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I didn't think she was addressing anyone directly, but instead speaking in general—that though some behaviors are innoucuous, others are, indeed, indicators of our essential selves.
And people spend 8 years in school, with years of clinical study to be able to make a wild guess at which is which in pathologically disturbed people.
To think a typical gamer is able to discern motivations of other gamers is, well, a pretty monstrous conceit.
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Yes, Adamantine Dragon, my beliefs do come from my perspective on things (what you term "prejudices and biases"). Of course I judge things based upon what I think is important, correct, etc. If I thought that another perspective was better, I'd change to that perspective.
But I'm not sure what your disagreement is, unless you are just expressing discontent that people's actions affect my opinion of them. Do you think that I'm wrong to judge someone who plays Pathfinder as if it were FATAL? Do you disagree that people's beliefs about the real world affect what kind of roleplaying they engage in?
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Vivienne, I'm saying that you have demonstrated poor judgment in judging the motivations of people ON THESE BOARDS, so stating that you are able to read the secret motivations of your fellow gamers is something that I feel is worth challenging.
Adamantine Dragon, so you agree that people's beliefs about the real world affect what kind of roleplaying they engage in? You agree that certain kinds of roleplaying should be judged? Is the point of contention just that you don't trust me personally to make any judgements?
Edementine Dregon, so you agree that people's beliefs about the real world affect what kind of roleplaying they engage in? You agree that certain kinds of roleplaying should be judged? Is the point of contention just that you don't trust me personally to make any judgements?
Well, maybe if you didn't call me "misogynist" with the slightest of pretexts, I might find your judgment to be a little more reliable.
See Vivianne calling someone "misogynist" is a deadly insult, one that should be leveled only with the most careful of consideration of a preponderance of evidence, not based on one casual use of a common phrase in a manner that is completely consistent with the current discussion.
But you just go there. Blithely, confidently, boldly.
So yeah, I definitely question your personal judgment. Hard.
I get that you question my personal judgement. What I'm trying to figure out is whether you disagree with my broader point. Would you be so kind as to answer my previous question?
so you agree that people's beliefs about the real world affect what kind of roleplaying they engage in? You agree that certain kinds of roleplaying should be judged?
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Oh, and I do think your example is probably pretty common in the overall community Vivianne, so yeah, I think it's a pretty poor idea to make judgments of people's moral character based on their current role playing situation. For anyone. It is simply too easy to let our own biases and prejudices get in the way of our objectivity. As has been demonstrated here I think.
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I'm not sure anyone posting here is a typical gamer. We've got a pretty bright bunch, if you ask me. :)
I do think that, for some, playing sadistic characters feeds a part of them that shouldn't be fed. I think for others it's simply the challenge of a role, as for some actors. I mean, I don't think Anthony Hopkins is likely to take a bite out of me if we meet ... or run me through with Gugnir, for that matter.
I loathe playing evil characters ... though I've been told I'm surpassingly good at creating them as adversaries. Perhaps that says something about me.
Rambling I am. Sleep I need. Work for long hours tomorrow I must.
But leave the keyboard I cannot, yet.
Pretty much, Jaelithe. How many characters do you look over that someone has played -- one? Ten? More? I've played saints and sinners over the years with a wide assortment of attitudes, some of which I believe in, many of which I don't. That's why it is role playing. I do not believe that everyone uses their characters as avatars to work out their issues.
That raises the question: what is it about roleplaying that puts it beyond criticism? Do you think that literary or other media criticism is also a pretty poor idea? To pick a concrete example, do you think that we cannot (or should not) make judgements about Terry Goodkind's Randian views on the real world based upon what he wrote into his Sword of Truth book series? Do you think that the racism exhibited in C.S. Lewis's The Horse and his Boy says nothing about what Lewis thought about Islam and Arab people?
If you do think it's okay to criticize other media, then why is roleplaying different?
Oh, and I do think your example is probably pretty common in the overall community Vivianne
I really hope it's not common for Pathfinder players to play the game as a racism and sexual violence simulator. That would be dark.
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I've played a few complete monsters in my time. Those characters did things i actually felt physically sick about afterwards.
Does that make me a horrible person? No. It's a role, and just like any actor i have to do it justice.
