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We value freedom and independency so much that many of us see anything which prevent us doing what we want in anyplace in anytime, is incorrectly evil. But how about our characters?
In medieval times, safety and traditions were valued much higher, that you could easily sacrifice your freedom for those. People didn't think themselves individuals, but parts of society, even property of their families, countries and faiths.
Which of these sounds right?
Prince kiss the princess ending her hundred years old curse and they were happily married till end of their lives.
Prince kiss the princess ending her hundred years old curse, but princess leaves him later, because the world has many princes to kiss and no one today will marry their first love.
Should GM allow, encourage or enforce thinking, which is different from our modern values and standards?
Or should GM stop a good aligmented character from having slaves, murdering opponents in random encounters or stealing from fallen enemies as they are viewed evil acts in modern culture?
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Fantasy doesn't stop being fantasy if it goes beyond copying a narrow view of Medieval Europe with dragons and elves tacked on.
Inclusiveness, a lack of universal sexism/racism, modern morality, and so on don't make something "not fantasy" at all.
Different people want different things out of the game. There's not going to be a solid answer to "what should be in the game" beyond "what you want out of it".
For example, I'll have settings that definitely do have some deliberate values dissonance and unfairness built into some cultures, some of which might reflect real life, some of which might be entirely fantastic. But I'm also not going to heap misery porn on people who have to deal with that crap in real life, and there will be options available to them.
Personally, there are certain things that might get pushed as okay for good people to do that will make me bail on a game, like genocide. Someone else wants to play that, fine. But the games the reject that notion are no less fantasy for it.
edit-possibly a bit >:( after reading yet another thread moaning about Paizo's inclusiveness somehow not making for coherent setting. What.
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[EDIT, because Mikaze got his post in while I was typing.]
First rule of any group should be to tailor the level of any contentious material, to the sensibilities of the group.
You don't always know what will be a potential trigger for one of your players, and by the time you find out, it's often too late to apologise.
Forcing a certain level of grimdark, in the name of realism, isn't worth losing players or souring friendships. Nobody wins if one of the group walks away from the game.
However, that being said, I do believe that anyone volunteering to play a game of 'swords, wizardry and taking up arms against diabolical villains and foul beasts' should expect that they will be exposed to instances of some characters doing terrible things to others.
And if someone finds themselves in a game where the material is getting too close to home, that unless the other participants are slavering and gleefully 'revelling' in the troublesome themes, they should be given the benefit of the doubt that it was not intended to insult or offend, and if an apology is offered, it should be accepted in the spirit it is given.
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As Mikaze said, fantasy is a very different animal from history, even if much of it is informed by historical periods (predominately Medieval Europe, though really RPG settings are not paragons of historical accuracy and there is oodles of borrowing and anachronism all over).
Really, I would imagine that it would depend on the setting and how much it intends to reflect a historical place and time. And that's not even taking into consideration contemporaneous cultural discrepancies in values like we experience today between Western and non-Western cultures. I suppose it's up to every GM to decide for his or herself how closely they want to approximate a historical antecedent, but with a published setting like Golarion, for example, that choice is out of their hands. If a GM wants to run a game that hews as closely to a historical setting as possible and the players are okay with glaring inequalities between people based on race, gender, and status, then by all means, play on!
I don't think that a GM should necessarily encourage players to distance themselves from their modern values, but what players should consider is how things like the adventuring lifestyle, the power of magic, or routinely fighting monsters and/or villainy might inform the way their characters perceive and assess the world around them.
I would also imagine that maybe if a setting is highly dissonant with our modern values that players might actively want to play characters who are forward-thinking, enlightened spirits, whose exploits bring the light of reason and humanity into the backwards, barbaric places of the world.
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Lots of material to discuss there, and if the current 'slavery' threads are anything to go by, there are a lot of posters who bring their modern viewpoint to the game.
