Cross-Forum Response to criticism of Land of Ice and Stone

[soltakss]

Normally, I laugh and "someone was mean to me on another forum" threads and think they are a bit pathetic, but someone was mean to me on another forum. Normally, I would have replied to the thread or on the same site, but the thread has been closed by a Moderator and I don't want to open up a new thread to reply to a closed thread. However, The RPG Site has had cross-forum threads in the past.

I do note the vitriol of the OP on the other thread, which is not particularly nice. Also, the claim that I am a misogynist, which is completely untrue.

However, I have posted my response below. If this thread is then closed, fair enough, but I thought I should at least post a response rather than letting it fester inside me.

[soltakss]

Ok guys, I just need to check - this is almost two decades into the 21st Century, right? I haven't accidentally fallen through a hole in time and ended up in some benighted, misogynist century or ended up in Gilead from The Handmaid's Tale? Because I appear to have purchased some RPGs from there. Specifically two RPGs about the ice age: Land of Ice and Stone (OGL from Wizards of the Coast/Mongoose) and Wurm (Nocturnal).

Land of Ice and Stone is not by Wizards of the Coast, but is by Mongoose.

First, Gathering in LoIS. Skip ahead if you've already read my complaint in Roger's RPG forum (link above). LoIS thinks it is being all equal opportunities, but keeps slapping me down every time I might dare to have the expectation that playing a female character might be fun. For instance, here's their description of the Gatherer skill:

Although the typical image of Stone Age people is of a hunting band heroically bringing down a mammoth, the vast majority of food is gathered, not hunted. Most gatherers of the Land of Ice and Stone are women, children, old men and the crippled or infirm. Skilled in the knowledge of plants and animals, they gather nuts, berries, small game, shellfish, and much, much more. (Page 13).

Sorry, but 'skilled' is damning with faint praise, because your underlying message is: women are incompetent and useless. You've just said Gathering is so easy it be done by feeble people, such as a 5 year old child, a frail elderly person or someone with a stinking cold. It is so simple it can be done by incompetent people, such as clueless kids, pensioners with dementia or people suffering from life affecting brain injuries. Also I dare you to climb a tree or cliff to collect bird's eggs or to harvest honey, or even to dig up tubers with a digging stick if you are 'crippled or infirm'. Yes, hunter-gatherer kids get sent to do gathering, but that doesn't mean that all gathering tasks can be done by kids.

That was definitely not the intention. Gatherers are the mainstay of life in the Old Stone Age. They collect most of the food and raw materials used by a Clan. Roots, tubers, nuts, berries and eggs are what keeps people alive. Grass, pieces of wood, scavenged bones and so on provide many of the raw materials of the Old Stone Age, far more than gained by Hunting. Gathering is a very important profession in Land of Ice and Stone.
Men can be Gatherers, of course, and often are. The mention of children being Gatherers just makes them productive members of the Clan and allows them to learn the skills used in Gathering. The elderly and infirm can help with Gathering, as they can do the easy stuff. At no point was this meant to imply that Gathering is an easy thing to do, nor that it is of low value.
Climbing a tree of a cliff in search of birds eggs is difficult and would only be done by experienced Gatherers. I do not say that it isn't, or cannot remember saying this.

Meanwhile, there is no mention in the Crafter skill that it could be done by children, old men and the crippled or infirm. The Hunter skill only mentions men, and says hunters are "self-reliant and brave". Apparently killing small game doesn't count as hunting, because we wouldn't want any implication that women are self-reliant and brave would we?

In Land of Ice and Stone, the cultures have roles that are usually carried out by one gender. In all cases, people of the opposite gender can do those roles, but it is unusual. Where gender is not mentioned, those roles are shared across the genders. So, yes, women can be crafters, as can men. Both can be healers, Wise Ones, Clan Leaders and so on. Hunters are usually men, due to the strength needed, but a physically strong or skilful woman could be a Hunter, or Huntress. In hindsight, I should have included a Huntress as one of the Spirits worshipped.

