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Anarchy_Kanya
2011-10-06, 02:35 PM
Lets say that the world/setting has no males. There are only females, they don't know what a male is, because there never where any. Lets also assume that it's a fantasy setting/world, so there is magic or supernatural powers available. I'm very curious if anyone of you Playgrounders knows any books, games, game settings, etc. that have this kind of setup, and if you could tell in short something about it. Maybe you even played in such a game? Please, share your experiences.
(P.S. I'm most curious about how did the story/game/setting deal with the problem of reproduction. There are some simple and obvious solutions like for example magical cloning/impregnation, but I'm interested in any original ideas. SOMEHOW they have to make babies, right?)

gkathellar
2011-10-06, 02:38 PM
There's some speculative fiction book I read a chapter of where all the men died in this little valley and now all women just inexplicably reproduce.

Y: The Last Man deals with our world becoming one of these. Not fantasy, but very good.
They figure out cloning, IIRC.

Ravens_cry
2011-10-06, 02:44 PM
So, everyone reproduces via parthenogenesis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parthenogenesis)?
It would certainly change society in the extreme. For a significant part of history, and likely before, powerful individuals have gone to great lengths, and other powerful individual have gone to great lengths to stop them, to beget an heir. While not the whole dynamic of history, a casual glance at history shows a rather huge influence.
It rather changes things, to use a rather extreme understatement.

Andreaz
2011-10-06, 02:49 PM
Vandread starts with one of those. They are aware of males, but never interacted with them in manners not "shooting them dead", and only became aware of reproductive capability late in the series. They reproduced via cloning.

gbprime
2011-10-06, 02:51 PM
Well unless you want to take away the entire concept of motherhood, divine intercession is a good answer. They can participate in a ritual that makes them pregnant. In this way, the deity literally has a hand in creating her followers, and all of them could benefit from abilities that can only be acquired by those descended from the divine.

An archetype for such a deity could be an Artemis like figure. Feminine, no use for men, has created her "ideal world" to make this happen.

...

Another more mature (as in adult themed non PG) method might be that the world was created/discovered by a very powerful wizard who used it as his own personal playground and laboratory. In time he populated it with females that he had created or transformed, gave himself a harem, etc, etc. Quite the perv.

He's gone now, either dead from old age or his slaves revolted against him. If his creations are long lived enough, the fact that there are no new ones being born is not a problem. Otherwise, perhaps they have turned to the magics in his laboratory as a source of procreation. Maybe the elders know (or knew, if they're all gone now) what a male is, and to them this is a very bad thing...

LibraryOgre
2011-10-06, 02:57 PM
Well, in the Robotech: Sentinels series, there's the Praxians, who are an all-female race; the Zentraedi weren't genderless, but the genders were very segregated at the lower levels, and reproduction was tank-based, meaning they didn't really understand most gender concepts. Of course, there's also the Asari, from Mass Effect, who are counted as female, despite being monogendered themselves.

Usually, however, such races are set against "normal" races as a contrast. Older works tended to play up their "us against a man's world" attitude, but it seems a lot more common for their difference to just be a cultural/genetic "oddity" from the POV of bi-gendered races. If everyone in the game world is female, you have to consider what dynamic you're looking for, especially if the characters are otherwise essentially "human".

Calmar
2011-10-06, 03:29 PM
I had the impression James T. Kirk might have visited such a place once, but that's probably not true. However, TVtropes.org (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LadyLand) has a list of stories depicting societies consisting mostly or only of women. There's also a link to a wikipedia site about a concept called "Lesbian Utopia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lesbian_utopia)".

Edit:


(P.S. I'm most curious about how did the story/game/setting deal with the problem of reproduction. There are some simple and obvious solutions like for example magical cloning/impregnation, but I'm interested in any original ideas. SOMEHOW they have to make babies, right?)

If I were to create such a setting, there would be priesthood dedicated to a mother/impregnator deity performing the rituals to bless the women with pregnancy - nothing lewd or spectacular, just simple and realistic fertility rites.

Lord Il Palazzo
2011-10-06, 03:47 PM
I don't like the idea of a single-gendered world or race that reproduces entirely by cloning. Maybe it's the fact that such a race couldn't survive without the technology (or magic, as the case may be) to create clones or the fact that it implies a nearly complete lack of genetic diversity.

I like the asari from the Mass Effect series as an example of a single-gendered race that still produces sexually. When two asari mate, one of them (refered to as the mother) provides all of the genetic information for the child, but the information is altered by psychic melding with the other (called the father), in such a way as to emphasize traits from the father in the altered genetic code. Because the process is psychic rather than biological, an asari can mate (and produce viable offspring) with an individual of any race, though the child of the union is always an asari.

gbprime
2011-10-06, 04:00 PM
Really the only stumbling block might be animal life. The intelligent race with magic is one thing, but what do all the beasts do? (and if they do "do it" and have males and so forth, then the natives are going to know something is up, though it could be a taboo.)

Calmar
2011-10-06, 04:09 PM
Really the only stumbling block might be animal life. The intelligent race with magic is one thing, but what do all the beasts do? (and if they do "do it" and have males and so forth, then the natives are going to know something is up, though it could be a taboo.)
I agree. on the other hand, in most cases animals don't wear clothes, don't create tools, or houses. I think an explanation for another fundamental difference between man (:smalltongue:) and beast would ealily be found.

Should there be no male creatures in this world, there wouldn't exactly be 'females' either, because then the basic 'sex' probably is hermaphrodite...

LibraryOgre
2011-10-06, 04:14 PM
(P.S. I'm most curious about how did the story/game/setting deal with the problem of reproduction. There are some simple and obvious solutions like for example magical cloning/impregnation, but I'm interested in any original ideas. SOMEHOW they have to make babies, right?)

Whoops. I UTTERLY misread this, and wondered why everyone was talking about reproduction when you didn't want to talk about that. So, to actually address those things...

Praxians: Mystical temple thingy. Were compatible with humans, Zentraedi, and Tirolians, but almost all offspring was female.

