Wyrmworks Publishing What happens when the player, not the character, is min maxed? Welcome to Gaining Advantage Wyrmworks Publishing Welcome to Gaining Advantage. We are using tabletop games like Dungeons and Dragons to help you make lives better. Just this week, we released an accessible character sheet for people with print and reading disabilities. It uses emojis and has spaces where you can draw different spell effects or whatever it is that you need to remember, really useful for what your actions are. And this is available to anybody that would benefit from something like that to have those visual cues to help them out. It's available free on DriveThruRPG, and there is a link to that in the show notes. Also, if you haven't already, you can check out our Ready-to-Roll: Fairweather Friends Kickstarter — it's only $1 for a complete adventure, and there's all kinds of extras that are going to be available for that. We're gonna be launching that really soon. And so if you follow the link to the show notes and click the button to get notified when it launches, you can get it right away including some extras for those who back it in the early hours of the Kickstarter. And so with all that, let's get right into the interview. Wyrmworks Publishing Today we're talking with Dr. Steven Dashiell, a sociologist who studies language in male-dominated spaces, including gaming. We're going to explore the connection between language, masculinity, and tabletop gaming experiences. Welcome Dr. Dashiell. Steven Dashiell Thank-you. Thank-you very much. I'm glad to be here. Wyrmworks Publishing Alright, so what would you like us to know about you personally, specifically speaking to the tabletop gaming crowd? Steven Dashiell Ah, that I don't really study games, but I am myself an avid tabletop gamer. I've been gaming for about 30 years. My first game was, of course, like a lot of people, Dungeons and Dragons. But my first, my first iteration of Dungeons and Dragons was the blue box, the Expert Set. I didn't even have Basic because we only had one store that actually sold Dungeons & Dragons because this was around the time of the Satanic Panic. They sold out of the Basic, so I had to get the Expert, and my first actual D&D game was AD&D. And I happily walked in with my Experts Set books and was completely blown away, because all of the information that I had was somewhat relevant but not very relevant to the game. But that space at a local comic book store on in a small town on the eastern shore of Maryland actually opened me up to many other tabletop roleplaying games and and even miniature games. So I played, oh gosh, BattleTech, and I played I don't know if people even remember this. The game, Toon, which was Wyrmworks Publishing Oh, yeah. Steve Jackson Games. Steven Dashiell And Twilight 2000 and other games like Warhammer of course. So yeah, and that but but I've always had a first love for Dungeons and Dragons. Even though I am a huge White Wolf game fan, D&D is my heart and soul, and it is the thing that I expend a lot more time looking at and researching. Wyrmworks Publishing I started with AD&D and and and then I encountered the the D&D rules later, and I was really confused. Like, "What do you mean an elf is a class?" Steven Dashiell Yes, yeah. Oh, my. It's interesting you bring that up, because I just started playing Baldurs Gate 3, and I'm playing a halfling Paladin. And there was this moment where I was like, you know, in D&D, this wouldn't be possible because halflings didn't have Paladins. And I went down this whole rabbit hole of like, wow, how limited that halflings could be thieves and fighters and that's it. Absolutely nothing else, and and how how the game has grown and expanded so much. And that was D&D when when you have the demihuman rules. AD&D even had similar rules where like, for example, Paladins had to be humans. Yeah, it's it's amazing how much the game has grown. Now people are talking about tiefling Paladins, and I'm like, "What? Who?" Wyrmworks Publishing That's awesome. All right. So tell us about your language research, and especially the language of gaming and what you've discovered. Steven Dashiell Sure, sure. Um, so my research… I'm a sociologist who studies the sociology of language, and my research actually started with looking at the language and the capital, the things that are seen as valuable at cons and looking at comic book conventions and gaming conventions. And one of the things that I found interesting was that I was there with a friend and his partner, and his partner got into this very strange discussion and asking a whole bunch of questions which he didn't know. That's not something you do at a con, which really irritated my friend to the point that he really ostracized his partner. And it was at that moment that I kind of like felt some level of empathy for the partner, because I'm like, wow, there's some things you really aren't supposed to do at these conventions. And there are unwritten rules and there there are things you're allowed to say and things you're not allowed to say and, okay, I get it now. And I started thinking laterally about, "Well, that's true in other spaces. That's true with a gaming table." And that led me to researching the gaming table. I'm looking at, potentially, the kind of conversation, the kind of discourse that's privileged at the gaming table. Steven Dashiell And that led to a paper that I wrote in a journal called Acta Ludologica, which is talking about meta discourse. Meta discourse is that conversation that isn't about the game, but happens at the game table, and if it weren't for the game, the conversation wouldn't happen. Think about like some of the popular culture references that occur at the gaming table. And like, in my first gaming experience, they were talking about Monty Python and the Holy Grail, which at the time I knew nothing about. Wyrmworks Publishing Yep Steven Dashiell There was there were all