Why would stereotypical murdering, pillaging, and raping pirates have a female captain, or indeed any female crew?

Because out of all the pirates in her ship, she murders the most, pillages the most, and rapes the most?

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Bonny

More like a pirate empress. Ching Shih. She started out as a prostitute (nobody knows where she came from), then married a notorious pirate captain. When he died, she took over his ship, and rapidly began to build it into her fleet. She also put many of her children in command of different segments of the fleet (keeping that shit in the family), since she had something like 300 ships, and basically sailed around the China sea sacking whatever she felt like, sank multiple Imperial Fleets raised by the Chinese Emperor to sink her (she captured something like 50 of the ships in one fleet and added them to her own forces), until she basically gave them no choice but to offer her a mass amnesty, so she and her seventeen thousand followers finally retired from the pirate life, kept all the loot, and went back to being civilians.

Anne Bonny and Mary Read were Calico Jack's fuckbunnies
But that is a valid answer for OP: the captain likes his wenches and he's even more cutthroat than his thugs

There was no part of that story that didn't get me rock hard.

What if they don't know she's a girl?

That's selling them awfully short. They were both respected by the crew. If Jack had died, Anne Bonny would likely have been captain after him.

>en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ching_Shih

Best part is when she retired and kept the loot, she opened a casino with it.

That was Mary Read when she came aboard Calico Jack's ship -- the fact that she was a woman was only revealed when Jack got it in his head that Anne Bonny was having an affair with this Mark Read fellow.

Sounds like stereotypical RPG character.

Because she's effective and takes shit from nobody.

Best pirate ever? Chink whore, who proceed to pull Dread Pirate Roberts IRL.

>all of them arguing who can rape their mom

I was thinking more of Fargo season 2 actually

What the fuck do you think peg boys are for?

>implying the 'officers' wouldn't be turned on immediately if their proposed next leader is something as vulnerable in the context as a woman

historically there are a number of female pirates, just like there are also major kinpins who were female and regents/rulers that were.
muscle does not make a crime empire, you need competent leaders and a lack of muscle can definitely made up by a good amount of wit.

Pirates were actually probably more of civilized gentlemen than the sailors from the navy. After all, they weren't press ganged into being pirates and they actually elected their captains.

Like how hundreds of nobles were trying to rape the queen of england?

All you need is a army and family in the right places

By murdering the fuck out of anyone who says otherwise?

>navy
>wanting to rape women
the fucking code gets me.
That shit i could see an actually competent pc coming up with.
diff user.
1. please don't talk about the queen like that.
2. remember, a pirate is not the divinely appointed ruler of a country surrounded by a complex web of political intrigue that spans generations and would prevent it, in a realm where people would MORE then gladly kill the noble who tried for such a wasteful act,
this user gets it

This is true. Pirates are a widely varying lot. I recall reading of some pirates who captured a vessel carrying women into Arab slavery, and they released the women and dropped them off at the nearest port.
Of course, you also have sadistic monsters like Edward Low, whose cruelty and wickedness were wholly supported by his crew..

It's hard to pigeonhole them, when every ship, crew, and captain was different.

>pirates
>navy

There have been female pirate captains, a lot of them would dress up as men, though.

They would need to be very cunning, very charismatic and very violent to be able to lead a crew of pirates. Don't get surprised if they actually took part in all the murdering, pillaging and raping.

In a fantasy setting you can be realistic or not, it's up to you.
Make this female pirate captain a butch stereotipical lesbian or a adventurous pretty lady, it works either way.
Or give her a dick

For number of countries those are actually one and the same.
Turks and arabs raided up and down
Oruç Reis worked for the turks a number of times as well as folks like Sir Francis Drake and other pirates would also be hired or created by countries to covertly damage shipping lanes and coastal towns without provoking actual war between powers

so corsaires ?

>how can a female pirate captain exist?
>easy! just change the definition of pirate to mean something other than what it is!

>privateers are not pirates
>sir Francis drake is not a pirate
>paying a pirate to sic someone else is not a pirate
>the barbary pirates are not pirates.
nig nog you know shit about pirates

>>how can a female pirate captain exist?
what the fuck are you on about?

>setting where women are physically just as strong as men (that is, literally every D&D setting by core rules)
>why can women be allowed to do X job!?

>A pirate is a person who commits warlike acts at sea without the authorization of any nation.

I always assumed women were still weaker, but PCs were outside the norm.

Still though it's pretty dumb to some a woman couldn't be in any role, especially in fantasy setting.