Asari: "Female" in that any could have children and appeared female, but were really monogendered, using their partner's DNA as a template for randomizing their own. Believed that "daughters" took on the traits of their "father's" species (said father did not need to be male), but did not actually mix DNA. Also believed that outbreeding was essential. Slight prejudice against "purebloods" (those with two asari parents), partially because some genetic diseases were more common among purebloods (notably, the Ardat-Yakshi, who more or less shredded the nervous systems of anyone they slept with).

Also, to add:
Dryads, from David Eddings' Belgariad: Monogendered "monster" race that lived in symbiosis with their trees, but are not tied to them. Captured human males for reproduction, but also entered into an agreement with a Tolnedran (read: Roman in medieval fantasy drag) noble house Borune to provide them with the occasional Dryad princess as a wife. Most Borune females ARE dryads, complete with their own tree; the line "breeds true" in females.

Of course, in D&D you also have Nymphs and Dryads, both of whom mate with other species.

jseah
2011-10-06, 04:22 PM
Asexual reproduction is certainly possible. Aphids can do it.

Also, I do recall writing a pretty strange play on this topic. Science fiction of course.

Basically, a sociologist and a geneticist have tracked down the cause for a slow rising in male:female birth ratios and they request a conference with the president. I did not write any solution to the slowly growing no-male problem.

This story was inspired by a biology lecture, interestingly enough. The situation in my story can plausibly happen. Of course, it requires genetic modifications of human beings but it does involve one of the more plausible routes to practical genetic modification.
Essentially, a transposon carrying an SRY controlled lethal gene will end up wiping out all males from the human race. It needs to carry a mieosis controlled transposase but that's just details.
---Transposons are useful because they can self-splice into a chromosome. You just pop it into the cell together with the needed proteins and hope. They do it for flies. ---

This is because even a single copy of a transposon will be inherited by ALL children. Not just 50% of them. Transposons tend to copy themselves into other chromosomes.

If carrier mothers only ever have female children (male ones self-abort too early to tell), and the average birth rate is 2; I calculate in an ideal model that starting from 1% of the population carrying the gene, 20 generations later, 99% carry the gene.
Note: 1% of the american adult female population is >1million people. It gets kind of hard to stop. And even at 1%, it's pretty hard to detect unless you know exactly what to look for.

Which means the human race becomes female-only in around 400 years. Of course, having m:f birth ratios of 1:2 would start to happen in about 100 years and social chaos would result.

EDIT: also, some examination indicates that it is harder to do the reverse (male-only) since females turn on the same initial sex-determining genes as males do. Males just turn on one more.

Coidzor
2011-10-06, 04:23 PM
Ahh, a setting where every player runs the risk of being That Guy. :/

Interesting, but ultimately dangerous idea.

Trekkin
2011-10-06, 04:29 PM
The only examples I can think of from biology are probably too bizarre for application to a sentient species, although I'm forced to wonder what exactly you want "female only" to mean. If you want to keep reproduction as humans understand it, a hermaphroditic race would work, and you'd have only one gender. If they are female only and capable of reproduction without the involvement of another member of their species, almost every option with sufficient genetic variability is going to involve some variation of magic.

Mando Knight
2011-10-06, 04:31 PM
Unless the setting is horridly sexist (one way or the other, leave your double standards at the door), realistically, the society would probably be fairly similar to ours, just without the direct derivatives of physical sex differences and a means of procreation/reproduction that probably seems utterly arcane to us.

However, the women in the hypothetical society would probably have different values for the "ideal woman" compared to our society, probably with a significantly decreased emphasis on sexuality, especially if the method of parthenogenesis is primarily asexual and non-romantic in nature.

Calmar
2011-10-06, 04:34 PM
Are we actually talking agout human (or humanoid) females? :smallconfused:

Coidzor
2011-10-06, 04:44 PM
However, the women in the hypothetical society would probably have different values for the "ideal woman" compared to our society, probably with a significantly decreased emphasis on sexuality, especially if the method of parthenogenesis is primarily asexual and non-romantic in nature.

Building off this, I'd say take the ideal man. Subtract the parts from that ideal that would conflict with caring for one's offspring and the parts about wooing a mate and getting sexual pleasure. Add in the ideal forms of nuture and child-rearing.

Then you've got one reasonable jumping off point for beginning working out what that'd be, adjusting, of course, for whether physical intimacy is known and how child-rearing is laid out. If it's communal, then there's less pressure away from hunting in their early cultures.

If every 'woman' is bogged down by her offspring, then that's going to put pressure more on gathering and scavenging and eventually planting/cultivating than on hunting and domesticating animals.

Or possibly just means that the population was controlled because the young had to go out and hunt in order to gain enough security to be able to stay back and raise a kid and war was rarer because it was a losing proposition due to the reproductive culture.

Fouredged Sword
2011-10-06, 05:03 PM
If you are willing to go really into alien biology, then you could go the same way as some species of insect.

There are males of the race, but they are aborted pre-birth. Their sisters are inseminated in the womb and hold the male genetics in their bodies until they reach adulthood. Then they internally gestate a new generation using the genes they where born with.

In a sentient race you could add a ritual that triggers their bodies reproduction. You could have a race that had two genders, but are completely unaware of the male side because it never grows into a viable life.

Squicky, but there is a breed or two if insect that does this, so it is theoretically a viable way to breed. One of them could breed their whole race from nothing. I would expect birth defects would be a problem, but their race would likely breed itself to resist the inbreeding degredation, tending to favor very dominant genes.

flumphy
2011-10-06, 05:17 PM
If there literally never were any males, then yeah, everyone would be hermaphroditic or, with some kind of mystical reproduction, genderless rather than female. Is that what you're wanting, OP, or are you thinking of something where the characters are (demi)human but males simply ceased to exist a long time ago?

In any case, a mono-gendered society no one has brought up yet are Tolkien's ents. Sure, they're supposedly all male rather than female, but well, they're trees. I assume that wherever the entwives ran off too, they were doing pretty much the same things.



Also, to add:
Dryads, from David Eddings' Belgariad: Monogendered "monster" race that lived in symbiosis with their trees, but are not tied to them. Captured human males for reproduction, but also entered into an agreement with a Tolnedran (read: Roman in medieval fantasy drag) noble house Borune to provide them with the occasional Dryad princess as a wife. Most Borune females ARE dryads, complete with their own tree; the line "breeds true" in females.

