On female Adventurers in the Solomon's Games
Hey Raptisoft,
I am a huge fan of your games. I have played them since my freshmen year of high school and absolutely adore them on mobile platforms(Can't wait for PC!)
I remembered seeing awhile ago that you believed there to be logical inconsistencies with having female adventurers in the games and that because of this SKHD would lack female adventurers. I was wondering if you might be able to expand on that more. Ultimately I view this situation as analogous to you being the dungeon master in a game. You set the rules, you define everything inside of this space. So if you do not want to include them for literally reason I do not think anyone should care nor do they have a say. Using that same thought process you could also conclude them. On top of this there are female witches in boneyard, I really wanted to understand this more and to further understand the lore of the world the game exist in.
Thank you for your time and hard work,
Abrafo
Comments
1. Solomon is bored. Male adventurer walks into Solomon's Keep. Solomon could flatten our level 1 adventurer with a wave of his hand. So for his own entertainment and to levelup cruelty, he allows the adventurer to progress through the Keep getting beat up and terrified. Solomon believes himself to be fully in control of the situation at all times. That the adventurer would actually win in the end is considered "unexpected."
2. Female adventurer walks into Solomon's Keep. Solomon says "hot dog!" and snatches her up to put into a cage and proceeds to leer at her and worse for the remainder of her lifetime. Until you are leveled up decently, Solomon is completely in control. It would not fit a comic book villain to let a female fight through his keep and have hope. She needs to be either caged or strapped onto a table while a giant rotary saw approaches. Anything else would be sorta sissy, by the world's standards.
So a female entering Solomon's Keep better be level 50+. That wouldn't make for a very fun game.
But also, and this is where the more serious retconning is happening-- it's been canon in the world that Wizards really dislike females (if you read some of the Archchancellor's speeches to the female characters in Boneyard) and the reason is that for about 5-10 days a month, females channel the magic of creation and are essentially super-mages-- except they don't have good control over that wild of magic (no mortal does). This makes them frightening, and dangerous, and able to easily quash any low-mid level male wizard. Enlightenment/Renaissance eras do happen, but the story of Solomon's Keep isn't really during one of them.
Witches exist, but they are typically so dangerous in those 5-10 days, and they themselves are in so much danger OUT of those 5-10 days (when everyone that got hurt gets vengeful), that they end up shunned and isolated. This can embitter. Has a nice witch every existed? Sure! But the stereotypes exist because 99% of them are quite angry.
So essentially, it's a gameplay-driven retcon:
Q: "Why doesn't Solomon just snatch up the adventurer right when he walks through the door?"
A: "Because torturing a hopeful adventurer is entertaining!"
Q: "Would he also do this to a female adventurer?"
A: "No, he'd capture her immediately and find alternate entertainments."
Q: "Could a level 50+ female adventurer storm the keep?"
A: "Maybe... but that wouldn't be a very fun game!"
Q: "Could a female disguise herself as male and accomplish everything a male does, game-wise?"
A: "Yes."