Sex and Gender in Tides of Shadow

[Prak]

Sidenote about alignment- assuming I ever actually finish Tides of Shadow, alignment will be completely replaced by "Allegiance" and "Descriptors." Instead of Lawful Good, a paladin might have "Allegiance- Church of Panesa" or "Allegiance- Innocents" and "Descriptors- Protective, Loyal, Altruistic."

[Koumei]

Here's my own quick stab at a short and sweet "gender can be M, F or a bunch of other letters blurb" that would go in a chargen section

Name _____

Write a name for your character here. This can be any name you would like - it can be a real world name or a completely new fantasy name never used in the real world. The only requirement is that you can write it down and that players at the table can speak it aloud. It's strongly suggested, but not absolutely required that gaming groups have some common conventions for naming as that helps to set the tone for the overall game. If a couple of players choose period and cultural appropriate names researched from actual history and a couple other players choose names just to be funny, that's a sign that players are expecting different things from the game and should try to work together a bit more to avoid ruining each other's fun.

Gender _____

Pick a gender for your character. This can be any gender you want. It can be Male or Female or it can be something else. Note that in the real world there are many people who identify as something other than simply Male or Female and more than you might think who have physiology which is not clearly in either category. In a fantasy world with cultures of plant-people, sentient rocks, hivemind bee-people, amorphous shapeshifters and body-jumping psychic entities, gender can be a whole lot more varied than the binary gender often erroneously assumed in the contemporary western world of reality. Sometimes thinking in depth about alternate physiologies, fantastic means reproduction and the cultures that could result from such can provide a unique hook to build a character around.

Whatever you choose for your character's gender, it has no mechanical effect on your character's stats or abilities, although it may change what other characters in the setting expect of your character

This is actually spot on for what's needed. The fact that you can add a little thing like this for age, name and skin colour ("if you are covered in tattoos, mention that!") means you're not adding "Chapter 1: my personal rant", and instead, you're just adding "think outside the box a bit and think about your character as a person" to every aspect of character creation. Then the assholes of the world can't even talk about how "you gave those queer folk a whole section for themselves!" (I jest, they can always complain about being too inclusive!) The more space is used talking about any given thing, the more it looks like you're standing on your pillbox and lecturing people, whereas one little paragraph is really just something to think about.

As for traps being offensive, I had to ask someone else - I wasn't sure, because one other friend self-identifies as a trap. It might be the strangest question I've asked at a wedding reception, but given the father of the bride started the speech with "We're no strangers to love. You know the rules and so do I.", and the groomsmen had Transformers cufflinks, I think it's all good.

[tussock]

I would prefer game designers focus on whats good for the game and stay out of politics.

Like, socialised protection from violence, weapon access, availability of healing, legality of magic, respect for field expertise over local social standing, the reach of the law in society, the weaponisation of justice, extra-judicial killings, the ethics of business around risks to employees, are zombies even a crime, ... yeh, none of that shit belongs in games. Fucking politics, who needs to know. /sarcasm.

Oh, no, that's right, everything is political. Teaching science is political, of all things. Teaching anything at all, really, politicians decide that. How much, how long, etc. Everything. Idiot troll.

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*Panesa is intended to be basically the goddess of socialized health care.

Couldn't you just call her Panacea? Just my thing that people should pick ancient god names with modern resonance in their RPGs.

[Prak]

I could, that was the obvious basis for the name. Could be interesting to go into how shadow religions changed in contact with the mortal world.

[Parthenon]

Sorry Prak, I went a bit overboard. I know that gender and sexual fetishes are different in that they can both be very deep basis of self-identity, can revolve around social constructs and relationships with others and can take a long time and a lot of self-honesty to work out what your gender/sexual desires is/are. They have also both have been classified as mental illness when outside the ordinary in the modern age.

What am I trying to say in a constructive way? You may have to bear with me on this since this is a bit train of thought.

