I’ve read a number of rule sets recently that used ‘he’ instead of ‘they’ when referring to what a player can do. It wasn’t in the context of examples, nor referring to male characters; they were rules. ’1989: Dawn Of Freedom’ was particularly egregious, even having card text using “he” when referring to a player. (The friend I was playing with was so embarrassed they started translating them to ‘she’ on the fly whenever reading card text that applied to me as the player in question.)
When chatting about it with girlfriends, there’s recognition of the casual misogyny (perpetuated by how English language is structured eg ‘mankind’) and a sense of exclusion, as you’d expect, but it’s laced with an undercurrent of “is this the hill we want to die on” given everything else going on in the world and wanting their gaming experiences (which is largely with guys) to be positive.
To be fair, most new rule sets coming out now are actually great in this respect. (Thank you!) For anyone out there working on or providing feedback on rules or card-text though, can we please continue being mindful, and give way on any dogmatic insistence that “they” should only be used as a plural form. Language changes with the times. I’m hoping the times are changing. Thanks for listening.
New-to-me games played recently include …
