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Friday 26 June 2020

Reclaim the dame

Along with climate awareness, millennials like to imagine they invented gender equality. Truth is, we were talking about sexism and racism back in the 20th century (and earlier; see Gissing's novel, below) and we were just as committed to ending all prejudice. That’s what Star Trek was all about. Regardless of modern cynicism, “We come in peace for all mankind” wasn’t an ironic statement for most who heard Neil Armstrong say it.

Likewise in games. My own original campaign was set in Tsolyanu, the Empire of the Petal Throne, which overtly allows for sexual equality by a woman declaring herself aridani. At that point she ceases to be a ward of the clan, as most women remain throughout their lives, and becomes the equal of a man in rights and responsibilities. (More detail about that here if you scroll down.)

Other ‘70s roleplaying settings allowed for female adventurers, of course. EPT wasn’t unique in that respect. But Professor Barker actually thought about how societies organize, and what it would mean to have the cultural mechanism for women to declare themselves equal. In theory a female player-character could even choose to remain non-aridani, though I’m not sure how much fun that would be. The point is, it’s a real choice with an upside and a downside.

In the D&D games I occasionally looked in on back then, gender equality was dealt with by treating the world as a sort of huge cosplay arena, with most NPCs acting as if they were in the Middle Ages and PCs as the guests bringing 20th (or 21st) century mores into that.

In the heyday of gamebooks we knew that 90% of our readers were boys, but I was always mindful of the other 10% (if not, back then, much aware of the fuzzy area of overlap between the two) and made sure to keep descriptions gender-neutral. For instance, if you were running from the town militia, as often seemed to happen in gamebooks, and Jamie or Oliver or Mark had written passers-by yelling “Stop him!” I’d remind them to change it to “Stop that thief!” or “Grab the miscreant!”

In the land of Legend as described in Dragon Warriors there is no societal provision for becoming aridani. The world is supposed to be like our medieval times, that’s the whole point. Female player-characters in DW could be whatever they wanted to be, even knights, but the prodigy of a female knight would be remarked on by the people they met. In the same way, a Mungoda hunter strolling through the streets of Ongus should expect to attract attention – Melville talks in the opening paragraphs of Billy Budd about just such a (black) Handsome Sailor archetype attracting “the tribute of a pause and stare, and less frequently an exclamation”.

But race is another post (and in fact I have an interesting tale about that; remind me). I said there was no formal cultural mechanism for gender equality in the Middle Ages, but knights belong to the nobility, and with class comes a whole set of social passkeys. Celia Fiennes or Lady Mary Wortley Montagu could carry themselves with swashbuckling disregard for the attitudes of their times and merely be regarded as eccentric. Agnes Hotot even reputedly tilted in the lists. (She was probably more Ronda Rousey than Keira Knightley, as I doubt if I could even move in tournament plate myself, much less climb onto a horse while carrying a lance.)

To be equal doesn’t have to mean being the same. In our world I doubt if we’ll ever see a lot of women firefighters or oil riggers. Female PCs in my Legend games usually opt to be sorcerer or assassin rather than an armour-clad beefcake, but if a female PC wants to be a knight, how should she style herself? There’s a trend these days to stamp out any gender difference in titles (actor/actress, dominator/dominatrix, etc) and there’s very good reason for that: we want to eliminate the preconceptions that may come with gender-specific titles. But a fantasy world should be colourful rather than politically correct, so I’m going to make a plea that players don’t opt for styling their female knights “Sir Agnes Hotot” or whatever. It’s a horrible, Gradgrindian intrusion of modern attitudes into the game world. What’s wrong with “Dame Agnes”? Dame is Middle English for a female ruler (cf the Dame of Sark) and derives from the Latin domina. By contrast, Sir comes from sire, which comes from the Latin word senior, in the sense of having higher status. And that ain't bad, but it's nothing like a dame.

24 comments:

  1. This originally appeared on the Jewelspider Patreon page, but I thought it might be of wider interest, especially as Fabled Lands has more female players than most of the old school gamebooks and RPGs did.

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  2. Do you stat female NPCs differently? Or female PCs? (and why, either way?)

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    1. Not PCs; they're outliers in any case and the player can apportion their character design points however they like. The average female NPC would obviously not be as strong as the average male NPC, but who stats random NPCs anyway? If you are going to have the players encounter a female warrior, for example, you're not going to bother with what the statistical distribution of strength is across the whole population!