of these jokes that seemed like inside jokes about about a movie and a genre of movies that I knew nothing about. But I recognized that it was important and it is and metadiscourse recognizes that you understand that these things tend to be privileged, and that these conversations are ones that you have to like kind of pick up on and that some minoritized populations, whether it be women or sexual minorities, or people of different racial ethnic backgrounds, who might not have been exposed to some of these things that have value, have to kind of catch up in order to feel like that they are seen as an effective part of the table. And even if the table isn't just privileging them, they kind of internalize, "I don't feel like I am a huge part of this, because I don't understand these things and I don't do these things." Wyrmworks Publishing Fair. Yeah, that makes sense. Okay, so can you give us some examples of within the games themselves and how that works? Steven Dashiell Oh, sure. Sure, absolutely. So another example of the way in which language is important and that there's an enforcement of language that is more poised to some people rather than others would be things like rules lawyering and gamesplaining. And rules lawyering is of course, that kind of minute argument of these kinds of breezy concepts that exist in rules. And the idea of rules lawyering which can go on forever, and the persisting in the discussion of rules lawyering, there's something that when we look at sociolinguistics that has studied the gendered nature of language there's something very masculine about rules lawyering, because it is an argument of a reinforcement of a point. And we do recognize from sociolinguistic study and study of gender, like that which is done by Dr. Deborah Tannen, that women for example, and little girls tend to be taught that conversations are about compromise. And rules lawyering is not about compromise. It's about, "I'm right and this interpretation is right." And you start to recognize that the game, the day is not won at the table by compromise in those circumstances of whose interpretation of the rules are right, nor is it necessarily a structural issue, whereas I wrote a paper talking about the nature of the DM and the GM, whereas the old idea of the DM is, "DM is the final rule." And he says this is what's right and that's it. But we know that at the contemporary table, if somebody reinforces that they know more about something, and there's this nature to say, "Well, I've been playing D&D since blah, blah, blah," which automatically gives you a level of authority over people who haven't been playing it as long that that can be used as a buttress and that can be used as capital in order to have some level of authority at the table. And so yeah, the idea of rules lawyering is very much about the language that's necessary in rules lawyering, which is always going back to the rules. One of my papers I talked about the most effective rules lawyers are the people that quote the rules and are not looking at the rules. Because that means that they have like an encyclopedic knowledge of the rules. However, there is also value in having the books that have the rules, because if you have the book that has the rules, then you can say, I'm looking at the book. And so there's an entire line of research that talks about the value of the books as text and paratexts. And one of the things that you need is the physical copy of the book, which is something that's always amazed me in the D&D world which has gotten more and more digital, but more and more people will show up at D&D games with like 18 books. And it's like, you know, you can get 18 PDFs on a tablet and it's the same thing, but there's value in having the book. Wyrmworks Publishing Yeah Steven Dashiell …and having the book and having the book in front of you. That's a power play and it is a recognition that it is a collection of discourse, and that when people, and I've seen this so many times in games, when people do something, and somebody has an issue with it, and they pull out — they won't say anything. They pull out the book and start turning pages. That is that is most assuredly a power play using the book isas the paratext, but challenging with a discourse that goes unsaid, and this is, I mean, I find this interesting, just like gamesplaining. And gamesplaining is the idea of telling somebody that they're doing something wrong. It's not rules lawyering, but it's actually like, "Oh, you're doing this, and you're doing it wrong, which means I know more about this game than you." And again, from a point of view of gendered conversation, and for people who come from cultures that are far more communitarian. It's about helping people. Gamesplaining is not about helping. Gamesplaining is about, "Oh, I'm helping you, but I'm doing it in a way that's clearly showing that I know more about this." And these are all aspects of language that I look at in games. And, and to understand that people are not doing this maliciously. And I think when some people hear this, they're just like, "I know, these people are horrible, and you're saying they're horrible, or you're maligning." Some… People aren't doing this maliciously. This is a part of socialization. People have seen it at tables as they've grown up, and they've seen it works. And it may not be necessarily the most polite thing in the world. It may not be the most communal type of discourse, but it is the discourse at the tables that work, and we do understand that people say, "Well, you know, my table's not like that." Sure. Every table is a microculture, and microcultures develop their own cultures of how they deal with circumstances. However, go to Gen Con. Go to Balticon. Steven Dashiell If you go to a con, which is a good example of a collective idea of the expectations of gaming, which is outside of your microculture, you start to see how those things absolutely positively