Wizards of the Coast Noticing Women: A Preview of Gender in D&D 4
May 2008 Issue
Features
- From the Editors
- Craft Check: Crafts Revisited
- Gaming in the Media: How Can Grand Theft Auto Transition from Base Entertainment to Art?
Articles
- Gender & Live-Action Role Play: Into Monster Camp
Author: Samara Hayley Steele
In this ongoing series, Samara shares her experiences as a female LARPer in a male-dominated LARP organization.
In an IRIS retrospective, Olivia recaps some of the more memorable milestones of the past year.
Robyn shares her thoughts on a recent preview of D&D 4th Edition, held by Wizards of the Coast in Los Angeles, California.
Gamer Stories
Reviews
- Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII
- Ikariam
- Retro Review: Final Fantasy VI
Odds 'n Ends
I’ve been playing Dungeons & Dragons since I was six or seven years old, and have been a feminist for about that long. It’s easy to imagine, then, how thrilled I was to see steps towards greater inclusion of women – as both characters and players – in the 3rd edition source books for D&D, and with what excitement I have watched the continuing development of the D&D franchise in recent years. D&D’s earliest incarnations were rife with casual sexism, but since the franchise was taken over by Wizards of the Coast there has been a visible trend towards inclusion and gender equality. Feminine pronouns have been utilized in sourcebooks, female characters have been used as archetypes, and while some regressive, chain-mail-bikini-esque artifacts have remained in the art and writing of some newer D&D products, Dungeons & Dragons as a whole is getting better and better from a feminist perspective.
The approach of the 4th edition of D&D has, in many ways, seemed to promise further progress. With the publication of Shelly Mazzanoble’s Confessions of a Part-Time Sorceress: A Girl’s Guide to the Dungeons & Dragons Game, Wizards of the Coast made an explicit overture to the hitherto-ignored demographic of potential female players. Many existing female players found the focus, tone and even the existence of the book insulting, arguing – among other things – that Confessions paints a picture of inherent gender differences in style of play where none truly exist, thereby contributing to the ongoing “othering” of women in gaming culture. But regardless of one’s opinion of the text itself, the publication of a book about D&D written by a woman and for women is certainly a signal of WotC’s sincerity in courting female players.
I have taken WotC’s attention to this magazine as further evidence of a sincere interest in increasing the number of women playing D&D, and I was absolutely delighted when I was invited to attend an informational meeting about 4th Edition and the related web applications with Bill Slavicsek, Scott Rouse and Chris Youngs in LA. I packed my Cerise business cards, my note-taking equipment and, just in case, a set of dice (you never know!) and headed off.
My husband and I decided to get a little extra mileage from the trip and visited with his parents for a few days before we were due in LA. While I was hiding out in the guest bedroom one evening (I mean, “working”), I checked in on the Iris forums, and learned about Jonathan Tweet’s blog post responding to Robin D. Laws’s summary of a “Why does gaming appeal mostly to guys?” panel. Tweet (a game designer who was instrumental in the development of the 3rd edition of D&D) has since removed his post, but, since the internet has an extremely long memory, excerpts survive:
Roleplaying, as currently construed, appeals disproportionately to guys because it’s mostly about the things that men evolved to enjoy: hunting and warfare. It’s about a group assembling to undertake (imaginary) risks for glory and dominance. It’s the same reason that team sports, such as basketball, are more male, whereas women compete to be judged beautiful and worthy (ice skating, gymnastics)…LARPing has more female appeal because it’s more about personalities, relationships, clothing, and make-up.
- Jonathan Tweet, as quoted in “Personally, I hate glory and dominance.”
Tweet wasn’t speaking as an official spokesperson of Wizards of the Coast, but he was writing on his Gleemax blog under his Wizards of the Coast handle, “WotC_JoT.” Like many other fans of roleplaying in general and D&D in particular, I was both appalled and disappointed by Tweet’s assertions. And though I was still excited to have the opportunity to learn more about what the new version of D&D will bring, reading the words of a Wizards of the Coast staffer who apparently believes that my reproductive organs render me unfit to truly appreciate anything that doesn’t involve makeup did rather take the shine off things.