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  3. Another factor that will have influenced gender relations in the cultures of Tekumel is the easy availability of a reliable contraceptive in the form of lisutl root, possibly genetically engineered for precisely that purpose in ancient times. Homosexuality, bisexuality and transgender are all accepted in the Five Empires, though the reason for that may simply be that nobody took a Bible or Koran on the starships that originally colonized Tekumel.

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  4. "...treating the world as a sort of huge cosplay arena, with most NPCs acting as if they were in the Middle Ages and PCs as the guests bringing 20th (or 21st) century mores into that."

    Possibly the best description of an RPG that I have ever read!

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    1. Not necessarily a *good* RPG, mind you :-) But it is a lot easier for my Tekumel players to fully think like Tsolyani than it is for most players to get into a medieval mindset -- not least because there are a hundred Hollywood movies to unremember first. A good argument for "subcreations" there?

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    2. BTW, you mention another website? I'm interested in your general gaming/writing posts. Am I in the right place? ;-)

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    3. I tend to think of the Mirabilis blog as "my" site, though I rarely update it these days. I usually put my posts on writing there rather than inflict them on gamebook readers and RPGers :-)

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    4. Now I’m going to have to check another blog *sigh* may have to look at using one of those feed thingys. Any suggestions anyone on how to watch a few blogs but not have it take over what little spare time and intellectual bandwidth I have left? :-)

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    5. I use a free site called Feedly.com. Check it out.

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    6. Thanks. Will check it out

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    7. Some tips also in the sidebar of this blog. See "Latest offerings" and "Sites of interest"...

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  5. I know this isn't strictly relevent to your post but do you know why it's so difficult to find the tekumel novels? I can only find the first one on kindle and the others appear to not be available anywhere.

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    1. I thought they'd be on DriveThruRPG, but I don't see them there. It seems quite an oversight on the part of the Tekumel Foundation not to at least have Kindle editions available. I'll investigate further...

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    2. The only place I've been able to find that might stock the novels is Tita's House of Games:

      https://www.tekumel.com/tita/novels.html

      It's really strange that they're not at least on Kindle. I would have thought that would be a higher priority than yet another set of Tekumel RPG rules.

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    3. Thanks for investigating. Their purchasing page is stunningly archaic. Very odd.

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    4. It does look as if they've mothballed it. Too bad, as Tekumel deserves to reach a wider audience.

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    5. "Tita's" hasn't been the authorized merchant since the foundation took over after the author passed away. I believe Carl was only allowed to sell what stock he actually had on hand at the time, but that was the end of that. Apparently the foundation was going to "handle all that" themselves, but you can see how that turned out.

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    6. The tragedy is that 24 years ago Steve Foster explained what needed to be done to save Tekumel: "All I can do is point out the facts. If the strategy hasn’t worked for the last 20 years it’s not going to suddenly start working now. Without change, Tékumel is dead."

      https://tekumel.com/eoasw6_05.html

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    7. Well, everyone things they know the answer. At least making EPT available on Drivethru was a good move. Personally, I think you can play a perfectly wonderful game with just that. I used it to adapt Tekumel to my preferred rules set, with only the rare dive into the Source Book for this-or-that bit of inspiration.

      My own choice would be a minimalist rules set that is easily adaptable to the most popular systems of the current day. And then collecting all the disparate sourcebook-type information, RE-WRITING IT to make it accessible, divvying it up into bite-sized volumes by subject ("splatbooks"), and releasing a SLEW of adventures. With, as Steve suggested, some intro stuff shared without charge. But hey, no one cares what I think.

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    8. I care :-) and your suggestions sound sensible, but I'm afraid it's too late now. There might have been time to turn it around back in '96, but the reaction to Steve's article then was the usual one to a radical but necessary proposal: high dudgeon, double down.

      In an alternate world, Prof Barker would have accepted Steve Jackson's offer of doing three GURPS Tekumel books. I heard Steve talk about that in the early '90s and he was a real fan of the world. Oh well.

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  6. Damosel and Dame are great words; it would be a real pity to lose "Imperatrix" as well !

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    1. Agreed. Furiosa would have been even more kick-ass impressive as an Imperatrix!

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