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Post by scottcarter on Aug 25, 2015 6:07:59 GMT -8
How does the presentation of a game (be it layout, art, fiction, rules explanation, etc.) effect your interest in that game? What can publishers do or not do to diversify appeal in RPG products? What are some examples of products that appeal to you and why do they?
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Post by Forresst on Aug 25, 2015 10:39:32 GMT -8
Gay white female here. It's pretty simple and not very new, but if I look at an RPG and see nothing but dudes, or if the only women I see are chain bikini'd j-cup ladies whose purpose seems more to titillate than kick ass, I'm going to think that the game in question isn't for me. I want to be able to relate to the characters I see, and have some implied empathy for the situations the game might present to me. And for god's sake, PLEASE don't put just one of something in. Women can and do travel in packs, it's not like a lioness pride where one woman has 3-7 men around, presumably for mating purposes.
I get more excited about a game when there are a variety of skin tones and physical types represented in artwork. Again, avoid tokenism, but like... it's more interesting to me if there's a lot of variety. I know enough white people, I live in Alberta, Canada, it's pretty white around here.
As for rules explanations, I really enjoy quick-reference charts. It's cool to have big paragraph explanations of stuff I suppose, but if I'm just looking for the modifiers from a specific score range or whatever, then just give me a little box with 5 lines and the information.
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sbloyd
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Post by sbloyd on Aug 25, 2015 11:53:37 GMT -8
Bechdel test! Bechdel test!
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maxinstuff
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Post by maxinstuff on Aug 25, 2015 16:10:15 GMT -8
As a white male - it's clear that publishers should just include one of every ethnic and gender persuasion. People who produce corporate propaganda have known this for years. It's even better when the content you produce is unintentionally racist and/or sexist as a direct result of attempts to be inclusive. Jokes aside, I worked for an American corporate here in Oz which was especially good at this. When watching a training video about preventing money laundering: > the phone operater was a black female > the accountant was Asian (also female) > Hispanic cleaner in the background (female) > the boss was, of course, a middle aged white male. The only male in the whole video. > the person who fucked everything up by being lazy was a woman (I don't remember what her job was). On the other hand, take the cover of the Spinward marches book: It has everything but everyone looks like they have a purpose. The females are dressed as you'd expect any traveller for hire would be. Except that Droyne sitting there staring into the middle distance. No one plays Droyne and no one likes them either. No wonder the imperium quarantined their planet/s. We should send them to special camps or something.
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D.T. Pints
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Post by D.T. Pints on Aug 27, 2015 6:26:31 GMT -8
Gay white female here. It's pretty simple and not very new, but if I look at an RPG and see nothing but dudes, or if the only women I see are chain bikini'd j-cup ladies whose purpose seems more to titillate than kick ass, I'm going to think that the game in question isn't for me. I want to be able to relate to the characters I see, and have some implied empathy for the situations the game might present to me. And for god's sake, PLEASE don't put just one of something in. Women can and do travel in packs, it's not like a lioness pride where one woman has 3-7 men around, presumably for mating purposes. I get more excited about a game when there are a variety of skin tones and physical types represented in artwork. Again, avoid tokenism, but like... it's more interesting to me if there's a lot of variety. I know enough white people, I live in Alberta, Canada, it's pretty white around here. As for rules explanations, I really enjoy quick-reference charts. It's cool to have big paragraph explanations of stuff I suppose, but if I'm just looking for the modifiers from a specific score range or whatever, then just give me a little box with 5 lines and the information. Forresst have you interacted much with the Contessa Con people ? Everything that I have had a chance to get involved with that they do has been a lot of fun. Anyway... www.contessa.rocks/contessa/And though many do not care they just won an Ennie for best Blog. And finally you should really hop in on the Traveller character generation with that aussie dwarf bastard...that way we will have a North American alliance to balance out all this Commonwealth aggression. .
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SirGuido
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Post by SirGuido on Aug 27, 2015 9:20:24 GMT -8
As a curved white male, I generally look for a good game. Presentation doesn't generally affect my interest unless its just plain rude. If its fairly clear that its presented with real biases toward race, gender, sexual interest or proclivities, or any other category really... I generally steer clear. I don't push biases onto it either though. For example I don't look at the Pathfinder races section and see racial bonuses as wrong or get angry that the sketches of races include nothing but "white" people. Could they have put more thought into that part? Sure. Does it mean that they are racist? I doubt it.
edit: Oh, and I commented with "curved white male" because I think that excluding "straight white males" in your post is just as bad as if someone were to exclude "transgender latino females" in theirs.
