My typical answer to that is "Whatever floats your boat, but it probably won't come up too often in RP". Just not my sort of thing as a GM, I'm not a big fan of relationship drama. The one character in my Kingmaker campaign who's in any sort of romantic partnership, it was more like a formal contract than anything, due to the two being a wizard and a witch respectively and looking at the whole thing from a very practical standpoint given the circumstances.This is a common brazilian trope, that we roleplay more deeply than USA players because we are more willing to roleplay characters relationships, entire conversations with multiple NPCs, character struggles and virtually pass entire sessions without playing any dice (i have deep problems with pathfinder society game, we really lose a lot of time in roleplaying encounters as we don't like to just roll any diplomacy tests, we make all talking in character.
I never played with anyone not brazilian, so i don't even know if this trope is true, but many people report that north american that come to brazil say that.
There's two different levels here, really.
On the one hand, I have no issues with long, roleplay-focused sessions with little to no combat, deep and complex friendships, rivalries, and other such relationships with NPCs, and such like. My games are full of those, and the huge size of my current campaign's NPC cast list is still growing, and regularly being revised with further expansion of the PCs' interactions with the NPCs. So it's not a lack of immersive interaction.
What it is is that I, personally, am not very comfortable with or interested in pursuing anything along romantic or sexual themes. So if anything like that happens in my games, it's all off-screen, or handwaved, or otherwise not delved into in great detail.
This wizard and witch I mentioned have been close co-workers and later friends ever since the second chapter of the campaign, a little over a year in real-time. She's his second-in-command at the colony's mage-school, she takes his place on the council as Magister when he has to be away (either due to traveling with the party, or other absences), and the two have been cooperative partners for in-game years. But I - as the GM - am not comfortable with nor interested in going into detail on the romantic interactions between the two, so it's all left to off-screen. If the wizard's player decides he wants the two of them to have children, okay, that happens. Any detail beyond that is untouched.
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Let's also stop conflating sex and gender.
Sex is sex. It is physically what you are. That's pretty much it.
Gender is internal. It's your mindset. How masculine/feminine you feel you are. It usually goes hand-in-hand with sex, but not always. When the difference is extreme enough, people may have sex reassignment surgery. How you express your gender will vary by culture (i.e. "dressing like a lady/man"). People want to be recognized as their gender in their daily life, while some "play"different genders for fun, or because it's more fluid for them.
People with conflicting gender mentalities can realize it from a very young age (i've read as young as 8 years old), before they even know what physical sex is, which is further evidence that the two are not one in the same.
@Ellis: I always get the two confused @_@ It's like all the -isms that keep popping up, I can never keep them straight
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There's two different levels here, really.
On the one hand, I have no issues with long, roleplay-focused sessions with little to no combat, deep and complex friendships, rivalries, and other such relationships with NPCs, and such like. My games are full of those, and the huge size of my current campaign's NPC cast list is still growing, and regularly being revised with further expansion of the PCs' interactions with the NPCs. So it's not a lack of immersive interaction.
What it is is that I, personally, am not very comfortable with or interested in pursuing anything along romantic or sexual themes. So if anything like that happens in my games, it's all off-screen, or handwaved, or otherwise not delved into in great detail.
Althrough brazilians have a lot more casual approach to sex, we don't do it either, but we think that is very strange to roleplay as if people are not wanting to do it. But there other types of relationships, like friendships, rivalities etc ... We go deep in the motivations of characters, and characters go deep in theorycraft in motivations of the villains,so very minor things in adventure paths gain entire diverse meaning in brazilian eyes, and so we congratulate very much that paizo can make adventures that appease to our tastes while do the same with the rest of the world.
The point is, there is no right answer. Maybe gender roles in fantasy is wrong in american culture but right in others. I guess paizo has the right amount. Korvosa and Kyonin have "girlies" queens, while Cheliax and the realm where Wraith of the Righteous takes place have warrior queens. The black Mwangi have a unique culture, and they are accepted as equal but have to overcome a stereotype. The GM can downplay or upgrade the conflicts as the group see confortable and everybody is happy.
But there other types of relationships, like friendships, rivalities etc ... We go deep in the motivations of characters, and characters go deep in theorycraft in motivations of the villains,so very minor things in adventure paths gain entire diverse meaning in brazilian eyes, and so we congratulate very much that paizo can make adventures that appease to our tastes while do the same with the rest of the world.
