techsoldaten wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:
I guess I should ask, what's the downside for this person appearing?

I wouldn't call it a downside, but there's a good chance Sarkeesian is going to address the thorny issue of six sided dice. It's come up in some of her other addresses to gaming conventions, the ubiquitous racism emerging from a standard gameplay device employed by so many tabletop games.

IIRC, the last time she brought up this topic, her argument was the standard six-sided die is a collection of facings that include a number of tiny black pips surrounded by fields of white. The lower the value of a roll, the more marginalized each pip becomes. And a roll of 1, the most isolated value possible, occurs approximately 16% of the time. It's associated with the worst possible outcome, sending a message that a singular, isolated, dark member of the community of dice facings should be avoided at all costs.

She had a problem with reversing the colors as well. The designers working for the Big Dice industry always opt for maximum contrast, and there are no generally-available dice that are more inclusive of other colors - white is always there. You have to have such dice specially manufactured and face ostracism / social isolation for trying to use them in games. Not to mention charges from opponents that you are selecting dice to gain an unfair advantage.

Fighting systemic racism in dice selection matters. I'm hoping she talks more about the idea, which I support, of replacing six-sided dice with 20-sided dice to maximize the diversity of possible outcomes and equity amongst players. I would personally boycott any tabletop game that does not adopt a d20 dice system in recognition of support for marginalized persons and eliminating systemic racism / sexism in the broader tabletop gaming community.