I used to follow genre conventions, thus if we’re playing a historical RPG, then the histories written by men were my guide. The same was true for my Sword and Sorcery. I imagined all the barbarians to be men, like Conan.
For my Pendragon campaign, for example, I felt that the fiction and the campaign focuses on the deeds of men. The rules also have a separate section for female characters that I could have ignored but which decided to keep in the game, wondering whether they’d add variety. Later I realized that it was going to be hard for me to run adventures mixing martial prowess and female characters created with these rules and so I ended up with an all-male cast of characters.
I think this was a mistake.
For me, having to play an all-male cast of characters is a reason not to play the game. I’d prefer a fantasy or alternate history version where we either have characters of all genders or the game is about fighting the inequality itself – much like I don’t like to have slaves in my games unless we’re playing a game about fighting slavers.
I don’t enjoy importing real world problems into my games unless we can engage with them.
If I ever run Pendragon again, it will have female knights using the exact same rules as male knights.
Just to be clear I practically don’t play strictly historical role-playing games. We play in Fantasy Japan, we play in the Gaslight Twenties where H.P. Lovecraft was right, we play in a D&D madness that is but vaguely inspired by the medieval ages and the classification of polearms – none of that requires any gender imbalance.
An excellent rule of thumb I like to pursue in my fantasy role-playing games is something I once read on a blog post elsewhere: When introducing a non-player character, roll a d6.
+----+-------------------+ | d6 | human | +----+-------------------+ | 1 | young man | | 2 | young woman | | 3 | middle aged man | | 4 | middle aged woman | | 5 | old man | | 6 | old woman | +----+-------------------+
I remember when I was young, all my characters were between 16 and 18. These days all my characters are in their thirties. All my non-player characters where men unless they were a witch. Rolling a die forces me to randomize where I apparently have prejudice. That is a good thing.
#RPG