Males & Females with different stats?

[CharonsHelper]

Real-life fights simply don't last as long as D&D ones do; the issue isn't one problem with numbers or representation or how you picture it, the issue is that the fundamental structure of how fights work in D&D is entirely cinematic, with no relation to reality.

How long do your D&D fights last? It's exceedingly rare for a 1v1 melee fights to go more than 30 seconds in any session I've seen (that's usually only with really bad rolls); more often it's 12 or so. And fights with swords, especially when both sides are armored, often lasted longer than that IRL.

UFC fights often last for 10-15+ minutes, though as you said, they're much less brutal due to rules and lack of weaponry.

Frankly - it sounds like you're mixing up the time it takes to play out a fight and the in-game time of the fight.

[Donnadogsoth]

That causes its own problems, because it means that everyone in combat apparently went to the Stormtrooper school of marksmanship or swordsmanship. It's silly to suggest that a high-level archer or swordsman could stand right next to someone and make many, many attacks on them and have every single one just being a grazing blow. It's equally silly to suggest that you could be "so good" at dodging or avoiding getting hit that you could soak up attacks the way D&D hit points allow a high-level character to do -- dodging simply doesn't work that way.

If a decent swordsman gets next to you and is able to make an attack, you should be at serious risk of dying in one hit unless you're protected by magic. Fullstop. Real-life fights simply don't last as long as D&D ones do; the issue isn't one problem with numbers or representation or how you picture it, the issue is that the fundamental structure of how fights work in D&D is entirely cinematic, with no relation to reality. Look at how fast your typical UFC fight goes (and remember, even there, there are rules intended to make it a bit longer, more competitive, and less brutal; and that these people aren't using deadly weapons or trying to kill each other.) D&D doesn't represent that accurately at all on any level, and no amount of houseruling or trying to picture it differently is going to change that.

In reality, every single action an enemy took in a fight once they were in range would have a serious change of killing you, taking you out of the fight, or maiming you permanently. That's not something that D&D can represent without fundamentally losing what it's supposed to be. It's not realistic; it's a completely cinematic epic-heroes game based on myths and legends, without even the slightest of perfunctory nods to how real-world fighting works.

Yes, I agree. A major reason why I fought my way free of D&D to gaming that better models reality.

I would only underscore that D&D combat simulates nothing but combat-in-D&D. It's not simulating myths and legends, or even movies, though it shares blood with those things and that blood flavours the play. Nothing in the movies or myths and legends has combat rounds of blow-traded-for-blow lasting one minute and people able to sustain ten arrows to the chest and live outside of, maybe, kung fu flicks. Really D&D is still, for all its refinements, Chainmail on crack.

[JoeJ]

Yes, I agree. A major reason why I fought my way free of D&D to gaming that better models reality.

I would only underscore that D&D combat simulates nothing but combat-in-D&D. It's not simulating myths and legends, or even movies, though it shares blood with those things and that blood flavours the play. Nothing in the movies or myths and legends has combat rounds of blow-traded-for-blow lasting one minute and people able to sustain ten arrows to the chest and live outside of, maybe, kung fu flicks. Really D&D is still, for all its refinements, Chainmail on crack.

Rounds haven't been one minute long since AD&D. They're only six seconds in 3.x and 5e (and probably 4e too, but I never played that edition).

[Marlowe]

The why do you bother claiming absolute rules for all games and then claim that pointing out specific games that didn't follow them a "jerk move". There are indeed games where the player simply can't declare nonsensical things about a character simply because it is their character. (On the other hand, the DM in such games can make equally nonsensical things about the world). This should be compounded by the fact that AD&D (1e) at least made the mistake of having different allowed stats for Males and Females, which is allegedly the topic for this thread. It might be wrong, but to claim it doesn't exist is the height of folly.

And don't assume they are completely dead. Google D&D old school revival for many games that follow such systems. Don't expect to be given complete control over you character in anything. And expect that absolute statements will always be wrong and counterexamples will exist (presumably this one would require a Godel-like counterexample).

Since you ask, it's considered a "Jerk move" because it's moving the goalposts, and indeed, the entire playing field of a match that's already started.

In this case, you're not even paying attention to the context of the discussion. Physical Strength, as I said above, wasn't even even part of the statement I objected to. That's a crunch issue, that effects a character mechanically. The original point of contention was the handicapping of a player's mechanical abilities (carrying capacity, equipment options) based on a purely cosmetic quality (height and build).

If our hypothetical little "anime waif"-let's call her Gally--if Gally's character wants to buy a drink in a tavern, but the GM rules the innkeeper won't sell to her because she looks too young or black leather bodysuits violate the dress code or something, that's handicapping the character in a perfectly acceptable way. We expect NPCs and other characters to respond to our PC based on the way they look and act.

However if Gally want to use a large, intimidating weapon, and the GM rules she can't because she's not "big" enough, even though she meets all the rules requirements to carry and use the weapon, then that's worth raised eyebrows (I'm going to avoid the word "legal". I wasn't the one who brought it in) because it destroys the implicit understanding that rules provide a objective basis for everyone.

As I said before, and which I'll say again because it seems you ignored it, it turns the game into a exercise in guessing what the GM wants to see.

Back in the pre-history of TTGs, when 19th century Prussian officers were squinting through their monocles at toy soldiers on a table, their games were initially very rules-light, and played with a referee who had great powers of deciding how things turned out. They moved away from this to a set rulebook because they realized that such exercises taught the players/students nothing except how to play to the biases of the referee.

[Donnadogsoth]

Since you ask, it's considered a "Jerk move" because it's moving the goalposts, and indeed, the entire playing field of a match that's already started.

In this case, you're not even paying attention to the context of the discussion. Physical Strength, as I said above, wasn't even even part of the statement I objected to. That's a crunch issue, that effects a character mechanically. The original point of contention was the handicapping of a player's mechanical abilities (carrying capacity, equipment options) based on a purely cosmetic quality (height and build).

If our hypothetical little "anime waif"-let's call her Gally--if Gally's character wants to buy a drink in a tavern, but the GM rules the innkeeper won't sell to her because she looks too young or black leather bodysuits violate the dress code or something, that's handicapping the character in a perfectly acceptable way. We expect NPCs and other characters to respond to our PC based on the way they look and act.

However if Gally want to use a large, intimidating weapon, and the GM rules she can't because she's not "big" enough, even though she meets all the rules requirements to carry and use the weapon, then that's worth raised eyebrows (I'm going to avoid the word "legal". I wasn't the one who brought it in) because it destroys the implicit understanding that rules provide a objective basis for everyone.

As I said before, and which I'll say again because it seems you ignored it, it turns the game into a exercise in guessing what the GM wants to see.

Back in the pre-history of TTGs, when 19th century Prussian officers were squinting through their monocles at toy soldiers on a table, their games were initially very rules-light, and played with a referee who had great powers of deciding how things turned out. They moved away from this to a set rulebook because they realized that such exercises taught the players/students nothing except how to play to the biases of the referee.

"The biases of the referee" are part of being a Dungeonmaster whenever he has to address situations not covered by the rules. The possible ways of dealing with strange situations are either to (a) make a rule for everything (spending the rest of one's life writing rules), or (b) hone a sense of genre-reality. Since the former is risible, the latter is the only option.

If Gally walked into a bar in my game and wanted to use "a large, intimidating weapon," either I would already have rules regarding encumbrance, STR requirement, height requirement, bravery requirement, and so on, or I would arbitrate them on the spot. In either case, whether put through the sieves of rules or arbitration, magical factors aside, Gally would probably end up having problems if the character concept was that she was basically a kid trying to wield a claymore.

[Marlowe]

Don, those rules already exist. They're core to every RPG system I've seen. The old T&T was almost nothing but a combat mechanic plus a lot of equipment tables.

You're not talking about arbitrating an ambiguity, you're talking about changing the rules of the game on people on the basis of cosmetic factors.

[Donnadogsoth]

Don, those rules already exist. They're core to every RPG system I've seen. The old T&T was almost nothing but a combat mechanic plus a lot of equipment tables.

You're not talking about arbitrating an ambiguity, you're talking about changing the rules of the game on people on the basis of cosmetic factors.

I already have rules for determining whether someone can, for example, draw a given bow, based on their skill and STR. And how they look is going to depend in some measure on their strength, weight and build. If a girl weighs 90 lbs she's only going to have so much muscle mass, ergo STR. That's not cosmetic, that's integral to the character, based on the laws of reality as encoded into the game. If I had no such rules, I would arbitrate, which, again, is one of the main reasons we have Gamemasters. Anyone in my game making a 90 lb, non-magical, non-cybernetic, non-robotic, non-divine, non-alien character should be prepared to have a STR limitation, whether through rules or arbitration. Why does that bother you so much?

[Marlowe]

Apparently, the "laws of reality encoded into the game" assume that everyone in the world has same body mass index.

[raygun goth]

Apparently, the "laws of reality encoded into the game" assume that everyone in the world has same body mass index.

I don't like pulling a But Dragons! fallacy, but to add some weight to your argument here, these are also the kind of games where:

An average person can destroy a tank by jumping off a four story building onto it (Shadowrun)
You can learn to walk through walls and travel to other universes by doing your pushups and sticking to your schedule (D&D 3e)
If you shoot someone in the face, then kick them, your kick does more damage than the gun (Cthulhutech)

And so on. Your Strength score is a measure of how much you can lift and carry, and how dangerous you are in melee. It doesn't have to be representative of your physical mass or muscles or anything - it could just be how in tune you are with the plane of Earth, or your mental ability to trick yourself into pushing into limits you don't look capable of. This is even how it actually works in L5R - Water is the ring that governs perception and strength, and the books are full of examples of puny-looking monks and priests who are attuned to their Water rings and just as capable of smashing a goblin with an ono as the big tough Crab over there, barring that Crab's training.

[goto124]

Why does my 18 Str character have to have a specific body type? Especially when appearance matters mostly to my own imagination and has very little impact on the rest on the game?

[Segev]

(Carrying capacity in D&D is utterly ridiculous for everyone, of course; it's one of those acceptable breaks from reality, since having the characters bring a giant wagon train through the dungeon to carry all their loot isn't very fun.)Actually, it was assumed this was exactly what people did in the early editions. Adventuring parties included more hirelings and henchmen whose job was to maintain camp and carry loot and handle pack animals than actual PCs (who were the main adventurers). But yes, we've very much moved away from that in more modern gaming, as a general rule.


If Gally walked into a bar in my game and wanted to use "a large, intimidating weapon," either I would already have rules regarding encumbrance, STR requirement, height requirement, bravery requirement, and so on, or I would arbitrate them on the spot. In either case, whether put through the sieves of rules or arbitration, magical factors aside, Gally would probably end up having problems if the character concept was that she was basically a kid trying to wield a claymore.
If you make it up on the spot because you've decided that the rules that already permit it are "silly," then your player has a right to cry "foul." If you make these rules in advance, he's within his rights to decide not to play if he can't have Gally the Greatsword Girl be a winsome wittle waif.

But it is an unusual game where "she looks waif-like" is enough to change her from being able to wield such an enormous weapon to not, even though her strength and other stats say she can. So while you're welcome to your preferences, and can even enforce them when you DM, it's a little weird to act shocked that people would find it odd that you do require her to be a six foot amazon before she can use her max-for-human strength.

[JoeJ]

Why does my 18 Str character have to have a specific body type? Especially when appearance matters mostly to my own imagination and has very little impact on the rest on the game?

Whether or not it matters depends on the game. GURPS has a height/weight chart for different Strength levels and body types. If you want your character to be an exception, then it's on you to convince the GM. Pendragon has separate stats for Strength and Size, and both are important in combat. If you want to be tiny but strong in that game you can, but it will hurt you mechanically. (Appearance is also a core stat in Pendragon, and it very definitely has an impact.)

[Talakeal]

Apparently, the "laws of reality encoded into the game" assume that everyone in the world has same body mass index.

I don't think anyone has said anything like that. In fact, most people seem to be saying quite the opposite, implying that people should have different body builds based on their individual capabilities.



Out of curiosity, do you believe that there is ever a point where the DM has the right to reign in cosmetic aspects of a character?

How about if it is patently absurd, like wanting to play a human who is 35' tall or someone who looks like Dragonborn in a game set on modern Earth?


Furthermore, do you believe that a characters appearance should ever have any impact on the rules?

How about if it is something as simple as an especially short character having difficulty reaching something on the top shelf or a very tall character needing to crawl to get through a passageway with an especially short ceiling?

[Marlowe]

I don't think anyone has said anything like that. In fact, most people seem to be saying quite the opposite, implying that people should have different body builds based on their individual capabilities.


Then read the post right above mine, and be enlightened.

[ImNotTrevor]

Then read the post right above mine, and be enlightened.

Well, depending on what we're talking about it might be incredibly ridiculous to assume that ANY 90 pound person could use, say, a .50 calibur machine gun as stick-figure anime waifus sometimes seem able to do.

The force -> weight ratio for a 90 pound person lifting an 84 pound rifle (http://www.gd-ots.com/armament_systems/ics_m2a1.html) is a nice .93.

The thing is, that's picking the thing up. Possible, sure. Humans regularly get force->weight ratios about 1.5 for certain tasks. But...

Then we get the sticky situation of firing the thing. Now I'm doing some quick-as-hell and sloppy math, so excuse any inaccuracies. I'm not a physicist, I just think this is an interesting thing to investigate.

So to get real basic, to figure out the force being applied to our lady with each bullet, we need to know the Velocity and Weight of each bullet.
Each bullet will travel at, fired from out example gun,
2,910 feet per second.
Using the lightest possible 50 calibur round, we're looking at 42 grams or 1.482 ounces. Now we multiply!

2,910 x 1.482 = 4,312 and change. I'll throw out the change. Now, this is in ounces. So lets convert back to pounds by dividing by 16.
This gives us 269 pounds of force.

Lets redo our ratio here...
269/90= 2.988888-> or 2.99

Very nearly TRIPLE THEIR OWN WEIGHT being exterted INTO THEIR SHOULDER (or their hips, as usually depicted) each time the rifle fires. Oh, and did I mention? It fires 450 rounds per minute. So over the course of a minute, their body endures a sum total force of 12,100+ pounds. Or in our ratio, 134 times their own body weight. (There is a reason they mount these things on vehicles and bipods, and people not using such devices often get their shoulders dislocated by their own gun. Even the big beefy men.)

Is it possible? Sure, I suppose. But this individual would be JACKED. Like, no ifs ands or buts about it. JACKED. And it would STILL likely cause them bodily harm to fire it for more than quick bursts.

And yet I've seen really thin anime chicks weild guns just as big and hip fire them like they were capguns.

Come on. Not even slightly real.

Of course, neither is DnD, so you do you, honey boo boo.

But BMI has VERY little to do with firing a huge machine gun. It's about the recoil of the gun. If the gun has so much recoil it can dislocate a shoulder and needs a bipod or mount to fire effectively, then it probably doesn't matter what your BMI is.

Lift it? Sure, if you're really damn fit. Firing it from the hip? Lolnope

[Broken Twin]

Would it be fair of me to assume that the primary reason people oppose the concept of different stats for different genders/sexes is because of its association with real world discrimination, unlike game terms like races and classes? Is this strictly a human-only problem, or would you be okay with sexual dimorphism being reflected in other races?

The reason I ask is because I have a playable race in my setting where the difference between males and females is blatently obvious. The females are significantly larger, with earthen tones, while the males are smaller, with brilliantly coloured "plumage" (not actual feathers, but its where the concept comes from). This is reflected in the mechanical stats for the race. Would the people against gender stat differences have an issue with this setup? Why or why not?

Also, strictly for the record, I've got no horse in this race. I see where both sides are coming from, but the mention of fantasy races earlier in this thread made me curious.

[goto124]

Would it be fair of me to assume that the primary reason people oppose the concept of different stats for different genders/sexes is because of its association with real world discrimination, unlike game terms like races and classes? Is this strictly a human-only problem, or would you be okay with sexual dimorphism being reflected in other races?

I've considered that as a possibility. We wouldn't be alright with giving different stats to 'whites' and 'blacks'.

Hypothesis: Using a fantasy race allows us to see the race in a more neutral way, to think about the biology and cultural practices of that race without RL association. We're assured that whoever designed the race isn't affected by discrimination themselves.

Also, your male/female thing actually exists in RL birds. Realism is a... realistic claim here :smalltongue:

[Apricot]

The worst thing about that is that it might actually be reasonable, if we want to make a perfectly realistic gameworld. Body size is a direct limit to strength (you can only put on as much muscle as your frame supports), and we have good demographic evidence that different races reach different sizes...

Thank goodness that there's no hard data indicating any difference in mental statistics, and thank goodness that food consumption gives us a good biological trade-off to explain why it's not always an advantage to be bigger, or else we'd end up with some awful real-world conclusions.

Regardless, it's messy enough and adds little enough to gameplay that I wouldn't think it a worthwhile goal to "fix."

[Broken Twin]

Also, your male/female thing actually exists in RL birds. Realism is a... realistic claim here :smalltongue:

Yeah, that's where I got the idea. :D

It's a matriarchal society, where the men are expected to fulfill the roles of envoys, messengers, and other "face" roles, while the women maintain order within their society. They run primarily off of "different but equal". A female diplomat or male leader would be practially unheard of, but not forbidden.

There's also a hyena-based race, where the males have a dexterity advantage, but culturally are "seen, not heard", and are very much second class citzens.

There are other forms of society in the setting as well, but I wanted to mention these two specifically because their society and culture developed in part due to the obvious physical differences between the sexes.

[Clistenes]

I raise an eyebrow. Call me Nobody. I don't play games like that, Marlowe. I'm not a "D&D player," I don't fuss about D&D rules, and rules lawyers who are that fussy are probably not going to enjoy my games. I play games that are halfway realistic. My players realise this and accept this. And unless you can explain to me how a 90 lb human can have STR 18 or a 30 lb halfling can have STR 16, outside of robotics or magical spells or divine intervention, you're barking up the wrong tree.

Ability scores aren't meant to represent real physical scores accurately. A human with STR 18 is as strong as a 2,200 lb/ 1 metric ton draft horse. A human who raises its ability scores to STR 22 is as strong as an american bison.

I take STR scores as a calibration of how good is your character doing strength-related stuff. A very strong character is good at jumping, swimming, climbing, lifting and hitting stuff, that doesn't mean that he or she is literally as muscular as a bison.

That said, if you want to give your character maximum strength, it probably is a good idea to make them muscular, it helps to keep suspension of disbelief. It helps the players see their characters as characters instead of a mere list of numbers.

As for halflings and gnomes, they shouldn't be able to fight at all, realistically speaking. Their reach would be pathetic, and any normal human could easily destroy them...the same way any 10 feet/3 meters tall, 650 lbs/300 kg ogre with STR 26 should annihilate any human warrior in a second. But we want to play a game in which halflings, gnomes, humans and ogres can fight each other.

The thing about D&D, and about 3.5 in particular, is, it isn't the better game to realistically portray normal people, but it does a decent job portraying normal people and mytholological/superheroic types side by side. Other games are good for roleplaying normal people, while other games are good for roleplaying demigods and super-heroes, but if you want to climb the ladder from normie to Hercules, D&D is the game you want.

[Lorsa]

I'm sorry if I am a little late to the party, but I just wanted to comment some here.

What is it with this thread and its science-aversion? Luckily I saw the "no global warming" nonsense being refuted immediately, frankly that sort of stuff annoys me far more than any religious discussion ever would.


While I share your position that most of scientific conclusions is extremely biased and not very reliable, it seems to be that with the matter of potential for physical strength it is not a scientific conclusion but an observable thing. Pretty much as clear as if you drop something and there's nothing to hold it, it will fall until it makes contact with a surface.

Most scientific conclusions are [my edit] extremely biased and not very reliable?

What in the world has led to reach THAT (scientific) conclusion? It's a bit of a leap, based on the observable facts at hand.

Please inform me what bias led me to conclude that the band splitting of quantum well states observed from photoemission data taken from ultra-thin silver films that I deposited on a silicon substrate are not due to a multi-layer coverage or Rashba spin-orbit splitting?* If I am biased in any way I would like to know, so I can rethink my conclusions and improve my odds of publication.

*I haven't actually fully reached that conclusion yet, even though it looks that way. Would be really cool to observe the Rashba effect though, so I think I am biased for that.


Again, I agree with you on the fact that many scientific conclusions, even some of which are widely spread and taught at school as if they were The Truth, are rubbish. But in this case, it seems to me a matter of experience rather than scientific conclusion.

So you went from most to many?

But you really can't divorce observation from conclusion so easily. In order to do observation properly, you need a conceptual background, which is (usually) based on already made conclusions.

It is true, in a sense, that science can never prove anything (that's the logical problem with induction). It is, however, very good at disproving things, and in good Popper spirit we can then incrementally get closer to the truth (although we wouldn't know if we reached it). However, if we want to go down this line of reasoning we get to some heavy philosophy of science stuff, which we might want to avoid.

So yes, it is problematic that they claim that science gives you The Truth, but I've been lead to understand that some people have a hard time grasping nuances and prefer black and whites. As science is the closest thing we have to white, it makes sense to teach it.


NOTE: And before somebody jumps to say that experience=scientific observation, I'm talking about conclusions, not observations. Everybody knew that if you dropped an object in the air it would fall, that's experience or observation. But the fact that an external force is pulling the object downwards is a conclusion. They're different.


Actually, the fact? that an external force is pulling an object downwards is a model. Two conclusions, based on this model (F = G*M*m/r^2), is that celestial objects (such as planets and stars), must move in certain orbits, and that there is a constant acceleration (g) affecting all bodies on the surface of the Earth, regardless of their inherent mass (ok, I needed more equations for this, but I thought the example was good). The movement of celestial bodies, along with the trajectory of light, can be used to falsify the above model, but luckily there is a better one out there to replace it, which explains many more phenomena. It might also be false, even its creator believes so (Einstein), but it is the best model we have so far.

If you want, we could go back to an even earlier model, which explained objects falling down when dropped in air with "they are striving towards their essence; since they are composed of the element Earth, they want to go to Earth".

There is a lot to say about science as a human en-devour, and how our biological brains and socially reinforced memes impact our current models and understanding. Nuance and discussion definitely has their place.

But you didn't do that, you said:


I share your position that most of scientific conclusions is extremely biased and not very reliable,

Which is essentially taking the best thing known to man and throwing it out the window. Why would you do that?

[Satinavian]

Then we get the sticky situation of firing the thing. Now I'm doing some quick-as-hell and sloppy math, so excuse any inaccuracies. I'm not a physicist, I just think this is an interesting thing to investigate.

So to get real basic, to figure out the force being applied to our lady with each bullet, we need to know the Velocity and Weight of each bullet.
Each bullet will travel at, fired from out example gun,
2,910 feet per second.
Using the lightest possible 50 calibur round, we're looking at 42 grams or 1.482 ounces. Now we multiply!

2,910 x 1.482 = 4,312 and change. I'll throw out the change. Now, this is in ounces. So lets convert back to pounds by dividing by 16.
This gives us 269 pounds of force.

Lets redo our ratio here...
269/90= 2.988888-> or 2.99
Your physics is wrong.

With mass times velocity you get momentum, not force



Very nearly TRIPLE THEIR OWN WEIGHT being exterted INTO THEIR SHOULDER (or their hips, as usually depicted) each time the rifle fires. Oh, and did I mention? It fires 450 rounds per minute. So over the course of a minute, their body endures a sum total force of 12,100+ pounds. Or in our ratio, 134 times their own body weight. (There is a reason they mount these things on vehicles and bipods, and people not using such devices often get their shoulders dislocated by their own gun. Even the big beefy men.)
taking your numbers, you would need an average force of :

F= 42g*2.910* feet/s *450 / 60s

to compare with own body mass, you then need to devide the result by 9.81 m/s². Which will give you some completely different number of around 28kg.



I still don't recomment doingit, but for other reasons

[goto124]

My stance so far on it is "have gender-based differences to invoke the feel of a particular setting". Which "+1 Str for males/ +1 Con for females" doesn't really do, unless supplemented by worldbuilding reasons. Note that worldbuilding > gender-based differences, things can get really weird if someone threw in a part of the world that doesn't quite make sense purely to 'justify' gender-based differences.

[Segev]

What is it with this thread and its science-aversion? Luckily I saw the "no global warming" nonsense being refuted immediately, frankly that sort of stuff annoys me far more than any religious discussion ever would.



Technically, since anthropogenic global warming is something that has its adherents accepting proven and admitted hoaxes as "science" and scrambling to explain or ignore data that disagrees with their predictions (including that, by now according to the "science" 10 years ago, we were supposed to have flooded and "unrecognizable" coast lines), it has become a religious discussion to many. Even if they won't admit it.

But I respect your desire not to discuss it; please stop brining it up if you do not wish it discussed. It is disingenuous to say so as a means of insisting that nobody gets to post disputation of your claims, however. If you don't want to have your assertions disputed, don't bring them up.

[Elderand]

Technically, since anthropogenic global warming is something that has its adherents accepting proven and admitted hoaxes as "science" and scrambling to explain or ignore data that disagrees with their predictions (including that, by now according to the "science" 10 years ago, we were supposed to have flooded and "unrecognizable" coast lines), it has become a religious discussion to many. Even if they won't admit it.

But I respect your desire not to discuss it; please stop brining it up if you do not wish it discussed. It is disingenuous to say so as a means of insisting that nobody gets to post disputation of your claims, however. If you don't want to have your assertions disputed, don't bring them up.