Personal gender is partly based on gender role in society, so it is inherently difficult to describe in a kitchen sink setting which doesn't have fixed societies. Especially since the male/female sex binary may not exist in some species and some may be able to swap at will.

Since the societal view on gender is so vague, gender can be a bit like playing a monster race in Gygax's games- MC may get irritated at you picking a gender they don't like and have every society and group discriminate against PCs based on it.

Because of this, a paragraph or two about gender should be included in the rulebook to point out that doing so is not cool, and that there should be no discrimination based on it. This is an inclusive reason to make the game better and more fun rather than shoving it in because gender politics is important to you or to get hype from the internet about it.

Once you know why you are adding this to the rulebook (to improve the game and to reduce the occurrence of MCs pissing all over your character) you can make sure that the writing actually does what you want and have a standard to compare it to.

Similarly, sexual fetishes shouldn't be the subject of the rulebook because not everyone has to state their sexual desires, it is not something expected to be on character sheets, and a lot of people are squicked by discussion of sex at the table. It also isn't publicly shown as standard.

So, at this point you know that you want to talk about gender but not sexual fetishes and why this is the case, and what you want to get out of talking about gender.

Thinking about it, a bit of my writing was a bit of frustration about you not being clear about why you have this text. You started off by saying that it was because 5e had some good publicity because of it's inclusiveness and it partly seems to be because of your interest in gender politics. Neither of which is about making the game better.

Because of this, when you say that you are including gender politics for inclusiveness but not something else for inclusiveness while calling it weird, stupid and dumb, you make yourself look a bit hypocritical and preachy.

[Prak]

Hey, I went overboard too, I get it.

I guess it's because people generally see their gender as a more integral part of their personality than their fetishes. I mean, there are kinky things I like, but I can point at reasons I like them, whereas my gender is just who I am--even if I can point to the reasons I identify as genderqueer, those reasons are more of "that's what society calls a person with these traits"

It seems to me that fetishes are a lot more personally or environmentally constructed/cultivated that gender identity is, and there are only a handful of cases where fetishes might be relevant ("Too kinky to torture" or "whips and chains excite me" sort of stuff).

I could maybe see including a short sentence or two treating fetishes as a part of sexuality, and saying that what a person is aroused by or attracted to will shape their interactions with others (a bondage kinkster may well react fairly favourably to a chain devil, for example, and furries would probably see their interactions with the zoomorphic races coloured by their identity as a furry).

As for why... well, I do think that it's important for the rulebook to explicitly include G/Sms, even if only to call out bigoted DMs as bags of dicks you shouldn't play with. There's also the very real phenomenon of representation. If this game actually gets to the point where I'm creating/commissioning art for it, I will very consciously try to have art that depicts poc at least as much as it depicts white people. I might even consider using only art that depicts pocs and fantasy species, because I seriously doubt that (many) white people would decide to not buy because it has no white characters depicted, and the ones who would make that decision are racist pricks who can suck a barrel of diverse cocks.

I wouldn't include it so much explicitly for the potential publicity or marketability, because it's an (hypothetical) indie game, and the Mary Sue is not likely to notice it and interview me because I wrote a couple paragraphs welcoming G/SMs. I would be including something like this because I think it's an inherently positive thing to include, and worth a couple inches of page space. The fact that it just happens to make my book a more attractive product is really just a bonus.

[animea90]

@animea90: I can't for the life of me figure out why you're only interested in fucking straight women, and I can't imagine an answer that won't make me angry. And I can't imagine that you think it's actually a useful conveyance of information about your character to go "I wanna fuck my character". I mean, your parenthetical indicates that you seem to think more about it than that, if only to convey to people which of your characters you wanna fuck.

Honestly, if you think that gender is only meaningful as a fuckability tag, I don't see how you interact with the idea that other people can tell you their gender rather than vice versa, or how gender could be a trait of a person, not an ordered pair, or how you can even tell the difference between a cis woman and a trans man who hasn't had hormones/surgery.

