories in this case) is less enjoyable for the audience unless there are characters that align with their own identity in some way. An assumption which was previously rejected when I mentioned it.

Don't get me wrong. I actually agree that portrayals within works could (and likely should) be more representative of the audiences of the works themselves. But I also think it's incredibly important that we (each of us) assess exactly *why* we believe this, and know our rational behind the claim rather than a somewhat dogmatic "it must be so" position. I touched on this earlier. We can certainly suggest that there is bias (whether by author or publisher) in the overwhelmingly greater number of male characters in the bulk of the Gygax reading list. However, we can also suggest that there is bias in ourselves by assuming that a female reader (for example) will derive less enjoyment of the work because of this. That latter bias assumes exactly that our own enjoyment is based strongly on our personal identity aligning with that of the characters portrayed in the work itself.

This is why I suggested earlier that while the Bechdel test (and others) are useful metrics to examine a body of work as a whole, they are less valuable as an assessment of any individual work. And we certainly should not attempt to create some sort of "rules to follow" as a result.

There are literally people speaking openly about how Gygaxian portrayals have harmed them, and modern creators directly acknowledging they have seen this firsthand. (https://dnd.wizards.com/news/diversity-and-dnd) I therefore find the "no harm at all" conclusion... odd... to say the least.

Again though, that's a criticism of the publication. I'm looking at how the publication is received, and perhaps how the readers of that publication act in response to it. Yes. Some people complain about the portrayals of race, sex, gender, orientation, etc in the publications themselves. But how does that reflect itself at a gaming table?

One can argue that the precise reason why there are complaints is because most RPers are, well, roleplaying. And they see a disconnect between the wide array of characters they play compared to how they are portrayed in the publications. Most gaming groups I've played with have never had any sorts of issues with human characters of differing races (by our strange earthy measurement at least). I've played in games where humans have different racial characteristics based on where in the world they are from (kinda like our world). Ditto with other races as well (Elves, Dwarves, Orcs, etc). And we've all (likely) played with groups where you could play a "good orc", or a "good drow", or "evil elf", or whatever. The player decides what sort of character to play, and the GM fits it into their world (and an answer like "you can be whatever skin color you want, since that isn't really a "thing" in my world, is also extremely common).

That's what I was getting at. Despite the source material failing measurement number 1 (objective counting of identities and how they are portrayed), the games themselves tend to succeed amazingly on measurement number 2. Most players ignore the very stereotypical depictions of things in the source material and "play their own game". Which is the entire point. And, as I mentioned earlier, this has been going on in the RPG community for a very very long time. RPG groups tended to be well ahead of the curve compared to other portrayals in society.

I can certainly speak to the difference in attitudes towards race, gender, orientation, identity, etc between a RPG table and say a bridge club, or poker night, or a weekend at a pool hall, or sports bar or any of a hundred other group social activities back in the day. The RPGers were far more broad in their thinking when it comes to identity. This is because roleplaying actually invites you to examine a life inside someone else's world (and body) that is completely different than your own. No other game/activity does that. The process itself invites us to explore these identity aspects and interactions.

So yeah. I tend to cut a lot of slack in terms of what pictures they put into source books. Or what novels they suggested we read. Ultimately, the only way those things do matter is to the degree to which they influence the readers/viewers, right? So the real question we should be asking is how the players act. Not the publishers.

Kalashak

2022-09-26, 01:25 PM

Vahnavoi

2022-09-26, 02:06 PM

Sarcasm doesn't actually dodge burden of proof for positive claims. Your punchline would've had more teeth if you'd actually linked to some peer-reviewed study showing a reason to believe the relevant claim.

icefractal

2022-09-26, 04:01 PM

Liquor Box

2022-09-26, 04:16 PM

I really wish it was surprising that when confronted with EGG's bigotry people rush to defend him by saying it's actually proof he was trying to be inclusive, pretending we can't even say he's wrong, or rationalizing it as just him making a conclusion based on the social conditions of being a nerd in the 70s and 80s.
I wonder if having people willing to defend and overlook views like that were part of the "social conditions" that made women harder to find in nerd hobbies? But I suppose without a mountain of peer reviewed research, we'll never know

Personally I am relieved that people do not unquestionably accept accusations of bigotry (or anything else really) without critically looking at what he actually said. Being a bigot is a nasty accusation to make, and it should not be thrown around without good reason. Doing so is the equivalent of hearing someone say they love watching children play and accusing them of being a paedophile. Unfortunately it is unsurprising to see that a couple of people in this thread who appear to suggest we should just accept accusations of bigotry without looking critically at the reasons for the accusation, but it is heartening to see that those people appear in the minority.

I mean, it's sarcasm but that's actually the point - we voice all kinds of theories, opinions, and assertions in this forum, with literally nobody claiming that you need a peer reviewed study to say that the 3e multiclassing penalty is bad design. But on this topic, it's apparently a requirement?

For that matter, "it pushed some women away from the game" is an assertion, but so is "nobody minded it". You can reasonably say "it's unknown without proof", but that's not the same as the latter.

Noone has asked for peer review on this topic either. THat was just hyperbole so the comment could be framed as sarcasm to avoid meeting the lack of evidence head on.

In my experience on this forum members are constantly questioning statements (both opinions and assertions of fact) by other posters, including frequently asking for sources, on a wide range of topics. Nothing that has been said about this topic in this thread makes it any different to most other discussions on this forum in terms of the degree of rigor being applied to it. The difference seems to me that some people seem to be offended by anyone daring to question the accuracy of statements such as these.

icefractal

2022-09-26, 04:51 PM

Liquor Box

2022-09-26, 05:50 PM

Who's being called a bigot though? It doesn't seem to be anyone here. Possibly Gygax, if you read it as harshly as possible?

But for one, he's beyond caring about such things (being dead and all), and for another, anything he's accused of here is small potatoes next to already-known stuff like "nits make lice".

I was referring to the post with the blue text (which you referred back to) which had the comment "when confronted with EGG's bigotry". That seems to me to be a pretty clear statement on the point.

That he is dead does not render the allegation immune from critique. If someone makes a claim (positive or negative) about another person (living, dead, or made up character), there is nothing wrong with other's questioning the truth of that claim, or pointing out where the evidence does not support it.

gbaji

2022-09-26, 06:58 PM

I really wish it was surprising that when confronted with EGG's bigotry people rush to defend him by saying it's actually proof he was trying to be inclusive, pretending we can't even say he's wrong, or rationalizing it as just him making a conclusion based on the social conditions of being a nerd in the 70s and 80s.

Who's being called a bigot though? It doesn't seem to be anyone here. Possibly Gygax, if you read it as harshly as possible?

But for one, he's beyond caring about such things (being dead and all), and for another, anything he's accused of here is small potatoes next to already-known stuff like "nits make lice".

It's also the extension of criticism to "people rush to defend him" which is problematic. I'm also not a fan of "any disagreement with my position and/or labeling of people is 'pretending we can't even say he's wrong'" forms of argument. There's a whole range of possible realities between "person A's statement right here is wrong based on current understanding of <whatever>", and "person A is a bigot", or even "person A's statement is an example of bigotry". Someone simply pointing that out isn't preventing you from expressing your opinion.

It's also entirely possible (correct even) for me to point out that the method being used to judge someone's statement/position/opinion is itself flawed without actually specifically defending the individual person who may or may not be currently the target of said method.

If someone posted that "{scrubbed} was a terrible person because he had a moustache, and people who have moustaches are clearly evil", I could (and perhaps *should*) correctly point out that his moustache probably had little to do with his evil nature, and that the degree to which someone has a moustache is not an accurate measurement of "evil". That's not me defending the person. I'm questioning the methodology being used.

Same deal here. There's some value to examining different metrics we might use to measure certain social issues, representation, etc, but we should be extremely cautious of moving to the next step of condemning/labeling people (especially historical people) on the basis of that measurement. You run the risk of transferring the determination from "is this a good measurement/metric" to "do we like or dislike this person", with your position on the metric being tied to an assessment of the person. And then followed by "you're defending <insert person here>" if someone disagrees. Which I personally believe is not a great way to go about doing things. A position on identity representation in RPGs should be the exact same regardless of which person we're looking at. And often, when the same methodology is applied to people we do like and respect in a given field/genre, we find that they fail as well. Which leads us to erratic and inconsistent discussions on the issue as a whole.

Dr.Samurai

2022-09-26, 07:38 PM

Where exactly does the bigotry enter that "small sampling"?

Is it the fact that there are sex differences between male and female brains?

Is it his experiences with women playing in TTRPGs?

Is it his opinion that those experiences might be based on those factual differences?

Where exactly is this an example of evil bad no no behavior?

The ironic thing is that you can be sure as sugar that the people calling everyone out in current times will be judged harshly by the future as well, as they should be.

gbaji

2022-09-26, 08:34 PM

The ironic thing is that you can be sure as sugar that the people calling everyone out in current times will be judged harshly by the future as well, as they should be.

Yeah. There's definitely a "stones and glass houses" aspect to this. We can't possibly know what social standards we may be subjected to by future generations, so maybe cut past generations a bit of slack as well.

Also, whether we think Gygax's statements themselves measure up as bigotry is not really the issue. He was making a decision with the game based on social standards/rules of the day. I don't think most (younger?) posters really understand what sort of advertising was broadly used back in the 70s to "target things to girls vs boys". Gygax's Lionel Train example (in the link) is a pretty mild one, in fact. So the irony is that Gygax, regardless of whether we like his reasoning, choose to just stick with the game he liked, presented it how he liked, and made a point of not trying to market it to girls, which actually resulted in something that fits better with today's concept of gender equity and is far far far less offensive than anything that would have resulted with a marketing attempt to "get girls into RPGs" back then.

If he'd marketed it to girls/women back then, it would be a series of stereotypes that most of us would shudder in horror over today. Instead, what happened was that the gender stereotypes themselves began to be challenged (a good thing). Girls/women realized that they did like playing this game that was supposed to be "for boys/men". And they put their own input into it merely by participating in it. And gamemasters created their own worlds, which changed over time based on their players. And the player base changed. Naturally. Without someone needing to make it happen. Because the very methodology of RPGs allows for this naturally. Doesn't matter what Gygax thought, or how he ran his table in the long run.