That's rich coming from you given you did the exact same thing in this thread.


Poor example, since there is NO actual rise in average temperature for the last 15 years, world-wide. So much so that the anthropogenic global warming activists are trying desperately to find where all the heat "went." (Their current theory is that it's warmed up lower layers of the ocean, despite the upper layer not demonstrably warming.)

But this isn't a global warming thread. I just couldn't let that myth go unchallenged. (By all means, investigate yourself; you may find evidence that supports your view over mine. I encourage investigation, is all, and do NOT encourage further discussion in this thread.)

[Satinavian]

It has been proven.

While models have been modified and improved since climatology became a thing and predictions changed accordingly, anthropogenic global warming has been pretty much stopped to be a scientific controvery and been accepted as proven for nearly a decade. People refusing the data look more and more like flat-earthers.

[Donnadogsoth]

Ability scores aren't meant to represent real physical scores accurately. A human with STR 18 is as strong as a 2,200 lb/ 1 metric ton draft horse. A human who raises its ability scores to STR 22 is as strong as an american bison.

I take STR scores as a calibration of how good is your character doing strength-related stuff. A very strong character is good at jumping, swimming, climbing, lifting and hitting stuff, that doesn't mean that he or she is literally as muscular as a bison.

That said, if you want to give your character maximum strength, it probably is a good idea to make them muscular, it helps to keep suspension of disbelief. It helps the players see their characters as characters instead of a mere list of numbers.

As for halflings and gnomes, they shouldn't be able to fight at all, realistically speaking. Their reach would be pathetic, and any normal human could easily destroy them...the same way any 10 feet/3 meters tall, 650 lbs/300 kg ogre with STR 26 should annihilate any human warrior in a second. But we want to play a game in which halflings, gnomes, humans and ogres can fight each other.

The thing about D&D, and about 3.5 in particular, is, it isn't the better game to realistically portray normal people, but it does a decent job portraying normal people and mytholological/superheroic types side by side. Other games are good for roleplaying normal people, while other games are good for roleplaying demigods and super-heroes, but if you want to climb the ladder from normie to Hercules, D&D is the game you want.

Hmm. I think one of the things that bothers me about "D&D combat" is how untactical it is as written. Odysseus fought Polyphemus but never by engaging in a melee per se with him. Odysseus violently tricked Polyphemus, and couldn't have overcome him otherwise. It's this hardness of interaction that I prefer to presuming that a sufficiently high-level gnome can slay him with a dagger in close combat, or whatever.

[Donnadogsoth]

If you make it up on the spot because you've decided that the rules that already permit it are "silly," then your player has a right to cry "foul." If you make these rules in advance, he's within his rights to decide not to play if he can't have Gally the Greatsword Girl be a winsome wittle waif.

But it is an unusual game where "she looks waif-like" is enough to change her from being able to wield such an enormous weapon to not, even though her strength and other stats say she can. So while you're welcome to your preferences, and can even enforce them when you DM, it's a little weird to act shocked that people would find it odd that you do require her to be a six foot amazon before she can use her max-for-human strength.

I let my players know in advance if I'm changing the rules.

Said girl would be defined in character creation and so her STR score would be explained already and embodied appropriately. Seems to be some sort of misunderstanding that body type and STR are created independently of each other, as if on different occasions and with one or the other coming as a surprise. Never said they were.

[Feddlefew]

The deviation from historic trends in global temperature (and greenhouse gas concentrations) is remarkable for its speed, not just its severity. It also neatly coincides with historical landmarks such as industrialization.

A lot of people also underestimate just how big a 1 degree C change in global temperature is, but I think XKCD explains the problem pretty well:

https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/4_5_degrees.png

[Clistenes]

Uh... average temperatures are rising. 15 of the top 16 warmest years ever recorded have occurred since 2000. The ice caps are receding. The sea level has risen 25 cm since the beginning of Industrial Revolution. There is not doubt about that, those are objetive measures. You can doubt the reasons it's happening, but not that it is happening.

Most people who doubt anthropogenic climatic change claim that humans have nothing to do with it, but nobody can seriously claim that Earth isn't becoming warmer.

[Broken Twin]

As engaging as the discussion of global warming is, can everyone stop trying to get the last word in and just take it to PMs or something? I get that gender stats in gaming is nearly as retreaded a subject, but it's the topic of the thread, not global warming.

------------

I'm seeing a number of people say that they would be okay with playing a game with mechanical gender/sexual differences, as long as it contributes to the setting. Is there anybody that would disagree with that?

[CharonsHelper]

I'm seeing a number of people say that they would be okay with playing a game with mechanical gender/sexual differences, as long as it contributes to the setting. Is there anybody that would disagree with that?

I agree that it seems to be the general consensus - especially if they're overall balanced. Though there are a small minority who seem to get angry at the mention of gender differences.

[AMFV]

Actually this topic makes me think of something that I've been mulling over. I think that I'd almost rather have a game that has no actual physical stats, essentially everything is represented by skills. This would mean that there's no mechanical disadvantage to fluff cool options which are often disadvantageous (nimble fighters in D&D for example, in certain editions, or worse fighters that use intelligence and learning). Then you don't have the issue with gender differences, or figuring out how to represent a certain skill concept that depends on different stats. You also don't have the simulation-side issues that most stat models have in that they're horrifically imperfect.

To answer the thread topic, I don't think there's a significant issue with it. I would probably include some reference to culture though. If you establish that upbringing as well as biological differences plays into it, then you can have it be a cultural aspect in the game, more readily. And it won't necessarily be as oppositional to people's personal beliefs about gender differences. Additionally you'd have the advantage or being able to have the advantages balance more cleanly.

[Satinavian]

I'm seeing a number of people say that they would be okay with playing a game with mechanical gender/sexual differences, as long as it contributes to the setting. Is there anybody that would disagree with that?
The problem is not with mechanical differences per se.

The problem is with mechanical differences introduced for realism and that implying things about real world sexes which might be sexist notions.

If the setting is sufficiently Not-Earth and the inhabitants are sufficiently Not-Real-Humans it is not a problem. This does include genre conventions which are probably Ok. Doesn't mean that every player would be OK with every genre, but rules matching with what the game is supposed to be is a good thing.


But if your setting is supposed to be realistic, better don't touch mechanical sex differences or be prepared to discuss, how accurate your model is and if it betrays sexist beliefs of yourself.

[AMFV]

The problem is not with mechanical differences per se.

The problem is with mechanical differences introduced for realism and that implying things about real world sexes which might be sexist notions.

If the setting is sufficiently Not-Earth and the inhabitants are sufficiently Not-Real-Humans it is not a problem. This does include genre conventions which are probably Ok. Doesn't mean that every player would be OK with every genre, but rules matching with what the game is supposed to be is a good thing.


But if your setting is supposed to be realistic, better don't touch mechanical sex differences or be prepared to discuss, how accurate your model is and if it betrays sexist beliefs of yourself.

The chief problem with this particular compliant is that there are real physical differences between the sexes. I mean testosterone alone accounts for that. Athletes use amounts that are fairly small compared to the vast differences between men and women (approximately ten times, from what I've heard), that has a significant affect. Bone structure is different. It's different enough that it moves the curve far enough away that a woman who is a strong as the average man is pretty exceptional in most applications of strength. I've known a lot of exceptional women (female Marines and all that), but my experience (I was a training NCO) is that the most exceptional women did not perform better than what was typically expected of men. The less fit you got the less this was true though, men who are exceptionally out of shape, often aren't that much stronger than women who are out of shape. Again it all comes down to the difference in testosterone, male bodies are going to gain A LOT more muscle and strength by being worked than a female body is going to, and is going to wind up excelling in virtually every aspect of athletics or physical endeavor for that reason. Of course that isn't a complete rule, but it's almost always the case.

Modelling that accurately though, is another story altogether.

[Satinavian]

Oh, i don't disagree with existing differences.

But putting a number on it ? That is part of the problem. How much is realistic and when are you in prejudice-territory. The next part is how a lot of things in RPGs are derived from base stats (they are called base stats for a reason) and introducing base stat differences make the genders mechanically differently capable of a huge number of other things. Which is often not an accurate portrayal. On top of that we have the balancing stuff and the implied inferiority stuff.

All in all, while a difference exist, bringing it into the game for realism is a really big mess. Generations of game designers have tried and eventually abandoned the concept.

[obryn]

I'm seeing a number of people say that they would be okay with playing a game with mechanical gender/sexual differences, as long as it contributes to the setting. Is there anybody that would disagree with that?
Mechanical differences between genders is a good leading indicator that I'd rather not play that game. That's at least in part because it's bound to be way more 'sim'-heavy than I'm into, and secondarily because I'd place good money on it having some other weird/regressive stuff.

Now, playing around with gender roles in the setting? Sure, I'll check it out - Reign in particular does some fun things, here. But if the author cares enough to mechanize those differences for individual heroes, the game's setting is likely to be some variation on the cynical medieval dirtfarmer world I've got no interest in.

[AMFV]

Oh, i don't disagree with existing differences.

But putting a number on it ? That is part of the problem. How much is realistic and when are you in prejudice-territory. The next part is how a lot of things in RPGs are derived from base stats (they are called base stats for a reason) and introducing base stat differences make the genders mechanically differently capable of a huge number of other things. Which is often not an accurate portrayal. On top of that we have the balancing stuff and the implied inferiority stuff.

All in all, while a difference exist, bringing it into the game for realism is a really big mess. Generations of game designers have tried and eventually abandoned the concept.

Well partially because it's very difficult to get physical attributes down to a few, at least in any meaningful sense. In real life strength is so absurdly complex as to be almost impossible to model. After all, a powerlifter will be able to lift more weight than a bodybuilder as a general rule, but he won't be able to hold muscular contractions as long, as a general rule. Explosive strength is different than sustained strength, and must be trained for differently. Some strength helps you to hit things, but only in that it gives you muscular control (which is an entirely different category of strength). And then we're not factoring in weight, after all if a 100 lb person bench presses 300 lbs, that's extremely impressive, if a 299.6 lb person bench presses 300 lbs, that's hardly worth noting. But that 100 lb person could walk a further distance (most likely), so it's too complex to model accurately.

It's why I would suggest modeling the end state of the skills rather than the physical differences that lead up to them. After all functionally there is no difference in whether I can hit something because of my natural talent, or my skill. And there's no difference between different types of natural talent that could lead to that (good eyesight, cleverness, muscular control). Since there's no functional difference adding that earlier step at the start of the model is what makes everything complicated, so you achieve a more simulationist model by actually removing an entire category, which is not typically the case.

[Donnadogsoth]

Technically, since anthropogenic global warming is something that has its adherents accepting proven and admitted hoaxes as "science" and scrambling to explain or ignore data that disagrees with their predictions (including that, by now according to the "science" 10 years ago, we were supposed to have flooded and "unrecognizable" coast lines), it has become a religious discussion to many. Even if they won't admit it.

But I respect your desire not to discuss it; please stop brining it up if you do not wish it discussed. It is disingenuous to say so as a means of insisting that nobody gets to post disputation of your claims, however. If you don't want to have your assertions disputed, don't bring them up.

Why are we discussing climatism now?

I realised "global warming" was a cult the day I read in the newspaper a columnist earnestly advising us not to burn candles because they contributed CO2 to the atmosphere.

[Donnadogsoth]

Well partially because it's very difficult to get physical attributes down to a few, at least in any meaningful sense. In real life strength is so absurdly complex as to be almost impossible to model. After all, a powerlifter will be able to lift more weight than a bodybuilder as a general rule, but he won't be able to hold muscular contractions as long, as a general rule. Explosive strength is different than sustained strength, and must be trained for differently. Some strength helps you to hit things, but only in that it gives you muscular control (which is an entirely different category of strength). And then we're not factoring in weight, after all if a 100 lb person bench presses 300 lbs, that's extremely impressive, if a 299.6 lb person bench presses 300 lbs, that's hardly worth noting. But that 100 lb person could walk a further distance (most likely), so it's too complex to model accurately.

It's why I would suggest modeling the end state of the skills rather than the physical differences that lead up to them. After all functionally there is no difference in whether I can hit something because of my natural talent, or my skill. And there's no difference between different types of natural talent that could lead to that (good eyesight, cleverness, muscular control). Since there's no functional difference adding that earlier step at the start of the model is what makes everything complicated, so you achieve a more simulationist model by actually removing an entire category, which is not typically the case.

I'm sure you underestimate the power of geekdom to come up with a set of Strength Simulation Rules that cover all of what you've described and more. I remember when I worked on fatigue rules I was even modelling individual limb fatigue (never got to finger fatigue though). Such a rules set may be an unplayable curiosity but I don't think it's impossible to design.

[Segev]

That's rich coming from you given you did the exact same thing in this thread.Note that I responded to what had already been raised; you can accuse me of trying to get in the last word (which is at least moderately true), but you cannot accuse me of raising a point and then suggesting it's bad form for anybody to post anything contradicting it. To do that, I would have to have brought it up with no prior counter-viewpoint. I was, in fact, refusing to allow it to go unchallenged, not refusing to allow it to be said.

As for the rest of the supposed counter-evidence, it's neat how they ignore...pretty much everything from the 1000s AD, which show first a warming then a cooling trend, which we're only now coming out of. And "the hottest 15 years in recorded history" isn't saying much, when we haven't been recording them for long enough to really measure an ice age vs. a "warming period."

I could go on, but I am distracting now. If you guys want the last word, go ahead and reply, I will stop answering you now.

[AMFV]

I'm sure you underestimate the power of geekdom to come up with a set of Strength Simulation Rules that cover all of what you've described and more. I remember when I worked on fatigue rules I was even modelling individual limb fatigue (never got to finger fatigue though). Such a rules set may be an unplayable curiosity but I don't think it's impossible to design.

I'm pretty sure it is. People can't even agree on what constitutes strength in a real world context, and this is comparing folks who are literally the strongest people around, insofar as most measurements would agree. It's why there's such argument over which sport is better, because the physical attributes required for each are so incredibly diverse.

[Donnadogsoth]

I'm pretty sure it is. People can't even agree on what constitutes strength in a real world context, and this is comparing folks who are literally the strongest people around, insofar as most measurements would agree. It's why there's such argument over which sport is better, because the physical attributes required for each are so incredibly diverse.

We can't agree about anything! That's why there are wars 'n' stuff. No, I don't think it's that hard to compose a set of rules governing can you do X, Y, Z. How many pushups can you do, how many chin ups, how long can you hold one leg up, etc.? And if it isn't expanded to include utterly everything (yoga poses, tongue lifting etc.--but why not?) we can still enfold these things into a dice roll that will be reasonably verisimilar. I can't despair over strength rules any more than I can despair over any rules.

[8BitNinja]

Just for clarification, is this a stat cap difference or a stat start difference?

[Talakeal]

Apparently, the "laws of reality encoded into the game" assume that everyone in the world has same body mass index.

Do you mean this post?


I already have rules for determining whether someone can, for example, draw a given bow, based on their skill and STR. And how they look is going to depend in some measure on their strength, weight and build. If a girl weighs 90 lbs she's only going to have so much muscle mass, ergo STR. That's not cosmetic, that's integral to the character, based on the laws of reality as encoded into the game. If I had no such rules, I would arbitrate, which, again, is one of the main reasons we have Gamemasters. Anyone in my game making a 90 lb, non-magical, non-cybernetic, non-robotic, non-divine, non-alien character should be prepared to have a STR limitation, whether through rules or arbitration. Why does that bother you so much?

Because if so he is flat out saying that people will have different weights and builds.

However, I notice you didn't respond to any of my other questions, which makes me suspect you are more interested in trading barbs than actually having a discussion, but I really am curious as to what your position is.

Judging by your responses earlier in this thread it seems to me that you are taking a hardcore "gamist" / "rules lawyer" position, where the rules are the rules and anything not in the rules is ignored, and cosmetic things are purely there for fluff. As there are no rules for cosmetic things the DM should have absolutely no say in them, and is cheating if they try and increase verisimilitude by making rules adjustments to try and make the "crunch" and the "fluff" sync up more perfectly.

This is the impression I have of your argument, but again it is probably incorrect and I would love for you to elaborate on your views better so that I can come to a more accurate impression of where you are coming from.



I have to ask: what's a bama-bait?

I am also curious about this. I tried googling it, but all I am coming up with is fishing stores in Alabama.



I would contest the assertion that D&D is intended to represent "figures of legend," if hit point damage isn't just mostly wardrobe damage as I have said. My familiarity with legendary or mythic heroes tells me they don't get hit, not that they get hit and shrug off injuries (modern “shoulder shots” in films aside). Even Conan, as a modern mythic hero, virtually never gets hit in battle, and anyone else in the Conan Universe who does get hit more or less dies outright. I am not familiar with myths or legends in which heroes get hit by killing strokes (like swords to the face and arrows to the chest) and survive. Could the relevant literature be not myths and legends as such but D&D-based literature itself?.

I have only read Dragonlance, Planescape, and a few Ravenloft novels, but in my experience D&D based literature doesn't stick too closely to the game rules. I can't recall a piece of D&D literature where someone was a superhumanly tough killing machine who could take a dozen arrows, normally they are just really skilled fighters who can endure a lot of minor wounds, avoid most wounds, and then are killed by a single major wound.

In fact, going through the Dragonlance saga I can only think of a single named character (Lord Verminard) who took more than a one good hit to kill, although I guess a couple of them were already pretty beat up going into their last fight.

I have personally always figured that the D&D combat rules where a gamist abstraction rather than trying to model the "physics" of the D&D world.


Why are we discussing climatism now?

I realised "global warming" was a cult the day I read in the newspaper a columnist earnestly advising us not to burn candles because they contributed CO2 to the atmosphere.

A lot of people say a lot of very stupid things about form of science, that doesn't make them cults. Heck, look at the practices of ancient doctors, or even the crazy "medical breakthroughs" that infomercials try and sell you today; doesn't mean that modern medicine doesn't save millions of lives each year.

[AMFV]

We can't agree about anything! That's why there are wars 'n' stuff. No, I don't think it's that hard to compose a set of rules governing can you do X, Y, Z. How many pushups can you do, how many chin ups, how long can you hold one leg up, etc.? And if it isn't expanded to include utterly everything (yoga poses, tongue lifting etc.--but why not?) we can still enfold these things into a dice roll that will be reasonably verisimilar. I can't despair over strength rules any more than I can despair over any rules.

I disagree. I have too much experience with too many different kinds of strength to think that it could modeled in any way that would satisfy my verisimilitude. Even in your example there are multiple different kinds of things at play...

How many pushups? That's not so much raw strength as it is endurance, but anaerobic endurance. Sort of like a sprint, it can involve completely different muscle groups. I can do pushups that work almost entirely my triceps, I can do pushups that work almost entirely my shoulder cradle and chest. If I have strong triceps it's completely different in terms of how that affects other things. My shoulders will affect things differently as well. Also if you are smaller then you are expending much less effort than somebody who is large. Of course, if the large person has more muscle, it may not be any more difficult for them, but it is certainly more effort.

How many chin-ups? That's pretty much just strength, since your own weight tends to be on the heavy end of what you can lift. But where your grip is will alter your muscles used again, which again will involve different things. That may even involve the same muscles as you were using in pushups. But for example somebody might be able to a large number of pushups, and then not be able to more than a few chin-ups.

Holding your leg up is again completely different. I could be able to hold my leg up for a very long time, and still have very weak legs in terms of what they can carry, since the weight of my leg plays so much into it.

It's just too complex to model with any real sense of verisimilitude, I don't despair over the rules, since I normally consider them an abstraction. But if simulationism is what you're going for (and if you're modelling gender differences it is), then you'd be better off just modelling the effects rather than the causes, since the causes are so disparate.

[Takewo]

Most scientific conclusions are [my edit] extremely biased and not very reliable?

What in the world has led to reach THAT (scientific) conclusion? It's a bit of a leap, based on the observable facts at hand.

Please inform me what bias led me to conclude that the band splitting of quantum well states observed from photoemission data taken from ultra-thin silver films that I deposited on a silicon substrate are not due to a multi-layer coverage or Rashba spin-orbit splitting?* If I am biased in any way I would like to know, so I can rethink my conclusions and improve my odds of publication.

*I haven't actually fully reached that conclusion yet, even though it looks that way. Would be really cool to observe the Rashba effect though, so I think I am biased for that.

The very fact that some variables are chosen to be studied and gathered as data and some other aren't makes it biased. I'm not saying that scientists are trying to trick us into believing lies, but that science is not objective.

There's also another thing, maybe I should have been clearer, but I assumed that since we were talking mainly about sociology and human biology, it'd be understood that I was referring mainly to those fields. My apologies. However, even natural science is far from objective. There are literally millions of variables to study in any given experiment, of which only a few are actually studied. This is what is called subjectivity or bias.


So you went from most to many?

There is a difference between affirming that something is biased and that something is rubbish. Most are biased, many are rubbish.


But you really can't divorce observation from conclusion so easily. In order to do observation properly, you need a conceptual background, which is (usually) based on already made conclusions.

I didn't mean to. Again, my mistake. Probably I should have trodden more lightly there.


Actually, the fact? that an external force is pulling an object downwards is a model. Two conclusions, based on this model (F = G*M*m/r^2), is that celestial objects (such as planets and stars), must move in certain orbits, and that there is a constant acceleration (g) affecting all bodies on the surface of the Earth, regardless of their inherent mass (ok, I needed more equations for this, but I thought the example was good). The movement of celestial bodies, along with the trajectory of light, can be used to falsify the above model, but luckily there is a better one out there to replace it, which explains many more phenomena. It might also be false, even its creator believes so (Einstein), but it is the best model we have so far.

If you want, we could go back to an even earlier model, which explained objects falling down when dropped in air with "they are striving towards their essence; since they are composed of the element Earth, they want to go to Earth".

Gravity is probably one of the best products of natural science (I must admit that my field is social science, so I know rather little about natural science, my apologies if it isn't true). That, however, doesn't change the fact that it is the conclusion of an observed fact. As you have pointed, several model have been proposed during human history and some are better than others.


There is a lot to say about science as a human en-devour, and how our biological brains and socially reinforced memes impact our current models and understanding. Nuance and discussion definitely has their place.

But you didn't do that, you said:



Which is essentially taking the best thing known to man and throwing it out the window. Why would you do that?

Some would argue against scientific research being the best thing known to man. I certainly would. As to why I would do that, simply because I think it is important to acknowledge that we are not objective in our observations, studies and conclusions about reality. It's not that we should forgo science, just that we should acknowledge our bias.

Science is an extremely useful tool, but as to being the truth or its ability to show the truth, I think that we should be very wary and not too hasty to assume some research's conclusions as being the truth. I have no problems with it coming up with models and paradigms that help us relate to reality. I have problems with it as being the ultimate truth. Just as you yourself have shown, many of the established scientific views have change throughout history, and we should leave open the possibility that our current understanding of things be challenged and changed.

[Donnadogsoth]

A lot of people say a lot of very stupid things about form of science, that doesn't make them cults. Heck, look at the practices of ancient doctors, or even the crazy "medical breakthroughs" that infomercials try and sell you today; doesn't mean that modern medicine doesn't save millions of lives each year.

Telling readers not to burn candles is cultish thinking. Climatism itself is, however, in terms of the bureaucracies that are being erected to pinch the economy of the world and the climatologists eager to make their careers on it, more of a "green" cult if you get my meaning.

[CharonsHelper]

We can't agree about anything...


I disagree...

Lol - maybe I'm just too easily amused.

[Donnadogsoth]

I disagree. I have too much experience with too many different kinds of strength to think that it could modeled in any way that would satisfy my verisimilitude. Even in your example there are multiple different kinds of things at play...

How many pushups? That's not so much raw strength as it is endurance, but anaerobic endurance. Sort of like a sprint, it can involve completely different muscle groups. I can do pushups that work almost entirely my triceps, I can do pushups that work almost entirely my shoulder cradle and chest. If I have strong triceps it's completely different in terms of how that affects other things. My shoulders will affect things differently as well. Also if you are smaller then you are expending much less effort than somebody who is large. Of course, if the large person has more muscle, it may not be any more difficult for them, but it is certainly more effort.

How many chin-ups? That's pretty much just strength, since your own weight tends to be on the heavy end of what you can lift. But where your grip is will alter your muscles used again, which again will involve different things. That may even involve the same muscles as you were using in pushups. But for example somebody might be able to a large number of pushups, and then not be able to more than a few chin-ups.

Holding your leg up is again completely different. I could be able to hold my leg up for a very long time, and still have very weak legs in terms of what they can carry, since the weight of my leg plays so much into it.

It's just too complex to model with any real sense of verisimilitude, I don't despair over the rules, since I normally consider them an abstraction. But if simulationism is what you're going for (and if you're modelling gender differences it is), then you'd be better off just modelling the effects rather than the causes, since the causes are so disparate.

Wouldn't modelling effects be just "roll to achieve" then "record the result"? Roll to lift X, then make a note that you successfully lifted X before, and so, barring other factors, you should be able to again? Why not use that method unfolding out of a basic "strength" score to "flesh out" the character's abilities in question?

[AMFV]

Lol - maybe I'm just too easily amused.

To be fair I was disagreeing with the concept of making a strength stat system that was sufficiently crunchy to model real life.

