anyway.

I would be really, really sad, though, if we lost outright our basement punk aesthetic.

I would also be sad.

Did we, for instance, have a single book whose cover featured cleavage as a cheap sales device?

I believe we did have Macho Women with Guns on the shelf.

Paul

Well, rats, that's what I forgot to get - 1001 Nights.  Curses.  I did get a copy of "Don't Rest Your Head" and properly drooled over Burning Empires (but was fairly broke and didn't get it).

I had very little time in the Dealer's Room (curse my volunteerism), but did get to meet Judd from "Sons of Kryos" and tell him how much I enjoy the podcast.

I completely missed Paul and Danielle (and many others I wanted to see).  I need more hours in my day.

As a GamerChick I'd be interested in demoing games next year if you're looking for more females to do so.

I agree with all of these, and I'd include myself in #2, though for reasons of jet lag rather than emotional trauma.

See ya soon!

yrs—
—Ben

Vincent,
It wouldn't have been a complete or successful con for me if we hadn't had the chance to sit down and talk. Our sparse and infrequent conversations are especially important to me—a reinforcing of the communal bonds and the "mission statement" as it were.

Macho Women with Guns is one of the most feminist games out there. It's funny, I never thought of what we do as particularly pro-fem. (It's still heavily a boys club just by virtue of numbers.) Our group is pretty much pro whatever, so long as you're a game designer and you buy into the concept of mutualism. If that allows for little heard or underrepresented voices to be heard, so much the better! Let us continue to design games (and sell them) without prejudice or restraint.

-Luke

Here Here, Luke!

Peace,

-Troy

I think the most telling evidence of the Forge community's openness on gender can be found on page 45 of Brennan's Mortal Coil: full frontal nudity ... of the male variety. And it's not there for shock value. (I'd say the dead baby in the sink in another illo serves that purpose well enough.) It's there because it's right for the book.

As many have noted, Mortal Coil provided only one of this year's games to feature a Free Willy. Others may be found in It Was a Mutual Decision, The Dictionary of Mu, and ... geez, I know there were more, somewhere. I was told that at Origins, someone present proclaimed, "It's the year of the cock!" when the Willys appeared during various leafings through games.

Thought provocation - display of male genitals in our artwork is, at least to Justin, evidence of openness regarding gender, and I agree with him. Could display of female genitals, in the right games, with the right aesthetic decisions and roles, do the same?

I showed Em some of the nudie pics in the game Degenesis, German version, which was at the Shadowrun booth across from ours. I'd seen them earlier in the week upon meeting one of the artists and learning about the impending translation into English (and probable speedos/halters being added to the art). I was most impressed with one illo from a female artist, not because of the uncovered vagina, but because of its solidity and accuracy regarding the female form overall.

Depicting female anatomy both accurately and in tandem with images of genuine power, rather than over-compensatory posturing, seems to me to be a high goal to strive toward. I do not consider denial or pious prudery to be anti-sexist, but rather weakness and failure. Sexism should not own sexuality.

Here's a call for graphic sexuality in the service of openness, awareness, appreciation, power, and drives both between and among men and women.

I pretty much avoid the artists' booths at conventions like GenCon because of the rampant chain mail bikini art that seems to be synonymous with "fantasy art". I think the worst offender I saw this con was the dryad pouring water all over herself (complete with nipple-covering white sticker to make it con-safe).

I very much enjoyed the Forge booth because it was one of the only places in the dealer's room that I didn't feel conspicuous for being female. So I have to thank everybody from the Forge booth for being so enlightened because it was nice to have a refuge from the surprised looks I got in many of the other booths. ("Boobies! Uh... I mean... women! At the con! OMG!" >:P)

On the one hand, it's really a drag to think how I'm totally excited that a whole two women are selling games at the booth, but on the other, we have to start somewhere, and I'm hoping that Em and Meg will be seen by other would-be game designers, both men and women, as not just peers but experts, and next year or the year after that Vincent won't be damning quite so much.

Not to mention that we'll have all these cool games to play that we wouldn't have otherwise.

I wish there could have been four more days of just hanging out and talking and stuff. I'm missing that particularly right now.

"Sexism should not own sexuality. Here's a call for graphic sexuality in the service of openness, awareness, appreciation, power, and drives both between and among men and women."