Of course, in D&D you also have Nymphs and Dryads, both of whom mate with other species.

I don't think they count. As I recall, they were very, very keen on, uh, interacting with males. When they could get their hands on them, anyway.

David Eddings is a horrible author to look at for inspiration for female societies, or female anything, anyway, considering his twisted universe where every single woman is either a ruthless b**** or a complete airhead with no middle ground. (Yeah, yeah, he was supposedly being deliberately cliche. But still...)

LibraryOgre
2011-10-06, 05:37 PM
David Eddings is a horrible author to look at for inspiration for female societies, or female anything, anyway, considering his twisted universe where every single woman is either a ruthless ***** or a complete airhead with no middle ground. (Yeah, yeah, he was supposedly being deliberately cliche. But still...)

I actually disagree with you, quite a bit.

Ce'Nedra is neither a ruthless bitch nor an airhead... in the first series, she's a spoiled little girl, but that's also a bit in character, since she only turns 16 at the end of the 4th book.

Polgara is a bit ruthless, but she's also a strongly maternal figure, with a great deal of compassion for others (who are not evil).

Truthfully, I'm having trouble seeing any merit in your statement. I can think of one minor character in the Belgariad who was an airhead (Islena), with a possible argument for another (the wife of Furlach of Sendaria... Layla, I think), but few who were ruthless that weren't outright villains (Salmarissa and Zandramas).

Do you have some examples?

Dienekes
2011-10-06, 05:52 PM
Building off this, I'd say take the ideal man. Subtract the parts from that ideal that would conflict with caring for one's offspring and the parts about wooing a mate and getting sexual pleasure. Add in the ideal forms of nuture and child-rearing.

Then you've got one reasonable jumping off point for beginning working out what that'd be, adjusting, of course, for whether physical intimacy is known and how child-rearing is laid out. If it's communal, then there's less pressure away from hunting in their early cultures.

If every 'woman' is bogged down by her offspring, then that's going to put pressure more on gathering and scavenging and eventually planting/cultivating than on hunting and domesticating animals.

Or possibly just means that the population was controlled because the young had to go out and hunt in order to gain enough security to be able to stay back and raise a kid and war was rarer because it was a losing proposition due to the reproductive culture.

The way I see it, if some ritual is made to create birth it would be most likely that the standard romantic relationship would be between young woman older woman. The young woman would take the place of the male in hunting and gathering and waring, while the older woman would care for the child and become selected for the breeding ceremonies.

I don't see war being rarer really, or if anything would be more violent. Since the entire population could theoretically keep reproducing even while half the population is on campaign the loss of troops is actually less detrimental to the society.


David Eddings is a horrible author to look at for inspiration for female societies, or female anything, anyway, considering his twisted universe where every single woman is either a ruthless b**** or a complete airhead with no middle ground. (Yeah, yeah, he was supposedly being deliberately cliche. But still...)

Polgara, Layla, Porenn, Poledra, Beldaran, Tamazin, Velvet, Taiba, Dweia, and Leitha to name a few who fit rather nicely in the middle ground. Now I'll admit that there are plenty of problems with Eddings writings, but I generally enjoy his stronger female characters.

Coidzor
2011-10-06, 06:15 PM
^: After all, he's no Robert Jordan when it comes to male-female dynamics.
I don't see war being rarer really, or if anything would be more violent. Since the entire population could theoretically keep reproducing even while half the population is on campaign the loss of troops is actually less detrimental to the society.

I'm talking the rise and invention of warfare here at the tribal level. Unless large numbers of females are going to be workers or even soldiers that can't reproduce a la hive insects, the reproductive dynamic is going to limit mobility without some kind of counter to this, assuming roughly mammalian, humanoid biology. If every woman is a mother, there's no daughters to send to war but the children, so to speak.

Older women are exactly the ones that one doesn't want reproducing though, as they're less able to do it without complications and then there's that factor that makes genetic hooplah like Down's Syndrome become more and more frequent.

Though I guess that bit could be handwavium'd by having the gametes created over the lifetime of the creature, or perhaps having two puberties, one minor/false one which gives an adult body that can actually do work and then a second one later in life that gives reproductive capability.

To be sure, if they do manage to get war, or rather, when, Kipling's words would almost certainly ring true, I'm just saying there's a pressure away from it that would most likely delay it to the rise of societies, possibly to cities over farmland/water access.

Wardog
2011-10-06, 06:33 PM
In any case, a mono-gendered society no one has brought up yet are Tolkien's ents. Sure, they're supposedly all male rather than female, but well, they're trees. I assume that wherever the entwives ran off too, they were doing pretty much the same things.


Ents are all male, and they presumably do (or did) reproduce sexually, as there haven't been any entlings since the entwives left.

If I remember right, the entwives had notably different personalities and goals in life, prefering gardening and growing crops to wantering about in the forests talking to trees. (Which, IIRC, was part of the reason they wandered off in the first place).

So entwife society would probably be (or have been - we don't know if there are any left by the time of LotR) quite different from ent society.

Kaun
2011-10-06, 06:43 PM
After spending some time working in a female prison this idea terrifies me lol.

gkathellar
2011-10-06, 07:55 PM
^: After all, he's no Robert Jordan when it comes to male-female dynamics.

I just spent the last five minutes trying to find a decent "Ouch Burn!" image to place here, but then I got lazy.

Tyndmyr
2011-10-06, 09:44 PM
^: After all, he's no Robert Jordan when it comes to male-female dynamics.

I had a brief, horrifying moment where I thought this was entirely serious.

Phew.

cattoy
2011-10-06, 10:43 PM
does Gensokyou count?

flumphy
2011-10-06, 11:19 PM
The way I see it, if some ritual is made to create birth it would be most likely that the standard romantic relationship would be between young woman older woman. The young woman would take the place of the male in hunting and gathering and waring, while the older woman would care for the child and become selected for the breeding ceremonies.

