My copy of the SSG is at home and I haven't read it in a while, so you'll have to excuse me for now. I have to say, though, that books like Loose Alliances or Shadows of Asia don't exactly describe paradises of equality.

My take? Some regions of Shadowrun's world made some progress,  while other places are even worse than now. Metahumanity and magic have only added a new layer of complexity and problems to the situation.

For example, SR's Korea takes pride in being a meta-friendly country, but there's a rabidly ultranationalist, anti-Japanese stance. The Korean underworld also suffers from age and gender discrimination.

Quote from: JimBobOzFrom your profile, I see you enjoy D&D. I look forward to seeing your historically accurate treatment of dragons, bugbears, gelationous cubes, Magic-Users, Clerics, Rangers and Paladins using D&D.

Heh!  :-)  I mostly agree with JimBobOz here.  I'm capable of suspending disbelief for it, but it's pretty ridiculous to have a world full of real magic, monsters, gods, and so forth -- and have absolutely no effects on society, culture, or customs.  

For example, many games posit that there are ultra-powerful beings around: gods, demi-gods, and so forth.  However, these are illogically prevented from having any effect on social/political structures.  The gods appoint high priests but never kings.  (Indeed, if you have a godlike being appoints the ruler, some gamers scream bloody murder. :-)  

It's fine for people to have their subjective tastes, but I see vanishingly few claims to objective realism in medieval fantasy.  

Quote from: gleichmanOne thing that does set me off however is game designers who put forth settings where the world is going to hell in a handbasket (Shadowrun, Deadlands- The Wierd West, etc) but where for some reason there is perfect equality of race, sex, etc.

Well, I'm not going to defend Shadowrun or Deadlands here because they're both pretty stupid.  However, the world going to hell isn't inconsistent with equality.  For example, 1940s Russia was pretty much the definition of "hell in a handbasket" -- but it also was one of the few times when women were equal within the military, holding both combat and leadership positions.  Similarly, the times when you see racial differences tossed aside are often ones where there were far more pressing problems.

Quote from: jhkimWell, I'm not going to defend Shadowrun or Deadlands here because they're both pretty stupid.  However, the world going to hell isn't inconsistent with equality.  For example, 1940s Russia was pretty much the definition of "hell in a handbasket" -- but it also was one of the few times when women were equal within the military, holding both combat and leadership positions.  Similarly, the times when you see racial differences tossed aside are often ones where there were far more pressing problems.

1940s Russia was facing an single outside threat and a single internal 'vision' that unified its nation.

SR represents the exact opposite.

Also 1940s Russia's experiment with such equality failed, and a setting working from that PoV should show the same problems undermining the attempt.

But I think we're going far afield now. Why is it that of all the people who state their opinion, I'm almost always the only one called to defend it?

I just don't think one player should be penalized or prevented from adventuring with the rest.

For example, you *could* play as escaping black slaves in the Civil War Era or just prior. I mean, you're all still adventurers, there are villains and allies (sometimes you can't tell which), etc. etc. *Or* you could play free slaves in collonial times, enjoying freedom, roleplaying racism, and occasionally having to fight off a press gang who want to revoke that freedom.

As for women, again, you'd be surprised how little society actually *cared* what poor people did. Furthermore, there are better time periods to play in than those with a stable society that can even afford to frown on such petty things. In the French Revolution, for example, I'd be up on the barricades shooting people I didn't happen to like very much and my wife would be right there with me. I have to admit she was the better shot! My kids would be on the field too... scouting for ammo and discarded weapons. War and societal instability make for wonderful equalizers.

And the Middle Ages? You do realize that one of the *original* paladins was a girl. A girl who constantly had to "rescue" her knight from the clutches of his evil sorcerous father. The thing about killing people is that if it needs getting done, people don't care who does it. And if you happen to be good at it, they're probably afraid to question your right to.

As for fantasy, when you've succumbed to raids by drow, orcs, mind flayers, and every other "slaving rapacious" monster (pretty much all of them) let's see how "afraid" you are of blacks. After you've watched your wife get eaten, your house burned, your children skinned, etc. etc. Hell, after you've seen the adventurers save the day with a freaking FIREBALL. Fantasy worlds are too fucking scary for people to really worry too much about skin color. Unless it happens to be green or purple or grey or what have you... then there's a whole new kind of racism for that level of resentment.

