So, I've started this AP. Part one went relatively good, to tell the truth, but I've hit all sorts of difficulties adjusting this module in Part 2.
First, my group is a bunch of women. I know, that may seem odd to some, but considering my wife is the ring leader, and my daughter is also a ring leader, I play with whoever is available. We have a Paladin, Cleric, Monk, Rogue, Fighter (specializing in archery/bows) and Sorcerer.
The Paladin about threw a fit in regards to the play, if the alg. wasn't LG, would have probably skewered the director, the Diva, and Thesing. She is NOT happy with the AP part 2 at all and feels like it's railroaded (I'm actually trying to give options, but there's really not enough info out there about possibilities or what's around the Manor or anything about alternate ways to the manor except infiltration, something a Paladin and Cleric in full armor are probably not really great at).
So they went with the play. First problem, the Paladin again, found the play very distasteful.
But the bigger problem, the play seems to have only male roles. So, I tried to adapt it, but then with Ilsandra...every single player at the table has condemned the play as extremely anti-female and excessively chauvinistic. We actually had to stop reading (and seriously, some of them like acting...so that's one reason why I thought it might be fun...but it TURNED OUT EXACTLY OPPOSITE...this has to be one of the worst plays ever for a female group) and then only rolled the tests or combats. It was pretty bad.
One basically called the play the worst written piece of excrement ever!
Apparantly the character of Ilsandra is the key figure behind their hatred and dislike.
We're now at the party...and I've toned down Calseinica's part...they really don't offer any alternative but to get rid of her part of the adventure since the lead role was played by one of my players who has no interest in leaning their character that way.
The worst problem, despite how loose the morals of Calseinica's is indicated at the end of the play (and they actually went out of their way to try to help her survive) is that both of the male NPC's in the play were written as trying to bed women instead of anything dealing with romance. As I said, some of the players want to gut those guys. I've also toned down the way the NPC's act in that manner as well.
So my problem....the group wants to universally kill almost all the players from the play (with the exception of the stage hand, they actually like him), and talk about if they ever get to high level, burn the theater, and somehow eradicate the play from existence.
There is also talk about killing the mayor for his part in it as well. I've never seen such a radical turn and it has me grasping at straws almost.
As I said, the only thing really keeping them in line at this point is because the Paladine and Cleric are LG algn., otherwise I'd probably have an even worse time with them going into convulsions of destruction.
So...I does this continue through the entire AP or is the rest better? Part 1 was good for them...but part 2 has convinced me (I don't see it as much, but they feel it is chauvinistic and patronizing) that maybe this AP is NOT the right one to be running, especially if it continues like this.
If it does continue, what do I need to modify in order to make it more "girl friendly" as one could say. Right now, they want to kill half the cast of the module!
My alternative which I'm highly debating, is getting them out of Westcrown and starting another adventure or something...but have no idea how to do this or what to run. That would solve the entire AP "Chauvinistic" thing. I think if I toss much more of this stuff, even toning it down as I have...may lead them to revolt and have me kicked out as DM and my wife instituted as such (and no offense to my wife, but she's not exactly my favorite DM).
Anyone else have this problem with this AP? I'm trying to make it a more enjoyable experience...if it's more like Part 1 in the future, that's great...but if it's more like part 2...I need options, either in how to continue it so it becomes more feminist and non-offensive to them...OR how to transfer to a totally and completely different line of adventure or AP besides simply saying...okay, this was an abysmal failure...we'll just let bygones be bygones and pretend that we are suddenly somewhere else with a totally different plot.
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Actually, I hadn't noticed your correct observations about the Male NPCs in book 2. (In fairness Thesing is meant to be a douche, and he does become a villain in the later books.)
I think that the writer did assume that most or all of the PCs would be male. (I also thought that the motivation for performing in the Murder Play was kind of thin.)
On the upside, the rest of the AP is better, but even so, the Council of Thieves is not about a "resistance" movement. The rest are more normal dungeons and wilderness treks.
If it wasn't for the Paladin (and the LG cleric) I might have suggested that you check out Skull & Shackles For that change, the characters get themselves run out of the city, they can then become Anti-Chelaxian pirates.
