Gender and Setting
Eero Tuovinen:
Actually, the revision is interesting in that it sort of gives us a very common roleplaying fluff symptom, the weasel-wording (also familiar from Wikipedia content guidelines). What I mean is that if you look at many roleplaying setting texts, they're often written to first strongly state something and then back-pedal with all the writer's might to make room for all the exceptions that player characters and other dramatic individual considerations inevitably introduce. This revised text sort of reminds me of that sort of back-pedaling: first you state strongly that patriarchalism is the order of the day, but then you give several exceptions that give an overall vague impression: are you saying that players are free to ignore the patriarchal stuff when they feel like it, or are you saying that this is a definite list of the exceptions, or are you saying that the conceived majority opinion is not that at all, for in fact everybody disagrees with it somehow? (That last one might seem idiotic, but you'd be suprised how far some writers have managed to take this wishy-washy "something for everybody" writing style. In some '90s rpgs it seems that there are so many exceptions to the common rules that the exception is the rule. This becomes even more vague when the writer has chosen to be clever and undermine his own claims about the setting to provide a thematic statement of some sort.)
I sort of like how Greg Stafford does this stuff in early Hero Wars publications, in which it is quite clearly stated that the "Orlanthi all" means 85%. What this means is that when the books about Orlanthi barbarians say that everybody worships Ornald or Ernalda, or everybody belongs in the fyrd (the fighting body of the rural community), or everybody knows that war is only for men, it's not really everybody, it's just a rough 85% of the community the writer is discussing. There are always exceptions, and not just dramatic ones, but marginal minorities that influence the setting even when the writer can't be bothered to back-pedal on every definite he chooses to claim.
Now, the back-pedaling is a high-order thing, so you're not probably suffering it here in this small excerpt. If you wanted to clarify for my sort of picky reader, though, you could just plain come out and say that the traditional societal structure presumes patriarchalism, and while other ideas are not unknown, they are only theoretical. Your revision is very vague in saying that this order of things "varies between different parts of the kingdom", which seems like an invitation to outright not care about the long explanation just prior. Also, the text already says in the first paragraph that there are nuances, so repeating that gives it perhaps more weight than you intend.
Ultimately, though, I think that this is, in a way, fiddling with details that only become problems due to an insistence on keeping to the kayfabe. I know that this sort of challenges the very premise of setting-writing, but I'm not so sure if it's a good idea in the first place to try to write about fictional places like they were real when we're discussing immediate roleplaying implementation. For myself, I'm planning to develop a new voice in the new TSoY I'm supposed to start writing this month - the text will be written from the viewpoint of play, not as a fictional travelogue. This means, among other things, that I don't need to be careful about picking the right words and right emphasis to transmit how many bars of pressure the gender roles are putting on different parts of society, exactly. Rather, I can just state that this society has this idea of patriarchalism embedded, and I added it because I want this thing to be a theme / because I need this thing to ground my theme / because I want to play tricks on players who want to play female characters / because I want all clerics to be females in the setting / because of some other reason. Then the people using the setting can actually make informed decisions about which parts are important and which are not; if I just wrote a florid description of how these people make the women do the cooking and they also have pretty clothes, how could I ensure that the reader understands to take each of those facts for their operative roles in the roleplaying process? I know that I myself get quite lost (and worse, bored) with the travelogue format of rpg writing that almost all setting-heavy rpgs have. All facts about a setting are not created equal.
Note that the above approach depends strongly on actually recognizing the role of each snippet of text you choose to provide. If this is a generic overview of the setting, for example, then why would you spare a single word for the marginal exceptions? Bold strokes, man! If 90% of the society, and more importantly, the parts of society relevant for play, accept the traditional gender roles, then just use that "Orlanthi all" and have a caption later for "different thinking" where you introduce your brave heroes, the academicians who dare to speculate about egalitarianism. Or don't, if you find that your only reason for introducing these counterpoints was to ensure that the players can play an egalitarian character if they want. That is better achieved by telling them to play against type if they want, not by trying to encourage it via setting description.
Let me know if the above discussion escapes the bounds of the present dialogue, though - I understand if you find it annoying that I question the whole premise of setting-writing when you're just asking about how people react to your choice of words. For what it's worth, the second formulation of the last paragraph doesn't sound apologetic anymore, just extraneous - you might consider leaving it out altogether, whatever you think of my repudiation of traditional setting-writing.
dindenver:
Simon,
Well, I guess it depends. If this is the entire write up for the Kingdom of Man, then it does come off as a little wishy-washy. But, if this section is immediately followed by write-ups for the various fiefdoms, then its a great way to prime the pump. Does that make sense?