I think we all need to step back sometimes and realize that we live in a less than perfect world, filled with less than perfect people (ourselves included). Focusing all our efforts on targeting and demonizing specific people for their slightly greater amount of less than perfectness is less useful than we might think. Working trends over time into (hopefully) positive directions is much better. It doesn't get the big headlines and attention, and maybe isn't as satisfying on some levels, but it actually does get more stuff done. This process definitely seemed to work better for the RPG (especially TTRPG) genre than any forced application of social rules of the day would have done.

Witty Username

2022-09-26, 09:04 PM

How was this not answered by the second paragraph of my post?

The fact that you even need to ask that suggests that you think any degree of reference physical realities of being female counts as social commentary.

Ah, I think my mind got stuck in gear, gender as social construct rather than gender as physical characteristics. I agree that that broadens the range significantly.

---
On the Gygax stuff, I am definitely in the camp of I don't much care and think our time would be better spent working on systemic issues in our gaming communities. That being said, I don't think I am qualified on evaluating Gygax on the subject anyway, my familiarity is primarily bits and pieces of work on d&d and very little personal conduct. If I recall correctly women had a -1 str in first edition, which was unnecessary, but I am not sure how much can be gleaned from that.

JadedDM

2022-09-26, 10:02 PM

If someone posted that "{scrubbed} was a terrible person because he had a moustache, and people who have moustaches are clearly evil", I could (and perhaps *should*) correctly point out that his moustache probably had little to do with his evil nature, and that the degree to which someone has a moustache is not an accurate measurement of "evil". That's not me defending the person. I'm questioning the methodology being used.

I dunno, I think there's a pretty stark difference between someone claiming Gygax was bigoted because he had a mustache (something that has not happened at all, from what I've seen on this thread) and someone claiming Gygax was bigoted because he said bigoted things.

Contrary to what some of the posters on this thread seem to think, no, we do not need to form a committee and sub-committees to investigate whether Gygax held bigoted beliefs or not. People can think whatever they want about him. I am not required to prove my opinion of him in a court of law, any more than you are required to prove your own.

Liquor Box

2022-09-26, 10:17 PM

Vahnavoi

2022-09-27, 01:19 AM

I mean, it's sarcasm but that's actually the point - we voice all kinds of theories, opinions, and assertions in this forum, with literally nobody claiming that you need a peer reviewed study to say that the 3e multiclassing penalty is bad design. But on this topic, it's apparently a requirement?

The verbal irony that serves as punchline of that post only works if there is, indeed, "a mountain of peer reviewed research" or some comparable evidence showing that overlooking or defending views like Gygax's keeps women from the hobby. Without that being the case, the sarcasm falls flat. Embedding a hyperlink in the text to demonstrate the point is a low a bar. (https://moonshot.news/news/diversity-inclusion/toxic-masculinity-strongly-upheld-in-online-gaming-study/)

For that matter, "it pushed some women away from the game" is an assertion, but so is "nobody minded it". You can reasonably say "it's unknown without proof", but that's not the same as the latter.

The actual assertion made by Gygax is that women don't find a particular format of gaming enjoyable due to their sex, the null hypothesis to that would be that there are no relevant sex-based differences.

It should be obvious that the assertions you outline are a separate pair of hypotheses that don't directly say anything about the first pair. As said earlier: social acceptance of a thing is distinct from enjoyment of a thing.

And I can substantiate this by looking at sex differences in other forms of play. Let me quote: (https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/male-female/201910/sex-differences-in-children-s-play?amp)

To be sure, there is a relationship between parental attitudes, stereotypes, and prejudices and those of their children, in keeping with a social influence on children’s beliefs and attitudes. The associated meta-analysis by Tenenbaum and Leaper (2002) focused specifically on sex-related stereotypes and included results from 43 studies and more than 10,000 people. They found a modest relation between parent’s stereotyped beliefs and their own children’s stereotyped beliefs about men and women and boys and girls.

The results were primarily for attitudes and did not extend to sex-typed interests and behaviors. The latter includes toy preferences, and here “parents’ gender schemas had a negligible association with children’s gender-related interests” (Tenenbaum & Leaper, 2002, p. 626). In other words, parents have an influence (though still modest) on what children think about what’s “appropriate” for girls and boys, and not as much of an influence on how they actually play or engage with their friends.

Underlines for emphasis.

The two conversations aren't the same and shouldn't be confused for one another.

Dr.Samurai

2022-09-27, 08:45 AM

Psyren

2022-09-27, 11:22 AM

No, 2004 would have been a bad time for that. The failure of Barbie Benetton was still fresh enough in everyone's mind and people didn't believe that diversity themes would move product. Now is a better time to play this card if you want to sell books.

The failure of what? Never heard of that.

I get that you don't see Bechdel Test as a complete answer to whether a show adequately represents women - but I don't think it's supposed to be that.

I never said it was? :smallconfused:

Really? In all the discussions, many involving you, of traditional DnD portrayals I don't think any one has linked anyone saying those portrayals have harmed them. Can you post links?

You know full well I can't, not on this forum. Or if you didn't know, now you do.

Or are we doing that because we want to see character portrayals in the art that more closely align with "us" (the readers/viewers/players)? In which case, we loop right back to the assumption that a work (stories in this case) is less enjoyable for the audience unless there are characters that align with their own identity in some way. An assumption which was previously rejected when I mentioned it.

I didn't actually reject this assertion, but back then you used the qualifier "primarily" which you have now omitted here. That's what I was objecting to, because we have no way of measuring primary enjoyment. Now here you're simply saying it's a factor, which I actually agree with.

Again though, that's a criticism of the publication. I'm looking at how the publication is received, and perhaps how the readers of that publication act in response to it. Yes. Some people complain about the portrayals of race, sex, gender, orientation, etc in the publications themselves. But how does that reflect itself at a gaming table?

I think the actions of the only group to possibly be in the position of having a useful/representative sample of gaming tables is telling.

deadman1204

2022-09-27, 02:33 PM

Wouldn't this require 5e to have well written story and not just be phoned in?

gbaji

2022-09-27, 05:10 PM

I dunno, I think there's a pretty stark difference between someone claiming Gygax was bigoted because he had a mustache (something that has not happened at all, from what I've seen on this thread) and someone claiming Gygax was bigoted because he said bigoted things.

You completely missed the point of the analogy. It was about mistaking defense of something someone did or created with defense of the person. I've been trying in like the last 3-4 posts to make the point that if we set aside Gygax as a person, and stop obsessing over what we may or may not label him, and just look at the impact that he had on RPGs, and the impact RPGs had on society, it's been overwhelmingly a positive one.

I was specifically responding to a couple of posts which seemed to respond to my statement about the social impact of the game itself, and the degree to which RPG gamers were ahead of most of society in terms the very aspects the Bechdel test touches on, with broad "it's wrong to defend Gygax cause he was a bigot".

Um. If a bigot tells you to invest money instead of lighting it on fire, do you ignore that person because "OMG! He's a bigot, I can't listen to him!" and get out the kitchen lighter? Or do you accept that even "bad people" can have some good ideas and do some things that may *gasp* have positive effects on the world. No one is all bad.

Contrary to what some of the posters on this thread seem to think, no, we do not need to form a committee and sub-committees to investigate whether Gygax held bigoted beliefs or not. People can think whatever they want about him. I am not required to prove my opinion of him in a court of law, any more than you are required to prove your own.

And again, you're missing the point. My question to you is:

Ok. And?

Are you making any point at all other than just applying a label? If not then why say it in the first place? Is there any statement you are making past "He's a bigot"? Again.... And what? What does that claim mean to you? Why should it matter to us then? Make a complete argument of the form "I believe that X is true, therefore Y is true as well". You're missing the "therefore" part. There's no conclusion to your statement, so it's somewhat meaningless.

Let me give an example "I believe that Gygax was a bigot. Therefore, anything he did was bad. Therefore, the game of D&D is bad. The people who play it are bad. And no positive social outcomes could ever come of it". The stuff before the "therefore" is your assumptions. The stuff after are you conclusions. I put an obviously absurd set in there, but which ones do you think are valid (if any)? What is the extent of the impact on D&D and RPGs as a whole does Gygax's alleged bigotry impact? That's the part you are missing.

I didn't actually reject this assertion, but back then you used the qualifier "primarily" which you have now omitted here. That's what I was objecting to, because we have no way of measuring primary enjoyment. Now here you're simply saying it's a factor, which I actually agree with.

Fair point. Although I'd counter that the "primary" statement I made was in direct response to your statement that
' "antiquated portrayals of men" still allow them to be power fantasies for an assumed male audience'.

Just seemed strange to me that you personally defined the subject in the context of audience enjoyment, and have spent the following several posts since arguing that it's wrong to focus just on the audience enjoyment angle. Yes. We went down the road of publishers and whatnot, which lead to me acknowledging that was also a factor, but within the context of "assumed male audience" there's either the publisher or the reader, which you are assuming should be male to want to buy/publish/read the work.

You set the conditions. I just responded.

JadedDM

2022-09-27, 06:06 PM

Are you making any point at all other than just applying a label? If not then why say it in the first place? Is there any statement you are making past "He's a bigot"? Again.... And what? What does that claim mean to you? Why should it matter to us then? Make a complete argument of the form "I believe that X is true, therefore Y is true as well". You're missing the "therefore" part. There's no conclusion to your statement, so it's somewhat meaningless.

Let me give an example "I believe that Gygax was a bigot. Therefore, anything he did was bad. Therefore, the game of D&D is bad. The people who play it are bad. And no positive social outcomes could ever come of it". The stuff before the "therefore" is your assumptions. The stuff after are you conclusions. I put an obviously absurd set in there, but which ones do you think are valid (if any)? What is the extent of the impact on D&D and RPGs as a whole does Gygax's alleged bigotry impact? That's the part you are missing.

