M2e book has he and him replaced with she and hers!

[Spazmortis]

Has anyone else noticed that it says she/her anywhere it would say he/him?

I thought that it was a pretty cool thing to do. Nice one Wyrd!

[Pierowmaniac]

Yes it was noticed during the beta test and had a fairly large thread about it. Unfortunately all the Beta test forums have gone away so thats why the thread is no longer visible.

BTW yep its a good change

[Dracomax]

I think that it just says Her/she anywhere that the generic He/him would be used. If referring to something with a gender, it still uses the correct gender.

Personally, I daid it before, and I'll say it again. If it makes people happy, good for wyrd. It feels a bit pointless to me, but it's not a bad change. It's just a change that really doesn't effect the product.

Totally unsubstantiated rumor spreading time:

I hear it was decided by Justin and Eric getting drunk and then throwing lawn darts at a blindfolded Mack until He fell down onto a plastic mat with the several hundred versions of gender specific words(plus about 75 non gender words such as it, their, etc, and about five made up words such as shazbot and Poit!) and then they went with the one that had the most blood near it.

[Forar]

It's been done in other rulesbooks as well. While the male pronouns have been accepted as the default for ages, it's nice to see some people shirking that trend. It's a small thing, but when trying to expand ones user base, being as inclusive as possible isn't a bad idea, and I highly doubt many people refused to buy the book because of said change, but such a shift might inspire others to take a second look.

All told, I applaud the move as well.

[Dracomax]

To clarify my point. I really don't get why it gets any reaction, let alone the thread length that thread had. Not going to lie. when reading the book, I don't even really notice it.

Pronouns are generally one of those things that I read but don't notice unless I see a Character/type mismatch--i.e. if it says she when referring to a male character, I get confused, because it makes me question who was doing what or being referred to. in this context, it's just kind of irrelevant. They had to pick a pronoun. Word is, they flipped a coin. Okay. glad they made a choice.

Ascribing any kind of agenda to it (even, "It might raise sales" which I would guess is something that should be tested, because I'm not buying into it without some kind of hard data. It's such a small change that I doubt anyone who would be likely to play the game is going to be convinced to pick up the book because of it—I could be wrong, but I really think that just assuming it without any kind of testing is a bit irresponsible) just imposes something that we, the consumer, expect onto something that, in their own words, had no other meaning.

I think the conversation about the change is far more interesting than the change itself.

[Nathan Caroland]

True event:

Recently was at a distributor show and we had a ... erm, gentleman, have a huge ol' huff about the fact that we were making games that were more inclusive of, or at the very least, interesting to women (in this particular case he was having a fit about EBO and JU) and that the last thing he wanted in his store was females.

Said this to a female employee, in front of two other female retailers, and then stomped off in righteous indignation. After a moment of stunned silence the ladies had a moment to comment among themselves.

Needless to say, for some folks, one way or another, it means something. Not that I'm taking a stance either way or pointing to data XYZ.

[nyhil]

Let's be honest: we all got into gaming to meet women.

[odinsgrandson]

Well, I did meet my wife int he game store... (yeah, I married well).

Wow, Nathan. I've seen enough sexism to totally believe your story, but it just gets me every time that someone is willing to actually say something like that out loud.

I've also noticed a lot more inclusion since I first started gaming. Malifaux 2E isn't the first book to do this- I remember seeing it in books by Wizards of the Coast and White Wolf for quite a while (the first I remember was the Netrunner CCG manual from the 90s).

[Cadilon]

To be honest, I wrinkled my a nose a little at it when it was first decided and I participated a bit in that beta thread. I certainly have nothing against female gamers and the more women who get into gaming the larger the player pool I'll have to choose from. I have two daughters that I've been gaming with and I encourage them to game more for a number of reasons.

