Gender equality

[lordcooper]

I've gotten into a bit of an Armageddon debate on another forum, and one of the issues people seem to have is the concept of gender equality.

Personally, I like the fact that it's a part of Zalanthas, but I'd like to ask why it was incorporated?  Some people have claimed that it's merely to avoid sexism, because the developers were somehow afraid of not being politically corrent.  This is obviously not the reason here, but I'd quite like to know what is.

[Pale Horse]

Armageddon started out as a Hack and Slash MUD with heavy Darksun influences.  In the world of Athas, the two sexes are pretty much equal, physically.  This probably was the basis for "gender equality" in the game.

[Synthesis]

The major reason is so it doesn't restrict roles by sex, which would force players who wanted to play a particular role to choose a particular sex.  This is a fantasy environment, and there's no reason why a female player shouldn't be able to fantasize about being a badass female warrior who can dual-wield 15-stone battle-axes, etc.

[Mendel]

Documented support for gender equality is one of the biggest reasons I give a shit about this mud.  It's important.

[Akaramu]

Also, I believe Sanvean was / is a strong supporter of feminism. That could have been another reason.

[Ami]

However, just because there is gender equality doesn't stop female characters being regarded differently by some.

[Morrolan]

A cautionary tale about gender in RPGs:

The Background: Once upon a time, a few years back, my table-top role playing group was merged with another.  I come from a high-RP background, with experiences like Armageddon and a couple of long-term GMs who went on to be writers.  This was not one of those GMs.

We were playing a game in the Wierd, Wierd West.  Cowboys meet the Zombie Apocalypse...maybe someone else knows the name of the game.  My character was a stiff-necked, old-fashioned gentleman, a former Civil War officer who upheld traditional values.  He was Christian.  He was sexist.  He was sans peur et sans reproche.  He was internally consistent.  He was an awesome character.  He was so not me.

All was well, until he ran up against a player (in her mid-twenties and a new mother) who became offended at my characters sexism and took it personally.

[For clarity, the issue was that her character would act in ways appropriate for a man, not taking the setting into account.  To exacerbate the situation, when the character was not lying, cheating, stealing, and killing (frowned upon in the good book), as well as trying to order men about (including my stiff-necked old former soldier), she would try to hide behind her gender.  All this, was of course, fine...until she came head to head with my character, respectable representative of the Patriarchy that he was.

[The response of my character was completely in-character.  He called her "unnatural."  He told her she was "not a lady and should not lay claim to it."  He said, "The Good Book does not countenance such acts."]  

The player was so offended by my character that I ended up leaving the group.

Gender is a difficult, and complex, topic to address.  Like religion, which is also not allowed on the game, gender often strikes at the core of our identities.  It is easy for us to get upset, lose perspective, and lose sight of the fact that this is a game.

However, there are a few more salient points to make.

I would not want to be the staff-member who has to code "women" separately from men.  Or decide whether "males" are the norm, or "females."

Or negotiate fights between characters that get out of hand the first time there is an 'honor killing' or a 'forced marriage.'

Or hold the hand of a player who just got the same sexist or homophobic berating they put up with at work all day.

It is easier to simply wave a magick wand and say, "By the Poetic License Vested in Me,  We Will Not Have This Problem Here."  It is a problem that is easier to address as a whole rather than on a case by case basis.

Morrolan

[valeria]

We were playing a game in the Wierd, Wierd West.  Cowboys meet the Zombie Apocalypse...maybe someone else knows the name of the game.

Derail - This sounds like Deadlands or Deadlands Reloaded, which is a Savage Worlds system setting.

Underail - Not being pigeonholed into specific gender roles is one of the reasons I play here.  In fact, this was really important on my list of 'things I want in a game' because I really enjoy the female-badass-type

[Marshmellow]

The Weird West was Deadlands, a wild-west meets magick and undead and werewolves and saltworm-sized tentacled horrors in the desert and California fell off the continent at the last great shake and now there's magickal ghost rock full of dead folks.  Yummy.  It is a wild-west/horror/post-apocalyptic/steam-punk rpg.  It had a very unique way of doing things, including a bizarre system to manage your dice and also included being dealt cards that you'd turn into poker hands.  (How you improved in things was to increase number of dice, size of dice and number of cards dealt for stats and/or skills.)