I was just thinking that a really great pulp trope is the broadchested adventurer to gets "stuck" with a damsel in distress.  Throughout the game she takes care of herself, picks up the gun, fights off the monster, rescues that broadchested adventurer from his prison, organizes the attack and the adventurer comes to understand and respect her as an equal through the experience.

You couldn't tell that tale if they both started the game out as equals.

Quote from: VellorianI was just thinking that a really great pulp trope is the broadchested adventurer to gets "stuck" with a damsel in distress.  Throughout the game she takes care of herself, picks up the gun, fights off the monster, rescues that broadchested adventurer from his prison, organizes the attack and the adventurer comes to understand and respect her as an equal through the experience.

You couldn't tell that tale if they both started the game out as equals.

It took all of two minutes for people to forget Leia was a girl.

Quote from: VellorianI was just thinking that a really great pulp trope is the broadchested adventurer to gets "stuck" with a damsel in distress.  Throughout the game she takes care of herself, picks up the gun, fights off the monster, rescues that broadchested adventurer from his prison, organizes the attack and the adventurer comes to understand and respect her as an equal through the experience.

You couldn't tell that tale if they both started the game out as equals.

IMO...

There's a great deal of fun to be had playing to and off of stereotypes.

And there should be more in the way of the Hero than simple villains and combat.

It be fun.

Okay, some observations here. First, people are subtly shifting the goalposts to support their arguments: what started as a discussion focused mainly on historical gaming has slid down a slippery slope into whether a D&D world needs to have gender discrimination and castles without roofs. There are gradations in between, surely...and if I want to play Arthurian or pseudo-medieval fantasy due to an interest in the fundamental themes and trappings of the genre, then revisionism past a certain point are going to break the uniqueness of that genre and interfere with the desire to explore it. Again, I might as well be playing in an SF game. It's the gaming equivalent of the old pulp magazine trick of taking a Western genre story and recycling it with space instead of the lone prairie, a blasto gun instead of the six-shooter, and a rocket ship instead of the horse.

Second, I propose this is how a game pitch should go.

GM: "The setting for my game will be an ALIEN WORLD notable for its lack of indoor plumbing, arbitrary and unequal system of justice, and general exclusion of women from active participation in warfare and other aspects public life, which happen to be the primary focus of the game."

Player: "Sounds cool!" (proceed to character creation and play) or "Yar boo chiz chiz" (proceed to a counter-pitch or the GM coming up with a new idea)

Quote from: Elliot Wilen"Yar boo chiz chiz"

Can you translate that from Lower Elven into English?  

Quote from: VellorianCan you translate that from Lower Elven into English?  

"Suxx0rz!"

Quote from: Elliot Wilen"Suxx0rz!"

"English" is not "scum sucking, bottom dweller."

But, since I speak a little "scum sucking, bottom dweller," I got the translation.  Thanks!  

But it is a translation in context. The people who would have said "Yar boo chiz chiz" in their world would today say (or write) "Suxx0rz!" in ours.

(A guide for the perplexed.)

Quote from: JimBobOzRiiight. Zombies are easier to accept than racial equality in the CSA. I'm no fan of the CSA, or the alternate history scenarios in story or rpg where they get to win, but even I don't consider zombies more reasonable and rational than racial equality.

As a matter of fact, I would say that there would have been considerable more probability of the dead rising and walking to fight for the south, than for southerners to go from OWNING blacks and fighting to the death for their right to OWN blacks, to suddenly letting them carry guns and badges, fuck their white daughters and arrest their white children in the span of 2 or 3 years for NO GOOD FUCKING REASON WHATSOEVER.

Yes, in comparison of those two scenarios, the dead rising from their graves strikes me as VASTLY more plausible.

QuoteAnyway, it's simply as I said - they're presenting a game for an audience. There's no use putting out a game no-one will want to play. Even Ron Edwards made sure he had a cult before he published Sorcerer. A game where blacks get enslaved and whipped - no-one outside the Klan is going to want to play that.