Whether this is because they are unwilling to be seen as holding an out-of-date view (and fear social ostracism for it), or because they aren't even aware that other times bred other views, who knows?
The slavery thread contains a lot of goalpost-moving; essentially, any form of slavery that isn't US-style, pre-Civil War 'beat them over the head and kidnap them to a foreign land' is waved away as 'not being actual slavery, so doesn't count'.
It's easy to define something as Always-Lawful-Evil, if all the historical counter-examples which aren't Always-Lawful-Evil (prison work gangs, enforced community service, debtors prison, thralldom to pay off weregeld, involuntary national military service) are removed from the discussion.
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Much of the changes regarding what material is acceptable seem to have occurred over the last decade, as new generations of gamers are brought into the community, and aren't necessarily inspired by the same games and source fiction as the established players and GMs.
My peers were inspired by, among others;
Conan - amoral thief, pirate and sellsword, who would kill anyone who gave him lip, looked at him the wrong way, or didn't look strong enough to defend his gold or female companion. Sold his killing skills to whoever paid the most.
Comes to oppose villains by complete accident, due to self-defence, them having stuff worth stealing, or being in the wrong place at the wrong time, not for any notions of heroism.
Accidentally becomes king, after 'getting his retaliation in first', killing the sitting monarch who wrongly assumed he had an eye on the throne.
Accidentally becomes a popular king, by not being as much of a shit as the previous bunch of perfumed fops.
Elric - Demon-bonded king of a decadent amoral race. Brought up to consider humans as chattel, to be tortured for amusement, raided at a whim, and forced to pay extortionate protection, to support their idle lifestyle.
Wanders off due to boredom, not due to any righteous outrage. Leaves his kingdom in the protection of his decadent cousin, so he can wander the human lands, curious to find out if his people's ways 'might' be out dated, and if their 'might' be a better way of behaving (but prepared to admit he may be wrong, and go back to murder, torture, etc).
Finds a vampiric soul-drinking sword, and has little reservation on using it on anyone who gets in his way, since it's more convenient than his drug addiction.
Destroys the universe in the biggest example of 'throwing ones toys out of the pram' ever seen in fiction before or since.
Kane - an amoral killer, on good buddy terms with Satan himself. Nuff said.
When I first came across RPGs in 1980, the emphasis was very much that you were attempting to play another person, from another time and place, with different abilities and outlook to oneself.
That appears to have changed over the years, to players treating their PC as an idealised avatar of their own self.
Therefore, if their avatar behaves in a way that is disapproved of by the polite standards of today, that is an indictment of the player themselves.
"Your character behaved in an awful way, therefore you are an awful person!", as opposed to the previous view that "Your character behaved in an awful way, therefore they are an awful person!"
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"Do modern values have place in fantasy game?"
-No
Or yes, if you want them there.
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Fantasy doesn't stop being fantasy if it goes beyond copying a narrow view of Medieval Europe with dragons and elves tacked on.
Inclusiveness, a lack of universal sexism/racism, modern morality, and so on don't make something "not fantasy" at all.
Different people want different things out of the game. There's not going to be a solid answer to "what should be in the game" beyond "what you want out of it".
For example, I'll have settings that definitely do have some deliberate values dissonance and unfairness built into some cultures, some of which might reflect real life, some of which might be entirely fantastic. But I'm also not going to heap misery porn on people who have to deal with that crap in real life, and there will be options available to them.
Personally, there are certain things that might get pushed as okay for good people to do that will make me bail on a game, like genocide. Someone else wants to play that, fine. But the games the reject that notion are no less fantasy for it.
edit-possibly a bit >:( after reading yet another thread moaning about Paizo's inclusiveness somehow not making for coherent setting. What.
Hey Mikaze, could you include links to the Wyatt article and that particular thread?
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Fantasy doesn't stop being fantasy if it goes beyond copying a narrow view of Medieval Europe with dragons and elves tacked on.
Inclusiveness, a lack of universal sexism/racism, modern morality, and so on don't make something "not fantasy" at all.
