Quote from: noisms;568192I personally dislike the trope of the fantasy society in which women fight alongside men as equals, because it seems implausible on so many levels. At the societal level the idea is a bit daft. But on the individual level it can work fine and be good for the game: isn't the notion of a woman who wants to defy social convention and go adventuring inherently interesting?.

The solution I use in the Majestic Wilderlands is that in society as a whole the pattern follows that of our history. Warriors and politics are dominated by men for the most part.

But women can and do get involved in male dominated activities. Some will disguise themselves, mostly to ward off unwanted advances in a male dominated activity. But most do so openly. The reasons for this are

1) a multitude of sentient races has slightly increased tolerance. Bigotry exist in the Majestic Wilderlands but is largely based on how a person acts rather than how they look.  Orcs are hated not because they are green but because they are part of a aggressive culture built on violence that continually raids their neighbor.

But there are orcs that are born with an average level of aggression and are able to live and cooperate with others without reverting to being a sociopathic asshole.  Locals will eventually accept them if they act civilized. Although they will be continually harassed and tested because the default assumptions about orcs.

2)Magical power is develops on an equal opportunity basis. This combined with the fact that magic exist throughout MW history means that people know that anybody could have potent magical abilities. Which puts a nail in the idea that one gender is superior.

3) The immortal Elves have a powerful influence over allied cultures. This combined with the fact their society has equality among the sexes means that among allied culture women are generally treated more as equals.

So given this why are things still male dominated? Largely because along with the above the same culturals trends that produced male dominated societies in our history are still present.

What I like to do is tweak things to justify a 20% difference. People live 20% longer, 20% more productive because of magic, etc. in case of women that 20% means that while the different roles in society still skewed to their traditional gender ratio it is not unheard for the opposite gender to enter that role. That when it occurs people are going to judge the individual on what they can do and as long as they can do the activity they will be accepted.

Also this attitude is the baseline there are plenty of bigots who cut women, orcs, the wrong social class no slack and go out of their way to work against them just because. The opposite occurs as well particularly among the magical professions. People actively go out and encouraged dispised groups and women.



Sure it plausible if you carefully  pick the underlying issues.

Oh dear...do you think this bit I wrote for The Crucible and The Chalice will cause me any trouble?

Religion
   Light is reason irresistable and intractable in its discipline.

   Of the Seven Gods of the Seven tribes, Eathna Goddess of Reason is the dominant principle.  The priestesses of her great temples follow a strict regimen of study and service.  Their calling is to learn and teach and bring knowledge to the world.  Their severe manner and dress are the ideal to which all women in the Chalice are held.  Her husband Uazan God of Inquiry is seen as a somewhat comic and hapless fool who’s mad experimentation and research lead to disasters from which much is learned.  Lydwhn is the Godess of honor and her husband Genrastar is the God of duty and military virtue while they are often apart Lydwhn’s maid Bouvyn has given them many children.  Dislera Goddess of purity is the patron of nurses and maids her husband Chastno is the God of Purity and virtuous thoughts.  Together they teach that there can be no tolerance for filth or low mindedness in body or mind.  Bouvyn Goddess of Motherhood is the only unmarried deity, submissive and meek, her role is to remind women of their duty to the empire and her parables teach that women who bear children must accept their lot meekly or face harsh punishment.  Thus learning and self discipline are exalted in the society of the Chalice.  Among the upper classes women generally bear a single heir for their husband and then hire a maid from the lower classes to see to his needs.

Quote from: noisms;568198That's sort of the point - skill is important, and that means lots and lots of practice. Something that was unavailable to most women because, despite the many many other social prohibitions, before the invention of reliable birth control young women were either pregnant or weaning a child for much of their lives. You don't get to practice with a spear or bow if you are doing either of those things.

From Elizabeth Wayland Barber book Women's Work: The First 20,000 Years : Women, Cloth, and Society in Early Times (from the start of Chapter 1, "A Tradition with a Reason"):

QuoteFor millenia women have sat together spinning, weaving, and sewing. Why should textiles have become their craft par excellence, rather than the work of men? Was it always thus, and if so, why?