Fortunately, what Slavicsek, Rouse and Youngs had to show me renewed most of my enthusiasm. Slavicsek and Rouse began by giving an overview of how D&D 4 will build upon ideas and traditions from earlier editions, but with a heightened focus on cooperative gameplay and “turning up the fun.” I was pleased to hear that the new edition is designed to make gameplay easier on the Dungeon Master and faster for everyone with a more streamlined approach to combat. But we quickly moved on from a discussion of the analog content of 4th Ed. to the real focus of the presentation: the digital content.
Youngs had been fiddling with the D&D Insider virtual miniature builder from the start of the meeting, designing and tweaking a sample character. I had been primed from early screenshots to be unimpressed with the possibilities, but as Youngs enthusiastically showed me the versatile slider bars and variety of accessories available for making your miniature look just so, I started to feel a cautious optimism about the application. Then he showed me that you can make anything – jewelry, weapons, even hair – glow, and I was completely won over.
The dungeon builder application has a similar awesomeness factor, as well as a level of basic utility that I found very appealing. Digital versions of the sorts of patterned tiles that I use in my game already can be dragged and dropped to create dungeons quickly and easily. Adjustable light levels add a great touch of atmosphere, and the DM can also outline areas of the map – such as rooms behind closed doors – that won’t be visible to players right away. Subscribers to D&D Insider will be able to use pre-made dungeons as well as making their own, and will also have the option of sharing their creations with others.
Gameplay in the digital dungeon will be much like that at a physical gaming table, with a few benefits unique to cyberspace. First among these, of course, is that players will be able to get together for a game despite physical distance. Communication will be enhanced with voice and text chat support, and players will be able to meet up with each other for pre-arranged games or hang out in a virtual lobby looking for an impromptu adventure.
Once a game is in progress, the table can be saved at any time for later continuation, and the virtual miniatures will be in no danger from cats or toddlers (unlike the miniatures on my analog gaming table…). I was curious about how much the actual gameplay would be automated, and asked if it will still be possible for Dungeon Masters to cheat (not that I have ever, ever done this, of course), and was assured that though there will be tools like a dice roller and an initiative tracker on the virtual table, the rules will be DM-adjudicated, just as in a traditional game.
As interesting as all of the preview material was, though, what I was really eager to learn more about was how gender will be treated throughout all of the products that make up the 4th edition of D&D. I asked about the text of the new sourcebooks, and was told that gender neutral language is the rule (with a mix of feminine and masculine pronouns when applicable), and that there are lots of female example characters.
But what about the art? When I expressed a lack of enthusiasm for the design of the female character on the cover of the new Player’s Handbook, Slavicsek told me that, “we do want characters that are fun to look at.” He compared character design in D&D to the virtual representations of characters in The Matrix, saying that it isn’t about practicality, but rather about looking cool.
Well, yes. But there seem to be markedly different kinds of “looking cool” and “fun to look at” in most RPG art, and the female version involves less armor and more contorted poses, more often than not. But though I remain deeply unimpressed by the choice of cover design, Rouse showed me a few of the interior images on his laptop, and – from what I saw – female characters seem to get less sexualized treatment on the whole in the interior art. There were a few character designs that made me roll my eyes (a woman wearing leggings with what appeared to be skin-baring cut-outs all the way down the backs of the legs, for example), but there were also some strong, capable-looking women in serious armor.
And the miniature designer application from D&D Insider looks like it can be used to create almost anyone’s vision of cool. Weight sliders can take your character from extremely thin through athletic and muscular to portly (though not quite all the way to fat – yet). Skin tone and facial feature options make it possible to design characters with a wide variety of apparent ethnicities. You can choose from many, many clothing and accessory options, as well as scars and tattoos. Slavicsek, emphasizing that a lot of the Insider content will change over time to reflect what the community wants, talked about how feedback from players could result in even more variability in character design. And, of course, there’s the ability to make anything glow, which I still think is super-awesome.
As Tweet’s blog post so unfortunately reminded me, women who play RPGs still aren’t really being taken seriously by gaming culture at large. But Wizards of the Coast does seem to be taking notice of us, and considering ways to better appeal to female gamers. And though Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition probably isn’t going to give me everything I could have hoped for in terms of the treatment of gender, there’s still a lot to be excited about.
Chris Youngs, Scott Rouse, the author, Bill Slavicsek and the author’s husband.
