maxinstuff
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Post by maxinstuff on Mar 18, 2012 17:56:17 GMT -8
So the girl gamer twitter war that Kimi had reminded me of an episode of 'Postcards from the Dungeon' Ep. 14 (go listen to it) where they spoke about the Bechdel test. And it is something that I found useful to ensure the female characters I include in my worlds are better rounded characters than they might otherwise be....
The test goes like this and is normally applied to movies, books etc:
> Are there at least two, named female characters? > Do these female characters get to interact/speak with each other? > Do they talk about something other than the male characters (especially their relationships with them)?
This is really easy in most fantastical settings - where gender is usually an afterthought with minimal impact on characterisation. You can usually get away with 'zomg! not enough female characters! OK - X, Y and Z charactes are now female - done.'
The value of this for me is that it can alert me if I have created a 'boys-club' world where the only females in existence are bar wenches/whores, token female villains (for your female PC to fight of course), and the male characters mothers.
Does anyone else do anything to make sure there are meaningful female characters in your games? Does it matter to you and your group?
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HyveMynd
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Post by HyveMynd on Mar 18, 2012 18:48:46 GMT -8
I don't know what this says about me psychologically, but I usually have to use a reversed version of the Bedchel test. Meaning that when GMing, I have to make a conscious effort to ensure that there are a decent number of interesting male characters represented in my game words. Maybe it's me unconsciously overcompensating for the perceived lack of interesting, three dimensional female characters in most game settings. I first noticed this when I was setting up my Changeling game a while back. I was coming up with all these cool NPCs for the players to interact with and it suddenly hit me that, hey, four out of every five NPCs I'd created were women. (OK, one of them was a post-op transexual, but she was a woman now.) They were all major players in the world with distinct personalities and goals, and none of them were the typical "bar wenches" or "female villains" you so often encounter. I'm a (not so) closeted Xena: Warrior Princess fan, and none of the female characters I create woud be considered "weak".
It's also worth noting however, that I usually play as female PCs (read into that what you will). Frankly, I think the concept of a same-sex PC group is horrendously boring, and am often the only one in my group willing to play as a woman. It's gotten to the point where the other players are surprised if I showed up with a male PC. Heh.
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maxinstuff
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Post by maxinstuff on Mar 18, 2012 19:15:42 GMT -8
It's also worth noting however, that I usually play as female PCs (read into that what you will). Well, clearly you are a lesbian trapped in a man's body.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Mar 19, 2012 4:15:16 GMT -8
I never thought of applying the Bechdel test to an RPG!
Let me think. Basically, the NPCs are largely the inhabitants of the homebase space station. Head of the Scouts, female... the junior of the two naval officers, female... shop owner, female... I think that's it for the NPCs with whom they've interacted. Although the archeologist down on the planet is also female.
Technically, I don't pass, because I'm not sure any of them have spoken to each other. But, to be fair, none of my NPCs have had many conversations with each other.
It does highlight for me that I still made the majority of my NPCs to be male. Hrm...
--Pukka Tukka
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Post by jazzisblues on Mar 19, 2012 7:11:45 GMT -8
I don't usually even think about whether npcs are of a particular gender. They are simply the gender that fits the situation and the story. Interesting to me that people think about this or that it's an issue. Hmmmmm ... Curious ... Wonder what that says about me, and not sure I even want to know really.
JiB
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clanhanna
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Post by clanhanna on Mar 19, 2012 8:29:39 GMT -8
The game I'm currently running has three female players (playing female characters) and one male player (playing a male character). As far as Bechdel test goes for the PCs, that's entirely on the players.
As for the NPCs that I create for them to interact with, I will admit that I tend to make male characters more often, because it is just easier for me to portray various male characters. I have a very limited capacity to portray female characters. This is a flaw of mine, I'm aware of it, and occasionally I stretch myself to try to overcome it.
Funny thing is, I'm more adept at portraying effeminate male characters than female characters of any kind, regardless of whether they be butch, bimbo, or anything in between.
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Post by ayslyn on Mar 19, 2012 11:55:11 GMT -8
I never thought of applying the Bechdel test to an RPG! Because it's a remarkably bad idea... For this very reason.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 19, 2012 12:52:17 GMT -8
Yeah my NPCs rarely talk to each other so the second two parts of the test never happen. Also I tend to avoid female NPCs not to be sexist but because I'm bad enough at accents as it is, trying to pull off a woman is outside my abilities. But listing the few I have made.
There was the Thri'Kreen Madam of a brothel in Raam who hired the party to ensure her idiot son did not escape prison, as well as smuggling him some of the drug he was addicted too to help keep him from trying to escape.
The half elven leader of a small street gang in Tyr who was trying to overthrow a larger more brutal gang both for revenge and so she could better protect her neighborhood. She also happened to be in love with a ner'do well elf whose father had sent the party to find him.
Recently their was a somewhat religious zealot of a druid who attempted to kill the party after one of them mentioned that the curse that was upon him wasn't all that bad in his mind. He'd became a Thrax, a water vampire, and as a Thri'Kreen the idea of being able to drink his prey without having to first chew them up appealed to him. He looks at pretty much everyone as a possible food source anyway so it hasn't effected him on the emotional level the way it did another party member who has been going slowly insane dealing with his vile cravings to feast on people.
