Do you think that if you're playing a game in a historical or semi-historical setting, you should try to adapt the setting's sentiments to make them more connected to modern feelings, regarding issues like minorities, sexuality, etc?
Or is authenticity more important than sensitivity?

Does your answer change if there are members of said minority in your game?

Some case points:  First; I bring up the case because I will shortly be running a historical campaign set in China during the Three Kingdoms period.  In the party, there's a good chance we'll have a female player.  Now, in 2nd century China, women's roles were very highly restricted, and women were treated as a kind of property.  I could tweak historical truth and allow her to play an adventuress of some kind; or I could stick to the authentic, explain to her the role of women in this era, and make it clear to her that she could still end up having a lot of significance if she played a female courtier, or a Taoist witch if she was of low birth, or a courtesan if she wished to, or a midwife,  etc etc. But that obviously her choice of roles would be more limited than for a male character, and her options would be more limited, since I'm playing a primarily historical campaign.  Hell, its mostly like this even in Wuxia (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon has a girl trying to escape her limited role as a major theme).

In my Roman campaign we had a female player; of course in that campaign the PCs were all secretly immortal; and the player's character in question was a very competent rider and charioteer and a capable fighter, but she had to mostly hide this behind a "respectable" appearance.

I'm not just talking about women's roles, of course, though to me that's the one that most often comes up. I also wonder what you all think about race or sexuality issues in gaming.  

To me, if we're talking about a fantasy setting (even if its medieval fantasy) I generally prefer that said fantasy setting make allowances, that women tend to be treated with more equality than they ever were in our real world; though NOT necessarily with a 20th century earth level of equality, because then that just seems practically absurd. More like "most women should be married off and bear the babies, but if one can fight like a man or drink like a man or fling spells like a man, she should be allowed to do what she pleases".  That sort of thing.  I also think that it makes sense that there be relatively little racial tension within the human race in a fantasy world, after all, on Oerth or whatever we have Elves or Orcs to take that out on.
But in HISTORICAL campaigns (or "alternate history" campaigns), I think that the historical authenticity is more important than just about anything.

Rome doesn't have a lot of "racial" issues; the Romans had remarkably little racism (to them whether your skin was white or black mattered FAR less than whether you were civilized or barbarian; they had many black skinned senators, and far more of their slaves were blond haired and blue eyed than any other combination).  
But Rome does have a lot of issues around concepts of sexuality that are nothing like our own. In Rome "homosexuality" was not considered a particular condition, but rather a practice that could be honourable or shameful depending on whether you were a "catcher" or a "receiver" and whether you were also a man with a family or whether you were "selfishly" only practicing with your own kind.
There's also some very different concepts of what was an "acceptable" perversion and what wasn't. I had to explain to one of my players what a catamite is.

At the present era of the game I have to present a certain NPC who is considered one of the great heros of his age, as a generally "good guy", who just happens to enjoy sexual practices that to the romans was within the boundaries of acceptability but that in our culture would consider him to be just about one of the worst kind of pariahs we can imagine: sex with underage boys.

Is the solution to just pretend that instead the Romans were like we are now, and transport all our values on them? To me, doing that kind of thing pretty much makes me ill.  But of course, I'm an historian, and to me the most important thing is to tell the truth when you write history.

I think one of the most utterly disgustingly grotesque things about the Deadlands setting is the way that they removed anything that might have been offensive to 20th century sensibilities from their setting.  Somehow, in a setting that is basically a very near alternate-earth, you had black people being not just emancipated but treated as absolute equals in a triumphant Confederacy, women being treated just like they were men in the entirety of america, etc etc. It seems so cheap and tawdry to me.

That said, note that I said that historical truth is more important than "just about" anything.  I think the one thing that trumps it is the actual comfort zone of your players.  Just like its stupid and kind of hideous to try to whitewash the parts of history we in our 21st century mores might find "icky", its kind of pointless and just a little disturbing if you try to constantly rub your player's faces in it, like you're taking some kind of hidden pleasure in playing to the controversy, or even a kind of vicarious amusement at things we today find unacceptable.  So its just as important to me, for example, to try to highlite how utterly similar to us the Romans were in so many astounding ways, as to show the ways that they were radically different.

And of course, if your players have personal limits to what they're comfortable dealing with in an RPG, that has to be considered very strongly.  Finally, if your pc is playing a character that would find themselves limited by reason of these ancient mores, its up to the DM to try to help them create a character that can nonetheless do interesting and significant things in a campaign, or if the GM knows that this cannot be done, to warn them off of playing that kind of character.  Otherwise you're creating a needless problem.

