Those are all great character ideas.
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Lovely designs!
Turb is a Latin word. It's an abbreviation of Contubernium.
(Sure - I made that up, but I made it up and had it published in Third Edition, so...).
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Timothy Ferguson wins the internet today.
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My interest for knowledge lost ... or as Timothy Ferguson aptly put it, "hunted down and destroyed with fire", is piqued.
In which editions was "female gender" a game Flaw? I fail to recall seeing it in 2nd, 3rd or 4th edition, despite having played a number of female characters. It seems strange to me that my munchkin gaming table of the time would not have flocked to it with the same eagerness we displayed for orphanhood... but then it was a very, very long time ago.
That's awesome! Tell the truth... you steal faerie vitality whenever it gets cited don't you ?
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The idea that a desire for increased historicity would be a roadblock to removing or altering the virtue is pretty bizarre, not only because (as folks have pointed out) this is a setting that by its nature takes liberties with historicity or because people have different ways to enjoy Ars, but because the current Flaw being applied in any sort of general sense to Mythic Europe is itself ahistorical. Granted, my familiarity lies mostly with cultures and histories that exist on the geographic edges of the Order - al-Andalus, the Levant, and Muslim Anatolia - but just the existence of differences kinda negates the use of the "not historical" argument for universally punishing gender nonconforming people. There are tons of examples from history and period culture - one is the openly masculine coded and garbed warrior women of the Türkmen frontier epics of Western Anatolia (who were decidedly not "regarded as [freaks]" even in a deeply patriarchal medieval culture.) The epic hero Kan Turali rejects the conventionally feminine marriage partners offered as being not to his taste and goes searching for a warrior woman - explicitly called a "man-woman" later in the epic.
'You don't want a girl; you want a dare-devil hero to look after you, and [together] you can eat and drink and be merry.' 'That is so, my dear father,' he replied, 'but you'll go and get me some pretty dressed-up doll of a Turcoman girl, whose belly will split if I should suddenly lean over and fall on her.' 'Son,' said Kanli Koja, 'finding the girl is up to you; I'll see that you're fed and provided for.'
The girl he finds, Saljan the 'man-woman', is certainly not ostracized - she's a princess of Trebizond (Theban Tribunal represent). There's a lot of high adventure before they run off together but another relevant part comes in when Kan first spies his bride to be armed and armored; he's so moved by the sight that he makes prayerful sujud right on the spot.
Kan Turali opened his eyes, he raised his eyelids and saw his bride on horse-back, dressed for battle, spear in hand. He kissed the ground and said, 'I hold the faith and I believe; my wish has been granted in the court of God Most High.'
It's not an isolated case either. Nomad noble Banu Chichek gleefully wrestles her beloved Beyrek, who is impressed and sort of scared by her "warrior strength". The daughter of the Caesar in the Battalname slaughters an army alongside the eponymous hero. Just over the border in Byzantium, there's the Epic of Digenes Akritas - the half-Arab, half-Greek frontiersman whose exploits strongly parallel those of his Türkmen counterparts - that features the ambiguously masculine raider lord Maximo. These legends are in currency depending on area of Mythic Europe, particularly among the Oghuz peoples in the Transylvania and Theban Tribunals and their neighbors, and someone wanting to build a character around them would definitely be let down by the Flaw as is.
It's also not just myth. al-Andalus is full of situations concerning ambiguous gender, from beauty ideals favoring what could be called androgenous markers to the liminal spaces occupied by eunuchs to concubines and courtesans who dressed like men habitually. A useful discussion of Persian gender norms and their fluid nature before modernity can be found Najmabadi's Women with Mustaches, Men Without Beards which tbf is focused on the early modern and the end of amrad sexuality with the introduction of Victorian norms to Iran but certainly explains the existing culture well. Hell, we have examples of literal legal gender changes from this period (the Mamluk age is a little after the conventional start but certainly is in full force before the close of the 13th century) in areas covered in 5e game books:
...In the early Mamluk period the transformation of girls into boys is a cause for public celebrations...there are later cases in which courts are asked to confirm a female sexual identity for persons who, by all outer appearances, were physically male.
The citation for the above being Tamer el-Leithy's “Of Bodies Chang’d to Various Forms . . . : Hermaphrodites and Transsexuals in Mamluk Society” (apologies for language)
Realize now I may have rambled a bit but yea I just don't understand the historicity angle, which anyways is not good enough as an argument even if it was correct. Sure there are many cultures represented in Ars books that hew closer to the way the Flaw as is understands the question, even a majority of them probably, but then there's an even stronger case behind using some of the more flexible fixes listed above that allow characters to be tailored to the culture they are from and the experience they want out of the game. "But history" - as it usually is in these sorts of arguments - is more about myopia, limited research, and a simple unwillingness to listen to other (often minority) voices.
