>From: Trotsky <TTrotsky_at_...>
>
>But, to agree with your general
>principle, you could, if you really wanted to, have (for instance) a
>Seshnegi Royal Family cultural keyword.
OK, but that's my point. You could say, "Hey, there's no Seshnegi Royal Family Homeland Keyword in the book!" Or, more to the point, "Hey, I tried to use the keyword listed in the book for some Roayals, and know what? It doesn't work!" The idea being that it's problematic, becuse it never says anywhere that you can't apply it to the Royal Family.
The rule for presented keywords has to be that they work for who they work for. If you look at the keyword, and discover that it doesn't work for sub-group X, then you have to modify it.
Sure, they could be more specific and say in certain cases that it's only for the male gender. This is certainly the most important distinction one can make, and it would be the easiest to mandate in terms of saying that you always have to mention it in a write-up description.
And it could be argued that the fact that there are more male keywords listed than female is somehow sexist or something. But I think that there are counter-arguments to that, and that it's a quite unintentional error. More about the experiences of the writers than an attempt to denigrate women (if one plays only with men who play only men - a common thing in RPGs - then it's not surprising at all).
The fact is that the keywords are written the way they are written. You can call it a mistake that they don't have the female versions, or don't say that they're male versions, but that won't fix the problem (though future writers should listen up). The point is that the keywords are what they are, and the rule above applies. If the keyword doesn't fit, alter it to do so. Just because the keyword fits the character in one dimension doesn't mean it fits them in all dimensions.
Note that Rory's solution of adding keywords works here only if the primary keywords aren't "wrong" substantially as written. That is, if the keyword says, "Ride Horse" but only the men ride, and the character is a woman, then simply putting a "Woman of Homeland X" tag on will not fix the problem. You have to adjust the problematic keyword.
Mike
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