So where do the rest of you stand on this whole thing?

RPGPundit

I prefer to keep historical facts accurate for historical games.  If this means that female characters have to dress up as male to get into certain places/organizations, then that character better have a good Disguise skill.

If it means that you're playing a black man in the 1870s in the South, then you're going to be targeted with racial bigotry.  Today we'd call that "racist" and "horribly offensive."  At the time, in that culture, it was totally accepted.

It if means that you choose to play the priestess of the temple of Isis in Egypt, then you'd better realize that a major activity of that temple was the sucking in of profits from parishoners through the delivery of oral sex by the priestesses and acolytes.  (You made a "donation" and you got to "experience the goddess" directly.)  Priestess and acolytes identified themselves with bright, red lipstick.  This is also the origin of the custom of painting the lips.  Today we would refer to that activity as "whoring."  At the time, it was "experiencing the goddess."

For me, part and parcel of the roleplaying experience is in facing these situations and the need to work around them to solve the relative conundrum.  

I despise campaigns that try to homogenize the historical truths so that it's "more PC" by today's standards.

I don't run into this problem as much because I like running societies in tumult, as opposed to societies with hard and fast rules.

I mean, there would be the French Revolution (EVERYONE killed people and fought for a political viewpoint, hence women and children and everyobody could adventure) or, still on the French note, let's look at the Paladins and the story of Bradamante and Rogero, or in Greece the Amazons or the Cupid and Psyche story (another example of a damsel that rescues her knight). If there is sufficient conflict for adventure, I don't think there should be much of an issue who's fighting along side you, so long as they're fighting along side.

If you want to make a big deal about roleplaying bigotry, etc. nothing is stopping you but the fun of the game. If restricting a character just pisses the player off, I don't see the point. If the player's enthused about historical accuracy and is gung-ho about doing this, I say go for it.

I would suggest that, rather than having the racism/sexism/whateverism be omnipresent, simply make it an occasionally exploitable plot device. If you've seen Samurai Champloo, there's a good enough number of plots where Fuu and/or some minor character must be rescued from the whore-house, having gotten there by misfortune, gambling debt, what have you.

I personally am pretty much a stickler for historical accuracy in purely historical games. Even in In Harm's Way - which is based on historical fiction of the period not history directly - you can still use it to play an historical game. OTOH, I have a history bookshelf that's much bigger than my RPG bookshelf. Most people aren't like that. Other people who play my games can do what they want. If someone wants to allow a female Post Captain in their IHW game, that's totally cool - in fact it has happened to my certain knowledge. That's their game. GM and Game group trumps Game Designer every time.

OTOH, there are a lot of ways to make exceptions to the rule in most any period of history - lots of women have pretended to be men throughout history, though it is rarte at any given time, for example. Given a light enough skin, blacks have 'passed' for whites in the past, though it was very illegal.

Something that's tougher to do in an Historical game is keeping to history and not branching off into alt-history, IMO.

-mice

I would LOVE to have something meaningful to say in this debate, but unfortunately, no one ever wants to play historical games with me.

Quote from: joewolzI would LOVE to have something meaningful to say in this debate, but unfortunately, no one ever wants to play historical games with me.

You probably scare them.

-mice

I've never had the chance to run a historical game with my players.  They're mostly educated males whose comfort level with the nastier parts of history is pretty high.

That said, unless the sexism/racism/classism/religion of a society is a major plot point (see Brettonia in WFRP),  I default to a sort of half-assed fantasy-world egalitarianism.

Yes, that's pretty much the opposite of intellectual rigor.  I don't much like the shittier parts of history (which doesn't mean I ignore them, mind you) and I'd much rather forget about them for the three hours or so a week I sit down to play a game with my friends.

When building settings like Shades of Earth (1938) and Roma Imperious (708 AD) I hlook for excpetions and usually add things in. I caught some heat initially for Shades of Earth's portrayal of Blacks in the U.S. (i.e. not a happy time). Then people read deeper and saw the game potential involved. In this way I was true to historical fact. In Shades, women do not have it great but have the potential to manuever within the setting. I have had a number of women who reveled in the role of "early feminist". Shades did not get much in the way of modification as descibed by Pundit.