work. And interestingly enough, and I've talked to talk to a couple of people who sit and do mind space where it's like minoritized individuals. When I go to a con, I turn into like novice again, because I feel like everybody else sitting at the table understands the game more than I do. I mean, I'm a researcher who studies the game, and I automatically feel like, because I sit in this position, that I have to prove that I know as much as I do about the game, but I try to do it without gamesplaining and without rules lawyering, which means I don't do it. Because it's it's not something that comes naturally to me, and we find that in a lot of individuals who come from groups that may not be necessarily naturally connected to gaming, they feel that sense of, "Okay. I've got to prove myself, but I can't be too overbearing about proving myself." Whereas an individual who identifies themselves as a woman who is involved in rules lawyering has other issues involved with getting into that argument of rules lawyering compared to a man doing the same thing, because of the fact that there there there are other biases that might come into play. And a lot of my research looks at the potentiality of those biases coming into play. Wyrmworks Publishing Wow, this is fascinating, because you know, as you talk about, you know, rules like compromise, you know, and all that sort of thing. I mean, I think about just my relationship with my wife, and I think about our conversations, and it really kind of makes me aware of of why she responds the way she does at times and also why I respond the way I do at times, and so that's, that's fascinating. But it also, you know, when so I mean, yeah, my first D&D book was The Fiend Folio, because they were clearancing it out at Kay Bee Toys, which a lot of and, and so I was able to get it for $4. And so I just I read that thing back and forth so many times, because it was the only book I had. And and so yeah, but yeah, I learned first edition, and I learned second edition, and and stuff and then life happened, and and I just had to step away from gaming for a long time just to be a husband and a dad and start a career and things like that, go to grad school and and so I didn't get back into D&D until 2019, you know, and so it was we are we're firmly in fifth edition at that point. And, and so but you know, so I, I picked up the the core books and started reading through them and I went, Oh, okay, you know, I get the gist of this. And it's actually a lot easier and, and, and so I liked it, but at the same time I did, you know, I felt inadequate and and because I was I was trying to start up a big group, and here I'm like, "Okay, well, I've been playing this game for a long time. And and, and it's always been a big part of me ever since I was a kid. Even when I wasn't playing, I was thinking about it." But we had people there that were playing that they knew the game back and forth. And and I think this is something for like for, especially if you are the the GM, and there's this sort of feeling like you've got to know the rules. Steven Dashiell Yes. Wyrmworks Publishing And, um, but I, you know, I'm sort of upfront and said, "Look, I I feel like I know the rules, but you know what, I'm gonna also lean on those who, who have been playing for longer and you know, and so help me out." And I mean, thankfully in our case, the community was was very open. We had a nice mix of people that had experience, that didn't have experience, but at the same time, I have this memory of there was somebody new came, and he was playing a dwarven fighter and, and he had his axes and, and this, this other, it was this sort of random encounter of a just this sort of drunk dwarf comes along and starts picking a fight and stuff. And, and he, you know, he pulls his axes out, he's like, oh, you know, I've got this and kind of the rest of the table sort of looked at him and cringed and it was like, "Hey, this guy's drunk. Maybe we don't murder him. You know, because he's not bad. He's just not really in control." And, and it was, it was sort of like, I mean, this guy, the player is someone who's just a wonderful human being and very kind and compassionate. But, you know, he was like, Okay, this is D&D, you know, you swing axes around, you know, and then and, you know, so there's just there's that that culture. Steven Dashiell Yes. Wyrmworks Publishing And, and whereas whereas other gaming tables would have been like, "Yeah, roll to hit," you know? Steven Dashiell Yeah, no, I just finished a paper where I talked about that, that murder hobo culture where it's kind of like, you got Oh, and now I have seen now I have seen Monty Python and the Holy Grail a million times. But it's like that scene where Lancelot comes into the castle, and just kills everybody. And it's like, "Oh, well, that's kind of what you do, because that's what D&D is." And admittedly, there are a couple of modules in first edition and second edition that that's all they are. I mean, it honestly is like, "Don't think, just kill and work your way to the end." Then you kill the big bad, and you're, you're fine. But yeah, D&D is, I mean, there have always been thinking man modules. But but there is that that idea that still is popular of the murder hobo. And it persists, if not in D&D, it persists in games like Diablo. I mean, Diablo is like a picture of a murder hobo. "Oh, no, they've all turned into demons! Kill 'em all! Don't even talk to them! Kill 'em all! And yeah, it's hard to dispel, particularly for newer people, because that's simply what it's like Oh! Somebody's frightening! So of course we we get to kill them. And yeah, it's, it's fascinating. Wyrmworks Publishing So, I mean, now some of that is just different editions. Just with D&D that I mean, yeah. early editions. I mean, it was it. I mean, because it came out of wargaming. Steven Dashiell Yes Wyrmworks Publishing and so you know, I think about for example, superhero