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CharonsHelper
2016-01-27, 11:16 PM
It came up in a conversation I was having, and apparently in the original D&D, female characters' STR had a lower max than their male equivalents. Now - while it makes sense from a simulation standpoint (and please no - it was not sexist) it's rather annoying from a game perspective, even if with the original 3d6 roll it was unlikely to come up back then since you would have had to roll at least (if I remember) a 16 for it to matter.

Then it got me thinking about Rokka: Braves of the Six Flowers - it's a pretty decent show - but besides the whodunnit aspect, I thought the world-building was interesting. One of the major points was that the world's magic-users, or 'saints', were all female. So - the show's chosen warriors of destiny were either male badass warriors, or female saints with magic powers.

It got me thinking - how would people feel about an RPG where men & women had inherently different stats? It would of course need to be designed with that in mind from the ground up. From a D&D perspective (since it's the most common reference) it'd be giving females a minus to STR & CON, but bonuses to casting stats. Possibly even making it so that the magic use is female only as it is in Rokka. (It wouldn't be hard to come up with fluff reasons.)

So - that's my question. Do you guys think that such a system could work, one in which males were inherently better warriors in a straight brawl, but females had the magic powers? Do you think that people would call it out as being sexist? Do you think that it would actually BE sexist? Would it make for interesting role-playing as people might be forced to play characters which they normally wouldn't, or would it just be annoying to force people to play cross-gender for the class that they want?

The Glyphstone
2016-01-27, 11:24 PM
Don't mess with innate stat modifiers - as you accurately predicted, it's a gigantic can of worms that has been argued over into pulp again and again and again, including here in old threads.

If you want male warriors and female mages, restrict the classes/abilities by gender instead of giving stat penalties. Otherwise you end up with either A) men who can do magic, but worse than women (small stat penalty), or B) men who are so crippled by their innate stat penalties that they're unable to do magic even at the top of the curve in mental stats, which means the average male is going to be a drooling moron (large stat penalty). Reverse these situations for female casters, into A) slightly substandard female warriors, or B) mages who explode when you breathe on them too hard.

Restricting the classes by gender via fluff, on the other hand, is simple and easy. Make it a core defined part of the world, or even part of the metaphysics, and anyone who doesn't like it isn't suited to the setting/game.

kraftcheese
2016-01-28, 12:09 AM
I guess it would be interesting...but it certainly feels like it's playing into sexist tropes.

Tbh it wouldn't even necessarily be very stimulation-ey, as body shape/mass, musculature, fitness level, practice, etc that effect real-world "strength" and "constitution" have a huge amount of variation across individuals, regardless of whether they're male or female.

Men might have more of a tendency to put on muscle mass, but that doesn't necessarily mean that all men will be physically stronger than women, and I guess the same goes for things that we traditionally think women are better at than men.

I suppose you could always go with certain classes being traditionally relegated to certain sexes; like with your idea about casting. That way you could still for example play a male caster, or a female paladin, both with the same potential to do whatever that class does, but you might experience different reactions in-world, have different expectations of how you will use your skills (perhaps male/female clerics are expected to use their powers for healing, and a war Cleric of the "healer gender" would be frowned upon by other clerics and practitioners of their faith).

Just an alternate suggestion.

CharonsHelper
2016-01-28, 12:23 AM
If you want male warriors and female mages, restrict the classes/abilities by gender instead of giving stat penalties. Otherwise you end up with either A) men who can do magic, but worse than women (small stat penalty), or B) men who are so crippled by their innate stat penalties that they're unable to do magic even at the top of the curve in mental stats, which means the average male is going to be a drooling moron (large stat penalty). Reverse these situations for female casters, into A) slightly substandard female warriors, or B) mages who explode when you breathe on them too hard.

Restricting the classes by gender via fluff, on the other hand, is simple and easy. Make it a core defined part of the world, or even part of the metaphysics, and anyone who doesn't like it isn't suited to the setting/game.

I figured it'd either be your A answers (though the magic stats wouldn't be Int/Wis - they'd need to be something else) potentially combined with the class restrictions.

Possibly a point-buy system where males can upgrade physical stats more cheaply but cannot purchase magic powers at all.

CharonsHelper
2016-01-28, 12:29 AM
Men might have more of a tendency to put on muscle mass, but that doesn't necessarily mean that all men will be physically stronger than women

Certainly not - but at the high end of the bell curve (as adventurers are) the difference is significant.

Again - I'm not saying that all systems should do it. I'm just throwing it out as a question of what people would think of a system which did due to curiosity.

Raphite1
2016-01-28, 01:07 AM
This idea has occurred to everyone, and it always ends up being a Bad Idea.

ImNotTrevor
2016-01-28, 01:18 AM
Biologically, it has support on a lot of levels.
(What, you thought several millions years of evolution and specialization would go away once feminism was invented?)

However, it would cause a lot of butthurt. Better to avoid the ragemonster that would come after you. If someplace like Tumblr found out....
Yeah. Not good.

Not because its a bad idea, or because it wouldn't be an interesting game.
But because rage you don't wanna deal with.

YossarianLives
2016-01-28, 01:52 AM
It came up in a conversation I was having, and apparently in the original D&D, female characters' STR had a lower max than their male equivalents.
Objection!

The stats of female characters were never limited in OD&D, that didn't become a thing until AD&D rolled around, almost a decade after the initial release of D&D.

*ahem*


I don't think it's a terrible idea, and I don't think you should avoid it because some people would get angry, their concerns wouldn't be baseless but I think that all ideas deserve a chance. Contempt prior to investigation is a heinous crime.

But you would have to handle the whole thing judiciously and even then, it might turn out poorly. I think incorporating mechanics that limit the number of viable character concepts should be avoided at all costs, and effectively limiting characters of certain genders from choosing classes definitely does that.

Rusvul
2016-01-28, 01:56 AM
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.

goto124
2016-01-28, 02:12 AM
People want to play characters of whatever gender they like for any reason (playing their own gender, playing a gender they find attractive, why is a reason even needed).


In-universe sexism would have to be accepted as part of the premise of the game. Not everyone likes the "you're a helpless person whose sanity is literally torn down by supernatural creatures you can't touch" premise of CoC. That means those who don't like that premise can choose not to play CoC. Only those who want the premise would enjoy CoC.

Similarly, if you don't like the premise of "gender actually matters a lot in this world", find another group or setting to play. Lots of gender-equal settings out there. This setting will make sex and gender matter as much as race, or even more than race.

We've already covered "don't force mechanical restrictions by sex", it's much more boring and doesn't really allow to explore ramifications of gender roles in society. Presumably if you're playing in this sort of fictional society, you want to explore such ramifications.

Gender-based differences would have to be baked into the setting, history built up to explain everything, and made rather clear from the very start (who would expect gender to matter that much in an RPG? It's a dead practice). Sounds like something for serious roleplayers. When it's baked into the setting, it's easier to think of it as within unique in-universe culture, as opposed to seeing it as the DM's (setting creator's) weird sexism.

Make sure to do your research, so that the in-universe sexism is actually realistic. DnD had a drow matriarchy where every female drow wears a spidersilk bikini. Uhh... Oh, and realize that sexism goes both ways (we're sexist to both females and males, just in different ways, again research), sexism ties in with many other forms of discrimination such as racism, ableism, and classism, and sexism differs from society to society, era to era.


A thought: We have no problems giving elves, dwarves, and humans different stat modifiers. Would we be so indifferent if we gave different stat modifiers to insert RL races here (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_contemporary_ethnic_groups)?

It's because elves and dwarves don't exist IRL. (Also, they're more like different species.)

So we want a hypothetical sexist society* made of nonhumans (nonhumans means we can have sexes other than the standard 'female & male', but let's keep things simple). One could do the fantasy counterpart culture thing and base the society's ideas of gender roles on a RL society. I'll stop here for now, I'm blabbering.

*The entire setting won't be exactly sexist in the same way right? Sexism changes across the borders, and even in the same general area there can be subgroups that have different beliefs on sex and gender. We haven't even gotten started on the individuals.

NothingButCake
2016-01-28, 02:34 AM
I am not sure what you would gain from doing this. I do not even think it is conceptually interesting because it is already completely rote; it would just feel Old. I suppose it may work from the perspective of calling back to something like pulp fantasy.

There is also a weird element where you are balancing out a 'real' advantage of men (physical strength) with a fake advantage of women (can cast spells).

I know there will be people who disagree with me here, but if I saw a game system that in-built these kinds of gendered differences, I would just think the creator(s) had that understanding of gender as being static, that what they saw as what gender means in X country on Earth in the 2010s as being forever the what gender means in the past and future, across worlds. To me, that implies the rest of the background writing for the system would be similarly limited, especially since there is already such wide diversity of genders throughout our mundane human history. To me, it implies the creator(s) did not really think about transgenderism or intersexuality or third(/fourth/fifth) gender to produce cultures that are at least as interesting as our world.

I think fantasy writing already has this problem where cultures are very static and the sun god religion believes X and Y and it has always believed X and Y in the same way for centuries, or since we're talking about fantasy, for hundreds of centuries.

Thinking about it a little bit, I think I feel the most comfortable with gendered differences in character building if the character building system were one where you build the equivalent of a 5e background, a package of social advantages and technical skills, by purchasing them with Background Points and the BP costs of different advantages are culturally gendered. For example, Night Elf women are trained to be warriors while Night Elf men are trained to be druids, so an extra weapon proficiency costs a woman 2 BP but it costs a man 3 BP but a man can get Druid Circle Standing at a lower rate than a woman.

goto124
2016-01-28, 02:42 AM
There is also a weird element where you are balancing out a 'real' advantage of men (physical strength) with a fake advantage of women (can cast spells).

For example, Night Elf women are trained to be warriors while Night Elf men are trained to be druids, so an extra weapon proficiency costs a woman 2 BP but it costs a man 3 BP but a man can get Druid Circle Standing at a lower rate than a woman.

Both of these make sex/gender an optimization choice, like how people have choose Goliath for nice stat modifiers that benefit a Barbarian. Is this what you want, creating another optimization point where gender helps 'shore up' builds?

If you want realism, combine the above with letting NPCs react to the characters. A night elf man saying he's learning warrior skills could get a reaction of "Tis unnatural!"

Again, why do you want gender-based differences?

Satinavian
2016-01-28, 02:46 AM
So - that's my question. Do you guys think that such a system could work, one in which males were inherently better warriors in a straight brawl, but females had the magic powers? Do you think that people would call it out as being sexist? Do you think that it would actually BE sexist? Would it make for interesting role-playing as people might be forced to play characters which they normally wouldn't, or would it just be annoying to force people to play cross-gender for the class that they want?
Has been done before. Lots of times. It's a bad idea. There are a couple of reasons :

- While people can often agree that men are on average stonger, it is difficult to translate that into game terms without linking the strength stat to realistic athlete benchmarks. Otherwise you can't be sure about the thin line between a realistic model and a overblown sexist clichee. Also women tend to be smaller and lighter so you also run into issues of absolute strength for lifting and stuff and strength relative to body mass for climbing and stuff

- Strength ist easy. But there is no consensus about Constitution (pain tolerance, poison tolarance, sickness tolerance, hit points and equivalent) or Dexterity. Should men be better ? schould women be better ? And if, how much ?

- Messing with mental stats will always be a problem and can't be done without producing sexist clichees. Doesn't matter of Intelligence (hey, one gender is dumber), Wisdom (hey, one gender has no common sense/ one gender is intuitive) or Charisma (hey, one gender is eye candy/ is responsible for social stuff/ is made of born leaders)

- Casting : Giving women casting for the physical stat bonus of men implies that women are an inferior choise and need a supernatural buff to be competitive to men. Which they obviouslydon't have in real life where only the inferiority is left. This can't be done at all without being sexist.


Don't do it. Cultural differences are pretty safe. Having different supernatural powers availible to both genders is also pretty safe. But there is a reason nearly every contemporary RPG does not do stats per gender anymore except maybe hight and weight.

goto124
2016-01-28, 02:54 AM
Other option: go the full hog. Have a society where everyone is part of a created species, where the sexes are so different they're literally unable to cover the other sex's roles. Here, all males have lots of muscles and can fight, while all females are too weak to even carry a sword the normal way. However, all magic is fueled by womb power (http://pre00.deviantart.net/bbd8/th/pre/f/2013/303/1/4/now_you_know__by_nebezial-d6sfysa.jpg), which for obvious reasons means only females can cast magic.

Disclaimer: May work best in a comedic campaign.

Ashtagon
2016-01-28, 03:08 AM
Objection!

The stats of female characters were never limited in OD&D, that didn't become a thing until AD&D rolled around, almost a decade after the initial release of D&D.

By "almost a decade", you mean four years and five months, right?

1e PHB was published in June 1978.

OD&D was published in January 1974.

Cazero
2016-01-28, 03:29 AM
How about traditional gender roles (and the different stats that come with them) and not restraining the PCs to them? PCs already have exceptional stats (being stuck to kitchen duty because of your stat array is not heroic), so why not have their awesomeness crush that stupid gender-based stat difference into oblivion?

HammeredWharf
2016-01-28, 03:51 AM
Giving males more strength and females more [magicstat] wouldn't work well even in the setting you used as an example.

Adlet is a monk with some alchemist skills, basically a fantasy Batman. If I were making an Adlet in D&D, I'd definitely make him dex-based, with a good dose of int.
Hans is an assassin. Extremely dexterous, insightful and cunning, but not particularly strong.
Mora has some earth-related magical powers, but she usually just punches things to death.

So, both male characters have high dex and mental stats, while the "party member" with the highest str and con is female. As far as I know, nothing even implies males have better physical abilities. They just can't do magic, which is why Adlet focuses on alchemy and gadgets.

PersonMan
2016-01-28, 03:53 AM
By "almost a decade", you mean four years and five months, right?

1e PHB was published in June 1978.

OD&D was published in January 1974.

It was written during the Year Famine of 1975 - 1975, where the Year Crops failed for so long that the year had almost 38 of them.

---

I agree with the idea of gender roles being an in-universe thing. It's more fun, in my opinion, to play in a world where a male X or female Y is considered unusual but isn't at a strict disadvantage as far as rules are concerned, rather than just having to fight an uphill battle against stat penalties or point cost increases.

ImNotTrevor
2016-01-28, 05:01 AM
If I had to do stats for SEXES (not genders. Genders aren't biological, nor involve differing brain chemistry or anything of the sort) then I would likely do this:

Males have more Str. Duh. Like a +1.

Females have more Cha. Also like a +1.

BUT MUH EYE CANDY

No. Put down the pitchfork.

In history (verifiably, even) women have been not just Home-makers, but SOCIETY-makers. No, really. You know that joke "The man is the head of the household, but the woman is the neck. Amd she can move him any was she wants." It's surprisingly true at the family level, and even more true in ancient societies.