...But if you really do see it that way, I can see how you'd not see a need for a gender blurb, or even a space on the charsheet. What would you even put there? "Does animea90 want to fuck this character? Y/N"

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@rasmuswagner: Seven categories: iron, leather, studded, green, torn, sleeveless, not manufactured in sunlight.
What? No! I'm not completely ignorant of armor. I'm just trying to say you can wear whatever you want and I won't judge you, as evidenced by the fact that I think these categories are even remotely related to each other, much less a disjoint cover.

My campaigns rarely involve sex, so fuckability doesn't matter, which was my point. Other than pronoun use, gender just isn't an issue. Very few players have any desire to include gender politics or sex in their game. And those that do already have strong opinions and don't need the blurb(and will likely get angry if it doesn't match their exact views).

And I am a bit surprised that you can't grasp why I would be attracted to straight cis women(although I suppose I would be okay with her being bi too). Most guys are interested in the same thing.

[animea90]

The arguments I am hearing boil down to "Include it to make transgender people feel good", which comes at the detriment of the actual game(by using up page space).

Well the whole point of an RPG is to make players feel good, so arguing that blatant inclusionism is wasted space seems kind of silly, especially when we consider the typical word count of a modern RPG. With several hundred thousand words, you can use a thousand or three to pander without notably impacting the product.

It is doubly especially silly when we consider the low bar for many of those words. It would probably be a net gain to replace the all of the text about D&D's 9 alignment system with random screeds about gender identity politics. At least that way all the arguments would have real world application.

I would consider it a gain over alignment because I consider alignment to be an actively harmful mechanic. I also think most RPGs could benefit from from cutting down on their word count. So I would advise going through each section and making sure it contributes to the game.

Gender politics could be useful info in splat books for the different cultures, but not in the core rulebook.

[fectin]

I see two potential pitfalls to including anything more than Josh's points:

- "Let me tell you about my character" is already legally recognized as a form of torture. I would be leery of any game that encouraged people who already already talk about the sheer power of their elf's magic missile to also talk about how their elf sexually identifies as an octopus.

- It potentially does start having mechanical effects. Even if you are super-disciplined and never include gender as a keyword as soon as you start playing with someone who thinks sex-change belts are high comedy, non-binary gender is immediately the correct choice.

[Parthenon]

I guess it's because people generally see their gender as a more integral part of their personality than their fetishes. I mean, there are kinky things I like, but I can point at reasons I like them, whereas my gender is just who I am--even if I can point to the reasons I identify as genderqueer, those reasons are more of "that's what society calls a person with these traits"

Maybe I need to be less subtle. When I had a paragraph pointing out the similarities between gender identity and sexual fetish, and went on to say that your opinion that what you are interested in is more important is belittling other people's opinions, and that you should have solid and stated reasons for including one thing rather than another, maybe I should have been much clearer.

Or whatever, lets not get into that.

It seems to me that fetishes are a lot more personally or environmentally constructed/cultivated that gender identity is,

Now I'm really confused. I mean, I was confused before about gender politics concerning little details such as whether gay/lesbian is based on Person A with the sex of male is attracted to people of male sex, or whether it is person B with the self-identifying gender of male who is attracted to those who identify as male gender.

But with this and your earlier statements implying that gender is not cultivated or developed as people grow, now I don't have a clue what gender is.

I mean, I thought gender was a social construct which varies between cultures, and that gender identity is something which children picked up in early childhood. So it is hugely personally and environmentally cultivated/constructed, to a similar level as fetishes.

But I'm probably wrong.

I might even consider using only art that depicts pocs and fantasy species, because I seriously doubt that (many) white people would decide to not buy because it has no white characters depicted, and the ones who would make that decision are racist pricks who can suck a barrel of diverse cocks.

Something about this seems completely wrong to me.

It seems to me to be the same argument as you doubt that many women would refuse to buy video games because they have no female characters depicted, and the ones who would make that decision are sexist bitches.

