[prof1515]

Actually, I put that quote in there for humor and to express the fact that to design something, you need to know a little about who's going to use it.  As for my "concern over 'chivalry'" and my view of women, it appears you don't know much about me or for that matter people in general.  As for the title, "the fairer sex" is a term that is used, regardless of accuracy, to describe women and I thought the use of "fairer sex" and "fairness" was a nice little play on words.  You've taken it from that and turned it into "how (I) view women."

I cited one example.  Sadly, I don't have the time to go off on a tangent and explain everything to someone who's upset because she's misinterpreted my words.  Teaching people?  That's my occupation.  But as far as MUDs go, they're recreation, though they can be intelligent recreation that can stimulate one to learn more about what they experience in the game such as setting, etc.

Sadly, not every woman does view it on emotional and personal levels.  In fact, I can recall one female I know who stated that if male and female characters weren't equal in every way, she wouldn't play that MUD.  I've run across many others that weren't interested in a MUD where they felt they couldn't do everything a male can do (regardless if male characters couldn't do everything a female character could).

When one uses parenthesis to denote a direct quote, it should actually be a direct quote and not your own opinion posed as someone else's.

I didn't say your post was "knee-jerk", I said your reaction was.  Your post was for the most part quite level-headed and accurate, but your initial response appeared, at least to me, to indicate that you were responding more in reaction than in suggestion.

That's what I've spent a good amount of time doing.  However, I'm also trying to simultaneously avoid the pitfall of making female characters mundane, as was said by another poster above, while avoiding taking them too out of context with the setting.

While also ignoring the initial problem of fitting this into the historical period.  You wrote:

Now, if these opportunities were not available in the said time period, it's impossible for them to be attained.  As it were, there were some analogous roles in the period I'm working on, but unfortunately, it would have to be pointed out that they were still subordinate to men of supposedly-equal standing.  Nevertheless, such opportunities (as possible) are going to be available in the MUD, for both male and female players but characters would likely be confined by their social standing and other relevant factors.

You went from discussing the MUD to discussing the problems of reality.  If that's not hopping on a "Feminazi High Horse" (your term, not mine), what is?  You took the time, in a discussion of how to make a historical MUD more palatable in spite of period limitations upon women, to talk about "21st Century women" and how they won't want to step back into a period where their role was different.  I'm well aware of that problem, since that's the topic of this discussion essentially, and your reiteration of it came across not as constructive but as soap-boxing.

Actually, that's one of the topics I'm debating.  Should suffrage in this time period, one in which women could not exercise it, be modified to allow women for the sake of fairness, since women eventually did win this battle (though it took a long time).

This is actually very good discussion and I agree with your points.  The only part that has to be watched, and this applies to male and female characters equally, is that "opportunity" to become what they want is sometimes just not possible, both from a cultural perspective and a administrative perspective (for example, no vampires, sorry folks).  But in both cases, that's something that applies equally to both male and female characters.  As for worrying about it now, I’d like to try and address problems before they arise by being proactive instead of reactive.

Now, judging by the different parts of your posts, I'm going to work off the premise that you didn't mean to come across as a "Feminazi" and hope you understand I'm not as easily stereotyped as you claimed.

Take care,

Jason

*Entire post edited due to MASSIVE citation syntax errors. *grin* #### it.

[shadowfyr]

Interesting how attempts to provide medieval type systems ignore modern facts. Yes, men may be bigger and stronger in most cases, which I would figure translates into slighlty higher CON and STR, but women tend to have shown in the tests run by the military to have much higher stamina/endurance and dexterity. Stamina/endurance isn't exactly a common attribute for games, but could be provided as a bonus to something like the concentration/skill/spell points used in many to allow special actions or spell casting, this mean that even if they can't attack as hard, they might be able to fight longer without resting. And DEX, tends to make it both easier to hit stuff, harder to 'be' hit and even for some guilds can increase the number of times you do hit. The nature of the combat used may change, making strength dependent things less practical, but that doesn't mean women can't have a major advantage in some other fashion. Equality isn't about perfectly identical abilities, its about getting to the same result, albet in a different way. So they can't swing a huge club as well, just don't let them have something small, lightweight and fast, or you won't have a chance to even start swinging the club. "That" is how things should be balanced, not some artificial equality.

As for all the chivalry, etc. Someone, I don't remember who, made the point in an article a number of year ago that the heroes are the 'abnormal' ones in society. One does not expect them to act exactly like the general populace, any more than someone would have expected Bonecia, from Scottish history to knit a tea cozey while the Romans where invading, instead of sacking London.