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maxinstuff
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Post by maxinstuff on Mar 19, 2012 14:40:28 GMT -8
I don't usually even think about whether npcs are of a particular gender. They are simply the gender that fits the situation and the story. Interesting to me that people think about this or that it's an issue. Hmmmmm ... Curious ... Wonder what that says about me, and not sure I even want to know really. JiB I don't think you sould be trying to make sure your game 'passes' in some way. Some games might have good reasons for having a lack of female characters - like a modern day commando team. It is more of a litmus test for your female characters - to see if you are ensuring that: a) women exist in some way other than as wenches and PC's mums b) that these characters are not all completely 2 dimensional The Bechdel test isn't actually measuring if a game 'wins' some imaginary vagina measuring contest - it just guages the level of representation given to this group which happens to comprise 50% of the human population (adjust for setting I guess). This might be high representation or low - and if the level you want suits your game setting/plot then all the better. Also - There's no reason you can't have 2 dimensional female characters in your game at all (fun!) - alot of male NPC's are likely the same. But if every single woman in existence in your game world after 5 sessions has been either a prostitute or your mum - you might have a sausage fest on your hands (and you should roll for anal circumference immeadiately).
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Post by ayslyn on Mar 19, 2012 19:16:31 GMT -8
It's a silly metric, though. Do you gauge how close to n% elves are in your party?
Sure, theoretically 50% of the population should be female. That doesn't mean that exactly half of the people you meet will be female (or male, for that matter).
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maxinstuff
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Post by maxinstuff on Mar 20, 2012 0:58:09 GMT -8
It's a silly metric, though. Do you gauge how close to n% elves are in your party? Sure, theoretically 50% of the population should be female. That doesn't mean that exactly half of the people you meet will be female (or male, for that matter). Not at all - but surely it averages out over time? This isn't really what the test is for though - it is meant to get you thinking about how active females are as participants in the world - not measure n%. Women might be completely irrelevant except as brood mares in some settings. In others they might control everything that matters. Neither of these are bad per se.
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HyveMynd
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Post by HyveMynd on Mar 20, 2012 5:38:24 GMT -8
Well, clearly you are a lesbian trapped in a man's body. I already came to that very same conclusion a long time ago. ;D I agree that you can't really use the Bechdel test exactly as it's presented, since NPCs don't often talk to each other. Or rather good GMs don't let NPCs talk to each other too often or for too long. I also agree that sometimes it isn't that big of a deal if there isn't a lot of diversity in people's imaginary game worlds. However, I do think that people should at least think about how gender, race, and ethnicity are represented in their games. RPGs need to attract new blood to survive as a hobby, and doing that means making it more accessible to a wider audience. One way to do that is to include diverse characters that players from different social, ethnic, and gender groups can identify with. Of course this won't have much of an impact in your home games. It's the big name publishers that could really make a difference with this. I tend to think that we populate our imaginary worlds with people who are basically like us. Or rather how we see ourselves. Unless we make a conscious effort to make a different type of person, that is. This is getting a bit off the gender track, but back in high school all my closest friends were of mixed ethnicity (like myself) but looked decidedly African American (where I look pretty Caucasian). I GMed several sessions of the old West End Star Wars D6 game for them, and being art majors, they all drew character portraits. When I looked over the sheets to note down their stats I noticed something; all their character portraits looked... well, black. It blew me away at first, and then I was suddenly like "Well, no shit dummy". That's how they saw themselves, so of course that's how they pictured the imaginary protagonist in their story. It was a real eye opener for me.
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Post by jazzisblues on Mar 20, 2012 6:13:15 GMT -8
It's a silly metric, though. Do you gauge how close to n% elves are in your party? Sure, theoretically 50% of the population should be female. That doesn't mean that exactly half of the people you meet will be female (or male, for that matter). Was thinking about this earlier and it occurred to me that skewing that percentage makes for some very interesting cultural dynamics. Consider what would happen in a culture if 2/3 of all births were female. If 2/3 of the population is female what does that do to the culture? Could be any number of things, could be a matriarchal society, could be totally the inverse because of the rarity of male children etc. My point here being that I don't know that it matters what % of npc's are male vs female but rather what impact do the npc's that you create have on the game. Then again I could be totally wrong and stupid, wouldn't be the first time. JiB
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maxinstuff
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Post by maxinstuff on Mar 20, 2012 22:56:06 GMT -8
Was thinking about this earlier and it occurred to me that skewing that percentage makes for some very interesting cultural dynamics. Consider what would happen in a culture if 2/3 of all births were female. JiB I saw a documentary called 'The disappearing male' in which scientists postulate that this is actually happening right now :/ It scared me. They were talking extinction. With his said - I have made no effort to verify anything they said B-)
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Post by ayslyn on Mar 21, 2012 8:58:39 GMT -8
It's a silly metric, though. Do you gauge how close to n% elves are in your party? Sure, theoretically 50% of the population should be female. That doesn't mean that exactly half of the people you meet will be female (or male, for that matter). Not at all - but surely it averages out over time? Not necessarily, for any given individual. Once you start averaging everyone in the world, that's when it starts. Take myself, for example. I have only worked one job where the number of men outnumbered the number of women. My numbers are skewed, fairly heavily off center. Plus, remember that we're not talking about every person you've ever met, but those you have had some level of meaningful interaction with. The person you pass on the street doesn't count; but the shopkeeper you see every Thursday does. It's the same argument though. There used to be arguments over how many Elf PCs should be allowed in a party, since elves only accounted for n% of the population. The contention was that it was unrealistic for too many elves to be hanging out together. Either way, the trick isn't to make sure that your female characters are fully rounded, interesting characters. The trick is to make sure that ALL of your characters are fully rounded, interesting characters.
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