Hear, hear, and amen, Ron.

I gotta say, the baby illo was *way* more disturbing to me than the rat-headed naked guy.

I saw the dryad too, and the fluff taped to her nipples was more distracting and attention grabbing than if they'd been bare.

Side note about boobies: It was interesting and odd being a nursing mother at GenCon. I have no qualms about nursing, but I was aware of the higher-than-average number of people who could be wigged out. I was glad to have the Gentle Giant booth near ours, which had a handy wall facing a less-traveled bit of carpet. Twice I even had people offer me chairs when they saw me coming with a baby. I think we in America are so unused to seeing breast-feeding that we have a difficult time seperating a nipple discreetly and momentarily exposed for nursing from a full breast being seductively flashed. I had no comments or weird looks, but I did have an awesome conversation with a guy in full, hand-made jedi regalia while nursing. Some people are just really at ease with themselves and others, and some aren't.

Oh, Matt, that hits on a really weird experience at GenCon that I will have to write more about when I have thought it through a bit more. There was a 'women gamers' gathering, including Emily, Julie, myself, and 6 other women.

Emily and I were the only one's there who had writen a game. It was remarkable how deeply these women were still defining themselves by the men in their groups ("Does your boyfriend try to kill off your characters, too?" "No, I never play women - I'm very male identified." "No girly crying in the game, right?!"), and the three of us came away feeling dissappointed. There wasn't any discussion of what it meant to be a woman gamer or game designer, or of what we saw as different goals in play if any, or anything. Weird.

In case anyone doesn't know, I think that Meg is maybe the awesomest person ever.

So how come all the naked penises are on monsters, if we're that enlightened? (The one in The Dictionary of Mu is on a monster, right? A witch king I think. The ones in In a Wicked Age are on monsters too, but of course no one's seen them yet.)

That's an easy one, Vincent. Sex is scarey. Sexuality is scarey. Penises are scarey. What's something everyone is taught in our culture? Don't let those penises out of controll, or they will be monsters, devouring women and men alike. A *truely* radical notion would be a naked man who was the hero. I wish that Agon had gone ahead and moved the horse's carefully placed leg and shown us a man who was sexual and a hero, not afraid of being a monster controlled by his sexuality.

Meg - I find that interesting (the women in gaming bit) especially because Raven and Myke both came away not disappointed.  Not exactly singing and praising, but they felt it was overall a good experience.  When you have your ducks in a row, I'll point Raven at where ever you write about it, to see where the different perspectives cross.

James

Jeff and I got a great interview with Lisa about being a female GM at Gen Con.  I can't wait to see it posted.

A couple of comments from someone that wasn't there, as he was in Mamallapuram crawling around two millennia old temples:

1) Even though Mo didn't end up making it to the Forge booth this year, I was very impressed with the energy and work that folks (Luke, Ron, Ben, and others) put into making her feel like she would be welcome there. She went from dreading going to GenCon to being hugely, crushingly disappointed that we wouldn't make it: and at least 80% of that was because of the Forge booth and various folks there.

2) While I'm a tad less Camilla Paglia than Ron, I agree with the general sentiment. It is not that we need to remove sex, sexuality, or even sexualization from games—it is that we need to remove whole scale victimization, gender-typing, and the frankly pathetic adolescence of objectification from games.

I've often been struck by the hypocrisy of game companies who sell their books with blatantly sexualized, and objectified, puerile art on the cover while giving their writers instructions to make it family friendly and doing everything they can to avoid having any actual sexual content in the book. Why is it all right to sell the book with sex, but not to have sex in the book?

Of course, I think a lot of this comes back to the idea that one of the biggest things gaming needs right now are games made to different audiences. If every game is targeted to 15 year old males, then it is no wonder that the sexual fantasies of 15 year old males dominate everything. But that's a rather limiting demographic, don't you think?

3) Meg, you have now made me want to do a Roman/Celtic game in which giant throbbing cocks are the sign of a true hero. Cause really, nothing says, "The Gods Inspire Me With Holy Rage" like a berserker with an erection charging down an army single handed.

4) I can't be sad I missed Gen Con, considering what I got to do instead. But I am totally 100% more hyped about the thought of going next year and meeting all you fine folks.

Oh, and as a side note: I have a million pictures of Hindu erotic sculpture that are going to be the inspiration for the art in a game I must do very soon now.