The thing that bothered me at first was that it appeared to be an attempt to be politically correct. Unfortunately, the english language just doesn't have a gender-neutral pronoun. It has to be one or the other. For better or worse, the masculine has come to be the default neutral. To change every pronoun in the book seemed, to me, to be akin to changing 'history' to 'herstory' and pronouncing harassment 'hairass-ment' instead of 'her-assment'. To me, political correctness has become people just looking for ways to be offended.

Anyway, does it really make any difference to me now? Nope. Do I even really notice it in the rulebook? Nope. I don't think its pretty cool, nor do I hate it.

And since I am already going out on a limb...I won't defend the comments of the man in Nathan's story. However, belonging to a certain male-only fraternal organization, I can appreciate that in a man's life he might want some male-only camaraderie. I don't believe that should extend to a public game store or to the games that a company makes. But maybe I can understand a small kernel of what the man might have been so clumsily going for.

[Dracomax]

True event:

Recently was at a distributor show and we had a ... erm, gentleman, have a huge ol' huff about the fact that we were making games that were more inclusive of, or at the very least, interesting to women (in this particular case he was having a fit about EBO and JU) and that the last thing he wanted in his store was females.

Said this to a female employee, in front of two other female retailers, and then stomped off in righteous indignation. After a moment of stunned silence the ladies had a moment to comment among themselves.

Needless to say, for some folks, one way or another, it means something. Not that I'm taking a stance either way or pointing to data XYZ.

Honestly, my guess is that it means some people are <bleep>holes. My guess is that unless you had a game filled with actively stripping miniatures, and acted like women were scum, he'd have complained. And if you did, he'd have found something else to complain about. Unfortunately, some people just never mature much past the age of 7.

Not just in reference to the pronoun issues, but to making things more girl friendly in general:

Honestly, the people whose complaints are anything more than, "Looks like change for change sake/attempt to appeal to political correctness with minimal effort" confuse me even more than the people who think it's a massive stride forward for feminism. Neither make much sense, but at least the ones looking at it as a good thing have the benefit of being happy for inclusion, rather than looking for something to complain about. It's one thing if you are changing (or being made to change) the entire character of your work to fit a larger audience(i.e. selling out) and another thing if you are making minor changes in the name of outreach.

[Justin]

Not really a rules question, moving thread.

[Matney X]

I've noticed in other places where they religiously alternate between male and female pronouns. IMO, that seems to be the best way to go.

I haven't looked at a D&D book in ages, but I know White Wolf was all about female pronouns in the 90s.

[Claymore65]

As a side note, I know every company does things differently. Some do male pronouns, some do female, some alternate. It doesn't make a difference to me really, but it is kind of interesting to note the differences. For example, the D&D books that I've read use male pronouns for the DM stuff, and female pronouns for player stuff. I've also seen each chapter alternating and a bunch of other methods. It's not very important to me (a book is a book), but if it makes some people feel better may as well go with that.

[HalcyonSeraph]

I've noticed in other places where they religiously alternate between male and female pronouns. IMO, that seems to be the best way to go.

I haven't looked at a D&D book in ages, but I know White Wolf was all about female pronouns in the 90s.

Eh, that just seems jarring and a pain to keep up with in editing. Just pick one and be consistent, or lobby for a grammatically accepted gender neutral pronoun in English.

[Z-Ray]

I've noticed in other places where they religiously alternate between male and female pronouns. IMO, that seems to be the best way to go.

I haven't looked at a D&D book in ages, but I know White Wolf was all about female pronouns in the 90s.

If I remember correctly the D&D 3rd edition had a stock of named characters that they used in the examples and the rules would use the pronoun that fit the gender of the one used i that sections examples.

eg. the setion on melee attacks used Lady Justice in all the examples and used she/her in the body of the rules as well. Then the section on summoning mechanics used Nicodem and him/he.

[Dracomax]

If I remember correctly the D&D 3rd edition had a stock of named characters that they used in the examples and the rules would use the pronoun that fit the gender of the one used i that sections examples.

eg. the setion on melee attacks used Lady Justice in all the examples and used she/her in the body of the rules as well. Then the section on summoning mechanics used Nicodem and him/he.