Go read Beowulf. I'll wait.

Ok. Now that you're back, did you notice who was always demaning that the rules of society be followed? (The paying of blood prices, etc)

Women. Women in tandem form the basis of societies.

Women have a strong tendency towards having very high social IQs, and focus outwardly. (When women get together, they chat and catch up and exchange socially relevant information.)

Men don't tend towards this behavior. Most men talk about what they're currently doing and talk about more personal issues with 1 or maybe 2 very close friends.

The biological imperstives for these kinds of behaviors no longer exist. And in fact society increasingly frowns upon anyone mentioning these differences.

But they persist anyways.

Even SJW morality (guided mostly by biologically female individuals) is based on SOCIETY. "That offends people, which makes society scary and unsafe. Society needs to accommodate this kind of person."

I have more, but my phone is dying. Anyways, Cha isn't attractiveness. It's Social ability.

Heian
2016-01-28, 05:38 AM
I use the following House Rules in my Setting:

- The difference between STR and COS scores for an humanoid is, before racial and other adjustments, maximum 2.
- Female Humans, Gnomes and Elves cannot have STR as their single highest stat at character generation, before racial and other adjustments.
- Level advancement (3.P) confers either +1 to two different physical stats or +1 to a single mental stat.

What do you think about the HRs above?

Steampunkette
2016-01-28, 05:41 AM
So... here's a thing.

A group of scientists grabbed some babies and their parents and a treadmill capable of inclining. Then they put the infants on the treadmill and had the parents watch as they inclined the treadmill. The babies, regardless of gender, we're able to climb the same grade of incline before they had difficulty, and had around the same maximum incline before they fell off, within the same size range at least. http://tinyurl.com/Babyramps

However, mothers universally said their daughters wouldn't be able to handle the inclines that other boys could. They underestimated them, completely. The babies were basically capable of handling the same slope regardless of sex.

From infancy, girls are kept from achieving their physical potential by parents who try to stop them from getting hurt, while cheering on the boys as they go to their limit.

The idea of humans being evolved with big sex based dimorphism is an inherently untestable hypothesis because you cannot reasonably control for social factors applied to children from birth. To actually test the hypothesis that men are, inherently, stronger than women you would need a sample size of several hundred thousand infants raised in a completely impartial environment to adulthood with the same physical training regimen through their lives for testing to commenced after 18 years.

The ethical considerations of such an act are, of course, unthinkable. But it would be the only way to objectively learn the truth. Until such a study has been performed I highly suggest keeping that fact in mind.

nyjastul69
2016-01-28, 05:55 AM
Different stats for different genders? FATAL probably has you covered. Or, maybe, just don't do it.

Lvl 2 Expert
2016-01-28, 06:34 AM
So... here's a thing.

A group of scientists grabbed some babies and their parents and a treadmill capable of inclining. Then they put the infants on the treadmill and had the parents watch as they inclined the treadmill. The babies, regardless of gender, we're able to climb the same grade of incline before they had difficulty, and had around the same maximum incline before they fell off, within the same size range at least. http://tinyurl.com/Babyramps

However, mothers universally said their daughters wouldn't be able to handle the inclines that other boys could. They underestimated them, completely. The babies were basically capable of handling the same slope regardless of sex.

From infancy, girls are kept from achieving their physical potential by parents who try to stop them from getting hurt, while cheering on the boys as they go to their limit.

The idea of humans being evolved with big sex based dimorphism is an inherently untestable hypothesis because you cannot reasonably control for social factors applied to children from birth. To actually test the hypothesis that men are, inherently, stronger than women you would need a sample size of several hundred thousand infants raised in a completely impartial environment to adulthood with the same physical training regimen through their lives for testing to commenced after 18 years.

The ethical considerations of such an act are, of course, unthinkable. But it would be the only way to objectively learn the truth. Until such a study has been performed I highly suggest keeping that fact in mind.

While you definitely have a big point here, I'd say you are taking it a little too far. After puberty men (the standard binary gender type males with "normal" testosterone levels in all parts of their body during all times of development, for simplicity's sake) are on average physically stronger than women, and would still be stronger if they had had exactly the same youth. Before puberty I'd agree that there is probably no difference at all or a very small one. You can see that by how children are build. Boys and girls are about as wide at the shoulders and their hands are about the same sizes. Post puberty that's not the case. Hormone regulation can be influenced by behavior, food etc, and there's a lot of individual variation, but on average men have more testosterone than women. This means that on average men will be able to grow a longer beard than women, that they will on average go bald much earlier and that they on average make more muscle mass. Mostly in puberty it also influences growth.

If a person had male hormones through puberty they will on average have bigger, sturdier hands than a person who had female hormones, more suited for getting a strong grip on something and for punching people with a fist, but less suited for delicate work. I love how I can get away with semi-unreadable handwriting because I'm a guy, and I would totally agree that the fact that's accepted from boys is sociological in nature, rather than biological. This means that yes, girls will be pushed harder to write cleaner, enhancing the difference. But that doesn't mean that there isn't a biological difference to begin with. Men are, on average, bigger and stronger than women. They're also more directly-aggressive (I don't really know how to call it, but you know what I mean) in their behavior, they like to brag more, they are bigger thrill seekers etc etc.

You could probably create an civilization (theoretically, as you said these things are kind of hard to test) where the gender roles are reversed. I mean, the differences are definitely there, but they're not that big. If the women are all trained as warriors, if certain types of behavior are en- or discouraged in both genders etc you could have women fulfill the roles men often fulfill in other societies and vice versa, and nobody would think that this is "wrong" or "unnatural" or anything like that. But even there the women would barely if at all be stronger than the men, because of biology.

I mean, just look at pro athletes. People who have spent their whole lives becoming strong. I'm a big guy, and I kayak, but I'm not by any means a "jock" or a bodybuilder or anything. I'd definitely lose an arm wrestling match against any male Olympic swimmer you can name, quickly and badly. (Also Olympic kayakkers, rowers, tennis players, you get the gist.) I'd probably stand a fair chance against most women in the same disciplines.

(Holy lettery goodness batman, a wall of text!)

HammeredWharf
2016-01-28, 06:40 AM
So... here's a thing.

A group of scientists grabbed some babies and their parents and a treadmill capable of inclining. Then they put the infants on the treadmill and had the parents watch as they inclined the treadmill. The babies, regardless of gender, we're able to climb the same grade of incline before they had difficulty, and had around the same maximum incline before they fell off, within the same size range at least. http://tinyurl.com/Babyramps

However, mothers universally said their daughters wouldn't be able to handle the inclines that other boys could. They underestimated them, completely. The babies were basically capable of handling the same slope regardless of sex.

From infancy, girls are kept from achieving their physical potential by parents who try to stop them from getting hurt, while cheering on the boys as they go to their limit.

The idea of humans being evolved with big sex based dimorphism is an inherently untestable hypothesis because you cannot reasonably control for social factors applied to children from birth. To actually test the hypothesis that men are, inherently, stronger than women you would need a sample size of several hundred thousand infants raised in a completely impartial environment to adulthood with the same physical training regimen through their lives for testing to commenced after 18 years.

The ethical considerations of such an act are, of course, unthinkable. But it would be the only way to objectively learn the truth. Until such a study has been performed I highly suggest keeping that fact in mind.

Babies don't have well-defined sexual characteristics. They develop mostly during puberty, generally speaking due to hormones. Testosterone is a big deal and we know how it affects the human body and that males produce more of it. That's proven medically, therefore social experiments aren't required to reach a fairly accurate conclusion. Before you grab onto the "fairly accurate" part, that's science. There's always a possibility of being wrong, but the studies are still valid until proven otherwise.

Societal pressures affect people in many ways, of course, and they do make women less athletic in some ways. However, women are also less muscular inherently. Frankly, I don't understand why so many seem hell-bent on proving otherwise, because being strong is one of the least significant advantages in first-world countries, unless you really want that ditch-digging job. If anything, current societal pressures seem to encourage women to be fit and men to be muscular, so in this regard women get the better deal.

Ninja'd by a wall of text!

Don nadie
2016-01-28, 07:01 AM
Well, lots of well argued points here! I definitely would go for making sex an issue in what skills you develop, rather than what physical abilities you have.

I also agree it is very difficult to differentiate between what is biological and what is social. It would easily fall into cliché sexism. Furthermore, stat differences tend to be about races with considerably differing bodies and metabolism (an elf or dwarf live hundreds of years!). If we don't see changes in stats between ethnic groups of humans (because even if there's some variation between humans, it is a tiny one that only emerges in large groups), I don't see that sex should be any different.

And, most important, I really don't see the point of having these differences at all: one more stat to consider? Why? D&D is already Fantasy Accounting!)

But if I had to do it, I may actually give men bonus Str and women bonus Con. It seems more reasonable than giving them magical powers or mental stats.* This is of course based on several asumptions that are very, very questionable (among other reasons because I am a man and because I am no doctor). But I'd give them Con because:

-Women deal with menstruation, which as far as I know from my friends and family, is a monthly exercice on resiliance. It may be ok-ish, it may be terrible, but it is there kind of every month. Men do not have a monthly set of days being uncomfortable. And 99% of women do not stop their work because of it - they just buckle up and go on. If that's not showing some awesome Fort saves, I dunno what is.
-Women give birth. And then they continue on living. I mean, if that's not a body made of sheer freaking endurance, I dunno what is, because human reproduction is probably the most botched thing ever. Again, Fort saves.
-Women who survive giving birth tend to live longer. It may be because they weren't allowed to risk their lives, but hey, still.


*As a side-note on mental stats: while the trope is that women make society in history, it is not rare for societies to keep women out of socialization altogether. Most of medieval girls would be carefully kept away from socializing and/or learning leadership skills. Of course, this only applies to rich people (poor people couldn't afford this particular brand of sexism). I think thus that charisma makes no sense as a "womanly" stat... And that without even considering how ridiculous "charisma" is as a stat!

Satinavian
2016-01-28, 07:07 AM
So... here's a thing.

A group of scientists grabbed some babies and their parents and a treadmill capable of inclining. Then they put the infants on the treadmill and had the parents watch as they inclined the treadmill. The babies, regardless of gender, we're able to climb the same grade of incline before they had difficulty, and had around the same maximum incline before they fell off, within the same size range at least. http://tinyurl.com/Babyramps

However, mothers universally said their daughters wouldn't be able to handle the inclines that other boys could. They underestimated them, completely. The babies were basically capable of handling the same slope regardless of sex.

From infancy, girls are kept from achieving their physical potential by parents who try to stop them from getting hurt, while cheering on the boys as they go to their limit.

The idea of humans being evolved with big sex based dimorphism is an inherently untestable hypothesis because you cannot reasonably control for social factors applied to children from birth. To actually test the hypothesis that men are, inherently, stronger than women you would need a sample size of several hundred thousand infants raised in a completely impartial environment to adulthood with the same physical training regimen through their lives for testing to commenced after 18 years.

The ethical considerations of such an act are, of course, unthinkable. But it would be the only way to objectively learn the truth. Until such a study has been performed I highly suggest keeping that fact in mind.
I strongly disagree.

I grew up in a city where under communist dictatorship every couple of years every single child in every school was measured for body development and performence in various physical tasks and all those information was evaluated by the local university and used to improve athletes performances and design professional training tracks from the age of seven. Having later actually seen some of the data, i am certain, you are wrong.

In fact, boys and girls are nearly equally strong until puperty starts. There was a small difference and girls are actually slightly stronger before the age of 10. But that is utterly minor to what happens between 10 and 20.
The real difference are hormones, not parental behavior. Or gender roles. While those certainly can make a difference, it should show already at an early age not only for teens and older. Either that, or the communist society was extremely equal (disclaimer : it was not.)

nedz
2016-01-28, 07:17 AM
Whilst it may seem more simulationist to do this: adventurers are meant to be outliers to the general population and so it's a better simulation of that idiom to allow for more options. If a player wants to create a low strength female then the rules allow for them to do that. There is no need for the system to enforce this.

Steampunkette
2016-01-28, 07:24 AM
Estrogen actually improves the tensile strength of muscles while testosterone encourages increased mass during muscle scarring from damage. Both hormones actually improve muscle strength in different ways. Where one results in a larger mass of muscle tossue, the other allows a smaller mass of tissue to perform more efficiently.

That's not to say that women with estrogen can't build big darn muscles, it's just less rapid and severe.

As to the teens and post puberty proposed evidence it does not control for societal factors which rather clearly play some role or another. Within a discussion on accounting for those factors such evidence proves nothing.

Spiryt
2016-01-28, 07:32 AM
Women are generally significantly less physically able than males in humans, not just in 'strength'.

See about every athletic competition.

http://www.newschoolers.com/forum/thread/771689/US-Women-s-Olympic-Hockey-loses-to-high-school-boys


And reflecting it in something in D&D sounds mainly like great way to spoil the fun, honestly.


Where one results in a larger mass of muscle tossue, the other allows a smaller mass of tissue to perform more efficiently.


I would love to read something about it, since it doesn't seem to make much sense...

Testosterone and it's derivatives are taken by both men and women as PEDs.

Haven't even really heard about estrogen being taken as such. It's taken only to mask excess testosterone, although likely not today, since it's rather primitive method.

And if it was allowing muscle to operate more efficiently, it surely would have been, because it's sounds GREAT for hundreds of different reasons.

gtwucla
2016-01-28, 07:49 AM
When you can become as strong as a dragon, how can you argue there should be a statistical difference between male and female characters? I realize its just a discussion at the moment, but adventurers on the high end of the bellcurve are so beyond what a human is capable of doing, including a measure for the real-world difference between the average male and female is nonsensical.

Frozen_Feet
2016-01-28, 07:52 AM
@Steampunkette: Societal pressures play a part in puberty and post-puberty development, but not that big of a part. Even without factoring out all societal causes and effects, physical differences between adult males and females are well-studied, well-documented and great many of them are undeniably biological, even genetic, in nature. Arguing that biological sexual dimorphism in humans is an "inherentently untestable hypothesis" is flatly counter-factual.

---

Now, as for the actual topic of RPGs where sexual dimorphism is an in-game thing, Noitahovi, a fairly recent Finnish RPG, has a setting and system where "men are realistically more fit, but women hold social and magical power". It is generally well-regarded, and even considered a feminist game by some reviewers (despite the fact that the matriarchal society described in it is explicitly not a portrayal of feminism, and the game maker is a man). No-one in my knowledge has made any of the complaints regarding it, that have been made here. Of course, like all Finnish RPG products, it's a small-print product with little spread, so it's not a surprise if not much noise has been made regarding it. :smalltongue:

But I do consider it an example of a) yes, you can have a game exploring both actual and imaginary sex and gender differences b) without falling prey to sexist tropes and c) while still being fun.