Twenty years ago Judith Brown wrote a little five-page "Note on the Division of Labor by Sex" that holds a simple key to those questions. She was interested in how much women contributed to obtaining the food for a preindustrial community. But in answering that question, she came upon a model of much wider applicability. She found that the issue of whether or not the community relies upon women as the chief providers of a given type of labor depends upon "the compatibility of this pursuit with the demands of child care." If only because of the exigencies of breast feeding (which until recently was typically continued for two or three years per child), "nowhere in the world is the rearing of children primarily the responsibility of men...." Thus, if the productive labor of women is not to be lost to the society during the childbearing years, the jobs regularly assigned to women must be carefully chosen to be "compatible with simultaneously child watching." From empirical observation Brown gleans that "such activities have the following characteristics: they do not require rapt concentration and are relatively dull and repetitive; they are easily interruptible [I see a rueful smile on every care giver's face!] and easily resumed once interrupted; they do not place the child in potential danger; and they do not require the participant to range far from home."

Just such are the crafts of spinning, weaving, and sewing: repetitive, easy to pick up at any point, reasonably child-safe, and easily done at home. (Contrast the idea of swinging a pick in a dark, cramped, and dusty mine shaft with a baby on one's back or being interrupted by a child's crisis while trying to pour molten metal into a set of molds.) The only other occupation that fits the criteria even half so well is that of preparing the daily food. Food and clothing: These are what societies worldwide have come to see as the chore of women's work (although other tasks may be added to the load, depending upon the circumstances of the particular society).

Readers of this book live in a different world. The Industrial Revolution has moved basic textile work out of the home and into large (inherently dangerous) factories; we buy our clothing ready-made. It is a rare person in our cities who has ever spun thread or woven cloth, although a quick look into a fabric store will show that many women still sew. As a result, most of us are unaware of how time-consuming the task of making the cloth for a family used to be.

(Of course modern and science fiction settings change this quite a bit, as the author mentions.)

Quote from: noisms;568198Of course, you can handwave that problem away with magical birth control. Or something, if you care absolutely nothing about the distinction between magic and science.

Widespread birth control also potentially creates broader problem, especially if you model your fantasy society on Western Europe or industrialized Asia and assume the average women only has 1-2 children.  If you combine that sort of birth rate with a high-fatality fantasy world full of monsters and wars and send women off to fight before they have any children, your civilizations aren't going to last very long.  The sort of space colony that jeff37923 mentioned is similarly problematic, not only in that a space colony won't grow with a sub- or near-replacement birth rate but you won't have the excess population that creates the pressure for colonies with a sub or near-replacement birth rate in the first place.  A lot of the historical and genre assumptions inherited by role-playing settings come from a period of population growth and don't really match the contracting populations of much of the current developed (and even some of the developing) world all that well.

John, thanks for posting, I found the original article at

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1525/aa.1970.72.5.02a00070/abstract

There is tiny link on the right side where folks can download the PDFs.

I retained the traditional mix of male and female role in the Majestic Wilderlands because that how history was but I never had a reason why that was. Or why the Elves were different.

Now I have a plausible reason for both. The Elves are more like post industrial societies due to their immortality, and the relative wealth generated by heavy use of magic. Elvish women don't spend a lot of time raising children so are able to pursue the same occupation as Elvish men. The smaller physical differences between male and female also contribute to the egalitarianism between the sexes in Elvish society.

In general the women in Human society, even those influenced by the elves, still have to spend much of their time child-rearing and their choice of occupation are still more limited. The result being that traditional roles are still prevalent among human societies. Although for the reasons mentioned in my previous post, if a women decided to be a warrior or go adventuring it would be unusual but otherwise not restricted by social or legal convention in most of the societies of the Majestic Wilderlands.

Quote from: estar;568243John, thanks for posting, I found the original article at

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1525/aa.1970.72.5.02a00070/abstract

There is tiny link on the right side where folks can download the PDFs.

I retained the traditional mix of male and female role in the Majestic Wilderlands because that how history was but I never had a reason why that was. Or why the Elves were different.

Now I have a plausible reason for both. The Elves are more like post industrial societies due to their immortality, and the relative wealth generated by heavy use of magic. Elvish women don't spend a lot of time raising children so are able to pursue the same occupation as Elvish men. The smaller physical differences between male and female also contribute to the egalitarianism between the sexes in Elvish society.

In general the women in Human society, even those influenced by the elves, still have to spend much of their time child-rearing and their choice of occupation are still more limited. The result being that traditional roles are still prevalent among human societies. Although for the reasons mentioned in my previous post, if a women decided to be a warrior or go adventuring it would be unusual but otherwise not restricted by social or legal convention in most of the societies of the Majestic Wilderlands.

This may be going off on a bit of a tangent, but I think we don't pay enough attention to the consequences of immortality in races like Elves.