Asmodeus is actually an extremely sexist deity... It's probably intentional that the play in his honor is sexist as well. I suppose you could use this as fuel for the players to dislike the current regime of Cheliax to impress how important their actions are.
But as far a railroading goes, you're going to see a lot of it...
Well, I guess it's good news that the rest of the AP is better. I'll hope for the best with the remainder then. It sounds like they may get a chance to gut a few of those they want to kill, so I suppose making some of the NPCs out as villains will mix well with the party's intent.
Ironically, Skull & Shackles is the next AP I'm thinking of running, when we get finished with this one.
Thanks for the information.
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As Mechlibur said, Asmodeus doesn't like women very much (he calls them the "second gender" according the Book of the Damned I). Cheliax is a bit better, since the country's motto is "Hell serves us" and they have a queen. The play's older than the country, though.
As for the play:
1. There is the concept of the "trouser role", where women played men's roles on stage. (I had two female characters in the play, one of them played Larazod. The player's a woman, too.)
2. You could have switched genders of a few of the play's characters, including Ilsandra's. There are humanoid looking male devils.
3. Ilsandra is an Erynies. A fallen angel. They are the worst. Do you know what is done to them in hell to change them into devils?
All the other characters are devil worshippers (except for Dendris, of course). What did your players expect? The whole affair is supposed to be distasteful. Remember, the actors are supposed to die.
It's also a piece of fantasy within a piece of fantasy. If your players cannot deal with that, maybe RPGs are not the right kind of game for them.
As for railroading: It's a published adventure. You have to expect a certain amount of it.
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I lucked out. The two female PCs in my group didn't mind the male roles at all and just accepted the play being what it was on the basis of "I hate this stupid city and everyone in it, let's just get this over with so we can go to the party." The cleric just flat out hated being in a play at all but got over it when she learned she got to whip people.
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I don't think my players hate the city yet, but they have hated a lot of the cast of the second module. They actually enjoyed the first one.
I seriously think they didn't have women in mind when they wrote the first half of the module.
All of my players took the male parts, though all the players are women...it seemed rather odd that there wasn't even one part that was written expressly for an PC that was a woman's part though. It's like it didn't even occur to the writer that perhaps girls play too. (and perhaps part is my error, I also didn't notice prior, even on my read through...it wasn't until we actually got to announcing the parts for audition that they so promptly pointed it out to me).
The things that really set them off were the way the male NPC's were written (and which I even toned down...but still)...AND simply horrendous the single female part was in the play. I think that was the biggest turn off for all of them and the capstone for them coming close to simply saying...they were done with this game and turning it over to my wife instead.
It's also a piece of fantasy within a piece of fantasy. If your players cannot deal with that, maybe RPGs are not the right kind of game for them.
If I understand what you stated...
sorry, I disagree with your statements. Perhaps you think women should not play RPGs or RPGs are not the right type of game...but that's a bad attitude in my opinion.
Fantasy is one thing, anti-feminist or an RPG that places woman as second class citizens or as inferior seems rather prejudicial in some ways, and I would not expect ANY women to accept such ideas in an RPG anymore than we would accept an RPG that delegated PC's to inferior or second class citizenry because of orientation, race, or otherwise.
The women I play with I respect quite a deal, and they all have been roleplaying LONG before I met them. I would not say that because they were offended, that they should not play RPGs. In fact, even if I decided to take that attitude and quit playing RPGs with them, they'd probably be just fine and play RPGs without me.
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It's also a piece of fantasy within a piece of fantasy. If your players cannot deal with that, maybe RPGs are not the right kind of game for them.
If I understand what you stated...
You didn't.
It's not about gender. It's about the ability to distinguish between the real world and a fantasy world's fantasy.
Again: Cheliax is a nation governed by devil worshippers. The play was written by one even before House Thrune took the crown, so you can assume he was a fundamentalist. And Hell is a misogynist place. (Hell, not necessarily Cheliax.)
It was your task to alleviate some of your player's problems with the play and switch some of the roles' genders, which you could have done on the spot without problem.