Rather than game design, though, I'd attribute these to the player base, who a) do not fall prey to the statistical fallacies Satinavian mentioned ("On average men are stronger/dumber, this means men as a sex are superior/inferior!" [etc.]) and b) do not have fixation with optimal play to the point they'd choose sex and gender of a character in order to min-max, like Goto124 proposed.

Satinavian
2016-01-28, 07:54 AM
As to the teens and post puberty proposed evidence it does not control for societal factors which rather clearly play some role or another. Within a discussion on accounting for those factors such evidence proves nothing.
If children are of the same strength before puperty and start drifting apart only later, it does at least prove that the parental influence does not lead to a change in performance before puperty. And it strongly suggests that it is also not the reason for the later difference.

That is pretty much the best test of the hypothesis "performance difference is due to upbringing based on gender roles" that can be done. And it does disprove this hypothesis.

ImNotTrevor
2016-01-28, 07:57 AM
Estrogen actually improves the tensile strength of muscles while testosterone encourages increased mass during muscle scarring from damage. Both hormones actually improve muscle strength in different ways. Where one results in a larger mass of muscle tossue, the other allows a smaller mass of tissue to perform more efficiently.

That's not to say that women with estrogen can't build big darn muscles, it's just less rapid and severe.

As to the teens and post puberty proposed evidence it does not control for societal factors which rather clearly play some role or another. Within a discussion on accounting for those factors such evidence proves nothing.

You seem to be assuming that societal pressures are so big, so vast, and so important that they can literally override several million years of evolution.

If you were to take a female infant and give her to a team of nursery-caretaker-bodybuilders amd have her train for maximum strength from the moment she hit puberty

And did the exact same thing with a male infant

The male would turn out stronger. How do we know this? We have athletes that have trained intensively through puberty and beyond of both sexes and the differences are too large to say "eh, its because the female secretly feels like she can't be as strong as the male because society says so."

Next you'll tell me women have wider hip bones because society wills it, too. Not because babies have to get through. Or that breasts are a social construct.

Trust me, some things don't actually need to be tested. For instance:
Do you know if gasoline will ignite if exposed to the fire of a green lighter? I know it works with a red one. But I've never tested with a green one. There is no reason the green one would make a difference, but I could check and make sure.

We know what Testosterone does. We know that having more of it means it does more of what it does. (Shocking)
So if males produce more testosterone, they would have more testosterone effects. We don't need to test this any more than we need to test if you'll be more full if yoi eat more food. So long as "more" retains its meaning, this will be true.

As for estrogen... I've never heard that. And I doubt it. So I took 5 seconds to google it.
http://m.livescience.com/38324-what-is-estrogen.html
Estrogen makes boobs and regulates your menstrual cycle. Nothing about muscular development. But lots about baby-factory function.

Maybe because the primary function of females biologically is to produce and nurture the next generation, and males are designed to kill things that may prevent the grand reproductive imperative and obtain females with whom they can complete the Grand Reproductive Imperative.

These things are part of our BIOLOGICAL programming and part of why we are still around as a species. The societal stuff was born from the biological, not the other way around.

EDIT:
Yes. Biologically speaking the entire purpose of your existence is to pass on your genes through reproduction. This is the Grand Imperative of life. Of all life. If you don't like it, too bad. Evolution doesn't care about being politically correct. It cares about the strongest species continuing while the weakest die out. That's it. Or rather, Evolution cares about nothing because it is a conceptual process and not a thinking, sentient entity.

Frozen_Feet
2016-01-28, 08:04 AM
When you can become as strong as a dragon, how can you argue there should be a statistical difference between male and female characters? I realize its just a discussion at the moment, but adventurers on the high end of the bellcurve are so beyond what a human is capable of doing, including a measure for the real-world difference between the average male and female is nonsensical.

Ah, the good old "but dragons!" fallacy.

Always remember: there are more genres than high fantasy, and more forms of play than hack-and-slash adventuring. Even in great many fantasy games, strongest humans stick close to real-life ability. As a point of historical trivia, the Strength and carrying capacity rules in AD&D actually were based on then-current fitness records. (Strength 18/00, IIRC, had its lifting capacity set at then-current world record for lifting.) In a similar manner, Intelligence score in AD&D was explicitly meant to be analogous to IQ, though no sex differences for Intelligence were used by the rules.

Even if player characters aren't created using random statistical distribution, or use a weighed distribution like D&D since 1e AD&D, having realistic rules for ordinary humans might still be useful if they feature prominently as NPCs.

Douche
2016-01-28, 08:52 AM
I think it's pretty needless. Gender roles make sense if you're building an entire culture. Like in Warcraft 3, the Night elf druids were all men and spent all their time hibernating/defending the emerald dream. Meanwhile, the women were all the real warriors, defending the night elf homeland and developing their society while the men slept. As a result, it was a matriarchal society. They got rid of that in WoW, though, cuz having gender-based class restrictions would cause a stir for no reason.

Anyway, I have seen RPGs where women and men have different starting ability scores (race, background, etc affected this too) but everyone can end up with the same max stats anyway. For instance, men would start with an extra point in Con, whereas women get an extra point in Wis. At the end of the day, they both have a max of 20, so it's not a huge deal. You don't want to touch the max stats, cuz then it would have an impact on end-game optimization. That'd cause people not to ever choose a women if they wanted to be a warrior.

I also don't feel like it's worth it to debate gender politics in a TRPG.

goto124
2016-01-28, 09:07 AM
I think it's pretty needless. Gender roles make sense if you're building an entire culture.

My thoughts as well.


For instance, men would start with an extra point in Con, whereas women get an extra point in Wis. At the end of the day, they both have a max of 20, so it's not a huge deal.

But how long will people have the difference in points, especially in games where you don't level up and gain stats so much?

Let's go back to Why do you want gender-based differences?

On their own, mechanical differences don't increase realism/verisimilitude, they just make the player think "oh if I want a more effective spellcaster, I'd better pick female".

Realism/verisimilitude is achieved if you've got well-thought-out, well-researched (research! research! research!) worldbuilding. The worldbuilding can then be supported by mechanical differences (like the night elf warriors/druids example on the previous page, complete with real reasons for each difference). But worldbuilding comes first.

Unless we're starting with "we need to put in a mechanical choice other than race that affects stats or other things", and then using sex/gender to fluff it up. Are we...?

Anonymouswizard
2016-01-28, 09:44 AM
Oh boy, next we'll be getting to giving women -4 STR in exchange for the 'ability' to get pregnant.

Now that I've got the sarcasm out of the way, this is a sticky topic. It can be okay (not good, but okay), but it's extremely easy to get wrong. Take TGTMNBN (FATAL), want to play a badass female warrior? Too bad, multiply your Strength by 0.7, while the men get a multiplier of 1.3 (for the record that makes men nearly twice as strong as women), oh, and you wont get anywhere near enough of a bonus for it to balance it out. The best way to do it with stats is with an adjusted cap, although I will personally break out the red pen and 'correct' it.

If you do want to have magic use be female only, why is this the case in setting? Tradition? Gods being sexist? The 'magic gene' being recessive and not on the Y chromosome? (Please don't use the last one)

Imagine a society where, traditionally, men become soldiers and engineers while women become priests and doctors. What if a man wants to be a priest? What if a woman wants to be an engineer? Can they do it? What gender are they considered to be?

halfeye
2016-01-28, 09:50 AM
Now - while it makes sense from a simulation standpoint (and please no - it wasn't not sexist)
Wasn't not == was? or are you just confused?

I always like to think back to a story that came on the news in 1980, about a leopard that was making a huge noise killing a family in an african hut, so the neighbour waited by the door, and when it came out, she killed it with an axe.

goto124
2016-01-28, 10:06 AM
The 'magic gene' being recessive and not on the Y chromosome? (Please don't use the last one)

Heh, I've already suggested womb power.

obryn
2016-01-28, 10:07 AM
I'd just steer clear. If your players care to make their men stronger or women weaker, they can work it out in point-buy. There's no gain, IMO, and it limits your players' options.

You can make a game that messes around with gender roles, and it can be fun - look at settings like Wheel of Time. Just be mindful, is all, and it almost certainly doesn't need a mechanical bludgeon like "mens are strong, womens talk good."

Apricot
2016-01-28, 10:30 AM
I, like everyone else, have considered this. It's basically impossible to ignore. We, as humans, are confronted day-in day-out by the simple fact that muscle mass is directly correlated with strength and that men are on average around 25% bigger than women by volume. There are other differences as well, such as muscle distribution and other such things (for example: check out which sex is best at long-distance swimming, by a massive margin at that), but that simple explanation is enough to show why having the physical attributes of each sex be identical feels odd more than natural. Mental characteristics, in contrast, feel completely natural as equals.

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 think the argument against general stat modifications has been laid out quite clearly. It means that if you want to optimize for a particular class, you have to pick a specific gender, which is a rather intense kind of munchkinry. I think leaving it out entirely might be for the best. As far as campaign settings themselves go, it's perfectly reasonable to say that there is a different stat distribution among the general populace on average which has absolutely no effect on how you individually roll up characters. I mean, after all, player characters are supposed to be inherently rare as-is; how much crazier could it be to waive stat restrictions for one of those special snowflakes?

wumpus
2016-01-28, 10:48 AM
If you do want to have magic use be female only, why is this the case in setting? Tradition? Gods being sexist? The 'magic gene' being recessive and not on the Y chromosome? (Please don't use the last one)



Heh, I've already suggested womb power.

Anybody remember Katherine Kurtz and the Deryni novels? I'm pretty sure the appendix made clear that magic (deryniness) was on the X chromosome (there was also a "conferrable magic" on the y chromosome in (at least) the Haldane royal line). I'm pretty sure there were some pretty good examples of how to include deryni into AD&D (1e: it was *that* long ago) in a special Dragon psionic magazine.

I think history has shown that "different stats" was a huge mistake. A better question would be about NPCs. My guess is that if you are stating a NPC, there is absolutely no reason to use different stats (for the same reason you wouldn't use different stats on a PC). If you are stating out a village and giving different roles based on stats, then there might be reason to group most of the higher strengths with the men (but don't just sort it and split it in half, that would be a disaster), but I doubt many DMs go to that depth. Maybe some sort of world generation software would care, but that is about it.

YossarianLives
2016-01-28, 10:59 AM
By "almost a decade", you mean four years and five months, right?

1e PHB was published in June 1978.

OD&D was published in January 1974.
Yeah, something like. I'll admit my facts are shaky, at best.

CharonsHelper
2016-01-28, 11:12 AM
Okay - the responses are about what I expected.

It could be interesting from a world-building perspective, but enough people are inherently offended/annoyed with the premise that it probably wouldn't be worthwhile, at least as it relates to PCs.

(And certain classes/roles being better for certain genders was kind of inherent to the premise in the first post - not an unintended/unforeseen consequence.)

Lvl 2 Expert
2016-01-28, 11:16 AM
I guess I'd like to reply on topic as well:

I think this idea is fine for specific settings, meaning for certain types of non-humans. Lots of fantasy and science fiction species have some sort of caste system, which may or may not involve gender and magic use. And RPG's give off bonuses based on race, gender is no different from that. However, RPG races are generally fantastic species, not existing human color varieties. Imagine that, 6th edition D&D giving black or white people a plus to something and a minus to something else. No matter what kind of bonuses you give them, even if it's just cosmetic stuff like height (which would probably be the most realistic difference you could implement anyway) you're going to get into a ****storm about how you've done it wrong and why that is awful. Gender differences are like that.

The funny thing is though, I think gender differences are pretty well represented in games, just like age differences. Most of the overly muscled barbarians are already male. Female characters are already often clerics, sorcerers, bow using rogues or rangers etc. Old characters are wise monks, or thoughtful wizards. If you'd collect 500 random male character sheets and 500 random female ones, the males would most likely have a higher average strength. There are outliers, but there should be. It's fun to have a female overly muscled barbarian every now and then. People like that exist in the real world as well (well, dragon slaying barbarians aren't very common in modern cities, but you catch my drift), they're just rare (plus steroids aren't illegal in most settings right?).

It's different of course if you roll 6x3d6 in order (after assigning your character's gender), but if you give people some control over their stats, they're going to create a more realistic population than if they were forced into roles by formal bonuses, while having less discussions about the matter. And they'll even create tall black folks and short yellow ones.

EDIT: Ninja'd by the conclusion.

Apricot
2016-01-28, 11:56 AM
It could be interesting from a world-building perspective, but enough people are inherently offended/annoyed with the premise that it probably wouldn't be worthwhile, at least as it relates to PCs.


Actually, I'd disagree: the resultant displeasure is an issue, but creating a system that mechanically differentiates between the average native abilities of men and women without creating even worse problems in terms of how believable it is requires far more work than I think anyone wants to put in. For example, a common theme in this thread is giving women an advantage in something like Charisma to make up for Strength: how does that square with our experience of massively charismatic male orators?

You can go for a whole "building another world" route, but at that point you're turning sharply away from recognizable human society and from our own culture. Good for commentary, but possibly not so good for gameplay or roleplay. That's gotta be a personal call, though.

CharonsHelper
2016-01-28, 12:08 PM
Actually, I'd disagree: the resultant displeasure is an issue, but creating a system that mechanically differentiates between the average native abilities of men and women without creating even worse problems in terms of how believable it is requires far more work than I think anyone wants to put in. For example, a common theme in this thread is giving women an advantage in something like Charisma to make up for Strength: how does that square with our experience of massively charismatic male orators?

That's why in the original post I mentioned giving females bonus to magic abilities (or perhaps making them female only) but I didn't tie them to any mental attribute. (Frankly - having the 3 magic stats be representative of normal intelligence/wisdom/charisma is one of the things which annoys me about D&D anyway.)

Edit: I do agree with your point though.

NothingButCake
2016-01-28, 01:15 PM
Both of these make sex/gender an optimization choice, like how people have choose Goliath for nice stat modifiers that benefit a Barbarian. Is this what you want, creating another optimization point where gender helps 'shore up' builds?
I am not sure if this question is meant to be hostile, but again, as my first post stated, I think gendered differences in character building is "completely rote" and I question what is there to be gained from such a system.

I was simply exploring at what point I would be okay with gendered differentiation in character building and I was imagining a system where the differentiation was cultural and reflected social dis/advantages for players of the chosen background. Like 5e backgrounds, the advantages are mostly roleplaying rather than incremental optimizations.

For example, if you play a warrior, you already get the necessary weapon proficiencies as part of your class. A Night Elf male warrior would have all the proficiencies he needed and would not need to buy an additional weapon proficiency as part of his background kit. A woman druid would have all the character components she needed and would have the base Familiar standing with the druid organization. What it did mean is that, for example, any druid can buy up to Friendly standing and can ask for small favors from other druids the party encounters in the wild, but for woman Night Elf druids, it would be slightly more of an opportunity cost (ex: 3 Background Points vs 2, so she would have fewer BP to spend on ability to play the zither and on knowing sailor's cant) because it was harder for her to be respected as a woman druid. Or whatever.

