Tell me about the women in your world!

[Timeboxer]

Seriously. Why WOULDN'T you have lesbian vampire sorceresses? Is there some kind of downside? Ever walked into a party and said, "Eh, too many lesbian vampire sorceresses for me. I'm outa here."?

If anything, I haven't met enough lesbian vampire sorceresses.

I am now tempted to start a thread entitled, "Tell me about the lesbian vampire sorceresses in your world!"

 

[LostSoul]

That was where my campaign sat before I started to move things towards the river of worlds. I had hoped the setup would be ripe for political intrigue.

Psion, that is very cool stuff.

I think that, when I don't really think about gender roles, I default to a modern view (which means sexism from the Evil guys). I don't tend to have too many female NPCs, but usually the ones I do have are more interesting. I guess I feel more comfortable with evil men than women.

I would like to create a matriarchy that didn't just turn gender roles on their heads - something that was different from what we expect to see, by virtue of all the power in women's hands.

 

[LostSoul]

And yes, we do have lesbian vampire sorceresses. Or rather, there's A lesbian vampire sorceress, but she's a doozy...

That was one of the reasons for posting this thread. So come on now, tell us about her! Don't be shy... she won't bite. Well, she will, but you'll like it.

 

[barsoomcore]

Yuek Man Chong showed up in my campaign initially as a margin note for another NPC, just a name I scribbled down because I realised that THIS NPC needed a boss, and that boss ought to have name, and I ought to record that somewhere.

And then she took over and I had to kill her because HER story was so much more interesting (to me, anyway) than the PCs.

Read my Barsoom Tales story hour, is your best bet. She's only been peripheral so far, but with the new season, she'll be moving from guest star to series regular...

It's funny, the fact of her being a lesbian vampire sorceress, while CRITICAL to the direction of the campaign, became almost immaterial in terms of her interest as a character. She's just a fascinating person (yes, I say that about imaginary people I've invented in my head. What's your point?), and is in many ways the very definition of high Charisma -- when she's around, you don't really pay much attention to anyone else.

And of course, in my head, she's ALWAYS around. It's a problem.

 

[Dancer]

IMC men are mostly the rulers of the lands the pcs have traveled although women have dominate rolls in many spheres (some sectors of religion and political arenas). Women warriors are uncommon but you do see them. Same with women rulers. In 5 years running this campaign I've never not had at least one female player (at one point I had 4). None have had serious problems with the way I run the feudal society (although, being pcs, they were always exceptional women and thus garnered more respect among the populous).

One pc was a very powerful sorceress (magic being one way for women to attain power and respect in the world).

One npc woman is the head of the most magical faction of the dominant religion.

I also have some sections of society where woman are treated as equal (one of my "barbarian" clans). They view all adults of age as warriors no matter the gender.

 

[barsoomcore]

On a slightly more serious note, on of the ideas I wanted to explore in Barsoom was the question of what magical power means to society -- what sort of social structures would arise in a world where a person's power has no necessary connection to society? In our world, rich people are powerful because society ALLOWS them to be so. We all agree that shares in Microsoft are valuable, and so Bill Gates weilds enormous power.

Gandalf's power in Middle-Earth is of a different sort. Society can't take away a sorcerer's power, and so (and this has been the subject of much longer threads than this) it can't control it, and so lone-wolf crazies become harder to keep in their place. On Barsoom, one of the underlying assumptions is that with magic, paranoia is actually the most advantageous pattern. The person who comes out on top is ultimately going to be the most ruthless, most paranoid, most intelligent person in the heap.

And they will be ruthless, paranoid and intelligent about maintaining that position.

Barsoom is a world at the mercy of the most paranoid, most intelligent and most ruthless people that humanity has ever produced.

Yuek Man Chong is part of that very exclusive club.

 

[Timeboxer]

I would like to create a matriarchy that didn't just turn gender roles on their heads - something that was different from what we expect to see, by virtue of all the power in women's hands.

Hmm. It's really hard to do this without stereotyping, to be honest; I must admit that I'm of the belief that men and women really aren't fundamentally different.

Well, how about this, right off the top of my head, as a mishmash of some historical patterns I've seen: a magically advanced matriarchy in which the leaders are women, certainly, but also, the intellectual elite is predominantly female, where "intellectual elite" tends to include those vocations which have magic in their blood (wizards, clerics, sorcerers, etc.). Recently published (if unintentionally prejudiced) arcane research has indicated that men are by nature more prone to irrational extremes of violence or logic, which undermines the feminine ideal of balance; indeed, the use of detect spells comparing a representative sample of male prisoners with a similar sample of female aristocrats shows that far more men than women are prone to be extreme on moral and authority scales, as Malina "the Indefatigable" Pinarr writes in her Treatise on the Unfairer Sex.

It is thus right and proper that women are those in charge, for men, by their very natures (as divined through magic), are incapable of the wisdom necessary for those positions, and certainly they would be unable to deal with the intricacies of the upcoming war against those Eiginese dogs. Men aren't discriminated against, of course -- women merely find them irrelevant to the important things in life, and certainly it can't be helped that men are simply innately unable to do what women do, by virtue of the fact that they are a corruption of the female progenitor sex. There have been many good men, history tells us, but they so often flip-flop between extremes that we cannot really rely on them -- they're almost like children, really, and women must be responsible for them. The idea of a male arcanist is a dangerous prospect, for they may use their magical powers to their own extreme ends, without the wisdom that women have.