If my character is a horrible wife-beating, misogynist alcoholic who loves bullying those weaker then him, does that make me that? Not, that would be ridiculous and completely unfounded. I love women, I hate alcohol and I tend to be helpful to people.
Vivianne, you seem to have a problem with disconnecting your character's behavior with that of your own. I have no such problem. Nor do many many others. What my character does and thinks is not what I do and think. Unless i play an expy of myself. Which i rarely do.
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The challenge was one. It becomes boring doing the same, safe thing all the time.
Most of them were NPCs, yes, and you have to roleplay them as horrid depraved people they are, to make an impact on the party.
Do you know how i know the villain has made a proper entrance? Silence around the table.
Some of them were PCs, when we played evil campaigns.
It's more proper to say that I have actor training, and a lot of it, but that life is behind me. I now mostly do software design and design fair stands in 3D studio.
Mostly because of the challenge...
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Hama, the conversation has been less about characters and more about the game world as a whole. Wanting to play a character who kills innocents isn't the same thing as wanting to play in a game world where killing infants is morally virtuous. Wanting to play a character who thinks women are inferior isn't the same thing as wanting to play in a game world where thinking women are inferior is a LG thing to do.
Obviously it's possible to separate what your character believes with what you believe. My concern isn't the person who wants to play a character who does horrible things, but recognizes that what their character does is horrible. My concern is the person who wants the game world to justify their character's horrible actions as the virtuous choice.
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The thing about looking for isms everywhere is you will always find them, even where they don't exist.
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Vivianne, reading your posts is a fascinating exercise in practical psychoanalysis.
The assumptions you make. The motivations you accuse. The grand sweeping generalizations you apply. All in the service of biases and prejudices that you wear on your sleeve like a neon tattoo... It's really stunning sometimes.
You continue to assert that your interpretation of things is the only valid one, and that you are the only one who can judge the morals of the people you view.
I've said it before, but it is a quite stunning performance of self-actualized judgment of others based on a remarkably narrow and focused world view.
Nobody has said that they want to build worlds where horrible actions are "the virtuous choice".
The ONLY thing anyone has said here is that it is possible to imagine and therefore play in a world where there are sentient irredeemable monsters, and that doing so allows players to engage in combat simulations without getting tied up in moral knots.
Everything else you have asserted is some sort of weird compulsive perception that you insist on applying on other people based on your own biases and prejudices.
"Hey, I know, let's play a game where we get to be heroes who protect the world from rampaging goblins!"
"You genocidal bastards!"
It's absolutely fascinating to see.
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That raises the question: what is it about roleplaying that puts it beyond criticism? Do you think that literary or other media criticism is also a pretty poor idea? To pick a concrete example, do you think that we cannot (or should not) make judgements about Terry Goodkind's Randian views on the real world based upon what he wrote into his Sword of Truth book series? Do you think that the racism exhibited in C.S. Lewis's The Horse and his Boy says nothing about what Lewis thought about Islam and Arab people?
If you do think it's okay to criticize other media, then why is roleplaying different?
Oh, and I do think your example is probably pretty common in the overall community VivianneI really hope it's not common for Pathfinder players to play the game as a racism and sexual violence simulator. That would be dark.
By the same token, I don't let Tom Cruise's religious views or Orson Scott Card's views on gay marriage decide if I enjoy Mission Impossible or Ender's Game. Nor do I decide that Bob the Player's character's commentary on women means that he himself is a misogynist.
As for the world, well. We're examining and casting aspersions based on modern takes on men, women, slavery, culture and so on. While it would be nice to live in an world where everyone is equal and so forth, that doesn't need to be every gaming world, or every culture in a gaming world. By the standards of those looking for gender or racial equality, many cultures may seem evil -- by today's standards.
Vivianne, reading your posts is a fascinating exercise in practical psychoanalysis.
What happened to spending 8 years in school, with years of clinical study?
You continue to assert that your interpretation of things is the only valid one, and that you are the only one who can judge the morals of the people you view.
I've not asserted that. I've asserted that some perspectives are invalid, but that's different from saying all perspectives but mine are invalid. ∃x φ(x) is not the same as ∀x φ(x).
By the same token, I don't let Tom Cruise's religious views or Orson Scott Card's views on gay marriage decide if I enjoy Mission Impossible or Ender's Game.
