The Butterfly Gender Effect
By The Warden
Whoops! That’s the reaction I had when I found out about the little faux paus Wizards of the Coast made recently with one of their D&D Next polls when they included the option for the next game to include level limits based on race and stat restrictions according to gender. I never saw the poll when it first came out; my discovery came from the reaction from various people on Twitter.
It must be frustrating when you write about magic all day long to realize you don’t have access to time travel to go back and fix those public relations boo-boos. Though they did try their best with the “glitch” excuse, but that’s neither here nor there. This event has brought up the evolution of sex and race in RPGs. And by sex, I’m not talking about the Book of Erotic Fantasy.
The Rise of Women in Gaming
When tabletop gaming such as role-playing games started out, males were the target audience. While there likely wasn’t much market research at the time demonstrating men as the only interested party, this decision was probably made according to the choices taken by the games’ creators (all men), it was generally assumed any game involving violence, swords, and monsters would only appeal to males. RPGs were considered toys and boys got to play with action figures; girls had Barbie. Kiss all that goodbye today.
I remember the first time I sat down at a table with a girl (since she was 17, the term “girl” applies) was at a convention in Peterborough, Ontario almost twenty years ago. It was also when I met Ed Greenwood when he attended a Forgotten Realms Q&A dressed as Elminster, but I’m straying off course here. It took me a bit to overcome my shock that she wasn’t there waiting for her boyfriend to finish up so she could go home, she was there with dice in hand and an elf on her character sheet. And she knew the rules! Maybe she was actually cute, but that cuteness was heightened when she uttered the phrase “Can I roll to see if there’s a secret door in this passage?” without asking how to perform said action. Then she told me I looked like an elf and I realized elves must look like open-mouthed idiots who’ve never seen a girl before.
In time, I’ve played with quite a few women and the shock has all but worn off to the point that I’ve even detested playing with one because she attacked me with a confusion spell for attacking a “helpless” kobold. The point I’m getting at is that the target audience was way off and the games have changed over time to suit the modern gamer.
Early editions of RPGs provided alternate stats for male and female characters, hence the majority of focus towards the recent controversy. Regardless of the science behind these modifiers, providing limitations for female character versus their male counterparts was no longer a valid option and all characters were allowed the same builds regardless of sex. With the rise of female police officers, doctors, politicians, hockey players, firefighters and world leaders, society frowned upon those who insinuated women had limitations in any way. The only gender variations you’ll find today consist of story elements, such as the infamous drow and their matriarchal society.
Race and Role-playing
What struck me as odd was the reaction to racial limitations in gaming. While the majority of opinions I read were not fond of level limitations based on race (which I agree with – I hated that my dwarf could only go so high as a fighter of all classes), there were some who spoke out against the idea of racial modifiers as if they were discriminatory.
Races exist in nearly every RPG on the market and perform two functions, each of them allowing players to complete each task quickly and efficiently: describe an overall background and history for their character, plus grant certain augmentations suitable to other choices in character generation, such as class. They are shorthand for presenting your character to your friends and can be left as a stereotype or expanded into a rich exception to the rule. (Drizzt Do’urdun is not your typical drow and no drow is like the famed ranger.) Fantasy games fall back on the tried-and-true of the genre with a few additions of their own design (elves, dwarves, gnomes, etc.), science fiction games turn to alien races from different planets, even structured RPGs like Vampire use bloodlines to differentiate between ancestry through statistical variety and powers (are you a Brujah or a Tremere?). Character race allows players to spice up their creations with individuality through more than just class and equipment.
The funny thing about race in RPGs is that they seem to encourage racism in the game. But safe racism, if you can use that term, because none of these races actually exist to be offended. There hasn’t been a D&D game yet in my 25 years of gaming that hasn’t had slurs tossed between members of opposite races. Even the one I play right now has my dwarf bantering with the elven ranger, who is AMAZINGLY racist and that’s part of his character. He trusts only the elves as the truly just and benevolent creatures in the world, a belief stemmed from spending his first 500 years surrounded by nothing but elves. Mind you, my character isn’t much better because my dwarf believes he is Moradin, the Dwarf-father, as the result of a horrific head wound and proclaims his dwarves to be perfect, as any parent would swoon about a child.
Race is like any other component of character creation; it’s a cheat sheet for development, background, and physical stature. It fills the same role as class, but with a more personal focus towards potential childhood and social values. It’s the equivalent of saying I’m Canadian. While I may be human in actuality, this tiny detail offers a variety of expectation from strangers combining stereotype and historical or geographical fact. For example, it’s safe to say Canadians can handle colder climates than a South American. If I were going to make Canadian a race in an RPG, I would give them a +2 bonus to rolls against cold damage and cold-related effects. The problem is publishing such mechanics for all nationalities in a real-world setting. It’s what makes race mechanics as tricky (and dangerous) as gender mechanics – you can’t always use them. What publisher would risk building race mechanics for a real world RPG? The outcry over any concept of an African race over a Caucasian race would be damning.
Simultaneously, race can place a restriction on certain games as players who have played with traditional forms of a race find themselves unable to break from those traditions. How many of us still look at halflings as little thieves? John Wick has put together a few expansions for Pathfinder through Kobold Quarterly as well as his own Wicked Fantasy line with the central purpose of revamping tried and true – and tired – concepts in these races.
Evolution…?
Modern race design has strayed from building a “balanced” race of bonuses and penalties and restrictions to an assembly of modifiers suitable to a race’s homeland, feature powers or abilities, and bonus feats. Race has become a tool to enhance your existing character, including humans, once nothing more than a plain Jane, nothing out of the ordinary design. The first revamp of fictional humans I ever saw was in FASA’s Earthdawn line, granting humans an ability called Versatility to gain powers from other circles (AKA classes).
Ironically enough, while race is – and always has been – designed to simplify the character creation process while simultaneously allowing players to expand upon the recommendations as they and their DM saw fit. Yet in an ever growing and expanding genre, the role of race design has created more controversy than other concepts of a game as one of the less adaptable functions in a typical RPG. (Though the upcoming Dungeon Crawl Classic RPG does delve back into classic designs with a level-based racial class for dwarves, elves, and halflings.) Race is to RPGs what Jar Jar Binks is to Star Wars: a great generational divide where all fans separate themselves according to where they fit within their definition of the medium.