I saw this thread blow up a couple days ago and finally had time to catch up and read the wonderful discussion that took place. Just wanted to say it warmed the cockles of my heart.
I think the developers and those who stridently defend the developers actions (not anyone here, referring to some rather nasty Steam discussion threads) in regards to their representation of women and lack of both women and people of color for your “Bro” roster do Battle Brothers a disservice.
Now I’m not saying the representation needs to be some mundane, interchangeable skin or whatnot that I think Madmarcus was referring to (a bit) in terms of BB’s theme. The backgrounds of the “Bros” provide plenty of opportunity to either weave women or people of color into the game or, with perhaps just a smidge of creativity, create new backgrounds instead of spending time on some frankly redundant or useless backgrounds (I’m looking at you, Cripple! Although it is kind of cool if one you recruited as filler somehow sticks around long enough that he gains some levels and might even kill stuff. But why do we have a Daytaler and a Vagabond? A Eunuch and a Servant? A Peddler and Bowyer? Peddler at all really.)
For example:
Why couldn’t there be female barbarians? Call them Amazons if you want, or not if you want to save that for an expansion later.
Why can’t the “Refugee” background be just about anything?
The “Thief” doesn’t need to be male of course.
There is a “Tailor.” Why not a “Seamstress?”
There is a “Wildman” why not a “Wildwoman?” I wouldn’t want to fight either frankly.
I get that the “Witchhunter” is going to be a dude but a “Warlock…huntress” (I am not creative) could easily be a woman. Plus, then you could have Warlocks doing Witch roles sometimes (or make it more specific if you want to invest more resources).
For POC, maybe they could’ve dropped one or two of their redundant characters (do they really need a Miller or a Ratcatcher? Well the Ratcatcher comes with a net but so does the Fisherman) and craft a particular background of some kind of visiting noble (there are like 3 different nobles - Adventurous, Bastard, and Disowned). I mean, couldn’t one of them be a visiting African-equivalent prince/princess?
Again, if they wanted to they could make some of these characters hard to come across in the main Germanic area or even tied to special events. But what irks me is that instead of choosing to do something like this they instead chose to make “Pimp” a background (rare event based, but still!). They spent time and effort (that I appreciate) on making extending events that have the possibility of allowing you to gain some other rather rare backgrounds as part of your crew, like King’s Guard, Killer on the Run, Belly Dancer (how is this NOT a woman?) and Assassin (not to be confused with the more common Southern Assassin, introduced with Blazing Deserts DLC).
The developers cry poverty now with their time and resources and frankly I’m in no position to judge what they do with their time in regards to Battle Brothers. But there really is no reason they couldn’t have made inclusivity a part of their game from the get-go and frankly BB would have been better for it. Toggle or no toggle is fine with me if they implemented this now but I would imagine none of us who have played and enjoyed our time with BB would have found anything wrong with it had it some more inclusive aspects from the get go.
It seems like at this point it’s a pretty deliberate decision and nowhere on the radar (just watch them announce a Forest of the Amazons DLC lol) to just not have any women in the game other than the crass (putting it mildly, misogynistic to put it more accurately) story events where your Bros behave at their worst (generally, I mean, sometimes they murder kids so that’s pretty bad too). Ultimately, I think all of us are poorer for it and the community is the lesser for it, which is a damn shame.