Nope the wimminz won't have any time to be self-reliant and brave, because they'll be too busy having babies. Reproduction must be a major thing in LoIS and Wurm games, because there are game mechanics for getting pregnant (Wurm) and for surviving the pregnancy (both LoIS & Wurm). So, um, why aren't there these sections on pregnancy in games set in the faux-Middle Ages of fantasy RPGs? Or in steampunk or Victorian RPGs? Or in any bleeding RPG set prior to the invention of modern, reliable contraceptives? Basically why is this information about pregnancy even a thing in these games?

LoIS at least makes including character pregnancy and the risk of mother or child dying in the game optional. Which is just as well, because it's fallen into that well known trap of lies, damned lies and games designers who don't understand statistics. Pregnant women have to make three Resilience rolls or they will have some complication. Fumble and mum and child may die. However the probability of NOT having a complication is about 1% for an average woman and 17% for the rufty-tuftiest Neanderthal woman.

In Land of Ice and Stone, nobody understands modern medicine. The best they get is a Lore, handed down from generation to generation. Operations are difficult and rare. Things like a Caesarean are unheard of and would be fatal even if they were known, in Roman times, Caesareans were done to save the baby not the mother. Death in childbirth was extremely common in pre-modern times and I have no reason to think it would be less common in the Old Stone Age.
Maybe the maths is wrong, but for game mechanic purposes it needed to be a problem on a non-succeeded roll. Perhaps a Fumble would have been more appropriate at each stage. There is always a balance between playability and actual fact in RPGs.

All this pregnancy and childbirth getting you down? Then don't worry - cheer up with a 'Humorous Scenario' (p167) where transgender people are used for laughs (Wurm). LoIS is better on this point and has 'Gender Change' as a possible Background Event for character or NPC backstory, p24, with no overtones of poking fun at trans people.

Why would I poke fun at trans people, or anyone else for that matter?

Next... there is no 'mature players' warning on the cover or back of either book. Which brings me to... Underage sex.

LoIS however head for creepy paedo territory with this:

Because of the meat-rich diet, children reach puberty very early, typically between 10 and 13. This means that they will normally be sexually active at the next Summer Festival. Games Masters and players may feel uncomfortable with this and may prefer to raise the maturity age to something more like modern-day levels.

Uncomfortable at the idea of people shagging 10 year olds? No shit, Sherlock. So why even bother including this in the game? Unless you want to corner the creepy paedo market? And where the hell did you get that 10 to 13 figure from? That's not from modern hunter gatherers - they average about 15 years old at onset of puberty. Also, it's not MEAT it's FAT which is the main nutritional factor in reducing age at puberty.

Meat/fat – I am not a Doctor and am only going by things I have read. Puberty has come down in the modern world because the diet includes more meat/fat. A Palaeolithic diet had a lot of meat/fat and puberty would have been earlier. Also, life expectancy was so low that it would have made no sense to delay bearing children until modern-day levels, as most people would have died by then.

Meanwhile, when we reach the scenario section, there's a ceremony where the kids who are now hitting puberty (the 10 to 13 year olds) pull a token from a bag to find out which of the "handpicked and trained people of the opposite sex" will relieve them of their virginity. So they don't get to choose who shags them. And they don't get to say "But I'm gay!" And the 'trained people' smacks of a creepy paedo's wet dream.

OK, this is an homage to the Earth's Children series of books, where one of the clans does this. I thought it was a nice idea as a rite of passage. Perhaps I was wrong.

And finally we graduate from implied off-screen rape to actual rape as a throwaway plot element. This time it is LoIS which is dazzlingly inappropriate.

ANOTHER SPOILER ALERT.