I mean you'd need to have every single muscle group accounted for, then you'd need different stats inside those groups to model strength, endurance, explosive power, ability to avoid injury. You'd need another stat to represent CNS capacity. You'd need still another set of stats to represent body weight. And that's just for raw strength. At that point you're past the point of playability.


Wouldn't modelling effects be just "roll to achieve" then "record the result"? Roll to lift X, then make a note that you successfully lifted X before, and so, barring other factors, you should be able to again? Why not use that method unfolding out of a basic "strength" score to "flesh out" the character's abilities in question?

That works fine, but it's not very realistic. I can't always lift the same amount of weight for example. Carb loading takes into effect, exhaustion, if I've prepped for the lift, what I've lifted before that day.There are too many factors. If I don't rest at all in between lifts then very rapidly I won't be able to lift it. You can't just say "barring other factors" if you're looking for that level of granularity. Since the other factors are more important than the original factor. Furthermore the things that make you able to lift that much weight will affect other things. If I'm able to lift weight because of my bulk that will affect lots of other game variables, if I have amazing muscle density and am compact that's going to affect things.

My point is that if you start caring enough about the realism to create differing stats for men and women, the most realistic thing to do is to handwave it, and then just model the skills in the game, which are slightly easier to model, because skills are in reality abstractions, combinations of different natural talents and different training and habits. As such they can be realistically modeled (or closely enough) to be fair.

[Segev]

To be fair I was disagreeing with the concept of making a strength stat system that was sufficiently crunchy to model real life.

I mean you'd need to have every single muscle group accounted for, then you'd need different stats inside those groups to model strength, endurance, explosive power, ability to avoid injury. You'd need another stat to represent CNS capacity. You'd need still another set of stats to represent body weight. And that's just for raw strength. At that point you're past the point of playability.

And now you need a GPU just to run your game engine for ONE stat.

[Broken Twin]

Mechanical differences between genders is a good leading indicator that I'd rather not play that game. That's at least in part because it's bound to be way more 'sim'-heavy than I'm into, and secondarily because I'd place good money on it having some other weird/regressive stuff.

Now, playing around with gender roles in the setting? Sure, I'll check it out - Reign in particular does some fun things, here. But if the author cares enough to mechanize those differences for individual heroes, the game's setting is likely to be some variation on the cynical medieval dirtfarmer world I've got no interest in.

Is it strictly human mechanical dimorphism you have a problem with, or the rules existing at all? To take my earlier example, in my current setting-in-progress there are playable species whose males and females are obviously physically different. One is based on birds, so the males are significantly more colourful, while the females are coloured in earthen tones. Mechanically, this makes the males more attractive, and females blend into the environment easier. Another playable species is based on hyenas, so the females are larger and more aggressive. Neither is based on existing human cultures, and it's possible to take edges or flaws to cancel out their traits (a female hyena could start with the 'timid' flaw, for example, which would remove her starting intimidate dice).

There are playable species in-setting where the difference between sexes is small enough to not be mechanically represented, or completely absent, but I honestly feel that representing the species with larger sexual differences mechanically makes the setting more cohesive. It has nothing to do with realism, and more making the setting come alive through the mechanics. This is in Savage Worlds, which is definitely not on the 'Sim' end of the gaming spectrum.

I'm not arguing with your stance, just more curious as to the details of it. I don't engage in the community that much, so I can't really speak to how "weird or regressive" people who enjoy mechanical differences would be. I mean, I can probably take some fairly accurate guesses, but they would just be guesses.

[ImNotTrevor]

Your physics is wrong.

With mass times velocity you get momentum, not force



taking your numbers, you would need an average force of :

F= 42g*2.910* feet/s *450 / 60s

to compare with own body mass, you then need to devide the result by 9.81 m/s². Which will give you some completely different number of around 28kg.



I still don't recomment doingit, but for other reasons

Thanks for correcting my physics. Like I said, I'm not a physicist. I detail cars for a living.

[obryn]

Telling readers not to burn candles is cultish thinking. Climatism itself is, however, in terms of the bureaucracies that are being erected to pinch the economy of the world and the climatologists eager to make their careers on it, more of a "green" cult if you get my meaning.
Wow, that some seriously deep conspiracy theory, right there.


Is it strictly human mechanical dimorphism you have a problem with, or the rules existing at all? To take my earlier example, in my current setting-in-progress there are playable species whose males and females are obviously physically different. One is based on birds, so the males are significantly more colourful, while the females are coloured in earthen tones. Mechanically, this makes the males more attractive, and females blend into the environment easier. Another playable species is based on hyenas, so the females are larger and more aggressive. Neither is based on existing human cultures, and it's possible to take edges or flaws to cancel out their traits (a female hyena could start with the 'timid' flaw, for example, which would remove her starting intimidate dice).

There are playable species in-setting where the difference between sexes is small enough to not be mechanically represented, or completely absent, but I honestly feel that representing the species with larger sexual differences mechanically makes the setting more cohesive. It has nothing to do with realism, and more making the setting come alive through the mechanics. This is in Savage Worlds, which is definitely not on the 'Sim' end of the gaming spectrum.

I'm not arguing with your stance, just more curious as to the details of it. I don't engage in the community that much, so I can't really speak to how "weird or regressive" people who enjoy mechanical differences would be. I mean, I can probably take some fairly accurate guesses, but they would just be guesses.
I think it is much easier to work in game-significant degrees of dimorphism when you're looking at non-humans; nobody's to say if male birdpeople are stronger than female birdpeople because there are no birdpeople. But there's still the issue of character concepts; if it's crazy to make a birdman wizard or a birdwoman warrior because they're mechanically disadvantaged in those careers, I think it's totally fair to ask what's being gained on the player side.

[Roxxy]

There's an RPG called Sagas of the Icelanders, centered around Norse settlers in Iceland. Society at that place and time in history had strong gender roles, (though men and women were seen as equals overall, they were expected to do different things) and the game reflects that. Your 'class' is based on your gender, and you have abilities because of it.

It works in a history-based game like that, but bring that into a fantasy game (and actually manifest it mechanically) and it becomes risky quickly.I've heard this said about pre-Christian Norse and Gaelic societies a lot. I've never actually seen it strongly backed up by historical evidence, and I've certainly read plenty to the contrary so far as the Norse are concerned. If you compare them to, say, the Romans or the Greeks (though that leaves a lot of room for variation), then it's likely not as bad, but this whole narrative that they treated women as equals has pretty much no bearing in reality. In fact, anthropologists have never once found a society that treated women as equals to men.

Now, that's the real world. I don't really want it in my fantasy. If I can become durable enough to fall into a pit of lava and not die in D&D, I should be able to, as a woman, be on par with the men. And don't get my started on the physics behind dragons being able to fly. Biological realism isn't a thing in D&D, and I don't want it to be. So no, I wouldn't support stat differences based on gender, because I want to be a female warrior and I don't care about realism.

[Broken Twin]

I think it is much easier to work in game-significant degrees of dimorphism when you're looking at non-humans; nobody's to say if male birdpeople are stronger than female birdpeople because there are no birdpeople. But there's still the issue of character concepts; if it's crazy to make a birdman wizard or a birdwoman warrior because they're mechanically disadvantaged in those careers, I think it's totally fair to ask what's being gained on the player side.

Same thing that's gained from making a half-orc wizard in 3.5. If you're wanting to optimize, you'll choose the best available combo. If it's a specific concept you want, then you'll pick the options that make the concept work. Halfling paladin is one of my favourite standard fantasy combos to play, and it's full of mechanical disadvantages. The disadvantage is part of what makes the concept interesting. It helps when you play a game where the gap between optimized characters and concept characters is small. The mechanical differences are meant to be interesting, not penalizing.

[Donnadogsoth]

To be fair I was disagreeing with the concept of making a strength stat system that was sufficiently crunchy to model real life.

I mean you'd need to have every single muscle group accounted for, then you'd need different stats inside those groups to model strength, endurance, explosive power, ability to avoid injury. You'd need another stat to represent CNS capacity. You'd need still another set of stats to represent body weight. And that's just for raw strength. At that point you're past the point of playability.



That works fine, but it's not very realistic. I can't always lift the same amount of weight for example. Carb loading takes into effect, exhaustion, if I've prepped for the lift, what I've lifted before that day.There are too many factors. If I don't rest at all in between lifts then very rapidly I won't be able to lift it. You can't just say "barring other factors" if you're looking for that level of granularity. Since the other factors are more important than the original factor. Furthermore the things that make you able to lift that much weight will affect other things. If I'm able to lift weight because of my bulk that will affect lots of other game variables, if I have amazing muscle density and am compact that's going to affect things.

My point is that if you start caring enough about the realism to create differing stats for men and women, the most realistic thing to do is to handwave it, and then just model the skills in the game, which are slightly easier to model, because skills are in reality abstractions, combinations of different natural talents and different training and habits. As such they can be realistically modeled (or closely enough) to be fair.

How would you lick the problem of overly chaotic strength rolls? That is, mechanics where a STR 18 and a STR 3 character both roll to lift X, and the first fails where the second succeeds. This is broken, if STR is to allow us to visualise anything. If the STR 18 dude can't do it, no one can. We can account for factors like he's tired or whatever, but to me this is akin to worrying about whether the anime chick is a robot or something. Factors are fun to account for. But after accounting for them, it breaks my visualisation ability, or my suspension of disbelief if you will, to have the rail-thin wizard lift something the musclebound freak cannot.

[Roxxy]

So, of course, I thought through some fixes. But the more I thought through it all, the more I realized that the sex of the individual was completely irrelevant to my immersion. What I found disconcerting was how you could create an incredibly slim, tiny individual, male or female, and give them stats that allowed them to be stronger than the burliest athlete. It's the whole super-strong cartoon prettyboy effect all over again. So really, the female thing is kind of irrelevant. We could imagine some incredibly burly woman with 18+ Str quite easily: it's the stick-figure supermodels that can be grating. So, probably the best way to handle things is just to individually create characters with reasonable connections between their stats and appearance. If you're strong, make a burly character. If you're weak, make a thin one. I mean, the alternative to that is to create some stupidly complex formula involving weight, height, and BMI, which is way more effort than I think anyone wants to put in.I've explained that in my campaign setting, funny enough. It's magitech Pathfinder, but I replaced the magic item system with an alchemical enhancement system. Basically, people drink magic enhancements, and this approximates what magic items would have given the character. Some people react to the enhancements better than others, and the strength enhancements rely on this factor much more than body mass or muscular configuration. As a result, small, skinny people may be much stronger than they look, even in comparison to someone much stronger built. This is also a reason for the commonality of female infantry.

[obryn]

Same thing that's gained from making a half-orc wizard in 3.5. If you're wanting to optimize, you'll choose the best available combo. If it's a specific concept you want, then you'll pick the options that make the concept work. Halfling paladin is one of my favourite standard fantasy combos to play, and it's full of mechanical disadvantages. The disadvantage is part of what makes the concept interesting. It helps when you play a game where the gap between optimized characters and concept characters is small. The mechanical differences are meant to be interesting, not penalizing.
Why is it better that an interesting narrative combo faces mechanical penalties?

[CharonsHelper]

How would you lick the problem of overly chaotic strength rolls? That is, mechanics where a STR 18 and a STR 3 character both roll to lift X, and the first fails where the second succeeds.

Don't have it be a d20 roll. I think that stat checks should probably be d4 or d6 to prevent such craziness. (The Gamers poked fun at that sort of thing.) It's an issue with d20 systems.

[JoeJ]

Why is it better that an interesting narrative combo faces mechanical penalties?

An character with no weaknesses is both psychologically unrealistic and, from a narrative standpoint, boring.

[Hiro Protagonest]

An character with no weaknesses is both psychologically unrealistic and, from a narrative standpoint, boring.

Disadvantages don't have to be A) mechanical or B) directly weakening the class you choose to play as. They can still have low stats, but for the half-orc wizard it wouldn't be lower Int.

[Marlowe]

Well, depending on what we're talking about it might be incredibly ridiculous to assume that ANY 90 pound person could use, say, a .50 calibur machine gun as stick-figure anime waifus sometimes seem able to do.

The force -> weight ratio for a 90 pound person lifting an 84 pound rifle (http://www.gd-ots.com/armament_systems/ics_m2a1.html) is a nice .93.

The thing is, that's picking the thing up. Possible, sure. Humans regularly get force->weight ratios about 1.5 for certain tasks. But...

Then we get the sticky situation of firing the thing. Now I'm doing some quick-as-hell and sloppy math, so excuse any inaccuracies. I'm not a physicist, I just think this is an interesting thing to investigate.

So to get real basic, to figure out the force being applied to our lady with each bullet, we need to know the Velocity and Weight of each bullet.
Each bullet will travel at, fired from out example gun,
2,910 feet per second.
Using the lightest possible 50 calibur round, we're looking at 42 grams or 1.482 ounces. Now we multiply!

2,910 x 1.482 = 4,312 and change. I'll throw out the change. Now, this is in ounces. So lets convert back to pounds by dividing by 16.
This gives us 269 pounds of force.

Lets redo our ratio here...
269/90= 2.988888-> or 2.99

Very nearly TRIPLE THEIR OWN WEIGHT being exterted INTO THEIR SHOULDER (or their hips, as usually depicted) each time the rifle fires. Oh, and did I mention? It fires 450 rounds per minute. So over the course of a minute, their body endures a sum total force of 12,100+ pounds. Or in our ratio, 134 times their own body weight. (There is a reason they mount these things on vehicles and bipods, and people not using such devices often get their shoulders dislocated by their own gun. Even the big beefy men.)

Is it possible? Sure, I suppose. But this individual would be JACKED. Like, no ifs ands or buts about it. JACKED. And it would STILL likely cause them bodily harm to fire it for more than quick bursts.

And yet I've seen really thin anime chicks weild guns just as big and hip fire them like they were capguns.

Come on. Not even slightly real.

Of course, neither is DnD, so you do you, honey boo boo.

But BMI has VERY little to do with firing a huge machine gun. It's about the recoil of the gun. If the gun has so much recoil it can dislocate a shoulder and needs a bipod or mount to fire effectively, then it probably doesn't matter what your BMI is.

Lift it? Sure, if you're really damn fit. Firing it from the hip? Lolnope

...And?

What anime are you watching? I've only seen people firing HMG-type weapons hand-held in western media. Never had a character attempt to do it in an RPG. The only time I've seen an M2 50 calibre fired from the hip was in some American computer game. And I thought it was rather silly. As for anime I can think of Gretel with her Browning Automatic Rifle...well, that's a Bonnie and Clyde joke.


Do you mean this post?



Because if so he is flat out saying that people will have different weights and builds. And in the sentence RIGHT AFTER THAT he says he using Weight. Not build. But simply WEIGHT as a measure of strength. Implying everyone in the world has the same BMI, training regime, metabolism and the like, and the only difference is size.


However, I notice you didn't respond to any of my other questions, which makes me suspect you are more interested in trading barbs than actually having a discussion, but I really am curious as to what your position is. First off, when someone jumps into a discussion and immediately demonstrates that they haven't bothered to read or understand what they are commenting on, it does not inspire me with much hope that a discussion is possible.

Secondly, I was quite interested by your questions because I had some similar ones. If being of lower weight gives you a penalty, do other deviations from absolute averageness give you like penalties? Do bulky people get hit more? Do skinny people have lower health? Do heavy people occasionally have to roll to see if they break items of furniture? Not I'm not saying these these would be a good idea or especially accurate, but I'm curious if all sorts of body shapes have their downsides in Don's system, or is it just small people.

As for the 35-foot human, well. That's just getting to the point where that character is no longer credible as a Human in any statistical sense, and really needs his own chapter in the rules. Which illustrates quite well why D&D doesn't do this sort of thing. If being a few pounds lighter and a few inches shorter than average is considered enough to give you a measurable change in your game statistics, it gives the rules nowhere to go when providing for the really small, or the very large, or the very...something races.



Judging by your responses earlier in this thread it seems to me that you are taking a hardcore "gamist" / "rules lawyer" position, where the rules are the rules and anything not in the rules is ignored, and cosmetic things are purely there for fluff. As there are no rules for cosmetic things the DM should have absolutely no say in them, and is cheating if they try and increase verisimilitude by making rules adjustments to try and make the "crunch" and the "fluff" sync up more perfectly.

This is the impression I have of your argument, but again it is probably incorrect and I would love for you to elaborate on your views better so that I can come to a more accurate impression of where you are coming from.
For the...THIRD time. Without respect for the rules by the GM there is no game. That is to say their is no objection basis for player participation. What there is is an exercise in pandering to one individuals biases. Which may be interesting as a psychological exercise, but which isn't a game by any reasonably metric.

I had enough of such way back when. There are some that can make it fun. More usually you find yourself stuck with somebody I wouldn't trust not to make a housefire out of a pile of wet newspapers using the game as a crutch to establish a private Celestial Debating Hall Where He's Always Right.

Now; "Bama"


I am also curious about this. I tried googling it, but all I am coming up with is fishing stores in Alabama. That's because I got it WRONG. The word should have been "BARA". My apologies. Have some caution googling that, btw, it means "Like Yaoi but more so. Bigger men. More sweaty and explicit".

[goto124]

Disadvantages don't have to be A) mechanical or B) directly weakening the class you choose to play as. They can still have low stats, but for the half-orc wizard it wouldn't be lower Int.

By the way, we've had dwarves/halflings/elves/dark elves/etc with different mechanical bonuses and penalties. People seem fairly fine with it so far.

[Hiro Protagonest]

As for anime I can think of Gretel with her Browning Automatic Rifle...well, that's a Bonnie and Clyde joke.

Pretty sure Gretel used an MG42.

[ImNotTrevor]

...And?

What anime are you watching? I've only seen people firing HMG-type weapons hand-held in western media. Never had a character attempt to do it in an RPG. The only time I've seen an M2 50 calibre fired from the hip was in some American computer game. And I thought it was rather silly. As for anime I can think of Gretel with her Browning Automatic Rifle...well, that's a Bonnie and Clyde joke.
.

You seem to have missed the point:

In some cases, it literally doesn't matter what your BMI is. It's just not realistic for your 90 pound person to weild a certain weapon however you want. BMI is a red herring to this discussion. If a 90 pound person is as JACKED AS POSSIBLE, they could find themselves able to bench around 200 pounds and probably squat about 500, but further increases in strength almost always mean an increase in weight. (Muscle isn't weightless)

So the odds of a 90 pound person swinging around huge solid metal axes and greatswords as if they were fencing sabers and doing so while being twig-thin is damn near impossible, because of the way muscles work. If you use them, they get bigger. For lean muscle you need low weight and high repetition. But this doesn't increase maximum weight lifted, it increases endurance.

So your twiggy 90 pound person sprinting around like a madman with daggers or a shortsword/buckler and going at it for hours at a time? Sure. Somewhat plausible.

Throwing around an axe that is half their own weight while being twig thin? Nope. Not gonna happen. They will become jacked sooner or later, unless "Majicks" are involved. That's just how muscles work.


So basically, BMI has something to do with it, sure. But not enough to refute his point outright. He actually still has a really good point. That's all.

What I was writing had nothing to do with anime besides the previous mentions of it.

[obryn]

An character with no weaknesses is both psychologically unrealistic and, from a narrative standpoint, boring.
What does this have to do with stat modifiers?

Or are we going to get all stormwindy here.

[8BitNinja]

What does this have to do with stat modifiers?

Or are we going to get all stormwindy here.

If you are overpowered, what fun is the game?

[obryn]

If you are overpowered, what fun is the game?
Obviously not, which is why nobody has argued this.

[8BitNinja]

Let's put it this way

It all depends on how you apply it

stat caps are not a good way unless the system implements stat caps

starting stats are a good idea, because it still allows growth

[Donnadogsoth]

Secondly, I was quite interested by your questions because I had some similar ones. If being of lower weight gives you a penalty, do other deviations from absolute averageness give you like penalties? Do bulky people get hit more? Do skinny people have lower health? Do heavy people occasionally have to roll to see if they break items of furniture? Not I'm not saying these these would be a good idea or especially accurate, but I'm curious if all sorts of body shapes have their downsides in Don's system, or is it just small people.

Those are all interesting ideas. Bulky people would make better targets for arrows, true. I've never heard skinny people being unhealthy, anorexia or other diseases aside, always heard the reverse (not too many fat people in the old folks' home). And a heavy person might have to worry around delicate furniture, yes. It's really situational. Go into a halfling house and suffer Gandalfian bumps to the noggin, etc..


For the...THIRD time. Without respect for the rules by the GM there is no game. That is to say their is no objection basis for player participation. What there is is an exercise in pandering to one individuals biases. Which may be interesting as a psychological exercise, but which isn't a game by any reasonably metric.

I had enough of such way back when. There are some that can make it fun. More usually you find yourself stuck with somebody I wouldn't trust not to make a housefire out of a pile of wet newspapers using the game as a crutch to establish a private Celestial Debating Hall Where He's Always Right.

Changing the rules without warning defeats the purpose of rules, but there is, as indicated, a realm of arbitration, and there's no reason why an entire campaign couldn't be played with pure arbitration. Precedents would take the place of rules for consistency's sake. Or looked at the other way, rules are a collection of traditional precedents, generally only overruled by appeals to the implicit (or explicit) gaming constitution of understood "spirit of the game" agreed upon by all participants.

[Hiro Protagonest]

If you are overpowered, what fun is the game?

Overpowered? What even is overpowered, short of Pun-Pun? D&D 3.5 allows you to play summoner Natural Spell druids or scimitar-wielding control/healer druids, and neither option is wrong, so long as the summoners are alongside wizards of equal power and the healers are alongside rangers. Exalted is played at a very different power level from GURPS (unless you try to use GURPS for something it's not really built to do, or play mortals in Exalted, in which case Exalted still favors cinematic stunts). But if someone is at a higher power level than the rest of their party, I suppose that's bad.

So I suppose being overpowered is bad. But what was suggested wasn't overpowered; it was at the same level as someone who picked a more common combination.

[Sitri]

While I haven't had the motivation build a mechanical difference for sexes into my games, I would be happy to play in one that did such.

The aggression (and dishonesty) with which some Piazo staff try to de-emphasize sex has left a very sour taste in my mouth with how I view gender in games. In all honesty, it makes me yearn for more overt differences within them.

[obryn]

Let's put it this way

It all depends on how you apply it

stat caps are not a good way unless the system implements stat caps

starting stats are a good idea, because it still allows growth
Differentiated starting stats are mechanically indistinguishable from stat penalties.

[JoeJ]

Disadvantages don't have to be A) mechanical or B) directly weakening the class you choose to play as. They can still have low stats, but for the half-orc wizard it wouldn't be lower Int.

The difference between a mechanical disadvantage and a purely role played one that is actually role played is meaningless. It's simply an artifact of the game system being used. You're physically weak? That's mechanics in M&M, role playing in Dying Earth. You can't keep from making a pass at every good looking man/woman/whatever you meet? Role playing in D&D, mechanics in GURPS.

[NoldorForce]

Differentiated starting stats are mechanically indistinguishable from stat penalties.What obryn is getting at here is that the mechanics of a game should be in concert with the intended gameplay, not in concert. Choices should be interesting, offering some degree of both reward and cost (even if it's just opportunity cost over not choosing something else instead). Things like racial penalties to necessary stats in a game that professes "you can play whatever you want!" don't really present true choice. Sure, you can try playing your half-orc wizard (or something analogous), but that's not an interesting choice because the mechanics are constantly sneering at you.

[Marlowe]

Pretty sure Gretel used an MG42. No. I think the plot would have been rather simplified if they could have trailed the twins by the clatter of 7.92mm ammo belts. To say nothing of the recoil putting her into the South China Sea.


You seem to have missed the point:

*SNIP*



What I was writing had nothing to do with anime besides the previous mentions of it.

You mentioned it. You mentioned you had examples. I'm asking you what these examples were. I've asked before.

As for "the point" in that post, the weapon you use as a reference is too large for almost anyone to use in the way you describe. Nobody fires 50 cal machine guns hand-held. Not 90-pound "twiggies" (:smallconfused:). Not big men with handlebar mustachios. Not Chuck Norris.

[Feddlefew]

As for "the point" in that post, the weapon you use as a reference is too large for almost anyone to use in the way you describe. Nobody fires 50 cal machine guns hand-held. Not 90-pound "twiggies" (:smallconfused:). Not big men with handlebar mustachios. Not Chuck Norris.

Well, it doesn't stop people from trying. It's an excellent way to lose your head, or at least most of your teeth.

[Lorsa]

Technically, since anthropogenic global warming is something that has its adherents accepting proven and admitted hoaxes as "science" and scrambling to explain or ignore data that disagrees with their predictions (including that, by now according to the "science" 10 years ago, we were supposed to have flooded and "unrecognizable" coast lines), it has become a religious discussion to many. Even if they won't admit it.

But I respect your desire not to discuss it; please stop brining it up if you do not wish it discussed. It is disingenuous to say so as a means of insisting that nobody gets to post disputation of your claims, however. If you don't want to have your assertions disputed, don't bring them up.

Where did I insist that nobody gets to post disputations of my claims? The only one who did so was you. I only said that such a discussion brings about more emotional impact than a religious discussion would, a ban I disagree with (but have to accept).

There is a vast difference between climate projection and regression. While the former still has some issues in the details (the basics of more greenhouse gases -> warmer climate is not one such detail), the latter has become very accurate and is under no scientific controversy.

A few things we know with certainty.