Later it got Reloaded using some generic rpg system.  It would be like making a d20 version of Deadlands.

Before that, however, Deadlands had a spinoff (sorta, technically it's like the difference between d20 and d20:modern) that was more futuristic.  The steam-punky guys from the earlier time-period, version... whatever.  Anyway, they eventually got technologically advanced enough to create the bomb and they irradiate a whole lotta people/area and now there are irradiated mutants that do indeed have strange radiation induced abilities that run the gamut and most people don't have much because it takes lots of radiation to grant lots of abilities, and it screws you for other things.  Definitely still a wild-west sort of theme, but now it's more of a wild-west/horror/post-apocalyptic/sci-fi theme.

[jstorrie]

Personally, I like the fact that it's a part of Zalanthas, but I'd like to ask why it was incorporated?

It's a playability issue. Women play this game too. You shouldn't have to roll up a man to have access to all the fun stuff.

[Drayab]

If I had to choose a #1 favorite thing about Armageddon, this is it, and I thank Sanvean for making it this way.

[Barzalene]

Personally, I like the fact that it's a part of Zalanthas, but I'd like to ask why it was incorporated?

It's a playability issue. Women play this game too. You shouldn't have to roll up a man to have access to all the fun stuff.

Thank you! Exactly!

[Wolfsong]

Personally, I like the fact that it's a part of Zalanthas, but I'd like to ask why it was incorporated?

It's a playability issue. Women play this game too. You shouldn't have to roll up a man to have access to all the fun stuff penis.

[Sephiroto]

If I had to choose a #1 favorite thing about Armageddon, this is it, and I thank Sanvean for making it this way.

I believe Sanvean more or less enforced this policy, rather than 'made it this way', much the way we (the gamers and staff) enforce that magickers are scum, half-breeds are yucky and Nobles are better than us.  This game was based off of Dark Sun, as explained in above posts, and reflected gender equality before Sanvean became an administrator (correct me if I'm wrong).  I understand that there have been a LOT of changes over the years, but I don't believe this is one of them.

In the real-world aspect, I think gender equality is very important.  However, I get the feeling that some players are praising Armageddon's gender equality out of context and if this is true, I think it's wrong.  Don't forget that in our documentation we promote racism between races, regions, and castes all across the game world.  Corruption, murder and betrayl is our theme.  I hope nobody is confused that this game promotes super-awesome values.  It doesn't.  It is a fantasy realm that just happens to reflect the fact that men and woman can be, and are, equals on the socio-political level.  In the case of the game, this extends to the physical aspect as well.  If gender bias was in the Dark Sun background, it probably would have translated into the game too.  I'm not sure many women would play the game (and I don't blame them).  In fact, I'm not sure ArmageddonMUD would even exist...but that's beside the point here.

I feel like some people might be praising this topic as a victory over a sign that real-life problems in our society are finally being overcome, when that shouldn't be the case.  The two are 100% separate.  Sometimes it's best to keep reality and fantasy separate.

I do support gender equality IRL, if there is any question about it.

[Is Friday]

The genders are not equal.

You start with way more free stuff/protection/importance as a female. Males don't get free stuff.

[hyzhenhok]

The genders are not equal.

You start with way more free stuff/protection/importance as a female. Males don't get free stuff.

Hey now, let's not generalize here. Not every female gets free stuff. I only get free stuff on half of my females.

The other half are dwarves.

[Cutthroat]

Personally, I like the fact that it's a part of Zalanthas, but I'd like to ask why it was incorporated?

It's a playability issue. Women play this game too. You shouldn't have to roll up a man to have access to all the fun stuff.

I agree with this. If our playerbase is currently roughly split down the middle, our playerbase would be halved if either gender was specifically tailored for certain roles.

If you want a possible IC reason, I would say that there is already so much hate and fear (for other races, for magickers, for scary animals, disasters, war, famine, etc) that conflicts between genders would seriously impact the ability to create future generations.

[Xagon]

If you want a possible IC reason, I would say that there is already so much hate and fear (for other races, for magickers, for scary animals, disasters, war, famine, etc) that conflicts between genders would seriously impact the ability to create future generations.

I tend to agree with this point of view. It makes sense -and- eliminates all the problems Morrolan emphasized.