Again, I am not proposing this system as ideal, just where the limit of my acceptance of gendered differences in character building would go.

8BitNinja
2016-01-28, 01:21 PM
Implementing that was simple for me

In my new RPG I am writing, Males get a +2 Strength and a -2 Speed while Females get a +2 Speed and a -2 Strength

Murk
2016-01-28, 01:49 PM
This is a topic that I see coming up on these boards every once and a while.

What always strikes me as odd is people saying it is either "not cool, because you want to play any character any way you want" or "what benefits to the game does it hold?".
That's because D&D is so very discriminating in lots of things it does. Why does aging bring stat differences with it? Race/species? If I want to play an elderly gentleman with as much strength as a young dapper, why can't I? If I want to play an orc with as much intelligence as a high elf, why can't I? What are the benefits?

If you look at the homebrew forums, you'll see plenty of people who want even more races. There's no one saying "let's do less races, because it's not OK" - most say "yes, more racial stats, awesome!"

Which makes me think that the average D&D player just enjoys stat differences. The more variability, the more choice options, the more inherent differences to whatever, the better they like it.
If that's true, that is why you'd want gender differences. Because differences are interesting. And if you don't think so, please tell me if

Is that because orcs and elves don't really exist, but men and women do? That would seem logical, but young and old people do exist, and I don't think I've ever heard someone complain.

CharonsHelper
2016-01-28, 02:10 PM
Implementing that was simple for me

In my new RPG I am writing, Males get a +2 Strength and a -2 Speed while Females get a +2 Speed and a -2 Strength

Out of curiosity - what's the fluff reason for females having a higher speed? (I understand they'd need something to compensate the STR as a balance mechanism.)

8BitNinja
2016-01-28, 02:18 PM
Out of curiosity - what's the fluff reason for females having a higher speed? (I understand they'd need something to compensate the STR as a balance mechanism.)

My game doesn't have dexterity, it has marksmanship, which from my shooting experience is pretty gender neutral, so I picked the the next best thing

Also, women are, on average, lighter than men, and lighter usually means faster

CharonsHelper
2016-01-28, 02:32 PM
Also, women are, on average, lighter than men, and lighter usually means faster

Only with the same muscle mass. It's fine if it works that way in your world, but Olympic runners tend to be pretty tall, and the males all faster than the females. http://www.livescience.com/7819-taller-athletes-faster-study-finds.html

Actually - I know that your system has cybernetics - did you consider having women be able to take them much more easily as the balance? It even sort of makes sense, in a technobabble sort of way, that they'd be less likely to reject such foreign material.

Lord Torath
2016-01-28, 02:33 PM
Next you'll tell me women have wider hip bones because society wills it, too. Not because babies have to get through. Or that breasts are a social construct.I'll just leave this (http://www.sandraandwoo.com/2014/07/11/0597-social-construct/) here.
(And for some context, here's the preceding strip (http://www.sandraandwoo.com/2014/07/07/0596-97-points/)).

8BitNinja
2016-01-28, 02:39 PM
Only with the same muscle mass. It's fine if it works that way in your world, but Olympic runners tend to be pretty tall, and the males all faster than the females. http://www.livescience.com/7819-taller-athletes-faster-study-finds.html

Actually - I know that your system has cybernetics - did you consider having women be able to take them much more easily as the balance? It even sort of makes sense, in a technobabble sort of way, that they'd be less likely to reject such foreign material.

Really, it was just for balance, and I used a lame excuse to justify it

But yes, cybernetic legs give speed, and arms strength

Usain Bolt, where's Sigma-355's legs?

Straybow
2016-01-28, 03:17 PM
That's because D&D is so very discriminating in lots of things it does. Why does aging bring stat differences with it? Race/species? If I want to play an elderly gentleman with as much strength as a young dapper, why can't I? If I want to play an orc with as much intelligence as a high elf, why can't I? What are the benefits?

...Is that because orcs and elves don't really exist, but men and women do? That would seem logical, but young and old people do exist, and I don't think I've ever heard someone complain. To misquote DPR, "Life is unfair, Highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something."

Maybe because Str is the one category where we can make direct comparisons to the real world, and men really are bigger and stronger than women? We don't insist that orcs and elfsies should be equal in all stats, we create them to be different. Men and women were created to be different, whether you believe in God or in Evolution.

Yes, on a nice, modern, couch-potato-ey, everybody-is-equal-even-when-they-aren't forum like this it causes a stir to bring it up. Doesn't mean it isn't true. And, even with the insistence that everything be "equal" we still want to discriminate. I don't choose someone at random to babysit my 2-year-old, I discriminate. I want the most competent person I can find to do surgery, not just someone who has an MD and is willing to give it a shot.

The male testosterone levels increase oxygen utilization in muscle tissue by 75%, which translates loosely into performance (but not strictly raw strength). Examples abound, e.g. Tennis (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Sexes_%28tennis%29), and there's a reason why LPGA plays shorter tees than PGA on the same course. There are extremely few physical contests where men and women compete head-to-head, scratch. Darts would be one example, in which strength is nullified due to the short range to target and extremely light projectile, and the object is precision and accuracy. Target shooting is another; Annie Oakley was at no disadvantage due to the comparatively light weight of pistols and rifles.

Testosterone level also effects muscular development. A man and woman of the same size doing the same workout will, over time, result in more muscular growth and strength increase for the man than for the woman. In game terms, a –2 Str is a 25% reduction, which might reflect strength differences between sexes closely matched size and mass. Given that men tend to be 12% taller and 20% heavier at baseline leanness (athletic women are around 14-20% body fat, men around 6-13%), that might equate to another –1 to –2 for women. (A 5% difference in size with proportional 15% difference in mass and strength would represent +1 Str on a scale doubling every +5.)

[/pot-stirring]

Anonymouswizard
2016-01-28, 04:31 PM
Heh, I've already suggested womb power.

Yeah, I liked that comic :smalltongue: I tend to use more traditional female armour though.

...sorry, apparently I have to change that to untraditional female armour. Something about what women warriors wore not being sexy enough.


Implementing that was simple for me

In my new RPG I am writing, Males get a +2 Strength and a -2 Speed while Females get a +2 Speed and a -2 Strength

If it's not for balance, why? Why a 4 point difference which is going to annoy anybody making a strong woman or a fast man? There's no benefit over just letting the man take what speed he wants, whether that's equal to the woman's or 4 points lower (or the same deal for Strength for that matter).

SimonMoon6
2016-01-28, 04:58 PM
I think gender dimorphism could have a place in an RPG. I know some people are STRENUOUSLY against it. "No no no, my lady warrior gots to have that 18+ STR!"

Here's how I think about it: you can keep males and female equal in the game to avoid sexism. You can also keep elves and dwarves equal to humans to avoid racism. I haven't ever heard anybody suggest that though. Why can't I have a HEALTHY elf? Why must I have a -2 CON for being an elf? Surely, if I want to play an unhealthy elf, I could put my dump stat in CON (and then have the DM put me in an insane asylum because who would do that?). Likewise, if I want a healthy dwarf, I could put my highest stat in CON. I don't need to be given a CON bonus for being a dwarf. And why can't I play a dwarf that's just as unhealthy as an elf?

If you're okay with stat differences for dwarves and elves, then you should be okay with stat differences for males and females.

But with a CON penalty, nobody's gonna play an elven warrior! Well, yeah. In fact, nobody's gonna play an elf. (Why exactly are they even in the Player's Handbook? Oh, yeah, legacy from 1st edition.)

Would nobody play a female warrior if they had a -2 to STR? Would that make that much difference to them? Yes, a male warrior would get more bang for their buck... in strength. Maybe the bonuses for being female would still be worth having? And is a -1 to hit and a -1 to damage, *really* a big deal especially at higher levels?

CharonsHelper
2016-01-28, 05:09 PM
But with a CON penalty, nobody's gonna play an elven warrior! Well, yeah. In fact, nobody's gonna play an elf. (Why exactly are they even in the Player's Handbook? Oh, yeah, legacy from 1st edition.)

Except - elves get bonus Dex and all sorts of secondary benefits which pretty much balances out the Con penalty.

Which... was sort of the premise of this thread. If there WERE a valid in-game balance for female characters being physically weaker, would that make for a viable game mechanic?

Apricot
2016-01-28, 05:17 PM
All right, so we've moved to the contrast against races...

It's a fair point, but it misses the mark in one key respect: the span of any RPG races completely fails to match the span of the sexes. Any modification you make to a particular race will affect only creatures of that one race, while modifications to a sex will affect half of the entire game world (barring asexual beings, which usually don't feature quite so highly). Furthermore, there quickly gets to be a "stacking bonus." Let's say (although other mechanics can be easily used) you decide to grant all men +2 Str and -2 Chm. Suddenly, Half-Orcs lose the ability to be anything other than male barbarians. Careless use of that kind of mechanic can awkwardly and abruptly eliminate an entire half of a race from meaningful gameplay.

Speaking briefly about races on their own: the primary purpose of race-specific mechanical traits is to give a sort of "edge" into good roleplay, similar to how alignment requirements work. By giving an idea of how builds for a given race are modified, you give players a better idea of what a character of that race might be like, and they can start constructing rudimentary characters in their heads and more importantly making the mental connection between crunch and fluff. This would be much harder if race was just a "reskin" of the same character. There are also advantages in making it more interesting to explore build optimization, of course. Now sex, on the other hand, is not something we ever need a guide on in order to get an image of what a character might be like. We are constantly surrounded by people of (hopefully) both sexes, and we get constant input on all sorts of ways that people of both sexes can meaningfully exist. Mechanical changes are not necessary for people to be able to decide on what sex their character should be, while it can certainly help with races. Goodness knows, if you ask someone on the street if they know what a Githzerai is like, they'll just look at you funny. But thanks to the 3.5 Monster Manual, you know they're dexterous, wise, and are naturally good at being monks.

That's why I don't think the race-sex comparison is a fair one, in terms of mechanics.

CharonsHelper
2016-01-28, 05:24 PM
It's a fair point, but it misses the mark in one key respect: the span of any RPG races completely fails to match the span of the sexes. Any modification you make to a particular race will affect only creatures of that one race, while modifications to a sex will affect half of the entire game world (barring asexual beings, which usually don't feature quite so highly). Furthermore, there quickly gets to be a "stacking bonus." Let's say (although other mechanics can be easily used) you decide to grant all men +2 Str and -2 Chm. Suddenly, Half-Orcs lose the ability to be anything other than male barbarians. Careless use of that kind of mechanic can awkwardly and abruptly eliminate an entire half of a race from meaningful gameplay.

Oh - I agree. It'd need to be balanced in the system from the ground up, and I'm not even sure that it would work in a system that had playable races other than human. Again - even if it were used - this is not something that should be slapped onto D&D or any other system. If you DID have other races, you'd have to balance each gender/race combination as if they were an entirely separate race.

Plus - just because it works that way for humans, doesn't mean that the same is true of other races in the same world. Heck - the D&D fluff for Drow is that the females are the generally beefier gender.

Donnadogsoth
2016-01-28, 05:55 PM
So... here's a thing.

A group of scientists grabbed some babies and their parents and a treadmill capable of inclining. Then they put the infants on the treadmill and had the parents watch as they inclined the treadmill. The babies, regardless of gender, we're able to climb the same grade of incline before they had difficulty, and had around the same maximum incline before they fell off, within the same size range at least. http://tinyurl.com/Babyramps

However, mothers universally said their daughters wouldn't be able to handle the inclines that other boys could. They underestimated them, completely. The babies were basically capable of handling the same slope regardless of sex.

From infancy, girls are kept from achieving their physical potential by parents who try to stop them from getting hurt, while cheering on the boys as they go to their limit.

The idea of humans being evolved with big sex based dimorphism is an inherently untestable hypothesis because you cannot reasonably control for social factors applied to children from birth. To actually test the hypothesis that men are, inherently, stronger than women you would need a sample size of several hundred thousand infants raised in a completely impartial environment to adulthood with the same physical training regimen through their lives for testing to commenced after 18 years.

The ethical considerations of such an act are, of course, unthinkable. But it would be the only way to objectively learn the truth. Until such a study has been performed I highly suggest keeping that fact in mind.

There are people known as tomboys who disregard any parental coddling and step out into the world of boys as they please. If we wanted to know about sexual dimorphism, comparing a large group of tomboys with an equally large group of boys seems the way to go.

About gaming, the stat differences between the sexes seem negligible except for STR. In my game sturdy peasant women can often have up to 16 STR, but usually only men have 17 or 18. Has anyone met a STR 18 woman in real life who was not either literally a giantess or an Olympic weightlifter? Tomboys and hay-slinging peasant women are one thing but having women too strong tips into the bizarre. Most women want to be pretty and being pretty and bench-pressing a horse do not really seem to go together.

And what about ordinary NPCs? The ordinary woman in my experience is more like an 8 or even a 6 STR. Can you open this jar of pickles for me? And I might be a 9 on a great day.

Jormengand
2016-01-28, 06:14 PM
Why can't I have a HEALTHY elf?

Because you're playing D&D. Some systems have a different view...


There’s no reason that your character actually has to be human, but there are no actual benefits or penalties for different races, and it’s only natural to ask why not. There are two reasons why not, and they are essentially linked to the fact that your character’s race is something very specific and unalterable. A mage, a sorcerer and a wizard are all the same thing, but an elf is an elf is an elf.
Therefore, the fact that it’s impossible to come up with rules for every race you might want to be, as well as the fact that some players might be tempted to play an orc for mechanical boosts while actually, they pictured their character as a human, become major problems for a system which assigns actual values towards being an elf.
Of course, you could always use the elf bonuses but say your character is really a human, or really some bizarre alien creature, but that solution is inelegant. (Also, the elves would be offended.)
Instead, you simply choose stats to fit your race – an orc might have high MT and VG but low IN, and an elf would have high DX and AG, and low VG. There's no reason you have to do this either, though. If you want a fast orc or tough elf, more power to you.

(Before you start wondering, MighT, ViGour, INtellect, DeXterity, AGility.)

Similarly, here's the word on MT scores and sexual dimorphism:


If you have a 7, you’re into the territory of epic heroes. Think of your favourite fantasy swordsman; they have 7 MT. The highest even legendary heroes can have is 8. If you have MT of 9, you’re probably a dragon. Therefore, the maximum number of dice you can have in one stat is usually 8. You can also only have up to 6 dice when creating a character.

At the Paragon rank, warriors ignore the limit of 8 dice in one stat, but only for AG, DX, MT and VG. This means they can use the dice gained for their new rank to increase one of these stats above 8, and can put dice gained from another association into these stats as well. However, they still cannot have more than 10 dice in one stat.

At this point, the warrior is probably a dragon.

