Quote from: Grognard GM on August 14, 2023, 06:50:46 PM
I'll point out that I moved on, but there's always someone that has to have a last stir of that pot.

Thus proving that you haven't moved on at all

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Comparing denying an event that happened in living memory, and has physical, video and photographic evidence; and suggesting that some aspects of messy 700 year old events MAY have been exaggerated or confused by contemporary sources, is asinine.

"Messy"? You are just implying that "people of that era couldn't say what 2+2 was equal to, poor things; I'm not blaming them, but, come on!"

I guess that Egyptian/Greek/Roman history is even more up in the air, considering that we are talking about thousands of years before.

People from the era, and before, were very serious. During her trial, Joan showed an unique talent for explaining to the English judges how they were little more than sad asses. This comes from English sources. It wasn't redacted. It wasn't softened. It even wasn't a surprise, as, back when Joan arrived at Chinon, she was interrogated by the hostile French Church - and she showed an unique talent for explaining to the French judges how they were little more than sad asses. And this comes from French sources.

We have only two possibilities here:

A) Joan had an unique talent for explaining why "la creme" of a given Church should just go home - and they were honest enough to record this as it happened.

Or...

B) Two enemy churches met and said "Our political leaders are at war, but... let's invent an imaginary tale where a peasant girl is enough to show how we are all morons (who should just go home). Of course we will have to meet regularly so to maintain continuity."

What of the two? Somehow, in these cases I'm always more inclined towards A.

Quote from: Reckall on August 14, 2023, 07:14:31 PMThus proving that you haven't moved on at all

Yeah I'm done. I've legitimately tried to move on in good faith, and extend the olive branch, but apparently defending myself is me not moving on.

You have a good day.

Quote from: Grognard GM on August 14, 2023, 07:09:10 PM
You seem to be fixating on certain fictitious depictions of female knights/warriors, and porting them to Pendragon as NPC's, is that correct?

No. From back in 2010, this talk was about an expansion for Pendragon about the (mostly) Italian and French tales from the era.

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What I am saying, to be crystal clear, is that a female Knight:

1) Doesn't need to be as badass as the Heroines in the literature you mention.

What are you even saying here? If we expand Pendragon to contemporary tales with famous badass female heroines we should not portray them the way they were described??

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A woman that is dubbed as a Knight is a Knight. She could be barely adequate from the side of physical and combat abilities, but, say, pure of heart and strong willed. Most men would be impressed that a woman would, and could, even scrape by the physical challenges of Knighthood, making her special because of her sex.

Cool! Write your tale with such a character and go with God! Tales from 1400 onwards (and before actually) had different characters. Those are the ones that we have to respect .

I mean, what you are even talking about? "Let's take Bradamante back!" the way Evil Hat "Takes the Mythos back!"?? If it is about Lovecraft I want Lovecraft. If it is about the Orlando Furioso I want the Orlando Furioso - not "what a XXI Century Marine explains about women in battle" (or how Cthulhu doesn't exist).

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2) The heroines in those stories are incredible because they're usually the protagonist

Clorinda isn't the protagonist of the Gerusalemme Liberata (not even Tancredi is: the main character is Goffredo di Buglione). Bradamante isn't the protagonist of L'Orlando Furioso. I could go on - but I see that it is futile. I gave you the free text of these poems, and you just proved that you aren't interested in reading (*) - not when making thing up is easier. I think we can stop here.

(*) Or even looking things up on Wikipedia, for what matters.

For me, the real breaking point is going to be how Pendragon 6th Edition handles Christianity. The last time I'm aware of that the line touched on the subject (Stafford's Book of Uther, published by Nocturnal), they seemed to be going with an anachronistic, egalitarian "British Christianity" and a more historical "Roman Christianity" as distinct things.

Any company pushing "safety tools" is definitely woke:

Quote from: Armchair Gamer on August 14, 2023, 09:21:45 PM
For me, the real breaking point is going to be how Pendragon 6th Edition handles Christianity. The last time I'm aware of that the line touched on the subject (Stafford's Book of Uther, published by Nocturnal), they seemed to be going with an anachronistic, egalitarian "British Christianity" and a more historical "Roman Christianity" as distinct things.

That's not anachronistic, that's current scholarship! Modern historians seem to say that was the actual state of affairs - that pre-Viking, around the seventh century, it wasn't just a two-way struggle between the Canterbury-centric Rome-sent missionaries (596) and the Pagans, but that there was also a significant Christian presence left over from the Roman-era dissemination of the faith. Bishops didn't have authority over Abbotts or take their orders from Rome.

References: The British History Podcast touches on this in many episodes; https://www.thebritishhistorypodcast.com/research-materials/ might be a place to start reading seriously.

For easy reading https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregorian_mission:

* "... by the time the last of them died in 653, they had established Christianity in Kent and the surrounding countryside and contributed a Roman tradition to the practice of Christianity in Britain." Christianity was already being practiced in a non-Roman fashion.