There is a clear correlation between amount of CO2 in atmosphere and global temperature (and the physical effect of CO2 on electromagnetic radiation is well known). Both CO2 and temperature levels have altered cyclically over the past 400 000 years, with ice ages followed by warmer climate and then slowly declining temperatures towards the next ice age. The CO2 level, and global temperature we have today is higher than the maximum value ever achieved for the past 400 000 years, thus breaking the pattern. This spike started around the industrial revolution.

We also know that the sun is entering into a cold period, which will offset the effects of rising CO2 levels for a time.

But perhaps I just clearly have bought into this obvious hoax. If you have findings that contradict the scientific consensus, please publish them. It would be a great relief to everyone if you are right.



Why are we discussing climatism now?

I realised "global warming" was a cult the day I read in the newspaper a columnist earnestly advising us not to burn candles because they contributed CO2 to the atmosphere.

Because Segev brought it up (for some reason). Also because this thread has had so many threads before it, that everything that can be said has already been said. So why not?

Someone once said something stupid? about global warming and that lead you to conclude that it was false?

Someone once said something stupid about , so it is clearly false.

I guess you don't believe in anything?

Disregarding that a newspaper columnist opinion is not the same as the scientific community's, it is a clear difference depending on what the candles are made of; paraffin or animal fat/palm oil (if we only care about the actual burning that is).



The very fact that some variables are chosen to be studied and gathered as data and some other aren't makes it biased. I'm not saying that scientists are trying to trick us into believing lies, but that science is not objective.

Biased, yes, but it is [i]informed bias. There are an infinite number of variables for any experiment, and the process of selecting the ones that are relevant is a very important thing to learn as a scientist.

As example, I had a lab for the first-year students, where they are supposed to figure out a formula to describe the bending of a steel beam.

When I described the process to them, I used example variables such as weekday, astrological sign at time of measurement and the color of my shirt.

None of the students measured these variables. Do you think that was an oversight and clear sign of bias to the point of making the results unreliable?


There's also another thing, maybe I should have been clearer, but I assumed that since we were talking mainly about sociology and human biology, it'd be understood that I was referring mainly to those fields. My apologies. However, even natural science is far from objective. There are literally millions of variables to study in any given experiment, of which only a few are actually studied. This is what is called subjectivity or bias.

Well, you didn't say "sociology" or "biology", you said science. Even in a talk about sociology, if you switch to make a statement about "science", it is implied that now you are speaking in a broader sense.

Sociology has different challenges compared with physics, but that doesn't mean most of the results are unreliable. Some might be, but that's why we have scientific discussions and debates, articles that contradict each other until a consensus is reached.

As far as human biology and sex differences are concerned, it is quite easy to test for example the effect of testosterone. If you first do enough weight-lifting to reach the "peak" (when the first rapid increase has stopped), then continue to train for 6 months, clearly tracking your improvement, then artificially increasing your testosterone level for 6 months, still training and tracking your improvement, then go back to normal levels and train another 6 months. If testosterone level has no impact, you shouldn't expect to see any noticeable differences in strength or muscle mass improvement during the three periods. Go make the test! See for yourself!

Since we know the effects of testosterone, and we know the levels vary among sexes (and individuals), it is a very unbiased conclusion that it has an effect for the observed differences in average strength. There might be other factors also, and I can assure you that scientists are trying to device experiments to test for them.

Sociology is a different beast altogether, with the main problem being that it can often be hard to isolate variables, and do repeat experiments. Discarding all results in that field as "rubbish" because of it is an oversimplification.

Yes, there are rubbish studies out there, especially in fields that are very value-driven, but that doesn't mean a lot of good doesn't come out of it (the field).


There is a difference between affirming that something is biased and that something is rubbish. Most are biased, many are rubbish.

In the broadest of sense, ALL scientific studies are biased. We want them to be, or else there wouldn't be any progress at all (as seen from my example above). But you also said that most are "not very reliable", which is sort of the same as being rubbish. Perhaps not, but still. Most scientific studies are rubbish is a very strong statement.


Gravity is probably one of the best products of natural science (I must admit that my field is social science, so I know rather little about natural science, my apologies if it isn't true). That, however, doesn't change the fact that it is the conclusion of an observed fact. As you have pointed, several model have been proposed during human history and some are better than others.

But according to you, most of them are unreliable and many are rubbish?

Newton's mechanics isn't rubbish just because we've found a better model to replace it with. It's also very reliable in most everyday situations we find ourselves in.


Some would argue against scientific research being the best thing known to man. I certainly would. As to why I would do that, simply because I think it is important to acknowledge that we are not objective in our observations, studies and conclusions about reality. It's not that we should forgo science, just that we should acknowledge our bias.

Science is an extremely useful tool, but as to being the truth or its ability to show the truth, I think that we should be very wary and not too hasty to assume some research's conclusions as being the truth. I have no problems with it coming up with models and paradigms that help us relate to reality. I have problems with it as being the ultimate truth. Just as you yourself have shown, many of the established scientific views have change throughout history, and we should leave open the possibility that our current understanding of things be challenged and changed.


https://gifts.worldwildlife.org/gift-center/Images/large-species-photo/large-Chimpanzee-photo.jpg


http://cdn.images.express.co.uk/img/dynamic/78/590x/Astronauts-spacewalk-559681.jpg

Sure, you are right, it is a bit of value-based if you consider this an improvement or not. But one statistic I think highlights very well what science has done is the child mortality, how many that dies before the age of 5.

In the beginning of the 18th century here in Sweden, that was about 33%. Today it is 0.3%. That's what science has done for us; most of us wouldn't even be alive to discuss it.

Science can never give you The Truth. That much is for sure. But it can certainly give you the untruth along with our currently best guess. Of course our current understanding of things can and will be challenged and changed. That's the nature of science, it's a work in progress, an iteration to increase the number of things we know are false and give us a better guess.

Being part of the process and coming up with new ideas, experiments, measurements and models will help us reach even higher levels of knowledge. Claiming that most of it is rubbish isn't doing humanity any favors.

[wumpus]

Changing the rules without warning defeats the purpose of rules, but there is, as indicated, a realm of arbitration, and there's no reason why an entire campaign couldn't be played with pure arbitration. Precedents would take the place of rules for consistency's sake. Or looked at the other way, rules are a collection of traditional precedents, generally only overruled by appeals to the implicit (or explicit) gaming constitution of understood "spirit of the game" agreed upon by all participants.
This is far closer to the reality of "old school gaming". Basically as far as I could tell, Gary Gygax had 2000 pages worth of rules for AD&D, and 500 pages to fit them in (actually, all the real problems* are in the DMG which is a little more than 1/3 of it). So he sorted them out by coolness and whether he had room to fit them in the books and that was that. You would be surprised at the number of rules that were unheard of on the gaming table. In the introduction, Gygax wrote that the "DM would be creating his own game with his own rules", but noted that you should play something very close to his rules since he has thousands of hours of play-testing and you don't (actually, I suspect that there was little to no playtesting of which rules could be jammed into the last spots, so who really knew what the real "Gygax tested rules" were).

To avoid the appearance of wild inconsistency, the official word was "players aren't supposed to know the rules". Really, check the introduction to the Dungeons Master Guide "[players, keep out:] DM's eyes only", or the "DM's section" of the early Beginner and Expert rules. The "rules" were not for players eyes. In practice, this didn't work (most players could do both), and it certainly didn't help book sales.

[as a shout out to the original topic, AD&D had different rules for men & women (and male and females of other races). Removing these wasn't controversial (unless I missed the screaming in 2e, I didn't hear any about that in 3e). These other things are likely to get grognards to rant and rave.]

Basically, it didn't work (because the players knew the rules and the DMs couldn't create professional quality rules on the spot). Or it only worked for exceptional DMs. This lead to games that were not only rules-heavy, but strove for "rules complete" (3.x as an example) and if that meant taking 6 hours of searching to determine the exact rule for the next 6 seconds, so be it. This also meant that every time a rule "allowed" you to do something cool, it meant all other cases couldn't do said cool thing. As an example, Robin Hood had better slot "ranged sunder" or else there is no way for him to cut the Sherif's noose with his bow (of course Robin had the feat to split the famous arrow, but still). Such things seem an inversion to the point of RPGs, and hopefully some sort of balance will be found.

* psionics are clearly labeled as optional (in the Players Handbook). If you want to wreck your campaign with a lucky roll, go ahead.

[PersonMan]

So the odds of a 90 pound person swinging around huge solid metal axes and greatswords as if they were fencing sabers and doing so while being twig-thin is damn near impossible, because of the way muscles work. If you use them, they get bigger. For lean muscle you need low weight and high repetition. But this doesn't increase maximum weight lifted, it increases endurance.

So your twiggy 90 pound person sprinting around like a madman with daggers or a shortsword/buckler and going at it for hours at a time? Sure. Somewhat plausible.

Throwing around an axe that is half their own weight while being twig thin? Nope. Not gonna happen. They will become jacked sooner or later, unless "Majicks" are involved. That's just how muscles work.

If we're talking about things that are realistic, or at least plausible, why are we talking about swords and axes like they weigh 45 pounds?

Some of the heaviest actually-used swords weighed something like four and a half pounds. It's not like they were bashing people with flagpoles.


If you are overpowered, what fun is the game?

It depends on what part of the game you get enjoyment from, and what you like.

If you like to struggle and face tough challenges, the payoff of overcoming them through use of in-game resources and strategy feels great.

For others, using metagame resources and strategy to craft a character who can overcome obstacles without much issue is where their enjoyment lies - the payoff isn't a hard-won fight, it's the avoidance of the near-death fight by not even being there, and having swapped out the McGuffin while the enemy was still looking for it.

Some people may want a game that explores the impacts of incredible power on relations and the psyche of their character. What does the character whose big goal was to gain fame, fortune and power do when they have surpassed every other living creature in all three? What does the once-lowly-mercenary do when he realizes that he can single-handedly tear down the society that once spat on him? In a game like this, a fight isn't meant to be a challenge, so being 'overpowered' doesn't interfere with the fun.

Hell, some people just want to play winners. They love the scene that establishes the big badass, you know the one where they single-handedly wipe the floor with a group of tough-looking enemies then walk away without breaking a sweat. They want to turn the old paradigm around; rather than the quintessential growth until they can take on the Dark Lord, they want to kick in the door before anyone even knew they were a threat, and start the game off with something like 'now the Dark Lord has fallen; how do you deal with the aftermath?'.


While I haven't had the motivation build a mechanical difference for sexes into my games, I would be happy to play in one that did such.

The aggression (and dishonesty) with which some Piazo staff try to de-emphasize sex has left a very sour taste in my mouth with how I view gender in games. In all honesty, it makes me yearn for more overt differences within them.

What is it they did that rubbed you the wrong way? I haven't followed Pathfinder developments, so this is the first I've heard of something like this.

[CharonsHelper]

Some of the heaviest actually-used swords weighed something like four and a half pounds. It's not like they were bashing people with flagpoles.

While I agree generally - that 45lb swords are silliness - some claymores & zweihanders were as much as 8lbs or so. Heck - the parade zweihanders were 10+lbs (though not meant for real combat).

[Segev]

Just to point out: I don't think anybody in this thread is saying science is a bad thing. Just that sciencism is not science, where "sciencism" is a near-religious belief that a particular orthodox view of reality is inherently "scientific" and that all contrary theories are "anti-science" because they...don't agree with "science" as proclaimed by whatever doctrine to which the sciencist (note that the word is not "scientist") adheres.

Real science does allow for accepted, time-tested theories and even proven fact, but it also allows for such things to be questioned and tested against alternate hypotheses. To reject something merely because it is not part of the orthodox accepted view of "science" is not scientific. It is even worse to reject scientific inquiry as "unscientific" because it could fail to support a desired conclusion.

Unfortunately, politics has desired conclusions and gets upset when science doesn't support them, so will encourage the lauding of any research - no matter how shoddy - which supports the desired conclusion and denounce as "anti-science" (and therefore not even worthy of consideration) any research that does not support (or worse, refutes) the desired conclusion.

Which is NOT science, but politics and, possibly, religion (when it gets to the point that people place their faith so much in the conclusion's truth that they will reject all contrary evidence as disproven by the very fact that it is evidence to the contrary of their faith.)

[Feddlefew]

Just to point out: I don't think anybody in this thread is saying science is a bad thing. Just that sciencism is not science, where "sciencism" is a near-religious belief that a particular orthodox view of reality is inherently "scientific" and that all contrary theories are "anti-science" because they...don't agree with "science" as proclaimed by whatever doctrine to which the sciencist (note that the word is not "scientist") adheres.

Real science does allow for accepted, time-tested theories and even proven fact, but it also allows for such things to be questioned and tested against alternate hypotheses. To reject something merely because it is not part of the orthodox accepted view of "science" is not scientific. It is even worse to reject scientific inquiry as "unscientific" because it could fail to support a desired conclusion.

Unfortunately, politics has desired conclusions and gets upset when science doesn't support them, so will encourage the lauding of any research - no matter how shoddy - which supports the desired conclusion and denounce as "anti-science" (and therefore not even worthy of consideration) any research that does not support (or worse, refutes) the desired conclusion.

Which is NOT science, but politics and, possibly, religion (when it gets to the point that people place their faith so much in the conclusion's truth that they will reject all contrary evidence as disproven by the very fact that it is evidence to the contrary of their faith.)

Well, there's such thing as a meta study (or study of studies), which is used to look at massive amounts of data and/or the results of a large number of experiments. They're pretty gosh darn important for science, especially in fields where their are a large number of confounding variables, such as biology, geology, and social sciences.

We also have statistics. Just because one (or a handful) of studies come to one conclusion doesn't mean they've come to a valid conclusion. For instance, p-values (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P-value) are used to asses the statistical significance of an experiments results. The short version is that the P-value tells us what the odds of randomly getting the results if the null hypothesis (can be summed up as "there is no effect") is the correct one. So, for instance, if p= 0.05, then if the null hypothesis is true, about 5% of the time you could expect the experiment to have those results just from random chance. That's why most experiments in biology aim for around p=0.01 or p=0.001, although time and money are other factors that are considered during experimental design.

So, in short, one or two papers out of thousands isn't impressive, even if they are from peer reviewed journals.

Edit: Anti-science is mostly about creating controversies where their were none, by the way, so as to so the seeds of doubt in the public's mind.

[Satinavian]

Real science does allow for accepted, time-tested theories and even proven fact, but it also allows for such things to be questioned and tested against alternate hypotheses. To reject something merely because it is not part of the orthodox accepted view of "science" is not scientific. It is even worse to reject scientific inquiry as "unscientific" because it could fail to support a desired conclusion.True. But if those alternate hypotheses are proven wrong or at least do agree far less with the measument, real scientists accept that and stick with the proven theory, even if they don't like it. If they have a new idea ornew data, they can question the theory again.
Also real science does not neglect error margines in predictions and tries to disprove the contemporary, improved models to disprove a theory.

Unfortunately, politics has desired conclusions and gets upset when science doesn't support them, so will encourage the lauding of any research - no matter how shoddy - which supports the desired conclusion and denounce as "anti-science" (and therefore not even worthy of consideration) any research that does not support (or worse, refutes) the desired conclusion.

Which is NOT science, but politics and, possibly, religion (when it gets to the point that people place their faith so much in the conclusion's truth that they will reject all contrary evidence as disproven by the very fact that it is evidence to the contrary of their faith.)
I am a physicist. I have followed the discussion for several decades. Have read papers, visited conferences and so on. I am not a climatologist, but i think, i do have some overview about where science is headed.

20 Years ago, global warming and clima models were pretty wild guesses.

15 Years ago the models were crude, the assumptions pretty reckless, the error marges big, the model results varied widely . Global warming as a theory was far from proven or disproven. But it became mayority opinion.

10 Years ago the models were refined, but several completely new clima mechanisms were discovered and had to be investigated to correct the predictions. Global warming was mayority opinion but there were still some credible alternative models that also matched the data. There was scientific debates.

5 Years ago the debate about "Do we have global warming" and "Is a significant amount of it man made" were pretty much over in scientific circles. The debate was now about "How much of it is man made and how much will we able to influence it" and "How will the world change because of the rising temperature". That is because the refined models matched better and better and the newer data from clima measurements wordwide did not fit the non-warmming models at all, Neither was there a single credible model with some other explaination of the sudden temperature rise.

This didn't change a lot in the last years.

But while scientists everntually agreed, in some nations clima change had started to pe part of the politics. And believing in a scientific theory was somehow linked to party affiliation. Those countries are the only ones world-wide where there is still a debate about "Do we actually have global warming" and this debate is completely outside of science. Doesn' mean that journalists don't cite and misinterpret scientific data regularly, but that has no impact on scientific debate, only on non-scientific debate.



So yes, i as a physicist am certain that human made global warming exist. That that deniers either don't have access to real scientific papers about it, don't understand them or are flat out liers.

And it is rich that people which can't produce a credible model that matches the data and still hold the believe that no human made global heating exists, accuse other people with different optinions which far better match the data and thus are preferred by science of orthodoxy, religious behavior and not questioning the own views.

[8BitNinja]

Hey guys, this global warming stuff is getting out of hand

I'm no mod or op, but seriously, we need to cut it out

there is another board to discuss global warming, it's called Mad Science and Grumpy Technology

I also could report this for political and religious discussion, because, despite your arguments, is both political and religious in nature

[obryn]

Unfortunately, politics has desired conclusions and gets upset when science doesn't support them, so will encourage the lauding of any research - no matter how shoddy - which supports the desired conclusion and denounce as "anti-science" (and therefore not even worthy of consideration) any research that does not support (or worse, refutes) the desired conclusion.
That's more or less what you've been doing, though, by parroting claims that the world hasn't warmed in 15 years. It's not simply wrong - it's deliberate misinformation (http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2016/02/01/climate_change_denier_claims_2015_wasn_t_the_hotte st_year.html).

It's not that it's unworthy of consideration - it's been considered, and found to be fantastically wrong.

[obryn]

I also could report this for political and religious discussion, because, despite your arguments, is both political and religious in nature
The fact that politicians and religious figures are arguing about scientific issues doesn't make them political or religious.

[A Tad Insane]

I picked my username because I was rather eccentric compared to my friends, family, and colleagues. This was before I really understood these forums.
---
On topic, while it would definitely help with world building to say '*gender* of *race* are generally *adjective* than *other gender*' or 'only *gender* can be *noun*', unless the setting and group want to follow fluff hard core (Like l5r's battle maidens), the pc should get to be exceptions. Because at the end of the day, most people play these games to be something or someone they either can't be, want to be, or just think would be fun to muck around as.

[8BitNinja]

I picked my username because I was rather eccentric compared to my friends, family, and colleagues. This was before I really understood these forums.
---
On topic, while it would definitely help with world building to say '*gender* of *race* are generally *adjective* than *other gender*' or 'only *gender* can be *noun*', unless the setting and group want to follow fluff hard core (Like l5r's battle maidens), the pc should get to be exceptions. Because at the end of the day, most people play these games to be something or someone they either can't be, want to be, or just think would be fun to muck around as.

This is actually a good idea

[Donnadogsoth]

That's more or less what you've been doing, though, by parroting claims that the world hasn't warmed in 15 years. It's not simply wrong - it's deliberate misinformation (http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2016/02/01/climate_change_denier_claims_2015_wasn_t_the_hotte st_year.html).

It's not that it's unworthy of consideration - it's been considered, and found to be fantastically wrong.

Was it deliberate misinformation or plain incompetence behind the claims that by now we should be experiencing catastrophic rises in sea level? I think Segev mentioned that, perhaps he can give the exact quote.

[obryn]

Was it deliberate misinformation or plain incompetence behind the claims that by now we should be experiencing catastrophic rises in sea level? I think Segev mentioned that, perhaps he can give the exact quote.
Which ones would those be? Science is an iterative process that corrects after its mistakes, and always moves toward increased understanding and improved predictive accuracy.

See Satinavian's post above for a quick rundown. In short, "But people were wrong 20 years ago!" is hardly evidence that the model, after two decades of refinement, is worthless; or that a current, broad scientific consensus is completely wrong.

[Mr Beer]

Can we please stop bitterly arguing about climate change? It's taking the spotlight away from the bitter gender arguments.

[Wardog]

Things like racial penalties to necessary stats in a game that professes "you can play whatever you want!" don't really present true choice. Sure, you can try playing your half-orc wizard (or something analogous), but that's not an interesting choice because the mechanics are constantly sneering at you.

I would think that's more a sign of bad class and/or mechanics design, rather than an inherent problem with stat penalties.

A (half)orc wizard with a penalty to casting stats and a bonus to fighting stats just means that such a wizard would be less good at pure magic than a more typical wizard, but would be better at fighting to compensate.

Now, in D&D 3.x, where:
1) Wizard magic is OP
2) Wizard magic depends solely on INT
3) STR is probably the least generally useful stat
4) Wizards suck at fighting even if they do have a STR bonus
5) Half orcs get a net attribute penalty (-2 to intand char, in exchange for +2 str)
6) Half-orcs get hardly any other bonuses
then playing as a half-orc wizard is deliberately gimping your character.

But in a different system, with different rules, e.g.
* Wizard magic depends on more than just int.
* Including maybe even str for some spells or abilities
* Or magic doesn't depend on int at all.
* It's more reasonable for a wizard to fight in melee
* half-orcs don't get a net penalty to attributes
* half-orcs get more interesting and useful racial bonuses
then a half-orc wizard may play differently to a human wizard, but it isn't a case of the mechanics "snearing at you".

[Segev]

For the record, I've made my point, and I know I'm not going to persuade anybody who believes in man-made global warming otherwise, no matter what sources I cite, because the very fact that they oppose that view will be enough to reject them. Conclusion presumed as premise.

I also know that there are those who will accuse me of the same thing. It has all the earmarks of a religious debate, with exactly as much potential to have beneficial effects on the thread to continue it. My sole reason for even chiming in on it was that an assertion was made which I know to be factually untrue. Despite knowing this will not persuade anybody who is a firm believer, I could not let it go uncontested. Both sides have now been voiced. I doubt further discussion will lead to anything useful.

So I apologize to anybody who hopes I will post further commentary on this; I will not. I probably shouldn't even be posting this one, but I didn't want to leave anybody hanging.

So, how about that other controversial topic?

Anybody want to try to build a fantasy race based on Angler Fish? >_> <_<

[AMFV]

I picked my username because I was rather eccentric compared to my friends, family, and colleagues. This was before I really understood these forums.
---
On topic, while it would definitely help with world building to say '*gender* of *race* are generally *adjective* than *other gender*' or 'only *gender* can be *noun*', unless the setting and group want to follow fluff hard core (Like l5r's battle maidens), the pc should get to be exceptions. Because at the end of the day, most people play these games to be something or someone they either can't be, want to be, or just think would be fun to muck around as.

It depends entirely on what genre you're playing in. How much should the PCs deviate from the norm. If it's a setting where the PCs are not supposed to then, it might be worth thinking very carefully about what you're putting in setting-wise.

[Segev]

It depends entirely on what genre you're playing in. How much should the PCs deviate from the norm. If it's a setting where the PCs are not supposed to then, it might be worth thinking very carefully about what you're putting in setting-wise.

This is the way to look at it. Do you want a setting where PCs bucking norms (particularly gender norms) are a common story element? Then make it a fluff element with only social consequences that dictates the societal norms. This leads to plenty of Drizz't Du'ourdens, at least across multiple parties, because playing "the exception" is fun and interesting to some people, and (especially in the case of gender-based distinctions) proving a point in a fictional setting is also an allure (e.g. the "Scrappy female fighter" proving that women can be just as good as men in a stereotypical medieval society where women "just don't do that").

If you want, on the other hand, the party to reflect and hold to those norms, then put severe mechanical obstacles in the way. In your "boys are mech pilots/girls are MGs" setting, outright forbid boys to have magic and girls to have piloting skills. In your setting where the most common mages are from the Phoenix clan, give the Phoenix clan mage school the best mage mechanics, and give others less good ones. Most mage PCs will then be Phoenix-trained, though some will still come from others. (Take advantage of the differences to theme the others appropriately, too, in mechanics. Just make sure they're less POWERFUL overall, and the allure of optimization will draw the majority of players to play to type rather than against.)

[Marlowe]

Anybody want to try to build a fantasy race based on Angler Fish? >_> <_<

Strange you should mention that. I've wanted for a while to pick all the water-breathing/unbreathing races in D&D and have a campaign involving walking around on the ocean floor.

Like, not the races with an actual Swim speed of course, that would just be too easy.

[A Tad Insane]

It depends entirely on what genre you're playing in. How much should the PCs deviate from the norm. If it's a setting where the PCs are not supposed to then, it might be worth thinking very carefully about what you're putting in setting-wise.

Yes, like I said, while a half orc wizard in eberron would be strange, it's more or less par for the robot-dinosaur-vampire-train course, where as a male doji battle maid would be murder anywhere in the empire

[CharonsHelper]

In your setting where the most common mages are from the Phoenix clan, give the Phoenix clan mage school the best mage mechanics, and give others less good ones. Most mage PCs will then be Phoenix-trained, though some will still come from others. (Take advantage of the differences to theme the others appropriately, too, in mechanics. Just make sure they're less POWERFUL overall, and the allure of optimization will draw the majority of players to play to type rather than against.)

Most MMOs have done that - since allowing players to be exceptions to the rule would lead to said rules being meaningless.