I agree with you that Elven women would be much more free than human ones, and their societies would probably be much more egalitarian. Actually they would come to resemble modern developed societies, only more so: an elf woman could put off having children indefinitely and pursue her own selfhood to her heart's content.

But I think Elves would also be the most risk-averse people you could possibly imagine. Think about it: if you could potentially live forever, why on earth would you put that at risk by fighting, going to war, going adventuring, etc.? You would try to avoid any situation in which you might end up dying and losing all of the umpteen thousands of years you potentially have left to live.

I've also recently been thinking about infertility, because I just finished The Empire of the Summer Moon, a book about the Comanches, and it said that one of the reasons plains indian tribes were keen to abduct and adopt children from other tribes and ultimately whites was because riding around on a horse while pregnant often induces miscarriages: plains indian tribes consequently had a chronically low fertility rate.

If elf women are indefinitely postponing childbirth they would also have this problem - admittedly nobody is dying of old age, but there is still going to be attrition from accidents, warfare, and so on, and if no elf women are having babies because they want their freedom, there are no replacements for the ones who die. Elf societies might end up adopting lots of human adolescents and absorbing them, just in order to keep their own numbers up. The number of half elves would constantly increase as a consequence, as would the number of "human elves" in general: what kind of social problems might result from that?

Quote from: noisms;568198That's sort of the point - skill is important, and that means lots and lots of practice. Something that was unavailable to most women because, despite the many many other social prohibitions, before the invention of reliable birth control young women were either pregnant or weaning a child for much of their lives. You don't get to practice with a spear or bow if you are doing either of those things.

Of course, you can handwave that problem away with magical birth control. Or something, if you care absolutely nothing about the distinction between magic and science.

In any event, I find the notion that, in order to make female characters as interesting as male ones, they have to be, effectively, men: skilled in combat, aggressive, etc. I think that message is in its own way pretty anti-feminist and regressive: in order for women to be worth anything as individuals they have to be the same as men.

You could have a society where women are born sterile and become a political force so slaves are taken to bear children and women develop martial skills. That is how my amazonian society functions

Quote from: jibbajibba;568247You could have a society where women are born sterile and become a political force so slaves are taken to bear children and women develop martial skills. That is how my amazonian society functions

Requiring warrior women to be sterile is a bit harsh as a trade-off, especially since fertility problems are fairly common in the real world. It's also kind of akin to requiring male warriors be eunuchs.

What I came up with for the Joanites (a matriarchal military culture) in the population essay that I wrote that was published in the Tribe 8 Companion was that the women were expected to bear several children young, before they were killed in battle, and pass them off to wet nurses to care for as infants and then older experienced retired mentors to raise as foster parents.  The Spartans show that something like that could work, but it really mangles what family means.

I think allowing women warriors as exceptions to the norm that society accepts, or at least tolerates, is probably the smoothest option for premodern societies.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;568130I think with historical settings you should just do your best to be accurate. Doesn't mean you have to be a jerk about it or use it as an opportunity to pontificate.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;568136Well, that's why it's important to do the research. If you just go with broad strokes, you end up perpetuating the worst stereotypes, but when you drill down a bit you find that the exceptions are as important as the rules, particular for a game which is based on exceptional characters.

It's been said, but still worth noting that the vast majority of actual RPG play aren't strictly historical - and even if it is close to history, it is often drawn more from historical adventure fiction than from primary sources or scholarly research.  

The tropes of historical adventure fiction are often quite different from real history, which is important to differentiate.  Often fiction sanitizes and/or glorifies the historical reality - which is giving a political message, in my opinion.  

My Vinland campaign was based on a mix of the Icelandic historical sagas with legends and history of the American Northeast.  I mixed and bent genres, though, to arrive at something I was comfortable with.  The Laxdaela Saga was a prime inspiration, which had many strong roles for women.  I had one woman PC who started out in disguise as a man, and one who was a noted prophetess.  The former worked fine, and was even well-accepted after she was revealed.  She had disguised herself to exact vengeance for her kin, which was lauded as a reason.  However, later on she faced more quiet disapproval for her actions.  The prophetess was always in demand, though.  

I did make an effort so that all the PCs were not too hampered by their social roles.  For example, most of the PCs - both men and women - had marriages arranged for them, since that was tradition.  However, I made sure that their matches were suitable ones for continuing play.  (Most games don't hold male PCs to historical social roles such as marrying and providing for a family - but for my Vinland game I tried to integrate this.)