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Since there is a general concept of social deviance, I'm throwing my hat in for a more general Flaw:
Social Deviance (_____)
The character rejects or flouts a common social rule or norm. Each such norm is its own Flaw.
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I think the best option is make it incredibly vague as other have suggested. Atlas has to look at commercial considerations, and one would not like an internet storm of rage.
It will create an interesting future writing environment. Each topic, will Atlas need to do a resilience assessment?
Fertility Magic: It may traumatise people who have failed IVF, had a miscarriage or the emotionally draining decision of an abortion. Do we include it?
Flaw- Non-confirming: it's nearly impossible to do this without an example, what example do we choose. Maybe atheists in a religious area, as they are unlikely to react poorly?
Slavery: Earthdawn has it and it was a key point of the history. Yes, but there are people in living memory who would have heard stories from their grandparents about being slaves. Is it too big a risk?
I wish you good luck, navigating this minefield.
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Truthfully, I'm not sure whether it deserves to be it's own flaw in it's own right as opposed to some flavour of 'Outsider' or 'Secret'.
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"Outsider" is a completely different flaw, so "Transvestite" (under any name) could not be a variant of that.
It could be a "Dark Secret" but that would imply that the character is both taking great pains to keep it a secret and that it could have serious implications if found out - neither of which need be true for the existing "Transvestite" flaw.
Besides, having many different, quite specific, virtues and flaws rather than just a few very broad ones is a good thing in my view. Makes for more variation among characters.
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Replying to Colleen because that seems most appropriate, but these are mostly more general points.
It's more that errata, strictly speaking, are things like spell designs not adding up, or accidentally allowing people to fast-cast mastered Rituals. That is, in the context of the rules, they are obvious mistakes, and just need correcting. That thread has raised several broader issues, all of which have been split out into their own threads, because they actually need discussion, not just correction. It was entirely on-topic to raise this point, and the errata thread was the right place to raise it, because it brought the point to my attention. It just wasn't the right place to have the discussion.
This is something that players should be able to do, and your character builds are great examples. However, there is a reason why we don't just have one Story Flaw — There is something in your background that drags you into stories. The lists of Virtues and Flaws are providing suggestions for character concepts, particularly for new players who might not know the background very well. For example, having Monastic Vows as a Major Story Flaw tells the players that this is a thing in the background, and that they might want to play such a character.
So, the Virtues and Flaws should support the sort of creativity you are demonstrating, but I don't think that they should require it of all new players.
Finally, I'd like to draw attention to the function of Personality and Story Flaws that is implicit in the above. If a Flaw exists for something, that actually means "We think this is a cool and appropriate concept for the game, and would like to encourage you to play this sort of character. Here, have a mechanical bonus for doing so". This should be more explicit, I think, but there is a limit to how much I can do about that in errata.
Chasing this back has led me to an interesting historical discovery. The Flaw was, it seems, originally created (in The Hidden Paths: Shamans for ArM3) by a pair of writers including someone I am fairly sure is a trans woman (Sarah Link), in almost exactly its current wording. Although the genetic fallacy is a fallacy, I find that this discovery shifts my attitude slightly. It's going to be harder to convince me to simply remove an explicit inclusion of trans people added to the game by a trans person than it would have been to convince me to remove the same Flaw added by a cis person.
The main question is really "Do we want to explicitly encourage people to consider playing a gender-nonconforming character, and make it explicit that such characters are an appropriate and historically accurate part of Mythic Europe, or do we not? And if we do, how do we want to phrase it?". (The current phrasing of the Flaw certainly does have issues; it sounds a lot less inclusive than it probably did thirty years ago.)
The subsidiary question is "Can we do anything about the unfortunate connotations of the legacy name of the mechanic that does this?", and I suspect that the answer is "Not in errata".
(There is, in fact, quite a bit of text on pages 36 and 37 explaining that Personality Flaws are not personal flaws. I think the problem is that people read the introductory text once, if that.)
Right, I really need to work on the straightforward errata…
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You've been reading my Venice stuff. 8)
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Sarah Link explicitly mentions her transition in one of her author bios, to explain why her deadnane is on the previous edition.
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That was what I remembered, but I couldn't find it this afternoon.
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Let me point out a critical distinction here.
All of these issues, slavery, discrimination, fertility, etc, are real issues taken from real world. They have an objective existence in the setting.
The problem with the flaw in question, if I read @Colleen correctly, is not that it presents a trope which potentially challenges some players on a deep and traumatising level. The main problem is that the flaw makes assumptions about what it means to non-conforming and the meaning of gender, partly implicitly and partly explicitly. Mechanical rules attempt to answer deeply personal questions about identity.
This would be akin to rules defining what was like to be a slave. And for that matter, what it means to be a Christian or a Moslem or a Jew.