What? It wasn't an if/than statement. Satinavian said:

But does the fact that women are kinda less impressive in Appendix N say anything about Gygax' personal tastes ? No. He might have listed as many good books with female protagonists, had they been available in this genre. We do know that he didn't like nonhuman protagonists all that much or settings that were not human centric. But i am not aware of any preferrence against women.

And I replied:

Well, you could always go straight to the horse's mouth (https://imgur.com/a/Lolb9nA) for that.

So I was answering a question. I never said, "Gygax was a sexist, so therefore..." or drawing any conclusions from it, just quoting Gygax's own words about his own views on things.

Psyren

2022-09-27, 06:18 PM

Fair point. Although I'd counter that the "primary" statement I made was in direct response to your statement that
' "antiquated portrayals of men" still allow them to be power fantasies for an assumed male audience'.

Just seemed strange to me that you personally defined the subject in the context of audience enjoyment, and have spent the following several posts since arguing that it's wrong to focus just on the audience enjoyment angle. Yes. We went down the road of publishers and whatnot, which lead to me acknowledging that was also a factor, but within the context of "assumed male audience" there's either the publisher or the reader, which you are assuming should be male to want to buy/publish/read the work.

You set the conditions. I just responded.

Business executives (including major publishers, marketers, and their respective overlords) ARE themselves overwhelmingly male. I didn't think that would be a controversial revelation.

gbaji

2022-09-27, 08:57 PM

What? It wasn't an if/than statement. Satinavian said:

And I replied:

So I was answering a question. I never said, "Gygax was a sexist, so therefore..." or drawing any conclusions from it, just quoting Gygax's own words about his own views on things.

Yes. And then the conversation moved from that response and into whether someone (like myself) pointing out that Gygax's alleged bigotry didn't really seem to actually impact the ability for women to appreciate and enjoy D&D and other RPGs as a whole being characterized as "defending his bigotry". My moustache counter was intended to point out that just because someone has a given feature doesn't mean that what they did is "bad". Having a moustache doesn't make you an evil person. And having made or held bigoted statements/positions doesn't make the game you created "bad" or even "bad for women".

You then responded with essentially: "But he was a bigot, so therefore he was a bigot'. That's totally not the point I was making and to which you replied. I was saying that his bigotry didn't actually have much if any effect on the ability of women to enjoy the game he created. I even made an argument that had he attempted to "include girls/women" in his game, given the social thinking of the time, it would have been far more comically (if such a word can be applied) inappropriate and cringeworthy by modern social standards.

I'm talking about your response to *me*. In which you should have said "Gygax was a bigot, therefore...". But you didn't. You just repeated the assertion that he was. Which is somewhat useless in response to what I had actually said.

I'm talking about the results. Not necessarily the process used to get there. Sometimes you have to step back and look at the forest and not worry about each individual tree.

Thane of Fife

2022-09-27, 09:06 PM

So, to go back to the OP a bit, I went through the Conan stories to see how many of them pass the test. I mostly just skimmed through them quickly looking for dialogue, but I've read them all before, so I had some idea what I expected to find.

As a rule, I only counted conversation if it was actual dialogue (I.e. it can't just say that two people were talking, they need to have lines) and I required it to have at least three or four lines and some degree of back-and-forth.

I counted four metrics. First, does it pass the Bechdel test. Second, does it pass the reverse Bechdel test. Third, would it have passed the Bechdel test if Conan was a woman. Fourth, would it have passed the Reverse Bechdel test if I excluded conversations involving Conan. Earlier in the thread, people were saying that the metrics would be skewed because Conan is the strong viewpoint character, so the latter two are basically to see how much Conan himself warps the distributions.

Out of the 21 stories, 4 of them pass the Bechdel test (Black Colossus, A Witch Shall Be Born, The Black Stranger, and Red Nails). Xuthal of the Dusk has two women talk, but they're talking about Conan. Most of the stories only have one female character; The People of the Black Circle and The Hour of the Dragon are the only stories that have multiple female characters who never talk to each other.

18 of the stories pass the Reverse Bechdel test. The Frost Giant's Daughter, The Vale of Lost Women, and The Servants of Bit-Yakin are the ones that fail. Bit-Yakin has parts where a man talks to another, but I did not see any reciprocation. The Frost Giant's Daughter has men talking, but the bit at the beginning was not enough for me to count it as a conversation, and the bit at the end is talking about a woman.

15 of the stories would pass the Bechdel test if Conan was a woman. There are four stories (Phoenix on the Sword, The God in the Bowl, The Tower of the Elephant, and The Scarlet Citadel) with no female characters at all. Rogues in the House has a woman with no dialogue. The sixth (Beyond the Black River) has some female settlers whom Conan never talks to (but Balthus does).

Finally, 10 of the stories pass the Reverse Bechdel test even if we ignore Conan. Possibly as many as 12 - there was a scene in Man-Eaters in Zamboula that fell just short of my threshold for conversation (three men each contribute a single line), and Black Colossus has a scene where several men are talking to Yasmela. I didn't count that one because they were talking to her and not really to each other.

Liquor Box

2022-09-28, 02:15 AM

Satinavian

2022-09-28, 03:08 AM

The failure of what? Never heard of that.Barbie once paid a lot of money to use the trademark "United Colors of Benetton" to produce a range of very diverse dolls who not only looked like a wider variety of ethnicies but also had clothes relating to the fashion brand which were inspired by pretty international fashion. This was compounded by the "United colors of Benetton" fashion brand being itself presented in a similar inclusive way and also known for highlighting various social problems, often about minorities. The idea was obviously to appeal to various potential customer groups that did not buy the other white and blonde and standard western upperclass clothed dolls.
But the whole thing disappointed economically. And decision makers in the toy industry would have been aware of that in the early 2000s and wary of putting diversity themes in the centre of marketing campaigns.

The point though is that "antiquated portrayals of men" still allow them to be power fantasies for an assumed male audience, with agency and complex arcs that don't have to rely on reductive tropes. It's the difference between, say, a story about Theseus being a hero vs. a story about Ariadne being discarded when her usefulness to the male hero runs its course.Regardless what the audience really looks like, i find it very questionable that "antiquated portrayals of men" and corresponding power fantasies are particularly enjoyable for contemporary men. Or that the tastes of men and women really differ much at all.

It is not only that decision makers of old times tried to cater to men. It is also that they did not know very well what men actually wanted and relied and relied on cultural assumptions/clichees about what (real) men suppossedly were meant to enjoy. The same was also true for fiction that tried to cater to women. People didn't really know their female audience either and stuck to clichees.
But market research has come a long way since then. Not less because so many works meant for men attracted a huge female fanbase and so many works for women attracted a huge male one. And people took notice.

PhoenixPhyre

2022-09-28, 08:34 AM

Not less because so many works meant for men attracted a huge female fanbase and so many works for women attracted a huge male one. And people took notice.

Related: My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. Marketed and designed for little girls, noted for (also? Instead?) Being popular among men of various ages (aka bronies).

Psyren

2022-09-28, 10:22 AM

Barbie once paid a lot of money to use the trademark "United Colors of Benetton" to produce a range of very diverse dolls who not only looked like a wider variety of ethnicies but also had clothes relating to the fashion brand which were inspired by pretty international fashion. This was compounded by the "United colors of Benetton" fashion brand being itself presented in a similar inclusive way and also known for highlighting various social problems, often about minorities. The idea was obviously to appeal to various potential customer groups that did not buy the other white and blonde and standard western upperclass clothed dolls.
But the whole thing disappointed economically. And decision makers in the toy industry would have been aware of that in the early 2000s and wary of putting diversity themes in the centre of marketing campaigns.

So - "Questionable toy line tried and failed to pander in the early 2000's, therefore every attempt at improving diversity portrayals in any other product would have been seen as pandering?" Sure, okay.

Regardless what the audience really looks like, i find it very questionable that "antiquated portrayals of men" and corresponding power fantasies are particularly enjoyable for contemporary men. Or that the tastes of men and women really differ much at all.

It is not only that decision makers of old times tried to cater to men. It is also that they did not know very well what men actually wanted and relied and relied on cultural assumptions/clichees about what (real) men suppossedly were meant to enjoy. The same was also true for fiction that tried to cater to women. People didn't really know their female audience either and stuck to clichees.
But market research has come a long way since then. Not less because so many works meant for men attracted a huge female fanbase and so many works for women attracted a huge male one. And people took notice.

As I mentioned earlier, so long as you acknowledge it was a factor (which you did again here in the bold) that's really all that matters to me, so I'm happy to move on.

Morgaln

2022-09-28, 10:50 AM

So - "Questionable toy line tried and failed to pander in the early 2000's, therefore every attempt at improving diversity portrayals in any other product would have been seen as pandering?" Sure, okay.

It would have not been seen as pandering; it would have been seen as very risky due to a precedent of failure. Companies tend to be risk-averse since they don't like losing out on profit. So a failure like that could very well have repercussions on what companies were willing to try over several years.

Psyren

2022-09-28, 12:01 PM

It would have not been seen as pandering; it would have been seen as very risky due to a precedent of failure. Companies tend to be risk-averse since they don't like losing out on profit. So a failure like that could very well have repercussions on what companies were willing to try over several years.

"Companies had sufficiently evolved in the early 00's to see the benefits of diversity, but they were simply held back by fear or repeating a high(?)-profile failure over at a children's toy line" is certainly not impossible, but it's also academic - we have no way to verify if that was the case now, nor does it ultimately matter.

Whether they're consciously doing it now more because the market has shifted enough to make it good business, or more because they've finally evolved - is ultimately irrelevant to me, so long as they do it. I get that that's not sufficiently cynical for some people but I don't care.

Satinavian

2022-09-28, 01:26 PM

So - "Questionable toy line tried and failed to pander in the early 2000's, therefore every attempt at improving diversity portrayals in any other product would have been seen as pandering?" Sure, okay.Yes, i would imagine that Hasbro, the toy company, does pay attention where toy lines succeed and fail.

