The Zondarton Tribes The Fiercest Females aka All About Women in Role-Playing by John Josten is a generic (although there are a number of references to Legend Quest) role playing game supplement published by Board Enterprises. This is part of the Small Bites series and is the “World Walker” version. The full version, which is available to Patreon supporters, is around double the length.
This is a 24-page PDF that is available for free from DriveThruRPG. One page is the front cover.
The Introduction states that the author is taking a chance by talking about women in role playing, both in game and in the hobby, which can be a taboo subject to discuss, and that this therefore might offend people. But that isn’t the intention. It also says that often “it depends” is the answer to various questions.
Fletnern Wiki reproduces various entries from the wiki related to women, namely legends and individuals.
The Sounding Board reproduces various blog posts.
Can Chicks Play RPGs? considers getting women interested in playing the game and, from the experience of the author and others, it seems women are less likely to like multiple types of dice. It concludes by saying that more than half of the people in the Western world are women, a large group to draw players from.
Women and Role-Playing Games says that the hobby may still be dominated by male gamers but a sizeable proportion are female and there are ways of getting them interested and involved.
Matriarchal Orcs? references The Wembic Nation of the Gold Mountains and says that, with the orcs, they often have the women deciding who gets to breed, in order to produce the best soldiers.
More on the matriarchs continues from a point in the previous article, about how matriarchal societies don’t seem to work and how this seems to be, in history, because women are more focused on their children before the state (the author does not claim to be either an expert or capable of peer reviewing the material read).
The Differences between Male and Female starts by stating that there are facts which are not politically correct, and that these facts are that men and women are different. It then goes on to say that, as people are different and adventurers in RPGs are oddballs and misfits, these facts are irrelevant in RPGs. There is no need to make stat differences in the game, because of the characters being, by definition, different.
Prejudice (in storytelling) is on stereotypes (referencing what is known as the “Planet of Hats” depictions of entire worlds in sci-fi stories; largely done in visual media because of limited screen time and a need to make planets recognisable on repeat viewing admittedly) and ways of breaking the stereotypes.
Lifestyles of the Magical and Mundane discusses women in Fletnern. Women in the Cultures considers how they are treated in different cultures.
Zondartons repeats something used before on the Zondarton warrior women matriarchal society.
Female Gladiators considers the female gladiators and their comparative popularity.
Wet Behind the Ears is on creating a female character, and avoiding stereotypes when doing such.
The Good Life considers women and then goes onto Female Armour, and its ridiculous depiction in fantasy art. How such armour would never be used in actual battle, but there is a chance it could be used as impractical, “dress” armour, just as male armour has decorations that would be a bad idea in combat. Finally, it considers Homosexuality in Gaming.
What’s Missing has two pages on what’s in the full version.
In Conclusion wraps the supplement up, with the author saying that they do not know how women think, and anyone who claims that who isn’t a woman is sexist, but they have had experience GMing women in games for decades.
The final page has a map of the Gold Coins of the Zondartons.
The Zondarton Tribes The Fiercest Females aka All About Women in Review
The PDF is well bookmarked with major and minor sections linked. The Table of Contents is not as thorough, but is hyperlinked. Navigation is very good. The text maintains a two-column format and a number of minor errors were spotted. There are some stock black and white illustrations generally appropriate to the associated subject matter. Presentation is okay.
As with all the supplements in this series, this is a collection of articles on the same general theme, in this case women, rather than a coherent whole. There is perhaps more material dealing with out of game matters than in game ones than is usual. It is a rather thoughtful examination of what is a rather difficult subject to safely discuss and there is also information on overcoming certain stereotypes. The Zondarton Tribes The Fiercest Females aka All About Women can be downloaded for free by clicking here.
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