DnD encourages progressive thought
Today, 39 per cent of players are female, up from 20 per cent in 2012.
Part of that growth comes from the visibility of female players in online streaming services like Twitch and YouTube, says Benjamin Woo, assistant professor in the school of journalism and communications at Carleton University, and author of Get a Life: The Social Worlds of Geek Culture. As it becomes more common to watch campaigns unfold online (on camera, the host — called the dungeon master — builds out the story narrative and the players think up how to respond, rolling 20-sided die to determine their success or failure), channels like Girls Guts Glory or MissClicks put women front and centre, and showcase that the game can be welcoming to ladies. “(As a woman) it used to be you had to be invited in by someone and there was this secret society, a boy’s club aura (to the game),” Woo says. “Now, there’s representation on screen.”
Wizards has also tried to make the game more inclusive by ditching the stereotypical scantily clad female depictions.
Kate Irwin, senior art director for DnD, says it was a conscientious choice to include more women among the artwork and to think about how they’ve been drawn.
“For example, (we’re) making sure their armour is practical. We’ve been trying to eradicate ‘boob armour’ — a metal plate that moulds around a women’s breast, because that would be deadly — and ‘chainmail bikinis.’ Why would you only have chainmail on a bikini?”
The result has been less sexualized female characters.
The scantily clad drawings weren’t necessarily on purpose. Irwin thinks back to a guide she handed artists for the previous edition, which included a group shot of women in stereotypical midriff-bearing outfits. “We were on auto-pilot, subliminally telling our artists that women wear less armour than men.”
To date, the DnD community has largely escaped the backlash other “nerd” pockets have faced when trying to be more inclusive, says Woo.
From death threats received by Anita Sarkeesian, who raised money to study female depictions of women in video games; to doxxing of prominent women in the game community; to the social media attacks against actors in previously male dominated fan faves (like Star Wars’ Kelly Marie Tran who quit Instagram as a result of the abuse), the overarching geekdom hasn’t been particularly welcoming to women.
But DnD’s ease at embracing inclusivity is threefold, says Woo. First, games tend to be played face to face, making it harder to display misogynistic or racist behaviours. Second, Dungeons is the biggest name in the role-playing market — it’s difficult for people who want to play tabletop role-playing games to boycott it in protest. Third, the game isn’t prescriptive. While DnD provides a guide, players aren’t forced into playing a certain way, Woo says. They are welcome to ignore the inclusive direction if they want.
Yet the game actively encourages progressive thought, asking players to think beyond today’s social norms. “You can play a male of female character without gaining any special benefits or hindrances,” it instructs. “You don’t need to be confined to the binary notions of sex and gender. You could play a female character who presents herself as a man, a man who feels trapped in a female body, or a bearded female dwarf who hates being a mistaken for a male.”
Dungeons isn’t perfect — there are still a few bare midriffs in the books. “And, if you hunt deep enough into online forums, you’ll find people expressing misogynistic or racist comments about changes that seem to be inviting more wom- en and people of colour to identify with the hobby in the (game) manual,” says Woo.
But this push for inclusivity is changing the DnD culture.
Red Herring, a Toronto dancer who prefers to be identified by her stage name, has been playing DnD since she was in high school. She loved the storytelling and fantasy aspect, but quit in university because men were more interested in hitting on her.
“There’s a couple of memes online, where players say ‘Can I hit it with my sword? No? OK, can I f--- it?’ ” she says. “That was what I had to play with.”
A decade later, she picked up her dice again when a friend asked her to join an all-women’s digital game. She’s heartened by the changes that have taken place in the DnD world, and has high hopes for the broader “geek” community.
“When I was younger, there were maybe four girls in the entire nerd club at university,” she says. “It was very much a boys’ club. I’m envious today of the nerd girls who can find (others) so easily.”