Limiting female characters to set values of their strength or equivalent stat (here MT) is an unfortunately common variation of this – given that you barely notice the difference between MT 6 and MT 5 in terms of the effect that they will actually have, and more so MT 8 and MT 7, it seems odd to suggest that limiting female characters' MT will make the game noticeably more realistic, and anyway, there definitely exist women who are far stronger than whoever suggests this rule! The reason, incidentally, that characters' MT scores are limited to 6 at character creation and 8 in total is not for realism, but game balance.

The other reason for limiting MT to 8 is because the characters probably aren't dragons.

Okay, the "Probably a dragon" joke starts to wear thin after a while, I agree.

Anonymouswizard
2016-01-28, 06:40 PM
Because you're playing D&D. Some systems have a different view...



(Before you start wondering, MighT, ViGour, INtellect, DeXterity, AGility.)

Similarly, here's the word on MT scores and sexual dimorphism:





Okay, the "Probably a dragon" joke starts to wear thin after a while, I agree.

But what if I want to play a dragon? Also, can I get what system that is? I'm interested in systems.

To be honest, of the two systems I'm considering running, one has no stats, and the other effectively uses the stats of Fighting, Physique, Mind, Social, and Mystic (okay, they are named after the five Elements from that one Chinese system that keeps popping up, but it's Wuxia). There isn't the variation to realistically model the difference (okay, in Legends of the Wulin you could argue that most women don't have any ranks in the Might skill, but most men don't either).

Hiro Protagonest
2016-01-28, 06:50 PM
Alright, so here's an idea.

Strength in D&D is a terrible representation of a warrior's attributes. Ever watch Samurai Jack? Jack and the Scotsman are equal warriors. In a fight where they could not move to the left or right (so Jack couldn't take advantage of any greater mobility), they fought to a standstill. They both got worn out at the same time. In the second episode where the Scotsman appears, the man expected Jack to be able to throw a large stone as a simple task. Jack could barely lift the thing. What he could do was - by shaking the hand of his competitor in the stone-throwing contest - a martial arts throw that sent the man who weighed more than the stone flying through the air. Jack also knows how to jump good, he can jump thousands of feet in the air. Jack is strong, certainly, but he has no genetic advantage compared to the towering warriors of Clan McKenzie.

So basically, women can have a strength penalty when strength isn't so damn important to a warrior.

Segev
2016-01-28, 06:51 PM
As was said a few times early in this thread, approaching it by giving different abilities to men and women in the sense of powers that neither has in the real world is a viable approach. It avoids making a direct and overt statement that invites an argument over sexism. (It won't avoid it entirely; any difference between them will attract SJWs who will insist it's anti-woman, and anti-SJWs who insist that it's anti-man. Because any difference that is even NOTED, factual or not, is interpreted by such fanatics as proof that there's a bias against their favored category or for the category they see as being unfairly privileged.)

But, for example, if Super Robots require something just a little "more" than the ability to push buttons and pull levers. Something undefinable that makes Super Robot pilots need something other than "merely" a human body to run them... and only men had it. But magic - genuine magic - only manifests in the form of Magical Girls (who are, yes, ALL girls), then you could have an interesting anime setting.

Even if only special people could be either, but all special males are Pilots and all special females are Magical Girls, it would be unique. It would play to stereotypes. It would probably lend itself to being very campy.

If you do something more Fantasy-oriented with a more serious bent and go with "only women can take the Mage class(es), and only men can be fighters," you can easily excuse the former: magic is something that only girls can do in your setting, for some reason. It's harder to justify why women CAN'T be fighters, since "fighters" are supposedly, traditionally, just physically really capable. Best, probably, to say that men can use chi or some similar magic-of-the-body to train up to Z-fighter (as in, Dragonball Z) levels, while women can actually use magic to be Slayers-style (or stronger) mages.

One fictional setting - I believe it was Darkover - had witches and warlocks divided by sex. Witches could use magic on things other than themselves, but not on themselves. They needed, for instance, brooms or carpets they could telekinetically make float in order to fly (by riding them). Warlocks could only use magic on themselves, so they could fly or shapeshift, but they couldn't hurl a fireball or curse somebody else.


So you can do interesting things with it. You can explore how this would shape a society and its expectations of its citizens. But do it carefully, avoiding giving "something special" to just one group and claiming the other is specialized in something both COULD do just because they don't have the "cool thing" to lean on. And definitely don't try to relate it to core stat differences; make it class-based, or powers-based.

8BitNinja
2016-01-28, 06:54 PM
If it's not for balance, why? Why a 4 point difference which is going to annoy anybody making a strong woman or a fast man? There's no benefit over just letting the man take what speed he wants, whether that's equal to the woman's or 4 points lower (or the same deal for Strength for that matter).

I did say it was for balance, and besides, you can have a strong woman or fast man, you just have to spend more skill points on it

CharonsHelper
2016-01-28, 07:01 PM
Has anyone met a STR 18 woman in real life who was not either literally a giantess or an Olympic weightlifter?

I don't think that I know ANYONE with a STR 18, much less a female.

The female world record holder for Olympic weigh-lifting would be at 18. Based upon the record for the snatch - which is lifting a weight over your head quickly vs. carry capacity - which a character can lift over their head. (And frankly - I always wonder about some sort of steroid at that level.)

The equivalent male record holder would be at a 21. (Though again - steroids?)

I can't think of anyone I know who is probably above a 15 or so.

CharonsHelper
2016-01-28, 07:04 PM
So basically, women can have a strength penalty when strength isn't so damn important to a warrior.

And an example from a cartoon proves it?

YossarianLives
2016-01-28, 07:17 PM
After thinking about this more - I came to a conclusion. What is the most fun? Is having badass female warriors fun? What about having charming male thieves? I think both of those things sound pretty fun and I would want to avoid a system that punished people for wanting to play those archetypes.

Also, I've found the idea that most women are strength 6 to be pretty blatantly false.

CharonsHelper
2016-01-28, 07:29 PM
Also, I've found the idea that most women are strength 6 to be pretty blatantly false.

Did anyone say that they were?

Anonymouswizard
2016-01-28, 08:18 PM
Did anyone say that they were?

This quote from this page of the thread at least appears to.


And what about ordinary NPCs? The ordinary woman in my experience is more like an 8 or even a 6 STR. Can you open this jar of pickles for me? And I might be a 9 on a great day.

Am I the only one who finds this sexist?

Also, do you mind opening this jar of pickles for me?

Apricot
2016-01-28, 08:53 PM
Something worth noting about stats, too:

In the actual world, you can increase your strength by very notable margins by training it. In most TRPGs, you can only do it through extraordinary means.

So there's a lot more realism missing. Lift and lift and lift and you might hit 18 Str. I dunno, just so long as the characters themselves are reasonable, I don't think rules are needed.

CharonsHelper
2016-01-28, 08:55 PM
This quote from this page of the thread at least appears to.

Even that just says that it's not horribly uncommon for women to have a 6. Probably some of the more petite ladies are around there.

Even with a 4pt difference (in D&D terms) if the average human is 10-11, that means that the average woman would be 8-9 & the average man would be 12-13.

According to my sister, getting jars opened is the main reason that she got married. :P

8BitNinja
2016-01-28, 08:58 PM
People keep saying it's sexist, but really, men and women are different, men really are stronger, but women do have their own strengths, just not usually in the biceps

BootStrapTommy
2016-01-28, 09:02 PM
You can make a game that messes around with gender roles, and it can be fun - look at settings like Wheel of Time. Just be mindful, is all, and it almost certainly doesn't need a mechanical bludgeon like "mens are strong, womens talk good."My immediate thought. Though, WoT eventually rectifies that in the story line.

Jay R
2016-01-28, 09:11 PM
It came up in a conversation I was having, and apparently in the original D&D, female characters' STR had a lower max than their male equivalents.

Giggle. Not true. If you want to rail against sexism, you should at least get it right.

Original D&D has no adjustments for sex. They weren't needed - the melee fighting class was Fighting Man.
Not Fighter.
Fighting Man.

At that time, only geeky male nerds played the game.

One of my first characters was a female, but it was the only one I'd seen. [And the only reason was so I could use the name "Endora" for a Magic-User.]

Adjustments for sex first appeared (I believe) in an article in The Dragon. Then they were put into AD&D, where all players and DMs I ever saw ignored them.


It got me thinking - how would people feel about an RPG where men & women had inherently different stats? It would of course need to be designed with that in mind from the ground up. From a D&D perspective (since it's the most common reference) it'd be giving females a minus to STR & CON, but bonuses to casting stats. Possibly even making it so that the magic use is female only as it is in Rokka. (It wouldn't be hard to come up with fluff reasons.)

So - that's my question. Do you guys think that such a system could work, one in which males were inherently better warriors in a straight brawl, but females had the magic powers? Do you think that people would call it out as being sexist? Do you think that it would actually BE sexist? Would it make for interesting role-playing as people might be forced to play characters which they normally wouldn't, or would it just be annoying to force people to play cross-gender for the class that they want?

Don't ask us. Ask your players. About ten years ago, I ran a game of original D&D in which each character was required to start with a background skill found in a small village. Each male character had to have hunting, fishing, farming, smithing, or some such. And each female character had to have one of sewing, cooking, embroidery, etc. Nobody had a problem with it, including the four women in the game. But I asked the players. And the female paladin was not given any form of strength penalty.


Go read Beowulf. I'll wait.

Ok. Now that you're back, did you notice who was always demaning that the rules of society be followed? (The paying of blood prices, etc)

I also noticed that Grendel's mother was at least as strong as Grendel.

YossarianLives
2016-01-28, 09:56 PM
People keep saying it's sexist, but really, men and women are different, men really are stronger, but women do have their own strengths, just not usually in the biceps
It's not even a matter of sexism. Yes, in The Real World men are, on average, stronger. But this is a matter of what is fun, not what is realistic.

And I'm not using the "Because Dragons Fallacy" mentioned earlier in the thread, I'm just saying that people should be able to play whatever kind of character they want regardless of gender.

Steampunkette
2016-01-28, 10:37 PM
Estrogen directly modulates the active state of Myosin in muscles during use. Higher estrogen content improves myosin function, to those who couldn't find the info, themselves.

As for assuming social factors account for greater difference than evolution, I'm not.

I'm actually saying that our assumptions on evolutionary differences between men and women are based on observations of humanity's current state and drawing conclusions based on fossil evidence... which can only exist in a society widely acknowledged to be biased. We know that environment and activity play a huge part in people's physical development, so when comparing average adult strength we must also account for average life physical activity.

Which means accounting for social factors.

Now if someone has a nice percentage chart that shows how much societal and evolutionary effects on adult strength works, awesome. But we have no such chart. And such a chart could only be based on rough guesses and inherently untestable hypotheses.

My hubby and I were discussing this and he suggested that a twin study could confirm or deny the rough assumption so long as the testing environment is sufficiently unbiased. I still think it would wind up pressing against unethical levels since the girls involved would need to be sheltered from society more or less completely in order to factor for social biases.

Steampunkette
2016-01-28, 10:58 PM
Actually, it occurred to me that there is a biased unbiased group which could reveal the difference between evolutionary and social impact on adult muscle strenght.

Trans teens.

Through hormone reversal during and following puberty, we could witness and record the actual biological and sociological impacts on average adult strength...

After all, everyone assumed Fallon Fox was going to have an unfair advantage in MMA due to the hormonal difference in her pubescent state prior to HRT. A fact which did not, in the end, play out. It indicates that pubescent hormones may not have as significant an impact as society presumes.

Segev
2016-01-28, 11:00 PM
Given that the OP wasn't really asking if it was an accurate simulation to include them, I think the discussion of whether the typical female bodybuilder or the typical male bodybuilder (professional grade, both) is stronger or not is very besides the point.

The question at hand is whether it would be interesting/fun/worthwhile to have a game system wherein the sex of the character determined at least in part their mechanical role in the game.

I still contend that doing so is best handled by specific attribute permissions and restrictions (where "attributes" are powers and abilities, not stat scores). This could be done by class restrictions, as well, in a system that used classes.

BootStrapTommy
2016-01-28, 11:54 PM
I don't think this is the first or last time on this forum that I will pity the "but mah verisimilitude!" crowd. I'll be over here, enjoying playing my school bus lifting fem-warrior, while you all sit in the corner struggling at suspending your disbelief. That being said...


As for assuming social factors account for greater difference than evolution, I'm not.

I'm actually saying that our assumptions on evolutionary differences between men and women are based on observations of humanity's current state and drawing conclusions based on fossil evidence... which can only exist in a society widely acknowledged to be biased. We know that environment and activity play a huge part in people's physical development, so when comparing average adult strength we must also account for average life physical activity.

Which means accounting for social factors.

Now if someone has a nice percentage chart that shows how much societal and evolutionary effects on adult strength works, awesome. But we have no such chart. And such a chart could only be based on rough guesses and inherently untestable hypotheses.

My hubby and I were discussing this and he suggested that a twin study could confirm or deny the rough assumption so long as the testing environment is sufficiently unbiased. I still think it would wind up pressing against unethical levels since the girls involved would need to be sheltered from society more or less completely in order to factor for social biases. First off, I question whether social factors could actually have that much of an effect on biology. If you've got examples where this was comparably the case in other situations, I'd love to hear them.

But I would like to tack on the question of how those very same sex hormone effect behavior, since it is quit obvious that they do in fact effect behavior (puberty alone is proof of that). My main question is, if you are going to question society's role in determining sexual dimorphism, you have to account for how the behavioral changes associated with sex hormones effect society (oh no!).

And the link between testosterone and behaviors that correlate with growth in musculature is not exactly untestable. Nor untested. Society is not immune to the effects sex hormones have on people. This complicates your question greatly.

Finally, I have to question the relevance of it anyway. So what if society has manufactured sexual dimorphism? Even if the probability exists, the fact that it isn't being realized says a lot. The data, no matter how confounded it is by a series of interconnected correlations, indicates that, as far as we know, males have an advantage in cultivating muscle mass. Having a game mirror that is hardly a stretch.

Stupid, maybe. But not exactly a stretch.

Talakeal
2016-01-28, 11:55 PM
There are many physical characteristics where the average woman is inferior to the average man, and where the maximum for a woman is inferior to the maximum for a man*. However, there is no reason why an exceptional woman cannot be significantly superior to the average man in those areas. While I can see some simulationist argument for capping a female's strength score lower than a males, I don't see any justification for a penalty as PCs are supposed to be exceptional rather than average and you will get a game imbalance otherwise.

If D&D didn't have such a SAD problem where a character class has one ability score which is clearly superior to the others you could model this with a series of plusses and minuses, but as is that is just going to make for unfair game advantages for players who happen to prefer the gender and class combos that the game rewards.



In my setting most humans are part Atlantean, and as a result have genetic engineering of some sort somewhere in their background, and as a result the physiological performance of males and females in the setting is much closer than it is in real life.