As a result, the societal ideal of romance tends to exclude men, for they are so unreliable; women often marry men because they are necessary for certain physical needs including children. However, for love, one must turn to a woman. The most famous historical example includes a young arcane apprentice who fell in love with her professor, and how the two eventually underwent a certain process to ensure that their love would endure eternally; the tale of the two lesbian vampire sorceresses is nowadays often told to young girls as a bedtime story.

All these things have been arcanifically proven.

 

[Sado]

That was one of the reasons for posting this thread.

Well if you wanted to talk about lesbians why didn't you just say so.

Yes I have a matriarchal/lesbian culture in my world (which started as a civ 2 scenario). The Chandala inhabit a huge sub-continent (like India) but even more isolated by mountains, which has contributed to the evolution of the female-dominated society, a rarity on this world (though there are some others). The fact that the physical roles are opposite the norm has also been a factor (women are stronger, or as strong)

The Chandala have a "mother-earth type religion (with a rather more aggressive mother earth than usual). They are matriarchal and segregated by gender, more so in the cities, where men and women live in separate districts. Even in most villages men and women do not share quarters. Actual mating only occurs seven times a year on religious holidays when men and women get together for that purpose. The rest of the time both males and females live in best friend/sexual partner type relationships with members of the same sex. Of course there are "backward" places where men and women cohabitate, but that is discouraged.

Women hold most important government posts, religion (the head of state is nominal head of religion, though a priestess council actually runs that), and most military positions. Men are allowed to serve as archers and other support roles which are considered...well I would say unmanly, but I guess unwomanly would be more appropriate. Magic users are almost exclusively men for the same reason.

And yes, I did sort of make them up just for my own perverted fantasies. Along that line I included the Sisters of the Sword, elite warriors who fight completely naked to demonstrate their courage. As these things do, it evolved and began to take on a life of its own, until it started turning into a setting that genuinely interested me.

There is also another notable form of lesbianism among the northern Skyth hill tribes. Theirs is a warrior culture, and families like to marry their daughters off to great warriors-even if said warrior is also a woman. This is advantageous to the female warrior as property is passed down through female children.

Seriously, that wasn't the only reason I made them up. I needed several minor "flavor" tribes in my civ 2 scenario as backdrops and wildcards for the main conflict between the main good guys and main bad guys. Other tribes included:

the Skyth (see above);
the Goven-disunited warlike dark age northern European style barbarians. Very patriarchal, women are basically property;
the Zanti-obligatory desert nomads/middle eastern style civilization. Among the nomads, fairly egalitrian, with leadership falling to the oldest and wisest. In the cities, males dominate though women are fairly equal under the law and head the Jezerene religion, whose founder was a great prophetess;
the Orkish Kingdom-There are many tribes of wild orks, but the Kingdom was a confedertion of tribes that had been united by a strong leader who had seen the advantage of the organization of the human kingdoms and was trying to emulate them. They have a code of law and fairly equal treatment of the sexes, though they still cling to pre-defined roles for males and females.
The Old Kingdom-Tyria, also known as the Old Kingdom (being the only major kingdom to survive a worldwide catastrophe several centuries ago), is the main good guy kingdom. Their society is a combination of tribal customs and the traditions of the now-extinct Eldan Empire-a combination which doesn't always mesh successfully even to this day. Mostly all people are considered equals and can take any profession.
Chaos-Evil force that is seeping into the world warhammer-style, which the OK is trying to stop. Gender roles are moot, all are subservient to the chaos which possesses them

Not around anymore but significant:
The Eldan-Ancient empire defeated by Tyrian tribes
The Shadroch-Ancient hun-type semi-nomadic empire defeated by an Eldan-Tyrian alliance.
The Fei Kingdoms-Elvish kingdoms across the ocean. Formerly ruled by the Eldan Empire, there has been little contact with them for generations.

If you're interested in a bit of history, the land of Tyria was being fought over by two great empires-The Eldan and the Shadroch. An Eldan prince secretly betrayed the empire and united the tribes of Tyria, allied with the Eldan to defeat the Shadroch, and in the immediate aftermath of that victory led the Tyrian tribes to turn on their Eldan allies, thus defeating both would-be conquerors on the same battlefield.

 

[fusangite]

This thread seems to be in danger of taking an odd and disturbing turn. So, to head it off, I'll raise the issue that seems to be creeping in incrementally: what do GMs do to prevent the sexualization of the gaming dynamic when their campaigns confront sexualized or eroticized events?

For me, it's all about prevention and glossing -- I do my best to steer the party away from any events or encounters that are overtly sexual and if such situations do come up, I make sure that they are glossed-over with as little detail as possible.

So, in the spirit of this approach, let me suggest that it's pretty damned sad that a thread about gender in campaigns has to turn into a thread about sexuality in campaigns.

 

[barsoomcore]

Well said, fus. Frankly, if people want to discuss sexuality in their games, a new thread is probably the best bet.

Nobody says this thread HAS to turn into anything.