Mike Holmes wrote: Excellent example bang, with the pregnant healer. Yep, that's classic. Consider that there's a hidden "Sex" Keyword on each character's sheet - we've been over this on the rules list. So all issues of maleness, or femaleness (including pregnancy) are automatically valid for all characters.

The problem in this situation is that the female player in this case is being forced to make a personal statement about how comfortable she is with this sort of thing. It's quite complex - I don't think it's that women have a problem playing a sexual character, I think that they rightly have a problem when a man forces them to display just how interested they are in these things by forcing them to create a response in-character.

Basically, it's the player using his position in the game to feel someone out, without the normal repercussions for doing so. Very invasive.

Except in this case, I knew that this wasn't what Fred was up to. I'm not Fred's bestest friend or anything, but he's a member of this community who participates conscientiously, and from what I knew of him, I was pretty sure that he was just playing out the drama of the scene as he felt best (in fact, he opened up his character in that the scene was based on a misunderstanding on his part that he'd enginnered knowingly - he was just asking to get shot down). I almost stepped in, just because I thought that Adrienne might be uncomfortable anyhow. But she seemed to catch on to what Fred was up to, so I didn't. I hope that I was reading things correctly. Hard via chat.

Instead, the pressure ended up creating a pretty neat situation. Adrienne told me today that she's purchased a "Conflicted about Okhfels" ability for he character (that's Fred's character). And I think he might have something similar. Meaning that it's just rife with all sorts of potential conflict in the future.

But, generally, all players must feel that they're equal participants in looking at issues, or they're not going to have fun. So no player should be there just to be the subject of other players objectification. Be it sex, religion, age or whatever that's being preyed upon.

I'm still not sure what your issue is with sex as a keyword, or why it might make you uncomfortable, but, sure, start a new thread so we can elaborate on it.

The "rules list" is: http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/HeroQuest-rules/

You may have trouble finding it there, however, as it's pretty high volume. Might just be easier for me to synopsize in the new thread.

StalkingBlue wrote:

Except in this case, I knew that this wasn't what Fred was up to. I'm not Fred's bestest friend or anything, but he's a member of this community who participates conscientiously, and from what I knew of him, I was pretty sure that he was just playing out the drama of the scene as he felt best (in fact, he opened up his character in that the scene was based on a misunderstanding on his part that he'd enginnered knowingly - he was just asking to get shot down). I almost stepped in, just because I thought that Adrienne might be uncomfortable anyhow. But she seemed to catch on to what Fred was up to, so I didn't. I hope that I was reading things correctly. Hard via chat.

Instead, the pressure ended up creating a pretty neat situation. Adrienne told me today that she's purchased a "Conflicted about Okhfels" ability for he character (that's Fred's character). And I think he might have something similar. Meaning that it's just rife with all sorts of potential conflict in the future.

Sure, it sounds as if it is leading to cool play. Do you think she is aware that she could have played her character the same way? (I mean, with her character hitting on Okhfels? Assuming that this would be acceptable play in your game.)

StalkingBlue wrote:
I’ve never been entirely happy with the "sexless” approach that DnD 3.x (for instance) takes to characters; but I’ve found in running games that it was important for female players to have this “protected space” to expand into and start enjoying roleplaying.

My first reaction when I realised that he was sensitive to issues of race was to try and downplay antagonism between species in Midnight; but once I was treading more lightly, he embraced the racism/species-ism theme I'd introduced earlier (rather thoughtlesssly) with such gusto that it has ended up adding fun and depth to the game for both of us.

Sorry to take so long getting to this.

StalkingBlue wrote: It took me a while to work out what to say to this and where I want to go with it. My most traumatic experiences of dysfunctional play have happened in this dimension.

I’ve never been entirely happy with the "sexless” approach that DnD 3.x (for instance) takes to characters; but I’ve found in running games that it was important for female players to have this “protected space” to expand into and start enjoying roleplaying. This is certainly true for players with past abusive play experience (I’m among them, so I can empathise),

but I’ve also found it true of female players who had never played a roleplaying game before and came into a group of friends that was supportive and non-sexist and already had female players with strong female characters in it.

I’m not sure what this is except that there must be some set of unspoken assumptions, both at the game level and at the Social Contract level. I can feel it, I can see players act upon it and in some blatant cases I can put a finger on it, but it’s difficult to grasp for me.

I guess that what most bothers me about the “hidden Sex keyword” isn’t that you say it exists (I agree, it exists even in games played using other systems that refuse to support it mechanically, such as DnD) or that it might be a cool thing to have (I tentatively agree, depending on what sets of abilities are in it), but that it is in fact hidden. The hidden-ness disempowers the player – usually, but not always, the female player of a female PC.

We have probably all heard of, or experienced, some typical “abilities” in the Sex keyword. "Defenceless against Conception" is one. "Available to be Hit On by Anyone No Matter How Grotesque" is another. On the male side (more common in grossly immature games) there’s “Catches STDs in a Wink”.

The way I’ve worded them, these are all indications of something dysfunctional and disempowering happening in play. They are extreme examples (although sadly not invented) of flaws, flaws that are all the worse because they are hidden. The worst things is that in my experience, female players tend to expect their character to have both the above flaws, and act accordingly, even though they aren’t on the character sheet and perhaps not even in the GM’s mind (certainly not in mine when I run a game – I’ve learnt to mention these things to female players at some point and always find they are surprised and relieved that they may not be as limited in their options of acceptable play as they expected).

Strangely enough, male players often don’t see a problem with playing a female character who “Can Get Anything in Return for Sex”, and does. Female players don’t do that – not only because this would make for a rather sad caricature of a female, but also (as I see it) because they tend to perceive the female keyword as containing only limitations and flaws, not powers and options. Again, I’ve found this true even for new players who hadn’t played ever before and who weren’t coming into a sexist group.

So yeah, I suppose these keywords need to come out into the open so everyone can see what is or isn’t in them. And they have to have nifty stuff in them that you’d actually want to play.

I guess a female keyword could have, say, a “Give Birth to Child” ability in it, as you’ve written somewhere. But the higher the likelihood of becoming pregnant, the more it’ll limit options for play for female characters. So should there be a "Contraception" ability in the keyword? I don’t think I’d ever determine pregnancy with die rolls, I’d always let the player decide.

The general question here is, can we find keywords that make both sexes appealing to play? That don’t limit one sex more than the other? Or if one is more limiting in certain circumstances, what’s the compensation in other situations that are just as likely to come up in play? This last bit is important. By making characters of one sex less viable and interesting to play, you limit the players of the same sex: they are forced to either live with limitations or play a sex that is not their own, regardless of their own preference.

For instance, “Give Birth to Child” would be less interesting in a game geared towards combat or exploration than in a game centred around, say, day-to-day life in a specific village or location.

Not sure what a male keyword would even have in it – all the abilities/flaws that have tended to come up in my experience relate to being female, almost never to being male.

What is sadder is that in most groups you don’t even have the option of defining your own character’s sexuality until someone decides to hit on you.

Most GMs provide opportunities for male characters, but never the females; and many groups cringe at female players playing a sexually active female character. (Weirdly enough, the male player's “Get Anything for Sex” caricature doesn’t get the same reaction.) Even where none of these obstacles exist, female players tend to limit themselves – I have yet to meet a female player happy to find out by trying.

Sure, it sounds as if it is leading to cool play. Do you think she is aware that she could have played her character the same way? (I mean, with her character hitting on Okhfels? Assuming that this would be acceptable play in your game.)

But religion, age, also race, appear somewhere in the game stats, so they are easier to handle than the “hidden” one, sex. At least you know what you’re dealing with; even a highly sexist and limiting keyword would be better than no visible keyword at all, because at least you know what you are getting into and can say no to it before it happens.

On a related note, I’ve only recently learnt to be sensitive about racial issues in games, from a player with an Asian background; these days I look differently at the Elves he likes to play (in a group that is all humans otherwise). My first reaction when I realised that he was sensitive to issues of race was to try and downplay antagonism between species in Midnight; but once I was treading more lightly, he embraced the racism/species-ism theme I'd introduced earlier (rather thoughtlesssly) with such gusto that it has ended up adding fun and depth to the game for both of us.

Mike Holmes wrote: Set aside Nathan's character Aysha who did as you say above making a female character potent this way - Aysha was constantly in conflict with Dana's character Regina for the affection of Brand's character, Thomas. It was tons of fun watching Brand go back and forth between his loyalty for the two characters. He knew Aysha was baaaad, and wanted to be with Regina, but Aysha was just so attractive that he couldn't stop her. In the end, however, Aysha died a nasty death, and Regina saved Thomas (using her interpersonal skills).

I sense that Brand really liked having his character in so much demand, just because he was so butch. Brand? And note that it was Dana that first used Regina's wiles against Thomas.

