A Gaming equivalent of the Bechdel Test.
There has been a bit of talk lately about ethnicity and gender in roleplaying games.
On one side you get the die hard "cultural appropriation" fanatics who think that any time a non-white culture is included in a game, it is an attempt to rape the cultural heritage of the people depicted (either explicitly or implicitly).
On the other side you get the people who are desperate to break gaming across the global spectrum of societies, these people decry the presence of exclusively white-male strong figures depicted throughout the illustrations and examples.
But gaming isn't the only aspect of "nerd-culture" where issues like this are playing out. Comics have long suffered from the same issues, with the vast majority of super heroes being male and/or caucasian. This has been highlighted in recent situation when there was a huge uproar about turning Spiderman into a half negro/hispanic kid, and the ongoing rants about there being few if any females on staff at DC comics (I haven't been keeping up to date onthis one, but I know it was a big issue discussed around ComicCon last year when a female audience member kept asking the hard questions at several panels).
Movies are the same, but in this case there is a group of individuals who apply the Bechdel Test to see if gender issues have been addressed. All sorts of movies fail the Bechdel Test, including action movies, thrillers, even romantic comedies.
The basic rules of the Bechdel Test are:
1. It has to have at least two [named] women in it
Movies are already mainstream fare, so they are expected to cater to audiences of all different types. Sure there are some genres of movie that tailor their market to specific demographics, but on the whole the category of "movies" usually has something to offer virtually anyone. Studio executives go out of their way to market their movies to maximise the potential revenues (successfully or otherwise).
Comics have suffered from being stigmatised as "teenage white male" fare. This isn't entirely true, but it what the comic book company executives seem to eternally think. I like some of the indie stuff like "Strangers in Paradise", which would regularly pass the comic book equivalent of the Bechdel Test, there are plenty of great female characters each strong in their own ways.
But is there any roleplaying game that passes the Bechdel Test (or some equivalent)?
A game where there are illustrations of two or more female figures, and no male figures in sight. A game where two or more females engage scenes that don't revolve around a man. Kagematsu comes close, most of the characters ae female...but those females are plotting against one another to win the affections of a man.
Can the same apply to race? Pictures of two non-pale-skinned characters enaged in some kind of activity other than looking menacing toward the reader (or toward some pale skinned hero).
If you can hink of any examples, let me know.
On one side you get the die hard "cultural appropriation" fanatics who think that any time a non-white culture is included in a game, it is an attempt to rape the cultural heritage of the people depicted (either explicitly or implicitly).
On the other side you get the people who are desperate to break gaming across the global spectrum of societies, these people decry the presence of exclusively white-male strong figures depicted throughout the illustrations and examples.
But gaming isn't the only aspect of "nerd-culture" where issues like this are playing out. Comics have long suffered from the same issues, with the vast majority of super heroes being male and/or caucasian. This has been highlighted in recent situation when there was a huge uproar about turning Spiderman into a half negro/hispanic kid, and the ongoing rants about there being few if any females on staff at DC comics (I haven't been keeping up to date onthis one, but I know it was a big issue discussed around ComicCon last year when a female audience member kept asking the hard questions at several panels).
Movies are the same, but in this case there is a group of individuals who apply the Bechdel Test to see if gender issues have been addressed. All sorts of movies fail the Bechdel Test, including action movies, thrillers, even romantic comedies.
The basic rules of the Bechdel Test are:
1. It has to have at least two [named] women in it
2. Who talk to each other
3. About something besides a man
Movies are already mainstream fare, so they are expected to cater to audiences of all different types. Sure there are some genres of movie that tailor their market to specific demographics, but on the whole the category of "movies" usually has something to offer virtually anyone. Studio executives go out of their way to market their movies to maximise the potential revenues (successfully or otherwise).
Comics have suffered from being stigmatised as "teenage white male" fare. This isn't entirely true, but it what the comic book company executives seem to eternally think. I like some of the indie stuff like "Strangers in Paradise", which would regularly pass the comic book equivalent of the Bechdel Test, there are plenty of great female characters each strong in their own ways.
But is there any roleplaying game that passes the Bechdel Test (or some equivalent)?
A game where there are illustrations of two or more female figures, and no male figures in sight. A game where two or more females engage scenes that don't revolve around a man. Kagematsu comes close, most of the characters ae female...but those females are plotting against one another to win the affections of a man.
Can the same apply to race? Pictures of two non-pale-skinned characters enaged in some kind of activity other than looking menacing toward the reader (or toward some pale skinned hero).
If you can hink of any examples, let me know.
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Comments
Unfortunately, much like the Bechdel test itself, passing doesn't mean that's the whole story -- there's obviously a sexual subtext to this illustration. That said, I think the old White Wolf stuff does have a few passes, since flicking through my Vampire: the Masquerade Revised core book shows a few examples of female-only, though nothing only involving non-whites (that I've spotted, yet).
It's a good idea seeing if these rules apply, but I think it might be innately unsuited. Movie scenes seldom feature only one character, but RPG book illustrations much more commonly do.
How many times around a table do you see two female players/characters, talking to each other, but not about men?
This does work for different ethnicities, but the problem with it is that until we see more art/text in the books to encourage more people from different backgrounds to enter the hobby, it's probably going to stay that way.
Unless that is, we all make sure we're playing our games in ways that don't seem exclusionary, and sharing our passion for the hobby with people, regardless of ethnicity or gender.
I'm certainly not going to cater to the stereotypes of weak women or ones incapable of acting without male validation, let alone cooperation.
The game is all about a broad representation of all the major Human ethnicities, as passed through my fictive filter, with none of them getting a free pass, but none of them being unfairly depicted as mono-maniacal, either.
The Vrun, the pan-European group, are entirely egalitarian, to the point of not recognising differences based on combat duties or technical expertise.
To paraphrase the Sword Worlds description in an old Travellers' Aid Journal, "[The Vrun] where the men are men, and the women are, too." TAS #18
I'm happy to confirm that I've played with 3 female players, all of whom have played in one campaign or another with each other. I also know and am friends with (though haven't gamed with) 2 other female players, who have gamed with some of the others mentioned, and another again (who to my knowledge hasn't). So, yeah, female players are out there, just not everywhere.
As for female characters, I'm lucky enough to play with some males who don't mind playing females (not in a dodgy way... okay, maybe just one of them, but we all know someone like that, right?). So, female characters get a good showing at many of my games too.
Characters or players, when two females communicate it most definitely is not always about us dudes, much as I'm sure we sometimes wish it was.