It's a bit old - but Dark Age of Camelot did something similar pretty well - combining with the game's PvP focus. The Hibernia faction's fluff was more magical - they had more magic classes, fewer warrior classes, and their magic classes were slightly more powerful than the average for the game. The Norse faction was the opposite - they had 4 warrior classes to the 2 each the other two factions had, fewer mage classes, and their warriors were a bit more powerful. Their archers were slightly weaker at archery - but also solid in melee. Albion was a mix of the two - with mages marginally better than Norse / weaker than Hibernia & stronger than Norse - warriors vica versa.

This had 2 benefits.

1. It made the game as played match the fluff behind the game. But since each faction could only team with their faction, the Norse mages, though marginally weaker, had no trouble finding groups with their fellow Norse. Same with Hibernia. They still needed tanks even knowing that their tanks were slightly worse.

2. It made the PvP dynamic interesting. Hibernia was always trying to poke at their foes from afar and pick them off, and the Norse generally were always looking for ways to close to melee for a brawl so long as they wouldn't be outnumbered too badly.

[Donnadogsoth]

Which ones would those be? Science is an iterative process that corrects after its mistakes, and always moves toward increased understanding and improved predictive accuracy.

See Satinavian's post above for a quick rundown. In short, "But people were wrong 20 years ago!" is hardly evidence that the model, after two decades of refinement, is worthless; or that a current, broad scientific consensus is completely wrong.

http://www.thenewamerican.com/tech/environment/item/18888-embarrassing-predictions-haunt-the-global-warming-industry

Science can also be hijacked by self-reinforcing money-driven hysteria.

[NoldorForce]

Would you happen to have a link to some more reputable source, such as (for example) the NYT or WSJ? Fringe sources like The New American (owned by the John Birch Society) tend to be a bit biased and in any case would likely stray into politics.

[ImNotTrevor]

GLOBAL WARMING NORMIES GET OUT
REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

Just kidding.

Seriously though, this isn't the place.

[Clistenes]

So, how about that other controversial topic?

Anybody want to try to build a fantasy race based on Angler Fish? >_> <_<

The Japanese are ahead of you, as always... :smalltongue:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6Ek3h4HTRE

[Marlowe]

YOU FOOLS!!! WITH YOUR TALK OF CLIMATE CHANGE!!!
http://images4.fanpop.com/image/photos/16700000/Evil-Ariel-disney-princess-16706173-500-374.jpg
Soon all shall be...under the sea.

[A Tad Insane]

YOU FOOLS!!! WITH YOUR TALK OF CLIMATE CHANGE!!!
http://images4.fanpop.com/image/photos/16700000/Evil-Ariel-disney-princess-16706173-500-374.jpg
Soon all shall be...under the sea.

What! How could we have been flanked by a Disney princess who's always singing? It would take a tactical genius to...

https://camo.derpicdn.net/9fb6542828ab6ba8b753148f36eeeb08a3004c86?url=http% 3A%2F%2F1d4chan.org%2Fimages%2F7%2F7d%2FCreed.gif

[Mechalich]

Anybody want to try to build a fantasy race based on Angler Fish? >_> <_<

This actually exists, in Pathfinder, as the Ceratioidi (http://pathfinder.wikia.com/wiki/Ceratioidi).

[Donnadogsoth]

Would you happen to have a link to some more reputable source, such as (for example) the NYT or WSJ? Fringe sources like The New American (owned by the John Birch Society) tend to be a bit biased and in any case would likely stray into politics.

I don't believe there is any such thing as an unbiased source.

[Marlowe]

What! How could we have been flanked by a Disney princess who's always singing? It would take a tactical genius to...

https://camo.derpicdn.net/9fb6542828ab6ba8b753148f36eeeb08a3004c86?url=http% 3A%2F%2F1d4chan.org%2Fimages%2F7%2F7d%2FCreed.gif

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/47/bf/5e/47bf5ecfb2c05e4d866b43134d9106b2.jpg
Where will you hide? Where will you run?
After the sea's come to claim everyone?
Denial is free, soon you will be,
Part of my world.

[Segev]

YOU FOOLS!!! WITH YOUR TALK OF CLIMATE CHANGE!!!
http://images4.fanpop.com/image/photos/16700000/Evil-Ariel-disney-princess-16706173-500-374.jpg
Soon all shall be...under the sea.


https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/47/bf/5e/47bf5ecfb2c05e4d866b43134d9106b2.jpg
Where will you hide? Where will you run?
After the sea's come to claim everyone?
Denial is free, soon you will be,
Part of my world.

I, for one, welcome our new mermaid underlords. The fact that my army of skeletons don't need to breathe has nothing to do with this. Why do you ask?

[JoeJ]

I, for one, welcome our new mermaid underlords. The fact that my army of skeletons don't need to breathe has nothing to do with this. Why do you ask?

But do mermaids have different stats than mermen?

[obryn]

I don't believe there is any such thing as an unbiased source.
So the conclusion you draw from this is that you might as well go whole hog into buying everything the John Birchers say? Crazy, man.

[Feddlefew]

But do mermaids have different stats than mermen?

It probably doesn't matter that much in the long run. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sequential_hermaphroditism)

[YossarianLives]

I don't believe there is any such thing as an unbiased source.
I really want to go on a rant about the logical implausibility of this.

[Feddlefew]

I don't believe there is any such thing as an unbiased source.

*GHASP* A post modernist!

[lightningcat]

Back on to the original topic...
Would it be bad to have males and females have different bonuses? I would argue no. As long as both are playable. If males get a bonus to strength and females get a penalty, but nothing else in return, then you have a problem. If males get a bonus to strength and females get a bonus to social stat, then you have at least some balance, as long as social stat is useful in the game. In 2e d&d, Charisma is the default dump stat for a reason, and getting a bonus there is likely wasted. But in 3.x, Charisma is useful, and getting a bonus there would be useful at least part of the time. Note, that I'm only speaking of bonuses here, not penalties. That opens a can of worms we left pages back.
On the other hand in games where 1 point of a stat means more mechanically, such as WoD, Exalted, or other Storyteller system games, then this idea really fails, as the bonus is to much, although if someone had a smaller benefit for each side then maybe.
In the hypothetical mecha and magical girls game, then either a simple must be this gender to be this roll, or a bonus to piloting/penalty to magic for males, and the reverse for females could be interesting. Depending on if you want someone to have to fight to be good at something that they are naturally just bad at. Heck, I think that playing a tomboy that just want to pilot mechas would be an interesting character, especially with the drawbacks. On the other hand, if both can be either equally, then only the first to break the social norm is really interesting.

[NoldorForce]

This actually exists, in Pathfinder, as the Ceratioidi (http://pathfinder.wikia.com/wiki/Ceratioidi).I was just thinking that an anglerfish race sounded right up China Mieville's alley considering the grindylow from The Scar. (Unlike in Harry Potter, these grindylow are actually pretty vicious.) And lo and behold, it seems that he has a writing credit on the specific section of the sourcebook those creatures are from. (Basically what I'm saying is that the man writes incredibly weird stuff and that more people should read it.)

[Segev]

So the conclusion you draw from this is that you might as well go whole hog into buying everything the John Birchers say? Crazy, man.

Thank you for proving my point; the only sources you have said you will accept are those which agree with your conclusion, and you conclude that any disagreement must be an invalid source because it disagrees.

[Feddlefew]

Thank you for proving my point; the only sources you have said you will accept are those which agree with your conclusion, and you conclude that any disagreement must be an invalid source because it disagrees.

Well, I can find sources that say time is a cube.

Edit: And that drinking bleach is good for your health and will rid your body of tapeworms. (Do not do this, you will die or strip the lining from your digestive tract.) Oh! And if you inject H202 into your veins it will oxygenate your blood instead of lysing your blood cells and killing you horribly!

And there are lizard people in the white house.

Edit 2: Maybe I'm a lizard person. And science is only what THEY want you to think.

[Satinavian]

Thank you for proving my point; the only sources you have said you will accept are those which agree with your conclusion, and you conclude that any disagreement must be an invalid source because it disagrees.Biased sources are a problem.

Science tries to solve it with peer reviewed scientific journals. Those are often dull reads, and the process is still not able to get rid of all bias, but they are as objective as it gets and not beholden do to local politics.

[Lorsa]

On the topic of male & female with different stats:

Yes, it can be interesting to have a RPG setting where sexual dimorphism plays and important role, and even show up in the statistics.

If you are modeling the differences between human men vs. women and the only conclusion you reach is that women should have a stat penalty to strength, then you should probably check yourself for some innate sexism bias.

A mechanical benefit / drawback based on gender means it will become an optimization choice, something you need to be aware of.

If you are aiming for realism in a fantasy setting, you'll be playing Hogs & Hovels. Very few people want to do that, so you have to accept that fantasy is fantasy.

What else need to be said really?





Thank you for proving my point; the only sources you have said you will accept are those which agree with your conclusion, and you conclude that any disagreement must be an invalid source because it disagrees.

Proving what point exactly? That some people believe not all sources are equal? That's just common sense. But even discounting that, a good source is a good source because it:

a) Explains the method involved in the experiment
b) Clearly shows how the conclusion was reached, using maths, graphs and the like

All this in order for you to be able to redo the experiment, test it yourself, in case you do not believe the author. That's the basis of science, a "do it yourself" method. It encourages you to do it at home, and if you reach differentiating results, to publish them for others to see.

For there to be some progress, this method has been refined a lot over the centuries, to prevent poor experiments and conclusions from taking up space in the debate and thus dragging it down (this is peer-review). It also needs to eventually "move on", once a problem has been properly analyzed and consensus is reached, it is accepted (for now). If you want to change consensus, you need introduce some new piece of important evidence which hasn't investigated before and thus open up the debate again. The important is there because you can't just bring up any random outlier and extrapolate from there, ignoring the vast majority of measurements and overall trend. If science was constantly locked down by a few outliers it would get nowhere.

Now, even if we ignore the fact that The New American isn't a good source for scientific claims, I don't dispute that what it said is true. More than likely, a few scientist have said stupid things, and made erroneous projections. That doesn't refute global warming. The only thing that article does is highlight the problem scientific communication.

Unfortunately, the real scientific debate rarely translates into common discourse. Especially things like Newsweek (which TNA used as an example of giving poor projections) will give you a completely misrepresented view. The further away from the actual scientific debate (which goes on in scientific journals) you get your information from, the more misrepresented the view will be. This is why, if you want to use a source, a better one would be:

http://www.omicsonline.org/earth-science-climatic-change.php

or, if we want to limit ourselves to more "popular" articles on the subject matter:

http://www.skeptic.com/reading_room/how-we-know-global-warming-is-real/?gclid=COL30u6328oCFQhuGwodyDEMTA

(the latter because it was written by an actual climate scientist, notice the lack of bold claims TNA says plague the field)

Climate scientists in specific, generally face a very precarious situation. If they communicate their claims as they are, which would be like "according to current projections, there is a 50% chance that X will happen, which could in turn lead to some problematic consequences, but there's also a 5% chance that Y will happen which will be catastrophic, and 2% chance that Z will happen, which might actually be an improvement", nobody will listen. We humans have a tendency to work that way. Unless the danger is made very clear and very imminent, we have trouble changing our way of life. Just take smoking for example.

Still we really should worry about those 50%, but in order to be heard, the message changes, sometimes from a scientist, but often further down the line from non-scientific channels, to something like "imminent danger of Y". Suddenly people listen and start adjusting their behavior (yay for psychology). However, when Y doesn't happen (you know, 5% chance), the scientist, or even the whole field, looses credibility.

So the precarious situation goes like; be honest and have nobody listen to you, or be bold and get heard. It's tricky, and it's the hardest challenge science has faced so far; how to communicate its findings to the public.

But to sum up the global warming science, it goes like this:

Human activity has increased the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, which in turn has a global warming effect on the planet. We should think about alternate solutions to burning massive amounts of fossil fuel, and gradually switch our energy consumption to phase out sources which have a large impact on CO2 atmospheric levels. While we don't fully understand the effects of the global warming, many of our projections lead to unwanted consequences, and its better to be safe than sorry.

That's it.

(and I mean that's it as that's the summation, not that's it as in I'm ending the discussion or some such)

EDIT: changed "number of greenhouse gases" to "amount of..." and added the parenthesis at the bottom of the post

[Frozen_Feet]

If you are aiming for realism in a fantasy setting, you'll be playing Hogs & Hovels.

This is a stupid generalization. Nevermind that Middle aAges =/= Dirt Ages, as it's often simplistically portrayed, there are many other eras to set fantasy in.

Think of Disney's Mulan, or the manga Brides. Those have value to this thread in other ways too, as they are examples of stories where different social and physical positions between men and women are key sources of drama, yet still are ultimately positive about women.

[8BitNinja]

Different gender attributes and rolls can still be respectful to women. There have been plenty of works out there that are very respectful to women while still establishing societal roles in-universe

You can still be respectful about it and still take away a strength stat

[Lorsa]

This is a stupid generalization. Nevermind that Middle aAges =/= Dirt Ages, as it's often simplistically portrayed, there are many other eras to set fantasy in.

Think of Disney's Mulan, or the manga Brides. Those have value to this thread in other ways too, as they are examples of stories where different social and physical positions between men and women are key sources of drama, yet still are ultimately positive about women.

It was a reference to Jay R's earlier comment about a hypothetical realistic historical game. I don't think he implied that it was inherently dirty, but rather that there are many realistic features we might not want in a game, and that differentiating stats based on sex might be one of them.

Still, as I said, it could be interesting to include sexual dimorphism in the rules, if you do it for some story-based purpose. Exploring societal gender roles, without the need for mechanical benefits/drawbacks, could be even more interesting, as highlighted by your examples. Just make sure you do it with the right people (the ones who enjoy it).

[obryn]

Thank you for proving my point; the only sources you have said you will accept are those which agree with your conclusion, and you conclude that any disagreement must be an invalid source because it disagrees.
Uhhhh no.

Bad science isn't bad because it disagrees with my preferred conclusions. Bad science is bad because it is badly done. That's the great thing about science; I might want the earth to be flat, but science doesn't care one way or the other.

[Segev]

Biased sources are a problem.

Science tries to solve it with peer reviewed scientific journals. Those are often dull reads, and the process is still not able to get rid of all bias, but they are as objective as it gets and not beholden do to local politics.

Unfortunately, the peer review process is highly corruptible, and often corrupted, by politics.

Leaving global warming aside, I can point to personal experience. I was able to identify one of my reviewers for an article I submitted to a conference by name, which you're not supposed to be able to do, by his review of my paper. Specifically, he rejected it with a note that it should be accepted if his recommendations were followed. His primary objection was that I had an "insufficient" set of papers cited to back up my research, and he named one paper in particular that, due to its lack, was a clear sign to him that I hadn't done sufficient background research.

The truth was, that particular paper had started me on the path that led to that article and beyond, because it was the first and only paper I could find on generating arbitrary values with spiking neurons. However, it was inspirational only in that it was an absolutely terrible approach which was actively worse than all non-spiking methods, and was a totally useless approach to spiking methods since it didn't actually require spiking behavior; it just was, if you took the extraneous steps out, a thresholding algorithm that assigned each possible output of the network to a single neuron, resulting in a really poor-resolution output that was overly complicated for the performance and could be done EXACTLY identically more simply (but no more usefully, because the approach was awful).

I hadn't cited it because I hadn't USED it. So I knew without a doubt that the author of it was that reviewer; he's the ONLY person who would have thought that paper had any bearing on my article, since my approach and methods were entirely unrelated.

Nevertheless, because he wanted his paper cited, I shoehorned in a sentence acknowledging that paper as an early effort that was an example of an...alternative...approach. Avoiding calling it fancy-words-for-stupid took a lot of willpower.

And that's just a MINOR example of how the peer review process is corruptible: authors who are considered sufficiently expert on a subject to judge a paper's worth also have a horse in the race regarding the content of the paper. Peer review is, at BEST and its MOST HONORABLE, weighted towards self-reinforcement of whatever the "ancestral" bias in a field is. Not even the majority; a minority of experts can reign tyrannically over the peer review process by being the existing recognized experts and gatekeeping such that new ideas that contradict their own preconceptions and preferred conclusions are not allowed to be published. Without being published, you don't get asked to peer review.

So, imagine for a moment that Young Earth Creationists were the minority but old guard of biological and archeological science. They're the majority, if not exclusive, source of peer reviewers for "respectable" journals of scientific publication (and associated conferences). It doesn't matter how many "crackpot" evolutionist and old-earth papers they see, they can and will find flaws in the methods, assumptions, and evidence presented which will allow them to reject those papers as "not scientific."

Now add in government grants. Let's say that the Evangelical Young Earth Creationist Council is the biggest collection of lobbyist groups in the world of science, and they're lobbying the NSF and its sister organizations in the US government and around the world to give grants to "scientific" research, but not to "unscientific" research into "crackpot" theories. Money is thus highly available for any research project into proving Young Earth Creationism, but you won't get a grant if you dare voice a contrary opinion about the age of the earth or the evolution of life. After all, those theories are unscientific, anti-science, biased crackpot nonsense, according to the powers that be.

Anecdote time, again: There are buzzwords and research topics you include in anything you want to get published and/or funded. Every single paper I wrote in my Ph.D. program had to include the phrase "green energy" at least once, if not once per section. "Sustainable" is another popular money-maker. This wasn't an official order, mind; it's just that my advisor would find a way to work it in if I didn't, no matter what, and pretty much every paper presented on anything resembling my topic would mention it at every single professional conference I attended.

This is because those are the buzzwords that fed the egos and political aims of the people who decided what research projects got what grant awards.

Academia is extremely political, both in the "office political backstabbing" meaning AND in the "government policy and political discussion" meaning. It's heavily dependent on government money handed out by agencies which answer to politicians who use the research those agencies fund to back their political agendas and policy preferences. You no doubt have concerns about any source of research funded by a private corporation; I'm telling you that you should be equally concerned about government-funded research.

The peer review process is imminently corruptible and inherently biased towards preserving the dominant POLITICAL viewpoint. It's why it takes generations for even pure physics model improvements to permeate the scientific realm: scientists and researchers are wedded to their pet theories, and they, sometimes in spite of themselves, dismiss anything that disproves them as "unscientific" or "obviously wrong." Combine it with a political agenda that wants to drape itself in the mantle of "science," and it becomes easy to dismiss anything, no matter the facts, which disputes the desired conclusion as "anti-science," because the "consensus" of scientists (as represented by the old guard with all the money who reject anything which threaten their position as gatekeepers of the money and sole arbiters of fact) says so.

In short: all sources ARE biased to one degree or another. Just because you think it isn't doesn't mean you're right, and if it summarily rejects a point of view as "anti-science," it probably isn't all that scientific in the first place. Assuming your conclusion is true and then rejecting any evidence which disputes it as "anti-science" is, itself, the definition of unscientific.

[Segev]

Uhhhh no.

Bad science isn't bad because it disagrees with my preferred conclusions. Bad science is bad because it is badly done. That's the great thing about science; I might want the earth to be flat, but science doesn't care one way or the other.

Absolutely! And you may want global warming to be true for your own political agenda and/or because you hate the idea that you might have been duped, but that doesn't make it so, no matter how much you cling to proven hoaxed data from East Anglia University nor to computer models which have never been demonstrated to be accurate under any experiment conducted. "15 of the warmest years in recorded history happened in the last 20 years" isn't very persuasive when the last 15 years haven't demonstrated any rise, but all models every year for the last 30 have predicted we'd see a near-meteoric rise through all 15 of them. We may be PEAKING from a warming period.

(I personally hope not; I like coming out of the mini ice age we had from the 1500s through the 1900s; it tends to lead to larger crop yields and more prosperity in more climes than otherwise.)

To me, the most likely theory behind what influences the change in temperature and climate on the Earth has little to do with human activity, at least on a global scale, and more to do with Solar activity. Especially since our best measurements of Martian temperatures indicate that Mars follows similar temperature trends to Earth, globally. Which, if you believe Man is responsible for Earth's global warming, I suppose you've got compelling evidence of industrialized sentient life on Mars.

[Satinavian]

peer-review is not without problems. I have made similar experiences. But it is still far better than everything elso.

Also a paper challanging an established theory and providing numbers/evidence will get noticed because of that. Even if multiple groups around the world don't believe it and want to actively disprove it, it gets read, distributed and cited. A lot. And people will find matching/contradicting data.

Even if there is some corruption going on with "If you cite me, i will cite you/approve your article" and even if funding of science is still dependend on politics, there is no wordwide conspiracy channeling science in certain directions.

If proponents of a model can't get peer reviewed articles out, even if submitting to several magazines, they most likely don't have compelling arguments. And if people dismiss the peer reviewed journals in favor of political popular science articles, because "the scientists of the whole world are corrupt, mislead, blind and deaf to compelling arguments", well, i do call them unscientific and anti-science.

[Frozen_Feet]

It was a reference to Jay R's earlier comment about a hypothetical realistic historical game. I don't think he implied that it was inherently dirty, but rather that there are many realistic features we might not want in a game, and that differentiating stats based on sex might be one of them.

And what about when we might want them in a game?

For example, if I was to make Bride's Story: the RPG, it would be completely proper and in line with the source material to do research on average height, weight and fitness, of Central Asian peoples in 19th century and the choose the scale of stats to reflect that reality. Those realistic features are what I might want, because they allow the game to produce situations like those in the source material.


Exploring societal gender roles, without the need for mechanical benefits/drawbacks, could be even more interesting, as highlighted by your examples.

This statement is of the sort that just makes me stare at the screen in bafflement. In a storygame, your actions in play are constrained by the narrative structure and the role you have. These are not in any way less harsh than mechanical benefits or drawbacks would be, if anything, they are that game type's mechanics. And "one of you is playing Mulan" is actually far more limiting than "you can't roll over 18/50 Strength for human female fighter".

In contrast to many others here, I'll note though that one being more limiting than the other doesn't mean the former would make a worse premise for a game. I'm primarily a convention GM these days and for speed of play make heavy use of both pregenerated and randomly generated characters. These have not proven to be crippling flaws of game design! Letting a player create a character from scratch or allowing players complete freedom of concept are not actually vital elements to an RPG. I know why they're popular, but you can have a good, even great, game without them.

[Apricot]

Oh, please, can we just not do the entire subjectivity spiral? I know it's in vogue, but that doesn't make it a valid argument in the slightest. I mean, here, let me lay it out for you.

Premise: every source has some level of bias.
Conclusion: every source has infinite bias.

That just doesn't follow in any universe. And sure, you can do the longer form of the argument, too:

1. We judge the veracity of a statement based on the veracity of other statements.
2. The veracity of those statements is further based on the veracity of additional statements.
3. Therefore, all veracity is just a circular argument.
4. A circular argument is fallacious, and therefore truth does not exist.

And then you act like this hasn't been thought of centuries ago at the very least and that nobody has ever done serious epistemology in the entire course of human history. Fun fact: they have, and this objection is generally considered weak. The way you get around it is pretty simple, too. The argument in question (that of the truth of the world) isn't circular, but rather has the nature of a network. It doesn't rely on each statement only being verified by a single other statement and only verifying a single other statement itself, but instead relies on very robust and redundant systems of connection. Each statement is supported by several other statements, and supports several other statements in turn. The reason why a circular argument is bad is that you can negate a single fact within it and bring the whole of it crashing down (this is under the assumption that objective reality takes the form of brute fact), making it inherently unstable. The kind of networked epistemology that we see in scientific understanding does not have this weakness, because you can negate countless facts and still have the system on the whole work properly. In order to disrupt it, you need to offer a system that has even more redundancy and even more ability to withstand disruption. And quite bluntly, the people who go against the mainstream never tend to do that.

It kind of appalls me to see people taking this super-subjectivity seriously. It's like they learned the basics of reading sources in light of their bias but were too lazy to think past that initial step.

[obryn]

Absolutely! And you may want global warming to be true for your own political agenda and/or because you hate the idea that you might have been duped, but that doesn't make it so, no matter how much you cling to proven hoaxed data from East Anglia University nor to computer models which have never been demonstrated to be accurate under any experiment conducted. "15 of the warmest years in recorded history happened in the last 20 years" isn't very persuasive when the last 15 years haven't demonstrated any rise, but all models every year for the last 30 have predicted we'd see a near-meteoric rise through all 15 of them. We may be PEAKING from a warming period.
Why are you still going with this '15 years' bit when it's for one measurement of one layer of the atmosphere (http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2016/02/01/climate_change_denier_claims_2015_wasn_t_the_hotte st_year.html) and been rather thoroughly debunked (http://climatefeedback.org/evaluation/james-taylor-2015-was-not-even-close-to-hottest-year-on-record/)?

[Donnadogsoth]

So the conclusion you draw from this is that you might as well go whole hog into buying everything the John Birchers say? Crazy, man.

I'm saying I have no reason to devalue them over the controlled media.

[Segev]

peer-review is not without problems. I have made similar experiences. But it is still far better than everything elso.I know. It's frustrating. It reminds me of an old saw: "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others."



If proponents of a model can't get peer reviewed articles out, even if submitting to several magazines, they most likely don't have compelling arguments. And if people dismiss the peer reviewed journals in favor of political popular science articles, because "the scientists of the whole world are corrupt, mislead, blind and deaf to compelling arguments", well, i do call them unscientific and anti-science.That's not the issue; the issue is that the biases are so strong that if you don't get published in the "right" journal, you're rejected by the side of the debate that disagrees with the prevailing bias of the journal in which you do get published.