Where did enjoyment enter the picture? I was talking about how one views on the real world affect the fictions one engages in. Clearly you can enjoy something with problems, but that doesn't erase the existence of the problems. You can enjoy Ender's game, but that doesn't mean that it doesn't say anything about Card's views on morality.
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Jaelithe, your inability to imagine "sentient irredeemable" monsters is not my problem.
Your insistence (and Vivianne's) that since YOU can't do it, it can't be done, is my problem.
Imaginary worlds can be whatever the imaginer wants them to be. Even if that means things are possible there, that aren't possible HERE.
Like, magic.
Vivianne, reading your posts is a fascinating exercise in practical psychoanalysis.What happened to spending 8 years in school, with years of clinical study?
You continue to assert that your interpretation of things is the only valid one, and that you are the only one who can judge the morals of the people you view.I've not asserted that. I've asserted that some perspectives are invalid, but that's different from saying all perspectives but mine are invalid. ∃x φ(x) is not the same as ∀x φ(x).
Some perspectives such as any perspective that disagrees with you in any way, yes.
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Vivianne, reading your posts is a fascinating exercise in practical psychoanalysis.What happened to spending 8 years in school, with years of clinical study?
You continue to assert that your interpretation of things is the only valid one, and that you are the only one who can judge the morals of the people you view.I've not asserted that. I've asserted that some perspectives are invalid, but that's different from saying all perspectives but mine are invalid. ∃x φ(x) is not the same as ∀x φ(x).
You don't even know what you are asserting.
What you are asserting is that YOU are the judge of what IS valid.
What you are asserting is that YOU are the judge of what IS valid.
Yes, I do believe that the things I believe are valid. If I didn't believe they are valid, I wouldn't believe them...
Are you upset that I think the judgements I make are valid? Why wouldn't I think that?
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What you are asserting is that YOU are the judge of what IS valid.Yes, I do believe that the things I believe are valid. If I didn't believe they are valid, I wouldn't believe them...
Are you upset that I think the judgements I make are valid? Why wouldn't I think that?
It's your naked willingness to shout your beliefs from the mountaintop and accuse those who run afoul of your prejudices and biases of horrible crimes that is the problem Vivianne.
Go ahead and believe what you want. But it would be nice if you didn't let that lead to you publicly calling people names and questioning their moral character.
Believe me, I have lots of biases and prejudices that I could turn into accusations and zealotry if I wanted to myself.
The difference between us isn't that I don't have those biases and prejudices, it's that I don't let them overrule my common sense and humility.
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By the same token, I don't let Tom Cruise's religious views or Orson Scott Card's views on gay marriage decide if I enjoy Mission Impossible or Ender's Game.Where did enjoyment enter the picture? I was talking about how one views on the real world affect the fictions one engages in. Clearly you can enjoy something with problems, but that doesn't erase the existence of the problems. You can enjoy Ender's game, but that doesn't mean that it doesn't say anything about Card's views on morality.
Perhaps. But then, my players and I do not feel any particular need to closely examine the problems and compare them to the real life struggles going on. We are playing to enjoy ourselves -- much like we would with Mr. Cruise or Mr. Card's material.
Or, perhaps a better way to say it is we do not care. The game we play or the movies we watch or the stores we shop in do not mean that we are unaware of the plight of the X in Y. But that is the real world, not the game or movie or store we're engaging. We're interested in having a good game rather than trying to fight out proxy battle in our game to legalize pot/abolish sexism or whatever.
There are avenues to explore to solve these issues in the real world. We're less interested in cramming a moral lesson into our game. I believe thejeff mentioned it earlier (though I could be misremembering), but the babies bit comes across like a 'gotcha' moment, sort of like arranging a no-win scenario for the paladin to fall.
@knightnday
You ought read the review I posted. Besides being a really good review, it's also apropos to the topic of this thread. John Kessel does an excellent job of looking at the problems and dangers in the moral viewpoint presented by Card in Ender's Game (and Speaker for the Dead). As Ender's Game is about presenting someone who commits genocide while remaining blameless (or at least, is presented as blameless by the narrative), it's quite relevant to this thread. Now, I'm not saying Card's intentions are shared by anyone when they roleplay in worlds with creatures who exist solely to be justified targets of violence. But I do think some of the same issues are present.