In this we are not so different, so cheers =)
@Ellis: I always get the two confused @_@ It's like all the -isms that keep popping up, I can never keep them straight
It's definitely not an easy thing to understand when one hasn't had direct experiences with the two being out of sync. Last year I had to have a long conversation with my mother trying to explain why my then-current partner was not my "girlfriend" and preferred to be referred to as "they" instead of "she".
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Let's also stop conflating sex and gender.
Sex is sex. It is physically what you are. That's pretty much it.
Gender is internal. It's your mindset. How masculine/feminine you feel you are. It usually goes hand-in-hand with sex, but not always. When the difference is extreme enough, people may have sex reassignment surgery. How you express your gender will vary by culture (i.e. "dressing like a lady/man"). People want to be recognized as their gender in their daily life, while some "play"different genders for fun, or because it's more fluid for them.
People with conflicting gender mentalities can realize it from a very young age (i've read as young as 8 years old), before they even know what physical sex is, which is further evidence that the two are not one in the same.
There is a wonderful thread about the LGBT community in the Gamer Talk board. It really opened my eyes on the complexity of the matter AND the terrifying things that people who do not conform to the norm have to face.
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I think something to keep in mind is that there are modern people playing these games, so depending on the person, some liberties need to be taken. Which is fine, since a fantasy world doesn't model reality, merely reflects it.
I can tell you right now, in my Renaissance/Age of Exploration game set in the psuedo-Caribbean, there is slavery and the slave trade. But, there are also abolitionists and the laws for slaves aren't anywhere near as harsh as in real life because I personally don't want to delve into that when I play. Got enough of that from a GM from my childhood.
At the end of the day, my players want to play D&D, not Jim Crow: The RPG ;)
OH MY GOD. THIS. THANK YOU.
Because up until this I only saw people discussing gender issues. It made me start to feel like maybe, MAYBE as a black d00d whose been playing and running FRPGS for over 20 years that I'VE BEEN DOING IT WRONG.
I do not understand. What would you have been doing wrong ?
AFAIK, the gender thing is a hot topic these days because the laws dealing with it are being debated and sometimes even changed in many countries.
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The presence of magic makes a typical fantasy so radically different from RL that I have always seen it as a lack of creativity when a setting fails to have societies with radically different ideas about thing than any in actual history.
Also I think that there would not be any real history of gender essentialism or general gender-based b%@&*@&& in a world with magic where a woman is as likely as a man to be a spellcaster and be able to light your face on fire. Or a world like Golarion where deities like Arshea can actually speak to people and tell them to knock it the f$+! off.
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Saint Caleth up there has a good point. Gender discrimination and homosexuality taboo seems pretty trivial in a setting where you can have sex and produce viable offspring with demons, dragons, or vampires.
Pretty much my point exactly. Though I was admittedly wordier about it >_>
The presence of magic makes a typical fantasy so radically different from RL that I have always seen it as a lack of creativity when a setting fails to have societies with radically different ideas about thing than any in actual history.
Also I think that there would not be any real history of gender essentialism or general gender-based b%%%$%@% in a world with magic where a woman is as likely as a man to be a spellcaster and be able to light your face on fire. Or a world like Golarion where deities like Arshea can actually speak to people and tell them to knock it the f@~* off.
If I could sig this post, I would.
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The presence of magic makes a typical fantasy so radically different from RL that I have always seen it as a lack of creativity when a setting fails to have societies with radically different ideas about thing than any in actual history.
Also I think that there would not be any real history of gender essentialism or general gender-based b*%!+~+# in a world with magic where a woman is as likely as a man to be a spellcaster and be able to light your face on fire. Or a world like Golarion where deities like Arshea can actually speak to people and tell them to knock it the f%$% off.
So, are you saying that when women could shoot others people in the face with a gun, all gender-based issues ceased to exist ? And because homossexual male could chop anyone with an axe as good as anyother male they never had issues ?
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No, they're saying in a world where people could always do those things, they would be less likely to arise, if they ever did at all.
The real world is having to deal with thousands of years of that sort of discrimination being built-in that most fantasy worlds wouldn't have to overcome.
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So, are you saying that when women could shoot others people in the face with a gun, all gender-based issues ceased to exist?