That really only worked when they preceded the section with a bit of fluff detailing what was going on in game, and then explained the rules. Malifaux isn't currently set up that way.

[i_was_like_you]

That really only worked when they preceded the section with a bit of fluff detailing what was going on in game, and then explained the rules. Malifaux isn't currently set up that way.

The book kinda was. [At work, no book in front of me.] The Judge attacks the Gremlin...

In rpg books, when they tend to default to the feminine regarding the players and storyteller (White Wolf!), it's fine. What bugged me about this in the Malifaux book is that most instances were regarding a model doing something. Call the model an it, if need be. I don't necessarily need my models' gender, especially in the abstract examples, to default to male or female.

She spends two soulstones, flips two cards, and adds the desired suit to the total... No, she does not, the player does. If the player is female. Great. I love that some games are more enticing to lady gamers than others. My White Wolf campaigns have been mostly gals. It's not that women don't like D&D. It's that the rules, not necessarily as written, but as presented by anyone they'd want to play with / learn from, tend to be far too daunting. Whereas, add two set of dots together, roll that many dice, and get 8s and up (or storyteller's fiat prior to nWoD) comes across more intuitively. That, and countless other reasons that are as varied as the number of women who have delved into the world of geekery.

[Spifferson]

Unsubstantiated Rumor time.

Mack made the executive decision to use 'she'. Plans are still being worked out, bu

t if you are in anyways upset Mack will personally scribble out all the S's and make the h's uppercase H's. It is still uncertain if he will provide notes of wisdom and mustache your favorite character.

[Mack.Martin]

Unsubstantiated Rumor time.

Mack made the executive decision to use 'she'. Plans are still being worked out, bu

t if you are in anyways upset Mack will personally scribble out all the S's and make the h's uppercase H's. It is still uncertain if he will provide notes of wisdom and mustache your favorite character.

Whenever I sign a book, I'm going to mustache a character now.

[Cats Laughing]

Whenever I sign a book, I'm going to mustache a character now.

Sweet

You should also consider varying the type of mustache too

Handlebars, Fu Manchus, etc...

[MrChom]

If people are pleased by this, great for them. I on the other hand...don't really care? So long as the rules are there it could use Male, Female, Gender Neutral, the terms used in Star Trek: New Frontier for multi-gendered characters, or always refer to any players needed as either Sir Edmund Blackadder or Bob.

I read a page, went "Oh, it uses she....fair enough" and carried on. More concerned about when I can play Kaeris again, personally

[Forar]

That's kind of the point. For the vast majority, it's a non-issue. For some, it's a nice change of pace. I suspect very, very, very few people consider it an outright negative, and honestly, I'd hope it might inspire a little introspection as to why that might be for some of them.

[Phototoxin]

I know for a long time that white wolf did this with their RPGs, I suspect partially because they are RPGs that have as many male as female fans and partially to be avant garde

However the English language has a lovely word for a plural amount of any gender which can also be used as a singular hypothetical person. Unlike say French where there are masculine and feminine forms of the word 'they' (ils, elles) or Irish where the 'they' changes depending on use-age (siad, doib, acu) the English 'they' suffices for all of these things. It is gender neutral, plural or singular, inoffensive and only 2 letters longer than 'he' and 1 letter more than 'she'. It is shorter than 'he/she'.

In reading it is easier to compute since one is not attaching gender or actual identity to the subject.

E.g.; 'When the character dies, she explodes'. What if my charater is male? does he explode? (one presumes so, but mentally its another mini block that we have to substitute) But if we said; 'When the character dies, they explode' it is a bit clearer although arguably the they could be confused for plural (who's they?)

TL:DR; use they instead of he/she.

[Forar]

With recognition that "they" can have issues of its own.