Heh. There's a discussion right now on the rules list about how to handle the character with really kickass combat scores. I've been explaining about making the contests less combat oriented and other tactics. I should have said - let em loose with some female PCs!

In fact, I feel bad now, because I let the womenfolk run roughshod all over poor Thomas, and his moments in the sun kicking ass were possibly to far between, or too unimportant. In fact, the other ass kicker, Fahja, was also on the bad end of the stick with regards to women - the same Amazon, to be precise. Moral of that story, never take a In Love with Foreign Woman 10W2 flaw when I'm GMing, and expect me not to exploit it!

Dana was the only woman playing in that game, and Adrienne the only in the current game. And Julie the only one in my FTF game (though often Josh is the only guy playing, so...). If any of them would like to comment, positively or negatively on any of this, I'd encourage them to do so.

Mike

Mike Holmes wrote: In fact, the other ass kicker, Fahja, was also on the bad end of the stick with regards to women - the same Amazon, to be precise.

Yikes, I should read this forum more often. :)

Doyce wrote: Just my two cents, but I didn't ever get the impression that she felt trapped into it in any way. She took her time with each reply, in fact, to make sure to come up with just exactly the right kind of response that would say no, while still 'leaving the door open'.

Frankly, that's a relief. It's the impression that I got from how things happened, but, again given the medium, it's often hard to be sure.

Anyhow, so there you have it Kerstin. A player who admittedly was abused this way in prior games, handled correctly, who not has no problems in dealing with this sort of thing in play. Even in IRC, which I think is an accomplishment that the entire group can be proud of, given the difficulties in communication, again.

I completely understand the frustration that you're going through, and I'd be frustrated with the groups you're playing with just based on their treatment of you as well. All I can say is that there's light at the end of this particular tunnel. And it's found in creating the appropriate social environment. If you can't with the people you're playing with, then you'll either have to avoid one of the most important (some would say most important) parts of your characters, or find new people to play with. Frankly, I'd suggest the latter. If they can't respect you regarding this, then how can you expect respect overall?

Mike

Hello,

I usually try not to promote my products too openly in discussions here, but in this case, it's impossible not to: my book Sex & Sorcery is explicitly written to address the concerns raised in this thread, and to my knowledge it is the only existing unified text to do so for role-playing.

A great deal of the ideas presented there were derived, or articulated, during our extensive play of (then-named) Hero Wars. People may also be interested in reading my article Goddess of Rape in Daedalus #1. (The "redeeming" in the article's title was added by the editor)

Best,
Ron

To further legitimize Ron's claim here, I have to say that some of the ideas I have above come, if not directly from Sex & Sorcery, from the same theoretical discussions that I think lead to Ron putting down his ideas on the subject. That is, there have been many discussions of these issues here before that have been very illuminating, and Ron has been the lead on several of them. He knows this stuff cold.

Mike

I'm slightly jumping in here without a great deal of theoretical knowledge. However I am the female player in Kerstin's groupm, so I thought I would chime in with my experiences.

My most uncomfortable experiences of play since I started playing RPGs about three years ago have been to do with my being a woman (typically the only woman in the group, which has often left me feeling somewhat isolated and helpless). I've dealt with sexism both in-character and out-of-character in almost every game I've played in. Kerstin's is the first game I have played in where these issues have been openly addressed, and I feel that the game and the group are better for it. In other games my enjoyment of my characters and the games themselves has often been hampered by other players' expectations (and even demands at times!) of how my character would behave sexually.

A lot of Kerstin's comments at the beginning of this thread really rang true for me. It has often seemed to me that male players tend to use their character's sex (whatever it is) to their advantage, whereas women tend to interpret their character's sex (whatever it is) as a disadvantage. I don't know where that comes from exactly, but it has certainly been reinforced in the majority of groups I've played in.

StalkingBlue wrote: in most groups you don’t even have the option of defining your own character’s sexuality until someone decides to hit on you

Ron, I think that this has definitely defied all attempts to be a Heroquest thread, and is instead a Theory or actual play thread. If you have a moment, maybe it ought to be moved?

Lucy, Kerstin,

I understand that this is a problem in your play. Further, I'm sure that if we tried, we could get many women to come forward with their stories of this sort of problem. Heck, I can give you such stories, having been in games like this myself - not participating in the sexism, but noting it happening, and doing what I could to stop it. Stories like this abound. If you want a real horror story, there was one post on RPG.net that still sticks with me to this day about a particularly blatant GM and some really awful sessions this way (can anyone remember those posts, or hunt up the URLs)?

I don't think that there's any doubt that this happens, nor that it's a common occurance. Nor do I think that there are many out there who would even disagree with the supposition that it's common. I'd say that the behavior you mention is epidemic.

And I understand that, given your experiences that you'd be tentative about playing around sex-related topics. It only makes sense. Even though I can't empathize, I can certainly sympathize, and beyond feeling for you, I hate this sort of thing, because I think it's one of the main reasons so few females play RPGs. Which means that tons of good players aren't playing because of this. That makes me sick on more than one level.

My only question at this point is whether or not what I've pointed out above makes sense given all of this context. Have I missed addressing the issue in some way? Is there anything we can do to help rescue you from this problematic sort of play? Or do you feel that in the new game that you're on the road to recovery yourselves?

Want to make characters for my IRC HQ game?

Mike

Mike Holmes wrote:
Lucy, Kerstin,

I understand that this is a problem in your play. Further, I'm sure that if we tried, we could get many women to come forward with their stories of this sort of problem. Heck, I can give you such stories, having been in games like this myself - not participating in the sexism, but noting it happening, and doing what I could to stop it. Stories like this abound. If you want a real horror story, there was one post on RPG.net that still sticks with me to this day about a particularly blatant GM and some really awful sessions this way (can anyone remember those posts, or hunt up the URLs)?

I don't think that there's any doubt that this happens, nor that it's a common occurance. Nor do I think that there are many out there who would even disagree with the supposition that it's common. I'd say that the behavior you mention is epidemic.

And I understand that, given your experiences that you'd be tentative about playing around sex-related topics. It only makes sense. Even though I can't empathize, I can certainly sympathize, and beyond feeling for you, I hate this sort of thing, because I think it's one of the main reasons so few females play RPGs. Which means that tons of good players aren't playing because of this. That makes me sick on more than one level.

My only question at this point is whether or not what I've pointed out above makes sense given all of this context. Have I missed addressing the issue in some way? Is there anything we can do to help rescue you from this problematic sort of play? Or do you feel that in the new game that you're on the road to recovery yourselves?

Want to make characters for my IRC HQ game?

Hi Lucy and welcome to the Forge!

I can understand your need to rant about this topic, and I really do not have anything to add to the excellent points Mike has made. I do want to say that gaming doesn't have to be fraught with sexual stereotypes. It can encompass sexuality and gender issues and be fun and very satisfying.

Over in the Theory forum, Ben Lehman has listed a number of past discussions on these issues: http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?p=147955#147955

If you want to pursue an all women's group, then I suggest reading this topic from over two years ago:
Exalted Freeform- Unstated Social Contract in Action. I find the described social contract for this group very interesting.

Oh, and Mike is right, this discussion has definitely abandoned Heroquest territory.

Julie

randomling wrote: I'd have to agree with you there, and I apologise if what I posted earlier sounded like a rant.

Agreed there, too. Every now and then I try to get an all-female game together (mostly because I'm curious to see what it would be like), but it always seems to fall flat because I can't find enough players. And it irritates me because I know a good number of women who used to play...

you may have to forgive a lack of theoretical knowledge though, as I'm just starting out at the Forge and just starting out expanding my ideas of what RPGs are about.

Mike Holmes wrote: I realize that this is a common experience for female players. It's common because the player has the facade of a character, and see it as a liscence to live out their fantasies. Not realizing that there are very real human interactions that are actually going on through this mask. The same thing happens on the internet, or at masquerade balls - the theoretical (or even practical) annonymity of the medium means that the person performing the act becomes "detached" from the social repercussion. For an RPG, he thinks, ah, she can't shout at me, at best, her character can shout an my character.

A good response to this is the female player slapping the male player in the face. Facetiousness aside, it would bring the male player back to the realization that he's actually the one playing the game, and that behind the character in question is another human being.

The fact that the player feels "detached" is no excuse for this behavior, which is an exceptionally bad form of "my guy" behavior. Simply the fact that a character behavior might be plausible, does not mean that the player has carte blanch to play the character any way they feel. One must still respect the other players at the table.

There are two types of this behavior, I think. The first is the male who's doing it because he knows it will make the female uncomfortable, and this gives him pleasure. I hope that if anyone detects such a creature in their game that they would immediately eject said creature. I would, and further would likely never play with said player again. The second type is the male that is playing their character "honestly," that is, with no intent to harm anyone, but playing in an insensitive fashion. That is, they're simply playing their character without considering at all what the female player might think of the play. This isn't an indication of a problem with the player's intent, but with them not realizing that play isn't just about satisfying your own needs, but that it's a community thing, and everyone needs to worry about the needs of others.