>This girl can throw fireballs
>But girls can't be pirates, because they're yucky.

Because the female pirates murder, pillage, and rape with the best of them.

that's Wikipedia, I am a part of the former British empire and thus i use oxford. which is the simple, and lacking "A person who attacks and robs ships at sea"
Etymologically it comes from, one who robs ships or sailer brigand in older langauges.
regardless, persons i mentioned Drake and Barbarosa (oruc) went between government sponsor and free fighting.
Furthermore many pirates are dissented/stolen navy/merchant vessels and given the tendency to shanghai the average linesman wouldn't likely be much different then pirates aside from stricter discipline.
and this is way to long to explains, that people become faggots on boats.

>implying female PC's isn't fudge only included to avoid controversy, but, like, demihumans, not actually expected to be played commonly
And gonzo is one thing, but fantasy doesn't mean throw all logic and internal consistency out the window. If part of the fantasy of your medieval setting includes females to be biologically different from real life to be appropriate for all the same roles as men, then the entire, normally highly gendered medieval society would look markedly different, just like it does with the introduction of monsters & magic. You have to make at least some attempt to consider its effects on the world for it to feel remotely plausible or immersive.

she also used to fight with her jugs out to distract attackers. Well, it was either her or Mary Read, either way, decent tactic

wanna know who stopped the queen of england from being raped by the spanish dogs? a crazy damn privateer/borderline pirate

Ever been to Japan? Navy and marines can't stop raping and murdering locals. Hence the bases always have curfew.

>Ever been to Japan
No.
>Navy and marines can't stopping and murdering locals
isn't that specifically a small base on a small island that is not japan itself.
really sucks for the locals and the only reason i've heard the American's don't just remove them is it costs less to leave them there and possibly something something strategic location, someting something stopping chinese intrests

You don't have to alter the physiology of women in the setting to make a more elegitarian culture. Especially when fantastic and magical elements are in play.

Why do the crew follow her?
>She's got the ear of the sea god.
>Anyone who disobeys is struck by lighting
>If questioned she flies into a bezerker rage
>She's freakishly good at stabbing people
Not our fault the local populace is so rapable.

>fantasy doesn't mean throw all logic and internal consistency out the window

Yes it does.
D&D does at least. There's no such thing as universal gravitation or atoms in D&D, for example. Gravity is a feature of planes that yank objects in certain directions. On super-microscopic scales, rather than being formed of molecules, everything is assembled from varying quantities of fire, earth, air, and water, and living things are further laced with an animating web of positive/radiant energy. (Undead things replace this animation with negative/necrotic energy.)

Realism is gone in D&D, and for better or worse, all P&PRPGs live in D&D's shadow. Thus logic and realistic consistency may be freely discarded.

>realism = logic/internal consistency
Having different physical laws than our world does not mean it's internally inconsistent or illogical. The entire reason D&D included obtuse rules for things like the planes is to maintain a logical consistency. "Realistic consistency" means an internal consistency that follows an obvious rationale, not consistency with our reality.

Because the last man that challenged her was mounted to the figurehead still breathing.

Don't mistake her for a lady, she's done more than her share of the murder, rape and pillage.

That's fine, then it's the same defense as why a PC can be female, some people are bound to be extra-ordinary. It doesn't mean average women are exactly equivalent as men, do all the same jobs, etc. they do in vanilla D&D's setting, and I hope not in yours unless you worked out the consequences of that.

Then there's no violation of consistency involved in having women take on roles arbitrarily.

>Why would the guys ruled by a queen not accept a female captain

Yes there is, eliminating the structure of traditional gender roles in a medieval world is illogical and inconsistent if real biological differences are maintained, unless something else is introduced to the setting to explain the implausibility.

There's no real biological differences in essentially every RPG though.

It wasn't to distract them, it was so they wouldn't shoot her, because people would hesitate to shoot a lady. It worked, according to various accounts.

I can't believe we've actually got people doing the whole
>-4 strength
bit and arguing that women couldn't be successful pirates, when there are a good dozen or so historical examples.

Again, PC's are considered to be exceptional. You can't take chargen rules for examples of NPCs. Dwarves or elves mingling with humans in vanilla D&D's setting is unheard of, but PC's parties aren't normal people, they're the stuff of legends.

Don't stop taking the bait.

Exceptions to the rule. Exceptionally strong women do exist but they'll still always be weaker than the strongest man more controversial, but it is true that women also have a tighter IQ range - they're underrepresented on both extremes.

