the games that I have played ,where we had female players, no efforts were made to make the setting more or less sexist. IMO, it would patronizing to do so.

Quote from: RPGPunditRoleplay in a fantasy medieval setting where modern sentiments are somehow transplanted as far as gender roles are concerned (ie. women have all the same jobs as men, are considered equal); or would you rather play in a fantasy medieval setting where the sentiments toward gender were more or less like the real medieval sentiments?

That depends on if I plan to make that particular struggle a part of the character. Otherwise it's just bullshit that gets in the way at annoying times. Some will say thats more "realistic," but I say: yeah? So's stabbing you with a kitchen knife every time you take damage, but we don't do that shit, either, now do we?

Quote from: RPGPunditYea, the difference is you don't often get barbarian vikings showing up to play in your campaign, so that you can see the difference between a regular joe playing a viking and a viking playing a viking.

At least, not unless you have a really wierd gaming group.

Well, I do have a really wierd gaming group, but no, none of us are vikings.  

My point is just that I don't feel that maximum accuracy is the same as most fun.  We can get the most accuracy by having each of the players play characters just like themselves and set it in the modern-day.  But that's not the most fun.  

So, say, in our Buffy campaign group we had four women and two men -- and there were four female PCs and two male PCs.  But the two men had female PCs, and two women had male PCs.  Everyone liked it.  

I'd agree that there are some common failings in playing the other gender, like playing to stereotypes or missing subtleties. However, I'm also suspicious about complaints about how people play -- since in my experience these often have the same flaws in reverse.  In my brief period of playing online, there was a fair amount of cross-gender play, but the rate of guessing was pretty bad.  What was also more telling, though, was how people guessed that a player was really a man or woman.  I remember in particular talking with someone who was infuriated when other players would say she was a man playing a female character because she didn't act "girly" enough.

Quote from: RPGPunditI can actually play in either type of setting; though the latter only if its consistent with the rest of the world. I have no problem, for example, with the conception of gender role equality in the Forgotten Realms.  I would have some problem with it in Warhammer.

RPGPundit

I'm pretty much in line with this.  There are some settings that revolve around their prejudices; cutting out the discrimination would cripple the impact of the game world.  Other settings do pretty well with egalitarianism, which is my personal default (as a boy I pretty much modeled my idea of What Women Are off of Ripley and Vasquez.)

All the same, a game without wenches is like a day without wenches.

Quote from: T-Willard"The Gods didn't make men and women equal. MAGIC MISSILE DID, BITCH!"-NahaJawen the Wanderer.

Tim, if you ever get bored with YotZ (or even if you want a break) you just have to write this setting up as an OGL Urban Arcana sourcebook.  I've tried to get Urban Arcana to work for me, but I always wondered why I didn't just play Shadowrun instead.  This? this works

Quote from: RPGPunditWow. Double standard.  I mean, why not "broach" it? See if your female player wants to have no difficulties due to playing a female, or might actually be interested in the conflict of having to work around being a "woman in a man's world"?

Shit, some of my best memories of good roleplaying have come from female players who were playing women in settings where they had to confront a sexist  society.  They all tended to deal with the issue in different ways, too...

Note that sometimes, I've had male players play female characters; and its never as good.  They don't really seem to be able to act coherently in a sexist setting; but in a non-sexist setting they act just like they were men, basically. Part of why I'm against the whole "gamer in drag" concept.


RPGPundit

I was making a generalization.  I will bring up the subject when I have women players, but I'll only do it with people I trust.  When talking of running a hypothetical game, I tend to think in hypothetical people.  Since I don't know these hypothetical people, my OP stands.  However, with a group of people I knwo, it's a different story.

One of the best Dogs in the Vineyard games Ive ever run had a female player whose character had to talk an independently minded woman into obeying her husband...it rocked.

So, sorry for the confusion.

I'd prefer to play in a fantasy game where modern sentiments are in place regarding gender roles, but I've never really played in a realistic fantasy (oxymoronic? maybe realistic medieval) setting.

Talking from the perspective of a guy that plays/runs the former category of game rather than the latter, I find women to be extremely fascinating on a lot of levels, and having a wide range of options open for them to fill offers a lot of added dimension to the gaming experience, IMHO.

Depends on furthur details of the setting honestly.
If its supposed to be 'historical' or some represention of it--then I'd prefer it be accurate or give reall GOOD reasons (like Pendragon, suggests--using the heritage of mythology it draws upon laden with warrior women.)

One of the funniest things I did, that challenged the PC's...

They journied by ship to another continent and got off their ship and entered the docks. At the docks, a powerful looking woman backed up by women in platemail asked: "Whose property are these men?" The woman was looking at the half-orc man with undisguised lust.

The birth-rate was 5 females for every male. Males were thin and sickly (-4 Str, -6 Con) and had a tendency to die from SIDS.

The male characters had to deal with being considered the property of the female characters. The female characters had to provide the male PC's with luxuries and spa treatments, etc. (A half-orc barbarian wearing mascara... LOL)

In a nieghboring nation, only females were born with magical or psionic ability, so once again males were second class citizens.

Fun game.

Depends on how the players feel about the level of realism (sexism?) in the setting. Generally if it's fantasy I leave that stuff out. There are a hell of a lot of other real world themes I can incorporate into the setting, than just real world attitudes of sexism etc.

As far as historical settings go, again it depends. If I was going for a larger than life, exceptional people type campaign, then it really wouldn't be a problem. However if it was a more down to earth average joe (jane?) context, then it would be pretty difficult to navigate the terrain so to speak. Besides dealing with the period detail, I would have to incorporate the everyday casual sexism into the game -not a problem if I was running a specfic kind of real world/real world issues campaign, which I have done before - but not really practical for most of my other games.

But at the end of the day, player enthusiasm trumps (sometimes) whatever historical jones I have. In my In Harms Way campaign, the women in my group - all 4 of them - wanted a more egalatarian feel for the campaign.

I didn't really have a problem with this. After all I still got the themes I was trying to cultivate (but has since taken a life of it's own) - hubris, ambition, compassion, loyalty...and as one character said to another "at the end of the day, the captain -she - stands alone staring out there...wondering what new mischief, the waves bring forth"...good stuff .

Regards,
David R