In the past, I've said that one can play "for themselves" with regard to theme, and I'll stick by that. I don't require that players play for the entertainment of others. My minimum requirement is that everyone play in a manner that allows all of the other players to have fun as well, however. This has to be the requirement of the Social Contract, or someone is being abused.

So, yes, in all cases, male players must approach questions of sex cautiously when dealing with females, understanding that it's possible that they might have issues. This all said, there's a general principle that's been exposed, which relates not just to sex, but to race, or to anything potentially. Simply put: always be sensitive to the other players playing the game.

Now, one shouldn't have to say this, it should be part of every group's social contract. But, again, the nature of RPGs is such that I think it has to be explicitly stated that "playing my guy" does not make any action automatically OK. Heck, we could be talking about foul language for some players, portrayal of religion for others, politics, anything. No amount of "don't take it personally" will ameliorate the uncomfortable feelings that some players may have about some topics. When in doubt, take the three seconds to step out of character, and ask the other player.

Now, does this mean that we can't ever approach these topics? Not at all.

but I’ve also found it true of female players who had never played a roleplaying game before and came into a group of friends that was supportive and non-sexist and already had female players with strong female characters in it.

I’m not sure what this is except that there must be some set of unspoken assumptions, both at the game level and at the Social Contract level. I can feel it, I can see players act upon it and in some blatant cases I can put a finger on it, but it’s difficult to grasp for me.

This I don't get. But then again, I'm not female, and I'm not particularly easily offended by many things (not having ever been a vicitm of abuse, descrimination, etc).

But, my lack of empathy aside, I've seen games in which females were engaged in playing around sex themes. So my thought here is that this has to be a personal thing. I'm not saying that only abused players have a special need here. I'm saying that I don't think that we can really generalize. We have to treat each player as an individual with individual predilections.

So, no, I don't agree that there's an automatic space that's needed regarding sex in every game. I do think that one does have to automatically consider that such a space might be needed. This is not the same. It's precisely the assumption that the person in question will automatically be offended by anything sexual in the game that drops sex out of most RPGs. Even when there are no females around.

Note this last effect - it's interesting. It's often an uncomfortableness with homosexuality that prevents males from playing out sex roles with other males. I felt strongly this way when I was younger - I didn't want to play out the female NPCs getting hit on, because what did that say about me? Once I matured a little, and learned that one's play doesn't neccessarily say anything about themselves, the problem no longer existed. I had cleared that space for myself.

And here's the point. I believe there is a point at which females can and do become comfortable trusting the males in their games to play including sex. Further, I think that there are steps that one can take to clear the way.

I guess that what most bothers me about the “hidden Sex keyword” isn’t that you say it exists (I agree, it exists even in games played using other systems that refuse to support it mechanically, such as DnD) or that it might be a cool thing to have (I tentatively agree, depending on what sets of abilities are in it), but that it is in fact hidden. The hidden-ness disempowers the player – usually, but not always, the female player of a female PC.

I quite agree that this is the problem. The solution, however, then is plain. Make this explicit. That is, don't fail to talk about it. It may be the case that a particular player doesn't even want to discuss a topic - and if so, one can assume that it's taboo for play, I think. But if they're willing to talk about it in an open fashion, I think that tons of headway can be made. For instance, a particular female player might not mind sex being a general topic, but do mind the idea of rape being portrayed in play (not just to her own character, but in general). So it's completely reasonable for her to request that people refrain from doing this.

To whit, and counter to your experience, I've seen female players come into games already comfortable with sex as a topic. Many times. I've also seen them come in with trepidation as well, but when it's been addressed, the issue generally seems to subside. They may still have limits, but often all a player wants is some assurance that they will be respected in terms of their particular issues with some sorts of play. In fact, in many cases, once a player becomes convinced that the play of these issues isn't intended to cause them pain, but to honestly explore said issue, they often then allow that issue to come into play. Not always, but it happens.

We have probably all heard of, or experienced, some typical “abilities” in the Sex keyword. "Defenceless against Conception" is one. "Available to be Hit On by Anyone No Matter How Grotesque" is another. On the male side (more common in grossly immature games) there’s “Catches STDs in a Wink”.

The way I’ve worded them, these are all indications of something dysfunctional and disempowering happening in play. They are extreme examples (although sadly not invented) of flaws, flaws that are all the worse because they are hidden. The worst things is that in my experience, female players tend to expect their character to have both the above flaws, and act accordingly, even though they aren’t on the character sheet and perhaps not even in the GM’s mind (certainly not in mine when I run a game – I’ve learnt to mention these things to female players at some point and always find they are surprised and relieved that they may not be as limited in their options of acceptable play as they expected).

OK, this is alien to me. That is, I don't doubt that there are male players who would try to force this paradigm, or even that there are females who would be forced to accept it. And I can see that this might be the result of some sad traditions of play. But it's not in any way a neccessity of RPGs. That is, while this all might even be common, it doesn't exist at all in the games that I run, or even play in. In fact, I haven't seen any play like this in over a decade.

Now, you might say that I've just been lucky, but it's at least in part because I would never allow these attitudes into play. Basically, one has to take steps to make good play happen. This means the following:
1. Explicitly establish a code of conduct for play.
2. Talk openly about potential issues (don't hide it).
3. Confront any bad bahavior when it occurs.

Note that you don't have to be a GM to make these things happen. Any player can pipe up, and say these things. Worst case scenario, you can always threaten to walk from the game if your rules are violated. And, in fact, you should. The moment the game isn't fun for you , and the players refuse to alter their play to accommodate you as a player, you should leave the group. I cannot understand why anyone would subject themselves to something that made them uncomfortable, especially when the idea is that the activity is supposed to be entertainment. A simple explanation using these terms ought to convince anyone. If they don't see it, then they're not worth playing with.

For me, it's enough that any player I'm playing with is abused, not simply myself, and I'll pipe up. Now, I understand that not all people are as vociferous as I am about these issues, and may not feel comfortable negotiating this into the social contract. Especially when tradition is against them. But then as a participant, you have to figure out some way to communicate it. If you're not good face to face, send an email, or write a note. Perhaps you can send them to this thread, or something like it, to give them the idea. But only the individuals playing can make this happen.

In one really humorous case I saw, a husband and wife switched sex roles, and then proceeded to try and outdo each other with their stereotyping of the other sex. I distinctly remember at one point, the woman playing a hulking male barbarian saying something to the effect of, "Well, dinner is finished, time for the womenfolk to do the dishes while we men relax and tell stories about how much ass we kicked in the last fight!" Everyone at the table was just rolling with laughter the entire scenario with these two. And before anyone asks, while there was a competition going on between the two, no, it wasn't mean spirited in any way. It was really just making fun of the stereotypes.

So yeah, I suppose these keywords need to come out into the open so everyone can see what is or isn’t in them. And they have to have nifty stuff in them that you’d actually want to play.

Well, see, here's where I differ somewhat. Above we're talking about social contract. Here we're talking about system. The system can't fix the social contract. That is, all of the goofy things that you put in the female keyword above are metagame issues. A keyword should be an in-game enumeration.

Further, and to really bring this back on topic for the forum, not ever HQ keyword needs to be enumerated. For example, each character could have a Childhood Background Keyword listing things like all the characters they grew up with, and things learned through play. There are potentially many, many other keywords that one could enumerate a character with. But we choose to enumerate the character with certain ones in order that these become the things that impact play.

Now, can you put the sex keyword on each character's sheet? Sure, if you want. Actually, I'd put them in combined with the "species" keyword, as an overall, i dunno, "Morphological" keyword? "Physiognomy" Keyword? Because these things do vary by species as well.

The other problem with this, however, is that I imagine that most people have these things at "default" level. This is hard to explain, so try to read carefully (and I'll try to explain well). A character with wings can fly, but a character without cannot. The character with wings has a default 6 to fly, just as a character who has legs has a default 6 in running. Women have a default 6 in "Give Birth" because they have the right physiognomy. Again, this is why it's not listed as a keyword, because, sans elevating the ability, they're all at default. Now, a particular species that was good at giving birth, might have it at a higher level. And characters can certainly be good at it (we all know women who are better or worse suited to childbirth). But it's just something that everyone has because of their background. Simply by using a female pronoun in the character's narrative paragraph, or putting it on the sheet, or just making it known, you get these things.

Just like you get things like Breathe Air ability at 6 just for being human. Fish do not get this ability (nor do humans get Breath Water). Get the point here? One does not practice being female and get better at it, generally, these abilities are just intrinsic to the character's form. Hence why they're "hidden." There's no need to mark them. Every time a player rolls his default running (and I make them do this every chance I get), they're rolling something in one of their many hidden keywords.