But, for example, if Super Robots require something just a little "more" than the ability to push buttons and pull levers. Something undefinable that makes Super Robot pilots need something other than "merely" a human body to run them... and only men had it. But magic - genuine magic - only manifests in the form of Magical Girls (who are, yes, ALL girls), then you could have an interesting anime setting.

Even if only special people could be either, but all special males are Pilots and all special females are Magical Girls, it would be unique. It would play to stereotypes. It would probably lend itself to being very campy.

If you do something more Fantasy-oriented with a more serious bent and go with "only women can take the Mage class(es), and only men can be fighters," you can easily excuse the former: magic is something that only girls can do in your setting, for some reason. It's harder to justify why women CAN'T be fighters, since "fighters" are supposedly, traditionally, just physically really capable. Best, probably, to say that men can use chi or some similar magic-of-the-body to train up to Z-fighter (as in, Dragonball Z) levels, while women can actually use magic to be Slayers-style (or stronger) mages.

If I were playing in such a system I would probably choose to play a character who was the "wrong gender" for their class. I like being the underdog in a system where there is a biological caste system. I always play non-Jedi in SW, non-marines in 40k, and heroic mortals in Exalted / WoD if I can find a GM who will let me.


I use the following House Rules in my Setting:

- The difference between STR and COS scores for an humanoid is, before racial and other adjustments, maximum 2.
- Female Humans, Gnomes and Elves cannot have STR as their single highest stat at character generation, before racial and other adjustments.
- Level advancement (3.P) confers either +1 to two different physical stats or +1 to a single mental stat.

What do you think about the HRs above?

No offense, but that is kind of terrible. It isn't particularly fair or realistic; there are plenty of female athletes who have STR as their highest stat even if it might not be as high as an equivalent male's.


*: There are also numerous physiological ways in which the female body is usually inherently superior to an equivalent male's, but for whatever reason those aspects are not often glorified by our culture or taken seriously as sports.

Steampunkette
2016-01-29, 12:26 AM
I don't think this is the first or last time on this forum that I will pity the "but mah verisimilitude!" crowd. I'll be over here, enjoying playing my school bus lifting fem-warrior, while you all sit in the corner struggling at suspending your disbelief. That being said...

First off, I question whether social factors could actually have that much of an effect on biology. If you've got examples where this was comparably the case in other situations, I'd love to hear them.

But I would like to tack on the question of how those very same sex hormone effect behavior, since it is quit obvious that they do in fact effect behavior (puberty alone is proof of that). My main question is, if you are going to question society's role in determining sexual dimorphism, you have to account for how the behavioral changes associated with sex hormones effect society (oh no!).

And the link between testosterone and behaviors that correlate with growth in musculature is not exactly untestable. Nor untested. Society is not immune to the effects sex hormones have on people. This complicates your question greatly.

Finally, I have to question the relevance of it anyway. So what if society has manufactured sexual dimorphism? Even if the probability exists, the fact that it isn't being realized says a lot. The data, no matter how confounded it is by a series of interconnected correlations, indicates that, as far as we know, males have an advantage in cultivating muscle mass. Having a game mirror that is hardly a stretch.

Stupid, maybe. But not exactly a stretch.
I mostly agree with you.

I'm mostly frustrated by how people ignore how much societal lens impacts scientific study, including evolutionary theory as it pertains to any animal. Just remember how completely fracked anthropology has been, up to and including the widely accepted bash over the head and drag off idea of marriage, founded exclusively in fantasy, for early humans. Ants are male, female, and neuter, but we widely say all ants are female except for the mating males.

Without accounting for society's lens in our understanding of science we run the risk of making big assumptions and pretending that they are not only obvious but clearly correct.

I'm not arguing biology has no effect, I'm encouraging people to question how extensive that effect is, and how much societal assumptions play into that. To account for them, completely, is impossible. But they should be questioned.

goto124
2016-01-29, 12:49 AM
The question at hand is whether it would be interesting/fun/worthwhile to have a game system wherein the sex of the character determined at least in part their mechanical role in the game.

I was wondering about this myself. Keep asking: Why? What do we want out of gender differences? What are we trying to achieve?

Steampunkette
2016-01-29, 01:37 AM
Verisimilitude for sexists.

Seriously, in 99% of fantasy worlds there would be either no difference or no noticeable difference between exceptional men and women, regardless of modern assumptions of averages that rely on normalcy.

Vitruviansquid
2016-01-29, 01:40 AM
Absolutely don't give a stat modifier for gender.

It's not about biology.

It's not about political correctness.

Stats are part of a complex system of trade offs and decisions that players have fun navigating. Unless you are literally playing an RPG about being a humdrum dude/lady born into some boring, leaning-average stats, don't make players have to compromise their aesthetic vision for their characters in order to play the numbers how they want. Let adventurers be weird. Let them be the 1 in 10,000.

Let there be in your fantasy world 10 male humans with 20 strength for each female human with 20 strength. Don't penalize your player who wants to be female and strong, just say she's exceptional. Like all adventurers are.

ImNotTrevor
2016-01-29, 03:07 AM
Remember what I said about the butthurt?

WITNESSED
http://i.imgur.com/qxuUKXE.jpg


It's happening even in this thread. Doesn't matter. We live in a society where you publishing such a game would lead to not just accusations of sexism but likely outright harrassment and threats, if the right groups caught wind of it. (Tumblr loves Doxxing people for less than this, lately.)

You can do it in games where the results are mostly fluff-based or grounded in the fiction or are based on actual history (Saga of the Icelanders, for instance.)

Does it have a basis in biology? Yup.

I looked into the studies on Estrogen and Myosin or whatever (the word escapes me right now) and read to the conclusion. The conclusion was: Certain kinds of estrogen may help prevent muscle deterioration in menopausal women. No really. That was it. With a one sentence about "maybe also in men if paired with testosterone treatments, ut we don't actually know." So unless I found the wrong study (none were cited, so....) then "Estrogen = More Efficient Muscles" is not a valid conclusion from that study.

But yeah. The hypothetical study would also need to account for culture, and the exact same restrictions would need to apply to the males in the study. Interesting that the entire focus is on the effect on the females. No chance males are pressured to be strong, only girls pressured to be weak. Come on, it's a two way road.

And since the difference comes out at the end of the bell curve, these kids would need to be physically trained like crazy for their whole lives.

And the study would likely be redundant anyways.

Also, Neuter ants are genetically female with underdeveloped genitalia. So it's technically accurate to call them female.

(I ruin all the fun.)

Satinavian
2016-01-29, 03:10 AM
Actually, it occurred to me that there is a biased unbiased group which could reveal the difference between evolutionary and social impact on adult muscle strenght.

Trans teens.

Through hormone reversal during and following puberty, we could witness and record the actual biological and sociological impacts on average adult strength...

After all, everyone assumed Fallon Fox was going to have an unfair advantage in MMA due to the hormonal difference in her pubescent state prior to HRT. A fact which did not, in the end, play out. It indicates that pubescent hormones may not have as significant an impact as society presumes.
Way to small sample size. And issues with MMA as measurment method.

As i said, we have even better group to distinguish socil and hormonel impacts : Pre-teens. They have been exposed to gender roles several years already and would show the effects of different excersize. But they don't have significant different hormone levels.

Scientific result so far : The difference in physical peroformance between sexes before puperty is negligible. Therefore the impact of society on those stats is pretty certainly negligible too.



But there is a factor which has been shown to have a huge impact on growth, mucle mass and so on : Nutrition. The typical diet of a child, potential scarcity, one-sided food etc. pretty much all show later in the adult. Again for both genders.



As for unethical child experiments : those have been done in cold war time. And they still say hormones, not society.





Which... was sort of the premise of this thread. If there WERE a valid in-game balance for female characters being physically weaker, would that make for a viable game mechanic?

It might be viable as game menanics, but still be sexist as it tags a number on real world differences of men and woman with men coming out better and counters it with unrealistic fantasy stuff that women now need to be viable.

If you really want to go with important sex based differences, give men and women different supernatural abilities.

gooddragon1
2016-01-29, 03:33 AM
Satinavian, if you don't mind me asking, which communist country are you referring to earlier?

Steampunkette
2016-01-29, 03:51 AM
Does it have a basis in biology? Yup.

I looked into the studies on Estrogen and Myosin or whatever (the word escapes me right now) and read to the conclusion. The conclusion was: Certain kinds of estrogen may help prevent muscle deterioration in menopausal women. No really. That was it. With a one sentence about "maybe also in men if paired with testosterone treatments, ut we don't actually know." So unless I found the wrong study (none were cited, so....) then "Estrogen = More Efficient Muscles" is not a valid conclusion from that study.

But yeah. The hypothetical study would also need to account for culture, and the exact same restrictions would need to apply to the males in the study. Interesting that the entire focus is on the effect on the females. No chance males are pressured to be strong, only girls pressured to be weak. Come on, it's a two way road.

And since the difference comes out at the end of the bell curve, these kids would need to be physically trained like crazy for their whole lives.

And the study would likely be redundant anyways.

Also, Neuter ants are genetically female with underdeveloped genitalia. So it's technically accurate to call them female.

(I ruin all the fun.)
You found one line in one summary of one study and you drew the conclusion that it had no other bearing... really not sure how to respond to that. For now I'll just ignore it and move onto your other action items.

You're right that the study would have to account for men's societal push towards athleticism. I kind of figured that would be implied in the highly unethical removed from society study of a group of several thousand children at birth, but nice to point it out. And the culture of the society would likewise get removed in the socially disconnected environment of the testing area, sure.

As for genetically female... blah what a terrible argument. What you're referring to, there is epigenetics or active genetics. Genetically speaking it is ant. You could just as easily say it is genetically male with underdeveloped genitals, since the external structures are based on the same tissues. Genetics don't play much role in the male and female sexes of haploid insects, they're the result of external factors, mostly in the chemicals placed in the insect during gestation and growth.

As to the genitals in question you're referring to the dufour's gland, which is a non sexual opening in neuter ants which is used for scent marking. It may have had the potential to become a vagina, but instead it became a specialized gland used for communication, not procreation.

Worker ants are not female, they are neuter. But we refer to them as female because it's easier to deal with that gender dichotomy.

Aasimar
2016-01-29, 04:32 AM
Ok, as people have said, every once in a while someone has this idea.

It's like Eddie Izzard's sketch about invading Russia.
*invades Russia.* "I've got a new idea!"
*retreating* "It's the same idea, it's the same idea!"

If this genuinely bothers you, you can do what I do. Think of it in terms of outliers.


20 is the absolute maximum human strength (except for high level barbarian berserkers).

10 is by far the most common and most average human strength. If we consider average stats for the genders, a random male villager might have strength 10 or 11, while a random female villager might have strength 8 or 9.

But it's still no problem to make a woman PC with strength 10, it doesn't cost anything extra because you could have made a male PC at no cost instead, and all it means it that she's a tiny bit of an outlier on her gender's strength curve.

If you make a male warrior with strength 18 (about the highest you can reasonably start with), he's a huge outlier on his gender's strength curve. He's stronger than 99% of guys he runs into

If you make a female warrior with 18 strength, she's even more of an outlier, she's stronger than 99.99% of women she'll run into. But that doesn't mean she can't exist. She may have a genetic anomaly giving her abnormal muscle growth or something, but she does exist.

It doesn't matter how many other women match her, you only need this one to exist. In game terms she's as easy to make as a male PC, so it shouldn't cost extra, it just means she's more of an anomaly in the total human population.

Even if you roll for stats and start with 20 strength on a female warrior, it just means she's the strongest woman to have been born in centuries, maybe ever, and that doesn't really matter, so long as you are willing to give her that niche, people would definitely notice someone like that.

You just fluff the stats you do have.

For example, I made a tiefling paladin, she's got 17 strength and 17 constitution, because I rolled two 17's and put them there. I fluffed it as unnatural, demonic strength, even though the tiefling race doesn't boost those stats.

In terms of gamism and balance, all that matters is that you could have made an identical male PC at exactly the same 'cost'.

From a simulationist point of view, you just have to remember that the PC is a single individual, not her entire population. You only have to make fluff for this one, not explain that it was as likely for someone this strong to be male or female. (that can be fluffed away, not every human is made using the character creation rules, they're just handwaved around the averages)

Satinavian
2016-01-29, 05:10 AM
Satinavian, if you don't mind me asking, which communist country are you referring to earlier?GDR

A lot of pretty nasty things, some of them downright criminal, were done to get all those olympic medals. Investigating growth and muscle growth processes from early age on on a really wide scale was only the first step. The next one was trying to mess with it for better performance.



As for ants, it uses the very same nomenclature as for every other insect species of the same order based on the chromosome number. Diploid = female, Haploid = male. If some species have additional differences with a lot of unfertile members, the same names are still used for the same reason. Ok, there is a rare case of sterile diploid homozygous specimen considered male which is something like a gene defect, but otherwise this simple algorithm is used.
Also, as both ant and bee workers occasionally do lay eggs in many species (which then often tend to be killed of by other workers due to worker policing) and are not really completely unfertile, the label female for them does make a lot of sense.

ImNotTrevor
2016-01-29, 05:57 AM
You found one line in one summary of one study and you drew the conclusion that it had no other bearing... really not sure how to respond to that. For now I'll just ignore it and move onto your other action items.

You're right that the study would have to account for men's societal push towards athleticism. I kind of figured that would be implied in the highly unethical removed from society study of a group of several thousand children at birth, but nice to point it out. And the culture of the society would likewise get removed in the socially disconnected environment of the testing area, sure.

As for genetically female... blah what a terrible argument. What you're referring to, there is epigenetics or active genetics. Genetically speaking it is ant. You could just as easily say it is genetically male with underdeveloped genitals, since the external structures are based on the same tissues. Genetics don't play much role in the male and female sexes of haploid insects, they're the result of external factors, mostly in the chemicals placed in the insect during gestation and growth.

As to the genitals in question you're referring to the dufour's gland, which is a non sexual opening in neuter ants which is used for scent marking. It may have had the potential to become a vagina, but instead it became a specialized gland used for communication, not procreation.

Worker ants are not female, they are neuter. But we refer to them as female because it's easier to deal with that gender dichotomy.

I read the whole conclusion. I just mentioned one line in particular and summarized the conclusion.

Of course, you cited 0 sources at all, so I'm not exactly the largest offender here. At least I'm having the good faith to google the claims. *shrug* I can easily provide the source of the one relevant study I found once I'm not working. (Hard to tap out a reply between detailing cars) i have to type in short, fast bursts. Hence the disjointedness and typos. For that I apologize.

