Monday, September 17, 2012

The Great Geek Sexism Debate

My friend Stephanie sent me this really interesting article from io9: The Great Geek Sexism Debate. It summarizes three incidents at recent conventions that have lead to "very public discussions about sexism and sexual harassment" in the nerd/geek community. If you haven't already, click through and read the article. I found it to be quite informative and remarkably unbiased. And in trolling the interwebs I found this article with ALL THE LINKS to information on other incidents of sexism/harassment in gaming, nerd/geek culture as a whole, and comic books: Sexism in Geek Culture, with a look at Comics. Careful, this last one isn't safe for work productivity - I've already spent a good portion of my day following various stories down their respective rabbit holes.

In general, my sense of nerd/geek sexism is this: a few bad actors are extremely vocal/aggressive, while most of us just want to get back to our games, books, movies, whatever. Many would be satisfied with at "Don't Feed the Trolls" policy of ignoring inappropriate people and hoping they'll go away. But by not sending a message of zero tolerance for sexism/harassment, we allow for these things to happen again and again. If we as a community are really committed to inclusion and openness - as we should be - we've got to get past this. IMHO, the best way of going about that is not national campaigns or public statements. For gamers it starts at the table, with being able to look someone in the eyes and say, "What you just said? Not cool."

Quote of the Week: "It takes a great deal of bravery to stand up to your enemies, but a great deal more to stand up to your friends." - Albus Dumbledore

Encounters 10.3: Curse Your Sudden Yet Inevitable Betrayal!

I hope y'all enjoyed my Twitter feed (@monkey_sri) during this brief, unscheduled hiatus. I tried to put some gaming content in there, but sadly was not 100% successful. Now, back to our regularly scheduled programming...

In last week's session of Encounters, we caught up with the treacherous drow priestess who had turned against her own party and left them for dead. She was accompanied by several hobgoblin toughs, and the battlefield was a narrow corridor. Being the only defender in the group, my character took quite a beating - Akneth was bloodied or unconscious half the time - but thanks to her druid ally, she made it through the Encounter in one piece. And then the fun began.

These guys? Least of our worries.


From one wall of the room we could hear a faint humming, actually composed of two melodies - one a chant to the goddess Lolth, the other some kind of wizard's mnemonic. Two adventurers had to place their hands on the wall and follow along with each melody - without confusing each other - to get through to the shrine. The DC was ridiculously low, but our rolls were ridiculously lower. Finally, our DM just let us take 20 to get through.

As soon as the wall disappeared, Akneth immediately leaped inside to complete her secret side mission - to douse the shrine with unholy water before the ritual could commence. In a shocking-to-no-one turn of events, the warlock of the party (and the only member of the House Xorlarrin) tried to stop her. Instead of being subtle or clever, however, he just fired an eldritch bolt at Akneth. Luckily, it missed. What I wanted was to have her turn around and beat his ass. But that would've extended the session and we were going out for karaoke afterwards. So she had to settle for reporting his betrayal back to her superiors.

So... interesting session. I'm still on the fence about this whole Stab Your Allies In The Back thing. Definitely not my favorite flavor of role-playing, but it does make for some interesting situations. It would be more fun, too, if I had allies who were in my house instead of having to be a faction of one.