Character creation, gender, and RP

[Parry.Lost]

Hello,

I was looking through the character creation process (for technical reasons I can't get beyond that yet) and I was just playing around with the screen where you select your parents' professions. And I know this is going to get me accused of being the political correctness police or something, but I am genuinely wondering about the differences between the descriptions for the mother's and father's possible professions... And just because this is the Internet I want to say that I'm not trolling for an argument, but I really am curious.

The professions are almost totally identical for both parents, but the descriptions for a few of them are different in a pretty stereotypical "masculine/feminine" way. For example, a "weapon smithy" father is described as making and collecting great weapons and helping you practise with them when you were little, while a mother in the same profession is described as focusing on inscriptions and decorations, and sometimes making smaller weapons. "Animal trainer" for the father shows bravery; for the mother it's all about intuition or a better understanding of animals. An "armor smithy" mother is explicitly described as being very unusual, and making you feel like you have "two fathers," while the same profession for the father has a more standard description. And one uber-manly profession, "builder," which is all about strength and toughness, is not even available for the female parent at all.

I actually think it's really cool how the descriptions are all written out; and it shows how much work and thought went into even such a detail in the game. And it's cool also that details are different for male and female parents, like how they first got into the profession, and other stuff like that. I'm just a bit put off by how, well, stereotypical many of the differences are. For many of the professions, it just sort of has the mother doing the lighter, more gentle, more delicate version of the job, or focusing on more traditionally feminine aspects and skills in the profession.

I was just wondering what the idea behind these differences is. 6_6 I know that this is a fantasy/medieval setting, and one wouldn't expect the culture of such a time to be exactly drenched with feminist ideals. But on the other hand, having a weapon smithy mother with -any- description already deviates quite far from the gender roles one would expect in the distant past. And it is explicitly stated in Plane Shift's description that male and female characters within the game itself have exactly the same stats and abilities.

So since this is a role-playing game and setting is important, I think it is a fair question... what is the philosophy behind the profession descriptions? Is the setting one where the genders are *mostly* equal, but with some stereotypes and expectations of standard masculine/feminine behaviour still common? How does this figure more generally in the role-playing setting -- in other words, how is gender treated in this fictional world? Does it shape the way actual role-playing is expected to go? Or does this just reflect the actual beliefs of the game's designers as to gender and such?

I know it's probably a very minor issue, since the whole thing is just one part of a character's background, but, well, it caught my eye, and since the game is about role-playing it can have wider implications as well.

So yep, hope no-one is too annoyed by me asking, and I look forward to actually joining in the game (as soon as I get it to work fully on my computer )

[Under the moon]

I agree with some points, though not quite for the same reasons. Creation has been a bone of contention for me since I started playing a few years back. My issue is not with the gender stereotypes, but with the narrow span you are given for every parent's job. Every person who had an armor smithy for a mother will have the same 'two fathers' experience while growing up. The details of Creation cannot be used very well in roleplaying. It would look rather silly if a group of people met who all had the same armor smithy mother and started talking about how it made them all feel like they had two fathers. The same goes with all the other jobs, homes, and childhood activities. They are just -too- specific, and leave very little wiggle room.

Perhaps we can add to it someday to give greater variety and flexibility.

[Zan]

I honestly ignore all those aspects of character creation in my roleplay. Creating a character is nice to do and very extensive but because of what UtM said, not useful in RP.

I think most people just (ab)use it to get the skills they want their character to have and maybe here and there to get some ideas for their own RP background. To me that's what a character creation process should do. Give examples and teach you about the game world, the settings and the culture. It shouldn't give you absolutes where you chose from and have to stick with .. shouldn't limit our creativity that much.

So see character creation as a nice example of what you could use for your own RP background creation.