characters like Captain America, like Batman, right, when Batman first appeared, he had a tommy gun. And but now it's that the Batman doesn't kill. It's like well he used to, you know, and Captain America. He was a soldier. Steven Dashiell Right Wyrmworks Publishing And like, yeah, give him a shield, but you send him out into onto the battlefield. And someone's getting shot. Wyrmworks Publishing Right. Wyrmworks Publishing And and maybe, maybe he holds up a shield and deflects the bullets back at 'em. But we're kind of looking at the trolley problem here. And it's, you know, someone is still getting killed because of his action. Steven Dashiell Right, right. No, and we've I can't remember what conference we were at. But we were talking about the fact that first edition AD&D equated everybody to experience points & gold. So it was all about how much are you worth dead? Because how much you are worth translates to how much you're worth to me as experience translates to whether I'm going to go up in level, and so it was very much about like this idea of, unless somebody is there to be the person with the literal like, exclamation mark over their head to provide you information, then they were fodder. You lose absolutely nothing for killing but you gain for killing them. Wyrmworks Publishing Yeah, yeah, "Man. I'm like 2 experience points away from leveling up. Hey, dude standing on the street selling apples. Steven Dashiell Right. Wyrmworks Publishing Okay. I'm good now. Steven Dashiell Exactly, exactly. And I think you make you raise a very good point, because when you were talking about the idea of editions there, there is a level of capital that's associated with the knowledge of various editions. And yes, fifth. I mean, I think that there are a lot of people that carry into — we're now in the 50th year of D&D — they carry into this half century mark a lot of D&D knowledge, which, in some ways is utterly useless. I mean, second edition, which was probably my favorite version of AD&D, It's like some of those, I mean, nonweapon proficiencies, I don't even know how to explain that to somebody who's never played second edition. It would, it would make no sense to them. I mean, they're like, "Is it like Feats?" I'm like like, "Kinda? But not really." So it's, it's, it's interesting and admittedly one of the reasons why I haven't DMed that much is I have a lot of knowledge of first edition, second edition. Like you, I took a break for like five or six years, and I came in at a when 3 was becoming 3.5. And so I was there for like, the Great Schism of fourth edition. And I didn't even try to learn fourth edition because everybody's like, it's horrible. So I have no capital associated with fourth edition. And I'm at a point where I feel like even though I know, first, second, third edition and AD&D first and second edition, that I don't know fifth edition as well. So I could walk into circumstances where I'm like, I've been playing D&D, for three decades, but there are parts of fifth edition that make absolutely no sense to me. Wyrmworks Publishing So something that I that I picked up on when just comparing them, and I think this ties into our discussion, too, is that so in, in first and second edition, at least, Strength was a very important stat. Steven Dashiell Oh, yeah. Wyrmworks Publishing All right. And charisma was your dump stat. Steven Dashiell That's right. Wyrmworks Publishing In fifth edition, Charisma is huge. Steven Dashiell It is. It is! Wyrmworks Publishing It's really important, and there's so much is dependent on Charisma, and whereas Strength is Strength's kind of a dump stat unless you're…even if you're a fighter, I'd say unless maybe you're a barbarian. Because with a fighter, you can just take mar…finesse weapons. Steven Dashiell Yep. Wyrmworks Publishing And have a good Dex and Strength doesn't really do you a whole lot of good unless you're trying to you know, swim or something, and then you can just get good at Athletics, and you don't even need it for that. Steven Dashiell Yes. No, no, I'm glad you brought that up, because I just started playing this Paladin and in Balder's Gate, and it's like your principal stat is Charisma. I'm like, since when? I mean I know historically in first and second edition, AD&D, Paladins always had to have a high charisma, but it kind of was like you just had to have it. Wyrmworks Publishing Yeah. Steven Dashiell It didn't count towards anything. You just had to have this ridiculous, I think you had to have a Charisma of 17 or something. It was a ridiculous number, but it was Wyrmworks Publishing Yeah, it was kind of rooted in the you know, that, "Well, hey, you're the sort of battlefield leader, and so you need Charisma for your hirelings morale and stuff like that." But yeah, like, like going through a dungeon or something like that. It's like what? Why? Steven Dashiell And even to the point, as you know, that Strength was such an important stat that they they percentaged it where remember when it was like you could get 18/50 Everybody was like 18, 18/00, and that you were essentially 19. But yes, no, it's and now Strength is Yeah. And so having that knowledge I mean, it's interesting because knowledge of all of the other editions now becomes its own component of metadiscourse. It's a conversation that can happen during the game, but it is mostly irrelevant to the game. And I found myself going into that metadiscourse where it's like, oh, gosh, what spell…Sanctuary, where now Sanctuary. Sanctuary is one where it's like, you can do so many things and cast Sanctuary because in the original Baldur's Gate that I'm playing with three people, I'm playing a cleric. And I'm like, you couldn't do anything except stand there. Cast this one spell or cast this other spell, and people had to make a Wisdom check. Otherwise they couldn't see you. Whereas now Sanctuary, once you cast it, nobody can see you. So long as you do nothing that attacks