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Post by EricaOdd on Feb 10, 2018 6:46:00 GMT -8
In a recent podcast, and I'm sorry but I don't recall which one now, there was some disbelief that even "back in the day" there were RPGs that had different rules for male and female characters.
One of the biggest, Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, had this in the very first pages of the Player's Handbook. If you created characters by the RAW, there were these tables that you used to determine your race, class, and even gender. You rolled your stats, and used the tables to whittle down your choices by process of eliminations. Strength 14 was the maximum for a female halfling, for example. If your Strength was 15, you could strike female halfling from your choices. The other stats just whittled down race and class, so at least it wasn't so sexist as to have a maximum Intelligence or Wisdom for female characters...
The original Pendragon, by Chaosium games, is an example of one that ruled out female characters at all of you played by the RAW. ALL of the characters were knights in the service of King Arthur. No female knights, no female characters. Females were courtesans, relatives, witches, fey enchantresses, and objects of courtly love. They were most certainly not adventuring knights in armor.
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fredrix
Master Douchebag
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Preferred Game Systems: Fate, L5R, Pendragon, Gumshoe, Feng Shui
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Favorite Species of Monkey: 1970's NTV, dubbed by the BBC (though The Water Margin beats it)
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Post by fredrix on Feb 10, 2018 10:35:18 GMT -8
The original Pendragon, by Chaosium games, is an example of one that ruled out female characters at all of you played by the RAW. ALL of the characters were knights in the service of King Arthur. No female knights, no female characters. Females were courtesans, relatives, witches, fey enchantresses, and objects of courtly love. They were most certainly not adventuring knights in armor. Actually RAW didn’t rule out female characters. You didn’t have to play a knight. You could play a woman, it’s “just” that women were limited to the tropes of the Morte d’Artur, etc. as you say “courtesans, relatives, witches, fey enchantresses, and objects of courtly love.” Given that the magic system could me months of sleep after a simple spell, witches and enchantresses were pretty much unplayable, but you could if you really wanted.
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tomes
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Post by tomes on Feb 10, 2018 12:04:00 GMT -8
For most games about exploring power fantasy and being "heroes" (e.g. D&D), I don't see the purpose of gender differences statistically. You are heroes, and heroes are special, so even if halfling females "tend" to be weaker than males, we aren't playing the 99% of the population. We're playing that unusual person who stands out... let the dice fall where they may, and play with it.
What I find interesting is some games where gender is explicit because the game is explicitly exploring gender:
Sagas of the Icelanders (Pbta) has gendered playsheets. Some of the moves in the game are gendered, and there are specific Male moves (When you consider an uneasy situation, When you accept a physical challenge, When you throw an insult at another man, When your honour is in question) versus specific Female moves (When you entice a man, When you lie with a man to conceive a child, When you raise your voice and talk sense, When you goad a man to action). Definitely informs the way it wants specific characters to interact with the fiction! The cool thing, though, is that you can actually play against your gender norm by using the other gender move (e.g. as a Female you Accept a Physical Challenge to someone), however you also have to roll the move "When you tempt fate", and effectively risking GM moves and bad things due to playing against the society norms (or not, depending on how you roll).
Bluebeard's Bride (PbtA) has each player play a facet of the same character: Bluebeard's Bride. The whole point of the game is to explore femininity and oppression and powerlessness.
The Watch (PbtA) also has all characters as non-male. You play females of the type: non-binary, genderqueer, cis woman, fluid, or transwomen. This is because all male-associating characters are susceptible to "The Shadow" and therefore have either flipped over to the enemy's army, or for those that haven't been corrupted: must be defended far from the front-line of battle. Again, gender is the whole premise of the game.
Witch: The Road to Lindisfarne has most players choose a character from of a bunch of males tasked with transporting a witch to be judged (and possibly burned at the stake). One player plays the female Witch. It's very story game, GM-less, scene-framing, of a style similar to Fiasco, or more likely Fall of Magic. There are pretty much no abilities or stats to speak of.
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Post by ericfromnj on Feb 10, 2018 13:16:57 GMT -8
I remember an rpg called Fantasy Wargaming that was harsh with gender roles. We tended to ignore them.