Then the next part of the scenario arrives. A half-Neanderthal arrives and the PCs can prevent him being attacked by racists and picked on by bullies and superstitious locals. The PCs can help him find acceptance with one of the less racist clans - so it looks like we're on track for a happy ending again. But wait. Here comes the WTF moment:

When Ba'Tan is feeling better, he can stand and walk for a short distance but he has a pronounced limp. One night he gestures to Sa'Tal [the lovelorn Juliet girl from the earlier part of the scenario] and when she does not react, he drags her to him where he begins to couple with her. Do the adventurers try to stop him, or do they leave him alone? If they complain, he says: "She Hearth Woman, she do this."
Complain? Complain??? Don't you mean react with horror and outrage? Don't you mean beat the living shit out of a guy who is raping a girl in public? The girl you obtained a happy ending for last session. I mean even if you are playing a nasty, brutish and short RPG or are showing off your literary credentials by pointing out this is a 'homage' to the scene where Broud rapes Ayla in Clan of the Cave Bear, this act specifically violates the game setting's taboo about having sex with hearth-sisters and hearth-mothers!

In the section of Red Men, it mentions that they have different notions of love and marriage. They have not made the connection between sex and reproduction and sex is just a routine thing for them.
The idea of this part of the scenario was to show that the Red Man was different to the PCs and had a different idea of what was and was not acceptable. The PCs have the chance to educate the Red Man and teach him their ways. Ideally, they would have stopped him. Maybe I should have made that clearer.

Is any of this mentioned? Nope. We cut to the next morning, where the PCs have to escort the rapist to see the tribal elders. A bunch of the girl's relatives are 'spoiling for a fight'. But when the scene with the elders occurs, those elders ask "how Ba'Tan has been and whether he has been any trouble". WTF?

So the scenario assumes that no-one has done anything about the rapist the day before. News hasn't spread like wildfire through the camp, because the elders don't know about it. The girl, her new beloved husband and/or her mother have not been to see the elders. In fact there is no mention of how the girl reacts or feels at all. She becomes Miss Not Appearing in These Scenes. The elders decree:

This must be settled quickly, otherwise there will be trouble at Summer Camp. You will take Ba'Tan back to Black Elk clan today.
Riiiight. There's already BEEN trouble you wanker of a scenario writer! A girl was raped FFS. But the main concern of your elders is to prevent a fuss. So there's no actual punishment for rape. Ba'Tan is just quietly moved to another parish. Sorry, I mean clan.

Life in the Old Stone Age is brutal and short, so there is a taboo on killing people. Even though he is not a member of their clans, he is a guest at the Summer Camp and is subject to that taboo. Exile is a way of getting rid of people without killing them. Quite often, exile is just a longer way of killing the person.
There is a subtext here, that the Black Elk Clan has a sub-clan who are partly Red Men. They accept and welcome Red Men to their clan. The Elders know this and know that he would be happier among the Black Elk clan, as he would have people there who understand him and how he behaves. Again, perhaps I should have spelled this out rather than dropped hints.

Next they are about to depart and...

Ba'Tan points to Sa'Tal and asks: "Pretty woman coming too?"
Mataan {Romeo husband] and Sa'Tal look to the adventurers for their decision, because this is their trip.
Yup, it is not the girl's choice if she wants to accompany her rapist on a trip to another clan's lands. That's the PCs choice.

So the PCs are off on the trip with the rapist, some blokes from the girl's clan (including her newly-wed husband), and some blokes from the clan he's being sent back to. Then we get this...

If Sa'Tal has come with them, then Ba'Tan wants to couple with her most nights; after a few nights the Black Elk hunters want to share her and scold Mataan if he disagrees.
It was at this point that I realised that the writer doesn't think what happened to Sa'Tal is rape and is quite happy with the notion that women have no choice about who shags them.

Ok, I handled that badly.
The Red Men do not consider that as rape, as they don't have that concept. It is accepted that people of the hearth have recreational sex with each other and that is a common and everyday thing. They just don't have the same mindset as we do. Clearly Sa'Tal has a different opinion and that should have been made clearer and that was a mistake on my part.

And the rapist's fate when he reaches the new clan? "They hold a feast in celebration of Ba'Tan's arrival". f**k you Simon E. Phipp.

This is part of the sub-text that the Black Elk clan has a substantial number of half-Red Men in their clan and they welcome him as one of their own kind.
His punishment was exile to the Black Elk clan.