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tomes
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Post by tomes on Aug 27, 2015 10:02:32 GMT -8
edit: Oh, and I commented with "curved white male" because I think that excluding "straight white males" in your post is just as bad as if someone were to exclude "transgender latino females" in theirs. I disagree with that. The post is seeking out the opinion of those that aren't coming from a place of (the current P-word) privilege. No, it doesn't mean you are bad, it just means you are the "norm" in regards to most things in this particular society (white = norm, male = norm, hetero = norm). Again, doesn't mean you are racist, or a homophobe, it just means that this person wants opinions from those who don't come from that point of view. (and that doesn't mean don't contribute... contributing is great; silence = bad; but complaining about someone wanting that point of view isn't really necessary or constructive, IMO).
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SirGuido
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Post by SirGuido on Aug 27, 2015 10:30:58 GMT -8
I wasn't complaining, I was explaining why I posted when he expressly asked that I not.
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Post by Kainguru on Aug 27, 2015 10:51:18 GMT -8
Except that Droyne sitting there staring into the middle distance. No one plays Droyne and no one likes them either. No wonder the imperium quarantined their planet/s. We should send them to special camps or something. You mean they're all X-Factor finalists? . . . . Aaron
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D.T. Pints
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Post by D.T. Pints on Aug 27, 2015 14:30:21 GMT -8
Statistically speaking we have failed the OP's request . Definitely hit up Contessa Con on G+...
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sbloyd
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Post by sbloyd on Aug 27, 2015 15:10:34 GMT -8
The forums _are_ a sausage fest.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 28, 2015 0:56:26 GMT -8
How would you feel if I asked the same question and said women, non-white people, and non-straight people's opinions were not wanted? I'd look like a giant bigot wouldn't I? Imagine I wrote this post starting like that. Does it make you mad? That's how I felt reading your post. I wrote a bigger post that got my anger across more than it did my intent. So I deleted it. This isn't the first time I wrote something and deleted it either. I feel like this gets my meaning across best of all the things I've written so far though. I hope it brings my perspective across.
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Post by Kainguru on Aug 28, 2015 3:44:20 GMT -8
Quite frankly any sort of segregation, 'positive' or 'negative', is bad and contributes towards the failure of the group with respect to 'inclusiveness'. More specifically, if fails because it makes broad and sweeping assumptions: that a target population can be identified by a set of imaginary and consistent identifiers that have nothing to do with belonging to the original discriminators of the target population. It puts people in boxes, it tries to label them in the worst way possible while paying lip service to 'inclusivity' ie: you have gender preference x/belong to racial group y therefore you must like z 'because all x/y like z'. It's as bad as the racial/gender/sexuality slights of old that should no loner be tolerated eg: 'all black men can dance and have big cocks', 'all women want babies and can multitask' and 'all homosexual men love musical theater and all homosexual women wear comfortable shoes'. It's bigoted, naval gazing, excluding horse shit . . . we are either altogether, mutually tolerant, mutually respectful, mutually understanding, able to accept each others differences and agree to disagree on specific issues (as the need arises eg: 'who do vote for' etc) or we remain adverserially tribal - in which case our species is fucked as we sow the seeds to our own self extinction . . . A good real world example: my gay work college loves the band 'Little Mix' with a passion that borders on obsession whilst I have been a longtime fan of (early) 'Jethro Tull' (the band not a the agricultural engineer). What does this inform any outside observer regarding gender/age difference (the discriminators) preferences? absolutely nothing. There are young/gay fans of 'Jethro Tull' and old grumpy fart fans of 'Little Mix' - preferences beyond the original discriminators are not subject to being dictated by belonging to one discrete group or another. It's more often than not that any happenstance/anecdotal observations are more the product of attribution errors (confirmation bias) rather than actual statistical phenomena contributing to the identified problem rather than positively trying to resolve it. In an ideal world we should all be gender/gender preference/morphic phenotype/ethnic origin blind/etc etc . . . as more contemporary social psychology models would have it: we are all unique beings-in-the-world who construct our own unique perspectives and experiences from this being-in-the-world that cannot easily be separated and subject to critical/impartial evaluation. More specifically we are all so different in this subjective experience that we tend to have more discriminators that differ than correlate between persons when attempting to attribute 'shared membership' of a narrowly defined population. Aaron
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Post by fredrix on Aug 28, 2015 13:25:58 GMT -8
Well, I think a few of these responses have been very unfair to the OP, who only wanted to ask a question of a limited subset of society. Researches do this all the time - doctors researching the symptoms of the the second trimester to pregnancy don't send questionnaires to blokes. My own organisations sometimes surveys only people over 45, and sometimes only people between 13 -25. Admittedly, he could have gone about his research with a modicum more tact, but seriously guys, some of these responses don't show us hetro-normative patriarchs ( ) in a good light.
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sbloyd
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Post by sbloyd on Aug 28, 2015 13:43:02 GMT -8
I totally understand why he's asking. It's just... there's not a whole lot of non- cis/white/male people here. There's Forresst and Kimi and druggeddwarf and that just about sums up everyone I can think of off the top of my head. Yes, we do get more women than Forresst and Kimi, but in terms of regulars... This sort of question might get a lot more traction on reddit, or even better, the RPG.net forums.
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