Is portraying Amazons as "evil" sexist?

[TheGlyphstone]

So I think what we have here is not so much a failure to communicate as a collision between two diametrically opposed playstyles.

From a gameist perspective, the various features and inhabitants of a campaign world are first and foremost defined by their relation to the player characters. Monsters both humanoid and non-humanoid are exactly that - monsters. Their purpose for existing is to be fought and to be killed by the PCs; they might have a culture, or complex motivations, but these are explicitly and ultimately secondary to their being opponents. From the other side, Farmer Bob the NPC exists so he can give the PCs a quest to rescue his pig from the goblin raiders. Maybe Farmer Bob has a family, maybe he has a backstory, maybe he even has a last name - but if he does, they're extraneous to his role as a quest-giver. Gameist players don't want to wrestle with complex moral quandaries or delve into the reasons why the ogres are attacking the town, it's enough to know that they are ogres and thus evil monsters to be killed and looted. It's not a game style I prefer, but enough people play this way that I can't say it's an invalid one.

From a simulationist perspective, the world exists even when the PCs aren't in close proximity to it. Even parts of the world the PCs might never see, or even know about, still exist for the purpose of a living, breathing world. For simulationists, verisimilitude is king. The Broken Fang tribe of orcs would prefer to stay in the mountains, but hostile giants have moved in and taken over their hunting grounds - now they have to raid human settlements or else starve. Farmer Bob Smithson used to be an adventurer until he took an arrow to the knee, now he raises prize-winning pigs and brews the best apple stout for a week's ride in any direction. Simulationist players will look at the world from a 'why' perspective, and are more likely to come up with unconventional solutions to problems as they internally justify that 'why' with something the GM hadn't thought of.

Thus, orc babies breaking campaigns. This isn't the inevitable result of having orcs be anything except ambulatory sacks of loot and XP, nor is it always due to immature or unimaginative players. It's what happens when a simulationist GM runs for gameist players ("why are you butchering the defenseless orc children, you monsters?"), or when a gamist GM runs for simulationist players ("why do you care about the babies? They're not worth XP"). This sort of thing is why style expectations are best laid out clearly beforehand.

[Blythe]

Hm. That is good food for thought, Glyphstone, thank you. I'll have to think about that; it's certainly an interesting point to consider.

[Regina Minx]

The difference lies in the fact that you cannot say there is malicious bias within a characterization of a fantasy race by the setting's creator, unlike with war propaganda. The creator is the person who decides how the setting works, so they are the definitive, objective source of truth. If orcs are described as nasty, brutish, and short by whoever made up the world they inhabit, it should be considered an objective truth. Use of language of varying connotation is just a means to help accentuate a general aura around a race for the purpose of giving it more vibrancy. It should not be considered duplicitous because the evil race was characterized with language commonplace to evil characters.

Of course there are differences. The differences aren't nearly so meaningful as the fact that both instances reflect the same behavior; we want to have an "other" enemy. Someone we don't need to apply our moral and ethical standards to. Someone about whom we can feel justified in saying "we kill them all." This tendency might be a very perfectly natural human instinct, but that doesn't make it right, or less of a thing we should reject when we see it. As I said in my first post on this thread, I find it unfortunate that so much of fantasy, especially gaming, relies on it.