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February 5th, 2008
10:26 pm - Revising "Gender Roles in RPG Texts"
There has been a fair amount of discussion about gender in RPGs regarding D&D 4th edition -- some on the WotC Gleemax board Astrid's Parlor, but also elsewhere.
On the amusing side, there was the controversy over whether female dragonborn (i.e. bipedal dragon-like creatures) should have human-like boobs. Badgerbag had an amusing post on that, "Boobs, butts, and platypi" and Metafilter post "But what about the platypi?".
On the slightly more serious side, there was some discussion of my study from several years ago Gender Roles in RPG Texts. In discussion of D&D 4th edition, I brought up the question of the characters used in rules examples -- in a thread first started back in November, "Do Female Example Characters Matter?"
There were some fair criticisms brought up. I had meant for a while to revise and/or extend that essay, but naturally other things came up. Since this was on a D&D forum, naturally my analysis of the 3.0 edition Player's Handbook and Dungeon Master's Guide. My conclusion about that was that it made a notable effort to be inclusive of women, with two women among the four recurring example characters. However, I did cite that the women seemed markedly less effective. In the thread, I shortened it to the following summary. Totalling up all their actions within example combats within the Players Handbook and Dungeon Master's Guide, here is how the four example characters fared:Jozan (M): Casts three spells in combat, and hits twice (out of two attacks) for around 17 total damage
Tordek (M): Hits twice (out of two attacks) for 26 total damage
Mialee (F): Casts no spells and does no damage in combat
Lidda (F): Hits once (out of three attacks) for 3 total damage
Now, I consider this a pretty subtle effect -- many people might not consciously notice it. However, I think it does come across in the characters come across. Intriguingly, one poster complained that I should be paying attention to whether women were portrayed as "weaker, cattier, and less capable" -- yet considered whether they actually succeeded at anything irrelevant to how capable they were portrayed.
Another poster suggested that my choice of products to review was biased. He gave as a list of products that would lead to the opposite conclusion -- Space: 1889 (GDW), HarnManor (Columbia Games), The Way of the Unicorn (AEG), Delta Force (Task Force Games), Star Trek: the Next Generation (Last Unicorn) and Street Fighter (White Wolf). Interested in this, I went through the only one of those that I have at hand in my collection, Space:1889. My findings were: There are 19 rules examples using named characters, and none of them include women. There are also thirty-something examples without any names, where they use "he" for the generic pronoun throughout the book. There are five unnamed sample NPCs on page 39 of which one is female -- a maid.
There are also a great many characters mentioned as part of the background -- some real and some fictional. In particular, there is detailed background in Victorian Age section on pages 22-33, and the fictional Mars and Venus background sections (pages 148-200). There are also some characters and background scattered through the rest of the book. There are roughly 45 named characters by my count. With the exception of a special section on page 32, there are three women mentioned: Queen Victoria, Queen Elizabeth I (mentioned once), and Miss Jennie Jerome (mentioned once as the American wife of Lord Randolph Churchill). There is, however, a special section on page 32 entitled "Remarkable Woman" which describes seven women of the period.
Now, this is certainly more inclusive than some other games. It has a special section where it pointedly mentions women of the period. However, there is something off about the approach where women are mentioned in a special women's section rather than anywhere else in the book.
Now, I am sure that there are RPG books out there where women are portrayed more favorably. I will see about including some studies of these. However, I wouldn't want to deliberately seek out such works for the study. One poster did have the fair suggestion that I should study many of the key popular works (like GURPS, the HERO System, etc.). However, I only have so much time. Perhaps I will see about regularly adding a game or two to the set.
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