As I mentioned earlier, so long as you acknowledge it was a factor (which you did again here in the bold) that's really all that matters to me, so I'm happy to move on.Yeah, sure. Never claimed that this was wrong.

gbaji

2022-09-28, 03:33 PM

Regardless what the audience really looks like, i find it very questionable that "antiquated portrayals of men" and corresponding power fantasies are particularly enjoyable for contemporary men. Or that the tastes of men and women really differ much at all.

It is not only that decision makers of old times tried to cater to men. It is also that they did not know very well what men actually wanted and relied and relied on cultural assumptions/clichees about what (real) men suppossedly were meant to enjoy. The same was also true for fiction that tried to cater to women. People didn't really know their female audience either and stuck to clichees.
But market research has come a long way since then. Not less because so many works meant for men attracted a huge female fanbase and so many works for women attracted a huge male one. And people took notice.

Yup. Pretty much the point I was making earlier in the thread. While we can certainly argue that it's a good idea to try to "be inclusive", the inherent problem is that what we think will be "inclusive" is itself based on whatever the current social biases are. What folks 40years thought would be inclusive towards different identity groups we find ridiculous and even offensive today. Are we really so arrogant to assume that what we think is going to be inclusive "today" wont be equally poorly viewed in the future?

Sometimes, it's just better to present something for what it is and just let the market come to it on their own. Make adjustments based on that and not try to adhere to "current thinking" on social rules.

Anymage

2022-09-28, 05:38 PM

Yup. Pretty much the point I was making earlier in the thread. While we can certainly argue that it's a good idea to try to "be inclusive", the inherent problem is that what we think will be "inclusive" is itself based on whatever the current social biases are. What folks 40years thought would be inclusive towards different identity groups we find ridiculous and even offensive today. Are we really so arrogant to assume that what we think is going to be inclusive "today" wont be equally poorly viewed in the future?

Sometimes, it's just better to present something for what it is and just let the market come to it on their own. Make adjustments based on that and not try to adhere to "current thinking" on social rules.

We're going to make mistakes, especially when the target is being visibly and conspicuously inclusive. However we also have the chance to learn from past mistakes and see what does and doesn't go over well. Better representation in art/examples and avoiding major sore spots should be no-brainers for making the hobby more inclusive and welcoming.

Unfortunately while I'd be curious to try and tease out what's actually effective vs. what's just trendy nowadays, I have a feeling that any in-depth discussion would cleave closer to politics than I'm comfortable with.

Liquor Box

2022-09-28, 06:32 PM

I never said it was? :smallconfused:

No, but you implied that it did not categorise Gravity and American Pie in accordance with your own views on their female characters, and I felt that your implication was that this was a failing of the test. Maybe you understood though the test was not meant to measure the quality of the representation, just whether there were multiple female characters who had things to do (talk about) other than men.

You know full well I can't, not on this forum. Or if you didn't know, now you do.

I don't know you can't. I find it odd you feel the forum rules allow you to make the statement that people have said they've been personally harmed by DnD representation, but can't link to where it happened. But it's you who knows the content of those links, and your account, so I will have to take your word for it.

It's a shame because my overwhelming impression in DnD (and my usual impression elsewhere, although with exceptions) is that people argue that something like what we are talking about might be harmful to certain groups (usually not ones they are part of) in the abstract, but seldom (if ever) give an example of a particular thing and said it harmed them personally in reality. I would have been interesting to see examples of it happening.

Yup. Pretty much the point I was making earlier in the thread. While we can certainly argue that it's a good idea to try to "be inclusive", the inherent problem is that what we think will be "inclusive" is itself based on whatever the current social biases are. What folks 40years thought would be inclusive towards different identity groups we find ridiculous and even offensive today. Are we really so arrogant to assume that what we think is going to be inclusive "today" wont be equally poorly viewed in the future?

Sometimes, it's just better to present something for what it is and just let the market come to it on their own. Make adjustments based on that and not try to adhere to "current thinking" on social rules.

A real world example of a content creator avoiding inclusivity to avoid things that would be seen as insensitive is the Order of the Stick webcomic. There was a relatively recent thread which was critical of a joke in the comic being insensitive to trans folk, although that had been the intent. After seeing the criticism, the Giant said that it showed he was not able to include trans representation sensitively enough to avoid such criticism, and therefore wouldn't do so.

Not quite your point, which I think was more about changes in attitudes and perspectives through time. But still an example of where a creator (and a well meaning one) chooses to limit inclusivity and representation due to criticism that he would not be doing it right.

gbaji

2022-09-28, 07:30 PM

Not quite your point, which I think was more about changes in attitudes and perspectives through time. But still an example of where a creator (and a well meaning one) chooses to limit inclusivity and representation due to criticism that he would not be doing it right.

I see that. And I think in the Giant's case, he's writing characters and stories, so it's difficult to not have such attempts suffer criticism. But in Gygax's case, he was just writing a game system. How he personally played, or what he personally thought in terms of how other people might play really didn't matter much. And, as I've mentioned previously, by actually *not* trying to cater to any identity group (other than his own I guess), he left a system that was open ended enough, without a whole lot in terms of preconceptions, and in which the people actually playing the game were free to create their own worlds, with their own social structures/rules, and play their own characters, however they felt.

Which is why I think it's maybe not silly to critique Gygax on this, but it's ultimately somewhat irrelevant. What matters is the outcome. Despite who *he* thought the game would or should appeal to, and despite what he wrote as a reading list for folks playing/running their games using his system, it didn't prevent players and DMs from just doing their own thing anyway. Gygax didn't write your characters. He didn't write your world. He didn't tell you what roles different characters should play based on any identity factor we might care about in our own "real" world lives. Certainly, the rules didn't require it. And, not surprisingly, people just did their own thing. Like they usually do when allowed to.

And my personal experience playing D&D (and many other RPGs) from the late 70s on, is that, while female players were somewhat rare early on, as time went by they integrated into playing just fine, and there were rarely significant problems (I'm actually struggling to recall any at all, in fact. Certainly none that were a result of playing the game). As you correctly pointed out, the perception/fear of the potential for problems based on the source (Gygax in this case) was far greater than the actual experience of the players when actually playing. Maybe there's a bit of a lesson here.

Anymage

2022-09-28, 09:25 PM

A real world example of a content creator avoiding inclusivity to avoid things that would be seen as insensitive is the Order of the Stick webcomic. There was a relatively recent thread which was critical of a joke in the comic being insensitive to trans folk, although that had been the intent. After seeing the criticism, the Giant said that it showed he was not able to include trans representation sensitively enough to avoid such criticism, and therefore wouldn't do so.

Not quite your point, which I think was more about changes in attitudes and perspectives through time. But still an example of where a creator (and a well meaning one) chooses to limit inclusivity and representation due to criticism that he would not be doing it right.

The girdle of masculinity/femininity was a real magic item from 2e and I think 3.0 as well. It was removed as a specific item for reasons I'd expect are similar to Rich's reasons for holding back.

To your broader question of seeing who's been harmed, that'll be trickier. People who either left the hobby or just never picked it up because they felt unwelcome are unlikely to be posting on a largely D&D focused message board.

And my personal experience playing D&D (and many other RPGs) from the late 70s on, is that, while female players were somewhat rare early on, as time went by they integrated into playing just fine, and there were rarely significant problems (I'm actually struggling to recall any at all, in fact. Certainly none that were a result of playing the game). As you correctly pointed out, the perception/fear of the potential for problems based on the source (Gygax in this case) was far greater than the actual experience of the players when actually playing. Maybe there's a bit of a lesson here.

There's a strong selection bias here, since again people who didn't mesh well with your group because they felt excluded are unlikely to have shown up on your radar. I've anecdotally heard plenty of stories from girls who were treated as interlopers in geeky circles. Did cheesecake art and exclusively masculine pronouns in the books help contribute to that perception? (Either directly in the eyes of the girls, or indirectly by setting up expectations in the boys.) I can't prove it definitively, but it's convincing enough that I'm willing to support a more inclusive art direction.

Psyren

2022-09-28, 09:35 PM

No, but you implied that it did not categorise Gravity and American Pie in accordance with your own views on their female characters, and I felt that your implication was that this was a failing of the test. Maybe you understood though the test was not meant to measure the quality of the representation, just whether there were multiple female characters who had things to do (talk about) other than men.

No, I didn't call that a failure of the test.

I don't know you can't. I find it odd you feel the forum rules allow you to make the statement that people have said they've been personally harmed by DnD representation, but can't link to where it happened. But it's you who knows the content of those links, and your account, so I will have to take your word for it.

Yep.

It's a shame because my overwhelming impression in DnD (and my usual impression elsewhere, although with exceptions) is that people argue that something like what we are talking about might be harmful to certain groups (usually not ones they are part of) in the abstract, but seldom (if ever) give an example of a particular thing and said it harmed them personally in reality. I would have been interesting to see examples of it happening.

I'll readily acknowledge that we probably inhabit different circles. Nothing wrong with that.

Ultimately it comes down to one's level of cynicism towards corporate pronouncements. Interestingly, we can both believe they likely prioritize profit and/or self-preservation above most other concerns, yet still conclude differently on the veracity of their claims. Not much I can do about that myself, so I'm okay with it.

Liquor Box

2022-09-29, 06:00 AM

The girdle of masculinity/femininity was a real magic item from 2e and I think 3.0 as well. It was removed as a specific item for reasons I'd expect are similar to Rich's reasons for holding back.

It wasn't the Girdle of Masculinity/Femininity that was the subject of criticism in this case. It was some lizard creature prostitute who was the subject of disgust from Belkar and Roy where the Giant was criticised for making cheap jokes at trans people's expense. The Giant jumped into the thread and said that he had never considered the character might be a trans analogy, and said he would not write any trans characters in OotS because he wasn't sure he could avoid inadvertently stumbling into things deemed offensive in the future.