Not exactly. Guns are an analogous equalizer, but are a relatively recent development compared to the length of time when our gender-related cultural norms were developing. In a setting with magic, that kind of equalizer always existed and thus cultures would have never developed the kinds of gender-based issues which are a problem today.
And because homossexual male could chop anyone with an axe as good as anyother male they never had issues ?
Homophobia is somewhat different because it was never really rationalized away with gender-essentialist arguments. That is why I mentioned the existence of deities like Arshea and also probably Shelyn. The existence of deities such as those who are actively communicating with and guiding people would do a lot to nip homophobia and transphobia and related things in the bud.
I have always thought that stamping out various forms of bigotry would be an excellent job for an inquisitor of Shelyn. Maybe a paladin although paladins can't really fight entrenched social norms effectively due to the lawful component of their code.
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Until someone tells me that in his fantasy setting men and women have the same reproductive systems (and associated functions such as breastfeeding), I will have a lot of trouble believing in societies where zero differences are made between them. Even more so if the whole setting is like that.
And if they have the same reproductive systems, why even bother distinguishing between them ? Gender would then be as trivial as eye color really. Or maybe the human(oid) need to differentiate and divide and hate would size on lesser differences, so that castes would be based on eye color. Possibilities abound :-)
But I definitely would not call that a typical fantasy setting ;-)
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But I definitely would not call that a typical fantasy setting ;-)
And I am 100% okay with that.
As for people needing someone else to pick on, I'm fond of the Terry Pratchett solution: Black and white teamed up to fight green.
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Homophobia is somewhat different because it was never really rationalized away with gender-essentialist arguments. That is why I mentioned the existence of deities like Arshea and also probably Shelyn. The existence of deities such as those who are actively communicating with and guiding people would do a lot to nip homophobia and transphobia and related things in the bud.
I have always thought that stamping out various forms of bigotry would be an excellent job for an inquisitor of Shelyn. Maybe a paladin although paladins can't really fight entrenched social norms effectively due to the lawful component of their code.
And now I am left wondering which deities are proponents of bigotry. I guess that we will end up with mostly Evil ones (and likely with furious debates even then) and maybe even lesser ones.
But I feel that a Good deity can still be bigoted and a Neutral one even more. And that if the most powerful Gods either oppose bigotry or just do not care, it would not exist in the world anymore.
Which robs us of possibilities for stories :-(
What do Good heroes fight if there is no Evil left ?
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And now I am left wondering which deities are proponents of bigotry. I guess that we will end up with mostly Evil ones (and likely with furious debates even then) and maybe even lesser ones.
But I feel that a Good deity can still be bigoted and a Neutral one even more. And that if the most powerful Gods either oppose bigotry or just do not care, it would not exist in the world anymore.
Asmodeus certainly is. Probably most of the other LE and NE gods that I am not really familiar with, especially racial deities.
As for non-evil gods, Torag probably is fine with discriminating against orcs and kobolds and so forth. Most of the Elven gods, maybe with the exception of Callistria, look down their noses at the other races. Especially the Elven gods of knowledge and art whose names I forget at the moment. As for other forms of bigotry besides racism, Erastil was originally presented as kind of mysogonistic but I know that they have retconned him, which is disappointing because I think there is room for even the major Good deities to have some nuance.
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And now I am left wondering which deities are proponents of bigotry. I guess that we will end up with mostly Evil ones (and likely with furious debates even then) and maybe even lesser ones.But I feel that a Good deity can still be bigoted and a Neutral one even more. And that if the most powerful Gods either oppose bigotry or just do not care, it would not exist in the world anymore.
Which robs us of possibilities for stories :-(
What do Good heroes fight if there is no Evil left ?
Maybe the lawful gods created the genders equal to their biology, than a god of chaos mixed everything and people started borning with gender different from biology, than the gods of law tried to fix it and neutral gods judged that as their already existing they have the right to keep existing. Some lawful gods (maybe even good ones) thought that was too cruel for them existing with wrong gender are in favor of using magic to "correct it", and others lawful gods say that there is nothing wrong with that and as they already exist they should be considered part of existence. The gods of chaos could just like it as to create more difference, while other just say they are against LGBT to create even more chaos but have nothing wrong against it personally.
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The struggle between individual freedoms and societly values still takes place today. Some cultures value individuality much less than others, even today. This isn't really an old vs. new or fantasy vs. reality situation.