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Post by uncommonman on Feb 10, 2018 14:46:00 GMT -8
Ok I know some won't like this but here it is anyway... Humans are a sexualy dimorphic species. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_dimorphismThis leads to diffrence in physical appearance and abilities. On AVERAGE: The males are larger, stronger and more athletic than the females. Females have a better immune system and a longer life span (if you disregard death due to childbirth complications) The females are more valued and protected because of childbirth and breastfeeding. Males take more risks and show more aggressive behavior due to testosterone. Intellectually the male has a larger span than the females, more idiots and more geniuses while females have a more average span. What this has lead to in most societies is that males take more dangerous and well paying jobs: 90% of work death and higher income. In (most) historical societies men where close to all warriors. --- What does this mean for rules and world building? That is up to you and the people you play with. Who cares if an army in a fantasy world is 0% female or 50% or even 100%. Who cares if females -1 strength and +1 constitution. You can go full FATAL if you want. BUT the point of rules in an rpg is to facilitate a certain kind of story and sometimes that's the reason why females can't be knights.
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tomes
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Post by tomes on Feb 10, 2018 15:41:48 GMT -8
Ok I know some won't like this but here it is anyway... Humans are a sexualy dimorphic species. I think most people would recognize that as a trend, but even in the URL you post, there is mention that individual humans can be somewhere in between genders (intersex). BUT the point of rules in an rpg is to facilitate a certain kind of story... I think that's the crux. In a simulationist system written by males it appears they give a bonus to Strength for males, or cap a Str score for females, but then conveniently forget to give females a Constitution bonus (per URL above: " Females typically have more white blood cells (stored and circulating), more granulocytes and B and T lymphocytes. Additionally, they produce more antibodies at a faster rate than males. Hence they develop fewer infectious diseases and succumb for shorter periods."), or build such things into various other races in the game, for the most part. I can already see arguments about "well, Constitution isn't just about white blood cells, it's also..." or whatever, but again, it's a matter of who wrote the games, and what they thought valuable to include and their perceptions of the world (possibly based on rigorous science; or possibly not). ...and sometimes that's the reason why females can't be knights. Of course they can, even in a "historically accurate" setting... as they could have hidden the fact that they're female. And even then, there are records of people who've bucked the trends, so it's really about how accurately history tends to get recorded. Not to mention people who are intersex, or otherwise. There are plenty of records of female "knights" (although much of that is in title mostly, with the actual roles being different than what we consider male knights from my shallow historical knowledge). But there are orders of female knights that came and went, and interestingly you will read things like this (bold mine): We live in a fairly patriarchal society, so suppression not just of such orders, but also later suppression of historical records in general, is quite likely. At any rate, what you said: It's a game made by someone to explore something. I agree. In some cases it's just obvious it's a game to explore male power fantasy. (Nothing inherently wrong with that, but it's useful to recognize what it is; for example some elements of The Watch explore female empowerment fantasy.)
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fredrix
Master Douchebag
Posts: 2,142
Preferred Game Systems: Fate, L5R, Pendragon, Gumshoe, Feng Shui
Currently Playing: Pendragon, Song of Ice and Fire, L5R, Feng Shui, Traveller
Currently Running: Fate, Coriolis, Nights Black Agents
Favorite Species of Monkey: 1970's NTV, dubbed by the BBC (though The Water Margin beats it)
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Post by fredrix on Feb 10, 2018 16:55:34 GMT -8
I remember an rpg called Fantasy Wargaming that was harsh with gender roles. We tended to ignore them. Fantasy Wargaming was absolutely dreadful I that regard. It didn’t even apply the sexism consistently. It really felt like a bunch of late teen boys who’d never known a girl writing their own game. Which of course it was.
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Post by uncommonman on Feb 11, 2018 0:43:14 GMT -8
tomes I didn't bring up intersex people because that is only 0,0018% to 0,5% of all humans. But yes most games trying to make rules differences between males and females do a bad job of it.