Ilsandra is an Erynies. A fallen angel that has been "impaled upon the loftiest tower spikes of Dis and left to be flensed by the vicious winds and fed upon by the city's revolting avian hosts for 150 years" (Princes of Darkness, p.28). She likes pain. She likes Larazod's ability to withstand pain. She's a devil first and a woman second (and remember, Erynies are elite warriors).
The whole affair is supposed to come of as distasteful, especially for good aligned characters. Yes, Thesing is a smarmy dick (he gets his comeuppance later in the AP). IIRC, The director has nothing against women, he's just choleric.
It seems that you and your player's blew the whole thing out of proportion.
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It's also a piece of fantasy within a piece of fantasy. If your players cannot deal with that, maybe RPGs are not the right kind of game for them.
If I understand what you stated...
You didn't.
It's not about gender. It's about the ability to distinguish between the real world and a fantasy world's fantasy.
Again: Cheliax is a nation governed by devil worshippers. The play was written by one even before House Thrune took the crown, so you can assume he was a fundamentalist. And Hell is a misogynist place. (Hell, not necessarily Cheliax.)
It was your task to alleviate some of your player's problems with the play and switch some of the roles' genders, which you could have done on the spot without problem.
Ilsandra is an Erynies. A fallen angel that has been "impaled upon the loftiest tower spikes of Dis and left to be flensed by the vicious winds and fed upon by the city's revolting avian hosts for 150 years" (Princes of Darkness, p.28). She likes pain. She likes Larazod's ability to withstand pain. She's a devil first and a woman second (and remember, Erynies are elite warriors).
The whole affair is supposed to come of as distasteful, especially for good aligned characters. Yes, Thesing is a smarmy dick (he gets his comeuppance later in the AP). IIRC, The director has nothing against women, he's just choleric.
It seems that you and your player's blew the whole thing out of proportion.
Thanks for the clarification, but I would NEVER say my players get anything out of proportion. That would be a guy telling women that they took the play out of proportion and that they shouldn't be offended by things that offend women...I really don't think I'd ever do that.
It would be like telling a person with a different orientation that they should not be offended by slurs, or that a person of a different race shouldn't be offended by slurs towards their race by whites when I'm white.
Telling them, much less my wife that...not only is stupid in my opinion, but would also get me sleeping on the couch for a year, if not worse and being stuck outside in the doghouse or car. Anything that would get me in that much trouble, would make me VERY unwise in relation to their wisdom.
It could be that their opinions are not reflections of the perspectives of others who may not share their same beliefs or ideals?
I won't comment on your private life.
I'm also not sure if that question of yours is loaded.
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I will take a stab and add a bit to Fabius's point and respond to you GreyWolfLord.
As Fabius Maximus said, the play and the build up to it is meant to be distasteful. Death of the main character is expected, to the point where Thesing is outraged that the PCs survived and claims they ruined the play. In a very real sense . . . they did.
For the players, Robahl is supposed to be an angry jerk. He is not meant to be sexist. Thesing is a self-absorbed, pretentious jerk and a womanizer. While he wants to bed Calseinica, having him chase after a female PC playing Larazod could also makes a lot sense (and is what I did). The entire character of Thesing is an exercise of "how can we make the most unlikable, sleazeball NPC ever?". Calseinica is a naive starlet, and while the book says she chases after the actor of Larazod, a think to remember is that seldom are NPCs truly solid in their sexual preference when it comes to the PCs. If Larazod is played by a female PC, Calseinica could still chase after them. None of them should come across as intrinsically sexist.
For the play, the all male parts could seem sexist, but the once again, Hell is sexist. Also, all of the characters can be gender-swapped pretty darn easily. There would have to be some pronoun changes in the play, but nothing depends on the characters being male or female with the exception of Ilsandra, as she is an erinyes and they only are female. But even Ilsandra can be swapped to a Bone Devil or something without much trouble.
And again, the entire play is in poor taste. It is meant to make good characters unhappy/uneasy. Players can either share in that sentiment (which it seems yours did), or they could disassociate themselves from the game and find it interesting or even amusing (my players found the whole thing fun and amusing . . . but they did have the barbarian playing the wizard).