We're interested in having a good game rather than trying to fight out proxy battle in our game to legalize pot/abolish sexism or whatever.
There are avenues to explore to solve these issues in the real world. We're less interested in cramming a moral lesson into our game.
Don't interpret me as saying that the only right way to roleplay is to shoehorn in morality lessons. I certainly don't think that. However, the simple fact is that the fantasy worlds we imagine will never be completely divorced from what we think about the real world. Whether we do it intentionally or not, what we imagine is influenced by what we think is real. Hence, I think we should strive to be aware about how our fantasy is influenced by our beliefs about the real world and how our fantasy influences our beliefs about the real world.
As thejeff brought up, it's not hard to avoid the killing babies or irredeemably evil race thing. Just about the only scenario that becomes impossible is the slaughtering a village scenario. You can still have all the fun tactical combat you want without having the game world say some races are uniformly evil. You don't have to go completely in the other direction either. You don't have to play a game centered around an obviously shoehorned-in real world issue. For example, the plot of the game could be
The elves from Nation 1, led by evil Emperor Maine Antagonist have invaded the elves of Nation 2 and kidnapped lawful good King McGuffin. Bold heroes are needed to stand up to the evil Maine Antagonist and use sword and sorcery in fun and engaging combat encounters against his henchmen and army of magical beasts! Are you a bad enough dude to save the king?
This is perfectly mindless hack-n-slash adventure, but it avoids the irredeemably evil monsters and killing babies things.
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@thejeff
Yes, there is a difference between "these four dwarves are minions of the evil lich and you should fight them" and "all dwarves everywhere are irredeemably evil and the only right action to take upon seeing a dwarf is to kill that dwarf". In the first case, the four dwarves are justified targets of violence because they are minions of the evil lich who does evil things. That is, the reason attacking them is justified is because of the actions of those characters. In the second case, dwarves are justified targets of violence because they are dwarves. In this case, the reason it is justified to kill them is displaced onto their race as a whole.
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LOL Jaelithe, when you call "sentient irredeemable" an oxymoron, what am I supposed to conclude other than that you have an inability to imagine it? It's NOT an oxymoron to me because I CAN imagine it.
And the 8 years thing... LOL, I just said that it's fascinating to watch Vivianne, not that my analysis was clinical. I stand by that analysis anyway because I'm not delving into motivations or morality, I'm just pointing out what is being done right there in public.
The bottom line is that it is you and Vivianne who are passing judgment on people for playing a game where you fight sentient irredeemable monsters, because you simply can't accept that sentient irredeemable monsters can exist anywhere. You've both said it enough times that I hardly think calling that an inability to imagine is an indefensible position.
But it's time to let this rest.
@Adamantine Dragon
I don't recall saying that sentient irredeemable monsters are impossible. I just talked about the problems associated with making them part of your game world.
And the 8 years thing... LOL, I just said that it's fascinating to watch Vivianne, not that my analysis was clinical. I stand by that analysis anyway because I'm not delving into motivations or morality, I'm just pointing out what is being done right there in public.
And I pointed out your public misogyny. So I guess we're in the same boat.
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Don't interpret me as saying that the only right way to roleplay is to shoehorn in morality lessons. I certainly don't think that. However, the simple fact is that the fantasy worlds we imagine will never be completely divorced from what we think about the real world. Whether we do it intentionally or not, what we imagine is influenced by what we think is real. Hence, I think we should strive to be aware about how our fantasy is influenced by our beliefs about the real world and how our fantasy influences our beliefs about the real world.
As thejeff brought up, it's not hard to avoid the killing babies or irredeemably evil race thing. Just about the only scenario that becomes impossible is the slaughtering a village scenario. You can still have all the fun tactical combat you want without having the game world say some races are uniformly evil. You don't have to go completely in the other direction either. You don't have to play a game centered around an obviously shoehorned-in real world issue. For example, the plot of the game...
Which is one set of beliefs and certainly one way to play and look at things. But not the only way. I can buy a God imprisoned in the world that is so evil that everyone turned against them. I can believe that there are races spawned by that God or others that are irredeemable, insufferable, and a blight on the world. I can believe that they cannot be changed, turned, or coerced into being 'good.' That is certainly another way to look at the game and playing.