Specifically keeping out white cisgender characters deliberately is bad because you are trying to be a better person than the bigots.

[Lokathor]

Specifically keeping out white cisgender characters deliberately is bad because you are trying to be a better person than the bigots.

Much less bad than you might think, because white cis people have a much larger portion of the representation pie elsewhere, so really it's fine. Basically the same reason we (ideally) tax higher income brackets more heavily. You have more, you can stand to lose a little more and still be well above the "good life" line.

[Prak]

I guess it's because people generally see their gender as a more integral part of their personality than their fetishes. I mean, there are kinky things I like, but I can point at reasons I like them, whereas my gender is just who I am--even if I can point to the reasons I identify as genderqueer, those reasons are more of "that's what society calls a person with these traits"

Maybe I need to be less subtle. When I had a paragraph pointing out the similarities between gender identity and sexual fetish, and went on to say that your opinion that what you are interested in is more important is belittling other people's opinions, and that you should have solid and stated reasons for including one thing rather than another, maybe I should have been much clearer.

So you think a character's fetishes are an integral part of them, and would come up in a game which isn't primarily focused on sex at least as much as gender identity would? Can you explain why?

It seems to me that fetishes are a lot more personally or environmentally constructed/cultivated that gender identity is,

Now I'm really confused. I mean, I was confused before about gender politics concerning little details such as whether gay/lesbian is based on Person A with the sex of male is attracted to people of male sex, or whether it is person B with the self-identifying gender of male who is attracted to those who identify as male gender.

But with this and your earlier statements implying that gender is not cultivated or developed as people grow, now I don't have a clue what gender is.

I mean, I thought gender was a social construct which varies between cultures, and that gender identity is something which children picked up in early childhood. So it is hugely personally and environmentally cultivated/constructed, to a similar level as fetishes.

But I'm probably wrong.

Gender is a social construct, and gender roles doubly so. However, a person's gender identity is mostly to wholly inherent, with some of it probably determined by their actual brain chemistry and some of it determined by the way they were brought up. The only way, as I* understand it, that gender identity is socially constructed is that we use the terms society gives us to express the way we are.

I might even consider using only art that depicts pocs and fantasy species, because I seriously doubt that (many) white people would decide to not buy because it has no white characters depicted, and the ones who would make that decision are racist pricks who can suck a barrel of diverse cocks.

Something about this seems completely wrong to me.

It seems to me to be the same argument as you doubt that many women would refuse to buy video games because they have no female characters depicted, and the ones who would make that decision are sexist bitches.

Specifically keeping out white cisgender characters deliberately is bad because you are trying to be a better person than the bigots.

I may have been too opaque.

It is demonstrable that having (real) diversity in art is only beneficial. I don't think that white people, however, would necessarily notice the lack of white humans in the book, and if they did, I think they'd merely think it was a bit peculiar, not necessarily alienating. I don't honestly know, though. That's pure armchair sociologist hypothesis, not an emperical statement.

*I could be entirely wrong about this.

edit:

Specifically keeping out white cisgender characters deliberately is bad because you are trying to be a better person than the bigots.

Much less bad than you might think, because white cis people have a much larger portion of the representation pie elsewhere, so really it's fine. Basically the same reason we (ideally) tax higher income brackets more heavily. You have more, you can stand to lose a little more and still be well above the "good life" line.

this.

[Voss]

Gender is a social construct, and gender roles doubly so. However, a person's gender identity is mostly to wholly inherent, with some of it probably determined by their actual brain chemistry and some of it determined by the way they were brought up. The only way, as I* understand it, that gender identity is socially constructed is that we use the terms society gives us to express the way we are.

OK, now I want to see a real study that even suggests this, with real people, real researchers and proper analysis. Because 'doubly socially constructed but inherent' sounds like twaddle. Especially since you immediately follow up with brain chemistry but also how they were brought up (which is social construction by definition).