If you're not published in "Young Earth Creationist Science Journal of Total Truth," your paper on evolution and archeology will be rejected as "not serious" by those who believe in the conclusions presumed by YECSJoTT. If you're not published in "Darwin's Journal of Archeological Certainty," your paper with compelling evidence that Egypitians rode Brachiosaurs into combat, which is why the chariots got pulled across the Red Sea but the drivers drowned, will be ignored as "unserious" by those who refuse to believe that Brachiosaurs existed contemporaneously with Egyptians, no matter what fossil evidence you may have. "Clearly, a hoax believed only by YECs."

(I am using deliberately ridiculous examples, please do not think I am supporting any particular view in the above, but assume for a moment that there is compelling evidence in both articles.)

[Donnadogsoth]

Back on to the original topic...
Would it be bad to have males and females have different bonuses? I would argue no. As long as both are playable. If males get a bonus to strength and females get a penalty, but nothing else in return, then you have a problem. If males get a bonus to strength and females get a bonus to social stat, then you have at least some balance, as long as social stat is useful in the game. In 2e d&d, Charisma is the default dump stat for a reason, and getting a bonus there is likely wasted. But in 3.x, Charisma is useful, and getting a bonus there would be useful at least part of the time. Note, that I'm only speaking of bonuses here, not penalties. That opens a can of worms we left pages back.
On the other hand in games where 1 point of a stat means more mechanically, such as WoD, Exalted, or other Storyteller system games, then this idea really fails, as the bonus is to much, although if someone had a smaller benefit for each side then maybe.
In the hypothetical mecha and magical girls game, then either a simple must be this gender to be this roll, or a bonus to piloting/penalty to magic for males, and the reverse for females could be interesting. Depending on if you want someone to have to fight to be good at something that they are naturally just bad at. Heck, I think that playing a tomboy that just want to pilot mechas would be an interesting character, especially with the drawbacks. On the other hand, if both can be either equally, then only the first to break the social norm is really interesting.

Shouldn't women get a compensatory bonus to stats given that men are typically taller than them? Height could be an advantage on an adventure, no?

[Feddlefew]

Shouldn't women get a compensatory bonus to stats given that men are typically taller than them? Height could be an advantage on an adventure, no?

Women are typically shorter than men, giving them the advantage "can fit through smaller passages", which could be an advantage on an adventure, no?

[8BitNinja]

First off, shut up about global warming,you are on the wrong board, if you want to argue that, make your own thread on the science and technology board

Now going to what I was saying, gender roles and stats could provide something interesting to the world, such as societal pressures, meeting certain expectations, and a new part of the order/chaos spectrum

But it could also go horribly wrong, you can either be super misogynist about it, or super misandrist, either way, you are demeaning 50% of the world's population

[AMFV]

Women are typically shorter than men, giving them the advantage "can fit through smaller passages", which could be an advantage on an adventure, no?

Women also have higher body fat and lower caloric requirements as well as less mass. So they'd theoretically survive longer in a starvation situation.

[Lorsa]

And what about when we might want them in a game?

For example, if I was to make Bride's Story: the RPG, it would be completely proper and in line with the source material to do research on average height, weight and fitness, of Central Asian peoples in 19th century and the choose the scale of stats to reflect that reality. Those realistic features are what I might want, because they allow the game to produce situations like those in the source material.

If you want them, then you should include them, obviously. Not all games are made to use equal rules, after all.



This statement is of the sort that just makes me stare at the screen in bafflement. In a storygame, your actions in play are constrained by the narrative structure and the role you have. These are not in any way less harsh than mechanical benefits or drawbacks would be, if anything, they are that game type's mechanics. And "one of you is playing Mulan" is actually far more limiting than "you can't roll over 18/50 Strength for human female fighter".

In contrast to many others here, I'll note though that one being more limiting than the other doesn't mean the former would make a worse premise for a game. I'm primarily a convention GM these days and for speed of play make heavy use of both pregenerated and randomly generated characters. These have not proven to be crippling flaws of game design! Letting a player create a character from scratch or allowing players complete freedom of concept are not actually vital elements to an RPG. I know why they're popular, but you can have a good, even great, game without them.

It's interesting what causes bafflement and what doesn't.

I don't think I said there were any less harsh, I think my point was more than if you can explore such contraints on a story level, even be the one to "break the mold" so to speak, without having the rest of the party grumble at you for making an unoptimized choice (which, by reading some threads on this forum, many do), it can be more fun than simply having mechanical drawbacks.

I'm not sure what is so baffling about it?

In any case, I am sure I will have a game somewhere, at some time, which uses sex-based stats. We'll see what type of game it will be.

[8BitNinja]

Women also have higher body fat and lower caloric requirements as well as less mass. So they'd theoretically survive longer in a starvation situation.

So give them a higher "metabolism" stat?

[AMFV]

So give them a higher "metabolism" stat?

Well lower if we're being technical. Better at least in terms of not needing to eat as much. In the real world this comes with the disadvantage of gaining weight more easily. Which isn't usually a concern in RPGs, although neither is extreme starvation typically.

[Takewo]

Sure, you are right, it is a bit of value-based if you consider this an improvement or not. But one statistic I think highlights very well what science has done is the child mortality, how many that dies before the age of 5.

In the beginning of the 18th century here in Sweden, that was about 33%. Today it is 0.3%. That's what science has done for us; most of us wouldn't even be alive to discuss it.

Science can never give you The Truth. That much is for sure. But it can certainly give you the untruth along with our currently best guess. Of course our current understanding of things can and will be challenged and changed. That's the nature of science, it's a work in progress, an iteration to increase the number of things we know are false and give us a better guess.

Being part of the process and coming up with new ideas, experiments, measurements and models will help us reach even higher levels of knowledge. Claiming that most of it is rubbish isn't doing humanity any favors.

See, I think we've got a bit of a misunderstanding here. First of all, let me say that the fact that I do not think that science is the best thing that has ever happened to humanity does not, in any way, mean that I think that it is not good. I think that science is an excellent tool.

Now, I wasn't attacking science as a way to bring improvements in well-being but as a way to show truth. I'm not talking about function but about ontology.

[Donnadogsoth]

Women are typically shorter than men, giving them the advantage "can fit through smaller passages", which could be an advantage on an adventure, no?

True. Also, men's strength advantage can be balanced by a social tendency towards chivalry, if we feel the need to balance everything.

[AMFV]

True. Also, men's strength advantage can be balanced by a social tendency towards chivalry, if we feel the need to balance everything.

True, although balancing physical stuff with soci stuff is tricky since PCs are more likely to break social rules, also physical rules are harder to get around.

[Segev]

True, although balancing physical stuff with soci stuff is tricky since PCs are more likely to break social rules, also physical rules are harder to get around.

In a game, this is only true insofar as the social rules are not mechanically enforced, and the physical rules are.

If you've got an Authority attribute that men can take higher than women to represent the patriarchy, and it gives you concrete power to compel obedience from other characters, but the game only suggests that women are usually smarter but weaker than men, while the rules allow both to have the same maximum stats in all attributes...

Then the PCs are less likely to break social rules than get around the physical ones.

[8BitNinja]

In a game, this is only true insofar as the social rules are not mechanically enforced, and the physical rules are.

If you've got an Authority attribute that men can take higher than women to represent the patriarchy, and it gives you concrete power to compel obedience from other characters, but the game only suggests that women are usually smarter but weaker than men, while the rules allow both to have the same maximum stats in all attributes...

Then the PCs are less likely to break social rules than get around the physical ones.

Social rules are enforced, it's called order/chaos

[Segev]

Social rules are enforced, it's called order/chaos

Depends on the game. In D&D, which I assume is the one to which you're referring, it's only barely enforced, since alignment is descriptive rather than restrictive. The only enforcement is that some spells interact with it.

[Feddlefew]

Well lower if we're being technical. Better at least in terms of not needing to eat as much. In the real world this comes with the disadvantage of gaining weight more easily. Which isn't usually a concern in RPGs, although neither is extreme starvation typically.

Constitution is the stat used for how long D&D characters can go without eating (it's 3 days then a constitution check with DC of 10 + number of days without food); other systems may differ, though.

(As a side note, it's less that women have an easier time gaining weight and more that they have a harder time losing it, which is an important distinction in medicine but probably doesn't mater for our discussion.)

Edit: After thinking about it more, the average difference between male and female humans is probably less than the difference between, say, the average difference between half-orc and a human male, or a human female and an elf, or vice versa. Humans just aren't very sexually dimorphic, and the average human D&D characters are practically superhuman.

[AMFV]

Constitution is the stat used for how long D&D characters can go without eating (it's 3 days then a constitution check with DC of 10 + number of days without food); other systems may differ, though.


Con wouldn't work as well though since it gives bonuses to things that men are better at. Hiking or running over distance for example.



(As a side note, it's less that women have an easier time gaining weight and more that they have a harder time losing it, which is an important distinction in medicine but probably doesn't mater for our discussion.)

If we're bring technical its that a woman of the same weight as a particular man will have a lower TDEE all other factors being equal, which means that if they eat the same amount the woman will gain more weight. Meaning that it is easier for a woman to gain fat than it is for a man. The man will have an easier time pitting on muscle pounds thanks to the greater amount of test in his system and typically larger bone structure. Also highet levels of estrogen promotes fat retention whereas higher levels of testosterone limits or prevents it.

Conversely this means that women will also have a harder time losing the weight since they will have to restrict calories more significantly, but the reverse also applies.

[NoldorForce]

I'm saying I have no reason to devalue them over the controlled media.Oh no, the lizard people are coming! You heard it here, folks! :smalleek:

On topic, as The Glyphstone said in the second post fiddling around with different modifiers based on sex is a huge can of worms. It's very easy to get wrong (by falling into/reinforcing stereotypes), very often fails to actually model reality (because, barring stuff like Phoenix Command, all elfgames are abstractions to one degree or another), and rarely offers something meaningful to the game. Establishing suggested roles (based on societal norms or whatever) can be more interesting, but of course there you'll want to do your homework. As with any mechanic, just ask yourself what this might offer to the gameplay experience, both for good and for ill.

[YossarianLives]

So give them a higher "metabolism" stat?
I want to make an RPG with really weird statistics like 'metabolism', 'ego', 'generosity', and so forth.

[CharonsHelper]

I want to make an RPG with really weird statistics like 'metabolism', 'ego', 'generosity', and so forth.

Scrooge took a dump stat?

[AMFV]

I want to make an RPG with really weird statistics like 'metabolism', 'ego', 'generosity', and so forth.

That would be awesome! You could have a skin tone stat too that fits with the absurd type theme.

[Segev]

That would be awesome! You could have a skin tone stat too that fits with the absurd type theme.

Your skin tone stat is, obviously, given in hexadecimal.

[Warrnan]

From what I've learned in anthropology in college, males are roughly 15% stronger than females, on average, due to manual labor in most primitive societies. Women however have gained great stamina from childbirth. It is biologically true that women are less sensitive to pain.

To reflect my meager knowledge of the evolutionary developments in human biology. I give male pcs +1 strength and females +1 constitution.

[AMFV]

From what I've learned in anthropology in college, males are roughly 15% stronger than females, on average, due to manual labor in most primitive societies. Women however have gained great stamina from childbirth. It is biologically true that women are less sensitive to pain.

To reflect my meager knowledge of the evolutionary developments in human biology. I give male pcs +1 strength and females +1 constitution.

You don't really gain any endurance from childbirth. Which is why male marathon records are so much faster. And why there are so many more male ultra marathoners

[SimonMoon6]

I want to make an RPG with really weird statistics like 'metabolism', 'ego', 'generosity', and so forth.

I've often wanted to make a game system with various mental attributes broken down, so that there would be different kinds of intelligence (creativity, quick thinking, logic, education, etc), and some things would be both advantageous and disadvantageous. Like, for example, stubbornness would mean that you can resist a lot of attempts to change your mind (mind control, charisma/persuasion, etc), but you're not open to new ideas, so you have a hard time learning new things and people would find you unpleasant since you're too stubborn to listen to them, so you would have penalties to trying to persuade people to like you or do things for you.

[Mr Beer]

I've often wanted to make a game system with various mental attributes broken down, so that there would be different kinds of intelligence (creativity, quick thinking, logic, education, etc), and some things would be both advantageous and disadvantageous. Like, for example, stubbornness would mean that you can resist a lot of attempts to change your mind (mind control, charisma/persuasion, etc), but you're not open to new ideas, so you have a hard time learning new things and people would find you unpleasant since you're too stubborn to listen to them, so you would have penalties to trying to persuade people to like you or do things for you.

Doesn't Rolemaster have a bunch of stats? Maybe start there.

[Donnadogsoth]

From what I've learned in anthropology in college, males are roughly 15% stronger than females, on average, due to manual labor in most primitive societies. Women however have gained great stamina from childbirth. It is biologically true that women are less sensitive to pain.

To reflect my meager knowledge of the evolutionary developments in human biology. I give male pcs +1 strength and females +1 constitution.

Are these pain sensitivity tests conducted on people engaged in fearful enterprise, or are they conducted in a sedate laboratory setting? Pain per se doesn't incapacitate, from what I know, neurological shock does. Confusion, biochemistry, and fear. Someone who's less or even in-sensitive to pain might still be so afraid and vulnerable in combat that even a small shock might prove incapacitating. Contrariwise, someone who is very sensitive to pain ordinarily might shrug off big shocks at the time for being so focussed at the task at hand.

[CharonsHelper]

It is biologically true that women are less sensitive to pain.

See - I've read that women have a higher baseline tolerance, but that men can gain pain tolerance faster. So - if consistently in situations where getting hurt, the male will eventually have a higher pain tolerance.

Of course - childbirth itself is incredibly painful - though the vast majority of women in the industrialized world get epidurals and don't really go through it. Even aside from that - their bodies pump them full of endorphins to help make it sort of bearable.

[goto124]

fiddling around with different modifiers based on sex is a huge can of worms. It's very easy to get wrong (by falling into/reinforcing stereotypes), very often fails to actually model reality (because, barring stuff like Phoenix Command, all elfgames are abstractions to one degree or another), and rarely offers something meaningful to the game. Establishing suggested roles (based on societal norms or whatever) can be more interesting, but of course there you'll want to do your homework. As with any mechanic, just ask yourself what this might offer to the gameplay experience, both for good and for ill.

And we're still arguing over the 'truth' of certain biological differences between the sexes.

What situation would sexual dimorphism (of the biological kind, as opposed to societal gender-based roles, it can come in later but one thing at a time, please!) contribute to the 'feel' of the setting? Non-human examples are welcome!

[CharonsHelper]

What situation would sexual dimorphism (of the biological kind, as opposed to societal gender-based roles, it can come in later but one thing at a time, please!) contribute to the 'feel' of the setting? Non-human examples are welcome!

Frankly - the reason why I started this thread was because I'm working on a space western RPG where I was considering making a couple classes which get Brawn (sort of Str with some HP/Fort save equivilent factors added in) as a primary stat male only and making the psion classes female only. *shrug* I thought it'd be interesting to have a sort of cult focused around female psions and their trying to create more.

Psions in the setting are created somewhat randomly when pregnant women travel through the warp - sometimes said kids eventually become psions. Knowing this - some women travel extensively when pregnant. I thought it might add something to the setting if they also tried to be pregnant with a specific gender.

[cobaltstarfire]

Are these pain sensitivity tests conducted on people engaged in fearful enterprise, or are they conducted in a sedate laboratory setting? Pain per se doesn't incapacitate, from what I know, neurological shock does. Confusion, biochemistry, and fear.


Studies done by the armed forces have found that women are better decision makers in high stress situations, though they are typically more susceptible to death via injury because of their lower body mass/smaller bone structure.

[goto124]

Ah, so the sexual dimorphism is part of the setting!

What's your current explanation for why only males have the Brawn stat and why only females get to have psion powers? Since you mention psionic power affecting pregnancy, maybe that power comes from the womb? Complete with Woooooooooooooooomb sound effect! Nah, too silly for anything but a comedy.

No idea for the Brawn stat though, that's a bit too close to the Str argument that's already taken place in this argument.

[CharonsHelper]

What's your current explanation for why only males have the Brawn stat and why only females get to have psion powers?

Everyone has the Brawn stat. Every class has primary, secondary, and tertiary stats. Every level you get stat points to buy them with - the secondary cost double and the tertiary cost triple. Nothing prevents any class from jacking up their Brawn - but it's generally not a good idea to spend too much on it if it's a tertiary.

When I considered making the psion classes female only I was considering making the classes which get Brawn as a primary stat male only as a sort of balancing act. (I thought of the female psion thing before considering making others male only.) Considering the drama in this thread - I probably will drop the idea of certain genders being disallowed from certain classes. lol

[AMFV]

Studies done by the armed forces have found that women are better decision makers in high stress situations, though they are typically more susceptible to death via injury because of their lower body mass/smaller bone structure.

Could you cite those? The only study I'm familiar with is the Marine Infantry one which showed women underperforming in every single category except for one (machine gun "talking" drills).

If you're referring to FITREPs or NCOERs, those are often inflated for women, in order to meet quotas or because they have markedly easier PFT requirements.

[goto124]

Considering the drama in this thread - I probably will drop the idea of certain genders being disallowed from certain classes. lol

Don't! I've already spotted several people who support gender-restricted classes for the flavor of the setting. Just come up with good justifications for the restriction of the classes, and you're set.

Since classes affect your stats so much, and people get angry over the relationship between stats and sexes, yea you've got to be careful. Psionic power is sufficiently 'unrealistic' (as in 'does not exist IRL for a 'how realistic is it really' argument to occur), Brawn can be an issue.

Someone else suggested refluffing Brawn as a Dragonball-Z or 'chi' type of magic, though how this fits a Space Western, I'm not sure.

[BootStrapTommy]

Someone else suggested refluffing Brawn as a Dragonball-Z or 'chi' type of magic, though how this fits a Space Western, I'm not sure.According to Muse, this is how it fits (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3Yc3HhSl1Q).

[cobaltstarfire]

Could you cite those? The only study I'm familiar with is the Marine Infantry one which showed women underperforming in every single category except for one (machine gun "talking" drills).

If you're referring to FITREPs or NCOERs, those are often inflated for women, in order to meet quotas or because they have markedly easier PFT requirements.

Not at all, if I could remember the sources of many particular things it'd be nice though. It's not something I'm really interested enough in to go digging to be honest. So it could be any of those things you've mentioned, and you'd probably know better than me.

The only other thing I can remember from it is that the lower body mass thing was a big enough issue to consider the average women a liability in the battle field, and is one of the reasons women aren't allowed into most combat positions.

[CharonsHelper]

Since classes affect your stats so much, and people get angry over the relationship between stats and sexes, yea you've got to be careful.

Yeah - the system doesn't have anything like BaB or base saves, so how expensive the various stats are is a big part of differentiating the classes. When I was thinking that the psion classes would be female only (at least for humans - which are the only playable species; most alien species kinda suck in combat anyway), I was thinking what classes I should make male only to balance - and thought the primary Brawn classes since men are generally stronger... without realizing that it was a potential landmine. lol

(For one thing - it will randomly make people start arguing about global warming!)

[YossarianLives]

Don't! I've already spotted several people who support gender-restricted classes for the flavor of the setting. Just come up with good justifications for the restriction of the classes, and you're set.

Since classes affect your stats so much, and people get angry over the relationship between stats and sexes, yea you've got to be careful. Psionic power is sufficiently 'unrealistic' (as in 'does not exist IRL for a 'how realistic is it really' argument to occur), Brawn can be an issue.
I agree with this! I think that gender-based abilities can be done well, even very well, and can contribute quite a lot to a system/setting. I just think that dropping an arbitrary -2 to strength is boring and generally a bad idea. Regardless of how accurate it is compared to the real world.

[Donnadogsoth]

Everyone has the Brawn stat. Every class has primary, secondary, and tertiary stats. Every level you get stat points to buy them with - the secondary cost double and the tertiary cost triple. Nothing prevents any class from jacking up their Brawn - but it's generally not a good idea to spend too much on it if it's a tertiary.

When I considered making the psion classes female only I was considering making the classes which get Brawn as a primary stat male only as a sort of balancing act. (I thought of the female psion thing before considering making others male only.) Considering the drama in this thread - I probably will drop the idea of certain genders being disallowed from certain classes. lol

Suggestion: have all "warp" pregnancies spontaneously divide into twins, always one male and one female. The female embryo because of a resonance with the mother develops this "psion" which I'm guessing is some kind of psychic ability, and the female embryo itself proceeds to alter the structure of the male embryo so as to create a literal "big brother" for her, as magicians need guards. Their relationship would be close, identical twins, and the prospect of losing one's twin grim, and the basis for some lost souls or people seeking compensatory relationships for those who have.

[cobaltstarfire]

That's a really cool idea Donnadogsworth.

That's all I had to say, don't have anything else to add. :smallsmile:

[CharonsHelper]

I agree with this! I think that gender-based abilities can be done well, even very well, and can contribute quite a lot to a system/setting. I just think that dropping an arbitrary -2 to strength is boring and generally a bad idea. Regardless of how accurate it is compared to the real world.

I agree with that entirely. Even if I did this - (for example) a male Trickster classed character and a female Trickster classed character would be mechanically identical. It's just that there could be no male psion classes (I haven't designed them yet as they'll use an entirely different set of Talents [powers] from the physical classes) and no female Brute classed characters or other classes who get Brawn as a primary stat.

[Donnadogsoth]

That's a really cool idea Donnadogsworth.

That's all I had to say, don't have anything else to add. :smallsmile:

Thanks. I hope someone finds it useful.

[CharonsHelper]

That's a really cool idea Donnadogsworth.

That's all I had to say, don't have anything else to add. :smallsmile:

I agree. I'm not sure if it fits my setting - but it's still really cool.

[Talakeal]

And in the sentence RIGHT AFTER THAT he says he using Weight. Not build. But simply WEIGHT as a measure of strength. Implying everyone in the world has the same BMI, training regime, metabolism and the like, and the only difference is size.
First off, when someone jumps into a discussion and immediately demonstrates that they haven't bothered to read or understand what they are commenting on, it does not inspire me with much hope that a discussion is possible.

Secondly, I was quite interested by your questions because I had some similar ones. If being of lower weight gives you a penalty, do other deviations from absolute averageness give you like penalties? Do bulky people get hit more? Do skinny people have lower health? Do heavy people occasionally have to roll to see if they break items of furniture? Not I'm not saying these these would be a good idea or especially accurate, but I'm curious if all sorts of body shapes have their downsides in Don's system, or is it just small people.

As for the 35-foot human, well. That's just getting to the point where that character is no longer credible as a Human in any statistical sense, and really needs his own chapter in the rules. Which illustrates quite well why D&D doesn't do this sort of thing. If being a few pounds lighter and a few inches shorter than average is considered enough to give you a measurable change in your game statistics, it gives the rules nowhere to go when providing for the really small, or the very large, or the very...something races.
For the...THIRD time. Without respect for the rules by the GM there is no game. That is to say their is no objection basis for player participation. What there is is an exercise in pandering to one individuals biases. Which may be interesting as a psychological exercise, but which isn't a game by any reasonably metric.

I had enough of such way back when. There are some that can make it fun. More usually you find yourself stuck with somebody I wouldn't trust not to make a housefire out of a pile of wet newspapers using the game as a crutch to establish a private Celestial Debating Hall Where He's Always Right.

Now; "Bama"
That's because I got it WRONG. The word should have been "BARA". My apologies. Have some caution googling that, btw, it means "Like Yaoi but more so. Bigger men. More sweaty and explicit".

Marlowe, I want to apologize if I was a bit snippy and confrontational in my post. My intent is not to fight with you, and I shouldn't be taking such a harsh tone.

I have read his post again and I still don't see any mention of BMI. BMI is a certain height to weight ratio and is generally used to measure how over or under weight someone is for their specific height, I don't see him talking about anything like that. I do see him talk about absolute weight and how height and body build influence it. Someone who weighs 90 pounds is not going to be a strong person regardless of their height or body build, they simply don't have the muscle mass or leverage, regardless of whether they are a three foot tall body builder or a seven foot tall death camp survivor.

As a DM I personally wouldn't approve a character that I find implausible. If you want to play a 90 lb strong man you are going to have to give me an explanation of how they came by their (proportionally) inhuman strength that fits in with the setting. Likewise I wouldn't let someone who looked like the human equivalent of Jabba the Hutt be a great acrobat or be renowned for their great beauty without some explanation of how their abilities came to be completely divorced from their physical appearance.

I wouldn't apply "bonuses" or "penalties" to a character based on their description, I would merely ask that a players describe their character in a way that could possibly reflect their abilities. Now, environmentally you might get something for your description. A tall person might have a bonus to reaching something high up or a penalty in an area with a low ceiling, a heavy character might have a penalty for walking across a rotten floor board and a bonus when trying to keep from being blown away in a heavy wind, and a character with blond hair might receive a bonus to seducing a man who finds blondes more attractive and a penalty against someone who only likes redheads.

A 35 foot human is outside of the range that is plausible, yes. But then again, a 90 pound person is also not plausible as a contender for the world's strongest man. Both could be explained by magic or super powers or something, but those might not make sense in every setting.