There is no wrong or right way to build a world, no requirement that one has to strive to make game world choices that reflect some real world ideal. It is about choices and the stories those that players are interested in. No one is required to believe the same way. That is a good and bad thing; good so that we all have games that meet our needs, wants and desires, and bad that many of us won't see eye to eye or play together.
And I pointed out your public misogyny. So I guess we're in the same boat.Pray tell, where was his public mysogyny?
Apparently suggesting that pregnant women were an inappropriate target is misogyny.
At least that is how it reads to me.As said earlier. If you are constantly searching for isms everywhere you look, you will always find them.
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Pray tell, where was his public mysogyny?
The thread's only 3 pages...
But here is the specific post:
So Viv and Mik and the rest of you recoiling in abject moral disgust, what about a world where there are no helpless women or baby goblins or orcs?When I pointed out that lumping women in with infants, relegating them to a passive role, is a common misogynistic trope, he replied with
Perhaps I should have described the monsters as asexual, the point of including women was that women are usually the ones having babies, and sometimes they tend to be pregnant.
Here he doubles down on the misogyny. In his previous post he referred to "helpless women". If he is clarifying why he called these orc women helpless, then he is saying that pregnancy makes one helpless. If the world "helpless" was intentionally not brought up again, then he is equating woman with pregnant woman. Either one is a common misogynistic trope. He later tries to defend himself by saying that his point was just that killing a fetus (by way of killing a pregnant woman) is just like killing a baby. But that fails as a defense. If he meant that all along, then why not say so from the beginning? Why detour through the misogyny? Why not just say "what about a world where there are no pregnant or infant goblins and orcs?" from the start? Even if this is what he intended all along, what he actually said played into common misogynistic tropes.
Personally, I doubt Adamantine Dragon intentionally was trying to denigrate women. Rather, I think that this sort of lumping women in with children, only bringing up women in regard to birthing and raising children, etc. are common in how gender is talked about in fantasy roleplaying games. Orc means orc man. They are described as inherently violent and their role in the game is to be violent (and have violence inflicted upon them). Consider how orc women are described in 3.5's Monster Manual:
Orc society is patriarchal: Females are prized possessions at best and chattel at worst. Male orcs pride themselves on the number of females they own and male children they sire, as well as their battle prowess, wealth, and amount of territory... An orc lair may be a cave, a series of wooden huts, a fort, or even a large city built above and below ground. A tribe includes females (as many as there are males), young (half as many as there are females), and slaves (about one for every ten males).
Everything is defined relative to men here. Women are mentioned only as possessions and when talking about populations of orc settlements. The orcs to be encountered by PCs (outside of slaughtering a village scenarios) are entirely men.
This is the trope Adamantine Dragon was falling into. Orcs, that is the creatures who are irredeemably evil, exist only to be killed by the PCs, etc., are men. Orc women are only mentioned in reference to domestic affairs.
An obvious rejoinder is that orcs are portrayed as patriarchal in this manner to show how they are evil, irredeemable, etc. The problem with this response is that the descriptions of orcs is androcentric, it privileges the perspectives of men over women. Orc women are an exception to the category orc, populations are defined in terms of the number of orc men, etc. This is also seen in the description of orcs in Pathfinder's Advanced Race Guide:
On an almost instinctive level, orcs believe they are entitled to anything they want unless someone stronger can stop them from seizing it. They rarely exert themselves off the battlefield except when forced to do so; this attitude stems not just from laziness but also from an ingrained belief that work should trickle down through the pecking order until it falls upon the shoulders of the weak. They take slaves from other races, orc men brutalize orc women, and bth abuse children and elders, on the grounds that anyone too feeble to fight back deserves little more than a life of suffering.
This is where the trope starts to get dangerous. The gendered violence among orcs here is explained as a byproduct of general orcish violence: orcs are violent towards those weaker than them. Hence, orc men abuse orc women (who are weaker than orc men) who abuse orc children and elders (who are weaker than orc women). This sort of hierarchy of violence has been appealed to in the real world to excuse real world gendered violence.
This sort of thing is why I argue that we should strive to stay aware of the connections between our fantasy worlds and the real world. Consider the topic of this thread: monstrous irredeemable races and whether wanton killing of them is justified. How do we come up with explanations why it would be justified? We do what we do elsewhere in creating fantasy worlds: we draw upon ideas from the real world and tweak them to fit the fantasy world. We describe orcs as inherently savage, uncivilized, evil, and morally inferior to humans. The connection to real world instances where groups have been described as these things is clear.
