"No Brothels to be in DA4" as per Mark Darrah Tweet.

If a brothel is the same as a tavern with whores in it, then why are you so against having it called a "brothel"?  You're splitting hairs... again.

The sooner you stop misrepresenting things people say, the sooner people will start to think your opinion matters.

I didn't say that having a sex industry adds nothing to the worldbuilding. I said BioWare's brothels don't. Exploring the lives of sex workers in a respectful, nuanced way is something I'd very much like to see. I've never seen a game that does that. No game I've ever played has used prostitutes and brothels as anything other than cheap titillation, under the guise of being "dark and mature". This same problem occurs again and again in games I otherwise enjoy (Assassin's Creed to varying degrees, Deus Ex, Dishonored), and also in abominations that should never have seen the light of day (the Thief reboot).

In fact, when it comes to fantasy, the lives of the mistreated and exploited underclass interest me far more than all the poorly-written "political" wank in Inquisition and GoT. If I thought there was a hope in hell of BioWare doing it properly, I would be all for it. I would like to see a prositute as a major character, maybe a party member or in something akin to the 'advisor' roles in Inquisition. If there is any basis to the rumours that we'll be playing as a secret agent-type character, then that sort of connection could be used in a narrative to great effect, and would be a perfect opportunity to provide the kind of content I want to see.

Also, I don't think Dragon Age has ever been dark fantasy, except maybe in the very early conceptual stages. But our metrics for "dark" might be very different. If I thought Dragon Age was "dark", I wouldn't play it.

Stews were not brothels. They were bathhouses where you could find prostitutes as a side attraction, much as in some taverns. In case I was ambiguous, let me be explicit that by saying “brothels were not a thing” I don’t mean that there were not establishments where prostitutes could ply their trade, but that places which served especifically and solely that function (such as we see in DA) would have been rare.

I find your argument about horse poop rather bizarre since horses were not cheap and those who could afford them would therefore take good care of them. Moreover, most medieval people would never travel, and doing so by ship when possible is pretty much always a better option than going overland anyway. Even if one got covered in waste all the time, dirt is everywhere in all ages and there is a simple solution to it: wash. As you’ve helpfully pointed out, there were bathhouses all over Europe for individuals of every gender and social class, and the merits of hygiene were not alien to the time. Bathing didn’t become anathema until the Early Modern period, when the whole “bathing is bad for you” thing you mention really started to catch on.

Inns only started becoming significant towards the Low Middle Ages. In that sense, they are no more medieval than witch hunts or cannons. And I’ll point you back to my previous post, where I specifically said that the MA were a terrible time to live in from a modern perspective, just not substantially more so than any other part of history previous to the twentieth century.

Certainly, DA is not historical fiction nor a remotely accurate dramatization of any historical period. I don’t expect it to be, either. But like a lot of fantasy, it draws from history (or rather it tries) and as such I think it can be interesting to look to the sources.

I am familiar with the arguments brought up by many in the pro-brothel camp here, because a lot of the fans of the grimdark subgenre seem convinced that George Martin is a reliable source for medieval history. All I can do is point out that DA has never been realistic and, that even if it were to start now, grimdark is not the way to go.

Brothels were called stews because they ORIGINATED from bath-houses not because they were bath-houses. You are incorrect when you say the stews of medieval england were bath-houses. Look back at Henry the 2nd's regulations on the previous page "stewholders were to be married and the premises to be used as brothels only." They were rare in that you wouldn’t find them in rural settings, but they weren’t rare in that they could be found in most cities, and in the case of London an entire area was set aside for them. If Bioware were to make a major city, it would most likely have brothels. If they required the player to travel to a small rural village would be unlikely. The capital of Tevinter though? Brothels would almost be a certainty.

You have it backwards, travel in the middle ages, while not done by most people, was still not uncommon and travel increased the farther into the middle ages you went. Inns were quite common by the 1300s and were becoming big business. It was the focus of a study done by John Hare (http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03044181.2013.833132). Ships were dangerous, they could get wrecked, attacked, and life at sea was incredibly difficult, an option for merchants but otherwise it’s not the surefire option you make it out to be. Considering Dragon Age is set in late medieval times bordering on the Renaissance, inns are most certainly not out of picture here.

Bathing in the middle ages at the best of times was complicated and time consuming. You don’t have the luxury of running water in taps, you had to collect the water and then you had to heat the water. Many people went without, many people bathed only once or so a week. And that’s with bath houses. In the late middle ages some people prided themselves on NOT bathing because the plague was spreading and bath houses were thought to be one of the sources, therefore quite a few closed down. In the 1470 the Parliament of Toulouse closed the bath houses because of the plague, and also the municipal brothel, note how they closed them separately. If brothels operated as bath houses, they would only need to close the bath houses. There were many outbreaks of the plague between 1300 and 1600, about 16 I believe, and this seemed to boost the “medical perception” that bathing was bad for you. It went like this, early medieval period – almost no bathing because society had just broken down from the fall of the Roman empire. A gradual increase in bathing. Plagues hit in late middle ages and bathing declined again. Of course this was on top of the fact that bathing was flat out difficult. The early modern period was when bathing got better, when medical knowledge improved to the point that dispelled the “medical myth” that was circling previously.

Everything is relative to something else. When I say that the Middle Ages are dirty and grim, I’m not exactly comparing it to caveman times (although life in the early middle ages was terrible compared to the time before it, due to the fall of the Roman empire and the technological collapse that followed.) I’m comparing it to modern times of course. When I say that inns are disgusting and dangerous places, I’m comparing the reality to the way it’s portrayed in books and games which often have them clean, safe, and jovial.

I’m not sure how much horse poo was in London in medieval times (in the 1800s the streets were swimming in it,) however there’s talk that muckrakers had to rake tons of horse poo every night from the London streets. So it was a significant amount.

That’s just my point. “Historical accuracy” is constantly thrown around by people who have no idea what it is to justify pretty much anything. It’s convenient to abuse the term when you’re trusting on nothing more substantial than your own biases.

Actually by the 14th century it wasn't just the plague that was causing a turning away from bath houses, but rather the propaganda of the Church also.

That's your wgole argument in the thread I quoted. If that's not what you intended, try communicating more clearly. Our job isn't to read your mind. Only what you write.

Lol, can you really not think of any other reason for why people would want prostitutes in a game?

I guess the same could be asked for why people would NOT want prostitutes in the game?

He was saying that it was your whole argument in this thread.

Stop dodging/deflecting