To your broader question of seeing who's been harmed, that'll be trickier. People who either left the hobby or just neer picked it up because they felt unwelcome are unlikely to be posting on a largely D&D focused message board.
No, although if there's a whole lot of people being harmed, then some might have persevered. But in the absence of examples, it is all just speculation - without people saying that particular things caused them harm personally all these chats about representation and unintelligent orcs potentially harming people is just in the abstract.

I'll readily acknowledge that we probably inhabit different circles. Nothing wrong with that.

Ultimately it comes down to one's level of cynicism towards corporate pronouncements. Interestingly, we can both believe they likely prioritize profit and/or self-preservation above most other concerns, yet still conclude differently on the veracity of their claims. Not much I can do about that myself, so I'm okay with it.

We probably do move in different circles. My circle includes women, who have been the people who we are speculating may have been harmed in this thread. Although we probable inhabit different circles, in DnD context those circles do overlap - at the least with respect to these forums.

Is your last paragraph is a reference back to that artlcle you keep linking? I haven't been talking about that, I have no opinion on whether it is genuine or not. I'm much more interested in whether orcs have been depicted as racist etc etc than what the maker says about it. I suppose I'd take their statement at face value, as I have no reason not to, but that doesn't mean I agree with it.

Psyren

2022-09-29, 10:41 AM

We probably do move in different circles. My circle includes women, who have been the people who we are speculating may have been harmed in this thread.

As does mine, as well as queer people and POC.

Is your last paragraph is a reference back to that artlcle you keep linking?

Among others, yes. Paizo has one too for instance.

Dr.Samurai

2022-09-29, 11:50 AM

No one has ever been harmed by Dungeons and Dragons.

Anymage

2022-09-29, 12:19 PM

It wasn't the Girdle of Masculinity/Femininity that was the subject of criticism in this case. It was some lizard creature prostitute who was the subject of disgust from Belkar and Roy where the Giant was criticised for making cheap jokes at trans people's expense.

Rich said that every time he made trans-adjacent jokes he'd received such feedback. Even when it was unintentional. (The lizard person joke was about a minor controversy that blew up a bit back in 4e, but it still landed wrong.) As such, the removal of a related item with it's whole joke/curse nature can be a relevant example.

No, although if there's a whole lot of people being harmed, then some might have persevered. But in the absence of examples, it is all just speculation - without people saying that particular things caused them harm personally all these chats about representation and unintelligent orcs potentially harming people is just in the abstract.

Fair if you want to use the high bar of "has this specific game element/setting element directly caused harm". I'm aiming for the decidedly lower bar of "would more people feel welcome in gaming spaces if we changed this".

Liquor Box

2022-09-29, 04:57 PM

Fair if you want to use the high bar of "has this specific game element/setting element directly caused harm". I'm aiming for the decidedly lower bar of "would more people feel welcome in gaming spaces if we changed this".

I wasn't really using a bar, just responding to someone who had suggested that an element had caused harm by asking if they could provide actual accounts of this happening.

But to address your bar, it would also be interesting to see accounts from people who have said they don't feel welcome in gaming spaces as a whole because the game element in question (in this case female representation in appendix N).

As to what is the correct bar, that probably depends on what question you are asking.

gbaji

2022-09-29, 05:43 PM

The girdle of masculinity/femininity was a real magic item from 2e and I think 3.0 as well. It was removed as a specific item for reasons I'd expect are similar to Rich's reasons for holding back.

The girdle existed in 1e D&D. What's interesting to me is how its reception has changed over time. Recall that the game was overwhelmingly played by males back in the early days. But, of course, there were no prohibitions against playing characters of either sex. The girdle actually acted as a bit of a nudge to that mostly male player base to expand their horizons, get out of their comfort zones, and roleplay different sex characters. It was overwhelmingly a positive thing (unless you really had a player that thought "girls have cooties" or something).

The point of roleplaying is to play something other than yourself. Right?

There's a strong selection bias here, since again people who didn't mesh well with your group because they felt excluded are unlikely to have shown up on your radar. I've anecdotally heard plenty of stories from girls who were treated as interlopers in geeky circles. Did cheesecake art and exclusively masculine pronouns in the books help contribute to that perception? (Either directly in the eyes of the girls, or indirectly by setting up expectations in the boys.) I can't prove it definitively, but it's convincing enough that I'm willing to support a more inclusive art direction.

Again, assuming we're speaking of early D&D (cause we're talking about Gygax's reading list and the effect of his views on sexual roles on the game he helped create), my observation is that while that did happen occasionally, it was not the game itself that did it, but the existing social structures and perceived sexual roles that abounded in the world itself. As I mentioned earlier, Gygax's views weren't some strange out of the box thing. It was pretty much the norm of modern (progressive even) thinking that women and men did have different likes and dislikes and that social equality was more about ensuring that both groups had equal opportunity to engage in the activities that society thought they should want/enjoy. Yeah. That seems completely backwards to us today, but that's what the current thinking was at the time.

So yes, people at the tables could impose this (guys thinking that girls wouldn't want to play). Or potential players could self impose this as well (girls thinking that this isn't a game they would enjoy). As I mentioned earlier, had the game actually been marketed with the idea of trying to appeal to girls/women back then, it would have involved some pretty laughably offensive stereotypes of "what girls want", that we would probably universally condemn today.

Once people got over this socially pushed hesitancy and actually just played? Things got much better. Males realized that the game didn't actually have any rules in it that said what sexual roles existed so they played whatever they felt like. And females realized that the game was fun and engaging and not at all "just for the guys" like they may have been told. And when they got together at gaming tables, they realized that they were *gasp* actually just having fun together.

Were there jerk players back then? Yeah. Could that turn off new players? Yeah. Were they even more jerky towards female players? Maybe. Hard to say. This is obviously very anecdotal on my part, by my experience is that mostly the jerk players were just jerks to everyone. They might find specific different things to be jerky about based on the target at hand, but it was usually pretty equal opportunity. Whether this sort of thing affected female participation at a greater rate than male participation is a broader sociological discussion that falls well outside this gaming forum though. I will say that jerky players tended to get booted from most gaming tables pretty quickly.

Jerky GMs on the other hand...

Fair if you want to use the high bar of "has this specific game element/setting element directly caused harm". I'm aiming for the decidedly lower bar of "would more people feel welcome in gaming spaces if we changed this".

I tend to apply a basic rule for "offense" issues. You should actively work to remove "negative" things. So in a gameplay environment, that means remove things that are acting in a negative way (causing harm) to a person or group. So jokes at the expense of someone's identity. Negative stereotypes (heck any stereotypes). Things that target a group and say "this is bad". Direct portrayals of members or representative stand ins of a real identity group that are negative in nature. Remove/avoid those. They are making people feel uncomfortable just being themselves.

You get into trouble the moment you try to do "positive" actions to include an identity group though. That should also be avoided. Because the moment you do this, you are singling out that group *and* making assumptions about what would be "more inclusive" for them. This itself requires the application of stereotype and is likely to give offense. Just the act of asking questions could be considered offensive if you are picking who to ask based on your own assumptions about that person's identity.

Trying to "make people feel more welcome" is as likely to give offense as anything else. I just think that's a rabbit hole that has no end. I think there is a push by some to demand this, and others to claim offense if it's not done, but I personally feel this fits squarely in the old adage "you can please some of the people all the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can never please all of the people all the time". And yeah, I keep coming back to what would have been involved in "including women" in the game back in the late 70s. And I then question what might be involved in doing similar things today. Then I just kinda shudder at the horror of it all and try to get back to just playing a game and having a good time.

I guess I could ask a direct question. What do you think (and be very specific) game designers should do to change their games to be more inclusive/welcoming to <identity group X>? Seriously. Not a rhetorical question. Pick a group and go with it. Then imagine proposing this on any forum catering to that identity group as something you think would be wonderful for them.

If you think you'll get anything other than endless disagreement, then maybe you're on to something. I'm placing very very low odds on that though. And no, I'm not singling out any specific group here. This will occur no matter what the group, or what that group has in common. Because it's pretty much always a failing proposition to try to engage in positive action of this kind. Human nature and group dynamics are at play here, and it's often best to just walk away from that. People tend to agree very easily on things they don't like. It's almost impossible to get them to agree on what they actually like though (and even then it's usually framed into a negative "I'd really like for people to not do X").

Cluedrew

2022-09-29, 08:39 PM

So, to go back to the OP a bit, I went through the Conan stories to see how many of them pass the test. I mostly just skimmed through them quickly looking for dialogue, but I've read them all before, so I had some idea what I expected to find.Hey, good job actually running numbers. Even if they are not exact they were cool to look over and probably get the rough idea across. Thanks.

Trying to "make people feel more welcome" is as likely to give offense as anything else. I just think that's a rabbit hole that has no end.No, as someone involved in community events there are a lot of things you can do to make people feel more welcome. These will have positive impacts on some people and neutral effects on the others. I can't rule out that they have driven some people away but it must be a very small number. Now it does have "no end" in that you are never going to get everybody, but doing some will often be a notable improvement over none at all.

Anymage

2022-09-29, 09:17 PM

The girdle existed in 1e D&D. What's interesting to me is how its reception has changed over time. Recall that the game was overwhelmingly played by males back in the early days. But, of course, there were no prohibitions against playing characters of either sex. The girdle actually acted as a bit of a nudge to that mostly male player base to expand their horizons, get out of their comfort zones, and roleplay different sex characters. It was overwhelmingly a positive thing (unless you really had a player that thought "girls have cooties" or something).

"Overwhelmingly positive things" tend not to be labeled as cursed items. It was a juvenile joke.

I guess I could ask a direct question. What do you think (and be very specific) game designers should do to change their games to be more inclusive/welcoming to <identity group X>? Seriously. Not a rhetorical question. Pick a group and go with it. Then imagine proposing this on any forum catering to that identity group as something you think would be wonderful for them.

If you think you'll get anything other than endless disagreement, then maybe you're on to something. I'm placing very very low odds on that though. And no, I'm not singling out any specific group here. This will occur no matter what the group, or what that group has in common. Because it's pretty much always a failing proposition to try to engage in positive action of this kind. Human nature and group dynamics are at play here, and it's often best to just walk away from that. People tend to agree very easily on things they don't like. It's almost impossible to get them to agree on what they actually like though (and even then it's usually framed into a negative "I'd really like for people to not do X").

