I have heard it said multiple times in the forums that people should be able to write their own story and if they aren’t comfortable writing a certain sexuality, that is fine and we should leave them be. However the feedback the author is getting is how I have felt would reality would go down if someone wrote a straight romance from a male perspective only.
Granted, the inclusivity comment that was made in the opener probably didn’t help any (know your audience) but still, let the guy write what he wants. It takes guts to share something that you have created. Is there room for improvement? Yes. However, you have a good foundation for something that is potentially fun.
Let’s ease off about the RO’s (or lack thereof) and focus on other things like: Why is my spell caster not hanging in the rear? Sure, all I know is a cantrip but squishies typically aren’t in knife range feom the beginning. Perhaps a choice to choose party “formation”?
@IronRaptor Please read what I wrote again. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. I have no problems with stories that lack RO’s. In fact I would like a bit more variety in that department, not every story has to have romance, although COG’s are definitely known for that aspect. (I have a published game without RO’s so that was never an issue.) I also have no issues with gender locked games if there’s a decent reason for it.
What I did have a problem with is the blatent sexism that was there by the author’s own admission.Read it again. Really read it, it’s all over the place. I gave him the benefit of the doubt to start with as it being unintentional, but subsequent comments and the inclusivity statement (on behalf of both women and non-straight relationships) was inappropriate and showed what his stance is. As was referring to people who dislike sexist portrayals of women as “snowflakes”. (I refer you to Samuel’s comment which pretty much sums up my reaction).
The author can write what he wants. Just as I can choose not to read it, so there’s no reason to tell me to “ease up” on him. I’ve already said I’m not reading further and won’t be offering up any further suggestions to lessen the stereotyping as it is unwelcome. But if he chooses to write this sort of thing and post it on a forum known for it’s stance on being inclusive, he’ll have to accept that he may be called out on it.
Stereotypes exist because some people do fit the bill. I guess I care about this because I was in one of those awkward phases a long time ago but it was friends and tabletop gaming that helped me overcome that.
If this story were going to be how someone playing D&D (or Dice, in this world) started to come out of their shell and begin interacting with the real world, I think that vould be a great arc. If someone did the opposite and lived for escapism, that is another good path.
Personally at this point I would be overhauling the Zoe character because that one is the closest in my mind to a stereotype (not saying that “attractive” people can’t play an RPG. My own party would counter that) but chatty, fashion designer taking a dig at the Sera character so early already put her on a dislike path.
Also, like I said before, this story does need improvement. I agree with others that have said so. I just felt like he got a lot of flak (some brought on himself) for the inclusivity post that was made.
Yes, I read his demo post (twice) and I am not denying the ladies and the D&D scenario need work. If my wife read women being portrayed that way in my own work, I would have a pillow being thrown at my head and would be sent back to the drawing board.
I am also not even bothering defending his snowflake comment as that is wrong too.
It is good to care about works in progress. We all should. I stated above that I’d enjoy a story-game based on this theme if I thought it was written better.
I agree that both of those arcs could be interesting to explore - but the approach taken here, turned me off from the first sentence in the concept paragraph. I waited until someone who shares a lot of my tastes and sensibilities read the demo and provided feedback on it and after she confirmed my suspicions I stated my reasons for passing on it so far.
The OP got feedback from someone who is a veteran of publishing these games and he not only dismisses that feedback out of hand he gives a back-handed insult.
Getting her feedback is something he should use to improve his story. Heck I received much worse comments on my first demo and I use that feedback as motivation each day I write or code.
It wasn’t what he said but the tone of his writing - [quote=“DesmundGrimsted, post:14, topic:27007”]
In my eyes it’s fine for the MC to be surprised to see female players since it’s fairly uncommon.
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This is his rationale - which in many of our experiences is a false rationale that we can’t relate to. Never-the-less he can write this perspective if he wants but by stating this:
He is basically saying no more feedback on stereotyping and tropes.
So that is the end of participation with this project since the very thing he doesn’t want feedback is presenting the most problems.
In my eyes it’s fine for the MC to be surprised to see female players since it’s fairly uncommon.