-2 STR is perfectly realistic, it means a female PC stats are generally lower then men's, but exceptions far above the average do exist - though they'll still never be better than the strongest man. The only mistake is giving a bonus to CHA, because in reality it applies to ability to lead, not beauty or whatever else people misinterpret it as. Of course, you shouldn't ever do it because player-facing mechanics are cancer. and cancer attracts SJWs who will kvetch you to death for it

PCs are exceptional in that they have 1~3 ability score points above the average across the board, but the male and female averages are still equivalent.
>Dwarves or elves mingling with humans in vanilla D&D's setting is unheard of
Excuse me what? Have you even heard of a half-elf? They're a major core race. The city of Waterdeep, the largest and most prosperous city in Faerun, has 64% humans, 10% dwarves, 10% elves, 5% halflings, and 11% assorted half-human races.
And that's deep in human territory.

Vanilla D&D refers to Greyhawk.

>PCs are exceptional in that they have 1~3 ability score points above the average across the board, but the male and female averages are still equivalent.
What? Average is 9 - 12, which is the average of 3d6. 4d6 drop lowest has nothing to do with D&D's definition of average stats. It doesn't matter that there isn't adjustment for male/female in chargen, PC's are all assumed to be exceptional - just because many players choose demihumans or choose female adventurers doesn't mean the world is filled with demihumans or female adventurers doing all the things PC's do, they're the exception. For example, it seems lots of people play dragonborn in the new games, but the vast majority of campaigns will likely never even encounter one NPC dragonborn.

Mechanically, D&D never carried any rule like stat modifiers for player choices in chargen until 3e, only stat requirements, and even for that, none were upper ceilings (e.g. if you're above STR 12, you can't play female; they were only something like STR: 9+ to play fighter). It would've required inventing an entirely unique rule template just to create gendered distinctions. A grossly inelegant solution to a non problem.

>Vanilla D&D refers to Greyhawk.
In 3.5. 5E's default is Faerun.
>What? Average is 9 - 12, which is the average of 3d6. 4d6 drop lowest has nothing to do with D&D's definition of average stats.
Player character average is the Elite array, 15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8. Generic array for NPC usage is 13, 12, 11, 10, 9, 8.
Thus PCs are exceptional across the board.

>just because many players choose demihumans or choose female adventurers doesn't mean the world is filled with demihumans or female adventurers doing all the things PC's do, they're the exception
The worlds ARE filled with demihumans and female adventurers, that's the matter. They are normal and non exceptional. It is regular in all the settings that I know of for D&D.

A physically stronger and more numerous (on the ship) gender

>Was the late captain's husband
>Is a wizard
>Is a species with larger females
>Has a gun

I suppose I should make clear I'm not familiar with WotC's D&D. I know it's different, but I don't believe it's different enough to consider PC's unexceptional, or only exceptional for their stats. Greyhawk is certainly not filled with demihumans, they remain the stuff of legend for the common people just as the remarkable heroes (both female and male) that make up mid level PC's (~3-4+) do. It's not like the learned and traveled don't know well of their existence and have even likely met some, but it's just a fact that they live separately from human society and rarely intermingle for trade or any other reason.

And even if you assume PC's are generally representative of all adventurers in the world, it's pretty safe to say female PC's are rolled far less often.

Ching Shih is the greatest pirate to have ever lived, bar none. Others are more iconic, but Ching Shih is just success given physical form.

HOT physical form.

Then the simple matter is that you're treating something exceptional when, in-universe, it simply isn't.

>And even if you assume PC's are generally representative of all adventurers in the world, it's pretty safe to say female PC's are rolled far less often.
That's completely arbitrary. Any form of logical deduction would tell you PCs are vastly over-represented with spell casters of every variety, who are extremely rare and special individuals in-setting. It doesn't comment on how many women adventurers there are at all. The setting itself varies to what degree, but in general the standard now is that female adventurers aren't even noteworthy. NPCs won't comment on it and it's not expected for the female NPCs to be commented on (and there's loads of them in modules). Monstrous races are still a rarity to interact with (peacefully), but the civil humanoids aren't rare in the slightest.

Anyone who tries anything with her gets neutered. Simple enough.

And I'm far from the first person to point this out, but female pirates--even female pirate captains--weren't even all that unusual.

