Frog God Games Plays Politics

I’m a big fan of Swords & Wizardry. But the third printing of the ruleset—currently on Kickstarter—is disappointing. The cover artwork is terrible. That’s obviously a subjective judgment, so judge for yourself:

[Undead Bullwinkle and the Butterflies]

The semi-transparent yellow product logo looks awful placed over the bright yellow magical energy emanating from the skull's head, if that's an accurate description. I cannot tell what the cover depicts or why it is happening. The cover is hardly innovative; it looks like the sort of art one would have seen on a White Wolf product many years ago. If the quality of the art were my principal complaint, however, I likely would not complain overmuch. But there is so much more to dislike.

Frog God Games hired an all-female design team to create a new look to appeal to potential female customers. Here is how the company explained the project:

We didn’t just want to do an exact reprint, and the history of the changes here date back a while ago to when we were talking with designer Stacy Dellorfano about the fact that many OSR games have a physical appearance and presentation that really targets the 40 year old guys who’ve been gaming since forever, and doesn’t have nearly as much appeal to younger or female gamers of the generations following that first wave of players from the 1980s. In point of fact, old-school games, with their light-rules aspect and emphasis on a game master’s “common sense” interpretation of situations, are actually a really good tool for anyone who feels like rules-lawyers may be spoiling the game by trying to be over-authoritative or even overbearing with a GM. But if the appearance and presentation make the game look like it’s purely a throwback and not a modern tool for good gaming, then there’s a real obstacle to the game’s push into the mainstream gaming community.

As a result of this analysis, we engaged Stacy as a designer to produce an edition that’s no less appealing to older male gamers, while being MORE appealing to younger and to female gamers. Stacy put together a team, all women, to address this dual objective.

There are so many doubtful assumptions inherent in the company’s statement that it hard to know where to begin. The proposition that the artwork of the current printing alienates women who otherwise would be playing Swords & Wizardry is dubious to say the least. There certainly are old school games accompanied by provocative artwork that could conceivably alienate female customers. But that’s not true of Swords & Wizardry. There are roughly 30 illustrations in the current printing that depict adventurers; of these 12 are of or include females and none of them are of the sort that occasionally elicits criticism, such as women clad in chain mail bikinis (a complaint that is both overdone and half-baked in my view). One of three adventurers shown on the cover is a woman. If there is anything alienating or marginalizing about the current rulebook’s artwork, it is less than obvious. Can anyone identify specific artwork that might offend and explain why?

I also am skeptical of the underlying assumption that there is a common female aesthetic point of view to which the company can cater. Women’s tastes in art vary as much as men’s. But addressing Frog God Game’s argument on its own terms for a moment, what makes it think that it is possible to simultaneously cater both to its male customer base’s tastes and those of potential female customers? If we accept the company’s implicit premise that men and women respond to art differently according to their respective sex, how could an all female design team ever hope to create a new printing “that’s no less appealing to older male gamers?” The company appears to have reconciled this apparent conundrum with conventional leftist gender politics. In an update to its Kickstarter project, a Frog God Games representative suggests the opposite, explaining that rightly or wrongly the gaming industry has been perceived as a “no girls allowed” zone and that the company is just explicitly saying the opposite, which is a fairly unobjectionable sentiment. But Dellorfano has been far more explicit:

The era of 70s gaming mimicked in many OSR products was perhaps the least welcoming time for women. This is an era where the creators were actively saying women don't buy D&D so they're not interested in listening to their concerns, where boys weren't just making the gaming table uncomfortable for women, they were telling them they weren't allowed, where stats for female characters were capped, and openly sexist material was being published that did as much to mock the women who disliked it as it did to minimize their involvement.

It's no surprise that when I ask women why they hate the OSR and will never do anything with it, they tell me they think the OSR is still trapped in the mindset of the 70s, where sexism was open and allowed and seldom questioned. This is a period where we were only represented in science fiction and fantasy works as token characters or sexual objects and love interests. This is a time when we watched our mothers and grandmothers crumble after lifetimes of being marginalized and treated poorly. This is a time when an amendment to the constitution banning discrimination based on gender *failed*. This is not a time most women want to go back to, and whether you know it or not, whether you like it or not, whether it *should* happen or not, the mimicked TSR trade dress and art style of the 70s reminds many, many women of that time.

Whether one approves or disapproves of this explanation, it is explicitly political in nature. To suggest, as some have, that the third printing of Swords & Wizardry is apolitical is just not true. That Frog God Games would embrace any politics whatsoever is lamentable, but the politics it chose to embrace are pitiful.

As an initial matter, I think Dellorfano’s complaint that “stats for female characters were capped” is misleading. I don’t have encyclopedic knowledge of the rules, but OD&D did not address sex differences in character statistics and the only statistic in Advanced Dungeons & Dragons that appears to have differed based on sex is strength (see pages 9–15 of the first edition Player’s Handbook). That’s not sexism; it’s reality. If you think otherwise, please explain why the U.S. Army has different physical fitness standards for male and female soldiers. A fantasy game is free to dispense with reality; realism is hardly required in a game that involves sorcery, monsters, and gods. But recognition of sex differences is not sexism.

More generally, the argument that the 1970s generally were inhospitable to women such that women naturally cannot appreciate old school artwork from the era is preposterous. By this logic, women also could not enjoy other art, books, films, or music from the era. It does not paint women in flattering colors to suggest that they cannot distinguish the defeat of the Equal Rights Amendment from the artwork of Erol Otus. Plenty of women opposed the ERA, by the way; its principal nemesis was Phyllis Schlafly. For anyone born after 1982, this is all ancient history anyway. In short, it’s highly unlikely that women younger than Dellorfano or those who do not share her politics see old school games in the same light.

At any rate, what about the new art will appeal to women? The pinkish hues? The butterflies? Had men produced a cover like this in an attempt to appeal to women, one can imagine the hue and cry that would have resulted. As near as I can tell, the only explanation on offer is that Otus, Easley, Elmore, Sutherland, and Trampier are just too triggering. That's unreasonable. I cannot grasp what Frog God Games hopes to achieve by playing politics in this fashion.