* (after the Anglo-Saxon-Jute invasions) ... "Though most of Britain remained Christian, isolation from Rome bred a number of distinct practices—Celtic Christianity—including emphasis on monasteries instead of bishoprics, differences in calculation of the date of Easter, and a modified clerical tonsure."

The Venerable Bede himself writes about the non-Roman Christians on the island - nothing positive, to be sure, but he documents they were already there.

If you want to read more of Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celtic_Christianity casts some doubts on the term but extensively discusses the history of Insular Christianity, including many paragraphs specific to the islands.

In all these discussions about women warriors, nobody has mentioned the role of virginity, except perhaps tangentially, i.e. the heroine leaves her fighting days behind her after she gets married. At least in medieval/renaissance texts, the link between virginity and female prowess could be due to the example of the Greek goddesses Athene and Artemis, whereas the wholly non-virginal goddess Aphrodite is the very antithesis of war and fighting. And to give a Germanic example, Brünhild from the Nibelungenlied is more powerful than any man except Siegfried until she loses her virginity and she thereon becomes a proper lady and wife (although she remains arrogant).

Quote from: I on August 15, 2023, 12:17:38 AM
Any company pushing "safety tools" is definitely woke:

Alas.

Have you noticed how she almost doesn't makes any examples at all? Even more, these "safety tools" do seem to be a Nazi-version of what it was once called Common Sense. Agreeing to play a game enjoyed by everyone, some basic rules for the table, unwelcomed topics (for example, absolutely no rape with me - but it can still be implied that a female NPC was prisoner for years of a Evil Wizard(tm) and a son was born from that occurrence), miscellanea. I do "Session Zero" since forever - also because if you start to play in, let's say, the Forgotten Realms or Dragonlance, you need to lay down how these worlds are different from vanilla D&D (spells, classes etc.).

And it is my job as the DM to be sure that everybody is involved and is having fun - and to be aware when someone is bothered. It is since my first DMing experience at 16 - I don't need a traffic light in the middle of the table.

Anyway, I still think that all comes down to a generation of young people who are suffering from a pandemy of mental-health problems. They don't take diving licences, the average age of the first sexual experience is now two years later than the previous generation (!), they simply don't want to go "out there" because they are scared (for a dark statistic, suicides are 150%-200% higher than the average number from the end of WWII to 2010; luckily, some just resort to self-harm).

Thus, I can understand the anxiety of someone who, after hearing that he will play in a medieval setting, immediately fears "RAPE!!!" To this generation, words are facts. We can deride trigger warnings, safe spaces and "Common Sense is, on this table, an ironclad contract insured by MetLife", but there is a reason if these things now exist.

Before someone screams "woke!" I have a surprise for you: I think that all these nu-ways to play are dangerous - because the underlying mental health problem is simply reinforced. "To go out there" means to break an arm (so you won't be again so stupid), to learn how to recognise seedy people, to tackle unsavory problems... and to be able to tell to a GM what you are not liking and why. If you can't do this, seek professional help, because you are not functioning. "Safety Tools" can be a crutch but, like any crutch, it is a need created by unwelcome events, and one's aim should be to get rid of it...

...And what we have here? A glorification of the crutch! Believe me, the first time one will default on his mortgage payments, the bank won't say "Well, we can bother him because this is in his list of unwelcome topics..."

Quote from: Naburimannu on August 15, 2023, 03:27:45 AM

Quote from: Armchair Gamer on August 14, 2023, 09:21:45 PM
For me, the real breaking point is going to be how Pendragon 6th Edition handles Christianity. The last time I'm aware of that the line touched on the subject (Stafford's Book of Uther, published by Nocturnal), they seemed to be going with an anachronistic, egalitarian "British Christianity" and a more historical "Roman Christianity" as distinct things.

That's not anachronistic, that's current scholarship! Modern historians seem to say that was the actual state of affairs - that pre-Viking, around the seventh century, it wasn't just a two-way struggle between the Canterbury-centric Rome-sent missionaries (596) and the Pagans, but that there was also a significant Christian presence left over from the Roman-era dissemination of the faith. Bishops didn't have authority over Abbotts or take their orders from Rome.

    Oh, that's not the anachronism. The anachronisms are things like claiming the British Church:

   "

• reveres the sacred cup of resurrection as being of greater importance than the cross of death.
• has no priests, but instead has Teachers, sometimes also called Shepherds.
• allows women teachers and abbesses who are fully equal to the males

" (Book of Uther, pp. 76-77)

    Now, ancient British Christianity isn't my area of specialty, so perhaps there is scholarship suggesting those facts, but I've never heard anything about that, whereas I was aware of the separate and abbot-centric flavor of British Christianity before Augustine of Canterbury, the Synod of Whitby, etc. And there's a trend through Pendragon's history and late 20th century Arthuriana in general of representing the British/Celtic Church as a 'kinder, gentler' (and often more libertine) Christianity. In fact, as I understand it, Pelagius (who's held up in Pendragon 4E and onward, if not earlier, as a precursor of tolerance and open-mindedness) started down the path to error because he was irked by the laxity of Roman Christians in works of penance and asceticism.