Conversely, trying to model the thoughts of a different period don't make it "not fantasy."
One of my favorite RPGs is Ars Magica, a game that explicitly tries to model medieval culture, thought, and belief. I find it a fascinating role-playing challenge to immerse myself in a relatively alien system of thought. Other people find it difficult to swallow a universe where Christianity is literally true (although for some reason, many of these people have no problem swallowing one where Iomedaeism is literally true).
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Or should GM stop a good aligmented character from having slaves, murdering opponents in random encounters or stealing from fallen enemies as they are viewed evil acts in modern culture?
As Snorter stated above, it is entirely dependent upon the GM and the group of players. Some may not want to play in a game where characters are allowed to take and own slaves or engage in atrocities and STILL be considered morally good by the standards of European Medieval times. Others would think that would define an absolutely great time.
I do not think the people who do so are engaging in Badwrongfun. It's just not the kind of game I prefer to run or play in, unless I am deliberately playing an evil character.
When I first came across RPGs in 1980, the emphasis was very much that you were attempting to play another person, from another time and place, with different abilities and outlook to oneself.
That appears to have changed over the years, to players treating their PC as an idealised avatar of their own self.
Therefore, if their avatar behaves in a way that is disapproved of by the polite standards of today, that is an indictment of the player themselves."Your character behaved in an awful way, therefore you are an awful person!", as opposed to the previous view that "Your character behaved in an awful way, therefore they are an awful person!"?
Often that "You're an awful person in real life!" reaction doesn't come from someone's character doing a bad thing. It came from that person being a selfish player who disrupted the game for the laughs (or because they were bored) and ruined everyone else's good time. Like the instance of a player who deliberately murders an innocent while the rest of the player characters wanted to establish a good rapport with the town, its people and the authorities in order to further the story.
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To repeat what others have said...it really depends on the group and the type of play style they prefer. Ultimately the game should be fun, and some players may not enjoy having to deal with some issues in a game if they have to deal with them in real life.
Really...if you play pathfinder out of the box, I am not sure it's really the best system to use for a morally ambiguous system. If Good and Evil alignment exists in your game, than that implies the existence of an objective morality with clear definitions of good and evil.
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In medieval times, safety and traditions were valued much higher, that you could easily sacrifice your freedom for those. People didn't think themselves individuals, but parts of society, even property of their families, countries and faiths.
Which of these sounds right?
Prince kiss the princess ending her hundred years old curse and they were happily married till end of their lives.
Prince kiss the princess ending her hundred years old curse, but princess leaves him later, because the world has many princes to kiss and no one today will marry their first love.
[Ninjaed by a million people after several interruptions. :P]
Even when the goal is immersion in a period, it's important not to be overly reductive about people's agency and options in a medieval/renaissance era. In the curse scenario, for example, other possible endings include the following:
• Prince kisses the princess, ending her hundred-year-old curse, and they marry. The princess soon begins an affair with a poet that lasts for years. (See Boccaccio's bio!) The prince likewise keeps a series of favorites of both genders; the princess deposes him, claiming his affairs have destabilized the kingdom. (See Edward II's bio!)
• Prince kisses the princess, ending her hundred-year-old curse, but his family deems her unsuitable, and he's already promised to someone else anyway. They carry on an affair regardless, and the prince later appoints their children to important political positions.
So we're going with western views as the template of modern? How queer.
Believe it or not, but modern western culture isn't the end all and be all of not relegating women to the absolute sidelines. The idea that women "can't do a damn thing, and auta be preggers in the kitchen" is fairly modern if you look at history/prehistory from the right perspective.
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Some modern values should be in RPGs. For example, men and women should broadly be regarded as equal even though this wasn't a medieval attitude. This is especially true if you have any women in your gaming group, as forcing them to either accept significant detriments or not play a character of own gender just isn't fair.
Similar things are also true of sexuality and race.