Land of Ice and Stone or Wurm: Women are incompetent. Women are property. So best play a Man and just use women as scenery or props.
GURPS Ice Age: People are just, you know, people.

The intention of Land of Ice and Stone was definitely "People are just people." And I apologise if that did not come through.

[soltakss]

The author of LoIS, Simon Phipp, got a permaban from me on ever reading or buying any of stuff again after his first RPG release,
Merrie England the Age of Eleanor which came out during the Mongoose RQ1 days. For a book that uses the name of one of the greatest historical figures of the Middle Ages it only details her in the major NPCs section, and there all it says is in effect "in an age where the kidnapping of brides was commonplace, Eleanor was kidnapped a lot". That's it. No mention of her power and influence, her famous marriages or famous offspring - or anything her fucking huge Wikipedia entry (which if even you were a lazy rpg writer of dubious quality you could have easily raided for content).

For me, Eleanor of Aquitaine is one of the most complex and interesting people of that period, which is why I named the supplement after her. I could easily have filled a whole chapter with her history, intrigues, the Court of Love, her support of troubadours, her relationship with her husband and sons, but this was a short supplement and I did not have the space for that. It is something that I have always wanted to do, but have never had the time. Perhaps I should make the time.
As for the bit about kidnapping of brides, that happened and happened a lot. Eleanor was an heiress and an important one. She was married to the King of France's son, to secure her lands, quite probably against her will. The marriage was annulled after 15 years because she had not produced a male heir, on grounds of sanguinity, but nobles of the period often married unsuitable people just so they could have the marriage annulled when it became inconvenient. She married the future Henry II because other noblemen tried to marry her by force.
She backed Henry against France, each of her sons against Henry, Henry against her sons, John against Richard and Richard against John. She was a shrewd politician and used her children as pieces in a long game of chess. She was instrumental in raising Richard's ransom and bringing him back to England.
She scandalised Europe in the Second Crusade, survived two husbands, was the mother of three kings, if you count Henry the Young King, two queens, one duke, one duchess, one count and two countesses. Her influence stretched across Europe and I apologise that I could not include more about her.

[soltakss]

I'm not particularly intersted in comments, but feel free if you wish.

I suppose I could have put this in a blog somewhere, but nobody would read that.

At least here, people can have a look and dismiss me as some sexist, misogynistic, paedo nut-job, which, although I think pretty far from the mark, is what the OP of the other thread seems to think.

Trying my hardest not to come across as a pathetic, whiny loser, not sure if I have succeeded.

[S'mon]

SJWs gotta SocJus. Don't let the bastards get you down.

[Toadmaster]

Wow some serious off base accusations there. Sounds like Land of Ice and Snow is meant to be a relatively realistic historical depiction of life in the stone age.

What's next, complaints that a WW2 game includes Nazis?


For what its worth, I've seen your interactions on several RPG sites (beyond The RPG site ) over the years and I've always found your replies polite, helpful and well thought out.

[crkrueger]

I appreciate the effort and I understand why you would want to respond, but you're basically arguing against a religious zealot, you can literally imagine the woman frothing at the mouth as she deliberately misinterprets the intent of the text.

It's cavemen - interpersonal relationships aren't going to be politically correct.  You look at studies of aboriginal peoples today you find worse stuff than Jean Auel for sure.  It is what it is.  Being called a pedophile is serious, you should contact a lawyer about that.

Newt got you a little bit on Eleanor, would one page have killed you?  Still, it looks like Newt wasn't pissed because of lack of information, looks like he was offended for her.  I didn't know Newt was a card-carrying member.

[Christopher Brady]

Sympathies, man.  Being attacked for no good reason sucks at the best of times.

[Kiero]

How dare you attempt to write a game that aims for historical authenticity for the period which it covers! If anything you've been tame, where were the complaints about commonplace infanticide?

I really hate it when ignorant people think their burning desire for "social justice" is a substitute for educating themselves on a topic they choose to expound upon.