Most of the things I'd like to see done are already being done now. And most of them boil down to more diversity. Seeing more types of people in the art, in the example text and in notable positions in settings would be good things. As is having a broad range of people working for and writing for you. And since shows and streaming seem to be powering D&D's current popularity, seeing a breadth of faces across those platforms is handy too. You might get some overzealous screwups, but on the whole it's simple and effective.

Dr.Samurai

2022-09-29, 09:51 PM

I am in agreement with broadening representation in the art. But not seeing people that looked like me never stopped me from playing the game, enjoying the game, being welcome at tables to play the game, reading the novels, etc etc etc.

I care less for apologies, revisionist histories, and the notion that writers with specific immutable traits are inherently of more value than other writers. The dark side of these "benevolent" initiatives is dark enough that I don't think it's worth it. Better to just encourage people to get over mild discomfort and try something than to do what's being done today.

Theoboldi

2022-09-30, 01:40 AM

No, as someone involved in community events there are a lot of things you can do to make people feel more welcome. These will have positive impacts on some people and neutral effects on the others. I can't rule out that they have driven some people away but it must be a very small number. Now it does have "no end" in that you are never going to get everybody, but doing some will often be a notable improvement over none at all.

Just popping in to give an example to the contrary, I want to relate something that I was involved in personally.

This did happen in the Ironsworn rpg Discord server, in the lead up to the release of Starforgeg (two excellent games, by the way) by the same author.

The author, Shawn Tomkin, asked for some feedback from the community for a specific entry on the random NPC tables, on which one result for the "first look" table was "visibly disabled". He wanted to gather some feedback at the time about how actually disabled people felt about the entry.

I myself am disabled, having tourettes, so I weighed in on the conversation, generally supportive of the entry. However as I recall, there was another disabled person who argued against it. And it has been a long time since that conversation, but if I remember right his concern was about this entry being a negative representation, about how it gave the impression that disability was always visible.

A fair point, but at the time I did feel very much thrown under the bus as someone with a very unavoidably visible disability. I did push back, and in the end we did leave Shawn with the suggestion to further consult a sensitivity consultant.

The final book now includes the entry. Make of that what you will.

So overall, I do agree that it is worth the effort to try and make things inclusive, however there are often times where trying to do so will make things less inclusive for others at the same time, and it's easy to get caught up in the weeds over things that will only have a small impact overall. It's far from a straightforward process or one that has definitive answers.

I will mention that I do have other personal examples and expetiences on this topic, but the events involved are too far back for me to remember everything everything confidently and the topics involved probably step over forum lines, so I will not detail them.

Satinavian

2022-09-30, 03:42 AM

"Overwhelmingly positive things" tend not to be labeled as cursed items. It was a juvenile joke.
Mh.

When i first stumbled overthis belt many years ago, i thought "Oh, what a cool magic item. With it a character can switch sex whenever they want and for as long as they want. You only need a source of remove curse ready to take it off again. It even works fo noncasters."

followed by

"Wait, the sex change aside, isn't a girdle you can't take off a bit annoying in practice ? How do you change clothes with it ? Do you sleep with it ?"

I never considered it to be a joke or funny. But i do remember thiking about why this even is a cursed item instead of a regular one.

False God

2022-09-30, 09:05 AM

Mh.

When i first stumbled overthis belt many years ago, i thought "Oh, what a cool magic item. With it a character can switch sex whenever they want and for as long as they want. You only need a source of remove curse ready to take it off again. It even works fo noncasters."

followed by

"Wait, the sex change aside, isn't a girdle you can't take off a bit annoying in practice ? How do you change clothes with it ? Do you sleep with it ?"

I never considered it to be a joke or funny. But i do remember thiking about why this even is a cursed item instead of a regular one.

While I generally found the idea of the belt more useful than funny, this comes from someone who primarily(like 3/4 characters) plays outside my own sex for no particular reason other than I seem to be better able to make not-my-sex characters. *shrug*

I have however experienced a couple DM's use "sex switching" as a tool for puerile humor, and as a punishment for players playing characters outside of their own sex. So I would certainly agree that the original implementation is at best a tool for some cheap laughs at a character who got swapped from male to female, and at worst a tool to "correct" certain players. There seems to still be a rather large (maybe just loud?) segment of the TTRPG population that is uncomfortable with, or outright bans players playing outside their sex.

IME, this is rarely a result of "That one guy a few games back was just such a massive jerk and played the most sexist representation of a girl you can imagine, so we just don't allow it." as typically those tables can be reasoned with when presented with a solid character concept and good role-play. More often I've found the objections are solidly irrational, usually based in certain -isims, ideologies, or -phobias.

Satinavian

2022-09-30, 10:44 AM

I have however experienced a couple DM's use "sex switching" as a tool for puerile humor, and as a punishment for players playing characters outside of their own sex. So I would certainly agree that the original implementation is at best a tool for some cheap laughs at a character who got swapped from male to female, and at worst a tool to "correct" certain players. There seems to still be a rather large (maybe just loud?) segment of the TTRPG population that is uncomfortable with, or outright bans players playing outside their sex.

I certainly do know players and DMs who don't want cross-sex play at their table. But that usually handled by out-of-game discussion and table rules. And tables that adopt such a philosophy are pretty guaranteed to never include items like the girdle anyway because this goes against the agreement.

I have never seen use of sex switch for humor or for punishment. And I can't remember ever having been at a table that would have tolerated it as punishment.
But maybe that is a cultural thing ? Ideas about what is funny rarely cross language and culture barriers intact nor do ideas about gender.

gbaji

2022-09-30, 05:33 PM

"Overwhelmingly positive things" tend not to be labeled as cursed items. It was a juvenile joke.

The degree to which it was a joke was in direct proportion to the sexual insecurities of the player of the character who wore the item. It was "cursed" only in that it could not be taken off without a remove curse spell. The item did not affect your class, race, level, alignment, skills, spells, items, or abilities. It imposed no personality affects/changes on the character either, excepting whatever the player choose to do in response. It literally had zero effect on the character itself. Only on the player's perception of that character, and then only to the degree that the player themselves strongly tied the sex of the character to the character itself.

It was primarily used as a roleplaying opportunity for the players. Especially important, as I mentioned earlier, in the early days where there was a largely disproportionate percentage of male players, in a time period where many of them may have felt uncomfortable roleplaying a female character. It pushed those players out of their comfort zones, got them to realize that the sex of the character didn't really matter that much (not at all in terms of actual game rules), and that it could even be "fun" to roleplay from a different sexual perspective. I'll not comment on some of the atrocious implementations of said roleplaying efforts, but they were at least trying. And progress was made as a result, which likely may have helped integrate the game more in terms of the sexual makeup of the players of the game over time.

Hence, my statement that it was "overwhelmingly positive".

Most of the things I'd like to see done are already being done now. And most of them boil down to more diversity. Seeing more types of people in the art, in the example text and in notable positions in settings would be good things. As is having a broad range of people working for and writing for you. And since shows and streaming seem to be powering D&D's current popularity, seeing a breadth of faces across those platforms is handy too. You might get some overzealous screwups, but on the whole it's simple and effective.

Agreed. Those seem reasonable. Again though, the devil's in the details. Individuals within a given group are also individuals, and you will encounter wildly variable ideas of what "inclusion" actually means. There's always the possibility that someone will find the specific depiction of an identity group they are a member of and/or associate with offensive in some way. This somewhat ties back to the Giant's conclusion that he's just not going to include certain character types because he's not likely to "do it right", and therefore get a negative response. Which is unfortunate, because it's essentially the extremely thin-skinned but very vocal minority kinda ruining it for everyone else.

There's also an issue of the risk of tokenism. I'm not even going to go into the issues and pitfalls of diversity hiring targets that may be involved when we start focusing on "people working for and writing for you". As to shows and whatnot, I've seen some panels where it's painfully obvious that whomever set it up was checking off identity boxes. Which can also be seen as pandering. And some may take offense to that as well.

Fortunately, the actual pool of talent is pretty darn diverse anyways these days, so it's less painful to watch and probably not as much of an issue. Again though, I'll repeat my earlier point that the mere attempt to include a group (in every way you just mentioned) first requires that we make assumptions about what/who actually represents the group in question *and* what that group will want to see that will constitute "more inclusion". I'm not at all suggesting it's not a good idea to try, just that the backlash for incredibly minor mistakes in this area can be huge (probably way out of proportion huge even). It's "fraught with peril".

I have however experienced a couple DM's use "sex switching" as a tool for puerile humor, and as a punishment for players playing characters outside of their own sex. So I would certainly agree that the original implementation is at best a tool for some cheap laughs at a character who got swapped from male to female, and at worst a tool to "correct" certain players. There seems to still be a rather large (maybe just loud?) segment of the TTRPG population that is uncomfortable with, or outright bans players playing outside their sex.

That's odd, because I've literally never experienced anyone opposing much less outright banning such a thing at any table I've ever played at in 45 years or so of gaming (referring to your last statement here). Is that actually a thing you have experienced, or just heard about (and if I ask the people you heard about it from, did they also just "hear about it" from someone else)? I'm not discounting the possibility. I've just never actually seen it in practice. I'm also curious about the "still" portion. While I admittedly at my age don't go out and join a lot of random gaming groups these days, I never experienced this as a child, or a teen, or a young adult. So if this is actually happening now, it's not "still", it's a newish development that has occurred over the last 25 years or so. Might want to address why players are maybe less tolerant of things like this today than they were back in the 70s and 80s (when we presume such intolerance was supposedly rampant and much worse).

I'll also point out that the statements I made about this at the top of this post apply in all directions here. Any player, regardless of their own sex/gender, who can't handle playing a character based on that character's sex/gender is reflecting their own insecurities into the situation. There's literally zero actual effect on the character itself except to the degree the player chooses to make it a difference. And that's 100% about the roleplaying of the player. So if you have a problem with this, it's literally a problem you are bringing to the table yourself.