[prof1515]

[Fern]

(ignore this space - it's empty)

[Fern]

Let's see.  I figure in the space of about 25 words (or less) I could break loose and turn into a frothing feminist, lay the smack down about the reality of the feminine condition throughout history, fact-check the preceding messages in excruciating and highly annoying detail (ie - it's spelled Boadicea or Boudicca or Boudica, depending on the source - and she was as likely to knit a tea cozy as I am to win the 2012 Olympics gymnastic gold from my wheelchair).

But I've reached that venerable age where I am allowed to be eccentric (*waves her several-year-old AARP card in the air), and that seems to grant permission to be grumpy if I so choose (or bake cookies for grandkids). However, in lieu of the frothing feminist approach, I'll stick with the simple question, which seems to have been lost someplace along the path of the past few pages:  What is your end goal?

Sure, folks like to deal with adversity as a character-building exercise.  But from what I've seen over the years, the adversity they enjoy dealing with is -external -: thwart the invading orcs, protect the castle against attack, strengthen a failing economy, keep the wolves at bay while the kids escape, etc etc...  I can't recall a single gameplay instance where someone trumpeted about sweet victory over their acne or in-game bad hair day. Triumph over internal adversity seems to fall by the wayside.

I enjoy 'reasonable realism' in games.  I've played a few where, my characters being of the female gender, my stats relative to a male character were shifted - they got more STR; I got more WIS or INT.  In an RP environment, my characters have been turned away from some social opportunities due to gender. At the end of the day, things work out pretty well all around.  Gameplay experience is preserved, and I'm not averse to being smarter than the warrior-guy leading my formation (long as he gets hit first).

But realism does not necessarily translate well to 'reality within gameplay.'  I have also played one game where I found my character having to stop combat and find a bush in the wilderness to take a ****. To my thinking, this did not enhance my gameplay experience one whit, and I didn't even bother to type 'save' before 'quit.'  

Gamewise, realism starts and gameplay ends. Rarely is realism injected in the game to provide convenience or comfort for the player. Instead, it seems many game designers use realism to thwart progress, diminish performance, degrade stability and interfere with escape. If I -wanted- to squat behind a bush for 5 minutes, furtively glancing from east to west for wandering coyotes and brigands, I'd just go out into my front yard and squat in the oleander out by the highway.  By the same token, if I wanted to get close to the less-than-equal conditions medieval life provided for the 'fairer sex'  or the peasant class, I'd go read any of Barbara Tuchman's well-written books or grab any of a number of bodice-ripping romances with Fabio on the front. I doubt seriously I would seek out a game based on a built-in 'realistic gender bias.'  (Read Tuchman's A Distant Mirror if you want to get up close and personal with the 14th century.)

If your goal is to provide a highly realistic gaming experience, and still have players choose to keep characters there and play it on a regular basis, involve a handful of trusted and more mature players in the design. Gather their thoughts and sense their tolerances to what gets proposed.  Want to incorporate blood lines and families with inherited characteristics?  Bring it up to your player design council and watch for lightbulbs to pop on over their heads.  If they balk, aim that note at the trash bin in the corner.

Propose the gender inequities that have historical validity to your timeframe, and listen to the responses.  If it gets shouted down, there's that good ole trash bin.

I would recommend reading Chapter 3 - Players - from Richard Bartle's Designing Virtual Worlds (C 2003 - New Riders Publishing). Read it from start to finish, with an ear for player immersion and tolerance. Actually I'd recommend this read to anyone on the verge of designing a MUD, but for many many more reasons.  Highlight the heck out of the section pertaining to Community (unless it's a library book).

Then read  Chapter 6, the portion on Gender Studies. You may find his discussion answers some of your underlying concerns, including the 'should we do this' one. If you're a sensitive sort or offended by plain speaking or reference to delicate subjects, skip the above.

Move on to the acquisition of as many books by Frances and Joseph Geis as you can afford. In particular, look for Women in the Middle Ages (Geis and Geis, C 1978 - and reprinted by Barnes and Noble in 1980).  Take this in hand along with a few of their other books, Life in a Medieval City, Life in a Medieval Castle, Life in a Medieval Village, The Knight in History - and several more.  Each book is small but intense and priceless references for the capture of the essence of the timeframe.

Well, I didn't start out to write a lesson on game module design references -and my apologies if it seems that I have.  Bottom line:  listen to your players and sense their tolerances. If you don't have players, or don't have very many players with that level of maturity, then barring that, I'd suggest setting up a forum to discuss it off the game with the option of anonymity and a tight rein on the moderator seat.  If it is made clear up front that counterproductive thinking, snide remarks, hostility and immaturity are unwelcome, you may find yourself gaining a quite remarkable insight into what your game community members of both genders wish to see.

Best of luck in this - Fern

[shadowfyr]

True in both cases. However, one doesn't hear the British singing about her as a folk hero, so she is more of a Scottish historical figure than British or even more improbable, Irish. I did get the spelling wrong though, but that hardly negates my point.

