tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-886868484666652260.post3987009199493194275..comments2024-03-09T03:49:50.699-05:00Comments on Your Critic is in Another Castle: Beyond the Girl Gamer 2.1: The System of the WorldsK. Coxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06554183349391372039noreply@blogger.comBlogger8125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-886868484666652260.post-26379231278578953252011-05-25T11:56:39.316-04:002011-05-25T11:56:39.316-04:00When I first started playing tabletop RPG's in...When I first started playing tabletop RPG's in 1980, several us would flip a coin to determine gender of the character we had just created. I think that was a bit of a crutch, a half-way ale house. I don't do that any more, but it's because I actually think of female characters I want to do. For most of the 90's we had a Call of Cthulhu campaign that was set in the 1920's - with Lovecraftian alterations, of course. Several people came up with female characters that both fit the period, were interesting, and could contribute to the goals. DoctorJaynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-886868484666652260.post-70800511855259157222011-05-24T19:56:27.772-04:002011-05-24T19:56:27.772-04:00mass effect 2 has some hilarious (and crass) side ...<i>mass effect 2</i> has some hilarious (and crass) side conversations that you overhear from those random characters, too. the volus trying to buy, er, <i>performance enhancers</i> made me laugh out loud.enstarstarstarnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-886868484666652260.post-5533569263936364492011-05-24T07:44:09.594-04:002011-05-24T07:44:09.594-04:00You're right about ME being like Star Trek.
D...You're right about ME being like <i>Star Trek</i>.<br /><br />Default Shep is a problem, but I think he's more of a marketing problem (and that "default" is the other problem) and not so much a game problem, as I haven't seen him once in my game. ;)K. Coxhttp://www.your-critic.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-886868484666652260.post-48667090046717493012011-05-23T23:44:37.901-04:002011-05-23T23:44:37.901-04:00I think Mass Effect, like Star Trek, posits a futu...I think Mass Effect, like Star Trek, posits a future in which humanity has overcome many/most of our current problems. So there's no racism between humans, and no sexism that I recall either (the only time Lady Shepard is specifically disrespected is by a Batarian and fuck those shitburgers, amirite?) So the Alliance is ruled by a couple of black men, and Shepard's mom is an admiral, and the race and gender of Shepard doesn't affect your interactions with them. <br /><br />Of course default Shepard is a white dude, just like the top roles in Star Trek and TNG were held by white actors, because we sure haven't reached that future yet.RedJennynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-886868484666652260.post-28516650112716237652011-05-23T16:53:58.654-04:002011-05-23T16:53:58.654-04:00And not all areas of reality are equally diverse. ...And not all areas of reality are equally diverse. Bluntly speaking, I have a much higher expectation that a person I bump into on the street in Montana or Stockholm will be white than when I'm in DC.<br /><br /><i>Mass Effect</i> does a fairly good job randomizing its background characters, though. If you're walking around the Citadel or Omega, the odds that the person you bump into will be human, turian, salarian, asari, or krogan are pretty decent, with elcor, volus, etc. mixed in. It's just a different kind of diversity.<br /><br />And the lack of Space Asians in a universe where Mandarin is everyone's bastardized second language is more than just a little weird. ;)K. Coxhttp://www.your-critic.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-886868484666652260.post-60745490226738581532011-05-23T16:46:29.610-04:002011-05-23T16:46:29.610-04:00 Does fiction deserve as much random diversity as ... <i>Does fiction deserve as much random diversity as reality has?</i><br /><br />Serious fiction has to make sense on its own terms. Those terms don't have to exactly mimic our world (unless it's supposed to be set here) but cause-and-effect still need to apply. The lack of Space Asians in Firefly, for example, strikes people as bizarre because no explanation is offered for what seems like such an unlikely future. The ubiquitous Asari strippers aren't off because their inclusion is sleazy (they signify sleazy locations) so much as because they're so out of character with everything else we know about the Asari.<br /><br />A game or movie based on a book about a planet colonized by Indians who proceeded to build their society along ancient Hindu lines, for example, would lack diversity in the sense that there would be few if any African, Caucasian, Native American, East Asian, etc. people around. But there'd be a reason for it.RedJennynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-886868484666652260.post-50790748638532126982011-05-23T11:09:16.120-04:002011-05-23T11:09:16.120-04:00All right, then... do we, the consumers of fiction...All right, then... do we, the consumers of fiction, deserve as much random diversity in our stories as reality has? ;)<br /><br />I do think background diversity is probably nearly as important as cast diversity. One thing I always liked about both of the recent <i>Fallout</i> games is that the denizens of the Capital Wasteland and Mojave Wasteland come in all types. (Which made it moderately annoying that, especially in <i>New Vegas</i>, your companions kind of don't.)<br /><br />I don't think main characters (player characters, immediate supporting cast, main antagonist, etc) should be purely randomly cast. A story needs to make sense and five randomly generated people thrown at the wall really only serve for one or two stories (like the first two seasons of <i>Lost</i> -- any "random people thrown in to work together" sort of story). <br /><br /><i>Eventually I just threw up my hands and just threw sex and ethnicity on <br />the page like flicking paint and just ran with it. Sometimes it worked, <br />sometimes it didn't, and where it didn't I've tweaked it, and sometimes <br />I've tweaked it back around to the random result. Call <br />it inoculating your story against unconcious bias.</i><br /><br />You flipped coins and saw if it worked. Suits me fine! ;)K. Coxhttp://www.your-critic.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-886868484666652260.post-74699645003145577812011-05-22T12:27:27.392-04:002011-05-22T12:27:27.392-04:00 Does fiction deserve as much random diversity as ... <i>Does fiction deserve as much random diversity as reality has?</i><br /><br />Well, I'm not sure this was the best wording. Fiction can't deserve anything, any more than my coffee, computer, or chair does.<br /><br />Randomized diversity shouldn't be discouraged in design, precisely because of what you said about Euro-male as the default. It's the default not because writers all pass around the same bad penny, but because few coins are ever harmed in the making of those decisions. Randomization "when it doesn't matter" is a cheap and quick tool for writers to avoid unintentionally falling into pitfalls of stereotype. In some games, randomized diversity is important. While it doesn't make sense to randomly determine all the general characteristics of each member of Shepard's team, or a character that walks by Solid Snake, designing curb flow on the streets of Liberty City by hand would be a Sisyphean task, and probably make it feel really wrong to boot, if it ever got finished.<br /><br />On top of that, it can be a useful aid to a more considered design process. If you <b>only</b> randomize, that's obviously bad. I've been in (and inflicted) my share of totally plotless D&D "campaigns" where the DM just rolled dice for literally everything. As someone who is laboriously working through trying to write a story, however, I spent a lot of fruitless time trying to design my main characters. Eventually I just threw up my hands and just threw sex and ethnicity on the page like flicking paint and just ran with it. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't, and where it didn't I've tweaked it, and sometimes I've tweaked it back around to the random result. Call it inoculating your story against unconcious bias.Stephen Winsonhttp://goodbadawesome.blogspot.comnoreply@blogger.com