What I am slightly more concerned about, and I apologize if this comes across as an insult or attack upon you, is that you were unable to predict and adjust the encounter to prevent this issue. As a GM it is important to be able to anticipate what the group will like/dislike, and make sure to make adjustments as necessary to facilitate that. I think this encounter may be something you can learn from. Now you know something that your players react strongly against, and will be better able to find it and avoid it in the future.
As for the "blowing out of proportion", I agree saying someone is blowing something out of proportion does not seem like the right thing, but I find when there is something that someone finds offensive, and reacts as strongly as it sounds like your players did, it is imperative for them to look back with a level head and evaluate whether their response was appropriate. Sometimes, if there is a sore spot, our reactions can far outweigh the offense. I posit that Fabius was merely suggesting that this might have been the case.
In this thread, you have people who have run and/or played this encounter and emerged without being offended by it being sexist. It might be that the people who have done so have really thick skin, or it may be that the encounter hit some trigger spots for your players and it snowballed beyond what is merited. In my mind, that is something that should be investigated. That being said, they are the ones who need to do the investigation and identify what offended them and if the offense merits their reaction. This is not something you can force upon them.
I'll start by saying I haven't run this AP so I'm taking my info from the thread.
To me this seems to be an issue of your players rolling their character reactions over into player reactions. On the one hand it sounds like things went well. Your characters were put in a situation they found distasteful and in turn gained a bad opinion of those involved (which it sounds like is the intended response). On the other hand it sounds like your players became upset that their characters were in a place that discriminated against them and you felt there might be out of game consequences to it.
It may be that your players would prefer not to run into sexism in their roleplaying but it seems to me that would be a pretty artificial world. In my mind putting characters in situations where they have to deal with conflict is exactly what makes RPGs great. You need to figure out how your characters will react and how they will balance those reactions against their short and long term goals.
"I posit that Fabius was merely suggesting that this might have been the case."
That's why I used "It seems ..."
By the way, the whole Calseinica-falling-for-Larazod thing played out a bit differently in my campaign.
The character playing Larazod was a woman. I would've had no problem with that particular relationship. However, our meat shield (played by a woman) chatted Calseinica up beforehand; a gangly, pimply youth with low Charisma and a really lucky roll. What did the player say? She paraphrased Batman: "It's that really big sword I'm carrying around."
I dropped this module into a homebrew campaign a while back, with some expanded parts for extra characters (primarily lifted from the libretto of Gilbert & Sullivan's "The Sorceror").
My group was three men and three women, and they generally felt the contents of the play were pretty vile, as were most of the NPCs involved in the module.
...but, simultaneously, they gave it universally rave reviews, with several of them stating it among their favorite gaming sessions ever. My wife, whose (female) bard played the character of Larazod in stage-drag without a second thought either in-character or out-, went so far as to declare Pett her favorite adventure author as a result of the module. (I think We Be Goblins and The Styes are her other experience with his oeuvre.)
If your group took the attitudes of the NPCs and the in-game cultural artifact of the play to be the attitudes of the author or of Paizo towards women, then I can definitely understand how they'd be upset. Is that what you're saying? If it is, then I agree with what others have pointed out -- the play, and the NPCs involved, are intended to be pretty heinous, as exhibits of the rather despicable culture of Westcrown which the PCs are fighting against. If the paladin (and her character) were driven to a desire to smite smite smite, then I think the editorial intent of the module was met.
The other option is that they recognized a distinction between those two things, and just feel that, if the experience of the play is any indication of the rest of the AP's tone, then it's just going to be un-fun, and they'd rather play a different AP?
Unfortunately, while I've skimmed several of the later modules, I haven't read them in depth or played them, so can't comment on the feminism or anti-feminism of it. My general recollection, though, is that PCs probably won't derail anything all that badly if they give in to the urge to smite smite smite sooner rather than later.
Though, considering your experience so far,
be forewarned that the latter half of that module features a woman as the party's primary adversary, and the next module in CoT opens with the head of a decapitated (woman) erinyes in a box...so if your group is already grumbling about a perceived anti-feminist tone, you might adjust those encounters to dial back the woman-targeted violence.