Quote from: estar;568243John, thanks for posting, I found the original article at

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1525/aa.1970.72.5.02a00070/abstract

There is tiny link on the right side where folks can download the PDFs.

Thanks. I own and have read the book I quoted and it's worth looking at. Basically, there is a lot of serious technical innovation in textiles such as how different weaves behave when stretched or torn and most of that was probably developed by women and transferred between women over the centuries.

One interesting idea that Barber raises is the theory that you can tell a lot about how well a culture treats its women and how engaged they are in society by how fancy and ornate the normal clothing is, because motivated women will put more effort into it than abused women or slaves.

Quote from: The Traveller;568195More unwanted advice you didn't ask for - I'd avoid that stuff entirely, its the hallmark of the heartbreaker.

It took a bit of Google searching on my part to figure out what a "heartbreaker" is. I'd never heard of the term before.

Regardless, it's taken out of context. Those short two sentences are followed by which authors and directors inspired the feel of the system.

Quote from: ZWEIHÄNDER;568253It took a bit of Google searching on my part to figure out what a "heartbreaker" is. I'd never heard of the term before.

Regardless, it's taken out of context. Those short two sentences are followed by which authors and directors inspired the feel of the system.

Apologies, this little level of the tower has subcultures within subcultures. The short version is that you'd be better off letting your work stand on its own merits rather than by comparison to other works, in my opinion. I certainly love the artwork so far!

Quote from: jhkim;568249It's been said, but still worth noting that the vast majority of actual RPG play aren't strictly historical - and even if it is close to history, it is often drawn more from historical adventure fiction than from primary sources or scholarly research.

I've found that digging into the scholarly research makes many of the historical adventures look fairly tame by comparison.

Frex, the real-life countess of Carlisle is far more interesting than Milady, the character she inspired.

Quote from: noisms;568246This may be going off on a bit of a tangent, but I think we don't pay enough attention to the consequences of immortality in races like Elves.

Agreed

Quote from: noisms;568246But I think Elves would also be the most risk-averse people you could possibly imagine. Think about it: if you could potentially live forever, why on earth would you put that at risk by fighting, going to war, going adventuring, etc.? You would try to avoid any situation in which you might end up dying and losing all of the umpteen thousands of years you potentially have left to live.

Yes this is an aspect of the immortal elves in my campaign. They manipulate the allied cultures around them as a buffer zone. While they don't impose a tyranny cultures allied with the elves tend to be static. The problem is that the Elves have a blindside to short term solutions when they are needed. This has resulted in the downfall of several elven realms.

Quote from: noisms;568246If elf women are indefinitely postponing childbirth they would also have this problem - admittedly nobody is dying of old age, but there is still going to be attrition from accidents, warfare, and so on, and if no elf women are having babies because they want their freedom, there are no replacements for the ones who die. Elf societies might end up adopting lots of human adolescents and absorbing them, just in order to keep their own numbers up. The number of half elves would constantly increase as a consequence, as would the number of "human elves" in general: what kind of social problems might result from that?

Well the wrinkle on Elven immortality in the Majestic Wilderlands is that they can't die. Sure they can suffer fatal wounds to their bodies but only their bodies perishes. Eventually they will reappear a decade to centuries later whole and hale of health. Sent back by the gods to live again.  The timing seems to be based on the elf being "ready" to return. There are some who "died" millenia ago who have not reappeared again.

Their immortality is tied to the life of the world and as so long it endures they endure. However they still avoid this because the experience of dying is very unpleasant along with that when they are in the "other place" they are not connected to the world which is likewise unpleasant.

I have in my folders of an outline for a campaign where everybody is an elf. It starts off traditionally but I have notes if there a total party kill. Basically everybody will resurrect a century or two later with the consequences of their unfinished adventures left to be dealt with.

I try to present the historical culture without any special judgment.    In the world of Jagat, based on mythological india, there is a caste system, there are taboos, there's the feeling that barbarians aren't even quite human, and there's what could certainly be termed as oppression against women. Its not my job to sanitize that or present it as "21st century culture in drag", aka "fantasy canada".

That said, I also have no interest in drowning the setting in excessive culturewank, and playability is the key interest in the setting design; I thus present a fairly credible in-culture rationale for how you could have woman adventurers, for example, if the GM desires.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;568376Its not my job to sanitize that or present it as "21st century culture in drag", aka "fantasy canada".

It's not even a real country anyway.