AKA: Female gamers and where are they?
Just for anyone who is interested.
Your welcoming and non-bias response to non-male gamers (/sarcasm) is unfortunately not as uncommon as it should be, and leads to them not being seen around much. If they are playing, they’ll avoid ones like yours like the plague.
Haven’t read far in, but you may want to give this reddit a skim. I haven’t done a lot of in person table top gaming myself, largely because of the bias (both social stigma and from male gamers) that got leveled against me when ever I did. Occasionally you’d find a good bunch, but there’s an unhealthy proportion with views matching your own. When I had good people to play with it was fun. As for online RPG’s wow. The level of sexism is quite amazing. You’d probably find many of the “guys” were actually girls. If you don’t want to fend off unwanted advances the entire time consisting of people with issues mistakenly thinking that bragging about their genitalia is the best way to get a date, you don’t advertise being female unless you know it’s a well moderated group. https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/1mnnqx/serious_question_where_are_all_the_girl_tabletop/
So couple of relavant highlights for anyone not wanting to read the whole thing.
“And it’s not just video games, either. Although the world of tabletop gaming and LARPing (live-action role playing) is predominantly male, there are plenty of women who participate as well. For example, a global “LARP census” conducted by RPG.net last year found 35% of their respondents identified as female. “Magic: The Gathering” head designer Mark Rosewater also recently disclosed on Tumblr that 38% of their current player base is female – a far cry from the dude-only mental image you probably have in your head from the way most “MTG” conventions are depicted online. Women might not be the most visible members of these subgroups, but there are certainly more of them than you’d think.”
“There’s no getting around the fact most of the data still finds men to have a slight majority over women in many of these aspects of media, most commonly in the 60/40 ratio. But that doesn’t mean that the women who enjoy comics, superhero stories, video games and other stereotypically male-marketed mediums should be ignored, because they still currently make up well more than a third of the audience on average – and sometimes closer to half, or beyond. If you were hanging out in a group of three people, you wouldn’t pretend that the third person doesn’t exist, right? Would a pair of people in a group of four ignore the other two?”
Jeremy Crawford, lead designer and managing editor of Dungeons & Dragons, challenges this stereotype of a male stranglehold on the realm of gaming:
“‘Asked to comment, [Crawford said], “There has often been a perception that such games are for straight white men. One of our goals for the new edition of D&D has been to make it as welcoming as possible to its large, diverse audience: people of different races, ages, gender identities and sexual orientations.’ … His point is underscored by the fact that the newest version of the game credits women as contributors to its design more than any previous one: About 26 percent are female, as opposed to 20 percent in the last version and 12 percent in the one before that. It’s also telling that three-quarters of D&D’s branding and marketing team is now female.”
To further reinforce the point about women gamers… I was in a D&D group in college, where the DM was a woman, and the original players she got were three other women and three men (myself among them)… and the players who stuck with the group were two of the women, plus me. Nobody really made a big deal about the genders here. Gender composition of gaming groups has more to do with who happen to be friends than anything else. And if you keep finding a lack of women gamers, that could be a sign that they’re not finding a welcoming environment (perhaps because of people stereotyping them, focusing on their looks, or just treating them as some kind of rarity.)
(Just taking a look around this forum and seeing how many women there are, and, say, listening to what they have to say, should also be quite illustrative.)
Anyway, all the women in the group were varied in personalities and interests (though similar enough to be friends), and even on the level of personal style, were all quite distinct… and none of them fit precisely within the cliché of “girly girl” or “gamer girl,” whatever that’s supposed to mean. Because it turns out that women have exactly the same range of personalities that men do.
The thing is, depicting women gamers as being so exceptional, and focusing so much on descriptions that relate to female stereotypes rather than distinct and well-rounded, you end up treating them much more like what you call “special snowflakes” rather than fully-fledged people… and they end up much less interesting as a result, too.
Also, it shouldn’t have to be said, but apparently it does: prettiness has nothing to do with someone’s level of interest in games.