anybody. Nobody can see you. And I was passing all like, "Remember when Sanctuary was…," and it's like, oh, that knowledge now becomes metadiscourse because people are like, "Oh, thanks for the trip down memory lane. It's not helping us. At all." Wyrmworks Publishing So I've also we've also seen over the years how, in, you know, very early in the game, it was a extremely male dominated game. Steven Dashiell Yes. Wyrmworks Publishing Whereas now it's, I mean, this is definitely more there's still a majority there. But it's a it's not nearly the majority that it used to be. Steven Dashiell Right. No, that's very true. No, we do know, now. Wizards of the Coast came out with some figures talking about like, "Oh, yeah, well, it's like 50/50." I will say that a lot of the empirical data I've been seeing does not show it's 50/50. That's more like 70/30 but 70/30 is a ridiculous growth compared to visibly what it was for the first 25 years in that one of the things I talk about in one of my papers where I'm looking at issues of Dragon magazine, is that there is a level of gender erasure. Women have always been a part of D&D as players. It's just there have there have been subtle efforts to not center or foreground the women who are actually players, except when it's convenient, like doing an ad or something, but it but you are right that the numbers have grown considerably. And I think that women or individuals who identify as women make up a larger percentage of the game. Will that change the nature of the discourse? I am one of those, I mean, as a board game follower, I'm very much of a Marxist where it's like, eh, unfortunately because the methods that exist in the game are so calcified that unfortunately, women who want to excel at the table have to pick up those male traits similar to that in certain business spaces. Like, oh, I don't know, gaming companies, that women have to pick up certain male traits in order to survive in those industries. That I feel like at the table, women have to do that same thing that they have to they have to get better at gamesplaining, or they have to protect themselves in such a way that they don't have to feel like individuals will gamesplain or will engage in rules lawyering with them. So yeah, it's it's fascinating. I know, some of the individuals that I work with, who are also academics. "We know it's changing! No, no, it's changing!" Like I haven't seen the data. Until I see the data. I don't believe it. Wyrmworks Publishing That's, wow. That's so sad. I mean, because I think about when I play with my daughters, alright, and what they bring to the table, their perspectives, their approach, the way that they play. is just like, I love it. It's just it adds so much. And you know, they do things that I never thought of doing before, you know and stuff and, and I go, wow, this is great. And but at the same time, you know, they often, one of them in particular. She's She's, she's almost a misogynist in the sense that she's so she is from a very very early age, she's recognized the patriarchy. And, and, and is has just sort of struggled with that and gone, "Do I need to be do I need to be male just to, you know, to be able to exist in this world?" You know, and it's like, "No, you don't. You can be who you are, and the world needs you." And you know, and and and and so, to emphasize that and to say, you know, just the importance of sort of calling out that dominance and saying, "Hey, there are other ways to do this. Steven Dashiell Yeah. Yeah, no, no and and I hope I hope, because you're saying your daughters do things in their own way, which is unique. I hope they bring that to the to be yourself at the table. That's what I say. Because the fact is, it's like people are like, do you play yourself? I'm like, I absolutely play myself. I love playing clerics, but by nature, I'm lawful neutral. And so I play that cleric that if I judge you that you've done something dumb to get yourself injured, I'm not healing you. It's the worst party cleric ever. But it's me, and it's it's if I have the ability to heal, and it's like, nobody told you to jump off that rock. You know what's tonight, you'll heal your seven points. And you just walk around with it. Remember how stupid that was? There's value in bringing yourself to the table and, and I know that one of the benefits of, of gaming is that you can be somebody else that that there is the magic circle and you have the ability to branch out from yourself, but there's also the ability to bring yourself into a fantasy world. And if those pieces of you are something that in some ways challenges, some of the capital and some of the norms of the table. More power to you. Wyrmworks Publishing Yeah Steven Dashiell I certainly do. Wyrmworks Publishing Yeah, no. It's important, and like that's why okay, I love my daughters. All right. But but but my my affection for them is not the only reason that I love playing with them. I mean, yeah, it could be because they do bring themselves to the table and and the Yeah, the choices that they make, yougo, "Yep, that's perfectly you know, that is your personality." And I would have never thought of that because you are so creative in ways that I will never be. And so, yeah, and so would you say not yeah whether it's the character like that, that daughter in particular she plays a wildfire druid because she loves fire and she loves shapechangers and and she loves animals and it was like, as soon as I told her what a wildfire druid was she's like, "That!" But, but at the same time, you know, it's more than just the character that you play, though. You know, when you're talking about how you approach the game and how you approach the other players and you know how you have that conversation. That to it just that adds so much depth and richness to the game experience. Steven Dashiell Right. No, absolutely, absolutely. And one of the problems that I've found in my research, which I