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

[soltakss]

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

I am not a fan of OpenQuest to be honest, but I still buy it to support D100 Gaming and because I can use parts of some of the Scenarios. I also recommend it to other people who are looking for a slimmed down D100. I could easily have permabanned OpenQuest, but that isn't in my nature.

[Anon Adderlan]

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!

I'm surprised she didn't also denounce this as anti-immigration rhetoric.

[jhkim]

First of all, regarding cross-forum response in general. The thread in The Gaming Tavern is closed, but I think it would only be fair to invite Stronty Girl to the discussion, rather than trying to discuss stuff behind her back.

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.

There's disagreement about age of puberty - the old dominant theory was that it went with climate, but I think at this point there are competing theories and it seems likely that there are multiple factors - including fat and/or protein in the diet, overall BMI, general good health, as well as climate.  From what I see, Inuit children of north Alaska have age of menarche at 13 to 14. For example, the link below says 13.68 +- 0.79 years.

https://books.google.com/books?id=0OFkK9JSWYMC&pg=PA53&lpg=PA53&dq=inuit+age+of+menarche&source=bl&ots=d36SYTDhhc&sig=45oU_7UQbPUTVP6DGO3qcjh76xo&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjDxefFtuPdAhUCOKwKHZTkAesQ6AEwBnoECAYQAQ#v=onepage&q=inuit%20age%20of%20menarche&f=false

In general - I haven't read "Land of Ice and Stone", so take this with a grain of salt. Historical realism does mean that women have many problems - but games are often very selective in their realism. So, for example, in a hypothetical game - women characters have to deal with a high chance of death from complications or infection in childbirth - but male characters don't have to deal with a high chance of death from infected wounds.

[S'mon]

Historical realism does mean that women have many problems - but games are often very selective in their realism. So, for example, in a hypothetical game - women characters have to deal with a high chance of death from complications or infection in childbirth - but male characters don't have to deal with a high chance of death from infected wounds.

I think there's some truth in this but most games avoid long term consequences such as crippling injuries, and wound infection tends to go in there. So you might see a chance for death in childbirth (just like death in battle, probably without a detailed 'giving birth' subsystem!) but you'll rarely see rules imposing long term injuries, infertility etc just as you won't see long term combat injury rules.

[S'mon]

First of all, regarding cross-forum response in general. The thread in The Gaming Tavern is closed, but I think it would only be fair to invite Stronty Girl to the discussion, rather than trying to discuss stuff behind her back.


There's disagreement about age of puberty - the old dominant theory was that it went with climate, but I think at this point there are competing theories and it seems likely that there are multiple factors - including fat and/or protein in the diet, overall BMI, general good health, as well as climate.  From what I see, Inuit children of north Alaska have age of menarche at 13 to 14. For example, the link below says 13.68 +- 0.79 years.

Sure. That sounds quite late to me, anyway. Sounds like a reasonable number (ca 13 to 14.5) to use for a Stone Age setting, anyway.

BTW my impression is that Arctic populations tend to limit fertility, and one way of doing that is late marriage, as well as monogamy. I remember reading stuff about this possibly influencing Cro Magnon evolution. I think it would be quite plausible to have a stone age Ice Age population where people weren't having babies until 18+ or even later. I don't think the modern tropical hunter gatherer populations much studied by anthropologists are likely to be a good fit.

[Omega]

In general - I haven't read "Land of Ice and Stone", so take this with a grain of salt. Historical realism does mean that women have many problems - but games are often very selective in their realism. So, for example, in a hypothetical game - women characters have to deal with a high chance of death from complications or infection in childbirth - but male characters don't have to deal with a high chance of death from infected wounds.

Few RPGs have one and not the other. And D&D has had rules for infections in various modules for quite a long time now. Think Wilderness Survival Guide had some rules as well? There is also been rules for long term injury in some editions. Broken limbs and other hazards. But older editions of D&D may have baked infection into the recovery rules. PCs brought down to 0 HP were in really bad shape afterwards and recovery took quite a while where they were effectively bedridden. Not to mention AD&D had rules for diseases.

