Tallifer
Hero
It has been very interesting reading all of your replies.
1. I think there needs to be more balance between post-modern ethics (which are maintained to make players comfortable at the table: eg. no raping your defeated foes like the ancient Assyrians did) and mediaeval ethics (which should be acknowledged in order to roleplay people who live with pre-modern technology and whose explanations for the universe are supernatural).
In order to maintain that balance, I would probably allow for example female paladins in my world (a crime for which even Joan of Arc got burnt) and arcane classes ( sometimes a tolerated eccentricity and sometimes a horrible crime in the Middle Ages) to accomodate twenty first century players.
On the other hand, I would disallow player character necromancy as offensive to every pre-modern moral system (which all took care of their dead in some manner), and I would normalize slavery or serfdom as it was universally accepted in olden times. (Obviously, no wants to be a slave, so a story can still make sense to rescue your relatives or countrymen from slavery: however the law would never be supportive of vigilante emancipation.)
1. I think there needs to be more balance between post-modern ethics (which are maintained to make players comfortable at the table: eg. no raping your defeated foes like the ancient Assyrians did) and mediaeval ethics (which should be acknowledged in order to roleplay people who live with pre-modern technology and whose explanations for the universe are supernatural).
In order to maintain that balance, I would probably allow for example female paladins in my world (a crime for which even Joan of Arc got burnt) and arcane classes ( sometimes a tolerated eccentricity and sometimes a horrible crime in the Middle Ages) to accomodate twenty first century players.
On the other hand, I would disallow player character necromancy as offensive to every pre-modern moral system (which all took care of their dead in some manner), and I would normalize slavery or serfdom as it was universally accepted in olden times. (Obviously, no wants to be a slave, so a story can still make sense to rescue your relatives or countrymen from slavery: however the law would never be supportive of vigilante emancipation.)