(OTOH, Sian, the antagonist of the latter half of the module, is kind of a badass, and as a highly intelligent and competent fighter, might be a refreshing change of pace from Ilsandra and Calseinica. You be the judge.)
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I'm going to have to disagree with some of the statements of the AP being sexist. The undertones of the module are certaintly sexist but this is done as a portrayal of the city and the culture. The play is meant to be vile and make players slightly uncomfotable; the writers certainly didn't assume that the PCs would be an all male, Lawful Neutral/Evil group of Asmodeus sympathizers, so I think this is done intentionally to delineate the culture that is permeated by a corrupting religion. Also, some of the AP's strongest players and movers of events are Female:
I finished running this module not too long ago. My gaming group was equally split between men and women at the time (3 male players and 3 female players) and I myself am female. The characters each matched their players gender (though that hasn't always been the case), and though none of the genders were changed for the play, it was handled easily enough:
My girlfriend, who is playing a female bard with the Chelish Diva archetype of course played Larazod - in drag. It was very fun for her because she got to showcase her characters acting talent, and she and Calseinica became friendly.
Calseinica remains close with the party and has been working towards a romance with the party's paladin.
I ended up adding in some of the extra roles that were posted elsewhere on the forums (I believe by Tacticslion?), one of which included the additional role of Larazod's younger sister, a role filled by one of my other players.
Finally, my third female player (and her female character) filled the role of Drovalid Vorclune, the torturer. This player does the least roleplaying but it fit well for her because she enjoyed exploring a more stoic role for the character.
Now, I'm going to partially reiterate some of what was said above (and if I start to repeat, my apologies), but I believe part of the sexism in the play IS intentional because of the sexism of hell. If you look at the layout of the hells, at Asmodeus, it states without a doubt that the Prince of Darkness has absolutely no use for women, whom he considers weak. And of course it is supposed to be an abhorrent practice - my players, all with the exception of said Chelish Diva bard - were absolutely opposed and they considered not even doing it, but decided it was the most viable option for entering Aberian's Folly without drawing undue attention.
That being said, I viewed neither this part of the adventure, nor any of the other parts I have read, as particularly sexist. I do feel like the lens you bring to the table directly affects much of how you perceive a game, and that different players like different things. I tend to like imperfect worlds/societies, games that dabble outside of the good, but also games that explore alternate world views, cultural ideologies, and even controversial subjects.
I would suggest talking to your players after you read the rest of the AP. Again, I believe it's a very well-written adventure path that gives a wide array of characters to interact with, of varying genders and affiliations, but if you're players would rather play in an environment with more of a focus on accepting diversity and clear black-and-white roles, then I'm not sure Westcrown (and the Council of Thieves AP) is a right fit for them.
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I lucked out. The two female PCs in my group didn't mind the male roles at all and just accepted the play being what it was on the basis of "I hate this stupid city and everyone in it, let's just get this over with so we can go to the party." The cleric just flat out hated being in a play at all but got over it when she learned she got to whip people.
I'm afraid to ask if you meant the PC got over it or the player :-)
Well, we continued and the second half went FAR better then the first half.
After I went over some of the stuff discussed on the board, and so of course the ensuing conversation was when they got to kill Asmodeous....
I wasn't quite certain where to go with that one.
I did point out that we'd have to get up to mythic levels probably to even consider that, and that's probably beyond the scope of this AP...
So...they still want to know when they'll be able to destroy Asmodeous...
I dont' know if they were joking or being serious. At least I'm of the hook currently since their characters aren't high enough level.
I seriously think they didn't have women in mind when they wrote the first half of the module.
First, I think that implication does a serious disservice to the author, Richard Pett. Second, I posit the complete opposite - that the author absolutely had women in mind when he wrote the module. As others have said, Cheliax is a chauvinistic culture reminiscent of early renaissance Italy/Spain. Back when, y'know, they didn't even have women as play actors and the female parts in plays were handled by young men and boys. To try and twist the depiction of Cheliax's culture to be more accommodating would be disingenuous to the setting of the Adventure Path. Granted, Cheliax isn't renaissance Europe and so they could choose to depict it less gender exclusive if they wished. . . which they already do as Cheliax is still less chauvinistic than actual European history.
