Quote from: jibbajibba;477137The point really is that the blokes still own the medium of communication so even where the idea of men being objectified is on the agenda it's really been subverted. Just like the male stripper at a hen night isn't performing for the women as an object of sexual desire he is showing off and they are showing off more to get his attention, it's a different dynamic.

Now THAT is an interesting idea!
I run a game for one player, who is male, and I invent girl characters for him as love interests...
In return when he runs for me, he creates love interests. His include boys that he knows I would like. It's a really interesting idea that girls don't objectify men... I think I would argue that while it's not necessarily the norm, there are certain ideals that are played out again and again in fiction for women that are really just as bad as the ones made for men.
True Blood or Anita Blake springs to mind.
Although that's not RP is it?
Hmm...
Sorry I can't really concentrate... Conan's enormous... sorry...

Quote from: Justin Alexander;477213Is that sexist?

Yes. Yes it is.

Next question.

Or is it??
Here's my question- is it sexist to not like people dragging girlfriends into games? or is it more like elitism... I don't want a girlfriend being pulled in after a year of gaming because the experiences of the past tell me that the likelihood of them actually enjoying and contributing are slim to none and I'm super protective of the quality of my game.
Now that I think about it I would have the same opinion if one of my femal gamers who I've known for years wanted to pull in her new boyfriend who has never gamed before and is really into... oh I dunno... football and R&B....

No offense to anyone...

I let my GFs know about my hobby, but I don't actively try to recruit them simply because I wouldn't want them playing simply because it's something I like to do. Some people are gamers, some aren't. I wouldn't want anyone to game simply to make me or anyone else happy. It undermines the point, IMO.

My current GF asked to play in a game, actually took to it immediately, and has been a regular player in my games since. But most of my GFs never gamed with me.

I think I would regard a girl dragging her BF along to a game with as much wariness as a guy dragging his GF along. It's not that I don't want as many new people as possible in the hobby, it's just that...

well, nobody likes a tourist, I guess.

Yep...
definitely.
To be honest it is one of those things, as a couple you want to do stuff together. My hubby wargames and whenever I say that ... you know... i could play some Eldar... I mean... I could paint minis and join in...
He gets this weird sort of look and says '...yes...' But I know he doesn't want me to. I get it.
(And I hen remember that I really hate warhammer anyway)
It's good to have your own things...
sometimes things don't translate.

I have only ever found a few people that gel really well with my style of running and run the games I want to play. It's hard enough as it is!
(Still not sexist. Obnoxious and judgemental maybe...)

It depends what you call "cheesecake".  I don't think the typical cheesecake and beefcake pictures are equivalent, because beefcake tends to have men looking powerful, active, and competent - whereas cheesecake tends to have women looking passive or even endangered.  

I haven't played with anyone who was opposed to any art of sexy women - and most would play competent and sexy characters.  However, I have played with a number of women who wanted more variety in the pictures of women (as well as men).  Things like how it is hard to find pictures of sexy women without big breasts, or sexy older women.

Quote from: DanDan;477307Now THAT is an interesting idea!
I run a game for one player, who is male, and I invent girl characters for him as love interests...
In return when he runs for me, he creates love interests. His include boys that he knows I would like. It's a really interesting idea that girls don't objectify men... I think I would argue that while it's not necessarily the norm, there are certain ideals that are played out again and again in fiction for women that are really just as bad as the ones made for men.
True Blood or Anita Blake springs to mind.
Although that's not RP is it?
Hmm...
Sorry I can't really concentrate... Conan's enormous... sorry...

That is fairly normal though right. I've been including female NPCs for my players since I was about 13 and trying my best to emulate the personality they would find most attractive. I mean there is no point giving a PC a love interest unless they really love them a little or they won't care when you kill them right.

Only one of my girlfriends ever played RPGs (well outside the bedroom of course:) ) and she really got into a cyberpunk game I ran for her where she was a Russian assassin. She tried a group game but was disappointed because it was more about blokes sitting round and making jokes and doing bits of monty python and rolling dice than it was really about the roleplaying bits.