As for the whole puberty thing. Most large primates seem to hit puberty around 15 according to research so 15 for cave men types seems reasonable. Some research suggests they might be fertile earlier than that. But for whatever reasons apparently tend not to start being active till they hit the mid teens? At a guess that is when the body actually matures enough to actually have a chance at successfully bringing a child to term. Assume primitive humans were probably the same.

[AmazingOnionMan]

I remember a time when The Tavern was a nice, low-traffic place where you could talk about fun games.
Oh well...

[RPGPundit]

I haven't read your book, but they've made the same idiotic claims about Lion & Dragon. Apparently being historically accurate is now 'misogyny'.

[tenbones]

Apparently being historically accurate is now 'misogyny'.

Because the very notion of Post-Modernism can't make the distinction between subject or object. History and anyone trying to portray it realisitically, is part of the very problem they pretend to be outraged about. They do not understand *how* we evolved to get from there to here, but they pretend they do.

It's much easier to simply be outraged and blame you for their self-loathing.

[RPGPundit]

Because the very notion of Post-Modernism can't make the distinction between subject or object.

Correct. That's the structural reason they want to destroy history. The ideological reason is of course that without history, no one will know what they're lying about or how it's all happened before or how it turned out the last times people like them were allowed to be in control (gulags and killing fields).

[soltakss]

First of all, regarding cross-forum response in general. The thread in The Gaming Tavern is closed, but I think it would only be fair to invite Stronty Girl to the discussion, rather than trying to discuss stuff behind her back.

Nobody invited me to that thread, so I didn't get the chance to respond. I don't want to open up a thread on a forum in response to a banned thread on that forum. However, if someone else wants to invite her in then that's fine by me.

[jhkim]

So I still haven't read Land of Ice and Stone, so still no comment on that. If it seems on-topic for you, soltakss, I did want to comment on general historical accuracy vs. misogyny.

Apparently being historically accurate is now 'misogyny'.

Because the very notion of Post-Modernism can't make the distinction between subject or object. History and anyone trying to portray it realisitically, is part of the very problem they pretend to be outraged about. They do not understand *how* we evolved to get from there to here, but they pretend they do.

It's much easier to simply be outraged and blame you for their self-loathing.

I agree that historical accuracy isn't misogyny - but I have encountered misogyny masquerading as historical accuracy. A number of years ago, I picked up "The Greenland Saga" module for D20 because I was running a related semi-historical game about settlers from Greenland. However, despite recommendations of it as being historically accurate in a number of forum discussion and reviews, I would definitely qualify it as being misogynist rather than historically accurate. Below was my analysis of women in the module.

This is a module put out by by Avalanche Press.  Two others of Avalanche's D20 historical series in 2001 were awarded for Origins Awards (one of them twice).  It received good reviews in Dungeon Crawler Magazine and rpg.net. I bought it thinking it might have useful material for a related RuneQuest campaign which I was GMing.

The adventure begins with a 7-page introduction to the historical setting for the game: 15th century Scandanavia, and Greenland in particular.  This includes a quarter-page section on women which presents a reasonably balanced view of women's social status in the time period.  However, in terms of rules mechanics, there are only three adjustments which it suggests for D&D character creation. These are:

• Remove all weapon/armor proficiencies and spell use from clerics (to reflect Roman Catholicism).
• Females have -3 Strength, +1 Dexterity, and +1 Constitution. (This is in a sidebar which ends with the text: "Life is not fair.  Deal with it.").
• Triple the cost of the Swim skill.

While each of these is individually justifiable as realistic, the module suggests no changes for bards, druids, sorcerers, or wizards -- all of which I think have far more effect on historical accuracy than females with average Str, Dex, and Con.  So the selection is significant.

