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.
3 Likes
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.
2 Likes
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'.
1 Like
"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.
3 Likes
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…
8 Likes
You've been reading my Venice stuff. 8)
3 Likes
Sarah Link explicitly mentions her transition in one of her author bios, to explain why her deadnane is on the previous edition.
4 Likes
That was what I remembered, but I couldn't find it this afternoon.
1 Like
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.
4 Likes
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.
1 Like
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.
2 Likes
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.
7 Likes
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.
3 Likes
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.
12 Likes
I want to say, from memory, that its in one of the iterations of Faeries prior to RoP:F. So, either 2nd edition or Revised.
I think this is a very important point - if we are to argue that the flaw ought to stay because it describes something true of the times... is it actually true of the times?
Without being particularly well-read on the subject, I suspect (because it is what I've found the case to be in other similar contexts) that the nature of prejudices surrounding sex, gender, and so on would not map cleanly to out modern-day understanding of such. Including a flaw like this without further commentary risks saying, effectively: "the setting contains a kind of prejudice, which you recognize, please go ahead and project your preconceived notions of how people in the past were backwards and intolerant onto the setting".
4 Likes
The risk is there, no doubt. And it is there at every turn and twist. We are directed to play out our preconceived notions about nobility, clergy, their power over common men, intolerance to non-conformity with respect to faith, opinion, gender, equality, sex, etc.
At the end of the day it is up to each and every player and troupe to decide how much they want to rely on their own preconceptions and how much they want to research actual history. That the published material point to actual tensions which could become stories is a good thing. But yes, more illustrative examples like the ones @The_Young_Ottoman gave us would be a good, both as story seeds and as research seeds.
2 Likes
I'm confused. Earlier you wrote.
Do we rely on our preconceived notions which are wrong, or do we accept what's written in the rule book, which is wrong? There's a good joke in the current rules about the level of research, and the extreme level being learning Latin and getting a degree. I don't want to do that level of research to play a game.
I think one thing we can all agree on, is no matter who writes explanations on contentious disads, periods in history, social groups, etc, there will be some people who will disagree with the material and how it is written. I personally want the explanation.
I would like more people with Ronni Fich's approach in post 78. Admittedly, what he wrote in post 78 is similar to what I wrote in post 31, so of course I'd like that approach.
In a different post I wrote
It's clearly a very large job and beyond the scope of an errata, however, if and when a 6th ed happened, a specific chapter of optional rules with a well written disclaimer ( it won't work for everyone, but it can cut out maybe 95% of the anger), could have the more challenging disads and other challenging world setting issues included.
1 Like
I don't see the conflict, but let's look.
We clearly do both. With topics as complex as gender or faith, neither our preconceptions nor the rulebook are going to cover the whole truth. Our conception of gender has changed rather rapidly over the last few decades, as is evidenced by the increasing number of letters needed to spell LGBTQ+, and I am sure it is going to continue to change.
We absolutely agree. However, my concern was not so much the disagreement between explanations, but rather the futile attempt to explain what is inexplicable. We are dealing with a form of knowledge which is not propositional in the sense that it can be written down, remain true, and be retrieved when we later need it [cf. Kemp 2013 Citizen of the World]. We can evolve our understanding by considering special cases, telling stories, and debating difficulties.
The rules can give some of the stories and special cases. It cannot give enough to give the complete picture, but it is important that there are enough to avoid giving the impression of being universal truth.
We are never going to reach a complete unwrong understanding, but we can choose to do more or less to evolve to a less wrong understanding. And yes, I am also not willing to invest massive time on research in order to play a game, but I have great respect for those who do, and their contributions improve my game too.
1 Like
To make my meaning a bit clearer, I wasn't suggesting folding 'Transvestite' into either of those existing Flaws, but rather creating a new one that could encompass it and similar situations - mostly because the mechanical effects don't seem specifically tied to the sex/gender aspect.