Thanks for the clarification, but I would NEVER say my players get anything out of proportion. That would be a guy telling women that they took the play out of proportion and that they shouldn't be offended by things that offend women...I really don't think I'd ever do that.
It would be like telling a person with a different orientation that they should not be offended by slurs, or that a person of a different race shouldn't be offended by slurs towards their race by whites when I'm white
I'm not going to quote your entire back-and-forth with Fabius and the others, so I'm just quoting your last bit of the response, but to get at what people are intimating - it's not that your players shouldn't be playing RPGs, or that they shouldn't be playing Pathfinder even, or that they're not allowed to be offended (they most certainly are) - it's that expectations just need to be managed a little better. If your players are offended out-of-game by the themes of the culture of the setting in the Adventure Path (Cheliax - a place where the villainous culture inspires aristocrats and propaganda to be, well, villainous) then perhaps it's just a matter of choosing a different AP in a different part of the setting. An AP that doesn't have themes or subject matter that makes your players uncomfortable. Or it may just be a matter of going over expectations out-of-game in a bit more detail.
To elaborate, I have female players in my group and we've also been playing together for a long time. One of my campaigns (a historical World of Darkness game) takes place in 15th century Italy. My female players knew this going into the game and knew what to expect in regards to 15th century Italy. One of my female players has a Masters in History and in fact approached me to make sure I didn't hold back in regards to portraying historical misogyny since part of the appeal of a historical campaign is the "authenticity". She could have played a guy to make things easier or a woman in a position of power (a Medici) but she was comfortable with the setting and chose not to. But I also don't go overboard - I know my players' limits and make sure to avoid making any of them (male or female) uncomfortable. That's my job but not the job of the setting or the adventure - different settings and adventures have different target audiences.
I also have players who are gay and others who are "non-Caucasian". I'm not gay and I am white. However, if the setting we're in has discrimination and they choose to play their Real-Life orientation/color and I'm currently role-playing an NPC that happens to be a bigot/uses slurs, my players understand and don't get offended. On the other hand, if I didn't clear this before-game and manage expectations, OR, if I did clear this before-game but they decided they wouldn't be comfortable with it: then we don't do it and I GM something else.
It comes down to the job of the GM in managing the expectations of any given setting contrasted with the level of tolerance of the players in how comfortable they are in separating out-of-game threshold with in-game politics.
Well, we continued and the second half went FAR better then the first half.
After I went over some of the stuff discussed on the board, and so of course the ensuing conversation was when they got to kill Asmodeous....
I'm genuinely glad to see that things are going better for your group. The ongoing theme of chauvinism (as it relates to Hell and Evil) does continue to varying degrees of blatancy throughout the AP (though it's usually relatively subtle), so be forewarned and manage accordingly. But it has nothing to do with the Authors' intent or lack thereof regarding women and everything to do with this particular region of Golarion.
As for killing Asmodeous, you're on your own there though people will be more than happy to give advice on this. But it's not just outside the scope of the AP, it's outside the scope of the current rules so you'll have to get really creative if you want to deliver that payoff to your players.
There is an alternative to killing Asmodeus. IIRC, he holds the keys to Rovagug's prison. I guess that a suitably mythic campaign could deal with acquiring the keys, then confronting Asmodeus at the entrance and throw him in there together with Rovagug. The Beast will be glad to do the rest.
Of course, the implications could very well lead to another campaign.
That could work. It's certainly the angle I would approach it from - getting another deity in on the action, be it Rovagug or someone else.
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Yeah, I think "Releasing Rovagug to kill Asmodeus because he's a misogynistic prick" might not be the best idea.
Maybe they can settle for killing a pit fiend?
You've got it made, friend. The best possible thing is to have players care about the NPC's in the game. The worst is when they can' t even tell them apart.
Now, you seem to be struggling with how the players SHOULD be reacting. To this I say: who cares? You only need to worry about your players.