Except no one is saying that, no one is saying this game should have been "Racial holy war" or something like, or that it should GLORIFY slavery. I'm saying quite the opposite in fact, that Deadlands chose the cheap way out of letting gamers, a disproportionate number of which carry romantic wargamer notions of the "glory of the old south" and "what might have been" to get to play confederate soldiers and southern gentlemen while conveniently whitewashing away the reality of the fact that it was a slaveowning society and a culture that's entirely livelihood depended on the brutal oppresion of fellow human beings. It was a copout so the gamer fanboys could whoop the rebel yell and not get all full of white guilt.

Instead, they could have made the confederacy as slaveowning as ever, though perhaps with a growing movement toward abolition.  After all, Robert E. Lee himself was of abolitionist sentiments, and in a scenario like the one Deadlands posits, where the civil war has dragged on even longer than it had in our world, the southerners might have felt very pressured to allow more blacks to fight for the south in exchange for their freedom, something which would have strengthened a push for abolition overall.
But that wouldn't have changed the fact that it would have sucked ass to be a black man in Dixie. Shit, in the 19th century it wasn't particularly fun to be a black man ANYWHERE, and that's a reality of that time that should be a part of the game, that gives opportunities for some serious gameplay.
Fortunately, the main setting of Deadlands isn't the CSA, its the "wierd west", and even in our own history many black men travelled out west for opportunities and to escape their downtrodden fates back east.  There was a generally more tolerant atmosphere toward blacks in the west (not that it was egalitarian by any means, see my point above).

QuoteNo, it's attempting to write a game people will actually play. Feel free to write the alternate, a game in which the players take on the roles of oppressed groups. Maybe you could all roleplay some Pakistani woman being hung upside down while her husband cuts up her face for dissing him, or some poor black guy being whipped till he almost bleeds to death for running away, or perhaps we could all play Auschwitz: the game of scrabbling for survival in a death camp.

Nice straw men, but I'm not talking about any of those.

I'm talking about HBO's Deadwood, or HBO's Rome.  Both of those portray stunningly accurate accounts of the cultural mores of the past, without pulling any punches for political correctness or whitewashing history to make it more palatable. And last time I checked, both of those programs were huge successes.
I'm talking about making historical RPGs like those.  Shit, I've run the "Rome" campaign already. Someday I'll run a "Deadwood" campaign, which may or may not have zombies, but definitely will have racial, social and gender inequalities and all the opportunities for character development and plot development those entail.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPunditSomeday I'll run a "Deadwood" campaign, which may or may not have zombies, but definitely will have racial, social and gender inequalities and all the opportunities for character development and plot development those entail.

1) Can I vote "FOR" Zombies?
2) Can I play?  

Quote from: BalbinusI care more about authenticity, though in fact many settings are less prejudiced than people imagine.  For example, racism towards black people isn't really appropriate in a pre-18th Century game as it hasn't yet developed as a concept.  

Yes, that's true. If you're going to do history with mores and values of the past in place, make sure you actually know what historical values were! Many people seem stunned when I tell them that Rome had a number of prominent political figures (and the catholic church a few religious figures) that were almost certainly black; and have a very hard time understanding how Roman sexual/gender identity values actually worked (because they're so totally different from how we tend to view these things).  

So when in doubt, its important to read up before presenting "historical" truths in your campaigns.

QuoteIndependent women while rare were more common than is sometimes realised, particularly during the swashbuckling periods in which there were several notable women swashbucklers.

Um, well, yes. There were some. There were also some women gunslingers of note in the wild west (probably more than the number of women "swashbucklers").  But note that this sort of freedom was a freedom that women of the lower classes or "sullied" women had; it didn't mean that just anyone could run off and become a swashbuckler or a gunslinger; it was usually pretty desperate women from low birth and no options.   Hell, in a lot of campaigns based on history any female character would have to make a difficult choice between being of high birth and having very strict limits to what she can and cannot do, or being freer to do something unconventional but having to be of lower class.
Not that being of high birth would mean you're screwed as far as gaming possibilities; consider that certain women in Rome, China, and throughout european history, wielded incredible amounts of power and influence.  Look at Livia, for example.

RPGPundit