At the core, these are games played by modern people, and one should take care not to offend the sensibilities of the people playing them.
That said, of course it is fine to explore through imagination different cultures, societies and viewpoints, but everyone should know what they are getting into first and be comfortable.
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We value freedom and independency so much that many of us see anything which prevent us doing what we want in anyplace in anytime, is incorrectly evil. But how about our characters?
In medieval times, safety and traditions were valued much higher, that you could easily sacrifice your freedom for those. People didn't think themselves individuals, but parts of society, even property of their families, countries and faiths.
Which of these sounds right?
Prince kiss the princess ending her hundred years old curse and they were happily married till end of their lives.
Prince kiss the princess ending her hundred years old curse, but princess leaves him later, because the world has many princes to kiss and no one today will marry their first love.
Should GM allow, encourage or enforce thinking, which is different from our modern values and standards?
Or should GM stop a good aligmented character from having slaves, murdering opponents in random encounters or stealing from fallen enemies as they are viewed evil acts in modern culture?
Golarion is not Historical Earth. It draws inspirations from various periods of real world history.
Draws Inspiration. That's it.
And that dichotomy about the Prince and the Princess you just drew is laughably not historical.
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So I should have modern values in my game if females play in it? That's your criteria for determining what values are used in the game world - the gender of the players?So what do Female PC's do in YOUR games then?"Do modern values have place in fantasy game?"
-No
If you allow female characters any roles other than housewives or nuns, you're already putting in a significant amount of "modern values" into your games.
So before you make a statement that modern values have no place in a fantasy game, perhaps you should study up on what midieval values were like first.
Modern values have zero to do with traditional roles and positions of power that have been held by men and women in the past. Not everything is Castles and Christians, so stop with the false equivalency of women who are not relegated to the job of nuns/housewives = modern values. This isn’t what we are discussing and you know it.
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And that dichotomy about the Prince and the Princess you just drew is laughably not historical.
It should have been followed by Princess leaves Prince...Prince's family declares war on the Princess's kingdom for breaking their family alliance and moves in to claim the lands that were added to the family possessions in the marriage.
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Most people have a pretty tenuous grasp of what women were and were now "allowed" to do in the nebulous blob of "medieval europe."
What part of Medieval Europe?
What culture?
During what time period?
Women fought. No, seriously, there are examples of medieval female warriors who bucked the trend. Sometimes they pretended to be men. Sometimes they didn't. Women controlled vast fortunes. Women ruled. There is a crap-ton of stuff we pretend they "weren't allowed" to do back then, as though societal strictures on the gender were universal across the breadth of the continent for centuries.
They weren't.
And when women "weren't allowed" to do a lot of things, guess what?
They often did them anyway.
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It should have been followed by Princess leaves Prince...Prince's family declares war on the Princess's kingdom for breaking their family alliance and moves in to claim the lands that were added to the family possessions in the marriage.
And that dichotomy about the Prince and the Princess you just drew is laughably not historical.
Or a billion other variations, depending on when and where it happened. In some places, yes. In others? Not so much.
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Modern values have zero to do with traditional roles and positions of power that have been held by men and women in the past. Not everything is Castles and Christians, so stop with the false equivalency of women who are not relegated to the job of nuns/housewives = modern values. This isn’t what we are discussing and you know it.
The concept of gender equality is a modern value, as is social mobility (i.e., a bunch of non-noble adventurers roaming the land in arms and armour typically reserved for knights and the Second Estate).
And if you are going to say "There is gender equality in my fantasy game, so that there can be viable female player characters, but it's based on the traditions and values of my fantasy world, not on real-world modern values" fine. But that is somewhat nonsensical, because you are still applying a modernized version of gender equality into your world where none had ever existed in real-world history for you to draw inspiration from.
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And what exactly are the "modern values" then, that don't have a place?
Any values that would not survive in the game environment naturally or artificially (i.e. enforced by Law).