[shadowfyr]

One thing to also consider is that most of the historical definitions of who got treated how could be written as, "How things where done in the big city." There was a lot more variety and less obsessiveness in outlying places and a lot of what did happen was due to hundreds of years of the same sort of indotrination the church tried on indians in California and other places where they set up missions. Given a few hundred years of everyone that disagrees with so called 'chivalry' getting axed, its not hard to imagine the true nature of things getting badly skewed. There are numerous examples of how the way women where treated in the middle ages was 'abnormal' from the perspective of many cultures, even in the same regions.

If you want to be realistic, you would have to also make clerics the 'enforcers' of those standards, the king jump at every sneeze of the church and hold stonings, burnings or just flat out murder as 'standard' everyday events enforcing the standards. At least for the first few hundred years of the 'social order'. As Fern would no doubt state, chivalry was a fiction. It was a pure white suite, which society told the exucutioner to where, in between beheadings. Assuming you get the analogy. But some people only want to see the supposed 'positive' behaviour that came from the pretense of putting a woman up on a pedistal, then chaining her their, so she couldn't get down to do anything.

[prof1515]

[prof1515]

Agreed, a lot of common misconceptions about what "chivalry" entailed (and there are different applications of that term over different periods of time) have molded the typical thought regarding that word.

Likewise however, the role of the Church is equally misunderstood. But I'm looking at a time period later than medieval so I'm facing a double problem: not only do people not understand concepts like chivalry, they don't understand them beyond the medieval sense of that word. Chivalry actually had numerous restrictions upon men as well in later times. Both genders were constantly on their toes about every aspect of their behavior.

You're also right about the lower classes, for whom a lot of this just didn't apply. They had better things on their minds, like survival, to think about. But in the countryside, you'd still find chivalry and its nuances practiced. It was more class-oriented than geographic in its use.

Take care,

Jason

[Fifi]

My suggestion would be to assign attributes or aptitudes where there were gender bonuses, but leave all the actual classes open to either gender.

I would be turned off by a game where I couldn't play a warrior or a thief or a what have you and was relegated to being a bard or a merchant. However, I think that having a size cap or strength cap that was lower for women would not be offensive. There should of course be an overlap. Perhaps a strong woman would not be as strong as buff man, but her strength should be greater than that of a weak man.

Men might be stronger and faster, women have better endurance and pain tolerance.

What would truly **** me off is to have mental (though not necessarily magical) characteristics have gender differentiation.

[Fifi]

I disagree. I don't want to be relegated to some new agey cut out of "what a woman should be."

[Fifi]

Finally, referencing my earlier post where I said that all classes should be open to female pc's, I wanted to elaborate and say that this doesn't mean that playing those classes would be as accessable socially. In a realistic world of chivalry there might be some cultural bias against women in certain roles, and part of the fun could having to suck it up and deal with it. Conflict is an essential tool in any type of story telling. Conversely it shouldn't be so unprecidented as to be impossible.

[prof1515]

[Fifi]

[quote= (prof1515 @ June 20 2005,20:57)]Inequality can be a great rp too. An impetus. Total repression might be harder to sell.

[prof1515]

[quote= (Fifi @ June 20 2005,21:07)]"Total repression" is far more likely in cultures based on economics (or in a few cases like the U.S., race) than gender. That's not to say it hasn't occured. But fear not, the time period I'm looking at wouldn't fit that mold.

Take care,

Jason

[Earthmother]

[Iluvatar]

I dunno, I'm just an old man who likes to create worlds and MUDs, but don't we provide an environment where anybody can be anyone or anything they really wish to be based on available choices? They do it because it's FUN! They are challenged, they have aspirations, they have MUD lives and way too often real lives insinuates itself into that make-believe world.

If we design our worlds where every woman has the potential to be Joan of Arc or Jackie Kennedy or Xena types and every man has the potential to be Napolean or Conan or Andy Warhol types, it's out of our hands and we can sit back and watch and learn how each settles into a role they choose for themselves. I realize you're doing a RP model Prof, but sheesh, how about enabling the base parameters and just let the players seek their own level regardless of gender. I honestly don't think you can construct ANY positive reinforcement tools for expected gender behavior within RP yet without making wrong assumptions.

Earthmom, you're simply amazing with the rhetoric and I applaud your comments and endorse the non-flame aspects wholeheartedly.

Fern, you busy next Saturday night young lady?

[prof1515]

[Fifi]

Since the middle ages for women was a life of needlepoint, prayer and waiting to die (if you were rich and lucky. Other wise it was pushing out pups, and potato farming, cooking and cleaning and waiting to die) how are you planning to sell that? Why would it be fun?

[Fifi]

That's a great idea. That sounds like fun.

But Prof, it means that the opportunities have to be there. If women are coded not to be able to do these things, what are you offering the female pc?