Interestingly, the adventure itself flatly contradicts the historical introduction on many points.  The introduction describes how the Icelanders are organized in extended clans, which is true.  However, the adventure itself has the colony devoid of families or even explicitly married couples.  The only extended community described is a group of men, of which the adventure notes: "No women are present, and the men of the Five Hundred speak often of sex and women in crude and sophmoric terms.  However, if any female adventurers or NPCs come to Brattahild with the party, the men of the Five Hundred will show themselves to be painfully shy around them."

Of the 31 NPCs in the adventure, three are female.  The first two, Elisabeth and Sigurd, have charisma 19 and 20, respectively.  They are both beautiful, high-level, unmarried noblewomen (7th-level Aristocrat and 7th-level Aristocrat / 2nd-level Sorceror, in an adventure for 2-4 level).  The third, Katrina, is the "long-time companion" of a man subtitled "Norse Trash", and has the following notes accompanying her stat block:
Special: Barbarian Rage.  For a period of three days, every 28 days, Katrina is able to invoke barbarian-like rage.  During this period, her strength increases to 13 and she is also able to use the Improved Bull Rush feat.  Changing Charisma. Katrina actually cleans up quite nicely - her charisma rises considerably (from 6 to 14) if she is bathed and out of the presence of Snorri (her "long-time companion"). Illiteracy.  Katrina cannot read or write, though she could learn to do so with intensive training.  Lust: Katrina is consumed with lust for any male of reasonable age and appearance who is not Snorri.  This obsession rules her actions.

And as if the reference to menstruation weren't enough, her description further notes that: "If Snorri is not watching, she 'accidentally' allows her blouse to fall open as she leans over near male members of the party, exposing her small and very dirty breasts."

What is notable here is how the gender roles manifest.  It is absolutely not the case of making women conform to historical roles. To the contrary, the women have no duties as mothers or nurturers. Instead, we have a contrast.  Elisabeth and Sigurd are ultra-beautiful and powerful but inaccessible.  As the module describes Sigurd: Sigurd's intelligence and beauty have long made her stand out among her fellow Greenlanders.  Over the years this has given her an arrogant turn of mind.  She does not suffer fools easily, and reacts with ill-concealed contempt to what she considers silly questions or statements.  There are many frustrated suitors among the Greenlanders who will bitterly claim that she considers herself too good for any of them.  They're right, but so is she.

The other is Elisabeth Elisabeth Camilla, a 7th Level Aristocrat and titled as "Ruthless Merchant Princess".  She appears in the beginning as the one who finances the PC's expedition.  Her description begins: She will appear very soon after the guard departs, a rather short but undeniably beautiful red-haired woman.  In her wake will come several more strapping young men she calls her "entourage."  Intensity radiates from her, and she is much more abrupt and focused than the genteel Marcello, moving directly to her offer with a speed verging on rudeness.

In contrast, Katrina is extremely accessible (as explicitly noted in her stat block!), but is also pathetic.  Again, this is not caused by the historical period -- quite the opposite!  There are no women who would be normal for the period: i.e. wives and mothers.  Instead there are aloof beauties and trashy sluts.

I didn't use the word misogyny originally, but I have no trouble applying it in this case. It has been passed off as historical accuracy, but it is not.

[S'mon]

I didn't use the word misogyny originally, but I have no trouble applying it in this case. It has been passed off as historical accuracy, but it is not.

Yes, but...

The SJW is inclined to see every historical RPG supplement as an Avalanche Press product in disguise.

[Jason Coplen]

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.

This. Also I'm posting to subscribe.

[TJS]

Yes, but...

The SJW is inclined to see every historical RPG supplement as an Avalanche Press product in disguise.

And there are others who will defend even the indefensible.

Which is the problem really.  It's becoming increasingly difficult to have any reasonable discussion anywhere around these issues.  If you don't take one extreme position you end up getting accused of holding the other.