Tell me about the women in your world!

[Klaus]

Seeing as 2/3 of my gaming group are women, they make up most of the realm's heroes!

 

[Ace]

The role of women IMC is very culture depandant. I have one semi matriarchy (think a Miriam Gimbutas style of bronze age government) one full true matriarchy (hey its fantasy who cares if there never were such things) a lot of places where the status of women is lower than that of men but higher than in the real world, a couple of places with legal equality and one or two where women are chatell

The status of women in general though is higher than that of woemn in the real world for three reasons

#1 Magic -- there are lots of women sorcerers and cleric and so on -- a fireball cares not for the casters gender as they say

#2 Contraception -- there are common and effective magical and mundane sorts of contraception available -- cheap

#3 two female headed pantheons -- there is an equivilant to Wicca and a polytheistic pantheon called The Fifty

As for specific women IMC here is a list of NPC's

1--Mary Bow:
Retired mercenary turned innkeeper, Bearer of the Stone of the Pact, Wielder of the bow Singer

2--Reverend Mother Virginia
Leader of the Church of the Way in Far Haven. She who must be obeyed.


4-- A PC this time Alhanna the Elf Friend
A mad Archer with a hatred of goblins, wears a wizards ring of unknown effect


5-- Lady Escafalon of Gallitep
Troublemaking Wizard, in fact the source of almost all of the campaigns problems

6 --Taswynd Twice Bled at other times Lady Taswynd, Empress Taswynd, Priccess Tassy
A rather legendary figure and the wife of the last person to sit the Stewards throne

7-- Ki Rin Haca (prounouced Kee Reen Hah Sah BTW)
a formidable duelist and mistress of the two swords

8- Alexandria the Paladin
An NPC borrowed from a friends Rolemaster campaign -- a farmer turned mad Paladin

As for the roles of women IMC women fill mostly the same roles that they fil IRL -- wives and mothers. There are few female warriors though there are more than IRL and there is the obligatory all female mercenary troop The Sisters of Steel (yes thats a comic - I used to love it)

There are more rulers than IRL though and lots of magic types and priestesses, maybe slightly more than men on a day to day basis

The only roles women rarely fill are Death Knight (there is only one in fact The Corpse Maiden) , as women are rarely warriors and even more rarely evil enough, Liches (there are 2 in all) as women rarely are evil or powerfull enough to take this path and Archmage as women usually lack the ambition (there are a few dozen)

As for Lesbian Vampire Sorcerereses -- there aren't any

 

[Arrgh! Mark!]

Well..

An interesting game was my swashbuckling adventures based in the 17th century. While there were two female players, only one played a woman. I warned her no less than four times it would be more difficult.

To begin with she was dismayed at the handsome duelist types stealing her every moment. That is, until she began to use it for her own ends. Then she began to quite like the character, involving it in a number of secret societies and so on.

"Oh, sir! That blackguard stole an invertation I was carrying! Please, accost him and get it back! *pretty blinking eyes*"

"M'lady! What a dreadful so-and-so! So I shall!"

(Idiot duelist challenges for invitation, is called a liar, duels, kills and retrieves invitation to Duke's Ball)


My other Conan game has a large variety of societies forcing women about, though there's two particularly egalitarian ones and one matriarchal one.

The celtic-based she-warrior was upset at being forced into doing various things. That is, until she showed the steel edge of diplomacy. Or at least a bloody steel edge.


It might be a fantasy, but there's just as much opportunity for heroism in breaking free of ones bonds, be they mind or steel forged.

 

[knitnerd]

Tell me about the interesting female NPCs, PCs, or organizations in your world. Are women considered equal, below, or above men in the social hierarchy? What are "kingdoms" ruled by women like?

My female ranger had to do more to prove she was capable than the male members of the party and had to endure remarks about having to protect a weak woman. The enemies tended to ignore her at first. When they decided to train the merchants and farmers to protect themselves, she suggested training the women too and was laughed at. When the goblins were kidnapping people to sacrifice and took mostly women and anyone else who could not protect themselves,she said that it would have been easier to stop if the women had been trained. They would be harder to kidnap and would be able to help when freed, instead of being a burden. She was ignored again.
The dwarf female fighter was accepted,but she had a beard.
The Drow Priestess has used her charisma to control everyone she meets.It was amusing until she raised a vampire in a small enclosed space filled with her allies.

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

Not really certain. Three general trends:

First,

Generally I'm dealing with outcastes, ie adventurers so they don't have many hard and fast rules in the first place. There may be more male fighters and more female thieves, but gender certainly doesn't give you a social advantage when you are all more or less at the bottom of the heap.

Specifics:

Of the two most important societies:

Enlightenment Matters. You are or you aren't, genders got nothing to do with it.

One relied on a more or less academic system. There were people who had attained the highest state of enlightenment and everyone was organized underneath them. You were a part of one of these mega households, your status depended on a mix of your universally recognized accomplishments and the whims of the household head. Getting to that state of enlightenment really had no correlation to gender, save that women live longer and therefore had the ability to hold households for longer. When you're head of household died you might have some means to pass to a successor, but if you really had no place to go within the system you still weren't in bad shape since being a member of a household gives you a lot of status. You can get a position with another one, set yourself up as an independent, or go to another society. At the top romance is really seen as nothing too get upset about, and at the bottom it's seen as everything from a means of advancement to a distraction. Children are viewed as a very very important communal affair, as you never know who might be the next enlightened one on the one hand and on the other nobody wants to have an individual set of parents have to close a relationship to one of them either.

Twins are the norm. So you're really only the male or female half of an androgynous whole.

The other was a society of giants who tended to produce fraternal twins of different genders. The basic individual unit was that twinset. Offices were held by twins and households involving large groups of servants were built around them. If one half of the twinset died or they couldn't get along they would go through whatever they could to again qualify for twin status. Tactics ranged from picking up another single to spiritually absorbing the essence of the missing twin.

Incest was probably a reality of the society, but the official means of having children was that you had to set up a reproductive alliance with another twinset. Such an alliance could be long term and actually consist of affectionate relationships, but the 'nuclear' family was that of son and daughter and mother and uncle. Father and aunt were seen in more or less the same affectionate light and lesser legal status as grandmother and grandfather.

The twinsets with the highest advantages are those who can best embody each other's traits. As such the highest ideal are people who can be manly or womanly but who can easily access and utilize the opposite traits.

Still, at the time of the game there had been rash of royal and high ranking twinsets who were actually the remaining woman after particularly heroic episodes, so there might be a societal trend towards women developing at the very highest levels at the least or, at the worst, a conspiracy developed by the Queen.

The queen is an ancient giantess, noone has seen her brother outside of the fact that she frequently dresses in drag and claims to be him. The performance is very convincing for a... number of reasons.