That being said, everything is up to the game group. I personally like playing fantasy games to be something other than what I am. I think many people who game are like me. Because of that I think we need to be very carefully about calling each other names.
People don't play a diabolist because they secretly worship the devil. If there is slavery in my game it is not because I approve of slavery past or present. If there is slavery or sexism or racism or any other kind of blackhearted evil in Pathfinder it is not because the people of Paizo secretly approve of that sort of thing.
In order to be a hero there need to be villans. In order for there to be good there needs to be bad. In order for there to be a fun game there must be conflict. That does not mean I approve of evil or conflict. IF you whitewash the game it seeks to be fun to play.
HEY, lets go play the game where everyone is equal, everyone gets along, no one argues, no one steals, there is no evil, everyone agrees on everything all of the time and nothing ever goes wrong! No thank you.
HEY, lets go play the game where everyone is equal, everyone gets along, no one argues, no one steals, there is no evil, everyone agrees on everything all of the time and nothing ever goes wrong! No thank you.
I don't think anyone is suggesting this.
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I imagined that the divergence would have happened at the hunter-gatherer stage. Instead of boiling down to men hunting and women gathering it would be something more like spellcasters and people with other Sp/Su abilities hunting and everyone else gathering.Now see this I can get behind. And that's how you get magocracies.
I want to DM a game set in the early Bronze Age about social upheaval in an oligarchy of Sorcerers once the invention of writing allows anyone to harness arcane power and become a spellcaster.
I want to DM a game set in the early Bronze Age about social upheaval in an oligarchy of Sorcerers once the invention of writing allows anyone to harness arcane power and become a spellcaster.I imagined that the divergence would have happened at the hunter-gatherer stage. Instead of boiling down to men hunting and women gathering it would be something more like spellcasters and people with other Sp/Su abilities hunting and everyone else gathering.Now see this I can get behind. And that's how you get magocracies.
Awesome.
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Those differences have to do with individual variation, not gender.With a little fear of get banned I would say that women are not equal to men.
Not even men are equal to other men, people are diferent for each other.
Differences have to be taken into account always.
I am not an expert in the chemist and biology of the brain, but to my knowledge the diference of the amount of testosterone in the pregnacy make the male diferent brain from the female one. Women and men also have to endure diferent thing in puberty and the biological clock can be a really big factor in women behaviour. So, I would say that both gender are diferent, in the vas majority of cases at least.
Afther all the fights women have done for their right I suppose there is fear cause maybe diferent can be misinterpreted like inferior.
Like homosexual and heterosexual. DIferent is good, homogeneity is boring.
I suppose The interpretation of "different! play a major role in our disagreement.
I think there are differences in the brain chemistry of women from men, but I guess the relevant point here would be whether those differences manifest in any meaningful way that would influence how woman are treated in a RPG. I would say: no...at least no differences which could have a meaningful effect on class options or stat arrays.
(Exception being sexually dimorphic species like Lashunta of course)
Well, saying there are "differences in the brain chemistry of women from men" is both true and misleading.
(Leaving aside for the moment that gender isn't a binary...)
In every measure, whether it's upper body strength, IQ, lifespan, height, weight, or whatever, we're not talking about "In characteristic X, men are A and women are B." We're talking about overlapping bell curves: "In characteristic X, most men fall in range A-F and most women fall in range B-G."
So while it might be true that the average -- that is, the highest point in that bell curve -- is different for men and women, it's also true that if the average for men is D and for women is E, there's still a giant portion of the female population that's D or C. While it's true, for example, that the average upper body strength for men is greater than the average for women, there are still a large number of women that are stronger than the average man.
You can make broad generalizations about men and women, and compare averages, but that doesn't change the fact that those generalizations are frequently useless in dealing with individuals, because individual variation within both the male and the female populations is much greater than the difference between the averages for each.
And the reason people start getting frustrated when people dwell on the "but men and women have different brain chemistry!" isn't just because that individual variation is so broad while the difference in averages is narrow, but because "men tend to be G, while women tend to be H" very quickly becomes "men SHOULD be G, while women SHOULD be H."
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Until someone tells me that in his fantasy setting men and women have the same reproductive systems (and associated functions such as breastfeeding), I will have a lot of trouble believing in societies where zero differences are made between them.