Oh, Meg, I'd been meaning to ask you and Em about that meeting. Thanks for talking about it.

Even if it was kind of disappointing for you, I want to believe that the women in that group will hopefully have walked away from your meeting with the tiniest little seed planted in them at the very least. You and Em are far better empowering examples than anything we can put in our games.

Brand said: "you have now made me want to do a Roman/Celtic game in which giant throbbing cocks are the sign of a true hero"

That game already exisits! It's called Barbaren  and it sounds like an awesome game of sex and mayhem. From the actual play I've heard, it seems like a pretty strongly feminist game, too. You have to be a good lover in order to be a good fighter, and there's categorically no rape.

I wish I'd been there :-(  Damn that Ocean!

What Ron said Re gender issues in gaming was teh awesome.

Men have cocks.  This should not surprise you.  Women have boobies.  This also should not come as a shock.  Humans are sexual creatures.  If you are young enough that this is a revelation, I apologise for saying "cock" earlier.

Depicting sexual humans with cocks or boobies doesn't seem like a big deal to me.  The problem is that one gender is mostly depicted as object, and the other mostly as character.

But also:

In my ideal world, we'd have heroes, villains, sex objects, monsters, villagers...of both sexes (and all races, sexual orientations etc etc)  No discrimination.  If I want a poster of a rampant gay centaur on my wall, that's my look out.

BUT

In real life, at a roleplaying convention attended by a lot of teenage boys, professional artists would produce lots of chainmail bikini porn.  Because that's what they'd sell.  (and then where would I find my homosexual horse-men? :-)

Is that okay then?  I don't think it is...but how to avoid it?

Tris, you're cool.

we'd have heroes, villains, sex objects, monsters, villagers...of both sexes (and all races, sexual orientations etc etc)

I think that's the absolute heart of the matter. It's both diverse human representation at the booth, and diverse human representation in the products. We're not at an ideal place in either case, but it keeps getting better.

Without being too self-aggrandizing: This is why the Forge and its ilk will be leading the way on this point. We are liberated by the fact that we do not need to appeal to the lowest common denominator to be commercially feasible.

Now, you really want to push at some stereotypes, have some full female nudity of an unattractive, non-anorexic female. That is the last taboo.

Well, Bachhanal had some of that (didn't it?). I can't remember if it was full frontal nudity or what, but a big girl was on there. Likewise, the first version of TSOY.

Here's what I don't like, and where the danger lies: forcing everyone into a politically correct mold ("we can't depict large breasts ever- that would be sexist!") will not serve you creatively. If someone wants to depict breasts, or penises or whatever, then let it serve the product, and let the public and peers decide. But please don't let this be a creativity-crushing collectivist-enforcement thing.

It's amazing that you guys can talk gleefully about throbbing cocks, but nobody would dare to talk about glistening—wait, what is the female analog word to cock? Is anyone hoping for a game about that, or would that be over the line?

Girls who dress like Drow elves rock.

Um. Er. I would like to politely offer that the correlating anatomies are cock and cunt, not cock and "boobies".  I personally would like to see more depictions (not necessarily sexual) of both male and female genitalia.

I think people were talking about boobies because of the breastfeeding-at-a-con thing, and also because they comprise the majority of fantasy porn art.  And cock is something sexual and usually hidden, so makes a reasonable comparison.  I can't think of a better piece of my anatomy to use in comparison :-D

But actually, it doesn't seem to me that which anatomies correlate to which is really relevant - what's important is that bodies of my sex are treated in all the different ways that bodies of your sex are, and vice versa.

What Julie said. Totally.

This is about the anatomical vaginal features: labia, clitoral hood and clitoris, pubic hair as context rather than mask, urethral opening, vaginal opening, lubrication, and all related matters, including fucking, pregnancy, and birth. My post above was quite clear about that; breasts are not genitals.

Therefore, I disagree with you, Tris. Boobies are half-on-display all over the place in our society. They get displayed a great deal as well, when you go to the channel or movie rating that shows them. They are cheap and available and hence showing them in (e.g.) a game supplement is a false line to cross.

