Game worlds
Nov. 6th, 2015 12:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethLast night I was reading GURPS Banestorm
and it just wound me the hell up
that they've cherry picked history to end up with two thousand years of AU that's more sexist.
Not just because the 20th century worked out quite differently.
They've just erased women in two easy steps.
The first one goes something like 'it is a historical fact that most warriors were men' and the second one just conveniently ignores the 'most' and continues as if history were entirely shaped by dicks.
Even the most masculine focused history books I've read included Boudicea and the Iceni.
But the gaming AU version? Rome! Rome forever!
Conquer the multiverse with some frozen in amber single most sexist moment, where nobody struck back ever.
And which is more exciting to play? Do you want to bestride the continent as the single most efficient war machine history has ever known? Or do you want to be the tiny tribe on an island in the arse end of nowhere that stood up and made them burn?
Banestorm takes little bits of Earth cultures and dumps them via storm portals onto a whole other planet, where they can develop differently. Or, for gaming purposes, not develop.
But it takes the most sexist stereotypes of the most sexist centuries, and then ignores the fact that each and every moment is one of dynamic change. Women didn't just sit around for nineteen hundred years on every continent entirely content to be told they could not. Women did. Women did all the things. Pick a thing, and women have done it. Led armies? Pirate queen? Queen regnant? Founded universities? And yeah, spun and wove and embroidered, made lace and knitted, but you know the fibre arts weren't so heavily gendered when they were a widespread industry. And see 'peace weaver' for another highly respected alternative. Or abbess, how about that, head of a joint house where male religious did what they were told. I know very little history and I know all those things. And it can't be that there's no room in the game book for the because it took me all of a paragraph to write them out.
So pick up your random bits of Earth culture and dump them next door to orcs if you will, but realise you could be taking them from an Anglo-Saxon era where men and women both could be 'lords' or 'throne worthy', could be land owners and bread winners, defenders and diplomats. Even if you want Christianity, you could have the Celtic version where women were (at least closer to) equals. In this timeline sexism won, imperial and religious both, but why keep that?
A few centuries later you could have the survivors of the Black Death, pulling together to survive, with women doing all the work because there weren't enough people left to make a fuss about it. Sure, before and after that they were locked out of a lot of paths, but for a while they were everywhere because that was the only way to survive.
And you know what happens when you've got a few thousand humans on an alien planet surrounded by orcs? Because history suggests it's not bloody sexism. See world war 2 for the most recent model. Necessity isn't just the mother of invention.
Plus GURPS specifically says the Banestorm pulled people from the crusader era, without considering that if all the fighty ones and many of the males have buggered off to go hit the neighbours, the villages back home getting portaled over could have a bit of a different balance going on. More Maid Marions than usual. Actually fewer Norman knights. Play through that as if the cross coated never came home and what could happen?
So you can pick your bits and pieces of societies from all over, take them from moments where women were already doing things, and weave together an alternate history where sexism died.
And it's more interesting, richer, more varied, gives you far more game possibilities, and isn't something we've seen a billion times before.
Are there RPG sourcebooks specifically about women? Templates for famous historical women, that sort of thing? There should be.
Maybe I should make one.
and it just wound me the hell up
that they've cherry picked history to end up with two thousand years of AU that's more sexist.
Not just because the 20th century worked out quite differently.
They've just erased women in two easy steps.
The first one goes something like 'it is a historical fact that most warriors were men' and the second one just conveniently ignores the 'most' and continues as if history were entirely shaped by dicks.
Even the most masculine focused history books I've read included Boudicea and the Iceni.
But the gaming AU version? Rome! Rome forever!
Conquer the multiverse with some frozen in amber single most sexist moment, where nobody struck back ever.
And which is more exciting to play? Do you want to bestride the continent as the single most efficient war machine history has ever known? Or do you want to be the tiny tribe on an island in the arse end of nowhere that stood up and made them burn?
Banestorm takes little bits of Earth cultures and dumps them via storm portals onto a whole other planet, where they can develop differently. Or, for gaming purposes, not develop.
But it takes the most sexist stereotypes of the most sexist centuries, and then ignores the fact that each and every moment is one of dynamic change. Women didn't just sit around for nineteen hundred years on every continent entirely content to be told they could not. Women did. Women did all the things. Pick a thing, and women have done it. Led armies? Pirate queen? Queen regnant? Founded universities? And yeah, spun and wove and embroidered, made lace and knitted, but you know the fibre arts weren't so heavily gendered when they were a widespread industry. And see 'peace weaver' for another highly respected alternative. Or abbess, how about that, head of a joint house where male religious did what they were told. I know very little history and I know all those things. And it can't be that there's no room in the game book for the because it took me all of a paragraph to write them out.
So pick up your random bits of Earth culture and dump them next door to orcs if you will, but realise you could be taking them from an Anglo-Saxon era where men and women both could be 'lords' or 'throne worthy', could be land owners and bread winners, defenders and diplomats. Even if you want Christianity, you could have the Celtic version where women were (at least closer to) equals. In this timeline sexism won, imperial and religious both, but why keep that?
A few centuries later you could have the survivors of the Black Death, pulling together to survive, with women doing all the work because there weren't enough people left to make a fuss about it. Sure, before and after that they were locked out of a lot of paths, but for a while they were everywhere because that was the only way to survive.
And you know what happens when you've got a few thousand humans on an alien planet surrounded by orcs? Because history suggests it's not bloody sexism. See world war 2 for the most recent model. Necessity isn't just the mother of invention.
Plus GURPS specifically says the Banestorm pulled people from the crusader era, without considering that if all the fighty ones and many of the males have buggered off to go hit the neighbours, the villages back home getting portaled over could have a bit of a different balance going on. More Maid Marions than usual. Actually fewer Norman knights. Play through that as if the cross coated never came home and what could happen?
So you can pick your bits and pieces of societies from all over, take them from moments where women were already doing things, and weave together an alternate history where sexism died.
And it's more interesting, richer, more varied, gives you far more game possibilities, and isn't something we've seen a billion times before.
Are there RPG sourcebooks specifically about women? Templates for famous historical women, that sort of thing? There should be.
Maybe I should make one.