The thing is, I'm not sure how standard the idea romantic relationships would be without sexual reproduction. Even assuming there's still a sex drive--which isn't a given--the majority of women in real life are heterosexual. I suppose that could change in a world where both society and natural selection were pushing the other way, but again, it's not a given.


Polgara, Layla, Porenn, Poledra, Beldaran, Tamazin, Velvet, Taiba, Dweia, and Leitha to name a few who fit rather nicely in the middle ground. Now I'll admit that there are plenty of problems with Eddings writings, but I generally enjoy his stronger female characters.

I wouldn't call any of these "middle ground", to be honest.

Ce'Nedra is, in fact, ruthless. She hatches and executes a plan that she believes will lead thousands of men to their deaths on the slim chance it will save the guy she has a crush on. She even admits to herself she doesn't really love him at that point. It's deep in teenage infatuation territory, and she's aware of it and goes through with it anyway. Sure, there's the potential to save the world and all that, but that's not even on the radar when Eddings explored her thought processes. Her motivation is getting laid and, to some extent, gaining power as a monarch. And as for her being a bitch...well, honestly, it's hard to think of an example where she's not. She is, in fact, the stereotypical teenage drama queen.

And Polgara is the stereotypical bitter old crone. Yes, she has maternal instincts. So does the bitter old crone. Yes, she has good reason to be bitter and untrusting. That does not make her not so. Yes, her controlling, moody personality comes in handy at times and is often portrayed in a positive light. This does not mean she is not moody and controlling. Yes, she is a strong character. Being a strong woman does not preclude being a bitch. If anything, the two commonly go hand in hand. (And before anyone explodes at me, I am, in fact, female.)

I could go on to refute the rest of that list, but I don't want to derail the thread any more than I already have.

Now, like I said, Eddings wrote the Belgariad by deliberately mashing together a bunch of cliches, so I'm not really knocking his writing. Given the portrayal of females in the majority of fantasy literature, I'd say his characters actually turned out pretty well, considering. In fact, I wouldn't call most of his characters, on their own, terribly unrealistic, because a small number of real life individuals really do fall under one of those extremes. It's the fact that every single woman in the setting tends toward those extremes that's ridiculous.

Another_Poet
2011-10-07, 01:19 AM
If every woman is a mother, there's no daughters to send to war but the children, so to speak.


Older women are exactly the ones that one doesn't want reproducing though, as they're less able to do it without complications...

Let's put these hands together.

What if it was a cultural expectation that older women go off to war?

This is similar to Siberian tribal practices where the elderly walk off on their own to die. It's also similar to the Vedic ideal that older men should leave their family and become hermits once their children are grown.

However, in this case the practice solves a chronic cultural problem, the lack of available young non-pregnant people to send to war.

I know what you're thinking - elderly women are not the ideal soldiers. But you're thinking Strength and Con. What if the default unit in this world is battle sorceresses?

Yeah you heard me. A world of parthenogenic women -> a world where battalions of grey-haired witches are the dogs of war.

Yora
2011-10-07, 04:02 AM
Are we actually talking agout human (or humanoid) females? :smallconfused:

There are some species of lizards that have done away with males entirely. I think they mostly just produce clones of themselves. Though I think this is kind of an evolutionary dead end. Useful in the short term, but absolutely kills genetic diversity.

Balor01
2011-10-07, 06:20 AM
After spending some time working in a female prison this idea terrifies me lol.


Do tell more! IMO this is it. Who cares about reproduction! Its the social factor that would make this setting different. (and cruel. Insidious. Backstabbing. kekekeke )

Tiki Snakes
2011-10-07, 07:45 AM
Let's put these hands together.

What if it was a cultural expectation that older women go off to war?

This is similar to Siberian tribal practices where the elderly walk off on their own to die. It's also similar to the Vedic ideal that older men should leave their family and become hermits once their children are grown.

However, in this case the practice solves a chronic cultural problem, the lack of available young non-pregnant people to send to war.

I know what you're thinking - elderly women are not the ideal soldiers. But you're thinking Strength and Con. What if the default unit in this world is battle sorceresses?

Yeah you heard me. A world of parthenogenic women -> a world where battalions of grey-haired witches are the dogs of war.

I suspect this might not be what the OP is after, but I do approve immensely. That would be a very interesting setting to explore.

Asari are also awesome, I can second them as a thing to look into.
Vandread is a lot sillier, but the fact that men and women had been on seperate planets and basically led to believe they were different species was one of the more interesting parts of the setup.

Toastkart
2011-10-07, 07:53 AM
There are some species of lizards that have done away with males entirely. I think they mostly just produce clones of themselves. Though I think this is kind of an evolutionary dead end. Useful in the short term, but absolutely kills genetic diversity.

I don't know how true that is. In the case of a species like the New Mexico Whiptail (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Mexico_whiptail), genetic information is recombined in meiosis, so the offspring is not a perfect clone.

This species also engages in what is sometimes called mock-copulation, since they're all female. The studies done on them seem to suggest that this copulation stimulates ovulation, as those that don't lay fewer, if any, eggs.

Morph Bark
2011-10-07, 07:56 AM
Let's put these hands together.

What if it was a cultural expectation that older women go off to war?

This is similar to Siberian tribal practices where the elderly walk off on their own to die. It's also similar to the Vedic ideal that older men should leave their family and become hermits once their children are grown.

However, in this case the practice solves a chronic cultural problem, the lack of available young non-pregnant people to send to war.

I know what you're thinking - elderly women are not the ideal soldiers. But you're thinking Strength and Con. What if the default unit in this world is battle sorceresses?

Yeah you heard me. A world of parthenogenic women -> a world where battalions of grey-haired witches are the dogs of war.

A single-sex world = Tippyverse?

OHOHOHO.

Let's do this.

Runestar
2011-10-07, 08:00 AM
In the anime 12 Kingdoms, babies are "hatched" from trees (like peaches). Perhaps something similar here where they grow on trees?

LibraryOgre
2011-10-07, 10:12 AM
I could go on to refute the rest of that list, but I don't want to derail the thread any more than I already have.

Truthfully, I think your evaluation of the characters is way too cynical, and has some major factual issues... but, as you say, that's a discussion for elsewhere.