I disagree that a lack of sex difference is necessary for a fantasy society without gender distinctions. As an example of this, I'll use kobolds from my homebrew setting. Kobold society completely lacks gender. There's no gendered nouns or pronouns, no gender roles, nothing. Kobolds who spend a lot of time among other races will often adopt a gender in order to fit in with those other societies, but gender does not exist within kobold society. They do have sex, but it's considered a private matter. A kobold's sexual partners would know xyr sex and a kobold would know the sex of xyr children, but that's about it.
Now, you mention reproduction. Of course, male and female kobolds have different roles in reproduction (though polymorph magic blurs that line into nonexistence at points). Kobolds are polyamorous, with marriages consisting of usually 3 to 6 members. There is no legal or social distinction made as to who is the biological parent of their children. In fact, the only time one parent is singled out from the others is when they spent a lot of time caring for eggs. Regardless of whether xe was one of the two biological parents, a kobold who spends a lot of time with the egg of one of xyr children is often recognized for that.
Further, adoption is a big part of kobold culture. Kobolds come in the same colors as chromatic and metallic dragons. When two kobolds reproduce, their child will be wholly one color. Even when two kobolds of the same color reproduce, their child is sometimes a different color. When this happens, the miscolored child is adopted by another marriage of kobolds with a member of the appropriate color. Adopted children are not treated differently than biological children. It's considered very impolite to ask whether a child was adopted and often a kobold does not know whether xe was adopted. In this way, even if a marriage of kobolds are all of the same sex, they can still have children without resorting to magic.
Familial relations play an important part in kobold society. Formal titles for others are usually familial relations (all in draconic, of course), from the perspective of the speaker. One kobold might speak of Spouseparent Yalandara (i.e. Yalandara is xyr parent-in-law) while another speaks of Siblingspouseparentsiblingchildspouse Yalandara (i.e. Yalandara is xyr sibling-in-law's cousin's spouse). The shorter the title, the closer the connection and hence the more it reflects on the speaker. I made a finite-state automaton for the grammar. (I also sketched a version of how this would look if gender was brought in. Instead of a pretty, symmetric graph, it became an ugly, convoluted mess.)
Because of this importance of family, marriages and adoption are used to help cement connections between different groups of kobolds. This is of course all carried out with regard for sex. There's really no way to determine a kobold's sex without asking xem. Xe would rightfully be offended and refuse to tell you, because it's considered a very private matter. One cannot even look at whether a kobold has children because the system of plural marriage and adoption makes it impossible to tell.
I'm very tempted to steal that for my own kobolds.
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I like healthy gender competition, like we see in children play, boys team vs girl team, this is nice and inoffensive "How inoffensive? This could create segregation between gender!" Not if, in your setting, you only take the inoffensive part of the package, discarding the noxious part.
Then you can have healthy, positive rivalry between genders.
Even if black teamed up with white to fight against green, black and white can still have healthy, positive, fun, non hindering rivalry between them.
Alas, none of you are wrong, how can i still be discussing this if i agree with everyone, thoughts?
Oh, about female vs male characters:
I have a nonspoken rule to my female characters and npcs: Generally they are 1 to 2 points weaker than male characters. But that is compensated because those points go on constitution, making them harder to fall, or in dextery, making them harder to hit. But there are exceptions, for example, the strongest (and biggest) pirate in my oriental camping is a woman.
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That's... a really cool system, Vivian!
I would ask, though, how do kobolds avoid the potential problems with inbreeding, or do you simply ignore that?
(Which is okay, by the way, given we're talking a fantasy society with fantasy characteristics and fantasy races. I'm just curious.)
HEY, lets go play the game where everyone is equal, everyone gets along, no one argues, no one steals, there is no evil, everyone agrees on everything all of the time and nothing ever goes wrong! No thank you.
Wow. No one is saying this. In anyway. Even remotely.
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HEY, lets go play the game where everyone is equal, everyone gets along, no one argues, no one steals, there is no evil, everyone agrees on everything all of the time and nothing ever goes wrong! No thank you.Wow. No one is saying this. In anyway. Even remotely.
You are right, no ONE is saying this but if you take the conversation collectively and add together everything that various individuals want removed from the game you eventually get a game that is much more bland.
Also my statement is what you call exageration for effect. :)
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I think blandness in this case is in the eye of the beholder.