Roma, on the other hand, took from a couple of different cultures. The Celts, skandians and a number of Bretanni allowed their women a number of freedoms. Did they carry swords and fight in battles? Yes. Did they own property? Ocassionally. As well, they could divorce, rule and exercise a lot of control over the home while men were out viking. Now, was this the norm? Mostly not. However, even men had a questionable life during that time. I took what there was about women's studies and some of the extremes and outlined the expansion of rights with in the setting. So Roma has some pretty liberal views on women's rights by the current setting date but still many prejudices.

China would be a tough one. Within the Roma setting women are not treated as well. I do use this as a means to introduce oriental women to the character pool as exiles from their own lands. That is also another approach to historical racial/gender intolerance. Take the character out of the culture and introduce them to a more tolerant one.

Bill

I think the first step should always be discussing it with the players. Maybe the hypothetical woman player wants to play up oppression (I can think of a couple of reasons why). Maybe she's not so keen.

But that apart, I think it's very difficult to avoid some measure of seeing history through our own lens.

Quote from: George OrwellThe Gladiators [by Arthur Koestler] is in some ways an unsatisfactory book. It is about Spartacus, the Thracian gladiator who raised a slaves’ rebellion in Italy round about 65 BC, and any book on such a subject is handicapped by challenging comparison with Salammbô. In our own age it would not be possible to write a book like Salammbô even if one had the talent. The great thing about Salammbô, even more important than its physical detail, is its utter mercilessness. Flaubert could think himself into the stony cruelty of antiquity, because in the mid-nineteenth century one still had peace of mind. One had time to travel in the past. Nowadays the present and the future are too terrifying to be escaped from, and if one bothers with history it is in order to find modern meanings there.

I think that there are at least three reasons for running a historical game, and they parallel three reasons for writing historical fiction:

1. You want to evoke the atmosphere of another time; to give the audience the experience of being there. This is what Orwell says is impossible.

2. You want to use the symbolic properties of an era to make a point. This is what Orwell says we do in any case.

3. You just like swords and togas. Easy.

I played a terrific game of Cold Space set in Atlanta in the early 60s, where one of the player characters was black. He had to deal with the predjudice, the white backlash, the institutionalized idiocy of the era. it was some deep gaming, sometimes painful, but very cool as well.

-mice

As others have said, I think it depends very much on the players. But there are several takes on this...

...Is it really the case that there's nothing interesting for a female character to do in the given time period? I think that would come as quite a surprise to e.g. the viewers of many a Chinese or Korean serial costume drama...like the one that's on right now locally, Jewel in the Palace. It's a bit of a different thing to say that a female character doesn't fit into the types of activities that your campaign wants to focus on, or the types of activities or conflicts that are gameable in an interesting fashion, given the mechanics and scale of the system you want to use.

...Why, exactly, would a player want to play a female character in an historical adventure campaign such as you propose? I see two possibilities. Either the player just needs that as a way to identify with the character, or the player actually wants the gender of the character to be relevant to the action. The way the character interacts with the setting is what really matters. If there's an understanding that the character will be treated exactly the same as the male characters, then you've just got a dude with a female name is all. End of problem. The alternative entails either accommodating a shift in focus or easing up on historical verisimilitude. Or a little of both, as in the story of Mulan.

In short it's a question of focus. You can be true to history while accommodating characters whose background challenge the dominant assumptions of the period, but only by focusing on that challenge and making it a major theme of the campaign. If you really want to focus on something else, then something has to give.

For example, suppose you use the female-dressed-as-a-man solution. It avoids the problem of having NPCs constantly comment and react to the female PC's challenge to gender roles in the historical society. On the other hand, what is the player doing here? Do they want to face the challenge of hiding their identity--which means that it needs to come up one way or another, such as having a female NPC fall in love with them or whatever--or is it just something that's going to go on forever?

I think the problem is especially acute for ancient and medieval genres due to the fact that modern fantasy literature has brought a lot of people with very different interests and beliefs into the same room. People who are enthusiastic about, say, the American Civl War era are likely to consider the actual race/gender roles and issues of that period as essential to capturing its essence. They may incorporate them or confront them but they're unlikely to want to have their cake and eat it too by e.g. having a black female major at Antietam.

However someone whose idea of medieval fantasy is caught up with a desire to explore the world of Le Morte D'Artur (or more, The History of the Franks)  is going to clash with someone whose entry to RPGs is via, oh, Thieves' World.

Quote from: RPGPunditTo me, if we're talking about a fantasy setting (even if its medieval fantasy) I generally prefer that said fantasy setting make allowances, that women tend to be treated with more equality than they ever were in our real world; though NOT necessarily with a 20th century earth level of equality, because then that just seems practically absurd.