I don't know what you're talking about. Demihumans are uncommon of at best in Flanaess' largest cities, and rare to unheard of everywhere else with few exceptions. At least when Gygax wrote the Greyhawk setting, I don't keep up to date with how it's been butchered. In any case, it's not even relevant, it was just an example to demonstrate that PC's are exceptional - though one point of reference in Greyhawk is the circle of eight, 1/9 wizards are female, 1/9 demihuman (high elf). These are most powerful wizards in the land so should overrepresent women (since their int is equally 3d6) if anything.

I'm now imagining a pirate crew gal in a normally all-male ship who was kidnapped from a pirate raid and is kept around as a sex slave, and enjoyed it enough to become unofficial crew.

Could be pirates passing off a noblewoman or daughter/relative of a noble as a pirate captain so the other pirates in the fleet don't get TOO suspicious and ask too many questions, and demand a take of the booty. She acts the part because they threaten her with rape each time she doesn't play along. (In b4 she doesn't play along because she likes it)

We're getting far from the entire point, which is that there's no statistical difference between men and women in-setting or out, PC or NPC. Asserting there "should" be one is baseless. There's also never insinuation that female adventurers are aberrant or uncommon. If there is, please cite the splatbook.

The original argument is this
>If part of the fantasy of your medieval setting includes females to be biologically different from real life to be appropriate for all the same roles as men, then the entire, normally highly gendered medieval society would look markedly different, just like it does with the introduction of monsters & magic.

If a medieval setting assumes women are not biologically the same as actual women, it is internally inconsistent for it not to maintain historical gender roles unless some other factor adjusts for it. Greyhawk can be assumed to be logically consistent and a thought out setting, it maintains traditional gender roles, women can be assumed to be biologically consistent with our world. PC women having the same roll without modifiers doesn't prove they aren't, as PC's are exceptional, and it's very unlikely TSR would've introduced that an alien build-style mechanic even if they wanted to.

>There's also never insinuation that female adventurers are aberrant or uncommon. If there is, please cite the splatbook.
While this was never the argument, as PC's are exceptional, I doubt you'll ever find a TSR splatbook referencing the commonness of adventurers in general. You can piece together things, though. Other parties in modules tend to sometimes include 1 female, or the aforementioned 1/9 wizards in Greyhawk PHB's circle of eight. The OD&D's fighter is literally Fighting Man. "Wine, women & song" (XP per 1gp wasted) was a very common houserule, etc.

Then whatever the circumstance is with Greyhawk, I can say there's no "traditional roles equivalent to historical medieval demographics" in Forgotten Realms or Eberron or Dark Sun or Planescape. In those, women are given every role equivalent to men other than carrying babies (and even that's just a matter of finding the right mage).

You don't mean leveled NPC's or PC's, right? Rather than normal average folk. Or just that women can be found in all the jobs as men though they're still strongly gendered on average? But that there is no real social distinction between genders, no gender roles like Sweden's desired utopia?

"crawled my my way"

I do mean normal folk, yes. At every level of society women and men make up varying degrees of a force's demographic, gendering only seems for personal choices (e.g. goddesses tend to have more female acolytes and gods tend to have more male) rather than any absolute functions.
Obviously there's some outlying civilizations and cultures with enforced gender roles both similar and dissimilar to history but that's all setting flavor.

Sounds like politicized cancer. Is it supposed to be plausible?

>Obviously there's some outlying civilizations and cultures with enforced gender roles both similar and dissimilar to history but that's all setting flavor.
yea IIRC, Greyhawk had a traditionally matriarchal kingdom or country or something

It's supposed to be plausible in a setting where gods who personally manufactured the living species by hand actually exist and decide their own gender arbitrarily (they decide their entire physique arbitrarily, really) so they don't really have a grasp of such differences as the real world to begin with.
It's not like men and women evolved.

>Sounds like politicized cancer. Is it supposed to be plausible?
it's a fantasy roleplaying game and not politics.

Let's say your crew sails into a port, starts wreacking havoc and rapes a busty wench or two. You then have to deal with upset husbands, boyfriends, brothers, fathers... what're you gonna do about that? Kill 'em? Not only is that risky, but all that bloodshed doesn't really help you get or stay aroused.

What you do is hire a bunch of lustful broads to jump on top of their dicks and keep them down for the count so you can rape the lady of your fancy in peace, and probably have a nice view to enjoy on top of that. Also, it helps your victims as well. If only the women were raped, the surviving men will not only reject them but hate them for doing nothing to protect those who have died. If everyone is raped, both sides are equally 'guilty' and the healing process can begin without grudges.

