So for decades RPG rules just used "he".  Then I noticed disclaimers start to appear saying they were using he for simplicity's sake but it wasn't to be taken as exclusionary.  Then I noticed alternating he and she.  Then I noticed using she for the GM and he for a player.  Now I'm noticing just she.

I am wonder why this is because it makes no sense to me.  Everyone knows that the extremely vast majority of people who read RPG rules are men.  Why not write to the person who is overhwelmingly likely to be your reading audience?

And if we assume they are using she so as not to exclude female rule readers, then what was wrong with the the alternating or the assigning one gender to the GM and the other to the hypothetical player?  If you assume that using male pronouns was excluding female players and that was a problem, then isn't switching to female pronouns now excluding male players and alienating a vastly larger percentage of your reader base?

And if you assume that the male readers aren't being excluded, then doesn't that mean by assuming male players won't feel alienated but female players will feel alienated, aren't you then assuming that female players are less secure and more fragile than men who goes completely against the notion that women are just as strong as men?

I just don't get this trend I'm seeing more and more of in using purely female pronouns.  It just seems to be potentially alienating the majority of the players while also sending a message to female players that they aren't in fact equal to men.  So what's being gained here?  I don't undersand.

It's bettter than Cyberpunk Red using the pronoun "they". I kept wondering why there were multiple GMs and mulitple players per character.

Quote from: kidkaos2 on December 29, 2020, 01:14:40 PM
I just don't get this trend I'm seeing more and more of in using purely female pronouns.  It just seems to be potentially alienating the majority of the players while also sending a message to female players that they aren't in fact equal to men.  So what's being gained here?  I don't undersand.

Culture war identity politics stuff. I'm surprised when people pop up who haven't heard about it.
Pander to women to appease the progressive activists but then it's insulting to non-binary people and it's a death spiral of constantly trying to keep up with the latest activist-speak.
What's being gained here is control over the discourse and what people think.

You see feminine pronouns in use, as early as the core books for D&D 3rd Edition; which were released in the year 2000.  So this has been a trend, for 20 years now.

I guess men are considered to be evil; so they must therefore be demonized and assimilated, or else destroyed?

Yes, it's bullshit.

Quote from: kidkaos2 on December 29, 2020, 01:14:40 PM
So for decades RPG rules just used "he".  Then I noticed disclaimers start to appear saying they were using he for simplicity's sake but it wasn't to be taken as exclusionary. Then I noticed alternating he and she.  Then I noticed using she for the GM and he for a player.  Now I'm noticing just she.

Your interpretation aside, this is a false perception. For example, AD&D 1st edition by Gary Gygax used "he or she" throughout. For example, from the Player's Handbook:

QuoteEach player develops the abilities of his or her character through random number generation (by means of dice rolling) to determine the basic characteristics of the persona, the abilities. The payer then decides what race the character is, what the characters' class is, the alignment of the character, and what the character's name is to be. The character will speak certain languages determined by race, class, and alignment. He or she will have a certain amount of gold pieces to begin with, and these funds will be used to purchase equipment needed for adventuring. Finally, each character begins with a certain number of hit points, as determined by the roll of a die (or dice) commensurate with the character's class.

I know White Wolf started using generic "she" in 1990 or so, which was thirty years ago now. So it's not like it's a new trend.

I don't think that it's a big deal, and I don't think it's a big deal to most players. I mildly prefer alternating or using singular "they" rather than "he or she". But mostly, I think it only stands out when one is looking for it.

I disagree that it only stands out if you're looking for it because my experience is the vast majority of gamers are men, so it's weird when I see the vast majority of rulebooks written using she as the pronoun.  That is weird.

Just like when my ex-wife was into the scrapbooking hobby.  Every scrapbooker around was female, so if I picked up a scrapbooking guide and found "he" uses throughout, it would stand out as strange.

Greetings!

The long-established convention of using "HE" is fine. The vast majority of DM's are men. A strong majority of players are also men. Insisting on using "Her" or "She" is ultimately political pandering to the activists, whether such are otherwise politically correct, Feminists, or now, SJW's.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: kidkaos2 on December 29, 2020, 04:03:37 PM
I disagree that it only stands out if you're looking for it because my experience is the vast majority of gamers are men, so it's weird when I see the vast majority of rulebooks written using she as the pronoun.  That is weird.