I guess a female keyword could have, say, a “Give Birth to Child” ability in it, as you’ve written somewhere. But the higher the likelihood of becoming pregnant, the more it’ll limit options for play for female characters. So should there be a "Contraception" ability in the keyword? I don’t think I’d ever determine pregnancy with die rolls, I’d always let the player decide.

Again, you're trying to encode social contract. And, again, the keyword does at 6 whatever the keyword does. No real need to work it out. But here are ones that I've used. "Attractive to Heterosexual Men." Yep, all women are a 6 at least. I'd say that this is the most often elevated ability from the keyword that I've seen for female characters. One could argue that this is sexism at work, but the female players that I've seen take this, use it with such skill, that they pretty much dominate the male characters with it. For real. Set aside Nathan's character Aysha who did as you say above making a female character potent this way - Aysha was constantly in conflict with Dana's character Regina for the affection of Brand's character, Thomas. It was tons of fun watching Brand go back and forth between his loyalty for the two characters. He knew Aysha was baaaad, and wanted to be with Regina, but Aysha was just so attractive that he couldn't stop her. In the end, however, Aysha died a nasty death, and Regina saved Thomas (using her interpersonal skills).

I sense that Brand really liked having his character in so much demand, just because he was so butch. Brand? And note that it was Dana that first used Regina's wiles against Thomas.

The general question here is, can we find keywords that make both sexes appealing to play? That don’t limit one sex more than the other? Or if one is more limiting in certain circumstances, what’s the compensation in other situations that are just as likely to come up in play? This last bit is important. By making characters of one sex less viable and interesting to play, you limit the players of the same sex: they are forced to either live with limitations or play a sex that is not their own, regardless of their own preference.

This is simple. Just don't make any flaws for either sex. I don't see any downsides for either that are not cultural.

Now, culture is different. In my FTF game, the players chose to play in a really repressive society in which women are second-class citizens. So, did I just ignore the "fact" from the setting? Would have been easy enough to do. But instead, I decided to make this class issue central to play.

See, Solani, Julie's character, is all about the female issues. In the first phase of play, her character was growing up as a young woman (17) in a household with a dominating patriarch, and the issues were about wheter or not she could maintain her family life, and how, or whether she'd become more involved as an individual in her religion. As it happened, Julie chose to have Solani leave her family, striking out alone after she'd learned that her god wanted to impregnate her via an avatar that she decided she needed to search for. In the second phase of play, she traveled to the repressive society mentioned, and fought for recognition. In the end, she got pregnant by an avatar, became the head of her own little cult, and then gave her child away to empower the avatar to return from the land of the dead.

Not sure what a male keyword would even have in it – all the abilities/flaws that have tended to come up in my experience relate to being female, almost never to being male.

Well, hopefully "Attractive to Hetero Females" though there are days when I wonder if we have that as a default. :-)

How about "Impregnate Female?" Takes two to tango, you know. Whenever this one comes up, male players are always going to be looking at their character sheets for stuff like "Robust" and "Healthy" to try to outdo the default 6 (which I allow with recklessly applied improv penalties). Heck, since I've started incorporating this sort of thing, male players have been scrambling to take things like "Sensitive lover" and even "Well Endowed." Which has been pretty hilarous, IMO. I love it when they forget to make the character good looking, or even give him a sense of humor or something to make them initially attractive. And then they get shot down so easily in social contests by the pretty women. Talk about empowerment...

What is sadder is that in most groups you don’t even have the option of defining your own character’s sexuality until someone decides to hit on you.

???

Male PC: "Hey, hot stuff, looking for some action?"
Female PC: "Yeah, I was thinking that the barmaid over there looked pretty good. What do you think?"

Uh, just enforce your own concept. It's your character. All I can say is that it sounds like you're playing with jerks. Tell them to change, or leave.

Weird. In games I run, I'm careful about putting "romantic target" NPCs in front of female players, because I don't want to assume that women are all romance novel reading saps for this sort of thing. I want to give them as much chance to be, say, the warrior hero, if they want. But given an indication that the player would like to see some romance for her character, I'm right there with suitable NPCs.

In fact, in Solani's case, I had an NPC I worked up "just in case" she wanted some romance in her character's story. Heh, in the end, she allowed his throat to be cut by an opponent, rather than move a muscle to try to save him - just to prove how cold her character had gotten. Message recieved. Very cool.

But religion, age, also race, appear somewhere in the game stats, so they are easier to handle than the “hidden” one, sex. At least you know what you’re dealing with; even a highly sexist and limiting keyword would be better than no visible keyword at all, because at least you know what you are getting into and can say no to it before it happens.

You should always be able to say no. Always.

GM: The dragon is coming down breathing fire at you, roll to resist.
Player: I don't like it. How about the dragon comes down to talk with my character?
GM: OK.

The narrator still has final say, but I strongly recommend to narrators that they consider their player's requests for how contests go. When PvP contests are imminent, I allow either player to call it off. For example, I allow PCs to seduce other PCs, but only if the target says that they're willing to roll for it. In that way, it becomes a gamble, but one that all players are willing to lose.

This is key, if you don't like the potential outcome of losing and aren't willing to take this gamble for the potential positive outcome, then just say no to the contest. Better yet, suggest a different one that has outcome ramifications that you're interested in seeing.

On a related note, I’ve only recently learnt to be sensitive about racial issues in games, from a player with an Asian background; these days I look differently at the Elves he likes to play (in a group that is all humans otherwise). My first reaction when I realised that he was sensitive to issues of race was to try and downplay antagonism between species in Midnight; but once I was treading more lightly, he embraced the racism/species-ism theme I'd introduced earlier (rather thoughtlesssly) with such gusto that it has ended up adding fun and depth to the game for both of us.

Perfect example. Given the same sensitive treatment, why should females have any less trepidation about play revolving around sex, than this guy did with issues of race. All he needed was to know that the environment was friendly on the social level.

randomling wrote: I've felt in the past like I was expected to divorce my own feelings on these issues from my characters' feelings and/or behaviour. Of course that's impossible, and it's often led to me feeling uncomfortable or even angry.

In large part I've also been at fault by not speaking up when I did feel uncomfortable,

but I've also had experiences of being laughed at or ignored when I did bring up my concerns, not to mention in one case being told "yes, we'll be more sensitive" and having nothing change.

For example, one character I played (in what was actually a rather Gamist D&D game, so my mistake) was a single mother, and it would have been interesting to explore some of those issues if it had been a more comfortable environment in which to do it. In the same game I also tried to play a lesbian diplomat struggling against a sexist system and a deeply passionate young noblewoman. Neither of them really worked very well, either - but then this was a game where the combat was the main focus, and I was trying to play interesting characters with involved stories. It just wasn't the right game or group to do it in.

(In fact, I can't think offhand of a character I've created whose personal story wasn't dealing with some aspect of sexuality or womanhood. I also can't think of a group, until I played in Kerstin's game, where I had even the beginnings of a supportive atmosphere to do it in. So I'm starting to think that you're right in saying it's all about the group.)

I've played with very few women, and my own early experiences of RPGs were quite abusive, but I have to agree with Kerstin here: in all the groups I've played in, there have been these unspoken assumptions, somehow. Partly it's been about the group dynamic, partly about assumptions about the campaign setting, and partly, I think about women in general. It is difficult to put a finger on exactly what's wrong, but I've felt it in almost every group I've been in.

Okay. Personally, for now anyway, it's something that I need, mostly because I need to relearn how comfortable sex can be around the gaming table! (That sounds utterly wrong, but you know what I mean.) And I think it's certainly better to have it than not: after all, it's something that can be eased out much easier than it can be introduced once play has started.

Obviously I can't speak for Kerstin, but personally I'm not advocating removing sex from the game entirely - I'm constantly creating characters who have something to say about these issues, so a game that didn't exist on that dimension at all would probably have little interest for me. What I need is to know that there's a reasonably sensitive and friendly atmosphere for me to explore these issues in at my own pace (rather than have them forced on me or snatched away when I've got something to say, I guess).

Oh, sure, I've observed that for myself among male players, even when I'm there. (A lot of the guys I've gamed with have been deeply immature, which has been another part of the problem, I think.)

And here's the point. I believe there is a point at which females can and do become comfortable trusting the males in their games to play including sex. Further, I think that there are steps that one can take to clear the way.

I'm sure you're right about that - I'm just scarred by past experience, I guess, so that's the part that's taking time.

I can picture that being possible in Kerstin's group, but in other groups talking about these issues would have been even more uncomfortable and juvenile than playing the games with their horrible misshapen ideas of including sex. (Which really is an indication that I was playing with the wrong people.)

I'm glad it's not a necessity - that would cause me to throw up my hands in disgust and never game again, I think! - but it's certainly my overwhelming experience of RPGs. Granted, my overwhelming experience of RPGs involves young men playing D&D, and I honestly think it's partly informed by the game, but it's still there.