don't write about, but it's something that I've recognized, is that because sometimes these ideas of how we're supposed to game and how we're supposed to play are so calcified, that people some people don't bring themselves to the table and their characters because I feel like some people, and this has always been a criticism, and TTRPG is where it's like, your characters are just numbers on a piece of paper, or as where it's like the personality of the character. And some people are afraid that if they bring out pieces of their personality to the table, then they will get some level of resistance and pushback. But but there's value in doing that there. I mean, it it helps an individual grow and it helps an individual understand who they are and and how they can be more of an effective part. of the table. I mean, I try at times to make characters that are not me, but by level five, they're me. They act like me, and it's like, oh, the sorcerer, yeah, he really wasn't me. It's like no, by level five, he absolutely was. Wyrmworks Publishing Even in my villains, you know, I'm creating a villain of some kind, and then it's like what is… you know, I'm kind of getting in the villain's head and thinking about what's motivating them and going oh, oh, they're me. This is if I were you know, yeah, I I know. I know, the trauma, you know, that this character has experienced. I know, you know, that that feeling that they're experienced that frustration that's driving them to do whatever they're doing or you know, yeah, Steven Dashiell Absolutely. Absolutely. So yeah, I mean, if, if anything, I mean, I know sometimes a lot of my research seems a little bit pessimistic, because it's like, "Things aren't changing!" Just because things aren't changing doesn't mean things can't change, but it might need it might require destabilizing the system that fixing the system might just need a complete destabilization, and fifth edition is is a good start. I mean, fifth edition, if you put fifth edition next to first edition, the old box set, it doesn't even look like the same game in certain ways. And that might mean with the influx of people that came with 5e, that might mean that we are looking towards, in the next half century of D&D, a game that is in some way markedly different. And if the game becomes markedly different. Then the culture surrounding the game will become markedly different too. Wyrmworks Publishing Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah, I think about how Wizards of the Coast said, you know, "Fifth edition is the final edition," and, you know, whatever that means with when they just say, "Well, it's the same thing. We're just coming out with rules revisions." And, you know, it's the roleplaying game of Theseus. So, but at the same time, yeah, the game changes depending on who's playing and, and the expectations. You sort of bring it back to what you're saying first of all, you know, the culture, the like, whether it's at conventions or, or wherever else, those sort of cultural expectations that surround it can change too. And then that in turn is gonna influence the game, even if the sort of, even if you're still playing with the 2014 set or whatever. Steven Dashiell Yeah, no, absolutely. Wyrmworks Publishing All right, so you just rescued a genie from the hands of an efreeti, and it offers you three wishes to achieve your goals to make the world better. What do you wish for? Steven Dashiell Oh, when you sent me this question, I was like, Oh, good, try. Good try. Oh, I'm doing this by the old 2e rules, and I know how genies and and efreet work with these! I'm not doing anything, because every wish is going to be subverted. This is like the Deck of Many Things. I am not doing it. Absolutely not! Oh, gosh. I mean, I'm also a big believer in cause and effect that if you fix one thing, it automatically will make something else worse. And maybe I've just watched Black Mirror too many times, but I'm like, I don't want to fix anything because then it's like, oh, well, it's like you solve world hunger and then suddenly, like, I don't know. Everybody just stopped exercising and I've got no I can't do anything with those wishes. I'm sorry. I would actually give it…no, I wouldn't give it to somebody else. They'd make the world blow up. I would bury it. I would very I would bury the lamp. That's what I would do. Wyrmworks Publishing Alright, that's fair. Alright, so what what message would you like to give to tabletop gamers or designers who want to make their gaming spaces more welcoming? Steven Dashiell One thing that's interesting. So it would, the degree to which individuals invite others in at the ground floor, and that's the ground floor design or the ground floor of the game is a very important, it doesn't necessarily mean that everybody needs to start at the same way but trying to find a uniform way to introduce people into a particular system. Because they feel like, particularly in gaming spaces, individuals feel kind of like they're rushed into something. And if there was some type of orientation that and I'm sure you had a situation similar to mine, where there were other games that you joined, where the DM is like, "Don't worry, I'll write you into this game." And you're sitting there for like four hours. It's and eventually, they're like, "And suddenly an elf appears!" And it's like, Okay, wow. I don't know that I necessarily feel like I'm a part of the game. But, but if there, but the degree to which you introduce somebody into your subculture, the orientation, and this is my sociological piece, the degree to which you invite somebody into the subculture will tell you how invested they will be in this culture. So the better your invitation, the better your orientation, the better connection that you will form and so, for designers, it's about looking at how people were introduced to the game, looking at if there's a way that they can easily slide into the game. Do the