But if you're interested in the comparison, my all male group also hated Thesing, they were tired of Robahl, and they really did not like the Mayor at all.
If you're trying to figure out where to go from here,...
Have the Pathfinder agent contact them, and want to weaken the Mayor by getting him in trouble with the Queen. How? By breaking the royal edict banning Pathfinders and closing Delvehaven.
If you haven't run the Asmodean Knot yet, have some of the Council of Thieves agents contact the party. Give them the secret code to weaken the Spiral, basically they can do Sian Desmodius's work for her.
Which means you can make Sian an assassin, hired by the Mayor to stop the players.
It'll all work out. Cheliax is supposed to be full of irritating people.
Yeah, I think "Releasing Rovagug to kill Asmodeus because he's a misogynistic prick" might not be the best idea.
Maybe they can settle for killing a pit fiend?
Or, if they want to go beyond the scope of the AP (unlikely, since you want to run Skull & Shackles), they could damage Asmodeus's control of Cheliax.
If you have access to the Faction Guide, check out the Bellflower Network.
Yeah, I think "Releasing Rovagug to kill Asmodeus because he's a misogynistic prick" might not be the best idea.
Nobody said that they should release Rovagug. That'd be insane.
They could attempt to lock both him and Asmodeus in the same cell.
I lucked out. The two female PCs in my group didn't mind the male roles at all and just accepted the play being what it was on the basis of "I hate this stupid city and everyone in it, let's just get this over with so we can go to the party." The cleric just flat out hated being in a play at all but got over it when she learned she got to whip people.
This sounds a lot like how my game went. All three of the players are men, playing men. One is a gnome bard (who loved the play and the chance to show off), one is a human elderich knight (who sighed heavily and dealt with it, though he didn't really have any performing skills) and a half orc ranger. The player of the ranger loved being in the play, but his character has no charisma and no skills for it. His comment was also, "So I just have to whip Karl and Locke when they get annoying? And occasionally talk? (thinks for a second) But I still get to whip Karl? And Locke? Where do I sign up?"
As for me, being a female GM, the play was reprehensible, but I made my city a lot more friendly towards women, even if the play wasn't. Janivan was the woman with the group, and I think she decided to sit that one out, based on the fact that there were no female parts and that she felt about the same as the half orc about becoming an actor without the inherent joy in getting to whip her fellow adventurers.
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Our group is a perfect mix of two female pc's and two males. Players are three guys and a girl. The guy player with a female pc got the lead role as his character had all the acting clout and skill focus. He had his pc cut her hair down to man length and tried to fill the role as a man. She is a barbarian, and thus, didn't have to much of a problem doing this.
It was a sexist play, especially when the GM had the director constantly throw jabs at the female pc's. The actual female player with a female character got the part of the insulter, and threw back so many awesome insults at the director, that the female barbarian didn't even have to lift a finger to help. She blistered that director and sent him home to mommy crying like a sissy.
She is my girlfriend and I now know not to try to get in to a tongue lashing contest with her.
My barbarian felt less pain from the whipping act...
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There is also talk about killing the mayor for his part in it as well
well considering my group has just started the next part of this path I think I can say the Mayor has his own problems....
There is a chance for that although there is fallout if they are not careful.
I think part of the stress is that your players chose LG cleric and paladin. Those classes will and should have problems with the government and culture in Cheliax. There's even a warning in the class selection segment of the player's guide about paladin being a difficult class to manage in this AP. These were risky choices for the players and this AP should be full of conflict and unhappiness for the characters.
That said, people who really get into role playing need to be careful to separate themselves from their characters AND from the GM who runs the game. Though it's the responsibility of the GM to make the game fun for their players, player choice can make a big difference, particularly for pre-written APs in a very specific setting.
I had one player who insisted on playing a half-orc in a very human culture which was at war with nearby orcs. Of course, the people hated him, refused to talk to him, insulted him, refused to serve him in stores and taverns, etc. I tried to tone that down some so his RP experience wouldn't be so horrible, but honestly, it was his choice to play that character in a hostile environment, and he was warned about it going in. Let it rip!