I'm starting to learn how different it can be, but it does scare me how many women must be put off RPGs for life by this kind of immature play.

Now, you might say that I've just been lucky, but it's at least in part because I would never allow these attitudes into play. Basically, one has to take steps to make good play happen. This means the following:
1. Explicitly establish a code of conduct for play.
2. Talk openly about potential issues (don't hide it).
3. Confront any bad bahavior when it occurs.

My instinctive reaction to that was "oh God, that would be horribly uncomfortable", but on reflection it would be a good and useful thing to do in Kerstin's group (not that we're having these kinds of problems in that game right now).

To be honest, looking back I can't quite figure out why I stayed with these dysfunctional groups for as long as I did. I can only assume that I must have been getting something out of it that kept me there - although in comparison to the game I'm involved in now, it seems rather pathetic. I do enjoy gaming a huge amount, though, and apparently it's sometimes enough to ignore some fairly major issues in the group.

Sure thing. (I wish I'd read this thread or something like it two years ago when I was having trouble asserting any kind of authority at all as a female GM.)

That sounds like a really fun scenario!

Hm, I actually think that quite often (in my experience anyway) the social contract and the game rules have quite powerful interactions. The rules of the game can have quite an impact on what is expected of characters and players in a social contract sense, because it has an effect on what is or isn't available in play. Maybe that's just me, with a history of groups who don't have separate social contract discussions, but it does seem to me like the two things are mixed up with each other, partly because if we're involving these issues in play, do we not also want to enumerate them in the rules?

I think that a Sex keyword, certainly for me in an ideal world, wouldn't be hidden because that is the only way I can control what's in there. If it's enumerated on my character sheet, there's less opportunity for other players to decide for me what is or isn't part of the Female keyword. In terms of empowerment and comfort in play, my ability to make those choices is really important.

Okay, again I may be careering away from Kerstin's point here, but I'm not necessarily talking about basic physiological processes like birth here. Sex - or maybe it's better to start using the word "gender" here - isn't just about biology, but also about a set of assumptions that is made about you on the basis of that biology (which will also vary with the Species and Homeland keywords, no doubt; I agree that a Sex keyword would probably be best subsumed into one or both of those).

Defenceless Against Conception

Again, sounds like a fun scenario in the right environment, but I still think that the social contract and game rules are tied up together somehow.

Interesting journey, sure. But surely her upbringing as a woman in that culture was enumerated somewhere on her character sheet? It sounds like it was something that would have been important to the story (at least the first part).

She seemed to be constantly being hit on by male afficionados of her deity, and always turned them down gracefully, but it disturbed me a little (OK, a lot) because it seemed to me like the GM wanted me to completely U-turn on my character so she would fit in with his very sexually active idea of a devotee of this goddess.

In fact, in Solani's case, I had an NPC I worked up "just in case" she wanted some romance in her character's story. Heh, in the end, she allowed his throat to be cut by an opponent, rather than move a muscle to try to save him - just to prove how cold her character had gotten. Message recieved. Very cool.

Niiiiice. I like this character.

Ah, I wish I'd started out in a play environment like that. In many groups we had a strange situation where there was hardly any in-character play at all, but it was a cardinal sin to drop out of the game world and talk for a minute as players about what was happening. When I've done that in recent times, as both player and GM, it's led to really, really cool play.

And I think that, on a basic level, that is all we need. It's just taking time and work, because for some reason these assumptions and dysfunctional situations are ingrained in my head as "normal play".

First, my apologies for deserting the boards after starting a thread here - the start of the new year has been rather turbulent for me and is continuing the same way for now, but I'll try to come back and reply to posts, bit by bit (hopefully starting later tonight). Lots to cover!

Ron - Just to say, I agree with Mike that this thread has drifted away from a HQ discussion to a more general one, so if you wish to move the thread to wherever is more appropriate, that's fine with me.

I'll get to your actual posts somewhere below. :)

Doyce wrote: It was "obvious" to the male PC (not the player, but the PC) and those NPCs around him that she was picking up a man for the night...

I was just a fly on the wall in that scene, but I think it was clear what was coming up, what the misconception was, and that something could have been done at any point in there to shut the whole thing down in a much more decisive way -- there was a lot of discussion about it in the OOC channel. In other words, it was left open as an option because the female player left it open.

Probably, none of this addresses your main point, but I think it bears illustration of the scene.

Brand_Robins wrote: I can't help but think that these things are linked at a basic level, and that it has to do with not just issues of sex and race, but that all such sticky issues have a degree to which player control determines the dynamic and acceptability of the game. Let me try to illustrate this with a situation that happened last week in my game that had little to do with sex or race, but just with the sticky issue of player protagonism.

It was because she had created the NPC, and had asked for the scene. Fortuno was her character’s mentor, whom she’s secretly in lust with, and she wanted him to have a scene where he got to be the coolest thing on earth – to be more properly sexy – and where she got to be part of his business, but in such a way that he wouldn’t notice that she’d helped him out. The whole dynamic of the scene was something she wanted, something she instigated, and thus something she enjoyed because it let her tell her story.

I think the “protected space” around sex and race in many games allows this dynamic to appear.

Sex is fine when you’re the one instigating it (or at least a full partner in instigating it), and dealing with racial prejudice is great if the player is interested in doing so and has a say in starting out how it happens.

Hello,

Rather than me splitting off or moving any thread stuff, I'd appreciate it if people were to begin new threads in whatever forum's appropriate, when they want to emphasize a new aspect of this (very large) topic.

On the other hand, this particular thread seems to have a nice vibe among the participants that might get diluted otherwise ... tell you what, let's keep things here for a while. Maybe onto page 4 or so.

Regarding race in RPGs, I think it's best to consider them forms of social cliques in combination with class - usually corresponding to high school stereotypes. "Clan" in later games served the same purpose. I really don't think race (in the D&D sense) has anything to do with ethnicity at all.

If it did, then we'd be seeing a lot of stress and hassle about race during play which would parallel the stress and hassle most role-players constantly experience about sex/gender (even if they deny or sugar-coat it).

Best,
Ron

Mike Holmes wrote: Sorry to take so long getting to this.

StalkingBlue wrote: It took me a while to work out what to say to this and where I want to go with it. My most traumatic experiences of dysfunctional play have happened in this dimension.

Well, I'll try to deal with this from your POV, because it's your thread. But I'll also, in the meanwhile, try to give another POV, which is the functional inclusion of sex into the game.

This is certainly true for players with past abusive play experience (I’m among them, so I can empathise),

I realize that this is a common experience for female players. It's common because the player has the facade of a character, and see it as a liscence to live out their fantasies. Not realizing that there are very real human interactions that are actually going on through this mask. The same thing happens on the internet, or at masquerade balls - the theoretical (or even practical) annonymity of the medium means that the person performing the act becomes "detached" from the social repercussion. For an RPG, he thinks, ah, she can't shout at me, at best, her character can shout an my character.

The fact that the player feels "detached" is no excuse for this behavior, which is an exceptionally bad form of "my guy" behavior. Simply the fact that a character behavior might be plausible, does not mean that the player has carte blanch to play the character any way they feel. One must still respect the other players at the table.

There are two types of this behavior, I think. The first is the male who's doing it because he knows it will make the female uncomfortable, and this gives him pleasure. I hope that if anyone detects such a creature in their game that they would immediately eject said creature. I would, and further would likely never play with said player again. The second type is the male that is playing their character "honestly," that is, with no intent to harm anyone, but playing in an insensitive fashion. That is, they're simply playing their character without considering at all what the female player might think of the play. This isn't an indication of a problem with the player's intent, but with them not realizing that play isn't just about satisfying your own needs, but that it's a community thing, and everyone needs to worry about the needs of others.

In the past, I've said that one can play "for themselves" with regard to theme, and I'll stick by that. I don't require that players play for the entertainment of others. My minimum requirement is that everyone play in a manner that allows all of the other players to have fun as well, however. This has to be the requirement of the Social Contract, or someone is being abused.

But, my lack of empathy aside, I've seen games in which females were engaged in playing around sex themes.

The hidden-ness disempowers the player – usually, but not always, the female player of a female PC.

I quite agree that this is the problem. The solution, however, then is plain. Make this explicit. That is, don't fail to talk about it.

We have probably all heard of, or experienced, some typical “abilities” in the Sex keyword. "Defenceless against Conception" is one. "Available to be Hit On by Anyone No Matter How Grotesque" is another. On the male side (more common in grossly immature games) there’s “Catches STDs in a Wink”.

The way I’ve worded them, these are all indications of something dysfunctional and disempowering happening in play. They are extreme examples (although sadly not invented) of flaws, flaws that are all the worse because they are hidden. The worst things is that in my experience, female players tend to expect their character to have both the above flaws, and act accordingly, even though they aren’t on the character sheet and perhaps not even in the GM’s mind (certainly not in mine when I run a game – I’ve learnt to mention these things to female players at some point and always find they are surprised and relieved that they may not be as limited in their options of acceptable play as they expected).

