Our debate about female players and female characters has attracted some interest in the wider AW arena. I set out below an exchange between Maria Marius and myself on this subject.

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I really don't like to join groups as a male--even if I'm writing one. However, I would be interested very much in joining Testudo if there's a possibility of writing as a Vestal or as a Roman woman with a husband in need of guidance. LOL! I could join as Maria, while you are still in the planning stages. Ultimately, if the Vestal role is available, I'd create a Patrician identity. It depends on how you and the other members see things I guess.

To get around the military dilemma, you might consider viewing the characters as a "package." Each member gets a male PC and a wife--or something like that--to act as a unit. Although I don't personally feel up to leading armies (my knowledge of the army of this era is not great), I'm sure there are many women who would welcome that sort of challenge. Vipsania is certainly very knowledgeable in that area. Although, I think most women would probably just want to create a male identity if they want to do military adventuring.

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I’m pretty sure we will go for the option of having a Chief Vestal, and it will always be open to a player to concentrate more on her PC’s wife as the directing influence than the male PC himself. The named PC in that second category would have to remain male since he’s the one that has to stand for election etc., but the wife can always be played as the dominant partner.

There would have to be only one, minor, Rule change, or change of practice, in such cases as far as I can see. Normally the Rule is that the player controls only her own character, and that the Umpire controls all npcs, including family members, although in practice he leaves family members to the player. We would have to make it clear that in such cases, of the wife being played as the dominant partner, the Umpire could not control the wife’s character.

To a certain extent this would give a female player playing a male/female team an advantage the other players lacked (namely complete control over the wife), but the advantage would be more apparent than real since in practice family members tend to be left alone, and in any event would be just compensation for the amount of extra subtlety required to play such a dual character.

We are still in the planning stages, so by all means join now and take part in the rule-making process. All ideas welcome, as long as we remember that simplicity must be our watchword – we want to be the antithesis of Imperium and RR.

As to warfare there must, surely, have been many Roman nobles who were quite hopeless at this, or who even more basically were lacking in physical courage. No doubt they had to keep this well disguised, but they must sometimes have found themselves as a Consul and in charge of an army. Maybe there were more of them than we realise, and that this explains why so many experienced military men were appointed Dictator in our period!

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Ancus Cornelius