Dienekes
2011-10-07, 11:37 AM
^: After all, he's no Robert Jordan when it comes to male-female dynamics.

I'm talking the rise and invention of warfare here at the tribal level. Unless large numbers of females are going to be workers or even soldiers that can't reproduce a la hive insects, the reproductive dynamic is going to limit mobility without some kind of counter to this, assuming roughly mammalian, humanoid biology. If every woman is a mother, there's no daughters to send to war but the children, so to speak.

Older women are exactly the ones that one doesn't want reproducing though, as they're less able to do it without complications and then there's that factor that makes genetic hooplah like Down's Syndrome become more and more frequent.

Though I guess that bit could be handwavium'd by having the gametes created over the lifetime of the creature, or perhaps having two puberties, one minor/false one which gives an adult body that can actually do work and then a second one later in life that gives reproductive capability.

To be sure, if they do manage to get war, or rather, when, Kipling's words would almost certainly ring true, I'm just saying there's a pressure away from it that would most likely delay it to the rise of societies, possibly to cities over farmland/water access.

I'll admit I have not studied reproduction at all since I was forced into classes on human sexuality in High School. So I don't exactly know all the problems with older woman baring children. But without that knowledge it really does look like the benefit of the society would be for the older (but not too old mind you, 30s and 40s) would bare and take care of the kids. At this time they would not be as active or athletic as the younger woman who would likely be more fit for both hunting, gathering, and warfare.

If war is brewing, and I honestly think it would. I personally don't find woman somehow less violent than men, just different about it, sometimes. Then it would make sense for the young woman to go out to display their prowess in combat much like the hunters would in our past. A cycle of ages, childhood where you are cared for by the older mother and taught basics of society. The willful and wild late teens to twenties were they become independent and take up the hunting aspects as well as soldiering, to eventually becoming mothers themselves.

Honestly I think this would in almost all situations create a more potent war machine than standard male/female relations. It would be odd to not exploit it.


The thing is, I'm not sure how standard the idea romantic relationships would be without sexual reproduction. Even assuming there's still a sex drive--which isn't a given--the majority of women in real life are heterosexual. I suppose that could change in a world where both society and natural selection were pushing the other way, but again, it's not a given.

Now assuming these are actually similar to humans in emotional processes, no I can't see an entire culture develop without some form of romantic and sexual link. Even if it does not create babies in it's own right. Humans have a strong desire to feel needed, and hold emotional connections, and frankly, sexual stimulus feels good. Furthermore attraction has been linked to what is most commonly portrayed in a positive light within the society that the attraction develops. So for instance in an all female society the standard of beauty might be completely different, but beauty, romance, sexuality, and so on would still remain.


I could go on to refute the rest of that list, but I don't want to derail the thread any more than I already have.

And I could quite easily make a counter argument. Except for Ce'Nedra who you will notice I did not put on my list. But that does on a whole demonstrate a distinction between males and females when it comes to writing I find absolutely interesting. Belgarath for instance is in all cases more controlling, more calculating, more grumpy than Pol ever was, yet I have never seen an argument to show that Belgarath is an unlikable character, yet I have for Pol. Same goes for the outright murderous Silk, and no character is more idiotic than Mandorallen. Why when changing the character traits from one gender to the other is it somehow negative? And how the hell do you make an interesting female character if men have a monopoly on all the interesting character traits and flaws?


I don't know how true that is. In the case of a species like the New Mexico Whiptail (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Mexico_whiptail), genetic information is recombined in meiosis, so the offspring is not a perfect clone.

This species also engages in what is sometimes called mock-copulation, since they're all female. The studies done on them seem to suggest that this copulation stimulates ovulation, as those that don't lay fewer, if any, eggs.

I remember studying, years ago mind you so it might be outdated, a test done with fish. Two species of fish were very similar genetically except one reproduced asexually. They tried to give the fish different diseases and change the environments a bit to see how fast they adapt, universally the fish that reproduced sexually adapted faster. The other fish did adapt eventually, but the sexual fish were faster and more efficient.

DeadManSleeping
2011-10-07, 11:46 AM
Given that having (at least) one person who's a caretaker and (at least) one person who's a resource-getter is probably going to be ideal for raising children in any society, I think that family units would still occur. If family units occur, then there will still be some measure of an idea of monogamy, though it might not be the dominant idea. Either way, I expect monogamous relationships to happen.

Coidzor
2011-10-07, 01:48 PM
Do tell more! IMO this is it. Who cares about reproduction! Its the social factor that would make this setting different. (and cruel. Insidious. Backstabbing. kekekeke )

Well, getting the reproduction down would have a lot of ramifications for the social factor and social dynamic and what kinds of societies could/would form. That's kinda why it's been discussed.

If you want an idea of cruelty and such that would be a given with the setting, just read Kipling's The Female of the Species.

Reluctance
2011-10-07, 02:02 PM
Yes, she is a strong character. Being a strong woman does not preclude being a bitch. If anything, the two commonly go hand in hand. (And before anyone explodes at me, I am, in fact, female.)

Kinda like making "strong" male leads with oppositional defiant disorder. It's popular, but really makes me see both the character and the author as overdone adolescents.


Given that having (at least) one person who's a caretaker and (at least) one person who's a resource-getter is probably going to be ideal for raising children in any society, I think that family units would still occur. If family units occur, then there will still be some measure of an idea of monogamy, though it might not be the dominant idea. Either way, I expect monogamous relationships to happen.

Untrue, especially in the context of this exercise.

In every society I've looked into, men are the high risk/high reward actors. If three brothers go out and only one comes back, the remaining one can come back with enough goods to guarantee his brothers' wives a life of comfort. (More cynically, to impregnate and keep three or more women.) If three sisters go out with the same result, the remaining one will be hard pressed to triple her baby output to keep up. So you'll see fewer high-risk activities, both exploration and war. Whether innovation would suffer is a pissing match I have no desire to engage in.

Extended families will be if anything even more important than they were in real-life earth history, which is in turn vastly understatedin fantasy, given how we project the modern nuclear family. The simple fact that patrilinearity wouldn't exist would vastly downplay the need for the wife to join the husband's family. Expect familial identity to be a significant part of a person's character no matter what tech/society level they're at.