This is no different if it's someone who can't handle playing a character outside their own sex, versus a player who can't handle playing a character *not* outside their own sex. IMO, it's the same learning/roleplaying experience in either case. And yeah, some people might think it's "funny", but then you have to ask why they think that, and what are their own baggage/issues they are bringing to play or representing that they think this is so.

It's just odd to me because I ran tourney tables back in the day, where we handed out sheets of characters (shuffled randomly), where said characters had a wide assortment of race, class, sex, etc attributes. Not once did I *ever* experience someone complain because they were forced to play a character that didn't align with some identity aspect they wanted, or preferred, or whatever. They just played the character. It's somewhat baffling to me that this is such an issue *now*, when it wasn't *then*.

Maybe we're not advancing in tolerance in the gaming community as much as we think we are.

IME, this is rarely a result of "That one guy a few games back was just such a massive jerk and played the most sexist representation of a girl you can imagine, so we just don't allow it." as typically those tables can be reasoned with when presented with a solid character concept and good role-play. More often I've found the objections are solidly irrational, usually based in certain -isims, ideologies, or -phobias.

Can you be specific (without violating any rules)? Again. Is this something you yourself personally observed? What "isms, ideologies, or phobias" are we talking about here? I'm not trolling here. I honestly want to know what you are talking about because I've literally never seen or experienced this at a gaming table.

Are you saying that a male player shows up to a gaming session and tries to play a female character and is told no because... <what reasons>? Or a female player wants to play a male and is told no as well? Or are you talking about players being harassed for doing so by other players or the GM? is the harassment about the cross-sex play, or the chosen sex of the character as an absolute value (ie: juvenile group of young male players treating the one female character as a sex object, making jokes, etc)? If that's the case, that's less about the player roleplaying the role (or being "punished" in some way by the girdle) as a really terrible group of young idiots playing the game. I'd be reasonably certain in that case they are probably equally terrible in other aspects of play and this is just one symptom. Doesn't excuse it, but doesn't put the blame/harm on the concept of the girdle itself, much less on the concept of encouraging people to play outside their own sexual identity (or any identity factors for that matter).

It's just really really strange to me because I've always, since as long as I've been playing, played different sex characters, based on whatever personality/background/whatever I felt like at the time, and never thought twice about it. As have pretty much everyone I've ever payed with. And no one ever made an issue of it. So this is completely alien to my gaming experience.

I certainly do know players and DMs who don't want cross-sex play at their table. But that usually handled by out-of-game discussion and table rules. And tables that adopt such a philosophy are pretty guaranteed to never include items like the girdle anyway because this goes against the agreement.

What exactly do you mean by "cross-sex play" though. Are you saying that these tables just don't allow male players to play female characters (and vice-versa)? Or do you mean something else? Because that's just strange (and incredibly limiting from a RP perspective).

Do they give reasons for this? Again. If this is actually happening then this is not something that existed in the game early on. It's something that has evolved and appeared over time. Is the issue a concern over players doing this and "doing it wrong" and maybe offending someone? I'm honestly trying to figure out where this (frankly bizarre) behavior is coming from. I'm starting to wonder if this maybe is a strange backlash effect at work where now we have folks so offended by someone else's attempt to roleplay something different (maybe calling it sexual appropriation?), that folks have stopped allowing it just to avoid the argument? Dunno. Seems like maybe we should be rejecting the players who are taking on the role of "sex identity police" for everyone else, and just let players play how they want. Just speculating here though.

It does kinda tie into the Giant's issue and decision to just not write certain character types though. If you get enough players deeply offended by another player daring to play a sex they aren't, in a way that "isn't right" or something, maybe that could happen (I honestly do want to know if this is the case). Um... But the problem is with those other players. They are the ones clinging to a rigid perception of "the right way to play X", insisting that their stereotypical view of X is the only valid one, and not allowing anyone else to do or be anything else that does match their "rules". Letting that small but vocal group control everyone else's play is just wrong (IMO).

Curious to know what the actual reasons are though. Cause I'm honestly in the dark here. I guess I just don't play with enough teens and 20 year olds anymore. Again though, I'd point out that this does seem to be a new problem and not something that's been in the game or the gaming community all along. If it's a problem, then maybe we should be looking more at the impact of current trends and not worrying so much about reading lists from 45 years ago.

JadedDM

2022-09-30, 05:56 PM

gbaji

2022-09-30, 07:49 PM

Not sure which version of the item you are familiar with, but originally (in 1E and 2E), Remove Curse was not enough to reverse it. Nothing short of a Wish (which only had a 50/50 chance of working) or divine intervention could do so. Also, there was a 10% chance it wouldn't reverse your sex, just remove it entirely.

Hah. Was curious (and honestly couldn't remember the details). Just pulled out my old 1e DMG and looked. It did require a wish (or powerful magical entity/god/whatever) to remove (not sure if "remove curse" even existed in 1e). The 10% chance to remove sex entirely wasn't a random chance when putting on the belt, but that 10% of the belts would do this instead of reversing sex. Suppose that was up to the DM to determine which kind of belt it was.

It also didn't remain on you. It was a one use item. Once it changed you, it became a normal belt with no magical properties at all. So I guess the problem of having to wear a belt at all times wasn't an issue.

Again though, it was overwhelmingly used as a tool to remove/challenge discomfort by some players to ever play a character other than their own sex. The degree to which it "harmed" the player (because it never harmed the character in any way) was in direct proportion to how inflexible the player was in terms of playing different types of characters in the first place. Although, I suppose most players would have issues with the 10% that just removed sex entirely (I don't recall ever seeing anyone actually use that variant though). But sex wasn't a stat in the game. It had zero effect on the playability of a character. It was purely a roleplaying concept.

In a game where you could be polymorphed into other creatures/species, have limbs removed and replaced with magical things, have permanent stat loss, level loss, etc. This was really a "nothing" effect. Unless you allowed it to be more.

Vahnavoi

2022-10-01, 12:21 AM

Stories about metamorphoses, including changes from one sex to another (or from one sex to combination of them) exist and have existed world-wide and range from ancient myths (https://paxsies.com/blogs/blogs-paxsies/greek-transgender-myths) to contemporary gag comedy (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranma_%C2%BD).

Hence, attempts to decide if something like the Girdle is good or bad almost always falls victim of motivated reasoning. (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motivated_reasoning) That is, rather than honestly reviewing use cases for the thing, the conclusions end up being more about what people already believe about the original designers or their audience. The corollary being that self-hating hobbyists (=people who have internalized all the negative stereotypes about their own hobby) will always argue a thing was included for worst possible reasons.

Satinavian

2022-10-01, 01:20 AM

Not sure which version of the item you are familiar with, but originally (in 1E and 2E), Remove Curse was not enough to reverse it. Nothing short of a Wish (which only had a 50/50 chance of working) or divine intervention could do so. Also, there was a 10% chance it wouldn't reverse your sex, just remove it entirely.

Hah. Was curious (and honestly couldn't remember the details). Just pulled out my old 1e DMG and looked. It did require a wish (or powerful magical entity/god/whatever) to remove (not sure if "remove curse" even existed in 1e). The 10% chance to remove sex entirely wasn't a random chance when putting on the belt, but that 10% of the belts would do this instead of reversing sex. Suppose that was up to the DM to determine which kind of belt it was.

It also didn't remain on you. It was a one use item. Once it changed you, it became a normal belt with no magical properties at all. So I guess the problem of having to wear a belt at all times wasn't an issue.Ok, that is far worse. The one i knew definitely was multi-use and prone to curse removal. The original version still has uses, but obviously only when people want to change their sex permanently and even then it is risky.

Again though, it was overwhelmingly used as a tool to remove/challenge discomfort by some players to ever play a character other than their own sex. The degree to which it "harmed" the player (because it never harmed the character in any way) was in direct proportion to how inflexible the player was in terms of playing different types of characters in the first placeTo specifically target players, you would have to make a specific character don the girdle which seems pretty unlikely. Also i would not say that it has ever been good practice to change a PC by force to get the player to play something else.

JadedDM

2022-10-01, 01:21 AM

Again though, it was overwhelmingly used as a tool to remove/challenge discomfort by some players to ever play a character other than their own sex. The degree to which it "harmed" the player (because it never harmed the character in any way) was in direct proportion to how inflexible the player was in terms of playing different types of characters in the first place. Although, I suppose most players would have issues with the 10% that just removed sex entirely (I don't recall ever seeing anyone actually use that variant though). But sex wasn't a stat in the game. It had zero effect on the playability of a character. It was purely a roleplaying concept.

In a game where you could be polymorphed into other creatures/species, have limbs removed and replaced with magical things, have permanent stat loss, level loss, etc. This was really a "nothing" effect. Unless you allowed it to be more.
What are you basing that idea on, that it was meant as a tool for roleplaying? Because I can find no citation that supports that claim, and seeing as it was a cursed item, and most cursed items existed to trick or punish players for not being cautious enough (most cursed items deliberately resemble other, non cursed magical items), I'm not sure I buy that its intended purpose by Gygax was to 'encourage roleplaying.'

Also, you are wrong about it having no mechanical effect. In 1E, women had STR caps on them originally. So if you were a man with a high enough STR and put on the girdle, you would have your STR permanently lowered.

Satinavian

2022-10-01, 01:32 AM

What exactly do you mean by "cross-sex play" though. Are you saying that these tables just don't allow male players to play female characters (and vice-versa)? exactly.

Curious to know what the actual reasons are though. Cause I'm honestly in the dark here. I guess I just don't play with enough teens and 20 year olds anymore. Again though, I'd point out that this does seem to be a new problem and not something that's been in the game or the gaming community all along. If it's a problem, then maybe we should be looking more at the impact of current trends and not worrying so much about reading lists from 45 years ago.The reasons given tend to be either "We have had bad experiences". "People are bad at playing the other sex convincingly" or, surprisingly often, "speaking with a clear male/female voice while playing the other hurts the fiction".