To summarize what you have written so far (with thenew erata):
The kingdom is sexist
Politics is sexist
Economics is sexist
The Military is sexist
The Military leads, society follows
This society is very warlike
Religion is reverse sexist
Marriages are sexist
Cultural norms are sexist
Academics are mostly not sexist
Sometimes Female nobles can engage in politics without breaking taboos
Oh, and these rules do not apply to the entire Kingdom.
Is that the message you wanted to convey?
Simon JB:
Wow, I've been away from here a long time! One computer crash, holidays and different projects taking your time can do that, I presume... ,-)
Eero,
I'm not sure I'm with you about the weasel-wording and back-pedalling here. Firstly, my intention is to make sure the gender structure of the setting is visible to the player, even while it is to a large part very similar to that of our society. Many RPG settings include a lot about power strucures along the lines of ethnicity and class, which is all well and good since power structures are food for drama, but with few exceptions leave out any mention of gender-based power structures in the world. Or, even worse, mentioning something about how this is a gender equal society but failing to draw any conclusions from that statement, reinforcing the invisibility of these issues, leaving it to the players' unconscious assumptions about the way of things. I see this as a major flaw in writing RPG settings.
But that's just basics. What I want with having this text as a part of the setting description, not a major part, but very much there, is to encourage players to make characters that take sides on the issue, as Paul put it above. But for characters who break the norm to be interesting, there needs to be a context, an idea of how the society views those women who believe they are great officer material. For those characters, I believe it is essential information about the setting that their belief would find support in the intellectual circles in the big cities or possibly with radical nobles, which are not that uncommon. In this light, I would be negligent in leaving that last paragraph out, wouldn't I?
Or am I missing something?
Now, I'm sure what I want could be written better, but hey, I'm working on it... ,-)
As for the voice of the setting description, I'm not at all sure how that's going to be. Up to this point I have mostly been working on putting the ideas I have finished in my head down in text, to be able to share and discuss them with others.
The setting that this is for is a diesel-punk fantasy world heavily inspired by Warhammer 40,000. The "Kingdom of Man" will be discussed mostly as a framework, since it is a large imperium with different countries within it, while I will put the focus on a smaller Border Town in a corner of the world. This gender text would be a part of the birds-view description of the Kingdom and the setting in general.
chance.thirteen:
Reading the last paragraph didn't feel like an apology or back pedalling to me. It reminded me of similar discussions in 7Th Sea and Victoriana. To me it said this: This is a product of culture, not any divine or physical causality. Like most medieval culture, it is entrenched and widespread. There are idea of a more equal treatment of poeple is present if the players need to use it.
As a GM, I saw it as shorthand that lets me know whats going on in the world, and how special I should treat exceptions. Not that I should restrict them or not. And like any issue in a game world, whether the players or the GM want to set folks up in opposition is a specific game choice. &th Sea has no real support for advocating change save anonymous academic discussion, Victoriana is set up to point the players directly at these issue. Neither seem to apologize for either apporach.
Valamir:
Simon, I just found this thread today. I'll give you what occured to me, in pretty much the way it hit me.
First paragraph: Ok, pretty standard stuff, no biggie.
Second paragraph: HEY...this is interesting. If this is a real faith based religion (as opposed to just a power faction masquerading as religion) and the women are in charge of the religion...what does that say about the how and why the rest of society has remained so patriarchal. That's some interesting things to explore. Or if this church is just a front for secular power, there will still be interesting things to say...just very different things.
Third paragraph: Yawn. See, I would expect the interaction of the first paragraph and the second to produce some really interesting points of view on the hows and whys of gender role in the society. To have instead those gender roles to just be bog standard ordinary "old fashioned" gender roles seemed not only not very interesting, but down right disappointing given my thought process after paragraph 2..
Honestly the last paragraph didn't effect me one way or the other, because I'd already stopped caring.
So to me. If you don't want to feature gender roles as anything more than a "be aware this is how this culture is" thing, then I would stick to making the church patriarchal just like everything else...you then have an ordinary "old fashion" cultural view and its consistant. But if you're going to do this thing where the church is entirely the opposite...well, then I recommend thinking bigger, and really reflecting on how that divergence might effect the broader social norms, because I doubt very much that Old Fashioned Old World Patriarchal norms would look the way they do if the Pope, the Cardinals, the Bishops and the Templars had all been women.
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