games make sense? People tried to get me to watch Critical Role around Season Two but were pointing out like, well, if you haven't watched season one, it won't make much sense, and it's like, okay, then I'm not watching season two then. So once the cartoon Vox Machina happened, I'm like, got it. Absolutely got it. It served as a wonderful vehicle, where I not only got to be introduced to the characters, but in a way that I felt like I wasn't intrusive. And so whether that involves recording games, or whether that involves some type of debrief and post mortem after games in order to see how people are feeling about games, the more that you invite people in, the more that there's an orientation, the more that people feel like that they are part of a game, the more they are going to break down some of those norms and values that are in ways just privileging certain people at the table. Wyrmworks Publishing All right. Yeah, I'm just thinking about a recent game where I was trying to introduce a player, and her character was in a cage, and along with some other prisoners, and it took longer to get her out than I had intended. And I felt terrible. I mean, we like we found a way so that she was able to rescue herself before someone was, you know, the goal was like, oh, you know, first round, somebody's going to smash the cage, and she'll get out, and there's an ax laying right there, and she'll be able to jump in and, and it just didn't work out that way. And I felt really bad. Steven Dashiell And that… your story is so… I had a situation like that myself when I started a game that I was a part of for 20 years. It started in 2004. And I decided in 2022 that I'm like, Okay, I can't do the same work twice a month, every month. For nearly 20 years, I'm good. They're still playing. So they're about at their 20th anniversary, but I'm like I'm I'm good. But my first game, that DM was like, "We'll introduce you into the game." Yeah, it didn't happen that game. It happened at the end of the second game. The games were six hours long. Oh, I was sitting there for literally 11 hours of one six hour game, and one game about five and a half hours where I was introduced in the last 20 minutes of the game. Wow. And it's like, and similarly the DM said something very similar to you, he's like, "I thought that they would do this a while ago, but clearly they were just fumbling around for the longest time, and I'm really trying to hurry them along," but I'm just sitting there. Like, okay, can I join? I'm ready. But yeah. Wyrmworks Publishing In our game when when things fall apart, no in this case, it was she was a barbarian and she was able to muscle herself out after a couple of rounds, but it was, you know, we always say if you know someone shows up or whatever if we didn't have a convenient way to slot them in pretty quickly, we'd say you fell through a plot hole, and that's how we handle if somebody can't make it that night or something like that. Wyrmworks Publishing Alright, so what what message would you like to give tabletop gamers or designers who are skeptical about the effects of language use in the gaming space? Steven Dashiell It's real. It is, really, language is very important. We don't think about the language that we use, and we get used to the style of language and the things that we talk about, that we don't even recognize and some of the long term impacts. Dr. Sarah Stang, who is at Brock University, has done research looking at issues of monstrosity in some of the depictions of female monsters in Dungeons & Dragons, and it's one of those circumstances that, unless you really sat there and thought about it, you really I mean, like, it's like whoa, you have the night hag. Well, have you ever heard of a male night hag, because no, they actually have a technique in which they reproduce more female night hags and it's not necessarily…. Well, anyway, it's it's it's it's pretty invasive. But it is one of those things that I mean, I've seen the examples of the things that she's talking about, but I didn't really start thinking about it until I read her piece and then had conversations with her, and it's like, "Oh, crap, that's awful." So sometimes things get normalized, that we don't even recognize that, okay, this is not necessarily great. But when they're brought up, we start to become more conscious of the fact of these are realities. And yeah, I mean, there are people that are not going to pick up on pieces of the metadiscourse, and they are going to feel like they are out of the circumstance. I would recommend that people just scan the table and start like when jokes are made or comments are made and people have that look on their face like I don't get it. Explain it. I mean, the worst thing you can be doing is explaining to somebody who already understands what's going on. The best thing you could be doing is inviting somebody in on what is going on at the table. Wyrmworks Publishing Yeah, absolutely. All right. So projects that you're working on next that you can talk about. Steven Dashiell Oh, so I am about to publish a piece. I did a survey about a year and a half or about a year ago. No, it's about a year and a half ago and I'm about to publish a piece that is analyzing the data of that survey. It looks at issues of a tabletop roleplaying game and what are the things that pull people away from the tabletop game? Like what what pulls people from the table? What are the things that are important enough that pulls you from the table? And how do you feel about when you are pulled from the table? How do you feel about the gaming situation? Do you feel guilty? I'm analyzing this data based on gender, because of some of the gendered research that it's looking at, issues of women and second shift like the things that women have to do in the household in addition to work, and some of the preliminary data is showing like if there was one, there were a lot of quantitative questions and some