It is a minority, but it has existed for at least 3 decades, probably longer. Not a new phenomenon at all.

JadedDM

2022-10-01, 02:08 AM

Speaking from personal experience of over 30 years playing D&D, the only people (both players and DMs) I've encountered that have an issue with playing the opposite sex are older gamers--grognards, usually. Newer/younger players don't care and don't even bat an eye at that sort of thing.

Liquor Box

2022-10-01, 03:05 AM

Again though, it was overwhelmingly used as a tool to remove/challenge discomfort by some players to ever play a character other than their own sex. The degree to which it "harmed" the player (because it never harmed the character in any way) was in direct proportion to how inflexible the player was in terms of playing different types of characters in the first place.
The two times I've seen it in media were in the OotS, and in Baldur's Gate 2. Both times it was played for laughs (at the character's expense) - quite successfully (although with criticism both times). Neither time was the character harmed.

exactly. or, surprisingly often, "speaking with a clear male/female voice while playing the other hurts the fiction".

I was playing a video game once, where you create all six characters. I wanted one character to be female, but females had stats penalties which I didn't want. So I had the bright idea of making a male character, but choosing a female avator. I forgot the voice. There wasn't much dialogue in the game, but when it used its male voice it was jarring.

Vahnavoi

2022-10-01, 04:16 AM

What are you basing that idea on, that it was meant as a tool for roleplaying?

How about the simple fact that it exist in a roleplaying game?

Same argument can be made for each and every cursed item. "Something bad happened to you & now you have to deal with it" is one of the basic schemes for setting up scenarios. The purported other motives such as "joking" or "punishing players" are not counter-arguments - because both the humour and the punishment can straight-forwardly derive from the player having to play their modified role.

InvisibleBison

2022-10-01, 07:38 AM

Stories about metamorphoses, including changes from one sex to another (or from one sex to combination of them) exist and have existed world-wide and range from ancient myths (https://paxsies.com/blogs/blogs-paxsies/greek-transgender-myths) to contemporary gag comedy (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranma_%C2%BD).

Hence, attempts to decide if something like the Girdle is good or bad almost always falls victim of motivated reasoning. (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motivated_reasoning)

I don't see how your conclusion follows from your premise. Why does the fact that gender changing is an ancient concept mean that people cannot overcome their emotional biases when considering its effects on a roleplaying game?

Vahnavoi

2022-10-01, 09:48 AM

Quertus

2022-10-01, 10:12 AM

Not to muddy the waters too much, but… my experiences with the Girdle are… that my experiences are invalid.

To explain that… hmmm… so, there was definite… “voiced negativity” about the item. Not as strong as some posters have claimed / indicated, but it… not only was not a uniformly positive thing, it in fact had (that I recall (Darn senility)) 0 positive feedback at the time.

However

For those who were… insecure? Is that the word I want?… about their own exploration of their gender identity, or even just about roleplaying a cross-gender character (Yes, even, “my voice isn’t ____ enough to play a ____”), who wouldn’t ever have intentionally chosen a cross-gender character? Just for the few of them I’m aware of, it was clearly beneficial (even if they’d only admit that after the fact).

So this is a case where there was more going on behind the scenes than I can adequately account for, and my personal experience leads me to say, “it’s complicated”.

EDIT: still, what I’m aware of now puts it at “net positive” from my experiences. Shrug.

InvisibleBison

2022-10-01, 10:53 AM

You're right, I missed a step explaining this.

Let's try again: the fact that there's a wide range of examples from all over the world, all across history and in various genres means that when someone engaged in motivated reasoning goes cherry-picking for examples, they're almost bound to find something that fits their idea of why a thing exists now. This allows for creating superficially well-founded arguments that nonetheless fail to be useful.

That still doesn't connect your premise to your conclusion. You still haven't explained why this wide range of examples makes attempts to evaluate the Girdle almost always fall victim to motivated reasoning.

Pauly

2022-10-01, 07:56 PM

The Bechdel test is like
- the real physics test
- the historical accuracy test
- the proper grammar test
- the economic simulation test
Or any other artificial test you want to apply to a work of fiction.

It is only important to people who want to care about those things, but whether or not a work passes any one of these arbitrary tests is irrelevant. The real tests are
- dud you enjoy the work?
- do a sufficient number of other people also enjoy the work?

InvisibleBison

2022-10-01, 09:09 PM

It is only important to people who want to care about those things

How tautological. Of course only people who care about something will care about that thing.

but whether or not a work passes any one of these arbitrary tests is irrelevant. The real tests are
- dud you enjoy the work?
- do a sufficient number of other people also enjoy the work?

Not so. It can be helpful/interesting/enjoyable to think about why you enjoyed or didn't enjoy a work, and why other people did or did not share your opinion. Looking purely at whether a work is enjoyable is far from the only meaningful method of analysis.

2D8HP

2022-10-02, 03:41 PM

Eyes nodded too and said dreamily, "Blue skies and rippling water, spotless beach, a tepid wind, flowers and slim slavegirls everywhere…"
Nemia said, "I've always wished for a place that has no weather, only perfection. Do you know which half of Ilthmar's kingdom has the least weather?"
"Precious Nemia," Eyes murmured, "you're so civilized. And so very, very clever. Next to one other, you're certainly the best thief in Lankhmar."
"Who's the other?" Nemia was eager to know.
"Myself, of course," Eyes answered modestly.
Nemia reached up and tweaked her companion's ear — not too painfully, but enough.
"If there were the least money depending on that," she said quietly but firmly, "I'd teach you differently. But since it's only conversation…"
"Dearest Nemia."
"Sweetest Eyes."
The two girls gently embraced and kissed each other fondly

Passes “Bechdel test”, is among the ‘Appendix N’ works.

If I bother to dig it up another such conversation may be found in Leiber’s “The Mouser Goes Below”from The Knight and Knave of Swords (but while in the same series was published after the DMG)

Yakk

2022-10-03, 02:09 PM

The "Bechdel test" isn't really about specific works. It is an insanely low bar to pass, and the point is a huge percent of works don't pass that bar.

When the gender-swapped Bechdel test meanwhile is passed by almost every work in a collection, and the Bechdel test itself fails on almost every work, and the collection wasn't chosen based off of Bechdel test passing or not (directly), it tells you stuff about that collection.

gbaji

2022-10-03, 09:01 PM

To specifically target players, you would have to make a specific character don the girdle which seems pretty unlikely. Also i would not say that it has ever been good practice to change a PC by force to get the player to play something else.

Correct. That would be pretty unlikely. It would just occasionally be tossed in and whomever chose to wear it was the person who would deal with it. Having said that, girdles/belts tended to be items that fighter type characters wore (most of them have effects most useful to melee classes at least), and to whatever degree old school stereotypes may exist with regards to male players (mostly) focusing on their "big strong male" fighter types, this would tend to fall on them more often than other character classes.

Again though the degree to which this was a "punishment" or a problem at all was entirely the degree to which the players themselves were stuck in rigid concepts about sexual roles (and roleplaying). Dunno. It was just never that big of a deal on the super rare occasions it ever came up. I've never played at a table where players had any issue at all with playing characters of different sex than themselves, so this was just kind of a "oh, huh. my character is now <X>", followed by that player roleplaying the character with their new sex. Which sometimes could create even more roleplaying opportunities if said character was in a relationship with another PC or NPC. They'd have to decide how that character would react to the change, and move from there.

All are valid (and IMO valuable) roleplaying opportunities.

What are you basing that idea on, that it was meant as a tool for roleplaying? Because I can find no citation that supports that claim, and seeing as it was a cursed item, and most cursed items existed to trick or punish players for not being cautious enough (most cursed items deliberately resemble other, non cursed magical items), I'm not sure I buy that its intended purpose by Gygax was to 'encourage roleplaying.'

I don't recall if I said it was "meant as a tool for roleplaying", but that it was "used as a tool for roleplaying". I guess that somewhat of a trend I'm trying to get across. What a game designer intended when writing the game, rules, items, or even reading list, aren't as relevant as what the players did with those things. What Gygax intended doesn't matter. What the players (and GMs) did with the items/whatever is.

And overwhelmingly, in my experience, items like that were used as roleplaying opportunities by the players. Somewhat forced opportunities, but one could argue that of many "cursed" items. Having your alignment changed was also primarily about having to roleplay your character differently than intended, right? That one though, actually could have some significant class conflicts.

Also, you are wrong about it having no mechanical effect. In 1E, women had STR caps on them originally. So if you were a man with a high enough STR and put on the girdle, you would have your STR permanently lowered.

A lot of people just ignored the sex restrictions on stats anyway. Heck. We ignored half the tables in the original game. I guess that also falls into the "how people played vs what the game designers wrote".

Even among those who did enforce those restrictions on sex based on strength (or any character facet based on stats), those were on the initial roll up. If something changed later, you could keep it and just played through. I think most DMs (if they used the sex restriction at all) would not cap strength as a result of a girdle caused sex change. I'm pretty sure a female character could wear a girdle of storm giant strength and wasn't capped on that either, so why in this case? Again. Details a bit fuzzy though. I can't recall this situation ever actually coming up though.

if your Orc's charisma rose above a 14 did you stop being an orc? I don't think so. I suppose it's possible that if a paladin fell below a 17 charisma, they might lose their paladin abilities? It's been a really really long time since I played 1e. There were a lot of oddities in the game back then, and a heck of a lot of house ruling to get around them. Which may be why I tend towards talking about how the players played the game more than what oddities were in the original rules. Looking back and scanning the rules and declaring "this was sooo wrong", fails when pretty much everyone back in the day also saw those things as wrong and changed them when they played.

And again, I find it odd because my experience playing was that most players were so much more open to exploring different characters and roles than it seems they are today. I literally never recall running into a single player back in late 70s through mid 90s (which is about when I stopped playing outside of my own smallish gaming group) that had problems with roleplaying different/any sex characters. It really does seem as though newer/younger players are more sensitive/bothered by this today than the old school players were back then.

Could just be me and my experience is the exception. Not sure.