I do not understand why the equality of women seems more difficult to believe in than dragons, orcs, magic fireballs, and so on.

Quote from: RPGPunditI think one of the most utterly disgustingly grotesque things about the Deadlands setting is... black people being not just emancipated but treated as absolute equals in a triumphant Confederacy, women being treated just like they were men in the entirety of america, etc etc. It seems so cheap and tawdry to me.

Whereas the zombies, magic rocks and so on didn't seem at all unrealistic?

This is like when spaghetti-armed gamer geek boys start babbling about female characters and how they should have strength stat modifiers. Magic? Instant healing? Monsters? No worries, who gives a damn about realism! When it comes to women being weak and inferior, suddenly the spaghetti-armed geek boy feels that "realism" is important.

Quote from: RPGPunditI think the one thing that trumps it is the actual comfort zone of your players.  

That's the key thing, for the simple reason that players vote with their feet.

If you try to force players to play their characters a certain way, or in a game world they don't enjoy, they'll walk. Don't ask us what you should do, ask your players.

Quote from: JimBobOzI do not understand why the equality of women seems more difficult to believe in than dragons, orcs, magic fireballs, and so on.

Why dragons, orcs, and magic fireballs, instead of space monsters, hostile aliens, and ray guns? It's far easier to accommodate egalitarian ideals in SF than in fantasy. Not that it's impossible in fantasy, but many of the fundamental themes as well as surface details simply aren't consistent with modern ideals. While the issue for the group is a matter of finding something that everyone's happy with, I don't see anything wrong with thinking about your need for versimilitude in examining what you as an individual enjoy.

I'm mostly one of those historical sticklers as well for historical games.  On the other hand, I mostly prefer my fantasy to not be just renamed medieval Europe.  So, for example, having real magic changes society.  

Note that prejudices apply to much more than just races and gender.  There were often major class barriers -- i.e. peasants could sometimes be freely killed.  In many societies rootless wanderers were treated with healthy suspicion and disdain.  You couldn't simply walk into town and check into the inn.  

However, these can usually be overcome by making the characters' qualities and connections strong enough.  The characters should have circumstances which give them freedom. For example, I ran a long alternate-history vikings game in a future of the Icelandic Vinland colony.  Most of the PCs were of a clan well-connected with their neighbors.  They had wealth and a good reputation which gave them a degree of freedom.  However, they still had to deal with things like weregeld for people they killed, and marriages arranged for them by their parents.  I also had several female characters.  One was Silksif, who was a widely respected gydja (prophetess).  Being able to speak to the dead and such, her position of spiritual authority gave her power.  Unlike most of the other PCs, she didn't have a marriage arranged for her, but rather had suitors come to her.  She still had the basic limits of Icelandic law: she had no direct voice in politics or war, for example.

Quote from: JimBobOzI do not understand why the equality of women seems more difficult to believe in than dragons, orcs, magic fireballs, and so on.

Because those other things are fantasy elements cheaply imposed on the quasi-medieval society of generic fantasy world X.
Whereas absolute equality of the sexes would be something that would fundamentally transform the quasi-medieval society of generic fantasy world X into something that wasn't medieval at all.
It would be like an Arthurian movie that had a bubblegum pop soundtrack and a jive-talking black guy in it; and yet was trying to be serious. The effect would be ill-thought out utterly mood-warping schlock.

QuoteWhereas the zombies, magic rocks and so on didn't seem at all unrealistic?

See my point above.  The fantastical unreal elements can be tacked onto the historical core BECAUSE they are fantastical and unreal. It becomes much harder to rationalize the kind of justifications that have to occur for non-fantastical changes to that same historical core.
In other words, the concept of zombies wandering around the Old South doesn't break suspension of disbelief specifically because Zombies don't exist, so we're willing to ignore the implications of their existing; but the idea of the Confederate States, caught up in a war that was at least significantly about their "right" to own slaves and treat a certain race as less than human beings,  suddenly doing a full 180º switch and accepting the members of this race as absolute equals, letting them be sheriffs, not really being concerned with them marrying their white daughters anymore, etc etc. is far harder for us to simply handwave away with "its fantasy", because it changes the entire "Real" part of the premise of the setting. In other words, that's just not the Old South anymore.

Not to mention that it strikes me as actually being the more insulting of possible choices. Its covering your eyes and pretending that this racism never really happened, or sexism never really happened; its whitewashing history to ignore the mistreatment of these minorities for the sake of avoiding modern-day "white male guilt".
Its a cop-out on every level.

RPGPundit