[trechriron]

There is no reason she can't create a whole new world and fantasy setting that espouses her beliefs. Blue Rose is a good example of such. Historical settings are going to relate to history (duh); where women were not held in high-esteem. If anything, these settings should remind us, that in the 21st century we know better and can CHOOSE to act/believe differently. If you don't want that in your game, seek out a setting you like.

Ignore the haters. She's angry and needs to vent. In the end it's only going to prevent sales to people who would not have enjoyed these books anyways. The irony is that feminists are seeking equality and fair/respectful treatment. No special oppressive rules. So, in this quest, she angrily shits on your books AND sets up special oppressive rules against historical settings. I keep bringing up the pendulum. Society has these swings. Eventually, the more reasonable people are left standing while the extremists have burnt themselves out from teeth-gnashing and fist-pounding. Be patient. This too shall pass.

[Omega]

Well I had never heard of The Tavern before and after reading the posters attack on the game. I do not want to ever hear of that site again if they all act that mad dog insane.

[soltakss]

Newt got you a little bit on Eleanor, would one page have killed you?  Still, it looks like Newt wasn't pissed because of lack of information, looks like he was offended for her.  I didn't know Newt was a card-carrying member.

Eleanor was the Duchess of Aquitaine and Countess of Poitiers as her birthright and held those lands even after marriage. She married Louis of France, heir to the Holy Roman Emperor, and then to Henry, Prince of England. She was Queen Consort of the Franks,
Queen Consort of England, Queen Mother and regent of England. She had two daughters by Louis, five sons and three daughters by Henry. Her daughters married kings, counts and dukes, her sons were princes, dukes and kings. Eleanor spoke French and Latin, although her native tongue was Poitevin, one of the langues d'oil or langues d'oc spoken in the south of France. She was literate and well educated, versed in music and literature, skilled in riding, hawking and hunting. A great beauty and a rich and powerful heiress, Eleanor was in danger of being abducted and married to powerful men, as was often the custom of the time. She was married to both Louis and Henry to avoid being kidnapped.

Queen Eleanor was famous for promoting the ideas of Chivalry and Courtly Love. Indeed, her court of Poitiers was a veritable Camelot. These ideas were spread by the troubadours and minstrels across the Angevin realm and soon reached Merrie England where they were embraced by the nobles.

There is a view that the idea of Courtly Love was partly responsible for transforming the Barony of Merrie England from a bunch of Robber Barons to a chivalric collection of knights. Certainly this process was started during the life of Queen Eleanor.

Richard I composed several poems in his Occitan dialect and the Angevin Kings, and Queen Eleanor in particular, were patrons and supporters of Troubadours.

There is more in Merrie England:Age of Chivalry, which mentions the Courts of Love. Admittedly, I would have liked more.

[Eisenmann]

Don't worry, Simon.  With worse art and layout, Newt would've loved it.

[Zirunel]

Meat/fat – I am not a Doctor and am only going by things I have read. Puberty has come down in the modern world because the diet includes more meat/fat. A Palaeolithic diet had a lot of meat/fat and puberty would have been earlier. Also, life expectancy was so low that it would have made no sense to delay bearing children until modern-day levels, as most people would have died by then.

Meat, sure. High-latitude H/Gs might well have had a pretty high proportion of meat in the diet. Less true the further south you go, but based on the title, this is all about high-latitude H/Gs, so fine. Lotsa meat.

But fat? Unless these H/Gs are whaling or sealing, their game is going to be pretty lean most of the year. And so will the H/Gs! despite all efforts to extract every little bit of fat from the carcasses and preserve and stockpile it if possible, it will never seem like it's enough. Fat will always be at a premium, scarce and desirable.

[S'mon]

Age of puberty AFAICT seems to be clinal with later further north, earlier further south, independent of meat & fat consumption. I'd expect Ice Age hunter gatherers to have puberty pretty late. I guess one could research the Eskimo & Inuit tribes for this sort of stuff.

Hunting vs Gathering - again it is clinal, the further south you go, the more Gathering dominates. In the far north there is often little or nothing to Gather and so Hunting dominates as source of calories.