One Thing L5R Did Right

​Disclaimer:  I've stalled on writing this article for a while. I don't know how it will be received.  Even people who have no problems with other aspects of being more inclusive with gaming might have a problem with 'getting' this part, and it makes me really nervous.  Hoping for the best.

'Lord,' she said, 'if you must go, then let me ride in your following. For I am weary of skulking in the hills, and wish to face peril and battle.'
'Your duty is with your people,' he answered.
'Too often have I heard of duty,' she cried. 'But am I not of the House of Eorl, a shieldmaiden and not a dry-nurse? I have waited on faltering feet long enough. Since they falter no longer, it seems, may I not now spend my life as I will?'
'Few may do that with honour,' he answered. 'But as for you, lady: did you not accept the charge to govern the people until their lord's return? If you had not been chosen, then some marshal or captain would have been set in the same place, and he could not ride away from his charge, were he weary of it or no.'
'Shall I always be chosen?' she said bitterly. 'Shall I always be left behind when the Riders depart, to mind the house while they win renown, and find food and beds when they return?'
'A time may come soon,' said he, 'when none will return. Then there will be need of valor without renown, for none shall remember the deeds that are done in the last defense of your homes. Yet the deeds will not be less valiant because they are unpraised.'
And she answered: 'All your words are but to say: you are a woman, and your part is in the house. But when men have died in battle and honor, you have leave to be burned in the house, for the men will need it no more. But I am of the House of Eorl and not a serving-woman. I can ride and wield blade, and I do not fear either pain or death.'   - Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien

There is a good argument to be made that Lord of the Rings is the foundation of modern Fantasy, and definitely Role Playing Games like Dungeons and Dragons, which drew heavily on on the book for its depictions of elves and dwarves, orcs and halflings, as well as the kinds of adventures that it wanted to tell.  I  still love the books with a fiery passion, and the movies only a little less so.    And I, of course, adored Eowyn, as a female hero and warrior, sticking it to the men who told her to stay home by striking down the Witch-King and proving herself on the battlefield.  She has been the model for many female heroes to come, and  more power to it.

But her argument here...the whole depiction of heroism in fantasy in general, touches on a point that becomes a real problem when taken in context of the history of gaming and how male-dominated it always has been.

Staying home, governing her people, leading them to food and beds, keeping them safe.  These things she takes, automatically, as given, with contempt.  Aragorn tries to convince her that they are important, vital.  But, the truth is, they aren't. Not in Lord of the Rings. We never know what person took up the role when Eowyn left it.  It's vitally important...but not important enough that Theoden assigns a man to the job.  It's only 'the most important task a woman can do', and Aragorn argues if she does not do it, then a man would have to. And wouldn't that be a waste of forces from the front line?  Aragorn respects the role...for women.  But not as an equally important task to the future of humankind.

In our society, we've similarly, traditionally, bifurcated everything into tasks suitable for men and tasks suitable for women.  Men's role, traditionally, has been spoken of, and expressed, in terms of domination.  At first this was domination on the field of battle: either domination over an animal as a hunter, or domination over other human beings as a warrior.  Later on, it became domination over nature, forcing nature to give up its bounty, and bend it to your will, or domination over the forces of capitalism, pushing your industry forward over the trampled businesses of your commercial opponents.   
Women's roles, traditionally, were about nurture and preservation.  Nurturing children. Nurturing homes.
This leads to some weird quirks in our modern society. Those who heal by destroying disease or defeating injury in bursts of intellect and insight are traditionally male...doctors. Those who heal by the long, slow requirements of regular nurturing care are traditionally female...nurses.  Education was once primarily a male profession....men driving out the demons of ignorance. But it got 'rewritten' to become more about nurturing children...becoming a female profession in the process.  Male = dominating and focused on conflict and overcoming enemies = exciting and important. Female = nurturing and passive/responsive and focused on reacting to outside circumstances = boring and unimportant.  At least for a shieldmaiden of the House of Eorl. And those who wanted to be like her.

I'm not really here to write about all the kinds of problems this framing causes in broad society, but more to talk about gaming. And L5R. Because it's relevant.

When L5R came out, every single game that came out on the market was about dominance, and usually the associated violence.   Dungeons and Dragons was completely overt about it.  A game system is created to put mechanics in the places it wants to highlight, the places it wants to have conflicts and create stories about, and the primary set of mechanics was created to handle physical combat, as well as growing your power to become more dominant.  Most other game systems for that first decade did the same.  Vampire the Masquerade proposed an alternative.  Now, instead of just physically dominating your opponent, here were mechanics to socially dominate your opponent too.  It even had the term 'dominate'.   It was very popular.

Can you fall in love with the possibility of a game system to do something different? Even if it doesn't?

Legend of the Five Rings, however, proposed, or even just hinted at, the possibility of something different.  You had a tightly structured world, with tightly structured clans.  The clans, and people within those clans, were opposed to each other. They had different agendas, different needs, and different ways of accomplishing them.  But they were all human. They were all just people.  They had a big supernaturally evil threat off to the side of the screen they all had to oppose together. None of them were evil.  None of them had to be dominated. 

Not only that, but the game was not primarily about the Shadowlands conflict. It really was about these clans politicking around each other.  There were even courtiers in this game, people whose primary reason to be was to negotiate and interact with other clans.  There was a role for combat.  But there was a role for negotiation too.

And this was the kicker.  There was a Right Hand of the Emperor...the Lion Clan, created to fight the Emperor's enemies, to express the Emperor's dominance in the world.  Men's work.  But there was also a Left Hand of the Emperor...the Crane Clan.  Created to cultivate art and culture and beauty.  To nurture prosperity. Women's work.  And this group was set up, by the framing of the game itself, to be an equal to the Lion Clan.

This was gaming.  But, in L5R, nurturing and reacting, fostering growth, it seemed like it was so important that even men did it. 

It was the first time in gaming, that I'd ever encountered, where a game world had not only women characters who went out and did 'men stuff' to be heroes, but it had an equal amount of men being creative or nurturing, doing 'women's stuff'...and who could become heroes by doing it. 

Even today, many years later, this  idea is really rare in RPGs.  There are women's RPGs. Some of them use the domination framework readily, accepting it like Eowyn does.  Some of them discard it completely, making a fairly soft-edged game focused entirely on nurture, with few of the harsh edges that ratchet up the tension in an RPG, giving it life or death circumstances.  L5R, though, has, at least in the structure of its game world, the possibility that it could balance these two things.  It could say both are equally important.  Traditionally male-oriented and traditionally female-oriented tasks are both places where heroes can be found. Both men and women could be saving the Empire, guided by the Left or Right hand.

It was an inspiration for me.  I didn't have to look at what my gender was consigned to as boring, outside the bounds of being worth captured in the tale...at least the tales of adventure and excitement I wanted to read.  L5R gave me a framework where I could have new stories that had a place for that part of me. That part of the world.  I treasured it.

Mechanically, it didn't quite pan out. AEG and later FFG didn't really come up with mechanics sufficient to address the need, even if the framework was there.  And of course it didn't teach anyone how to run a nurture campaign. It was just too new.  Social mechanics are still all win/loss, not trying to find win/win scenarios. I've tried to create rules for 4E and 5E that  provide mechanics that can assist in finding the nurture game that is possible within the framework of Rokugan, in The Influence Game and The Prosperity System.  We, at least, have been able to use these tools to work on such stories in L5R.  And I hope, eventually such a thing could be fully integrated into core L5R. 

So maybe my hopes are unfounded, and will never become a full equal to conflict. But this one thing, I thought L5R did right.