RPMiller: Faery's Tale

[pyrandon]

Ditto. I have B/G twins and even though we always tried to treat them the same and provided the same toys/books/games, etc, they manifested what would be called stereotypical gender preferences.

This and the other testimonials above (plus those of the 99% of B/G parents I know) proves that differences between boys & girls are "hardwired." While the scientific community dissects and argues and publishes, and while the psychological/sociological community sets up canned study after study, and while social philosophers & radicals soapbox and lobby over what they want to be the case, in billions of cases all over the world, the truth is quietly manifested in home after home, despite them all. Not to downplay the search for solid facts, but when the search for facts blots the truth...

Okay, done pontificating now. Carry on, people!

[RPMiller]

Ok, back to the subject at hand. I think we all agree that FT is a most excellent game, and there really is nothing wrong with the game, it's mechanics or its setting. The only problem we can see is its slant toward girl gender bias. I have to say that if that is all we can find wrong with it, it deserves a place at or near the top of most RPGs.

I think it is too late for any "re-marketing" so future versions should take steps to definitely remove the only "problem" with the book. Obviously Sandy and Pat are now aware of the "problem" and are both intelligent enough to come up with a brilliant solution so I think it is now time to focus on something different. Something that we truly excel at. I think we should make a map of Brightwood. What do you all think?

[Naryt]

OK...been away a week with my oldest boy (12 yrs) at Scout Camp. I've quickly read through the posts made while I was away and am now suffering from a bit of shell shock at finding Patrick and Sandy have both posted here. {Waves wildly for a moment.}

I just wanted to make a couple of quick comments:

First and foremost, I hope no one took any of my previous comments as being disparaging of FT.

As the father of four ( boy - 12, girl - 9, boy - 8, girl - 4), I agree with the "boys are boys and girls are girls" philosophy.

As to the main topic at hand, my personal interpretation of the "gender issue" in FT was mainly that it was likely an attempt to be gender neutral that became unbalanced. I based that on the even split between pixies/brownies and sprites/pookas in the rules and narration. Such a split clearly had to be intentional meaning the intent was gender neutrality but the rest of the text over-corrected and left the text seeming to be gender biased.

On the artwork, it's devilishly hard to find masculine faery artwork so even commissioned artwork would have to, quite literally, define the masculine faery world.

I'm a programmer by trade and often run up against the situation where my users interpret the "obvious" completely differently than I do; much the way that we, the readers/players of FT, have interpreted the mood of FT differently than you, the writers, may have intended. It's a difficult thing to step back from my finely crafted software and say not that I was wrong but that I did not fully anticipate or understand the expectation/need of the users.

The point being, FT is a great set of rules (as mentioned, the rule set is fabulous) but the gender neutrality is off center a bit as written.