Scarz, for any concerns or cautions about "don't just do it to do it," yeah, of course. My post about that was clear on this point as well. I am talking about sexuality, empowerment, and a perfectly understandable role for the feature in play itself, as a necessary or at least conceivably useful, powerful part of a *given game.* This isn't about plastering pictures all over the place and patting ourselves on the back for being so "aware."

Justin: yes. Yes indeed. Especially if she is not a figure of fun or grotesquerie. And actually, there's an illo in Degenesis that fits your criteria, too. Not that we'll see it in the English translation, I'm afraid.

Best, Ron

Fantasy art does not have to be chainmail bikini porn in order to sell. Case in point, I was delighted to find one of my favorite artists, Stephanie Pui Mun Law, there and was amused to note that seemingly all the women at the con had flocked to her booth because her art didn't feature the stupid pinups that most other booths did.

That being said, I was equally delighted to pass a booth that featured beefcake barbarian MEN right next to the cheesecake barbarian women. Equal opportunity objectivication! Chainmail bikini porn wouldn't bother me nearly so much if beefcake barbarians were equally prevalent. It's the disparity that bothers me, the cognitive divide between women as sexual objects and women as heroes in their own right.

It would be nice to have sexuality treated in an adult manner in games, but gaming as a whole hasn't really come to terms with the fact that it's core audience has grown past teenaged males. So for now, it doesn't really surprise me that the only games trying to treat sexuality seriously are indie games.

Tris, Lace & Steel has lots of centaurs in fluffy white shirts. I'm pretty sure some of them are gay. The illustrator, Donna Barr, also makes/made a very good comic called "The Desert Peach", about Erwin Rommel's gay brother - very funny, and very touching at times.

Meg: Great point about that pic in Agon! And now that you mention it, it is a *little* odd that there are no exposed penises in all that ancient-Greek-inspired art. Maybe for the revised edition I can summon up the hubris to alter the artwork of one of the greatest illustrators of the 19th century, and put the wang back in.

At least there are no fucking oak leaves. Gah.

Hey Meg, thanks for mentioning Barbaren, I was about to bring it in myself. ;-) I think it's kind of a back door approach to say the game is actually feminist, in that there is no rape. Ben said as much when he visited me in Hamburg. On the other hand, women in the game are categorized strictly in how pretty and, y'know, able they are. They are no more than trophies, which is pretty sexist when you think about it.

My take is that this macho image of a women is exaggerated and ridiculous and therefore no offence to women, but rather a way for intelligent people to mock all those idiots who still actually live this sexist shit.

Ah well, I am derailing the discussion. Be sure, though, that Barbaren will have some pretty explicit graphics when it finally comes... out.

- Frank

Ron -

I'm not sure what you disagree with, but that's perhaps because I'm not talking about crossing lines. So maybe we are talking at cross purposes?

I can't find a part of my anatomy that makes a better comparison with boobies in this context.

(As an aside:  If you are saying, anatomically, that cocks are closer to cunts than boobies, then yes.

If you are saying that cocks are closer to cunts than boobies in terms of what the society you live in is comfortable portraying in art then you live in a very different society to me.)

But don't get distracted by that.  Most importantly, I'm NOT trying to say anything about what is or isn't crossing a line.  I'm trying to delineate a position that isn't "No sex objects ever" but rather "Sex objects for everyone please.  And every other imaginable role you can depict, also for everyone".

As the father of a 2.5-year-old girl now wrestling with toilet training (and who came back from pre-pre-school talking about her "bagina"), I find myself consistently saying "secret part"—as in "well, Daddy pees standing up because boy secret parts are different from girl secret parts." Note that my toddler has had enough fairy tales read to her that she thinks of "secret" as "very cool thing you only show/tell special people," not as "shameful thing."

My wife thinks I'm loony, but somehow it strikes me as the most toddler-friendly way to cultivate appropriate respect for the seriousness of the thing. Viz. Corinthians 12:25. (I think verse 25's right...). Modesty can stem from shame and repression OR from respect and due honor.

And I think other fathers will agree with me when I say that once you've seen your wife struggle with breastfeeding, you never think "hey, boobies!" in quite the same way again. Because now you know what they're actually FOR.

Bagina, what series was it, Ally MacBill? Hilarious.

Anyway, for all you "Awful" Vagina lovers, you need look no further than Clanbook Tzimisce and some of the Wraith books(Spectres).

First - many many condolences on your loss, Vincent.