What gender means can be discussed, even respectfully, but it cannot be answered (in any universally valid way). The nature of rules is that they answer, and do not discuss. This is the critical distinction. In a story it is possible to explore what slavery or gender means to real people, but that is in the domain of the players. The rules must contend themselves with pointing out the theme as a possibility, and reward story driving character traits, but never make assumptions about difficult questions of life.
Therefore, I hope the published RPG can still point out difficult topics for play, but without making any assumptions about how they ought to be played. I very much like the transvestite flaw as an idea, but I dislike its implication that it is the way to play gender non-conform. The threshold for custom flaws is often high, so the #1 rule that the rules are yours to amend does not fully solve the problem. It is curious how some flaws are very open-ended, giving ideas to spin around while others are very narrowly defined, giving constraints to direct the character.
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Rereading it on ArM5 p.59 or in the OP, I don't see at all, that it claims or is meant to be "the way to play gender non-conform." It is about habitually dressing and acting as the opposite gender. It does not give or imply any motivation for it, but immediately cuts to the chase of typical consequences "in Christian and Muslim lands" - which it exaggerates.
This exaggeration and the Flaw's insensitive naming IMO need to be changed.
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What we, or you, understand after rereading, in the context of having debated the matter in depth, is hardly relevant. Our greatest concern is the reaction of new players who read the text once and have not had the years of experience to understand how ArM mechanics is thought out.
The implication that it is the way to non-conform comes from the fact that there are no other flaws to cover the other ways. Agreed, we cannot have flaws for everything, but it is nevertheless the case that players are restricted by (not to) the canon selection. The canon flaw becomes the concept which is immediately available. Every other variation is a hurdle of doubt and troupe negotiation. This hurdle is made higher by the trait being wrought with prejudice and discrimination. In the case of this particular, I cannot see that much would be lost by making a broader themed flawed, leaving more of the interpretation to the player.
There are of course two approaches to character creation. Sometimes we have a concept, and browse the rules to find a mechanical description which works. Other times we are looking for something new, and browse the rules for ideas which we can turn into a concept. The remark you quoted was written in the latter mindset.
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As a gay man, having this one flaw that says, if you're a man dressing as a woman, or a woman dressing as a man, this is a story flaw for you, when there's so much more on that spectrum between dressing as the other gender, and believing you were born in the wrong gender, or as a non-binary person.
I don't expect straight people to understand this, heck, even as a gay man, it took me some time to talk to gender non-conforming people, and get their perspective on this, but the fact that you don't understand it, doesn't mean that it doesn't hurt them to see this termed in that way.
That is why I think that Flaw needs to have it's name changed. And in the grand scheme of things, this is such a small change, since very few established characters have this flaw, that it's not a big deal for most players, but for the LGBTQ community, it's a big deal.
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So do I. See above: "This exaggeration and the Flaw's insensitive naming IMO need to be changed."
This can not and does not make the changed Flaw into a "go-to-Flaw" for LGBTQI-players. It does not even make it into a Flaw that implies an LGBTQI-character.
But it can be done by errata - and so I am sure it will be done.
To achieve more, we need to get an agreement about rules to play LGBTQI-characters im Mythic Europe. This looks to me like a brand new activity, starting with some study of such characters in the 13th century at least in the Holy Roman Empire, Byzantium and the Abbasid Caliphate. Then one can insert some stories (like those @The_Young_Ottoman has referenced in this thread) and distill some rules (Flaws or not) from it.
Will the result be just a single new Story Flaw, a new paragraph in the errataed core book, or a brand new source book? I don't know. I also don't know who will volunteer for this task.
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As a member of the LGBTQIA+ community: Please, please, please keep it! Please keep being a member of this group in ARS as a flaw - whether it is a social handicap, a story flaw or what not.
It WAS a flaw, it WAS a handicap (big time!). I prefer relative historical truth to removing it because of fear of a small subset of players either stopping playing ARS, or barring new players. I really doubt ARS would suddenly loose 30-40-50% of its player base because "Transvestite" (even renamed) was seen as a flaw.
On a personal level I think too many people consider anything that does not 100% support a modern day image of LGBTQIA+ issues as harmful, hurtful etc. Again - on a personal level - I find that conceited, and ultimately degrading. As if being faced with a game where being LGBTQIA+ is a flaw is somehow hurtful to me NOW, as if I will become depressed, traumatised etc because of a make-believe game that puts ONE aspect of my being in play with a caveat that it is not a positive thing all around. As if I am too weak to make a choice about whether or not I want to play an LGBTQIA+ because I am seeing it described as a flaw, and thus I must react to it negatively, BECAUSE I am LGBTQIA?
Please for the love of esoteric neo-pagan gods, Gnostic Christian saints or Islamic whirling dervishes, keep it and other flaws describing characteristics and mindsets and identities that are on the edge of society as flaws.
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