Barring significant handwavium, less sex (in the genetic shuffling sense of the word) means less diversity means more vulnerability to disease and other threats. The ill and infirm will probably have little support outside what they can personally marshal. This will most likely in turn lead to a lot of effort being spent on face and the appearance of normalcy. Given sufficient time, you'll end up with a society with a large, rigid selection of unwritten rules, all of which come down to formalized expressions of strength and health.

DeadManSleeping
2011-10-07, 03:17 PM
Why does the last sister have to be a babymaker? Maybe her wife could be a babymaker. All those sisters' wives could be babymakers. Those sisters could be devoted resource-getters, easily.

But, yeah, I imagine extended family would be pretty huge. On the other hand, if marriage doesn't consist of family-changing, that means the family as a political unit gets REALLY messy, much moreso than it was in our Earth history.

This is actually a really intriguing thing to think about. Sadly, the only culture that I can use as a basis for comparison is (pre-modern) Japan, and it'd take me a while to think of how lack of marriage-alliance would affect Japan's socio-political climate. That's certainly a research project I might be getting into.

Jayabalard
2011-10-07, 04:18 PM
I think that there was a society somewhat like that in a couple of the Jack Chalker books I read.

I think there was one in something sci-fi that he did but I really can't recall right now (it's been 20 years or so).

In the Dancing gods series, there's the Kauri; they're a race of Faeries that have no males, though there are plenty of males elsewhere in that universe. They're like the non-evil version a succubus (ie, sexual healing).


Truthfully, I think your evaluation of the characters is way too cynical, and has some major factual issues... but, as you say, that's a discussion for elsewhere.Agree

Dienekes
2011-10-07, 04:56 PM
Untrue, especially in the context of this exercise.

In every society I've looked into, men are the high risk/high reward actors. If three brothers go out and only one comes back, the remaining one can come back with enough goods to guarantee his brothers' wives a life of comfort. (More cynically, to impregnate and keep three or more women.) If three sisters go out with the same result, the remaining one will be hard pressed to triple her baby output to keep up. So you'll see fewer high-risk activities, both exploration and war. Whether innovation would suffer is a pissing match I have no desire to engage in.

You see this is where I think your logic is a bit faulty. If you have 3 males and 3 females of course the 3 females cannot reproduce until at least one of the 3 males returns. However in the all female society, you would instead have 6 females, if 3 females leave the other three can continue as normal if one of females returns or not showing an increase in potential birth rates.

nightwyrm
2011-10-07, 05:03 PM
In a society where there's no need for sexual reproduction, why would there be a need for marriages or even romantic attraction to another individual? :smallconfused:

Without the need to attract a mate, there wouldn't really be any basis for sexual attractiveness. The only competition between individuals would be resource based instead of sexual.

I would think that in an asexually reproducing society, the unit of social stability wouldn't be the nuclear family or pair bonding we have but an extended family of female clones who all share identical genetic heritage. Genetically, you would be identical to your mother, sisters and any children. The preservation of the lineage would be more important than any particular individual. I would imagine that society would greatly resemble the eusocial insects.

nightwyrm
2011-10-07, 05:12 PM
Untrue, especially in the context of this exercise.

In every society I've looked into, men are the high risk/high reward actors. If three brothers go out and only one comes back, the remaining one can come back with enough goods to guarantee his brothers' wives a life of comfort. (More cynically, to impregnate and keep three or more women.) If three sisters go out with the same result, the remaining one will be hard pressed to triple her baby output to keep up. So you'll see fewer high-risk activities, both exploration and war. Whether innovation would suffer is a pissing match I have no desire to engage in.


Men are high risk/high reward not because the species "knows" that it can do with less males but because each male have to compete with each other to gain access to mates. It's a race where coming in second has the same effect as coming in last.

With an asexual society, there wouldn't be competition for mates, but there would still be competition for resources to feed your family. Whether a high risk/reward strategy would be favoured over a low risk/reward one, I would guess it would depend a lot on the specific environment. Is the environment very patchy? How different in quality are the patches of resource? Is getting the second best patch of resources the same as getting the worse, etc.

Orzel
2011-10-07, 05:31 PM
Vandread starts with one of those. They are aware of males, but never interacted with them in manners not "shooting them dead", and only became aware of reproductive capability late in the series. They reproduced via cloning.

I played a game loosely based on Vandread but more fantasy. Every player had to play a man and a woman for 2 campaigns at once.

Female "Mejere" game: We were generally like a party where everyone had alignment issues with everyone else except one. And we started off broke as the nearest port was run by a Libby and she hated us (Jerk DM). We stole each other stuff. Healing spell favoritism developed. My caster got angry and started charging for spells. One clique backstabbed the other then jumped our men while they were arm wrestling for the loot.

Male "Taraak" game: Attack attack rage rage.... We fought over every piece of loot. We rushed into dangerous sitations and argued over who fought the boss. Then we all drank and were cool bros. Ended in TPK when we got ambushed by our female party while arguing/fighting over loot.

Oh so stereotypical.
Good times.
Good times.

Coidzor
2011-10-07, 06:00 PM
Why does the last sister have to be a babymaker? Maybe her wife could be a babymaker. All those sisters' wives could be babymakers. Those sisters could be devoted resource-getters, easily.

Barring some form of conjunction by which to share genetic material, the obvious answer is genetics.


But, yeah, I imagine extended family would be pretty huge.

Indeed.

0Megabyte
2011-10-07, 06:32 PM
Another species to look at is the bdelloid rotifers. Also, there is one other factor: while parthenogentic reproduction does create clones, don't forget mutations. They still happen, if occasionally.

Really, I imagine these humanoid species as having once been a sexual species, but, like with the rotifers, they gained the ability to asexually reproduce. There would be differences between individuals in a bloodline... though they would happen slowly, and you would see things like entire towns/ villages with only a few templates, with probably a few main variants that might end up splitting into different familial factions, or not.

For example, family A looks like family B, which is a smaller offshoot... but family B is distinct due to having black hair while family A is blonde. The main visible mutation difference is that of hair color, as a dominant dark haired allele mutated during one birth. Since dark is dominant, the founder of family B ( or the person who is thought of as such) had this dark hair, as do all her daughters.