I would follow a swords and wizardry style model (re: harsh survivalist) vs. a modified medieval one since even the most medieval D&D world - isn't. Fantasy =/= faux medieval.
But it all varies – how harsh is the world, how stable, what roles does magic or the divine play?
I use modern values in modern games. That’s it. If it doesn’t make sense I don’t force the game to accommodate people’s sensibilities or sensitivities.
In post apocalyptic sci-fi games I run, women (or men) do not have any intrinsic right beyond what they can defend. The weak are used and preyed upon as a standard, anything less without some kind of justification would seem artificial and idiotic.
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This is an interesting question.
My answer : it is interesting to give the modern answer to a world that mirrors old time values.
I will dare the slavery question : I hold slavery as extreme evil.
Many medieval cultures did not.
I think fighting against worldwide cultural evil is all the more virtuous than fighting against localised sanitised evil.
I'll try to say it some other way : in game design way, it is much better if a lot of the gaming world seems evil (ancient/medieval/alien/other) to us modern gamers, as it will create more opportunities to shine and show the game world the "right" (ours) way through our PCs.
There is no much glory, IMO, in fighting a sanitized world with "not quite good" guys, when you could be fighting EVVVIILLLLLL !!!!! guys.
And no demons and devils don't count : they get old pretty fast, while eveil NPCs don't.
YMMV, friendly advice and all that, of course.
I'd rather to have scenarii and APs with more human (-like) level baddies, and less extra-planar/save the world/save the convenient pocket plane/whatever ... because I would relate more to them.
best,
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You're asking each of us if we consider our own worlds and our campaigns to be valid if we do not adhere to a strict model of medieval morality.
The answer to that is... what campaign exactly are you talking about? And why would any of us think every campaign needs to be identical?
If you are playing a campaign which is distinctly modeled on Medieval Earth, then have at it with all the medieval morality and society you want. Just make sure your players know that is the campaign they are playing in.
However, don't assume that any particular campaign set in a fantasy world is modeled the same way. It might not EVEN BE "medieval times" in a given fantasy world. One world might have developed more modern morals more quickly while technology developed more slowly. Another might be the opposite - a draconian world filled with high technology.
Fantasy is a very, very broad term, encompassing many different subgenres and settings. Star Wars is considered Fantasy, for instance. We aren't debating whether Luke and Leia were "authentic" in their desire to overthrow an evil empire, or whether Obi-Wan should have known what a Democracy was.
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Since you are so confident about the examples name them. Name specfically the ones in which the women either did not pretend to be men, or were not specifically designated as men. If you're going to list Joan of Arc, remember it was because of those particular activities. (and being on the wrong side of a political struggle), she was burned at the stake as a heretic. And Boudicca was betrayed by her own chiefs, presumably because among other reasons, they resented being led by a womanMost people have a pretty tenuous grasp of what women were and were now "allowed" to do in the nebulous blob of "medieval europe."
What part of Medieval Europe?
What culture?
During what time period?
Women fought. No, seriously, there are examples of medieval female warriors who bucked the trend. Sometimes they pretended to be me. Sometimes they didn't. Women controlled vast fortunes. Women ruled. There is a crap-ton of stuff we pretend they "weren't allowed" to do back then, as though societal strictures on the gender were universal across the breadth of the continent for centuries.
They weren't.
And when women "weren't allowed" to do a lot of things, guess what?
They often did them anyway.
Not sure why you're asking me to qualify this as only women who weren't pretending to be men. I already acknowledged that that sometimes happened. That initial statement reads like an attempt to pull a whole "But they don't REALLY count" out of whatever response I might make, when yeah, yeah they do.
Maybe that's not your intention, but regardless. Examples. Behold. There's a lot and it might take awhile.