qualitative questions. Women are more likely to feel guilty when they are pulled away from the table. They feel guilty about letting the party down, about disrupting the game. Do men feel guilty? Some men feel guilty, and some are like, well, it's a game, and we understand that people are pulled away from the table, but women were 60… nearly 67% of women were like, "I feel totally guilty when I am when I am pulled away from the table. I feel so bad for everybody else. I feel like I'm letting people down." That's pretty significant. And when we add that to some of the data about like, who feels like they have more things that pulled them away from the table, interestingly enough, men feel like they have more things that pull them away from the table. So that data is going to be coming out hopefully very soon. sent to a journal, well being sent to a journal in about 10 days. And what other research am I working on? Oh, I'm looking at some research about the idea of individuals who play in a way that is not necessarily helpful to the game. So the people who play especially jerks in games, and or play antisocial characters in games, and the possibility of some of that of those characteristics coming out of the game and being involved either in the table or in their regular lives. The International Journal of Roleplaying is doing an entire issue talking about issues of related to consent, and this is talking about consent from the perspective of what what happens when people go into this level like where they are essentially like that one evil person in a party of good people. And they are taking advantage of other individuals. And that either happens in the game or goes outside of the game. So that paper is being is finishing up right now. It'll be turned in April 1 and the IJRP will probably be coming out at the end of the year. Wyrmworks Publishing That sounds so important. You know, it's it's I'm sure that you've experienced this a lot of times: people can sort of downplay the sort of academia, you know, approaching these topics and stuff and say, "Well, that's just an ivory tower thing," or whatever. But I mean this is that's just concrete, very practical. You know, this is this is human beings that we're talking about and and, yeah, the whole point is that yes, it is a game. It's supposed to be fun. You're supposed to enjoy it, and if you're being traumatized by it, or or you know, to varying degrees, then it's not fun anymore. Steven Dashiell Absolutely. Yeah. No. And for me, I mean, I know there's some people in game studies that talk about the games. There's some people in game studies that talk about the gamers. I talk about the game culture, and so I'm very concerned with what is happening at the table. Not necessarily the gameplay. In some cases, the gameplay, but really what is happening at the table. How are people feeling at the table? And these are, as you pointed out, these are really concrete things. I mean, this isn't like a level of philosophical navel gazing. This is actually what people can say, oh, you know, I've seen that at the table and thinking about what causes it. What are the impacts of it? And I'm not very applied. So I really never get into, "Well, how do you solve it?" but at least by signaling to people that this is a thing, it can encourage the people that do come out with the possible solutions. You know, and Wyrmworks Publishing My wife would throttle me for this one, but knowing is half the battle. Steven Dashiell Oh! G.I. Joe! Wyrmworks Publishing So speaking of, you know, metadiscourse. Steven Dashiell Oh my gosh. Oh, wow. Wow, that's that's excellent. Wyrmworks Publishing I use that way too often. She always stops me as soon as…that's one she won't compromise on. Steven Dashiell No no no, I can, I can understand that, that people get the reference. It's like okay, okay, we got it. I got it. Wyrmworks Publishing Alright, so we will have all your contact information in our show notes. But where is the one best place that you would like people to start to learn more about you or to contact you? Steven Dashiell Sure. They can find me if they look me up. They can find my page at American University where I am a research affiliate and resident with the Game Center. My email address there as my last name, which is dashiell@american.edu, easiest address in the world, well, at least for me, because I know my last name, but individuals if they have any questions, have any comments or just or want any copies of my articles, because the page there are my academia.edu page has lots of my articles where you can just download them if you want to read them on gaming and a lot of the other stuff that I talked about. So individuals are more than welcome to check those pages out. And if there's something there that you can't get a copy of the article, you can always email me and I'm more than happy to email copies of articles to people. Wyrmworks Publishing Awesome. That's phenomenal. So Steven, thank you so much for coming on. Everyone check out the links in the show notes. Wyrmworks Publishing I really appreciate Steven coming on and the conversation. It was really enlightening. And I think it really makes a difference in how we approach our games as players, not just as characters. And so I also want to shout out to those who helped put this show together, who helped make this happen and all of the other things that we do at Wyrmworks Publishing. Want to thank our new patrons Baylee Alger, Cici, EddyBot. Thank you so much for your support. It makes a huge difference to us. And thanks to our patrons, we also add Community Copies to our store every month for those who can't afford our products. And so if that's you, you can sign up for our weekly emails to get notified when they come available. This month alone, we added $515 worth of free copies. There's plenty there if you'd like one or more of our titles. 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