A great discussion (Part 1; Part 2) has been going on about sexism and D&D. And i’ve been sort of caught in the middle of it. Here’s my response to @sarahdarkmagic.
I am the author and creator of the pregens for DDE: Dark Sun and also the commenter you quoted. I was given a list of five races and six classes to include and told to make six characters from those. Though i feel like trying to address these concerns is a lose-lose proposition for me (if i defend my actions, i will be further labeled sexist; if i apologize, i will likely be labeled insincere. kind of ironic given the subject matter of this discussion), i’ve decided to speak out anyway.
First, i apologize for my lack of sensitivity to the issue. The decisions on gender and backgrounds were entirely mine and i failed to foresee the importance of including more female characters. In my 20+ years of experience playing with a lot of different people of all walks of life, i’ve never had anyone mention to me that pregenerated characters didn’t match their expectations for diversity. It’s just not something i anticipated.
Second, i think @sarahdarkmagic missed the point of my statement that she quoted. It wasn’t intended to mean “just reskin the pregen PCs”. I meant that a DM and players can bring whatever they want to the table. The pregens are there for convenience. If i were the DM and someone said they really wanted to play something other than the pregens, i would allow it because the point is to have fun. Ultimately, is the burden on Wizards to provide an array of characters that match the desires of their players or is the burden on the players (and DMs) to allow greater flexibility in telling the stories that Wizards provide them? I believe the latter is the case, but you may disagree.
Does Wizards send the wrong message to female or minority gamers by not including an option for everyone? Apparently so. I imagine the answer is to no longer include stories with integrated, pregenerated characters. Most players seem to prefer that anyway. I happen to be in the minority that prefers the challenge of playing a character that was created by someone else once in a while. I guess that means that my desires/preferences will not be met in the future due to the concerns of some other group. That’s the challenge facing identity-driven politics. Everyone has multiple, often conflicting identities that they need to manage.
That also raises the question: Do PCs have to mirror every quality of human life, or is it sufficient for them to merely be an escape from the everyday problems associated with identity politics or other human issues? Of course, i don’t have an answer for that, but it’s an interesting question (to only me, perhaps).
I hope the tone of this post is neither overly defensive nor overly aggressive. That is not my intent at all. The internet isn’t good at translating intentions, so i wanted to state that i’m happy for this discussion and i hope my contribution is useful.