As for rules lawyering and protection against tyrant DM's, I agree to a point. The rules are a handy shield against those people, but they aren't a very good shield. My last DM, for example, forbid players from looking at rule books and claimed to have an encyclopedic knowledge of the rules, he would frequently change the rules mid session or just flat out make rules up, and if anyone called him on it he would go on a patronizing rant about how stupid we were for not having the correct rule memorized like he did. He wanted to have his cake and eat it to, and made a situation where he could do whatever he want AND be an incredible rules lawyer at the same time; there were times when I wanted to take an action that was both RAW legal and common sense legal, but he would tell me no, that "he wanted to allow it, but he can't, its just not within the rules,".

A good DM, on the other hand, can ignore the rules to help encourage the players to take actions which would be more fun or fair or appropriate to the setting even if they are technically illegal. And sometimes the rules are terrible, if you are playing 3E D&D purely by RAW you will have no game at all in a fairly short order as that game has so many game breaking errors and loop-holes that you need a DM who is going to say no to run a decent game.

Also, it might not be the DM as the only person who has a problem with player descriptions. If I sign on to play a dark gritty GoT inspired game and someone shows up playing a literal clown (who is also the best warrior in the world despite having never left the circus before because its more funny that way) it is going to ruin the game for me, and probably a lot of the other players, even if the DM is not allowed to ban an inappropriate character because it is technically not breaking any rules.


Also, you don't have to apologize are admit you were wrong for typing BARA as BAMA, typos happen. I have never heard either phrase before and I was genuinely curious what it meant, thank you for explaining.

[8BitNinja]

Guys, you have to remember we are only talking about stat difference between sex, not to make the game hyper realistic

What gender only classes would there be? I see it being discussed, and I know that I can't have a unicorn as a mount right now

I don't want a unicorn anyway, war horses are way cooler

[goto124]

Gender-restricted classes? Try the female-only Unicorn Riders :smalltongue:

[Sitri]

What is it they did that rubbed you the wrong way? I haven't followed Pathfinder developments, so this is the first I've heard of something like this.

There were a couple of threads dealing with women's clothing. In one I started by explaining that a lot of females, my wife included, like playing sexy characters, and a lot of the language being used in regard to people who like sexy female characters was painting with broad strokes and more offensive than the people who like having sexy fantasy characters.

During that or an explanation shortly after, I used the word "uppity", not towards any individual but to describe the mentality that female characters shouldn't show signs of sexuality.

Jessica Price (project manager) went off on a tirade for several pages how I was demeaning to a lady in the thread because by calling her "uppity" I was using a well known slang to say she was a lesser person than me and needed to get in her place.

I requoted myself, not just my fraction of a sentence she quoted, to show that I could not have been talking about the woman she said or the minority group that apparently made that word unusable. This went on for pages of senseless attacks where she threw every liberal attack at me but the kitchen sink. It was so far out as to make me ashamed to be a liberal. Along the way another staff threw in some slights at me because I questioned another poster who was claiming Jessica was an expert in women's studies who shouldn't be questioned on such topics.

I had gone to a conference about that time where the keynote speaker had a PhD in Women's Studies and Child Psychology, with several books published. A lot of the things the speaker said was in direct contradiction with Price's expertise in women's studies.

Several months down the road when hybrid classes came out, I stated that it appeared they asked their artist to remove sexuality from their female art while increasing sexuality in other areas. There was another big **** storm with no one answering the question (but another poster providing before and after pictures to verify what I suspected was true.) While no worker would speak directly to my point, I got several criticisms for my concern, including from the CEO's husband.

My group was on the edge about 5e at that time, and I pushed them over the edge for conversion.

[Segev]

There were a couple of threads dealing with women's clothing. In one I started by explaining that a lot of females, my wife included, like playing sexy characters, and a lot of the language being used in regard to people who like sexy female characters was painting with broad strokes and more offensive than the people who like having sexy fantasy characters.

During that or an explanation shortly after, I used the word "uppity", not towards any individual but to describe the mentality that female characters shouldn't show signs of sexuality.

Jessica Price (project manager) went off on a tirade for several pages how I was demeaning to a lady in the thread because by calling her "uppity" I was using a well known slang to say she was a lesser person than me and needed to get in her place.

I requoted myself, not just my fraction of a sentence she quoted, to show that I could not have been talking about the woman she said or the minority group that apparently made that word unusable. This went on for pages of senseless attacks where she threw every liberal attack at me but the kitchen sink. It was so far out as to make me ashamed to be a liberal. Along the way another staff threw in some slights at me because I questioned another poster who was claiming Jessica was an expert in women's studies who shouldn't be questioned on such topics.

I had gone to a conference about that time where the keynote speaker had a PhD in Women's Studies and Child Psychology, with several books published. A lot of the things the speaker said was in direct contradiction with Price's expertise in women's studies.

Several months down the road when hybrid classes came out, I stated that it appeared they asked their artist to remove sexuality from their female art while increasing sexuality in other areas. There was another big **** storm with no one answering the question (but another poster providing before and after pictures to verify what I suspected was true.) While no worker would speak directly to my point, I got several criticisms for my concern, including from the CEO's husband.

My group was on the edge about 5e at that time, and I pushed them over the edge for conversion.
Yeesh. My condolences on this experience. Sadly, I cannot say it is atypical when dealing with topics like this. People get incensed if you dare disagree with their claims, and it doesn't matter if you agree on broad principles; only their way of "fixing" a problem is anything but bigoted hate. And even discussing alternatives makes you a bad person to whom they should not have to listen.

[8BitNinja]

Gender-restricted classes? Try the female-only Unicorn Riders :smalltongue:

Maybe make Amazon a class

[Segev]

Maybe make Amazon a class

I didn't realize wizards were such a large demographic that on-the-spot book delivery would be in sufficient demand to warrant an entire class!

[AMFV]

I didn't realize wizards were such a large demographic that on-the-spot book delivery would be in sufficient demand to warrant an entire class!

Well Amazons also get drone pets so it's pretty cool man. They deliver a whole spread of stuff at higher levels not just books.

[Donnadogsoth]

According to strengthlevel.com, men are actually stronger per pound than women. A 120 lb woman in the elite category can dead lift 269 lbs. A 120 lb man in the elite category can dead lift 351 lbs.

Take the highest listed weight for men, 310 lbs, who can dead lift at the elite level 733 lbs, and call that “18 STR.”
Call the 250 lb man, who can dead lift at the beginner level 244 lbs, “14 STR.”
And call the 190 lb man, who can dead lift at the beginner level 205 lbs, “10 STR.”

We can estimate that a 90 lb elite woman can dead lift 232 lbs, slightly better than a 150 lb novice man's dead lift of 230 lbs. So her STR should be about 13. This is for a character who lives and breathes working out, and whose physique looks it.

A 90 lb woman at the beginner level we could estimate dead lifting 59 lbs. I'd say her STR would be about 5.

[cobaltstarfire]

Er, 90 pounds is pretty severely underweight for a woman of average height, especially if they're the sort who has built up their muscles.

edit:

I also feel you're lowballing the men and women on the bottom end, and giving too high a score to the men on the high end.

[AMFV]

According to strengthlevel.com, men are actually stronger per pound than women. A 120 lb woman in the elite category can dead lift 269 lbs. A 120 lb man in the elite category can dead lift 351 lbs.

Take the highest listed weight for men, 310 lbs, who can dead lift at the elite level 733 lbs, and call that “18 STR.”
Call the 250 lb man, who can dead lift at the beginner level 244 lbs, “14 STR.”
And call the 190 lb man, who can dead lift at the beginner level 205 lbs, “10 STR.”

We can estimate that a 90 lb elite woman can dead lift 232 lbs, slightly better than a 150 lb novice man's dead lift of 230 lbs. So her STR should be about 13. This is for a character who lives and breathes working out, and whose physique looks it.

A 90 lb woman at the beginner level we could estimate dead lifting 59 lbs. I'd say her STR would be about 5.

That doesn't really mean anything though. The ability to lift a weight once, isn't going to necessarily make you better at all or any strength activities. Powerlifters are very very strong, but they tend to not be equally proficient at all activities related to strength. Really if you're going for realism, D&D is AWFUL, flat out AWFUL in terms of modelling real world strength. Honestly Strength plays into far too many things and in too many disparate ways to be really effective. Somebody who is good at sprinting will be good at squatting, but the reverse isn't necessarily true.

Also a beginner guy who weighs 250 lbs should be able to deadlift a considerable amount more than 244 lbs. I mean maybe if he's literally never done any strength related activities but even that's quite a stretch.

[NoldorForce]

According to strengthlevel.com, men are actually stronger per pound than women. A 120 lb woman in the elite category can dead lift 269 lbs. A 120 lb man in the elite category can dead lift 351 lbs.

Take the highest listed weight for men, 310 lbs, who can dead lift at the elite level 733 lbs, and call that “18 STR.”
Call the 250 lb man, who can dead lift at the beginner level 244 lbs, “14 STR.”
And call the 190 lb man, who can dead lift at the beginner level 205 lbs, “10 STR.”

We can estimate that a 90 lb elite woman can dead lift 232 lbs, slightly better than a 150 lb novice man's dead lift of 230 lbs. So her STR should be about 13. This is for a character who lives and breathes working out, and whose physique looks it.

A 90 lb woman at the beginner level we could estimate dead lifting 59 lbs. I'd say her STR would be about 5.Trying to model the exact meaning of Strength in a game where hit points and ability scores are and have nearly always been abstractions is a fool's errand. Doubly so considering that there's no consensus on what 18 in an ability score actually means.

[Mr Beer]

That doesn't really mean anything though. The ability to lift a weight once, isn't going to necessarily make you better at all or any strength activities. Powerlifters are very very strong, but they tend to not be equally proficient at all activities related to strength. Really if you're going for realism, D&D is AWFUL, flat out AWFUL in terms of modelling real world strength. Honestly Strength plays into far too many things and in too many disparate ways to be really effective. Somebody who is good at sprinting will be good at squatting, but the reverse isn't necessarily true.

Powerlifting is extremely specialised and to make matters even less analogous to Strength stats, a lot of the competitive lifts involve specialised clothing that allow bigger numbers.

Olympic lifting is even more specialised and requires a lot of technique and 'explosiveness' for want of a better term.

Strongman is probably the best sport to test overall raw strength, since the feats are varied and extensive. However, in strongman, you end up with a place in a contest, which doesn't translate well to a Strength stat either. Also, there is no standardised 'Strongman' test that you could administer to get a human baseline normal. Most men couldn't perform a single repetition or lift with the type of weights these guys chuck around.


Also a beginner guy who weighs 250 lbs should be able to deadlift a considerable amount more than 244 lbs. I mean maybe if he's literally never done any strength related activities but even that's quite a stretch.

A typical 250lbs beginner is fat as hell and probably couldn't deadlift 240lbs. A lean 250lbs man - yes almost certainly.

[Mr Beer]

Re. the 'per lbs' discussion, men tend to be stronger per lbs, because they have a higher % of muscle per lbs of bodyweight.

Conversely, smaller people tend to be stronger per lb, because strength is proportional to muscle area and amounts lifted are proportional to volume, as I mentioned earlier.

So I haven't checked, but I think it's likely that small, lean, female strength athletes are stronger per lbs of bodyweight than very large male strength athletes.

EDIT

Because of the fact that lighter lifters are stronger per lbs of bodyweight, powerlifters sometimes use the Wilks Formula, which is an adjusted strength per lbs calculation, in order to rate the relative strength of athletes who compete in different weight classes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilks_Coefficient

[AMFV]

Powerlifting is extremely specialised and to make matters even less analogous to Strength stats, a lot of the competitive lifts involve specialised clothing that allow bigger numbers.

Certainly true, also the exact movements of those lifts don't really translate well. I mean certainly a powerlifter is going to be able to do quite a bit in terms of regular strength, but how much isn't an easy question to answer.



Olympic lifting is even more specialised and requires a lot of technique and 'explosiveness' for want of a better term.

Strongman is probably the best sport to test overall raw strength, since the feats are varied and extensive. However, in strongman, you end up with a place in a contest, which doesn't translate well to a Strength stat either. Also, there is no standardised 'Strongman' test that you could administer to get a human baseline normal. Most men couldn't perform a single repetition or lift with the type of weights these guys chuck around.

The thing with Strongman is that you have to account for what's in vogue that particular year. Some years they do a lot of pulls which are heavy leg movements, some years they do more carries. I mean a competitor in the sport will have varied strength since he doesn't necessarily know what's coming, but a placing isn't indicative of strength as you said.



A typical 250lbs beginner is fat as hell and probably couldn't deadlift 240lbs. A lean 250lbs man - yes almost certainly.

Depends on what you're calling a beginner, or at least that was my interpretation. I was reading it as a beginner to deadlifting competitively, who should still be lifting considerably more than that. So you'd have to figure out what other things bled into their deadlift. Sprinters would be better at squatting again, even if they'd never done it before. And you'd have to account for that.

[Donnadogsoth]

Er, 90 pounds is pretty severely underweight for a woman of average height, especially if they're the sort who has built up their muscles.

edit:

I also feel you're lowballing the men and women on the bottom end, and giving too high a score to the men on the high end.

Agreed, but underweight was the point of the example, and what Marlowe was taking such exception to.

If you'd like to reassign the numbers, go ahead, but I think the basic idea is clearly here, of the person's untrained strength, and her potential as a musclehead relative to others with a weight advantage.

[Donnadogsoth]

That doesn't really mean anything though. The ability to lift a weight once, isn't going to necessarily make you better at all or any strength activities. Powerlifters are very very strong, but they tend to not be equally proficient at all activities related to strength. Really if you're going for realism, D&D is AWFUL, flat out AWFUL in terms of modelling real world strength. Honestly Strength plays into far too many things and in too many disparate ways to be really effective. Somebody who is good at sprinting will be good at squatting, but the reverse isn't necessarily true.

Also a beginner guy who weighs 250 lbs should be able to deadlift a considerable amount more than 244 lbs. I mean maybe if he's literally never done any strength related activities but even that's quite a stretch.

The tables give an easy to understand comparison. As someone mentioned previously on this thread, modelling strength is impossible, but we have a game to run so we do the impossible thing and get on with it. So a 3-18 scale gives us a way to model strength in a rough-and-tumble-and-dirty way, but which we would like to have some passing resemblance to reality. Thus in application to the anime waif question we have a situation sketched by the weightlifting numbers aforementioned, whereby we can see that some who weighs 90 lbs can build themselves at same weight, into having above-male-average muscular ability, but that this person is going to look the part, they're not going to look delicate like anime waifs tend to do.

Presume the "beginner guy who weighs 250 lbs" has run to fat.

[Donnadogsoth]

Trying to model the exact meaning of Strength in a game where hit points and ability scores are and have nearly always been abstractions is a fool's errand. Doubly so considering that there's no consensus on what 18 in an ability score actually means.

I've already shown the solution to the waif problem. That's all I wanted to do.

[Mordar]

Doesn't Rolemaster have a bunch of stats? Maybe start there.

Leave my RoleMaster out of this mess! :)

But yes, RM has (had?) 10 stats that were nicely representative I thought of the range of attributes.

[NoldorForce]

I've already shown the solution to the waif problem. That's all I wanted to do.On the basis of questionable assumptions? Most notable is the fact that, as before, there's no consensus as to what the abstraction of a Strength score actually means. Individual game lines, such as but not limited to Dungeons and Dragons, may define things like carrying capacity as a function of Strength or something similar, but even different editions of D&D haven't agreed how to model stuff like carrying and weightlifting capacities (of which there are several) in any way besides establishing some sort of monotonically increasing function.

[Donnadogsoth]

On the basis of questionable assumptions? Most notable is the fact that, as before, there's no consensus as to what the abstraction of a Strength score actually means. Individual game lines, such as but not limited to Dungeons and Dragons, may define things like carrying capacity as a function of Strength or something similar, but even different editions of D&D haven't agreed how to model stuff like carrying and weightlifting capacities (of which there are several) in any way besides establishing some sort of monotonically increasing function.

Yes, different games are different. But, is the designation of a 90 lb woman as, untrained, having substantially lower strength, however you want to define strength, than an untrained 180 lb man, or of said woman, with elite training, having higher strength than said man, grossly inaccurate?

[cobaltstarfire]

Agreed, but underweight was the point of the example, and what Marlowe was taking such exception to.

If you'd like to reassign the numbers, go ahead, but I think the basic idea is clearly here, of the person's untrained strength, and her potential as a musclehead relative to others with a weight advantage.

I'd probably just push everything inward from both sides by some amount if you want to use deadlifting as your baseline for strength definitions on a D&D scale.

In 3.5 D&D someone with an 18 str can lift 300 pounds over their head. On the other side of things someone with a 5 can only lift 50 pounds over their heads, and a 10 can lift 100, again over their heads.

[AMFV]

Yes, different games are different. But, is the designation of a 90 lb woman as, untrained, having substantially lower strength, however you want to define strength, than an untrained 180 lb man, or of said woman, with elite training, having higher strength than said man, grossly inaccurate?

A 90 lb female deadlift champion is likely LESS strong than an untrained 180 lb man, just better at deadlifting. Which is, believe it or not, a trained skill, although strength factors in, technique does more so.

[Donnadogsoth]

I'd probably just push everything inward from both sides by some amount if you want to use deadlifting as your baseline for strength definitions on a D&D scale.

In 3.5 D&D someone with an 18 str can lift 300 pounds over their head. On the other side of things someone with a 5 can only lift 50 pounds over their heads, and a 10 can lift 100, again over their heads.

It doesn't have to be dead lifting. Any (or all) of the tables could be used. The assumption is a well-rounded meaning for STR, not that dead lifting has to take priority.

The same site (strengthlevel.com) lists a 310 lb man of elite level, what I'd termed STR 18, able to "clean and press" (over head) 397 lbs.

A 190 lb man of beginner ability, what I'd termed STR 10, could clean and press 77 lbs.

A 90 lb woman of novice ability, what I'd termed STR 5, could (estimating) clean and press 26 lbs.

[Donnadogsoth]

A 90 lb female deadlift champion is likely LESS strong than an untrained 180 lb man, just better at deadlifting. Which is, believe it or not, a trained skill, although strength factors in, technique does more so.

I don't doubt it. I was using dead lift for the convenience of not having to average the results of all the tables.

[cobaltstarfire]

I don't really understand why you must insist on using a 90 pound woman as your baseline for women, because again 90 pounds is severely underweight and a bad metric for whatever you're trying to do with str bases.

But I'm begining to feel this is a pointless conversation so I'm going to see my way out of it.

[ImNotTrevor]

I don't really understand why you must insist on using a 90 pound woman as your baseline for women, because again 90 pounds is severely underweight and a bad metric for whatever you're trying to do with str bases.

But I'm begining to feel this is a pointless conversation so I'm going to see my way out of it.

It was because of a previous comment that people shouldn't be allowed to have 90 pound ladies weilding swords the size of a small horse because it's just ridiculous.

At this point it's beating a dead horse, though. People stopped defending that at reasonable a long time ago.

[JoeJ]

It was because of a previous comment that people shouldn't be allowed to have 90 pound ladies weilding swords the size of a small horse because it's just ridiculous.

At this point it's beating a dead horse, though. People stopped defending that at reasonable a long time ago.

Realistically, Andre the Giant wouldn't have been able to effectively wield a sword the size of many of the ones seen in anime. (Assuming that Andre the Giant was proficient in sword fighting at all, I mean.) If you're going to let somebody who looks like Conan wield a sword the size of a small horse, it's not much more of a stretch to let the 90 pound waif do it too.

[Feddlefew]

Professional gymnasts are at the lower end of the weight and height range, yet still able to do things like this (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gChWtvPZqPs). (Gabriel Douglass is, BTW, 4'8" and ~90lbs during the 2012 Olympics.)

Edit: She's essentially throwing and catching her own body weight in that video.

[goto124]

Now I want to see a horse-sized & horse-shaped sword.

[Feddlefew]

Now I want to see a horse-sized & horse-shaped sword.

.... What kind of horse? Are we talking shetland pony or draft horse?

[goto124]

Any sword that's shaped like a horse, really.

[Satinavian]

Professional gymnasts are at the lower end of the weight and height range, yet still able to do things like this (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gChWtvPZqPs). (Gabriel Douglass is, BTW, 4'8" and ~90lbs during the 2012 Olympics.)

Edit: She's essentially throwing and catching her own body weight in that video.
Yes, and the own weight thing is the catch.

Strength scales roughly with size^2, as the crosssection of a muscle is the important part. Weight scales with size^3.

So for sports where athletes only have to move their own weight and not even over certain distances, but only in a certain way, smaller, lighter people will in general be even better. (Not true for races of any kind, as the distance that can be made roughly scales with the length of the muscle so that the scaling thing is countered here)

So, yes. Even when it comes to things like oversized swords : as long as they are only oversized compared to the body size and not absolutely, a smaller person will be able to better wield one. A person half the size has a quater of the strength, but a sword half the size weiths one-eighths.




As for sword-fencing itself, it seems women don't prefer smaller swords. Strength is not that important but reach is and women tend do be at disadvantage here already. So there is a tendency to choose longer blades for them. Or to go to polearms.

[Spiryt]

Professional gymnasts are at the lower end of the weight and height range, yet still able to do things like this (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gChWtvPZqPs). (Gabriel Douglass is, BTW, 4'8" and ~90lbs during the 2012 Olympics.)

Edit: She's essentially throwing and catching her own body weight in that video.

They are able to do things like this essentially BECAUSE they're usually rather to very small, of course.

Less mass, length, etc. means rapid accelerations, decelerations, directions changes, less stress on joints etc.



You won't see manu hulking gymnasts.

[ImNotTrevor]

Any sword that's shaped like a horse, really.

Closest I could get:

https://encrypted-tbn3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSpkFvlzME9bW23clgPpuZcsD-eJkcHY7Y-3wyJbLOEDAEJIBR7

[PersonMan]

Any sword that's shaped like a horse, really.

Well there's always DEATHHOOF.

http://i.imgur.com/VshebeG.jpg

[Mr Beer]

Well there's always DEATHHOOF.


Please tell me you made this weaponised horse especially for this thread?

[JoeJ]

At the risk of crossbreeding two arguments threads, if you use a point buy character generation system there's no need to worry about balancing an attribute cap for one sex. It's already balanced by the simple fact that buying less Strength (or whatever) leaves more points to spend on other things.

Of course, that doesn't mean you can't still argue about realism, physical vs. social construction of gender, the aesthetics of different body types, and whether or not such restrictions violate your group's ethical norms.

[Hiro Protagonest]

At the risk of crossbreeding two arguments threads, if you use a point buy character generation system there's no need to worry about balancing an attribute cap for one sex. It's already balanced by the simple fact that buying less Strength (or whatever) leaves more points to spend on other things.

That's irrelevant, it's not any different from class RPGs where they get +con or +int or something

[JoeJ]

That's irrelevant, it's not any different from class RPGs where they get +con or +int or something

It's absolutely different. If you give one sex a +1 in some attribute and the other sex nothing, you've created a balance issue. If you limit one sex to spending no more than X points on a particular attribute but don't change the total number of points they can spend on their character, there's no balance problem.

[Hiro Protagonest]

It's absolutely different. If you give one sex a +1 in some attribute and the other sex nothing, you've created a balance issue. If you limit one sex to spending no more than X points on a particular attribute but don't change the total number of points they can spend on their character, there's no balance problem.

What? I was using an example of -str +int. Not a straight-up buff to make one sex superior.

[JoeJ]

What? I was using an example of -str +int. Not a straight-up buff to make one sex superior.

Okay, but then you're trading something in that you hope is balanced. Not only are you adding an extra step, you also have to decide what to add. Is +1 Int really balanced with -1 Str? Without knowing details of both the game and the play style, there's no way to tell.

With point buy, if you restrict the maximum Str score of one sex and do nothing else, the game is still completely balanced (assuming it was balanced to begin with, obviously). No +/- on anything; just set a maximum. If you do that, then a character who can't buy high Str is in exactly the same situation as a character who could have bought it but didn't. Mechanically, nothing has changed. Note that this doesn't have to mean no classes, either. Point buy for stats has been an optional variant in D&D for a long time.

That doesn't necessarily make it realistic, aesthetically appealing, or something your group is comfortable with, but game balance, at least, is a non-issue.

[Segev]

Okay, but then you're trading something in that you hope is balanced. Not only are you adding an extra step, you also have to decide what to add. Is +1 Int really balanced with -1 Str? Without knowing details of both the game and the play style, there's no way to tell.Such choices lead to encouraging builds of varying types to use specific sexes, leading to a larger number of members of one sex having one kind of build than the other.


With point buy, if you restrict the maximum Str score of one sex and do nothing else, the game is still completely balanced (assuming it was balanced to begin with, obviously). No +/- on anything; just set a maximum. If you do that, then a character who can't buy high Str is in exactly the same situation as a character who could have bought it but didn't. Mechanically, nothing has changed. Note that this doesn't have to mean no classes, either. Point buy for stats has been an optional variant in D&D for a long time.Not entirely true. You still wind up discouraging the use of the sex with the lower cap; there are a wider variety of builds available to the sex without the cap, leading to a disproportionate favoring of one sex over the other wrt optimality. It is true that some builds won't care, but you make it so that certain builds will always prefer the uncapped sex, and no builds prefer the capped sex, therefore fewer members of the capped sex will show up in the game as PCs.

[goto124]

It's still pretty boring. "Oh, females have a Str cap? I'll pick male for my barbarian class". It's not much different from -1 Str.

[Steampunkette]

Can we start strict locking these threads when they're made?