However, family C is not fractured, and in fact is more an alliance of several related offshoots of family X, which was wiped out. They are more varied, with a few different features such as eye color, and a distinct difference in height between the branches, but due to historical reasons cling together as one family, just as due to historical reasons the more similar families A and B are considered separate.

Furthermore, families D and E look identical, and differentiate their factional difference with distinct tattoos, to show which family they belong to.

This could be interesting stuff.

Lady Serpentine
2011-10-07, 06:54 PM
In a society where there's no need for sexual reproduction, why would there be a need for marriages or even romantic attraction to another individual? :smallconfused:

Without the need to attract a mate, there wouldn't really be any basis for sexual attractiveness. The only competition between individuals would be resource based instead of sexual.


Also:



Men are high risk/high reward not because the species "knows" that it can do with less males but because each male have to compete with each other to gain access to mates. It's a race where coming in second has the same effect as coming in last.

With an asexual society, there wouldn't be competition for mates, but there would still be competition for resources to feed your family. Whether a high risk/reward strategy would be favoured over a low risk/reward one, I would guess it would depend a lot on the specific environment. Is the environment very patchy? How different in quality are the patches of resource? Is getting the second best patch of resources the same as getting the worse, etc.


I'll point out, though, that he specifically used a gendered term for them. Therefore, at some point, there probably were males. In that case, since they still need some way to produce children, you get into the problem of what it is, but let's hold off on that for later. We can assume that they were magically mutated to have children; for example, use one of the many Create Item effects to create whatever it is that the males of this species used to share their half of the genetic data, coupled with Permanency so that it does it more than once, and a variant on Familicide to ensure that the spell making it is passed on to the offspring.

Since there were two genders to start with, reproduction was likely sexual. Since evolution isn't perfectly efficient - it doesn't necessarily discard things just because they're no longer needed - we can assume that they still have some sort of drive to find a mate.

In this case, since you've removed males and kept children, the selection for those with a predisposition to be attracted to the opposite sex doesn't apply anymore; reproduction is handled without it, so the tendency to find a mate that you can reproduce with is unneeded. So, because people with a biological predisposition to the same sex are more likely to get together with someone, thus improving their ability to gather resources, rear children, etc., there's going to be the ones most likely to survive, leading to it being a survival factor, and unlike the real world, a beneficial one. So, the sex drive, though not needed for reproduction, still helps the species survive, because it promotes the forming of relationships.

This means that you do, in fact, have competition for mates - the ones that are best at foraging/hunting and raising children, the strongest, fastest, smartest, etc. - all desirable qualities to look for in potential mates.

So, you would still have a sex drive, and all that goes with it, just for different reasons.

Edit:

@0Megabyte:

That does sound interesting. You should start a thread for it over in Homebrew. I'd certainly be willing to contribute, and, if it got that far, play.

nightwyrm
2011-10-07, 07:10 PM
@ C'nor

From the OP:

Lets say that the world/setting has no males. There are only females, they don't know what a male is, because there never where any.

I mainly extrapolated my thoughts from this and assumed parthogenesis as the main mean of reproduction.

Lady Serpentine
2011-10-07, 07:18 PM
Yeah, I saw that after I wrote that, when I subscribed to the thread.

But I wasn't going to go and edit it out after putting all the work in. Oh well. At least I was correct if it had started off with males. :smallfrown:

nightwyrm
2011-10-07, 07:28 PM
Yeah, I saw that after I wrote that, when I subscribed to the thread.

But I wasn't going to go and edit it out after putting all the work in. Oh well. At least I was correct if it had started off with males. :smallfrown:

Sure, no problem.

But your points are absolutely right if it was a "they once had males but they're all gone now and the remaining females dealt with it" situation. I see a lot of posts that seem to use this kind of assumption and not really try to extrapolate how a truly asexually reproducing society would evolve and look like. I think this type of society would be really, really different and not just like a lesbian utopia where everybody had two mommies.

Lady Serpentine
2011-10-07, 07:55 PM
I think your posts are pretty good, using that assumption. Probably any sort of long term pairing would be based on skills and interpersonal relations; for example: This is my hunting partner - she's not someone I like, but we work well together. This, on the other hand, is the person who helps me with my kids, so we need to get along until they're grown up... Which raises the question of what sort of personalities they have.

Interesting things. :smallbiggrin:

Anarchy_Kanya
2011-10-07, 09:05 PM
^ I'd say such a society would be very lawful (using D&D alignment as an example).

Kaun
2011-10-07, 09:42 PM
Do tell more! IMO this is it. Who cares about reproduction! Its the social factor that would make this setting different. (and cruel. Insidious. Backstabbing. kekekeke )

Hehe using a prison as a guide to how a society like this would function probably isn't a good base point. Its just that women's prisons are scary places, much scary then men's.

Urpriest
2011-10-07, 10:01 PM
I think that even if sexuality is not needed for reproduction there will still likely be some level of sexual relationships, provided that you're sticking with roughly humanoid psychology (which seems to be the only reason the OP decided to call people from a monosexual world female, absent a rather extreme level of naivete). While most women are heterosexual, historical societies have existed with rather high levels of situational homosexuality, Ancient Greece being the standard example. Provided that we're keeping to roughly human psychology I could see Spartan-esque relationships between younger and older women being quite common.

Lady Serpentine
2011-10-08, 12:16 AM
^ I'd say such a society would be very lawful (using D&D alignment as an example).

Why do you say that? I'm not disagreeing, necessarily, but I'm curious as to your thought processes.

Anarchy_Kanya
2011-10-08, 12:22 AM
Why do you say that? I'm not disagreeing, necessarily, but I'm curious as to your thought processes.
Well, they would have to do things that are better for the society and suppress their own needs or feelings. You said in your post that a couple didn't need to like each other, but would want to stay together for the good of their child/children. That's Lawful behavior in D&D terms.

Lady Serpentine
2011-10-08, 12:24 AM
No, no - that was a skill based thing. Hunting partner, I said. Even Chaotics that hate each other will work together to survive.