Now, back to nudity and sex.

Back in, oh, '93 or so, I ran a Shadowrun campaign which was terrible and horrible and occasionally quite fun, mostly because I had people with a sense of humor playing.  One of them was Vincent.

Having played the same character for several months, he decided that he wanted to try something else, and brought on a physical ad... okay, a berserker. We cooked up some rules, and a little while later we had Jan, who carried a really quite large axe and worshiped the old Norse gods (Thor, specifically).

At some point, he showed me a sketch that he probably banged out in about 3 minutes. It showed Jan, seated facing away from the viewer. She was nude, her axe resting across her lap (not in any kind of provocative pose), and a large Thor's Hammer tattoo was visble across her shoulder blades.  It was both tasteful and unbelievably sexy.

Vincent played Shadowrun?

I know so little about so much.

(Wow, there're at least three conversations going on here at once.)

Matt & James, re: women gamers meeting - I'm going to work up a post about that; watch Fair Game for it sometime this coming week.

John, re: cocks in gaming art - The art in Agon is awesome, don't get me wrong. But that horse's leg has fig-leaf-like overtones. I bet there's other art you could find to add or swap, rather than changing that piece if you don't want to alter the existing artwork.

Frank, re: Barbaren and feminism - Yeah, it's shallow praise to say "Hey, there's no rape!", and I think your comentary on the game as a way to mock sexism is good. We've gone rounds about how often or not rape turns up in text or play or whatever, and I still think it's interesting commentary that it's forbidden in Barbaren.

Julie, Tris & Ron, re: cocks != boobies - Well, yeah. Also, there's a dificulty in showing women's genitalia explicitly, because (and I think this was part of Tris' point) it's less evident. I can easily see showing nude women, complete with pubic hair and breasts, and nude men, complete with penises and nipples, but a naked woman just hanging out in her skin does not generally have all her genitalia on display the way a man does, just by accident of biological form. Maybe a bit of a curve of labia majora, perhaps a bit of minora for some women. Clit? Not in any non-clinical or non-sexual pose I can imagine.

Sydney & Guy, re: names for parts - I always liked 'yoni' or 'vulva' better than 'vagina'. Yoni and vulva are softer and prettier sounding, to me. Also, the vagina is only one particular part of the whole wonderful package. It'd be kind of like calling a penis a urethra instead, IMO. I get the idea of privacy and all, and it's been a weird road to raise sons and go through their learning about how stretchy little penises are and not to do that in the supermarket. So far, they seem reasonably well socialzed, thank goodness!

Sam & Matt, re Vincent and Shadowrun: Yep, and it was KICKASS!

>  a naked woman just hanging out in her skin does not generally have all her genitalia on display the way a man does...

Yeah. Whose brilliant idea was THAT?

"Oh, look at this set of extremely pain-sensitive organs without which the creature cannot reproduce—oops, looks like the sperm-producing parts OVERHEAT AT NORMAL BODY TEMPERATURE, I guess we'll have the whole thing dangling externally—what can possibly go wrong?"

I believe in God, the resurrection of Jesus, and the literal truth of significant parts of the Bible, but: Intelligent design? What a load of cock.

You guys don't know what I studied to earn my doctorate, do you? Heh.

Check out this RPG.net thread, which I'm still pretty proud of ...

http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?referrerid=21316&t=22409&highlight=penis+dragon

Anyway, Meg - when the day comes for a game which needs depiction of a clit or vaginal canal, or so on, in the same way that the guy in Agon really needs his equipage on display ('cause he does!), then I will be there.

Best, Ron

Here's Ron's link, linkized. He's on page 3, in case you want to skip to it.

Ron, I just read those two posts of yours in that thread to my science-geek wife. When I read, "Most mammals have separated Mr. Anus from Mr./Ms. Genitals + Mr. Urethra. (male prefixes used just for fun, sorry gals) Look down if you're not sure what I mean ... all these parts are NOT in a little tucked-away orifice all together, right? If they are, I want to meet you - you're worth a publication to me," she laughed so hard her sides hurt. She also made smoochy-kissy noises when I read "cloacal kiss" before I read your aside about kissy-smoochy noises. Now she wants "So don't be mixin' up bacula with squamate hemipenes or any of that confused stuff" as a sig. Well done.