Also the last sentence there (about terminology) is also clearly bullshit, since most of the terms you're throwing about are recent creations, and couldn't have had a hand in anyone's identity if they're over about 30. Or if they've never heard those particular terms, which, frankly, I'd say a lot of people haven't. And definitely not in their childhood when their gender identity is forming.

[Prak]

Sorry, by terms I mean the terms male and female.

I'm far from a scholar, and not exactly hooked into trans culture as a whole, so everything I'm saying is implicitly prefaced by "it seems to me," but what I'm saying is that I identify as partially female because I identify with a number qualities that are socially seen as feminine qualities. That's what I mean. Those qualities are one part the way my brain works, and one part the way I turned out by my surroundings, and they're called female by society so I identify as partially female.

[Voss]

... yeah, OK. I think you need to do some research. And by 'some,' I'm not entirely sure if I mean 'a lot' or 'any at all.' Writing a preemptive tolerance bit about the subject while neither scholarly or 'hooked in' is probably a bad idea.

But if you're about to tell me you partially identify as female because you like to cook or eat ice cream after a breakup, I think you need to get punched in the dick. Maybe you mean something else, but the American view of what falls under 'socially seen as a feminine qualities' almost always calls for a preemptive dick punching.

[Prak]

No, you see, I said qualities, not interests or habits.

[Voss]

No, you see, I said qualities, not interests or habits.

Now I want to know less.

[Prak]

Then stop fucking asking because I'm not in any mood to search for words for this shit. I started this fucking thread to get editing and proofreading on a spiel for my game, not represent the great transgender culture with my blind fucking fumblings in the ocean of heterosexuals and cis genders that is Sacramento.

[Voss]

But, as written, that is exactly what your 'spiel for your game' was.


When you straight up tell people that you have an interest in gender and sexual politics, people are going to think that you know something about it. Not just blind assumptions based on 'it seems to me.'

[Prak]

Are we really still fucking going over the idea that fetishes are as important to be mentioned as gender identities?

Is that what this is still about?

No, fuck that noise. Explicit inclusion of G/SMs is good, and can lead to interesting stories.

There is little to no reason to tell people "think about what your character gets off on."

[deaddmwalking]

Are we really still fucking going over the idea that fetishes are as important to be mentioned as gender identities?

Is that what this is still about?

No, fuck that noise. Explicit inclusion of G/SMs is good, and can lead to interesting stories.

There is little to no reason to tell people "think about what your character gets off on."

Let's preface this with a big It seems to me...

Inclusiveness is good. I don't think anyone here disagrees with that. There are lots of ways to include people in your game. Some of the Pathfinder adventures did that in a good way. For example, they had a Lawful Good Paladin that was a homosexual male. They mentioned his romantic attraction to another NPC and that was it. But it was inclusive and supported the narrative of the game.

As the game designer, there are a lot of things that you're simply not going to be able to include as examples. While you may recognize that gender identity is not a simple dichotomy, it's hard to include it in the game without sounding preachy (something that you seem to want to avoid).

That said, you don't have to have a major section on 'it's totally okay to be whatever gender you want - even those that aren't always accepted. Like female hyenas'. You want to 'cut to the chase'. So if you have a section that talks about completing the character sheet, you mention that gender can include a lot of things beyond primary sexual characteristics.

Players will ultimately decide what's important. Gender identity is unlikely to be important to most of your players (the majority of whom are likely to identify as cis-gendered white males). Fetishes are also unlikely to be important to most of your players.

But as the game designer, you don't know which ones are which. When you try specifically to be 'inclusive' you are going to be limited in which groups you can 'shout out' to. You definitely don't want to be associated with 'token representation'.

So, think for a moment about what you do for 'race' or 'physical description'. How do you address the multitude of skin tones that are available. Do you have a shout out that Heimdall can totally be a black dude despite being part of a Nordic pantheon? Empowering players in a variety of ways is possible in the character creation section. But it won't take much before you hit 'too much'. And with this issue being particularly important to you, it's going to be very easy to go into more detail that is actually helpful.