Just like when my ex-wife was into the scrapbooking hobby.  Every scrapbooker around was female, so if I picked up a scrapbooking guide and found "he" uses throughout, it would stand out as strange.

So did AD&D1 stand out as strange to you? Do you think its pronoun use was a mistake, and Gygax should have instead used default "he"?

Quote from: jhkim on December 29, 2020, 03:46:14 PM
I mildly prefer alternating or using singular "they" rather than "he or she". But mostly, I think it only stands out when one is looking for it.

I found the use of singular 'they' in CP Red to be like driving down a road full of potholes. Whenever the word was used, I'd have to stop and parse whether they meant singular or plural.

In formal English the default grammatical rule is that the masculine pronoun serves as both specifically masculine and as default generic neutral, and that feminine pronouns are used only when the subject is unambiguously female (e.g. if it's been established that one is talking about biological mothers). Recent decades have seen a protest against this by claiming that because female readers don't see female pronouns in contexts where the subject could be either sex, the cumulative subliminal effect is to convey a message of exclusion -- if, for example, an otherwise-undescribed player character is only ever referred to as "he", it is claimed that the inevitable inference will be that all player characters are male.

I think that in part the desire to use the feminine pronoun as the default neutral is an attempt to prove this effect to male readers -- and to be honest, I do sort of see it myself, despite being a thorough skeptic of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis of which this is an offshoot. Part of the reason I was unable to get through the recent SF novel Ancillary Justice, by Ann Leckie, was that her protagonist and narrator is established as speaking a language which has no gender pronouns, and for which (for some reason) the in-universe English translation convention is to use the feminine as the default. As a result, every time I tried to read the book, I kept tripping up on the fact the protagonist/narrator identifies every other character encountered as "she" or "her" in ways that I knew would not always be accurate, and so I got stuck every time trying to figure out if this character actually was female or not. Ultimately, I was never able to get through more than a chapter or two of the novel, both because I found this a fundamental block to understanding the story, but also because I simply could not shake off the feeling that the author was trying to say, "See, this is what it feels like when the 'generic default' of a language excludes you," and however important that lesson may be considered, I don't want to fight through it every chapter to enjoy a novel-length story.

For games, I find the best approach is, wherever possible, either to name example players and characters first ("Craig, and his character Sam"), or to write in second-person directly to the reader ("If you buy this Power, your PC can fly").  Do this often enough so that the reader isn't drowned in generic neutral "he"s and most sane readers will generally not complain.

I tend to use "they/their" in my own writing, cuz it feels weird for me to assign a gender to a hypothetical player or character I haven't even visualized and I'm just referencing in passing, and constantly using "he or she" is just awkward, and "s/he" is just silly (haven't even seen that used in decades). But I've often wondered what pronoun I would use if I ever end up publishing anything.

And here I just always used either "you" "the PC", "the player" and "the GM" depending on the situation... but mostly "you" as I tend to write as if addressing the actual reader of the book.

Quote from: Chris24601 on December 29, 2020, 05:18:14 PM
And here I just always used either "you" "the PC", "the player" and "the GM" depending on the situation... but mostly "you" as I tend to write as if addressing the actual reader of the book.

I also tend to use "you/your" a lot. Even when I'm talking about characters or character abilities ("Your ability scores are a measure of your innate aptitudes, blah blah blah"), where "you" is "your character", which I think sounds more personal (and also saves me a lot of space and effort from having to write "The character", or guessing a player's pronouns). But sometimes I start talking about "the player/character", or "players/characters" (plural), for example, then slip into "they/their" rather than constantly bring up "the player/character" over and over again in the same paragraph.

Instead of either pronoun they should just say "person constructed in such a way as to feature a rectal opening, or USB port, utilized primarily for offload but which is capable of hosting input up to size 10 & 1/2 in mens footwear".

I think that would be the most inclusive and politically neutral whilst still remaining accurate.

Tunnels & Trolls back to 1979's 5th edition and possibly earlier used "she" frequently. 
I think the editor was female.

It's the usual PC bullshit to be celebrated in a cucked hobby.

"He/she" or "he or she" is fine since there's always been enough female players in the hobby for that to make sense.

"They" is fucking retarded.