It's been argued multiple times in this thread that one can roleplay something without believing that it's right or good. For example, roleplaying a thief doesn't mean you think thievery is good. Roleplaying a misogynist doesn't mean you think women are inferior to men. I certainly agree with this. However, what makes this work is the audience awareness. You know, and the other players around the table know, that you don't actually think burglary and pickpocketing are virtuous. The problem is when people want to ignore or deny the connections to the real world. In this case it becomes easy to do as Adamantine Dragon did: to fall into the trap of uncritically reproducing problematic elements in the game world. He played into the same misogynistic tropes as seen in descriptions of orcs in rulebooks. I don't think this was out of malice. But that's exactly why this is something we should care about. You don't have to be a bad person to fall for problematic tropes. If only bad people ever did this, the solution would be simple: don't play with bad people. But since it's something that can happen to all of us, we should strive to be aware of these things and be willing to point a critical eye at the hobby.
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As I said Viv, when you are desperately searching for misogyny under every rock, you'll find it even where it doesn't exist.
As I also said, this sort of thing is a deadly insult, the sort of personal accusation that generally reflects more on the accuser than the accused.
I always try to be polite and rational in my discussions on these boards and try my best to keep things from being personal
But you are an unmitigated ass.
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You really think you are doing your positions a favor by acting like a straw feminist? When you cry wolf at every corner and make everything in existence out to be an example of "fill in the blank", then it becomes hard to take your positions seriously. Especially when you have to twist things and insert subtexts that blatantly were NOT invoked to do so. The one predictable thing about just about ANY thread is that somehow you will have turned it into a soapbox and accused someone of some variety of thoughtcrime within the first few pages.
Do you think it's a bad idea to have misogynistic cultures in a setting? Leaving aside for the moment the question of whether the culture is the whole race or just a (common?) subset, there are certainly plenty of real world examples to draw from.
I'm actually currently working on writing up a players' document for a campaign I'll be running which heavily features a misogynistic culture. I certainly think it can be done. I don't claim that my approach is without flaw, but I think what I'm doing avoids the more obvious pitfalls. I am drawing from real world examples, in particular 1950s-esque ideas about American gender roles. I'm also drawing ideas from how things are presented in roleplaying setting books. For example, I'm using the sort of description of orcs I quote above. However, rather it being presented as fact, it's presented as the perspective of this specific dwarven empire (they're racist as well as sexist).
I think the main thing I'm doing that avoids pitfalls is being explicit about what is in-universe perspective and what is factual about the game world.
Most of the players' document is written from an in-universe perspective. Details about geography, cultures, etc. in the part of the world where the campaign takes place are presented as excerpts from a geography book for dwarven children. This is sprinkled with in-universe footnotes written by an orcish historian a few hundred years later. In this way, in-universe problematic viewpoints aren't presented without explicit acknowledgement that they are problematic. For example, in the setting, kobold society lacks a concept of gender (though sex is a concept). Further, kobolds typically have large, polygamous marriage. Here's how it's presented in the setting book:
Dragonkin [i.e. kobold] culture puts a strong focus on family. Each family is led by a father and his many wives.
This is footnoted with the historian's explanation of how dwarven Achaean gender roles are placed within the explanation of kobold society.
I actually first really thought about this sort of thing when reading a 3.5 book about the planes. The great wheel cosmology is presented as the true structure of the planes. But clearly, that structure isn't purely physical, since that doesn't even make sense to say regarding different planes. The way it is presented, there is no room for disagreement. (Thinking about what would cause someone to accept one planar cosmology over another ended up providing a lot of inspiration for a character I later played.)
Similar things happen with how creatures in the game world are described. Someone in the thread 137ben linked above mentioned this with regard to dragons:
There's something similar in the Advanced Race Guide description of fetchlings:The d20 (D&D open source) page on dragons:
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/dragonTrue.htmNote that it is wholly a tactical appraisal that reads like anti-dragon propaganda. All dragons are covetous, like sleeping on hoards of treasure, and here is how they fight. Great detail is given to the tactics of each species; almost none is given to the viewpoint or philosophy or culture of any.