>But why wouldn't the pirates just rape eachother
What do you think happens when they aren't looting and pillaging?

So they can loot /u/boats

Alright. In your situation, pirates are ruled by the authority of Force. The ruler is the one that can beat his rivals into mince-meat. So, if you accept that girls can be swole or skilled with weapons, there seems to be no problem.

>pirates are ruled by the authority of Force

I always felt it was interesting how that particular image of pirates wasn't necessarily the case for a lot of pirate ships, if I remember rightly, at least during the "golden age" of piracy. Captains were in charge of the ship, but they tended to be elected, and a bad captain could be rather rapidly deposed (and they also were quite happy, generally, for somebody to just surrender without a fight). Not to mention that by and large, while the captain was in charge during combat, for a lot of the day to day matters it was the quartermaster who ran the ship.

There have been several female pirate captains, and a few that are famous, so yes. Not even the usual "women can't do anything" idiots can discount taking over an entire flotilla of pirate ships, or the fact that there were a pair or women running an effective pirate ship for nearly a decade before they were coaught and hung like 90% of the pirate captains were.

Yes, that worked so well with Anny Bonny and Chang Shih.

You're an idiot.

Dunno how stereotypical the Ironborn are but awoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/Asha_Greyjoy

We've got two lady pirate captains (PCs) in our current game. One is not all that great of a captain though, she tends to move from crew to crew and ship to ship. Dangerous in her own right for how clever she is, has some collected wealth and connections, but she's had her fair share of misfortune. She doesn't take on female crew though.

The other one rules through fear and force, and can pull it off because she's cursed and has supernatural traits. She doesn't care about crew gender as long as they can pull their weight, and also because the supernatural can free someone from usual constraints.

>I always felt it was interesting how that particular image of pirates wasn't necessarily the case for a lot of pirate ships, if I remember rightly, at least during the "golden age" of piracy. Captains were in charge of the ship, but they tended to be elected, and a bad captain could be rather rapidly deposed (and they also were quite happy, generally, for somebody to just surrender without a fight). Not to mention that by and large, while the captain was in charge during combat, for a lot of the day to day matters it was the quartermaster who ran the ship.
this is how everything has operated forever. Almost every civilization realizes that taking and holding power by force is too resource taxing, especially if you want to any semblance of control over a disparity of families and communities. And even if you have a profession that by definition involves violence you are going to lean towards actions that have less risk to your own life. As for the quartermaster thing, that's how leadership works. The top guy makes all the decisions and his number two does all the work.

War rape is a common tactic by irregular forces against both civilians and enemy combatants.

Just because they rape the enemy/civilians doesn't mean they rape everything with two legs and a pulse, or that they'd inherently lack respect for female members of their in-group.

>Anne Bonny was having an affair with this Mark Read fellow.

History records him as being cool with it so presumably they let him watch after he found out.

>Drake
>borderline pirate
>borderline

So that heavy storm at the Bay of Biscay was also a pirate? Good to know

>a lack of muscle can definitely made up by a good amount of wit
Especially after guns.

>ignores all the examples of real women pirates and pirate queens to flail desperately at a strawman
No need to get so butt-furious about women doing more than you could manage, user.

Keep your hands above the game table creep.

>the evil sjw cancer is FORCING stupid weak women into my safespace! they should only exist as fapbait!

>Not even the usual "women can't do anything" idiots can discount taking over an entire flotilla of pirate ships, or the fact that there were a pair or women running an effective pirate ship for nearly a decade before they were coaught and hung like 90% of the pirate captains were
And yet we have this thread with those very idiots doing what you suggest they can't.
Facts don't matter in the face of their feels.

As others have said, you can be a female pirate captain/queen no problem, as long as you run a very tight ship. Ching Shih became one of the most powerful pirates of all time because her word was law, and her punishments were swift and absolute. She ruled through domination, and that's what allowed her to terrorize China so much that the government eventually gave up and granted her amnesty. You can rule through charm or however, but you must get your crew to respect you as a matter of course, not just because of your title. You're the captain for a reason.

Because it's fun.

Have you considered that she might just be ridiculously savage and competent, and that she's humiliated and killed all competition?

You can take this even further in a fantasy setting. Maybe she's an elf, and is therefore just as strong and tough as a male elf. Maybe she's a powerful sorcerer, or has the blessing of a seriously nasty deity, like that horned chick from Warmahordes. Maybe she has a magic sword that has made her a fucking beast.