OK, this is alien to me. That is, I don't doubt that there are male players who would try to force this paradigm, or even that there are females who would be forced to accept it. And I can see that this might be the result of some sad traditions of play. But it's not in any way a neccessity of RPGs. That is, while this all might even be common, it doesn't exist at all in the games that I run, or even play in. In fact, I haven't seen any play like this in over a decade.

Now, you might say that I've just been lucky, but it's at least in part because I would never allow these attitudes into play.

Note that you don't have to be a GM to make these things happen. Any player can pipe up, and say these things.

Worst case scenario, you can always threaten to walk from the game if your rules are violated.

And, in fact, you should. The moment the game isn't fun for you , and the players refuse to alter their play to accommodate you as a player, you should leave the group.

I cannot understand why anyone would subject themselves to something that made them uncomfortable, especially when the idea is that the activity is supposed to be entertainment.

For me, it's enough that any player I'm playing with is abused, not simply myself, and I'll pipe up. Now, I understand that not all people are as vociferous as I am about these issues, and may not feel comfortable negotiating this into the social contract. Especially when tradition is against them.

I distinctly remember at one point, the woman playing a hulking male barbarian saying something to the effect of, "Well, dinner is finished, time for the womenfolk to do the dishes while we men relax and tell stories about how much ass we kicked in the last fight!" Everyone at the table was just rolling with laughter the entire scenario with these two.

Well, see, here's where I differ somewhat. Above we're talking about social contract. Here we're talking about system. The system can't fix the social contract. That is, all of the goofy things that you put in the female keyword above are metagame issues. A keyword should be an in-game enumeration.

But we choose to enumerate the character with certain ones in order that these become the things that impact play.

One does not practice being female and get better at it, generally, these abilities are just intrinsic to the character's form. Hence why they're "hidden." There's no need to mark them.

I sense that Brand really liked having his character in so much demand, just because he was so butch. Brand? And note that it was Dana that first used Regina's wiles against Thomas.

Now, culture is different. In my FTF game, the players chose to play in a really repressive society in which women are second-class citizens. So, did I just ignore the "fact" from the setting? Would have been easy enough to do. But instead, I decided to make this class issue central to play.

See, Solani, Julie's character, is all about the female issues.

Well, hopefully "Attractive to Hetero Females" though there are days when I wonder if we have that as a default. :-)

How about "Impregnate Female?" Takes two to tango, you know. Whenever this one comes up, male players are always going to be looking at their character sheets for stuff like "Robust" and "Healthy" to try to outdo the default 6 (which I allow with recklessly applied improv penalties). Heck, since I've started incorporating this sort of thing, male players have been scrambling to take things like "Sensitive lover" and even "Well Endowed."

All I can say is that it sounds like you're playing with jerks. Tell them to change, or leave.

Weird. In games I run, I'm careful about putting "romantic target" NPCs in front of female players, because I don't want to assume that women are all romance novel reading saps for this sort of thing. I want to give them as much chance to be, say, the warrior hero, if they want. But given an indication that the player would like to see some romance for her character, I'm right there with suitable NPCs.

In fact, in Solani's case, I had an NPC I worked up "just in case" she wanted some romance in her character's story. Heh, in the end, she allowed his throat to be cut by an opponent, rather than move a muscle to try to save him - just to prove how cold her character had gotten. Message recieved. Very cool.

Sure, it sounds as if it is leading to cool play. Do you think she is aware that she could have played her character the same way? (I mean, with her character hitting on Okhfels? Assuming that this would be acceptable play in your game.)

Oh yeah, she knows. I think that she's aware that the way she built her character, that she can have any male character do anything she wants at any time. The question becomes more interesting - would she do something like that.

It's fascinating so far how she's leading Okhfels along, with the implicit question of whether there'll be a payoff for Okhfels at some point. We all feel that this is an important unanswered question that can only come out in further play. And everyone knows that any answer from Adrienne will be interesting.

GM: The dragon is coming down breathing fire at you, roll to resist.
Player: I don't like it. How about the dragon comes down to talk with my character?
GM: OK.

The narrator still has final say, but I strongly recommend to narrators that they consider their player's requests for how contests go. When PvP contests are imminent, I allow either player to call it off. For example, I allow PCs to seduce other PCs, but only if the target says that they're willing to roll for it. In that way, it becomes a gamble, but one that all players are willing to lose.

Ron Edwards wrote: Rather than me splitting off or moving any thread stuff, I'd appreciate it if people were to begin new threads in whatever forum's appropriate, when they want to emphasize a new aspect of this (very large) topic.

On the other hand, this particular thread seems to have a nice vibe among the participants that might get diluted otherwise ... tell you what, let's keep things here for a while. Maybe onto page 4 or so.

I really don't think race (in the D&D sense) has anything to do with ethnicity at all.

StalkingBlue wrote: Although on a side note, race and sex are two cups of tea. As my Asian player put it when we were talking about it a little while ago: when you play an Elf in racist game, you may be quite a bit of an outsider but you have compensations because you can do cool stuff no one else can. When you play a female character in a sexist game, there are only drawbacks and no compensations.

I think what the player is interested in is the key here.

Conversely, randomling isn't keen on having her character struggle with things merely because she's female, so if I made that kind of thing part of my game, it would deprotagonise her.

(Not that I would be keen on running a game in any kind of sexist game environment, I don't think I'd be comfortable with that at this point even if players were to ask for it.)

StalkingBlue wrote: Sounds uncomfortably familiar. (Sigh.) I'd want to add: "She can't know it's my fantasy, she'll think it's just my character/NPC/game world, right? Nothing to do with me, right?" I've seen people deny this when called on it, even in cases where it was blatantly obvious to the rest of the table.

Ah yes, plausibility. That's another thing I've become sick and tired of: character plausibility, game world plausibility.

Unfortunately, one intermediate type I've seen is those who take a thrill from the discomfort and frustration they cause (because it gives them a feeling of control) without being necesssarily aware of what their thrill comes from. My workaround to these kinds of people has been to drop games I found them in once I realised what was going on. My experience has been that there's no point in fighting against another person being in denial.

Agreed. Although moments happen in roleplaying games that are less fun for some than others; and that is generally accepted and considered appropriate and nothing to complain about when it's determined by game mechanics.

That's one reason why I'm so uncomfortable with a hidden sex keyword: it gives abusive players (whether intentionally abusive or in-denial-abusive) the power to be more so, by pretending they are merely exploiting aspects that are "inherent in the other character" anyway.

Well, that's not my drift here even - you see, I don't see why playing a female character has to be revolving around the sexuality theme at all.

Hm, Social Contract level - yes in fact, that's it. By having a "hidden" sex keyword, you cement something unspoken in the Social Contract and pretend that it is a part of the rules (hence not to be argued with when some exploit it to the detriment of others in the group).

I wish I could say that. I left a game only last autumn after finally being told by the GM (after about a year's play) that "of course" female PCs had a harder time succeeding at things because "of course" it was a sexist world, because that was one thing that made his game world "plausible" and thereby "superior in flavour" to commercially published ones.

Although the group I'm currently playing in (Ian's Red Cow game) is great in this respect. I feel I'm in a good environment there, definitely OOC.

Looking from the IC angle, the game's set in a patriarchal Heortling clan where married female PCs have to ask NPC husbands' permission for things a lot - but it doesn't come across as a GM's lone domination fantasy in any way. Part of that is the way Ian plays both the male and the female NPCs equally well and strong in their different ways, another part is that all the PC wives in this game happen to be played by male players, who are having great fun with this apparently.

No, I'd say I've been unlucky - strangely enough, almost always lucky with players who came into my games, but almost always unlucky with groups I was a player in. Then of course I'm able to control the basics of play at my own table in ways I could never do in other people's games.

Note that you don't have to be a GM to make these things happen. Any player can pipe up, and say these things.

I have.

Worst case scenario, you can always threaten to walk from the game if your rules are violated.

I have.

And, in fact, you should. The moment the game isn't fun for you , and the players refuse to alter their play to accommodate you as a player, you should leave the group.

I have.

I cannot understand why anyone would subject themselves to something that made them uncomfortable, especially when the idea is that the activity is supposed to be entertainment.

Because you might not even be aware that there are other ways to do it? Because leaving some of the people and a half-woven story behind is painful? Because you may have invested a lot of creativity into creating and playing and developing a character before you realise how bad things are in the game?

Don't get me wrong, I've done it. But it isn't always an easy decision, and it's not always apparent at first just how bad things are.

I'm currently in a place where I'm ready to get up and walk out at the first sign that something may be wrong. (In fact I came close to walking out on Ian when I arrived at his table my first session, he'd made me a female NPC to play, and he smiled and said, "So well, this clan is a patriarchal clan.." :) I'm glad now I didn't walk, but at the time it was courtesy more than an expectation that things would turn out all right.)