[Ami]

There is certainly equality in ability between the genders, but you'll always see genders being treated differently by people.

[Wolfsong]

The genders are not equal.

You start with way more free stuff/protection/importance as a female. Males don't get free stuff.

[Talia]

Stay on topic or I'll lock the thread down. The question was "Why is this the policy?" not "Please whine at me about <gender>."

If I had to choose a #1 favorite thing about Armageddon, this is it, and I thank Sanvean for making it this way.

I'm torn between gender equality and permadeath being my favorite features. And yes, to my knowledge we largely have Sanvean to thank for it, but also many other staffers (both male and female) for being just as vehemently in favor of gender equality in game.

[Marshmellow]

Actually, folks, in game there isn't gender equality.  Sure, there are no stat differences and most of the cultures around are egalitarian when it comes to male/female roles, but there are other cultures or micro-cultures within the game that are decidedly non-egalitarian.  One noble house of Tuluk is strictly matriarchal, for example, and only a female can hope to make it to the highest ranks (granted nobody will attain that rank while still a PC anyway, but that's beside the point).

It's equal enough from our standpoint, however.  Stats and normal opportunities for our normal characters, as in non-sponsored roles, aren't segregated by gender for most jobs.

Oh, and this isn't just a hand-me-down from Dark Sun.  This is something that is a holdover from D&D for years and years, actually, prior to Dark Sun existing.  Very few RPG systems, in fact, have had different stats for different genders, except as an exception.  In the Palladium game Manhunter there was an alien race that was matriarchal (again), and the females of the species had much better stats than the males.

What's more interesting to me is this:  where equality is usually fostered in the system by most games, why are the exceptions more often than not matriarchal or biased in other ways towards the female characters?

[Nana]

The genders are not equal.

You start with way more free stuff/protection/importance as a female. Males don't get free stuff.

Yeah.

Sigh, sadly, this is true. I've tested it. It's true.

I wish it weren't. This isn't bitching about gender x or y. This is commentary that people IG often don't RP true gender equality.

I do what I can to break the trend by making female characters that people wouldn't be inclined to treat preferentially. Often even that fails, probably because of male chauvinism in the playerbase.

tldr: everyone please stop giving me free shit for no apparent reason when I roll up females. Come up with a reason for it. Imagine to yourself, "would I do this if they were male?"

[Sephiroto]

Really?  I see nothing wrong with giving things to someone I want the attention of, male or female.  Men are horn dogs, so more often than not in the male to female situation the male is competing for attention.  I'm not sure I see how this has anything to do with equality.  People do things/give things to those they're attracted to.  Anyone always has the right to refuse, or even question why someone is giving you free stuff.

[Bluefae]

What's more interesting to me is this:  where equality is usually fostered in the system by most games, why are the exceptions more often than not matriarchal or biased in other ways towards the female characters?

    If I had to venture a guess, I'd say it's because a true matriarchy is much more "fantastical" than a true patriarchy, and thus more interesting as a thought-exercise.  Total domination by men isn't that hard for most of us on this forum to imagine, whereas the opposite would likely strike most as more unusual.

    As to female characters being given more resources, that makes a lot of sense from an evolutionary/reproductive stand-point.  To grossly over-simplify, as I understand the current state of evolutionary mating strategies, in many cultures men bring/display resources to women in order to demonstrate what a good selection they would be.  At the same time, I -totally- get the "But I want to do it myself!" urge; one of my favorite and most successful characters died upholding this.

    To augment what Sephiroto wrote, there are typically more male characters in the game than female at any given time.  This creates a relative scarcity of potential female mates for many male characters, further driving up the relative "value" of females on the relationship/mating market.

    To address the OP's question, from what I've read Sanvean was a driving force in initially implementing and then sustaining an absolute gender equality in the game-world.  However, as others (both in this thread and out) have pointed out, "equality" does not mean "no difference", just as 2+2 and 3+1 both = 4, but they don't use the same numbers to get there.  From my worm's eye view as a player, I'll say that even in the last six years, I've seen a noticeable increase in portrayals of physically powerful women.  Just as importantly, I've also witnessed an ever-increasing ease in other characters accepting said powerful women as full comrades.  

    In short, Vive la différence! and Vive l'égalité! aren't mutually exclusive.