Some members of the race also take offense at the name fetching, as it was given to them by humans who saw them as little more than fetchers of rare materials from the Shadow Plane. Most fetchlings instead prefer to be called kayal, a word borrowed from Aklo that roughly translates to "shadow people" or "dusk dwellers."
Things are presented as objective and from a perspective outside the game world, but they cleave to certain perspectives within the game world. In the case of fetchlings, an in-universe racial slur is used as the name in the rulebooks for their race.
How would you describe a culture like the orc culture in the ARG without doing so in androcentric terms or playing into misogynistic tropes?
I think an important thing to do is to not treat orc women as an afterthought. Part of the problem with what I quote is that orc women are treated as the exception to what it means to be an orc. Another thing is to not relegate them solely to a passive role. For example, maybe orcish warbands are segregated by gender, much like how real world militaries have been segregated racially. Perhaps the party has an encounter against a group of orcish raiders where the leader of the group is the only man among them.
The problem I see in trying to present a society where orc women exist solely in orc villages raising children is that it's hard to make that visible to the players without it becoming a big focus of the game. I agree with you about the problems with the slaughter the village scenario and I also think that including a misogynistic society doesn't mean it has to be the focus of the game. I think my example from the previous paragraph avoids some of these issues. The misogyny of that orc society adds some detail to an encounter (DC 15 Knowledge (Local) check to know about gender segregation in Redskull orcish warbands!) but doesn't make it the focus of the game.
Of course, the thing to do is to not fall into other traps in how orcs are presented. This group of orcs have a misogynistic society, but that shouldn't mean all orcs are that way. Redskull orcs are misogynistic, but Greenblood orcs are not.
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Haven't seen any misogyny in AD's posts. Misogyny is a horrible thing. Maybe you should dial down on the accusations. He may be sexist (he is not. He was making an argument, but all you saw was "helpless women"), but he certainly is not a misogynist. If you don't know the difference between sexism and misogyny, you should google it.
Interesting. I see pitfalls with presenting world information as in-world perspective. More so in published material than in home brew material for players to read. Primarily unreliable narrator stuff. At some point published material needs to be authoritative.
I don't think it's possible to avoid any authoritative statements in settings material (or at least, it's very difficult to avoid). In the players' document I'm writing, it is authoritatively stated that certain people in the game world have these certain views. The trick is to be careful to distinguish between authoritative details presented from an external view and in-universe views of certain groups.
But anyway, while some is necessary, I think relatively little authoritative detail is necessary for the game to function. For example, in most settings for fantasy roleplaying games, there is an authoritative answer as to the nature of the afterlife. In Golarion, souls travel from the material plane through the River of Souls on the astral plane to the Boneyard to be judged by Pharasma. I don't think this is necessary, however. Not having this stated as an authoritative detail would require some changes to Golarion's planar cosmology (in particular, Pharasma couldn't play such an important role). But the game world wouldn't fall apart if this wasn't authoritatively presented to us. My homebrew setting doesn't have an authoritative answer for what happens in the afterlife (or even if there is an afterlife!), and it works for me.
Another obvious example of this sort of thing is the alignment system. There doesn't need to be a mechanics-enforced authoritative standard of morality for the game to function.
Of course, when you're dealing with actual different species, there's no real reason why some things can't actually be species-wide. Sexual dimorphism is a real thing even in humans, more so in some of our close relatives. Different gender roles are pretty hard-coded in many animal species. Much more sexual dimorphism than humans and it'd be pretty hard to justify a significant warrior role for the smaller sex.
Sure. But (one of) the issue(s) with the orc thing I brought up is how closely it cleaves to a certain view of real world human gender roles. Dominance and power is linked to masculinity in this sort of depiction of orcs. It's hard for this to avoid connections with the real world ideas about masculinity. If you want to depict fantasy species with sexual dimorphism, you probably should take a few steps to avoid these sorts of connections popping up. Maybe the fantasy species has three sexes, each of which are very different physically. I think this example can avoid the problem of linking masculinity with physical strength and power and linking femininity with physical weakness and lack of power.
If you don't know the difference between sexism and misogyny, you should google it.
dislike of, contempt for, or ingrained prejudice against women
Hatred of, contempt for, or prejudice against women