I’d like to avoid making a “game” and include in-your-face classes or a battle system. I do want you to be able to focus on spells eventually if you want to and when relevant and I agree staying back to cast from a distance should be an option then. I’m not sure about having a “winning” option for every play style in every single fight, though.
I agree as well.
I’m fine with feedback on tropes. I think generally bad writing is presenting all problems here and do not consider political incorrectness to be an objective problem. It’s completely fine to feel women shouldn’t be portrayed in a certain way, but that sounds like opinion rather than fact to me. An opinion I’ll respect just like your wish not to play (and if the concept reeked of stereotyping already, I did a fine job turning you off before wasting more time), but respect my choice not to focus on removing anything that could be considered stereotyping by anyone at all as well.
That’s an awful lot of heavily biased homework you’re giving there for someone I wouldn’t hear from again. Don’t present click bait articles as if they’re food for thought.
A majority of the people I’ve played D&D with were female friends of mine. None of them played specifically out of interest in the game. If I play poker with friends it’s not because I’m specifically interested in the game either, so I’m not a poker player. A tabletop group that exists without a basis of friendship is still prominently male in my experience, and there’s no real pre-existing friendship in this story.
As I’ve mentioned, I have no issues with changing things to avoid characters being specific tropes without anything beyond that. For example, if I understand correctly, “typical gamer girl” was taken from Sera wearing boy’s clothes and having an interest in the tabletop game. Not my intention for her to be a gamer girl at all, though.
If I used pretty or something similar to describe a character, I can’t find it. I do see fit and tan, which do not make someone physically attractive to me personally but I can see how one might equate them to pretty. I’ll think about how to handle it.
CoG and HG as companies have a long history of inclusiveness. Looking around the forum, I’m sure you’ll notice that a great many of us are very diverse and came to this company because it specifically tries to ensure that it’s stories are representative of us. Granting that not every game handles this perfectly, on the whole many of them attempt to ensure that everyone feels welcome. Saying “to me inclusitivity is a dirty word” is saying “I don’t want you to feel welcome here” to a pretty large portion of the people on this forum. If your goal is to make a game that caters specifically to straight men, I’d recommend looking for an audience somewhere else, since the CoG forum audience is largely made up of people who don’t fit that mold.
Oddly enough, if someone is responded to, sometimes they will respond back.
Well, the DM of my group was a woman, so she obviously was very into the game itself, since it was her idea to do it in the first place. Another of the women was very into the game, has suggested and run similar games, and has been suggesting that we get together for an online campaign… because she likes the game. The third woman also sounds quite interested in this. And the original campaign was a large part of how I got to know them in the first place, so this wasn’t just a matter of friends getting together for the game, but people becoming friends as a result of the game. Yes, this is anecdotal… but so is all your example.
(Oh, and the “click bait articles” give a whole lot of specific data… I’m not sure why you’d think that the quoted game designers don’t know what they’re talking about )
I can see you’ve changed your phrasing here. That’s a good change
That too.
So you’re saying that the way to be inclusive is to support and approve of stuff that’s exclusive? Huh, I thought that made stuff less inclusive.
But hey, if that’s your take on inclusion, I’m glad to know you’ll be inclusive of having us complain about your lack of inclusion
Also, look around at our discussions… you’ll find we don’t always agree on everything but are generally respectful… we’re not a hive mind…
Anyway, we’re not telling you what you can or can’t write; we’re stating our opinions on what you’ve shown us. Also, considering that you’ve already stated that you’re happy to deal with the characterization, I’m not even sure what the issue is. The biggest issue with stereotypes is when characters are nothing but stereotypes, after all, so making them more well-rounded would be solving the bad writing as well as the concerns we’ve raised.
the story needs improvement. I know that Zoe is the friend that doesn’t share the same hobbits/interests as us but we still good friend with them. now the other girl is the one I don’t get, is she suppose to be a no life basement dweller?[quote=“DesmundGrimsted, post:34, topic:27007”]
Inclusive towards everyone as long as they share the exact same views and opinions, that is?
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Yes. If you dig enough in the forum you will be able to see the beautiful ritual I call ‘circle jerk’. JK…?
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