Since you are so confident about the examples name them. Name specfically the ones in which the women either did not pretend to be men, or were not specifically designated as men. If you're going to list Joan of Arc, remember it was because of those particular activities. (and being on the wrong side of a political struggle), she was burned at the stake as a heretic. And Boudicca was betrayed by her own chiefs, presumably because among other reasons, they resented being led by a womanMost people have a pretty tenuous grasp of what women were and were now "allowed" to do in the nebulous blob of "medieval europe."
What part of Medieval Europe?
What culture?
During what time period?
Women fought. No, seriously, there are examples of medieval female warriors who bucked the trend. Sometimes they pretended to be me. Sometimes they didn't. Women controlled vast fortunes. Women ruled. There is a crap-ton of stuff we pretend they "weren't allowed" to do back then, as though societal strictures on the gender were universal across the breadth of the continent for centuries.
They weren't.
And when women "weren't allowed" to do a lot of things, guess what?
They often did them anyway.
Not sure why you're asking me to qualify this as only women who weren't pretending to be men. I already acknowledged that that sometimes happened. That initial statement reads like an attempt to pull a whole "But they don't REALLY count" out of whatever response I might make, when yeah, yeah they do.
Maybe that's not your intention, but regardless. Examples. Behold. There's a lot and it might take awhile.
I don't think anyone is saying that those examples don't count. One thing you should notice, especially since you linked that specific page, is that despite the fact that women fought, it was the exception and not the norm. I mean, is there a page on wikipedia for "men who participated in war" or are the pages on most wars just about men by default?
On the actual topic of this thread, why do world builders have to be bound to one culture in one corner of the globe in one time period? What if I want to do a campaign based on Feudal Japan or the Ancient Aztecs? Is that not fantasy?
Thanks Judy for remembering me that medieval isn't fairy tales. :D
For female characters, the freedom of women had varied through centuries, but I would say that prechristian european (not mediterraean) women might have had even more freedom than western women between world wars.
And then there has been many remarkable woman, who have been exceptions of norm. The book http://www.amazon.com/Queen-Empress-Concubine-Claudia-Gold/dp/B0085SCI7W mentions 50 politically strong woman from our history, but also female sages, adventurers, explorers and scientists should deserve similar respect.
While Golarian takes inspiration from different cultures, why is wrong to try thinking differently? Why shouldn't LG Varisian have different opinions and values than LG Gebbian? Can only difference between them be their names?
I think morals and ethics are constantly evolving around our values. That's why the good and evil shouldn't be written on to stone, but there should always be little space for awareness of situation.
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I'm upset because a game which was never intended to model medieval European history does a poor job of emulating my (thoroughly modern) misconceptions about medieval European history.
Personally, I based my campaign around the Phantom Time hypothesis, so this problem never really occured.
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I think it's impossible for modern values not to have a place in fantasy games, which after all, are played by modern people. However, those values may not be the values of the characters in the game, may not be values metaphysically represented in the game, may not even reflect what the players consider logical for the setting.
Plus, Good and Evil have very specific meanings in Pathfinder. I consider myself a highly moral person, yet I would not consider myself Good in Pathfinder, though I incline in that direction. If i were transported to a fantasy world and forced to pick a Golarion-style deity as my patron, I'd probably pick one of the "nicer" CN ones.
LazarX....if there are certain people who define fantasy to be medieval europoe that really isn't my problem.
Edited after realizing I was not making the point I thought I was.
I don't think anyone is saying that those examples don't count. One thing you should notice, especially since you linked that specific page, is that despite the fact that women fought, it was the...Since you are so confident about the examples name them. Name specfically the ones in which the women either did not pretend to be men, or were not specifically designated as men. If you're going to list Joan of Arc, remember it was because of those particular activities. (and being on the wrong side of a political struggle), she was burned at the stake as a heretic. And Boudicca was betrayed by her own chiefs, presumably because among other reasons, they resented being led by a womanMost people have a pretty tenuous grasp of what women were and were now "allowed" to do in the nebulous blob of "medieval europe."
What part of Medieval Europe?
What culture?
During what time period?