My mum used to run a successful campaign world for about 5 years 2 sessions a week. A failed/aspiring author she would write up the session in between games to incorporate into her novel. Excellent world design and very strong plot and NPCs. She actually had one outstanding rule idea for chargen which I am actually reusing now, 20 years later.

My Murder mystery players though are mostly women and that is really just guided roleplay to a large degree. I have my buds who are my mates and with whom I have been role playign for 30 years and then i have my sisters and a bunch of women I have recruited. I can't imagiine any of them sitting round a table to play an RPg but i have had them all sitting round a table pretending to be pirates or gangsters or whatever and they find it totally acceptable.

As for sex and objectification Steven Fry made a comment a year or so back that got him into loads of trouble. He basically said women have sex to get relationships whereas men have relationships to get sex. He got into loads of trouble with women's movement of course because he was effectively saying women don't really enjoy sex whcih is kind of opposed to the entire women's lib thing. However, one of his very powerful arguments was that if women enjoyed sex as much as men then there would be an equivalent to the Cottaging Industry for hetrosexuals and lesbians but there simply isn't.

Quote from: jhkim;477318Things like how it is hard to find pictures of sexy women without big breasts, or sexy older women.

Or sexy dwarves.

Quote from: DanDan;477308Or is it??

If you had stuck to "I don't like bringing in new players who haven't played before" you'd be fine. You could probably even specify "significant others who haven't played before".

But you didn't actually stop there. You assigned gender as being specifically important, assigned specific negative behavior to women, and stated the gender plays a role in your opinion about who should and shouldn't join your game. That's pretty much the definition of sexism.

Now, you may have just expressed yourself poorly. That's OK. But saying, "I hate it when girls show up. They always engage in all kinds of girl behavior." Yeah. That's pretty sexist. Sprucing it up with value judgments like "negative" and implications that they'd only be showing up for something like this if they were "forced" doesn't help.

Ok, but the behaviour that i'm talking about is (from my experience) only a girl thing. Not that ALL women do it, but the people who do indulge in those behaviours, are women.
I still think that the reasons they do that is in thier own personality and desire to not be there. And as I said before, I actually think that the sexist ideas are actually from the outside society and not necessarily from the games or the people who play them.
So the girls who are doing those things are behaving in a way that is deamed approprate and acceptable by society, where as if a boy was to act cute and babyish and try to manipulate a girl into paying them attention rather than play a RPG, it wouldn't work.
I know what you're saying- that I am suggesting that it's not women, it's a type of woman. The same way I think it doesn't work with a certain men. I don't believe that not wanting a new girlfriend addition to a game is sexist. I think it's judegmental towards strangers and a wariness of girls who have never RPG'd before based on a long experience of negative experiences.

Quote from: jibbajibba;477320She actually had one outstanding rule idea for chargen which I am actually reusing now, 20 years later.

And what is that rule, mate?

Quote from: Imperator;477387And what is that rule, mate?

Well its about race.
Her game world was made up of 8 core races that had interbread and mixed across milleniums. The resulting mongrel breed were humans. There were no demi-human races in her games.

When you made a PC you rolled for a d8 or each of 8 physical stats
Build
Height
Weight
Skin tone
Hair type
Facial type
Eye colour
Eye type

If you got 3 or more values the same you got a stat bonus and the bonus and special powers went up the more same results you got. Now its not explained to the players at all they are just rolling some physical appearance numbers but in reality its seeing how similar they are to the original 8 races.

I worked it into my current setting (I am building a setting to complement my current heartbreaker system) because of Game of thrones. In SOIAF there are lots of big ugly folks that obviously have giant blood and there are a few oddities like the Targaryens with violet eyes and white hair who can control dragons and have a bit of the Melibonean about them.
So this is a way of doing that a way of working the idea tha the world is really ancient but that is was originally peopled with races from Elsewhere.

So as well as spewing off some great roleplay stuff , so I have ebon black skin and I am hairless, I am 6' 2" (or x + 1d6 inches) and I have a slender body type with fine facial features and oriental violet eyes, it also gives a whole new racial dimension to the game and statistically anyone with more than 3 matching numbers is an exception and anyone with 5 is a real stand out.