Beitragvon bruno faidutti » 11. April 2001, 14:13
I have little german and could not understand all that was said in this already long discussion, but as a game author, I have a few things to add and make clear.
- Abouth the Jew / Merchant. This topic has already been discussed on rec.games.board a few monthes ago, which means that it's not so hard to see a jew in the merchant picture. However, I heard this remark so far mainly from american, who are a bit paranoid with everything that deals with identities, and german, who feel strongly concerned with antisemitism. Well, I also heard it from some of the parisian jews which are a very strong minority in my testing group, but they thought it was a god joke, probably deliberately accepted by the french publisher - also a jew - , and never mind...
- About the absence of female characters in OFuA. We have tested a few ones, which were eliminated because of game issues. We have also tried to make some of the characters (magician and thief) female, but this sounded very artificial when playing, and has the reverse effect. The sexism is not in the absence of female character in this game, or another, it's in the fact that we naturally imagine powerful characters as men. And that they were in the middle age and Renaissance time, and largely are still nowadays.
- Next autumn will be published a new edition of my valley of the mammooths, which can be seen as highly sexist - women pawns are here to keep grottoes in order and make childs, and change tribe rather easily. This is not my view of life, nor my view of prehistory. It's only the typical prehistoric fantasy that I wanted to put in the game, just for fun.