You see, when I started this thread I wasn't clear about the dividing lines - the one between social contract and game mechanics for one, the one between "plausibility" and "game fun" for another. When I know what I'm doing, I can communicate it in no uncertain terms, so this discussion is helping me a lot in deciding where the divide between acceptable and unacceptable runs for me, and what to do when I hit problems with it in a given group.

Perhaps that is because people tend to assume there are certain things in the keyword that should properly speaking be in the social contract. But I'm not sure how far discussing these topics can get you with any group that doesn't already agree on them anyway. It feels to me a bit like trying to discuss GNS theory with non-Forge readers.

Or in story terms, as long as the player doesn't want an ability to be important to the story, it doesn't have to be on the character sheet. So conversely, a female character's player might increase Give Birth to, say, 5w2, if she or he wants this to become a focus in the character's story?

I don't mean that these things have to be on the character sheet, no more than I'd force a player to write all the abilities in their other keywords down. I probably first of all need clarity in my own mind on what I think is in the keywords, both to run and to play in HQ games, and also to be able to discuss these things in a more meaningful way a thte social contract level. I think that even any discussion at the social contract level will have to refer to what is, and isn't, in sex keywords.

Perfectly fine by me as long as all the players are happy. (I wouldn't be keen to play a female character in such a game, nor to run such a setting, but that's personal taste, not a judgement.)

Well, hopefully "Attractive to Hetero Females" though there are days when I wonder if we have that as a default. :-)

Well, default is 6, right? So it's like swimming. If I understand the rules, Swimming 6 means you can't actually swim yet, but you could always practice ... and one day you'll be swimming just swimmingly. ;-)

Oh yeah, she knows. I think that she's aware that the way she built her character, that she can have any male character do anything she wants at any time. The question becomes more interesting - would she do something like that.

Ah, so she originally made that choice, in designing her character around it? That's wonderful.

Yes, this is sounding absolutely great to me now. (Of course meanwhile I've also seen Adrienne's post, which was good.)

Ok. Of course you should always be allowed to object. That's just another part of giving up the traditional GM-player-player divide in which each player owns his or her character and the GM owns the rest of the world.

Cool. I can work with that.

I don't think I'd ever have players roll against one another without asking them whether they wanted to resolve the situation that way, not only in potentially sensitive situations like seduction (or even for ego-heavy warrior types, a fight or such).

Brand, thanks for recounting this in more detail. I've said elsewhere that I often learn most easily from examples, and this one was great fun to read.

Brand_Robins wrote: I loved playing the character, he was such a confused mess and in such constant demand by women. It really was kick-ass fun.

Oh cool. You're saying something. :)

Adrienne wrote: It was a little more complicated than that, although not much. I'm a bit self-conscious about playing out romantic/flirtation stuff, I suppose because I'm wary of my character being written off as a "slut." That's definitely not due to any problem with this group, but from previous online experience where promiscuous behavior from female characters was simultaneously encouraged and mocked. (I hadn't pegged that as the cause until I started thinking about it to type this. Huh.)

I didn't feel trapped at any time. It was touchier play for me than sitting around talking about the weather would be, but I didn't think there would be any problems if I flatly turned down the situation, either in or out of character. I had no sense of either coercion or mockery, which are the two things that will drive me screaming from potentially touchy play. Overall, it's been a good thing to have in the game, since it makes the characters' relationship more interesting than "I want to hire you to kill goblins."

Mike Holmes wrote: And it's found in creating the appropriate social environment. If you can't with the people you're playing with, then you'll either have to avoid one of the most important (some would say most important) parts of your characters, or find new people to play with. Frankly, I'd suggest the latter. If they can't respect you regarding this, then how can you expect respect overall?

Ron Edwards wrote: I usually try not to promote my products too openly in discussions here, but in this case, it's impossible not to: my book Sex & Sorcery is explicitly written to address the concerns raised in this thread, and to my knowledge it is the only existing unified text to do so for role-playing.

People may also be interested in reading my article Goddess of Rape in Daedalus #1. (The "redeeming" in the article's title was added by the editor)

Best,
Ron

Mike Holmes wrote: To further legitimize Ron's claim here, I have to say that some of the ideas I have above come, if not directly from Sex & Sorcery, from the same theoretical discussions that I think lead to Ron putting down his ideas on the subject. That is, there have been many discussions of these issues here before that have been very illuminating, and Ron has been the lead on several of them. He knows this stuff cold.

Mike

Mike Holmes wrote: My only question at this point is whether or not what I've pointed out above makes sense given all of this context. Have I missed addressing the issue in some way? Is there anything we can do to help rescue you from this problematic sort of play? Or do you feel that in the new game that you're on the road to recovery yourselves?

Want to make characters for my IRC HQ game?

Mike

Hey Lucy - good to see you here.

randomling wrote: What I need is to know that there's a reasonably sensitive and friendly atmosphere for me to explore these issues in at my own pace (rather than have them forced on me or snatched away when I've got something to say, I guess).

Now, you might say that I've just been lucky, but it's at least in part because I would never allow these attitudes into play. Basically, one has to take steps to make good play happen. This means the following:
1. Explicitly establish a code of conduct for play.
2. Talk openly about potential issues (don't hide it).
3. Confront any bad bahavior when it occurs.

My instinctive reaction to that was "oh God, that would be horribly uncomfortable", but on reflection it would be a good and useful thing to do in Kerstin's group (not that we're having these kinds of problems in that game right now).

I can only assume that I must have been getting something out of it that kept me there - although in comparison to the game I'm involved in now, it seems rather pathetic. I do enjoy gaming a huge amount, though, and apparently it's sometimes enough to ignore some fairly major issues in the group.

If it's enumerated on my character sheet, there's less opportunity for other players to decide for me what is or isn't part of the Female keyword.

True, but I also think that a Sex keyword that didn't deal with culture somehow wouldn't be of much use in helping to deal with the issues that we're talking about.

Again, that's just me, and I know my tendency to shut up and endure hurts me...

I was playing a very chaste character who had devoted herself to a goddess of love (who unexpectedly turned out to be a goddess of wanton and promiscuous sex - sigh). She seemed to be constantly being hit on by male afficionados of her deity, and always turned them down gracefully, but it disturbed me a little (OK, a lot) because it seemed to me like the GM wanted me to completely U-turn on my character so she would fit in with his very sexually active idea of a devotee of this goddess.

StalkingBlue wrote: Do you have a favourite one that you could point me to, perhaps? An end to start pulling on, so to speak?
I'm kind of boggled by the sheer amount of material on these forums, and especially on this topic I'm quite lost among the trees.

Brand_Robins wrote:

StalkingBlue wrote: Although on a side note, race and sex are two cups of tea. As my Asian player put it when we were talking about it a little while ago: when you play an Elf in racist game, you may be quite a bit of an outsider but you have compensations because you can do cool stuff no one else can. When you play a female character in a sexist game, there are only drawbacks and no compensations.

There is a very real degree to which Ron nails this on the head -- it's because race in RPGs is rarely about race, whereas sexual bias really is about just that. My experience is that if you played a game where real races were really problematic then you’d start to get into some of the same squicsome issues.

The funny thing is that we’re capable of making race not about race, but can’t make sex not about sex – which I suppose says something about how intrinsic they are to our nature. Or at least how important they are to our psyche.

(Not that I would be keen on running a game in any kind of sexist game environment, I don't think I'd be comfortable with that at this point even if players were to ask for it.)

Considering your history, you may be wise to trust yourself.

However (did you hear it coming?), there is a point at which you may eventually want to step past this.

Just as a quick correction about Tolien's elves: Almost all of the Elves in Middle Earth have black hair. The Sindar (wood-elves) are black haired and have golden skin and brown to hazel eyes. The Noldor have black hair, fair skin, and blue eyes. The Teleri have golden hair and blue or green eyes. Galadriel is half-Teleri, and is a blue-eyed blonde. Legolas is a wood-elf (son of the King of Mirkwood) and has black hair and golden skin. Celeborn, Cirdan, and Glorfindel are all Noldor and should have black hair and blue eyes. Elrond and his family are half-elven Noldor/Dunedain, and would have black or brown hair, blue eyes, and either fair or ruddy skin.

Mike Holmes wrote: This isn't to say that you have to be good friends with everyone you play with. It does mean (and I believe this is a Ronism) that the people you play with have to be people that you wouldn't mind hanging out with if the game weren't being played. That is, the game itself does not constitute alone enough reason to play with somebody. Roleplaying must be appropriately social before it can be fun.

Hm, Social Contract level - yes in fact, that's it. By having a "hidden" sex keyword, you cement something unspoken in the Social Contract and pretend that it is a part of the rules (hence not to be argued with when some exploit it to the detriment of others in the group).