It's sexist ideology masquerading as good faith arguments that invariably result in the statement that you could apply sexist limits to female characters, with the addendum that male characters could also be limited on a sexist basis though it's never the subject line of the threads which are often as not straight up str penalty questions , it wouldn't make things any more fun and would limit character concepts and options for essentially no value other than to say it's done.

Maybe next time the thread title will be "Should Male Characters Have Lower Con/Int/Wis Mods?"

But I doubt it.

[goto124]

What?

We're asking "are there legit reasons to give different mechanical reasons to different genders, and if so what are the legit reasons and how do we do it tastefully".

We've already found a few possible answers, such as "in-universe societal reasons". It's already been discussed.

[PersonMan]

Please tell me you made this weaponised horse especially for this thread?

You don't have a weaponized horse you could just get a photo of?

I did, yes.

[Steampunkette]

What?

We're asking "are there legit reasons to give different mechanical reasons to different genders, and if so what are the legit reasons and how do we do it tastefully".

We've already found a few possible answers, such as "in-universe societal reasons". It's already been discussed.

Mechanically limiting choice by gender, regardless of story reason is still sexist on its face and unfairly limits character choices. In a better world we wouldn't have people asking in the first place.

You can come up with a million and one reasons why it makes sense or why in a given setting it should be done, but it remains sexist. The intentional construction of a gender divide that doesn't exist, regardless of reason, will always remain so. Whether it's in a game or our world.

It's also incredibly cisnormative if not flatly transphobic, since these discussions almost never include people of different genders or sexual characteristic expression.

Seriously, we create world's filled with aliens and elves, laser swords and magic pistols, dragons and dungeons, but the idea of diversity and equality is so far beyond our ability to accept that we populate our worlds with the same biases and general assumptions of the real one, up to and including arguing the merits and problems with creating mechanical barriers based on gender, marginalizing character concepts in the process.

You'd be surprised how many times I've heard that there are no black women or Trans people in a given setting because it doesn't fit the time period. Seriously, folks, why wouldn't there be black women on Athas or Trans folks on Faerun? We're they not invented, yet?

[Frozen_Feet]

Noitahovi, an actual game which gives separate stats for men and women, has a prominent transgender NPC and a section in the setting book devoted the discussing how atypical sexualities might be treated in the game.

You can call the setting in the game sexist. It is explicitly build as such, even. But if you try to extend that to call Noitahovi as a game (or other games like it) sexist, you rob sexism of any negative connotation you may have wished to invoke. It just becomes a neutral descriptive term, akin to calling a biology textbook sexist because it has words "male" and "female" in it.

[goto124]

To my knowledge, most settings indeed do not have gender restrictions.

*furiously comes up with reasons to explain why black men exist but black women don't* :smalltongue:

[Clistenes]

Mechanically limiting choice by gender, regardless of story reason is still sexist on its face and unfairly limits character choices. In a better world we wouldn't have people asking in the first place.

You can come up with a million and one reasons why it makes sense or why in a given setting it should be done, but it remains sexist. The intentional construction of a gender divide that doesn't exist, regardless of reason, will always remain so. Whether it's in a game or our world.

It's also incredibly cisnormative if not flatly transphobic, since these discussions almost never include people of different genders or sexual characteristic expression.

Seriously, we create world's filled with aliens and elves, laser swords and magic pistols, dragons and dungeons, but the idea of diversity and equality is so far beyond our ability to accept that we populate our worlds with the same biases and general assumptions of the real one, up to and including arguing the merits and problems with creating mechanical barriers based on gender, marginalizing character concepts in the process.

Most games don't give men and women different stats because they don't want to open that can of worms, and physical abilities aren't realisticaly portrayed anyways, so, why bother? And people don't give a second thought to it and are quite happy to play the games this way.

However, if somebody wants to create a game as close a model to reality as possible, including different physical stats for each genders, I don't think that's sexist. They aren't "including a gender divide that doesn't exist", they are modelling a gender divide that does exist in reality.

It's not a matter of discrimination, but of style. Like allowing only a few hit points of health level to each character no matter their level, limiting their class advancement to 6 levels, barring fantasy races, removing magic...etc. Not the kind of game I play, but whatever. There are people who like this kind of game.

I have seen games in which medieval aristocracy had their advangages reflected in their stats: Better equipment, bonuses to charisma rolls, access from level 1 to some classes that were restricted for everybody else. It is not discriminatory, it just models a discriminatory reality.

And I'm sure people would start discussing what stats give to transgender people right after they reached an agreement about men and women.

Anyways, as I said earlier, I don't think it is worth the effort. Just let people play whatever they want.


You'd be surprised how many times I've heard that there are no black women or Trans people in a given setting because it doesn't fit the time period. Seriously, folks, why wouldn't there be black women on Athas or Trans folks on Faerun? We're they not invented, yet?

Who said that there aren't black women in Athas? Athas is a desert world. Most people's skintones probably go from bronze to black. I have never read any sourcebook claim that there aren't black people in Athas.

As for transgenders, there can be people who dress as the opposite biological gender, but if they want to change physically, they need VERY high level magic.

[Steampunkette]

Clistenes, whether you're modeling it on your assumptions of reality or not you're still creating an artificial divide that doesn't need to be there. There is no fundamental law of reality that requires you to create the artificial divide within the layer of reality that you are creating.

Whatever your reason for doing it, that doesn't change what you're doing.

Frozen: A game can be good AND sexist at the same time. I watch TV and movies and play videogames and read books and comics and so on and so forth at freaking ALL of them are sexist as heck because they're based in a reality which itself has serious issues with gender bias, written and created by people who are so steeped in that gender bias they aren't even aware it exists. It doesn't mean I don't like watching those shows, it just means I have to be aware of the sexism involved in them and keep it from being a casually accepted function or reality that affects my own thinking and interaction with other people.

It's like your nose constantly being in your field of vision: You don't even register it as being there, but clear as a bell when you take the time to notice it.

[Frozen_Feet]

It's interesting what causes bafflement and what doesn't.

I don't think I said there were any less harsh, I think my point was more than if you can explore such contraints on a story level, even be the one to "break the mold" so to speak, without having the rest of the party grumble at you for making an unoptimized choice (which, by reading some threads on this forum, many do), it can be more fun than simply having mechanical drawbacks.

I'm not sure what is so baffling about it?

It's baffling because to me it read like "it'd be fun to try something which necessitates restrictions without restrictions". In short, a paradox.

I get your spirit better now, but I think there's still a flawed way of thinking at the root of this. It was also illustrated by Obryn's question "why penalize narratively interesting character concepts?"

The answer to that question is "because the penalties are what makes those concepts narratively interesting".

If you have some players grumbling over a suboptimal choice another made, chances are your table has two kinds of players: those who find consequences of the choice interesting, and those who want to win. In such a case, the problem isn't with the drawbacks, it isn't with the former kind of players, it's with a bizarre attitude of the latter group.

And the latter group's attitude turns from bizarre to fallacious if degree of the drawbacks is not factored in. To give a non-related example that's cropped up on these boards: d20 fighters are weak. Bros don't let bros be fighters. If you pick a fighter over a decent class, you're actively detracting from the fun of other players.

I dub this "false player group utilitarianism". The weaker version is "picking a weak option is being a jerk to fellow players" while the strong one is "not picking the optimal option is being a jerk to fellow players".

It's false because it doesn't account for the fact that you can still make a fighter who is a decent threat to opposition in d20. You can win Pokemon with Beedrill and Butterfree, play a female fighter in AD&D and still kick ass, or a male witch in Noitahovi and become important in the court. Making such choices doesn't make those games unplayable, it just makes them a challenge.

A story game smooths over the difference of expectation by telling the "must win" crowd that suboptimal choices is how they win this time. But it removes the challenge by artificially enforcing the end result.

You can get the same story in a traditional roleplaying game by getting those people to understand that playing optimally is not required to have fun, and hence no-one's obligated to play that way.

[goto124]

Steampunkette: How about... different races with different racial modifiers?

[Frozen_Feet]

@Steampunkette:

I do not get the feeling you understood my point.

The game I mentioned does not operate under the principles you outlined for "sexist and good". Its biases are not invisible or accidental, they are purposeful and put under the spotlight to be examined. Sexism is a "casually accepted function and reality" within the game world, but its impossible for it to be the same to the players because tropes of the setting differ from everyday life.

As such, I'm not arguing Noitahovi is "sexist and good". I'm arguing that to call it a sexist game requires not considering sexism a flaw at all.

[The Insanity]

I have a question: Why should I care that something is sexist?

[Cazero]

I have a question: Why should I care that something is sexist?

Because if nobody does, we will eventualy have a cisnormative patriarchal thought police forcing us into "sex-appropriate" societal roles. Note how I didn't use the word gender since the thought police doesn't recognise gender as being dissociable from sex.

... Okay, that's maybe a little too implausible for the real world. The thought police has never been official and is less and less supported by states. But it's still here as a thought milicia and IMO the sooner we get rid of it the better.

[The Insanity]

I meant in the game.

[Steampunkette]

Steampunkette: How about... different races with different racial modifiers?

Represents a whole other can of worms when the Star Trek Consistency is applied. IE Some species/races being always warlike or always logical or whatever.

Though when it's a non-analagous racial modifier it isn't that big a deal. Like Gnomes. If you depict all gnomes as hispanic or latino, for example, then you get into issues, but if they're gnomes, with gnome traits and backgrounds (I.E. that it's a type of nature spirit or a separate race of small people with different from human traits and a unique culture that isn't designed as a real-world-parallel) it's not that bad. Though it can reinforce the idea that "Race" in reality represents a defined and important difference...

*gives Dark Elves a nasty look*

Different character races represent a fantastic element designed to separate them from reality. "Has Boobs" is not a fantastic element, and shouldn't be treated any differently from "Does Not Have Boobs" or "Has Magically Constructed Boobs" or "Had Extraneous Boobs Removed".

You get the idea.

[Cazero]

Ooooooh.
In the game.

Since the fluff doesn't need mechanics to support everything it defines, mechanics-enforced sexism is just sitting here being sexist. It's gratuitous and unecessary. Making an extra effort to create a discrimination that we could do without. Finding it offensive is a natural reaction. And now the sexism broke from the fragile containment you built and is running rampant in the real world.

If you want the conflicts to stay in the game as well, don't put your sexism in mechanics. Might not be enough, but at least you can argue you tried.

[CharonsHelper]

Whether or not you think that there should be in-game mechanics gender differences (I do think it can work if there's a good reason - but it probably shouldn't be the default) - having them certainly isn't inherently sexist. If you say that it is - you're removing all meaning from the word.

It's like if someone was to claim it's racist to acknowledge that certain races are more likely to have sickle cell anemia.

[The Insanity]

the fluff doesn't need mechanics to support everything it defines
It does if I want it to.


It's gratuitous and unecessary.
Maybe to you. I don't particularly care.


"Has Boobs" is not a fantastic element
Lol. Me and my girlfriend would disagree. Boobs are fantastic.

[Segev]

Mechanically limiting choice by gender, regardless of story reason is still sexist on its face and unfairly limits character choices. In a better world we wouldn't have people asking in the first place.

You can come up with a million and one reasons why it makes sense or why in a given setting it should be done, but it remains sexist. The intentional construction of a gender divide that doesn't exist, regardless of reason, will always remain so. Whether it's in a game or our world.Legend of the Five Rings is a game set in a fictional Japanese-style Empire ruled by Imperial Chinese-style bureaucracy. It has two prominent Schools which do not and will not accept males, and it is an important part of the feel of the Clans which have them that this is the case. You cannot have a male Utaku Battle Maiden, and you cannot have a male member of one of the Matsu schools whose name I don't recall off the top of my head.

In an effort to NOT be restrictive of the kinds of characters people can play, it has an unrealistically egalitarian social structure for the majority of the civilization, given the kind of society it is modeling; samuraiko and samurai are equal in nearly all respects, at least insofar as sex enters into the equation. Where they are not tends to revolve around very minor social things, and it is more likely you will encounter an intolerant "you must be female to..." construct than an intolerant "you must be male to..." one.

Being the sort of player I am, I think it'd be interesting to try to develop a story about male who managed to get trained in the Utaku Battle Maiden school, but the realities of the setting are that such a character AND his teacher(s) would be under a death sentence if it were ever found out by the matriarchs of that Family. Which still imposes strict limitations on how the character could be developed and portrayed. Such limits, however, are part of what would make the character interesting (or, if you're uncharitable, into a Marty Stu).

The point being that a setting can have a number of reasons for introducing sexist aspects to the world itself, whether culturally or (meta)physically. Female-only unicorn-riders, male-only mecha pilots, male-only mages, female-only priestesses, saidin and saidar having different methods of doing the same things and some things they tend to do better than the other... These things can make a setting interesting. Yes, it introduces limits to what you can play based on the sex of your character. Yes, it can be seen as "sexist," particularly if one sex's allowances let them be just plain better than the other (such that "I wish I was a boy/girl" was a totally rational thing for somebody to say based strictly on the fact that they could do so much MORE as the opposite sex). It certainly, in the parenthetical case, would lead to PCs predominantly being the "better" sex, from an optimization standpoint (just as D&D 3.5 tends to lead to more casters in moderately-optimized games).

But that doesn't mean it's always invalid.

I think this thread has had some useful conversation. The whole "girls can't lift as much as guys" argument is meh, to me, and I can certainly see why people would be actively annoyed by it. But the thread's topic - whether it's good to have different rules/allowances based on character sex - is not a bad one. It goes to how your game's setting is shaped, socially and metaphysically. The feel of the setting can be drastically impacted by it. The feel of a particular "class" or "school" can be dramatically impacted by it. This is not inherently a bad thing, and to say "I do'nt like the subject" is not a valid reason to shut it down, as long as it remains a discussion of gaming and how things are shaped by the rules thereof.

Feel free to gripe all you like about the real-world differences discussion; it has very limited use to a discussion of game mechanics which operate on any level of abstraction approaching usable, as far as I can tell.


Represents a whole other can of worms when the Star Trek Consistency is applied. IE Some species/races being always warlike or always logical or whatever.

Though when it's a non-analagous racial modifier it isn't that big a deal. Like Gnomes. If you depict all gnomes as hispanic or latino, for example, then you get into issues, but if they're gnomes, with gnome traits and backgrounds (I.E. that it's a type of nature spirit or a separate race of small people with different from human traits and a unique culture that isn't designed as a real-world-parallel) it's not that bad. Though it can reinforce the idea that "Race" in reality represents a defined and important difference...

*gives Dark Elves a nasty look*

Different character races represent a fantastic element designed to separate them from reality. "Has Boobs" is not a fantastic element, and shouldn't be treated any differently from "Does Not Have Boobs" or "Has Magically Constructed Boobs" or "Had Extraneous Boobs Removed".

You get the idea.Eh, I think this is looking too hard at it. But I do tend to fall into a camp that would prefer to really look deeply at different races in fantasy and sci-fi and make them more deeply alien compared to humans. Things which let the surface look as similar as it normally does, but which fundamentally change deep aspects of the beings, such that their "hats" are both explained and take on a twist that makes them MORE off-putting and hard to understand the deeper you dig.

In short, as long as the thread focuses on game and setting consequences of design choices and restrictions, racial or sexual, I think it serves a useful and beneficial purpose.

[The Insanity]

I can admit with no problem that I'm introducing stat bonuses based on sex/gender because I want to encourage certain stereotypes that I like in my fantasy. I see nothing wrong or shameful about it.

[Satinavian]

You can come up with a million and one reasons why it makes sense or why in a given setting it should be done, but it remains sexist. The intentional construction of a gender divide that doesn't exist, regardless of reason, will always remain so. Whether it's in a game or our world.People regularly bring it up for simulation. And most of the time people then abandon for various reasons, most already mentioned in this thread. That is not sexist. More likely the opposite.

It's also incredibly cisnormative if not flatly transphobic, since these discussions almost never include people of different genders or sexual characteristic expression.Obviously physical modifiers are for sex, social modifiers for gender. So, yes, people use the word gender to often, but that is not the same as being transphobic.

Seriously, we create world's filled with aliens and elves, laser swords and magic pistols, dragons and dungeons, but the idea of diversity and equality is so far beyond our ability to accept that we populate our worlds with the same biases and general assumptions of the real one, up to and including arguing the merits and problems with creating mechanical barriers based on gender, marginalizing character concepts in the process. Because a lot of gamers want humans or settings they recognice. Knowledge about a setting is important to interact with it in a meaningful way and the cheapest method to achieve this is using something everyone knows anyway.

You'd be surprised how many times I've heard that there are no black women or Trans people in a given setting because it doesn't fit the time period.Never seen a setting that didn't have trans people. Quite a lot of the more detailed setting descriptions even have text about how culture treats them. As for skin colors, as long as the mayority of settings are modelled after medieval/rennaissance Europe, as long inhabitants will look like that. They have European clothes, European architecture, European gouvernment systems and are nearly exclusively white. The same thing happens with games in settings inspired by late Han China or Sengoku era Japan which are also quite common and usually don't include white people. Or modern/futuristic settings, where usually all skin colores are present due to globalization.
Also, even many settings with pseudo-Europe do have other continents with other predominant skin colores somewhere.

[YossarianLives]

I can admit with no problem that I'm introducing stat bonuses based on sex/gender because I want to encourage certain stereotypes that I like in my fantasy. I see nothing wrong or shameful about it.
Exactly what stereotypes are those? You've piqued my curiosity.

[Donnadogsoth]

Frozen: A game can be good AND sexist at the same time. I watch TV and movies and play videogames and read books and comics and so on and so forth at freaking ALL of them are sexist as heck because they're based in a reality which itself has serious issues with gender bias, written and created by people who are so steeped in that gender bias they aren't even aware it exists. It doesn't mean I don't like watching those shows, it just means I have to be aware of the sexism involved in them and keep it from being a casually accepted function or reality that affects my own thinking and interaction with other people.

It's like your nose constantly being in your field of vision: You don't even register it as being there, but clear as a bell when you take the time to notice it.

Or, the creators are just not writing against type. If men and women are psychologically different, innately, to go with their physiological differences, then it would be strange (and painful (and resisted)) to force them into the same mould, which some critics of media products want to do, wouldn't you agree? The shows we have now may be as egalitarian as can be outside of total fantasy. Will STEM enrollments ever equalise among men and women outside of a forced quota? Will the armed forced ever be 50% women? Maybe in agenda-driven media fantasies they will, maybe outside of such media fantasies, not.

The point is, for a game, how one approaches these particular issues depends on whether one believes men and women constitute distinct types whose differences the game can try to plaster over, or leave be, or try to exaggerate for effect. Similar to how a gnome is, in a sense, a halfling exaggerated for effect. In our Gamma World game, for instance, there were no women party members, and the women they did meet were the types one might expect to find in a post-holocaust setting: scared, tough people, but not risk-takers; influential but not commanding, tending to shy back in defense of their children and encouraging the menfolk to step up to the threats. Of course at one point the menfolk of a certain village got out of control and went on a vengeance hunt, getting themselves killed and leaving the womenfolk to pick up the pieces and reestablish themselves.

I include this example to show how my group found it more interesting to consider, after accounting for the setting's fabulous elements, what life would really be like in such a world, rather than worlds where women just karate-kicked their way through life like slightly shorter, chestier men with fancy hair. No, the Bomb wiped out civilisation, the money economy, and koala bears but it couldn't lick sexual dimorphism.

[The Insanity]

Exactly what stereotypes are those? You've piqued my curiosity.
Mostly that women are more often the agile warriors and archers or casters.

[Talakeal]

Different character races represent a fantastic element designed to separate them from reality. "Has Boobs" is not a fantastic element, and shouldn't be treated any differently from "Does Not Have Boobs" or "Has Magically Constructed Boobs" or "Had Extraneous Boobs Removed".

You get the idea.

You know, thos actually comes up fairly often for me.

My PC is a well endowed female, and I camt count the number of times people have told me that it is implausible for a busty woman to be a warrior because large breasts make it impossible to swing a sword, use a bow, or not nave a crippled back in real life. Heck, some people even make a connection between between it and promiscuity based on totally true real life data.

[Feddlefew]

Or, the creators are just not writing against type. If men and women are psychologically different, innately, to go with their physiological differences, then it would be strange (and painful (and resisted)) to force them into the same mould, which some critics of media products want to do, wouldn't you agree? The shows we have now may be as egalitarian as can be outside of total fantasy. Will STEM enrollments ever equalise among men and women outside of a forced quota? Will the armed forced ever be 50% women? Maybe in agenda-driven media fantasies they will, maybe outside of such media fantasies, not.

The point is, for a game, how one approaches these particular issues depends on whether one believes men and women constitute distinct types whose differences the game can try to plaster over, or leave be, or try to exaggerate for effect. Similar to how a gnome is, in a sense, a halfling exaggerated for effect. In our Gamma World game, for instance, there were no women party members, and the women they did meet were the types one might expect to find in a post-holocaust setting: scared, tough people, but not risk-takers; influential but not commanding, tending to shy back in defense of their children and encouraging the menfolk to step up to the threats. Of course at one point the menfolk of a certain village got out of control and went on a vengeance hunt, getting themselves killed and leaving the womenfolk to pick up the pieces and reestablish themselves.

I include this example to show how my group found it more interesting to consider, after accounting for the setting's fabulous elements, what life would really be like in such a world, rather than worlds where women just karate-kicked their way through life like slightly shorter, chestier men with fancy hair. No, the Bomb wiped out civilisation, the money economy, and koala bears but it couldn't lick sexual dimorphism.

Dude. You've constructed a neat little narrative about how women are meek, fragile, and dependent on men for help, and have spent basically the entire thread fiercely denying anything that challenged it. I'd say that's pretty sexist.

Edit: Do you want to know why men go into stem fields? Stem fields are prestigious. Men wouldn't touch computer science with a 10 foot pole back before it became a big field, because it was mostly secretary's work. And women get pushed out.

Do you have any idea what it's like getting treated like you're abnormal because you're just as good- better, even- at science than your male classmates? Or how constantly getting told that your a "smart girl" wears down on you, because you quickly realize that what they really mean is "smart for a girl".

Do you have any ****ing idea just how awful not being able to make any friends for two years is, all just because you won't change your hobbies? And then finding out in high school that there were other girls who liked the same things you did, but wouldn't talk about them because they weren't supposed to like them?

[Donnadogsoth]

Dude. You've constructed a neat little narrative about how women are meek, fragile, and dependent on men for help, and have spent basically the entire thread fiercely denying anything that challenged it. I'd say that's pretty sexist.

What I have effectively said, most recently, is that, for all the mutated monsters and psi powers, my game remained relatively historical in tone in terms of, as relevant to this thread, the sexual dichotomy. Throughout history, this dichotomy has ruled to greater or lesser extent, and I see no reason why it wouldn't reassert itself after anti-gravity activists have gone extinct. It's only now in this postpostpostmodern anti-gravity world that we live in that we've embarked--or, rather, been forced to embark by vocal institutional activists--on a project of total equalisation-of-outcome between the sexes.

As I implicitly suggested, I don't think STEM enrollments will ever equalise outside of sheer force in the form of a quota that will push out half the male students in favour of the less qualified female ones (i.e., female students who wouldn't have outscored the males on the entrance exams). Nor do I think, in a post-holocaust environment, women will retain those type of gains. Necessity would induct many women into the roles of mechanics and hunters and fighters, but to a large part that would be playing against type, for the same reason most women today aren't interested in becoming mechanics, survivalists, or soldiers. Eventually social roles that played to type would reestablish themselves, leading to a situation I had in my game.

[Satinavian]

Proof of psychological difference between man and women is rare and rather difficult to obtain. That means, while those differences might exist, they are not particularly strong and pretty much vanish when compared to individual differences. And it means, that all those beliefs of certain psychological differences commonly held are not rooted in science but only in prejudices. Sexist prejudices.

Also which kind of career women prefer and which kind men prefer has been extremely varied over time. Many jobs nowadays filled with more than two thirds women were once jobs thought to be pretty manly. That does include STEM, where today biology is thought be be for more women and chemistry is often equally interisting for both. All that is changing all the time.

[Feddlefew]

As I implicitly suggested, I don't think STEM enrollments will ever equalise outside of sheer force in the form of a quota that will push out half the male students in favour of the less qualified female ones (i.e., female students who wouldn't have outscored the males on the entrance exams).

Women are actively pushed away from STEM fields starting in early childhood. Even legos are pretty much exclusively marketed to boys now.

Edit: And yeah, the stereotype where I live is the biology is a women's field. Which is why the enrollment for it at surrounding colleges is about 70-80% women.

Edit 2: Nursing is a separate major and ~50/50, BTW.

Edit 3: I should also note that there seems to be a strange preference for physicists and biologists to get together. Doesn't mater what sexes the biologist and physicist are, either. Maybe it's a personality thing? Or being able to geek out without stepping on your SO's toes?

[Spiryt]

Proof of psychological difference between man and women is rare and rather difficult to obtain. That means, while those differences might exist, they are not particularly strong and pretty much vanish when compared to individual differences. .

Well, measuring 'psychologica difference' in general is very difficult, so there's no surprise.

We have women, on average, behaving differently than male, worldwide.

Prevalent theory is that most of it is pure socialisation/culture, which may be right or not.


Similarly, saying why one man behaves differently from another due to hormonal, genetically etc. reason, and not due to upbringing will be hard too.

Looking that way we're left with no 'individual differences'.