I do think names are helpful, but this increasingly indoctrinates gender into the ruleset

Good idea, but I have to agree with Forest. 

I don’t mind the character-gender assumption, given the theme.

If we want a completely gender-blind narrative where the ruleset never refers to character genders and supports any readings that the players want to give it (from “this is a realistic but non-historical setting, so I’m imagining a mix of genders” to “we’re in 12th century Europe where gender mattered, so from the range of political actions available these characters are probably all men”), fair enough.

For what it’s worth I think it’d be mildly more interesting to take a historical European angle where playing a female character is hard mode, and to explore what that meant, than to ignore it or to explicitly say that we’re in an alternate history.

Character names are relatively rare in BlogNomic, though, and I often wonder if it’s something that we should try more. Whether it would change the tone of gameplay conversation and take some of the personal edge off of it (“for too long Osbert has held sway over this court!” rather than “we need to stop Clucky!”), perhaps encouraging more open tactical discussions as a result.

  for names in general. For this particular proposal, the point about it enshrining gender into the ruleset might be moot; the proposal that would have added brides has been withdrawn, and is likely going to be proposed to be more gender-neutral judging by the discussion on it.

Down with Osbert

I’m good with any of the 3 directions, I just avoided assigning one explicitly from the start. 

Oh god what happened

Oh god what happened, why are there three