[SnowTroll]

If you have 100 players, 50 of whom are female (or males playing female characters), 26 or more of which enjoy playing an inferior character, and 50 of whom are male, at least 45 of which ascribe to the discriminatory system and tow the party line, that system works. If you're a normal mud with 20 players, 7 of which are female, all of which are badass, nobody cares if the setting is supposed to involve women being inferior.

[Verbannon]

I mean I've seen female characters RPed as extra womanly but generally the only people who tell them to get the prostotutish sex having bum in the kitchen to make them a sandwich are the people playing a jerk character. And I think that may be a bigger issue there.

Its easy to RP racial discrimation, because there are generally easy built in reasons for it. extra life length, tendencies towards evil, competition for resources ect.

But where sexism is concerned, first off I'm not even sure what discrimination would be like. Unless you assume that the culture is a place where women are supposed to be married off as soon as they are old enough to do it. In which case immediately making every player woman an outcast regardless of how they are RPed.

If you just want women to be enforced as the weaker sex then, well actual discrimination will still be seen by the players as a jerkish or lawful stupid act. So still pretty much limited to those two types actually discriminating beyond the rest of the players having like two seconds of RP where they act pleasantly surprised at how strong the woman is, or just try to continue acting the part of the manly protector anyway.

Lets just face, Sexism is considered a bad thing, because it honestly is. Players will have a hard time making a sexist character who isn't a jerk or generally bad. And will have a really hard time making their otherwise good, decent save the baby from the burning house character sexist.

[cruelcore]

It's not so much inferior more than it is a gender role. I don't think this sort of setting could be enforced unless there were many more skills outside of just combat. Say, cooking/tailoring/crafting whatever and it's codedly impossible to be great at everything. A male who wanted to be a great cook would likely suffer the same social stigma as a warrior woman. But aside from that - I don't disagree with you. The theme is as prominent as the players choose to portray to be.

I am going to have to disagree with you here. There's many reasons why a character might have those views beyond FOR THE EVULZ. Maybe the species is nearing extinction. Maybe tribe x is in constant competition with tribe y and wants to keep as many women alive as possible to basically just pump out as many babies as humanly possible. Maybe he just believes it because it's what has always been taught and he's never given a thought to it otherwise.

And I'll have to say Sexist=/=Evil. It's good when characters have flaws. My character might be a aristocratic, brainwashed fanatic of a tyrant leader - but he could still genuinely care for the well being of those within his community. Same is true with sexism. My 'manly man' might feel pity for warrior woman x for being so confused. The character can still be sympathetic. He might have been bullied as child for not being man enough. He might just not know any better.

A good article for that would be .

[Verbannon]

Do you have an example that won't require designing the mud around making sexism feasible?

Also I just thought of another thing making enforced sexism impractical. Imagine if say a guy made a a MUD that enforced real world racism. Whites were the dominant color, blacks second rate citizens at best, it was legal to kill jews and homosexals at will. And Asians were only expected to work on railroads.

Is there anyone who wouldn't think the guy wasn't a racist in real life and made the MUD just so he could live out his racist fantasies?

I think the same thing applies to MUDs. A MUD with enforced sexism will make the MUD owner look bad, and people could likely assume he just wants to live out his sexist fantasies.

[cruelcore]

You don't have to design the mud around making sexism feasible. Just making it thematic and hoping players stay in theme is all I had been suggesting. I wasn't trying to persuade any one into trying to make one more than I wondered if such a game currently existed.

My thoughts on that mud example you gave are this: as long as it remains in a game, a fantasy, IC when the players themselves obviously know what their characters are doing is wrong, then I don't particularly care. Most roleplaying is wish fulfillment. I pretend to chop mother****ers up on several muds because it makes me feel powerful. I've seen people play serial killers. I have RL to be dull and unintresting in.

The way Firanmux justifies it is that it highlights why these sorts of things aren't acceptable IRL. Especially since the game has thematic rape. Fluffy bunnies and rainbow themed muds don't particularly intrest me. If the mud owner was obviously portraying the racists as being in the right in an OOC sort of way, then I'd be concerned.

[Bogre]

The short answer is: No, a mud like this does not currently exist.

Frankly, I don't think one would be very successful. The amount of people looking for that type of RP is, I'm sure, very, very minimal.

[joyofdiscord]

Armageddon is a great MUD for enforced nastiness and racism between humanoid species, although there are no prejudices taken from the real world (skin-color, sexism, homophobia). There are some dimwits now and then that try to take some kind of "harsh world reproductive imperative" as a logical axiom and derive sexism and homophobia from it and claim that it must be part of the world. Unfortunately, the RPI type of gameworld lends itself to people thinking that "realistic" or "logical" by itself is reason to argue to include a feature in a game. Adding homophobia to the violent and unforgiving world of Armageddon would make gay-bashing a game theme. I don't care what half-baked evo-psych argument someone wants to come up with, I'm not interested in playing a game where gay-bashing is a theme.

The relevant factor is as always "What makes the game better?" Do tired sexist cliches imported directly from real life make a roleplay game better? Who would want to play that game? Would you want to play with the kind of players that would want to play that game? Bogre is right on the money. Yeah, I'm sure there are some creepy Gor MUDs out there or something, but at that point we're basically talking interactive text porn. Personally I just don't see how real-life bigotry adds anything to a fantasy game. If you want tiresome real-life prejudices, go outside or turn on your TV or something. There is no shortage. You can get all the same compelling "struggle against adversity" storylines and roleplay with prejudices that are native to the fantasy world.

[SnowTroll]

That's an interesting point right there. If people really wanted to be logical, a mud where people hate Dwarves (for example) is stupid and poorly thought out. Dwarves are strong, hardy, hard-working, skilled, healthy, butt-kicking badasses. Everybody wants Dwarf-forged weaponry. A mud where people hate homosexuality IC is pretty darn logical and realistic by comparison. People who engage in sexual practices that don't lead to procreation, just physical gratification -- essentially a waste of time. That's an easy hate to justify in a harsh world where time and resources are limited, even without getting into religion, nature, people being uncomfortable, or whatever other real world factors influence real world bigots. Dwarves mine metal and make swords. Elves are magical geniuses. Even Hobbits bake a mean loaf of bread.

It would be really easy to justify a fantasy world where people don't like the clearly weaker gender, or don't like homosexuality, or don't like a race that's actually inferior and not good for anything. Not that anybody would actually want to play a mud like that. That would be an aggravating mud to play. But it's a hard sell to justify a fantasy world where race A doesn't like race B because the help documentation says so. "You're awesome at all the things I'm not and if we ever teamed up, we'd be the perfect complement for each other and the world would tremble beneath the might of our combined empires, but when I type help Elf, I'm told that I'm supposed to dislike your culture and try to kill you."