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Post by Kainguru on Feb 11, 2018 3:39:40 GMT -8
I'm trying to understand the original question: Did early RPG's have rules that differentiated genders? well, yes. Pretty clear cut. The members of that podcast 'couldn't believe it'? fine, disbelieve ... that doesn't mean it didn't happen. People deny The Holocaust - still happened. That's where I'm struggling with the actual question. What is the actual question? are we to be outraged at something that can't be undone? A fairer deconstruction (I really loath that word now, but it's better than the more contemporary 'unpack' that is so often used) is the simple observation that most players ignored those rules. Looking at the likes of DnD, the game changed to reflect actual game styles of the people playing the games ie: level limits for non-humans dropped because most people weren't using them, class restrictions for non-humans dropped because most people were ignoring them, gender differences dropped because ... most people weren't using them We can't change those games as written, but just because they were written that way doesn't mean they were played that way. TBH I'll bet no one used ADnD 1e initiative RAW (though we thought we were), anecdotally I don't think most groups imposed those gender restrictions - or were even aware of them (a rule read once then forgotten). As a matter of practicality. 'back-in-the-day', I like to believe that most gamers weren't 'spergtards and actually fairly socially adept. Nearly all the gamers I know eventually got married/partners/children/etc so not total basement dwellers. As such if a girl came into a group I doubt they'd have sat steadfast on RAW and risk alienating that potential player. But hey, that's just my experience and may not reflect the reality of other groups. What I'm not going to do is grab a pitchfork and dig up the corpses of Gygax and Arneson. 'Back-in-their-day', as miniatures wargamers, they belonged to hobby that was almost exclusively male (a product of their times) and reached a conclusion that was wrong because of faulty logic ie:'if all wargamers are male, and RPG's are a subset of wargaming, then all RPGers must be male' (not the first time in history this kind of marketing analysis has been incorrect) Aaron
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Post by EricaOdd on Feb 11, 2018 5:17:20 GMT -8
Pretty much just what my post said... some of the hosts didn't know that there were games with that kind of gender difference in character generation, and I was merely providing some examples.
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Post by Kainguru on Feb 11, 2018 6:22:56 GMT -8
Pretty much just what my post said... some of the hosts didn't know that there were games with that kind of gender difference in character generation, and I was merely providing some examples. They should read more (joking) More seriously: I don't think they were ignorant or uninformed, rather they add weight to my preferred belief that most people just ignored those rules right from the beginning ie: read them once, discarded them and then forgot them. Aaron
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Post by EricaOdd on Feb 11, 2018 7:05:32 GMT -8
The original Pendragon, by Chaosium games, is an example of one that ruled out female characters at all of you played by the RAW. ALL of the characters were knights in the service of King Arthur. No female knights, no female characters. Females were courtesans, relatives, witches, fey enchantresses, and objects of courtly love. They were most certainly not adventuring knights in armor. Actually RAW didn’t rule out female characters. You didn’t have to play a knight. You could play a woman, it’s “just” that women were limited to the tropes of the Morte d’Artur, etc. as you say “courtesans, relatives, witches, fey enchantresses, and objects of courtly love.” Given that the magic system could me months of sleep after a simple spell, witches and enchantresses were pretty much unplayable, but you could if you really wanted. And there was nothing for those characters to do. They weren't going to be going on adventures with everyone running a knight, and although there were rules for running the knight's household they weren't something for a PC to really get involved in. The magic system was nonexistant... just a list of spell names and the GM got to decide what they did, so you couldn't really make a PC mage of any kind. What was there for a female PC to do? Sit home and knit? And frankly, I'm a bit sick of the "historical accuracy" argument in fantasy games. There are dragons and elves and wizards... historical accuracy has already taken a vacation and pissed right on out the window for a typical fantasy setting. Why is the role of women always the one sticking point when certain gamers start banging on about "historical accuracy"? EDIT: And I want to clarify, fredrix, that I'm not ranting at you. Just ranting in general.
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Post by akavidar on Feb 11, 2018 7:12:34 GMT -8
But, where would all the Tapestries come from if it weren't for women in RPG's?
(No, no, put down the crossbow, I'm kidding, I'm kidding!)
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Post by Kainguru on Feb 11, 2018 13:01:13 GMT -8
Now then, no one has mentioned the obvious one - FATAL Aaron
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Post by EricaOdd on Feb 11, 2018 14:11:13 GMT -8
They talked about it a bit in the podcast. I know just enough about FATAL to know that I don't want to know any more about it...
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