I'm pretty sure most people refer to worker ants as female because they've never heard of Neuter ants before. And "female" is close enough for Most Basic Ant Knowledge 101 in kids books that 99% of people's entire Ant knowledge comes from. I didn't know neuter ants were a thing until a few hours ago. And when I googled it I got an entymology page saying they're technically "female" but its more accurate to call them Neuter. But both are basically right. Just one appears to be More Right. (Probably because the generally accepted "Neutral" setting of most animals is Female, until something says otherwise. I imagine that ant genes can be edited during the larval stage through food, and so some food takes the "MAKE FEMALE SEX ORGANS" Gene and sets it to "true" and another does the same thing but says "JUST KIDDING MALE SEX ORGANS" and if neither then they still have the "MAKE FEMALE SEX ORGANS" gene but in the off position. This would make them technically female. But it's inaccurate to say they are truly Female. Sort of like how a square is always a rectangle, but a rectangle is not always a square. Worker ants are always "female" but they're not always FEMALE. I can now say I've argued with a stranger about Ant Genitals. My bucket list just got shorter.

For Hypothetical Study, it's one of those things where I can tell you exactly how it would go, and we know it would go that way from other factors, and yet we need to test it anyways because WHAT IF. Honestly, if there was anything other than a very mild (like 0.1 or less) correlation between societal influence and physicality, I would be SHOCKED. Stunned, really. And even that much correlation (which probably DOES exist) would make little real difference. Statistically varifiable yet useless in practicality.

I'm fun at parties.

PersonMan
2016-01-29, 06:20 AM
But there is a factor which has been shown to have a huge impact on growth, mucle mass and so on : Nutrition. The typical diet of a child, potential scarcity, one-sided food etc. pretty much all show later in the adult. Again for both genders.

This is another thing that makes me think that sex-based stat modifiers aren't worth applying. If Character A was raised from birth to be a knight and was well-fed all his life, in reality he'd probably be far stronger than Character B, who is a 'badass escaped slave who was worked half to death in a salt mine before murdering his captors and disappearing'-type character. Back-breaking labor and malnutrition would take a huge physical toll, but we don't say 'sure, you can play him, but he takes a -1 to Strength from malnutrition and another -1 from salt mine labor', so why separate along sex lines?

If you want to make a super in-depth simulationist game, maybe, but otherwise it just feels incomplete.

goto124
2016-01-29, 06:23 AM
If Character A was raised from birth to be a knight and was well-fed all her life, in reality she'd probably be far stronger than Character B, who is a 'badass escaped slave who was worked half to death in a salt mine before murdering his captors and disappearing'-type character. .

Heh... considering what we've been talking about, I'd expected this.


Back-breaking labor and malnutrition would take a huge physical toll, but we don't say 'sure, you can play him, but he takes a -1 to Strength from malnutrition and another -1 from salt mine labor', so why separate along sex lines?

If you want to make a super in-depth simulationist game, maybe, but otherwise it just feels incomplete.

+1 Con and -1 Str from a Background of 'Salt Mine Slave'? I'm in!

If a game developer just wanted another point of mechanical choice, there's not much reason to fluff that choice as "race" or "background" instead of "sex", especially when the first two are much less arguable.

If we want verisimilitude or realism, build up all the way on the fluff worldbuilding side first. Mechanics not necessary, though it can help once you actually know very well why sex is such a huge difference it affects the mechanics in a visible way.

Just for fun: what if we had a "Neuter" sex that modifies stats? What stats would it change and how?

Steampunkette
2016-01-29, 06:26 AM
If you want to get into the genetics of ant genitals they've got "Make Dufour's Organ!" In the active state until certain enzymes are added that change it into genitals. Not "Make Vagina!"

The problem with knowing how it will go before it's tested is that's impossible. What you have is a guess. A guess informed by both your current understanding of the variables and a societal bias. It's an informed guess, a hypothesis, but it isn't certainty. Though your shock, if any existed, would be shared by most people.

But to get back on topic. A heavy load for someone in 3.5e D&D is up to 300lbs with a strength of 18. Becca Swanson, one of the strongest women on record, can deadlift 693lbs. The strongest men on record typically lift about 800lbs. The difference is there, but not significant enough, in relation to what the stats mean for game purposes, to matter for half a darn.

Exceptional characters break boundaries. And the idea that female characters should be penalized next to male ones is sexists on its face.

Apricot
2016-01-29, 07:50 AM
You're comparing a specific instance to what appears to be a general category, which seems odd. That's generally a tactic used to mask or conceal relevant data. I'm not sure you want to be making shady moves like that to support your point.

According to Wikipedia, the world record for deadlifting on men is about 1000lb. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deadlift#World_records ) The highest I can find for women is 589. ( http://www.powerliftingwatch.com/records/raw/women-world ) I am able to find a practice video where Becca Swanson deadlifts 660lb, which I am happy to use instead, but searching for your purported 693 gives no results. If you have additional sources which can help with this, they would be most appreciated.

However, even if we use your highest figure, we can clearly see that the limit of strength for men is far higher than the limit of strength for women. We may attempt to explain some of this away with cultural issues, but at a certain point, this strains credulity. It would be absurd, obviously, to claim that the disparate heights between men and women (which are very easily demonstrated by any census) are solely due to social pressure. So why is it such a tense point to claim that differences in physical strength might too have a significant biological component? Important to note: since I haven't done the math to compare the various physical statistics of these men and women, it may well be that the variance in top-level deadlifting ability can be explained entirely by size differences: the men are bigger (read: same proportions, larger size), and because muscle is what lifts weights, being bigger=more muscle=more weight lifted. This would not be an outrageous conclusion. However, I leave that kind of question to the statisticians.

Now, it seems to me as if you have quite a stake in this game, as it were. You're making extremely strong claims about subjective perception and how it can nullify objective results. Your point there is well taken; there are many examples of biased data-collection giving false claims of objectivity to data which deserves no such moniker. However, it is very different to claim that subjectivity is biasing extremely easily quantifiable data. It is not remotely challenging to quantify data about deadlifts and height, just as it is elementary to quantify data about objects dropping. The subjective perception criticism is used to answer statistics which strenuously resist unbiased collection, such as the famous blacks-have-lower-IQ statistic, which utterly failed to realize that it was measuring quite efficiently for American poverty.

But overall, it seems to me that you're trying very hard to misuse techniques, skew data, and generally argue in ineffective manners--for what? What is the endgame of proving that women are physically identical to men? If there is an advantage there, from an ideological standpoint, I don't see it. What benefit is gained from holding the ideological position that men and women have the same raw physical strength? Is it to support equality? That claim would necessitate the corollary that having less physical strength makes one a lesser class of human, which I personally find abhorrent. Is that what you've had on your mind all the time? Can women only be the equals of men if they have the same physical strength? That seems like an open concession to, as it were, patriarchal values of worth, and in my opinion seems extremely sexist in how it translates the average biological advantage of human males into some metaphysical notion of value. All in all, from start to finish, your argument seems weak at best and almost terrifyingly regressive at worst.

(Fun calculation on the side: for 3.5 D&D characters to lift 1000lb off the ground and stagger around with it, they need 22Str. A level 20 Human who devotes all ability bonuses to Strength and starts with 18 will only hit 23. I mean, let's be honest: it's kind of shocking how close to reality that is! Wonder if they actually did their homework before starting off.)

Steampunkette
2016-01-29, 08:05 AM
Becca Swanson's wiki page lists kgs. Check the 90+ kg category and convert to English scale. Deadlift 290.5kg

And I was comparing her to other weight lifted strongest as recorded by the World Powerlifting Congress from competitions by the same organization.

Sadly, Guiness doesn't separate by gender, so while I can tell your the most weight any human has held off the ground is over 6,000lbs I can't tell you what the largest weight a woman held is.

Typing on a tablet is hard!

That said, you also have to realize that there are a lot less female powerlifters in the world than there are men. And the women with the strongest potential to powerlift may not be in competition. Smaller pool, narrower range for the most part. Again, a social bias against women being strong and muscular limits our understanding.

Raimun
2016-01-29, 08:16 AM
I don't see why you should have different stat limits for males or females. There are a lot of women who are physically way stronger than the vast majority of those men who propose Str-penalties to female characters.

Besides, my experience is that women don't tend to usually make their female characters particularly talented in physical strength anyway. You don't really need to invest that much in your Strength-score if your character is intellectual, sneaky, spell caster, party Face, ranged combatant, support or Dex-melee. I've observed that the usual trend is the preference of these roles over traditional "Str-melee warrior" but if someone wants to break the trend and make a big, strong female barbarian, with Str of 20, I don't see why they should be arbitrarily limited. I've seen it happen many times and it's awesome.

Frozen_Feet
2016-01-29, 08:44 AM
I was wondering about this myself. Keep asking: Why? What do we want out of gender differences? What are we trying to achieve?

For Noitahovi, the actually existing RPG which does what the original post suggested ("men are realistically stronger but women hold social and magical power"), the purpose is to examine a matriarchal society inspired by mythic Finland and Russia WITHOUT doing a simple and tired role-inversion. Everyone I know who's read and played it agrees both the system and the setting work just fine.

In Kagematsu, where male players have to play women, and the (sole) female player plays the dominant male, the point is for the players to examine gender roles of feodal Japan from a perspective they would typically not choose on their own. This game as well has been received positively as far as I can tell.

I've personally played a woman in a game set in 18th century France, where the whole game revolved around my character's arranged marriage and social subservience to her brothers. (As a point of trivia, this game was designed and run by a woman). I took it as an acting challenge and loved it. Partly because it wouldn't have occurred to me to make a character like that on my own.



Which... was sort of the premise of this thread. If there WERE a valid in-game balance for female characters being physically weaker, would that make for a viable game mechanic?

There's an assumption here that an RPG needs to be balanced to be viable.

In Noitahovi, the one extra point of Body (=Strength & Dexterity) men get by default doesn't even begin to balance out their lower social and magical standing. This is fine for a game where men are supposed to be the second sex.

In 1st Edition AD&D, women get absolutely nothing to offset their lower Strength cap. This too is fine, because you don't need a maximal Strength score to enjoy play. Other factors, like level, equipment and strategy still allow you to triumph over monsters. And even in direct PC-versus-PC fight, a Str 10 female Fighter still has a chance to win a Str 18/00 male Fighter of equal level. People who go "no-one will play female fighters when you cap Strength" assume everyone is an obsessive min-maxer. They are apparently blind to the concept of playing a suboptimal character because you want to explore such a character type, or the concept of simply not giving a **** about it because the supposed "penalty" doesn't actually stop them from doing well in a game.

Segev
2016-01-29, 08:52 AM
If I were playing in such a system I would probably choose to play a character who was the "wrong gender" for their class. I like being the underdog in a system where there is a biological caste system. I always play non-Jedi in SW, non-marines in 40k, and heroic mortals in Exalted / WoD if I can find a GM who will let me.I often have a similar mindset, as I get inspired to write the "exception" character, but in this particular example, the mechanics would not only fail to support you doing this, they'd outright forbid it.

In this hypothetical system, having a male magical girl (or "magical boy") is as impossible as having a male bear children. Having a female super robot pilot is as impossible as having a female be the parent of dozens of healthy babies born within a month of each other.

(And no, science in that setting doesn't permit the latter, before you try to bring up that it's conceivably possible to use cloning technology to make a fertilized egg from two unfertilized eggs. Tech isn't going to isolate and artificially induce whatever it is that makes men able to pilot super robots for purposes of the generic setting; anything that permitted it would be a house rule.)

So in this case, the mechanics wouldn't just make your magical boy or super robot pilotess sub-optimal, but literally impossible. Like an elven Beholder Mage is impossible in 3.5e D&D.



I was wondering about this myself. Keep asking: Why? What do we want out of gender differences? What are we trying to achieve?
That question would likely be answered by each individual game where this was the case.

In the Magical Girls and Super Robots setting, the goal would be to tell a campy story where magical girls and super robots fight side-by-side and you can have the boys' group and girls' group tell a "all boys' school/all girls' school" story alongside the fantastical action.

It also WOULD allow exploration of gender roles and stereotypes by examining what they look like in a setting where there is at least one obvious, unarguable difference in capabilities, and examine if even that is enough to justify some of the stereotypes and expectations.

Or you could just be playing a fun "men are from mars, women are from venus" style game. (Other than a BESM game set in the Vandread setting.)

ImNotTrevor
2016-01-29, 09:06 AM
Becca Swanson's wiki page lists kgs. Check the 90+ kg category and convert to English scale. Deadlift 290.5kg

And I was comparing her to other weight lifted strongest as recorded by the World Powerlifting Congress from competitions by the same organization.

Sadly, Guiness doesn't separate by gender, so while I can tell your the most weight any human has held off the ground is over 6,000lbs I can't tell you what the largest weight a woman held is.

Typing on a tablet is hard!

That said, you also have to realize that there are a lot less female powerlifters in the world than there are men. And the women with the strongest potential to powerlift may not be in competition. Smaller pool, narrower range for the most part. Again, a social bias against women being strong and muscular limits our understanding.

But the very best potential male powerlifters may also not be powerlifting. The "maybe" people don't count. Maybe someone out there could maybe benchpress 2,000 pounds if they dedicated their life to it and had the natural talent. But "maybe" is outside of the realm of what IS. (Science's playground is primarily in the observable rather than the imagined)

And of course, natural talent is nice... and doesn't make up for hard work. It could easily mean another 100 pounds in the end. Impressive, yes. But an additional 400 pounds being lifted by less muscle (by weight)?

And as Apricot said why does it matter? Women aren't devalued by being physically weaker than men. It's just like them having generally smaller hands or generally wider hips.

Remember your Prime Biological Imperative(PBI]: build and nurture young. Everything in your existence is optimized to do THAT. And little else. Sentience is a nifty side benefit but all the meat outside your brain is designed for your PBI. Evolution is the most aggressive form of optimization ever. Females don't need to be buff to do the Build and Nurture Young thing.

Males are optimized for Impregnate and Defend. They kill stuff and keep their female(s) and young safe. (Look at apes, our closest relatives, for clues about how our society likely looked back then.)

Sentience, self-awareness, is where we broke free of biological programming to an extent. But things like how yoir brain prioritizes information to record in memory vs. To not record is very much an echo of that time. We are good at snap-judgement because our Ape brain needs to identify threats IMMEDIATELY or we could die. We fall into Confirmation Bias really easily because our brain records Events, not Non-events. (We remember unusually cold winter days as disproof of global warming despite having an obvious trend of growing temperatures because our brains aren't good at slow rises. They're good at recording unusual occurences, since they affect our survival. We dislike people with obvious disfigurement because it's often indicative of disease, and disease means death and failure to accomplish your PBI.

The PBI doesn't care what you or society thinks. If a trait prevents PBI from happening, it will likely die out as a gene pretty quick. (There are exceptions, but not many)

Satinavian
2016-01-29, 09:15 AM
Males are optimized for Impregnate and Defend. They kill stuff and keep their female(s) and young safe. (Look at apes, our closest relatives, for clues about how our society likely looked back then.)
While i don't agree with Steampunkette on the possible impact of culture, here you are jumping from scientific proven facts (differences between the sexes) to conclusions that are only hypotheses.