The one that she's raising the kids with, she needs to get along with until the children are grown up, since that's a much more intensive bond, that requires being together for far longer periods.

Anarchy_Kanya
2011-10-08, 12:50 AM
No, no - that was a skill based thing. Hunting partner, I said. Even Chaotics that hate each other will work together to survive.
... no. If a Chaotic person hates someone she will express that hatred. Maybe under extreme circumstances they could work together to survive, but I doubt it. Chaotic persons are following their emotions instead of logic or practicality, and so can be highly irrational because of that.

The one that she's raising the kids with, she needs to get along with until the children are grown up, since that's a much more intensive bond, that requires being together for far longer periods.
Lawful behavior.

Lady Serpentine
2011-10-08, 01:17 AM
I'd say that something like those could be at least TN, though you make a good point about Chaotics.

Heliomance
2011-10-08, 02:08 AM
I can think of one minor character in the Belgariad who was an airhead (Islena), with a possible argument for another (the wife of Furlach of Sendaria... Layla, I think)

Uh, what? Layla is explicitly called out as being extremely level headed, sensible, and the person that all the other queens go to for advice. She also, IIRC, single-handedly invented Sendaria's economy.

LibraryOgre
2011-10-08, 09:52 AM
Uh, what? Layla is explicitly called out as being extremely level headed, sensible, and the person that all the other queens go to for advice. She also, IIRC, single-handedly invented Sendaria's economy.

Sorry, was recalling the bit where she seemed to be distracted. I don't think she invented, or even re-invented their economy at any point.

Gadora
2011-10-08, 10:10 AM
I'd like to propose an alternative (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis#Spontaneous_generation) to parthenogenesis that I feel is a bit more fitting to a fantasy setting.

You can have dwarves that are quite literally born from the mountains themselves, should you so wish. Dragons hoard precious metals because the pressures and the heat of a dragon sleeping on a pile of gold create the right conditions for a dragon egg to form. I'm not really sure where humans should come from in this, but those settings may either be kept secret to the rulers or the priesthood, in which case only "suitable" people are given children to raise, or the "recipe" may be widely known, in which case the conditions required may be set up by anyone who wants to raise a child.

Urpriest
2011-10-08, 10:48 AM
I'd like to propose an alternative (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis#Spontaneous_generation) to parthenogenesis that I feel is a bit more fitting to a fantasy setting.

You can have dwarves that are quite literally born from the mountains themselves, should you so wish. Dragons hoard precious metals because the pressures and the heat of a dragon sleeping on a pile of gold create the right conditions for a dragon egg to form. I'm not really sure where humans should come from in this, but those settings may either be kept secret to the rulers or the priesthood, in which case only "suitable" people are given children to raise, or the "recipe" may be widely known, in which case the conditions required may be set up by anyone who wants to raise a child.

Come to think of it, why shouldn't this all-women society be Dwarven? Humans would be unable to tell the difference!

Gadora
2011-10-08, 10:50 AM
Come to think of it, why shouldn't this all-women society be Dwarven? Humans would be unable to tell the difference!

Don't think that didn't cross my mind when I was typing up that post.

LibraryOgre
2011-10-08, 11:27 AM
Come to think of it, why shouldn't this all-women society be Dwarven? Humans would be unable to tell the difference!

Combine this with just reading a thread about a Fallout PnP and I come up with...

"Stone. Stone never changes.

Since the dawn of dwarvenkind, when our ancestors first emerged from the embrace of stone, tunnels have been carved in our mother stone... tunnels for living, for traveling, for farming, for the simple joy of touching stone untouched.

But stone...
Stone never changes."

Drekk
2011-11-03, 10:24 AM
Firstly: I have done a brief stint in a female only world. My DM buddy was running a game for the lady gamers among my friends, and asked myself and a buddy to play two men. Men are apparently quite rare in this world, and are a precious commodity (so, reproduction happens naturally, I guess ~ this was maaany years ago and the game didn't last long so I dunno). We played two utterly disguting male specimens the ladies had to protect; me, Solomon, the lecherous dwarf and my friend Cale the elven dilettante with a kink for ropes. No harm could come to us, on pain of death for said ladies. Much amusement was had ~ might make for a fun single session if you use men in your world at all :smallwink:

Secondly: DEATH BY SNOO-SNOO!!!!

Dr.Epic
2011-11-03, 10:36 AM
Lets say that the world/setting has no males. There are only females, they don't know what a male is, because there never where any. Lets also assume that it's a fantasy setting/world, so there is magic or supernatural powers available. I'm very curious if anyone of you Playgrounders knows any books, games, game settings, etc. that have this kind of setup, and if you could tell in short something about it. Maybe you even played in such a game? Please, share your experiences.
(P.S. I'm most curious about how did the story/game/setting deal with the problem of reproduction. There are some simple and obvious solutions like for example magical cloning/impregnation, but I'm interested in any original ideas. SOMEHOW they have to make babies, right?)

Why does this sound like an old episode of Star Trek?

gbprime
2011-11-03, 11:43 AM
Why does this sound like an old episode of Star Trek?

Or that it SHOULD be? :smallwink:

Ryusacerdos
2011-11-03, 05:33 PM
You could make it so that the males of the society develop female sexual characteristics instead of male ones (say the Y-chromosome got screwed up somehow). A society of all women, but half of them are traps.

They'll know what a male is, but masculinity will be a foreign concept.

Morph Bark
2011-11-03, 06:54 PM
You could make it so that the males of the society develop female sexual characteristics instead of male ones (say the Y-chromosome got screwed up somehow). A society of all women, but half of them are traps.

They'll know what a male is, but masculinity will be a foreign concept.

"Of course that's a male! I can tell by some of the skin discolourations and from seeing quite a few males in my time."

Kalirren
2011-11-03, 09:49 PM
My first approximation to a world where parthogenesis was possible would be Vampire.

:smalleek:

Yeah, not so much with the utopia there. Even if you were to remove all the canonical metaplot behind the setting, you're still left with a setting where families contrive to commit genocide, matricide, etc. all the time. Not pretty.

If anything, sexual relations destabilize power.