Again, you're creating a construct that I'm not at all comfortable with. Yes, there can be hidden agendas. But this is never encoded in the rules. If it does become encoded in the rules, then you know that the social contract problem existed first.

I'd find it hard to believe that Ian's game would be anything but sensitive. So that just confirms what I know about him. It's always good to play with world renowned GMs - they have a higher level of scrutiny leveled at them, and probably wouldn't be world renowned if they were jerks. :-)

I wish I could say that. I left a game only last autumn after finally being told by the GM (after about a year's play) that "of course" female PCs had a harder time succeeding at things because "of course" it was a sexist world, because that was one thing that made his game world "plausible" and thereby "superior in flavour" to commercially published ones.

So you're saying that he'd encoded sexism into his system? Yes, that happens explicitly, and regularly, often for the reasons you claim (there was a long and acrimonious design thread on this subject a while back).

Excellent. And? What were the results?

Yes, but, again this is the thing about timing. Don't let it get to that point. This is why you have to address all of this up front at chargen. You can't wait for the problem to crop up in play, and then address it - you'll be seen as having been complicit up until that point, and then trying to change things to your own way for your own reasons. It might work, but more often you'll have to walk. Why let an investment get to that point?

I know, because you didn't know. Well, that's all in the past. What's the first thing you're going to do now, going forward?

It sounds to me like you showed up on Ian's doorstep ready to play, never really having talked to him. I mean, I'm guessing that if you'd spent ten minutes with him in the pub before the game, that you'd have seen that he's the sort of guy that just isn't going to make anyone uncomfortable in play.

Have you ever considered that the people who play sexist must not worry too much about you leaving the game? I mean, subconsciously they have to be thinking, "What do I care if she gets hurt? She's not a friend of mine." Again, would a friend do any of this to you?

No, no, no, no, no, no, no. You'll get people looking at you like you're a freak. I can envision it, "Before we play, I want everyone to know that there's an implicit Female Keyword for my character, and it includes, X Y Z." Gah!

"Hey, I like to play strong female characters, not silly stereotypes. You're all OK with that, right?"

Well, I think that it's actually quite cliche, but I've often said that cliche is the best friend of the roleplayer. But it sure is fun to anticipate the outcome. Tune into the game this Thursday - I don't think it'll be resolved so soon, but if it is, it would be cool to be there for it. Lurkers are welcome in my game.

My point isn't that you have to take away the power of the GM to have final say about what happens.

I meant to reply to this sooner, but I've been in computer hell this week. I hope it's still topical. :)

StalkingBlue wrote:
One more question: Mike said that the way you designed the character, she could get pretty much whatever she wants from men. Can you describe that in more detail? What were you aiming for here? Seeing that you say you'v had bad play experiences in the past, what made you decide to go this way with this character anyway?

Yeah, budding love triangle brewing in terms of Okhfels now courting another woman who he's decided is less complex.

Wouldn't it be nasty of me if I were to, say, make her turn out to be somehow incompatible as well? Making Okhfels have to consider whether or not the more confident and competent woman was really worth another look? And if I, perhaps, further complicated things by bringing in the other woman's old boyfriend? And then mixed this all up with other duties and obligations that stretched all of these relationships? Wouldn't that be just an awful thing to do to a pair of characters?

Nah, I'm waaaay to nice to do that. But NPCs do have a mind of their own... ;-)


Back on topic, the key is always the same for every player. You have to make sure that their character is the sort of protagonist they want to see in play. That doesn't mean that they don't have problems, or that things don't go wrong for them, quite the opposite. What it means is that you don't mess with the player's vision of the character. If the player sees her female character as competent, then that should come out in play. This doesn't just apply to this one issue, but to all play.

For example, last night, Thomas's character did another origami trick to impress a little girl, making a flower for her to gain her trust. He rolls a critical failure. I could have narrated that he stumbled presenting the flower and crushed it. I could have narrated that he became tongue tied in presenting it. I could have narrated that his pants fell down. But none of these would have been "Sebastian-esque." Sebastian is a cool, if understated, customer. So instead, I narrated that the flower turned out to look something like a flower that symbolized death to that culture, and her parents have recently died. So the attempt backfired making her scared of him. But not because he wasn't cool, or because something happened that made him something he was not. Simply because circumstance (represented by the die roll), worked to thwart him.

Always, always, always, maintain the means by which the character is a protagonist. I would never assume that Adrienne's character would just fall into bed with somebody because that's not how the character is cool.

I watched a neat movie the other night called Dangerous Beauty, about a famous Venitian Courtsean. She, of course, fell into bed with whomever could pay. But the character was no less a protagonist for it. In fact her occupation was entirely the source of her character's story.

So, it's not that playing a character who falls into bed is somehow anathema to the character being a protagonist. It's only so when it doesn't match the player's intended means for the character to be a protagonist. Because then the person forcing this issue is making a statement about women in general, and then we're back to the problem we've been talking about above.

Again, yes, sexism is rampant in RPGs. But the overall principle isn't just to not allow sexism to ruin your game, but, more stringently, not allowing anything that might damage a character's perception as a protagonist, as the player wants to see it, to come through in play.

It's a simple subset of the social contract: I won't let your character look "bad," because that can't be fun for you.

Mike

Hello,

Mike's point carries with it an important corollary: that when you do want your character to fail miserably in the classic crit-failure sense, you can have that happen too. Either way is good - what's bad is when what another person imposes upon your character de-protagonizes them. The actual details of what's happening in the imaginary space (success, failure) are not the issue at all.

Mike's totally right that sexist and sexual manipulations of person A's character by person B are a sub-category of this basic problem. He and I are completely agreed that a person B who would do this at all is displaying grossly disturbing behavior at the entirely human, social level, using the mask of "role-playing" as a form of hypocrisy.

Best,
Ron

P.S. These posts of Mike's and mine in this thread are kind of an amalgam of Sorcerer text (my stuff), Paul Czege's ideas, and Vincent Baker's, as well as Mike's powerful experiences of play over the last few years especially.

StalkingBlue wrote:
Yay! A shred of HQ discussion!

In HQ, cultural aspects would be covered in the Homeland keyword I think. Such as Katrin's "Rally the Clan" common magic ability, which Dornish men don't tend to get taught.

James Holloway wrote: I think this is very true. Note, for example, the differences between men and women in the Typical Personality Traits sections of the keyword for Esrolia. On the other hand, note that Esrolia -- the society where the women run the show -- is the only Homeland in the corebook that has different homeland keyword elements for men and women (well, apart from occupations, that is, but they're not part of the Homeland keyword per se).

I think that, for example, the Grazer limits on occupational keywords are, in fact, an important part of the keyword. I mean, it really says something about how they view the sexes by what they allow for occupations. I sense a very mid-twentieth century America level of sexism - women can be other than housewives, but they can only be teachers, nurses, etc.

So, a Samurai built for a typical RPGs session, say in feudal Japan, is going to behave like a Samurai. If he stops behaving like a Samurai, then he's doing it wrong.
In a Narrativist game, it's the opposite. If this same Samurai falls in love with the ghost of a woman who commands him to betray his code, he might well do that... and that's great – because it will provide stress with the PCs wife, his lord, his son and so on. HeroQuest provides lots of strictures for behavior based on the background of Glorantha. But it is the choices the PCs (and NPCs) make to follow -- or not! -- those strictures that provides compelling story.

While this debate uses the term gender we should probably acknowledge that some of these isues are not just about gender but about predjudices based on sex/sexuality. Gay gamers can encounter just as many issues. In fact there may be more because a gaming table that seems perfectly happy resolving male-female gender issues may find homosexuality uncomfortable, and game worlds which may not possess gender predjudice may have inbuilt predjudices based on sexuality.

As an example the Glorantha community has had some 'issues' in the past when religions that accept homosexuality, Nandan and Heler spring immediately to mind, have been documented. Let's just summarize the problems as: not everyone was comfortable with their inclusion, or reacted to thier inclusion positively.

sorry -- weird forum glitch.

sorry again

Mike Holmes wrote: I think that, for example, the Grazer limits on occupational keywords are, in fact, an important part of the keyword. I mean, it really says something about how they view the sexes by what they allow for occupations. I sense a very mid-twentieth century America level of sexism - women can be other than housewives, but they can only be teachers, nurses, etc.

All in all, again, Glorantha is a relatively egalitarian place. Yes, the Heortlings make the women warriors follow Vinga, but they're allowed. This is more advanced than the USA right now where women are just being allowed into combat units in limited roles. There are some places in Glorantha where women are definitely second-class, or worse, but they tend to be the exception it seems.

I think that this actually comes more from laziness than anything else, actually - people just don't want to work out how men and women differ in these cultures. But that works out just fine, IMO. Women get to play the fantasy of living in an actually egalitarian world.

Mike

Hi everyone,

Definitely time to create daughter threads from this one, with very specific topics, and to let this one lapse.

Thanks,
Ron