So, take a step back. What do you want to do? It sounds like you want to let players know that gender is a fluid term and they can make a selection beyond a binary male/female.

If that's what you're going for, you direct that to the players in the 'gender' description.

If you feel that a larger description of how gender if a fluid term with magic, you might want to append that to a section describing shapechanging magic. You'd likely just point out that with shapechanging magic being readily available, you can permanently alter appearance and gender at any time. This does have profound effects on the setting... The question of 'was this guy once really a woman' really doesn't mean anything - even in a biological sense - because you can just as easily ask 'was this woman once an awakened sheep'?

Outside of adventures and scenarios (which will really flesh out your campaign more than the basic rules), gender isn't going to be a major facet (since very few rules interact with it - THANKFULLY). Since there isn't much rules text involved in gender selection, you just need to make sure players understand that they can pick ANYTHING, just like with eye colors (even colors that don't exist in nature). Having red eyes as the result of a demon ancestor 4 generations back isn't any more of an issue than choosing to play a transgendered individual - it comes down to player choice. So make it explicit to the players that they can choose ANYTHING for gender, and leave the rest for later.

When you're making NPCs and other characters, making positive characters that possess alternative gender identities, you'll do more for your particular cause than any lecture.

[Mord]

Much less bad than you might think, because white cis people have a much larger portion of the representation pie elsewhere, so really it's fine.

Perhaps you've heard the adage that "there's no such thing as reverse racism, just racism." Though I recognize and understand your intentions, you are espousing a racist point of view, one that is segregationist in its implications.

It's nonconstructive, nonprogressive, and I recommend you reconsider.

Gender _____

Pick a gender for your character. This can be any gender you want. It can be Male or Female or it can be something else. Note that in the real world there are many people who identify as something other than simply Male or Female and more than you might think who have physiology which is not clearly in either category. In a fantasy world with cultures of plant-people, sentient rocks, hivemind bee-people, amorphous shapeshifters and body-jumping psychic entities, gender can be a whole lot more varied than the binary gender often erroneously assumed in the contemporary western world of reality. Sometimes thinking in depth about alternate physiologies, fantastic modes of reproduction and the cultures that could result from such can provide a unique hook to build a character around.

Whatever you choose for your character's gender, it has no mechanical effect on your character's stats or abilities, although it may change what other characters in the setting expect of your character

I'm adding my voice to the chorus that has already said Josh's blurb is best. If you spend more than a paragraph talking about gender in the main character creation rules, you're soapboxing without contributing anything to the play experience.

[tussock]

talk about how their elf sexually identifies as an octopus

SUBSCRIBE.

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Prak, it's your game, you want a 20 page intro about gender roles in light of grand changes to the world, do it. Serious.

I take back my initial position of brevity and vaguery because what I'm seeing here is a bunch of normative folk thinking the world be more normative and subtle about it's inclusivity. You know what, make your sample characters all the colours of the rainbow, and if that's not enough do the double rainbow.

You don't need to include strait white men at all, we're everywhere and no one even likes Regdar. 5e's proud their Fighter's a black woman, and good on them catching up on Pathfinder (maybe they can find space for Black people in the FR now, outside Chult somewhere). But where are the paraplegic genderfluid Polynesian Wizards on their Floating Disks? Hmm? Why does Remove Curse leave everyone of female sex? Hmm? Why hasn't your character tried out the Alter Self game? Oh, you're just asexual, cool. But what's more tasteful in general, reducing yourself, enlarging the Halfling, or neither? Hmm? So many questions.

[Prak]

The tasteful thing, when broaching the subject of magical assistance with a partner of a different size category, is to discuss with your partner which they would prefer.

I'm going to take another run at the spiel, but later.

[Korwin]

@animea90: I can't for the life of me figure out why you're only interested in fucking straight women, and I can't imagine an answer that won't make me angry.

Yes, bi women needs to get on the list too.
Well, lesbian women, if there is an short term transformational magic at hand.