Women fought. No, seriously, there are examples of medieval female warriors who bucked the trend. Sometimes they pretended to be me. Sometimes they didn't. Women controlled vast fortunes. Women ruled. There is a crap-ton of stuff we pretend they "weren't allowed" to do back then, as though societal strictures on the gender were universal across the breadth of the continent for centuries.
They weren't.
And when women "weren't allowed" to do a lot of things, guess what?
They often did them anyway.
Not sure why you're asking me to qualify this as only women who weren't pretending to be men. I already acknowledged that that sometimes happened. That initial statement reads like an attempt to pull a whole "But they don't REALLY count" out of whatever response I might make, when yeah, yeah they do.
Maybe that's not your intention, but regardless. Examples. Behold. There's a lot and it might take awhile.
Well...adventurers are the exception not the rule anyway. So this seems relevant to the discussion.
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I like my fantasy setting not to be overrun with modern western Political Correctness. YMMV
Not me, I prefer to trip all over myself in my desperation to signal that I have the Correct Beliefs (tm) about every conceivable topic.
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I like my fantasy setting not to be overrun with modern western Political Correctness. YMMV
Clearly, it is so much more noble to leave modern values out of your game as political statement, rather than simply seeing yourself as a purist of the fantasy genre.
LazarX brings up a good point. One reason why I always held real-world politics, religion, etc. as largely taboo in RPGs was that you don't want to start a real-world argument with / among players (and those topics are the ones that specifically tend to result in never-ending or friendship-destroying arguments). It's not even so much escapism as it is just practicality and politeness.
EDIT: Other people clearly don't believe that real-world contemporary politics don't belong in tabletop RPGs. Link.
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Should GM allow, encourage or enforce thinking, which is different from our modern values and standards?
Ignoring baggage and unexamined assumptions packed into use of "our":
Yes, no, and no. Not especially interested in a game where the GM wants to "enforce" a certain type of THINKING.
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...I don't think anyone is saying that those examples don't count. One thing you should notice, especially since you linked that specific page, is that despite the fact thatSince you are so confident about the examples name them. Name specfically the ones in which the women either did not pretend to be men, or were not specifically designated as men. If you're going to list Joan of Arc, remember it was because of those particular activities. (and being on the wrong side of a political struggle), she was burned at the stake as a heretic. And Boudicca was betrayed by her own chiefs, presumably because among other reasons, they resented being led by a womanMost people have a pretty tenuous grasp of what women were and were now "allowed" to do in the nebulous blob of "medieval europe."
What part of Medieval Europe?
What culture?
During what time period?
Women fought. No, seriously, there are examples of medieval female warriors who bucked the trend. Sometimes they pretended to be me. Sometimes they didn't. Women controlled vast fortunes. Women ruled. There is a crap-ton of stuff we pretend they "weren't allowed" to do back then, as though societal strictures on the gender were universal across the breadth of the continent for centuries.
They weren't.
And when women "weren't allowed" to do a lot of things, guess what?
They often did them anyway.
Not sure why you're asking me to qualify this as only women who weren't pretending to be men. I already acknowledged that that sometimes happened. That initial statement reads like an attempt to pull a whole "But they don't REALLY count" out of whatever response I might make, when yeah, yeah they do.
Maybe that's not your intention, but regardless. Examples. Behold. There's a lot and it might take awhile.
Yes, which was why I added that caveat. I'm not saying that women doing these things was "The Norm," so much as pushing back against a notion that such a "Norm" was perfectly uniform, or that it matters at all.
More generally, my issue is with projecting a very Victorian-era romanticism - the root source of the prince/princess dichotomy the OP asserted - onto the middle ages that wasn't really there.
The Medieval period was nowhere near that simple, or cut and dry.
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Or yes, if you want them there."Do modern values have place in fantasy game?"
-No
Both of these answers. It depends on what sort of feel a group wants for their game, it isn't something a majority consensus on a forum can decide upon for everyone.