We don't really know why the sexes have developed as they have. There are a lot of other possible explainations.

Anonymouswizard
2016-01-29, 09:19 AM
In this hypothetical system, having a male magical girl (or "magical boy") is as impossible as having a male bear children.

No matter how hard I try, I can only read this as 'young bears are all female'.

ImNotTrevor
2016-01-29, 09:21 AM
While i don't agree with Steampunkette on the possible impact of culture, here you are jumping from scientific proven facts (differences between the sexes) to conclusions that are only hypotheses.

We don't really know why the sexes have developed as they have. There are a lot of other possible explainations.

Such as?

Assuming the Prime Biological Imperative is to pass on one's genes (which it is), then why else would we have developed into what we are?

That probably sounds more antagonistic than I want it to. I'm honestly curious. I've never heard other explanations that didn't strike me as really weird.

Elderand
2016-01-29, 09:22 AM
Evolution is the most aggressive form of optimization ever.

Ah, erronous high school science pop culture raises it's ugly head once again. No, evolution is quite emphaticly NOT the most aggrassive form of optimization ever. In fact evolution does an absolutly horrendous job of optimizing anything. If anything, evolution is the epitome of throwing **** at the wall until it gets a barely passing grade of "good enough" and recycling old stuff until it becomes ludicrous.

Survival of the fitest is a misnomer. More accuratly its should be "death of the unfit and slightly increased breeding chance of the fitter, maybe."

Jay R
2016-01-29, 09:23 AM
If you insist on statistical realism in your game, begin by having each player roll percentile dice. If they get 50% or less, then the character died in childbirth.

Now roll again. 30% or less? Died of childhood diseases.

Congratulations! Your character survives to adulthood. Now roll one more time. If you get 95% or less, that character is a peasant farmer for the rest of his or her life.

"Hey! Let's all play Hoes and Hovels!"

Or accept that it's a fantasy, and don't penalize people for their characters sex.

Segev
2016-01-29, 09:25 AM
We remember unusually cold winter days as disproof of global warming despite having an obvious trend of growing temperatures because our brains aren't good at slow rises.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.)


No matter how hard I try, I can only read this as 'young bears are all female'.
And apparently Evangelion pilots, since that's the only time I've seen "children" used as a singular. ;)

Kardwill
2016-01-29, 09:57 AM
I'd just steer clear. If your players care to make their men stronger or women weaker, they can work it out in point-buy. There's no gain, IMO, and it limits your players' options.

You can make a game that messes around with gender roles, and it can be fun - look at settings like Wheel of Time. Just be mindful, is all, and it almost certainly doesn't need a mechanical bludgeon like "mens are strong, womens talk good."

Nowadays, it's my take on it too, including "racial" differences. Maybe not in games where races and classesdifferences are an established part of the crunchy "game in the game" of character building (like D&D dwarves and elves), but for most other where building your own custom character is easy via point build or similar mechanics, like FATE.

"- DM Kardwill, Dwarves are superior craftsmen and are very tough, and are not into magic. Shouldn't I have some bonus point?
- Nope. Simply take the skills "crafts" and "toughness" at a reasonable level, and don't take any magic skill, and you should be golden.
- But if I want to put points on "red magic" and not "thoughness" nor "crafts"?
- Ooooh, a scrawny, technology-impaired, fire-blasting dwarf mage? Sounds unusual. There must be a cool story beind that?"

Same thing for sex/gender differences. You can follow your culture's conception of your gender's abilities and place in society, or you can make an atypical character and make female-Conan. Either way, it will be a choice YOU make willingly for your character, instead of simply following a +2/-2 in some book.

Kardwill
2016-01-29, 10:03 AM
Ok, as people have said, every once in a while someone has this idea.

It's like Eddie Izzard's sketch about invading Russia.
*invades Russia.* "I've got a new idea!"
*retreating* "It was the same idea, it was the same idea!"

If this genuinely bothers you, you can do what I do. Think of it in terms of outliers.


20 is the absolute maximum human strength (except for high level barbarian berserkers).

10 is by far the most common and most average human strength. If we consider average stats for the genders, a random male villager might have strength 10 or 11, while a random female villager might have strength 8 or 9.

But it's still no problem to make a woman PC with strength 10, it doesn't cost anything extra because you could have made a male PC at no cost instead, and all it means it that she's a tiny bit of an outlier on her gender's strength curve.

If you make a male warrior with strength 18 (about the highest you can reasonably start with), he's a huge outlier on his gender's strength curve. He's stronger than 99% of guys he runs into

If you make a female warrior with 18 strength, she's even more of an outlier, she's stronger than 99.99% of women she'll run into. But that doesn't mean she can't exist. She may have a genetic anomaly giving her abnormal muscle growth or something, but she does exist.

It doesn't matter how many other women match her, you only need this one to exist. In game terms she's as easy to make as a male PC, so it shouldn't cost extra, it just means she's more of an anomaly in the total human population.

Even if you roll for stats and start with 20 strength on a female warrior, it just means she's the strongest woman to have been born in centuries, maybe ever, and that doesn't really matter, so long as you are willing to give her that niche, people would definitely notice someone like that.

You just fluff the stats you do have.

For example, I made a tiefling paladin, she's got 17 strength and 17 constitution, because I rolled two 17's and put them there. I fluffed it as unnatural, demonic strength, even though the tiefling race doesn't boost those stats.

In terms of gamism and balance, all that matters is that you could have made an identical male PC at exactly the same 'cost'.

From a simulationist point of view, you just have to remember that the PC is a single individual, not her entire population. You only have to make fluff for this one, not explain that it was as likely for someone this strong to be male or female. (that can be fluffed away, not every human is made using the character creation rules, they're just handwaved around the averages)

I really like this approach too.

Segev
2016-01-29, 10:06 AM
Nowadays, it's my take on it too, including "racial" differences. Maybe not in games where races and classesdifferences are an established part of the crunchy "game in the game" of character building (like D&D dwarves and elves), but for most other where building your own custom character is easy via point build or similar mechanics, like FATE.

"- DM Kardwill, Dwarves are superior craftsmen and are very tough, and are not into magic. Shouldn't I have some bonus point?
- Nope. Simply take the skills "crafts" and "toughness" at a reasonable level, and don't take any magic skill, and you should be golden.
- But if I want to put points on "red magic" and not "thoughness" nor "crafts"?
- Ooooh, a scrawny, technology-impaired, fire-blasting dwarf mage? Sounds unusual. There must be a cool story beind that?"

Same thing for sex/gender differences. You can follow your culture's conception of your gender's abilities and place in society, or you can make an atypical character and make female-Conan. Either way, it will be a choice YOU make willingly for your character, instead of simply following a +2/-2 in some book.
There are, indeed, character-building systems that do that. They work best for systems that are entirely divorced from setting, and meant to be able to model generically any setting in question.

When designing a system for a particular setting, it is useful to create mechanics that make the setting conceits better to play towards than to ignore or play against.

If you want a clan known for its mages to have more PCs from it playing mages, you give that clan the best stats for mages or a superior mage "class" that is exclusive to it. If you want a clan known for their tough warriors but not so much for their mages, you make sure their stats support tough warriors but make for weaker mages...or you give them classes that are the strongest warriors and only access to weaker mage classes.

This kind of thing encourages players to play towards stereotype without having to outright forbid it. And if you want to outright forbid something, go ahead and do so. "No dwarf can be a mage; they just can't use magic."

Satinavian
2016-01-29, 10:28 AM
Such as?

Assuming the Prime Biological Imperative is to pass on one's genes (which it is), then why else would we have developed into what we are?

That probably sounds more antagonistic than I want it to. I'm honestly curious. I've never heard other explanations that didn't strike me as really weird.

How about : Bigger male muscle mass did not evolve because males were tasked with fighting and defending but because males need only a small part of their body for reproduction and have less constraints revolving around pregnancy ? We already know that the combination of walking on two legs fast and giving birth without complications is not without problems which results in female hips being wider than optimal for movement and human pregnancies are still more dangerous than those of similar animals. There might have been similar problems in the evolution of primates.
We really don't know why something developed and what the alternative less competitive options had been. And in cases of behavior patterns that have synergies with physical proberties, we rarely know, which was first and the reason for the second to evolve. Even if males are more inclined to fighting (which is again not easy to prove) it might as well have happened because being more muscular instead of the other way around.


Over time, people have brought up so many reasonings why the things are like observed. All of them seemed to make sense. Only to be revealed later to be utterly incorrect when better observations were available. In cases of evolutional reasoning it is better to stick to observed facts and keep in mind that all the reasons are only hypotheses.

That does not mean that your argument is neccessariry wrong. Only that we can't be certain about it and that "makes sense" is not enough.

Anonymouswizard
2016-01-29, 10:38 AM
Or accept that it's a fantasy, and don't penalize people for their characters sex.

You mean I can't use my random STI tables? But how else will I stop my players blowing gold on hookers and blackjack!?

I think a better wording is 'don't penalise people because you don't think their concept is realistic'.

obryn
2016-01-29, 10:45 AM
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.)
Oh goodness gracious. You can't leave it, and I can't leave it. No fair asking me to take it elsewhere when you don't do the same. Here, have some links. In short, this is only if you take 1998 as the start of your 'trend' as opposed to longer-term views.

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

Additionally, the idea that the warming of the ocean somehow doesn't count is just silly. The ocean's a massive heat sink. (Literally! It's orders of magnitude more massive than the atmosphere.)

http://www.skepticalscience.com/no-warming-in-16-years.htm
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2015/noaa-analysis-journal-science-no-slowdown-in-global-warming-in-recent-years.html
Wikipedia gives an in-depth overview, with the caveat of wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming_hiatus
Ugly URL, good article (http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/12-02-08/?gclid=CjwKEAiAuKy1BRCY5bTuvPeopXcSJAAq4OVsHqifnaa qs6K4r8CMSCRwtXiIdFQK7YoEYTtqM8ND1hoCIoHw_wcB#feat ure)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2015/03/26/ted-cruzs-claim-that-there-has-been-zero-global-warming-in-17-years/
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/mar/20/ted-cruz/ted-cruzs-worlds-fire-not-last-17-years/

And a nice picture.
http://climate.nasa.gov/system/resources/detail_files/115_GisTemp_chart_v6_768px.gif

Segev
2016-01-29, 10:45 AM
But how else will I stop my players blowing gold on hookers and blackjack!?

That's easy! Hookers and blackjack don't provide mechanical benefits (and may provide mechanical penalties), and gold can be spent on things (e.g. magic items) which DO provide mechanical benefits.

Your pack of murderhobos will ignore those hookers and turn down that blackjack (unless they can cheat and guarantee victory) every time, live frugal lives of just enough not to suffer penalties for lack of sleep, and only invest in security to protect their stuff and selves. They're saving for the awesome magic items that make them terrifyingly effective.

Frozen_Feet
2016-01-29, 10:48 AM
Again: there are genres, even genres of fantasy, where "penalizing" characters in such ways is perfectly appropriate.

And there are players who don't find those things penalties at all. In my last LotFP game, my players had their characters boink each other in hopes of knocking up the female one. The die roll and searching for evidence to see if it'd happened this time became a high point of the game.

Segev
2016-01-29, 11:21 AM
Again: there are genres, even genres of fantasy, where "penalizing" characters in such ways is perfectly appropriate.

And there are players who don't find those things penalties at all. In my last LotFP game, my players had their characters boink each other in hopes of knocking up the female one. The die roll and searching for evidence to see if it'd happened this time became a high point of the game.

If they like the consequences, great! They'll do it. And everybody's happy.


Though I wasn't suggesting pregnancy as a negative consequence. (Admittedly, it could be if your goal is to be "effective adventurer," and your female PC is gravid.)

YossarianLives
2016-01-29, 11:50 AM
I vote that we just give up on discussing roleplaying games and talk about ant-genitalia instead.

Donnadogsoth
2016-01-29, 12:32 PM
If you insist on statistical realism in your game, begin by having each player roll percentile dice. If they get 50% or less, then the character died in childbirth.

Now roll again. 30% or less? Died of childhood diseases.

Congratulations! Your character survives to adulthood. Now roll one more time. If you get 95% or less, that character is a peasant farmer for the rest of his or her life.

"Hey! Let's all play Hoes and Hovels!"

Or accept that it's a fantasy, and don't penalize people for their characters sex.

And once you've mastered your hoe and conquered your hovel, you can play Advunced Peasants and Crapmongers (http://www.oocities.org/rowenaknill/jokes/peasants.html)!

I think part of the objection, instinctively speaking, is that ultrastrong females go against type in an unpleasant way. I'm sure someone finds extremely muscular women attractive, but most people don't--cf. any men's magazine or women's magazine; watch any tv show or movie. And although I haven't been keeping up with the fantasy literature I'll wager there are very few such women characters present, but that there are probably quite a lot of extremely muscular men. As noted above, adventurers are exceptional, so it's within the realm of possibility to play such a character, but it will be rare, whether for mechanical reasons or for instinctive ones; i.e., girls who want to play female characters usually want to play ones who are somewhat girly, not built like an ox.

Frozen_Feet
2016-01-29, 12:34 PM
@Segev: my post was more aimed at Anonymouswizard than you. I don't think anyone in this thread has suggested pregnancy in particular is a penalty, but the thought has cropped up in earlier threads, just like the issue of strength differences is reoccurring.

(It's actually sort of amazing just how reoccurring this topic is. As noted, it started within years of oD&D, and was codified and discussed in AD&D. I own a copy of 30-year-old Finnish RPG magazine which talks about this, and it somehow manages to include both of the following lines: "no differences exist between sexes which would warrant modeling in RPGs" and "on average men have 20% higher strength in general, and almost 50% more upper body strength in particular".)

Segev
2016-01-29, 12:38 PM
I think part of the objection, instinctively speaking, is that ultrastrong females go against type in an unpleasant way. I'm sure someone finds extremely muscular women attractive, but most people don't--cf. any men's magazine or women's magazine; watch any tv show or movie. And although I haven't been keeping up with the fantasy literature I'll wager there are very few such women characters present, but that there are probably quite a lot of extremely muscular men. As noted above, adventurers are exceptional, so it's within the realm of possibility to play such a character, but it will be rare, whether for mechanical reasons or for instinctive ones; i.e., girls who want to play female characters usually want to play ones who are somewhat girly, not built like an ox.

Yeah, but you don't have to "look" muscular to have high stats. HEck, you can theoretically have a scrawny little Halfling with Strength 20 just from level-up bonuses, no magic involved. And she could be the cutest little waif, per the rules.

As far as fictional examples, consider She-Ra. Admittedly, her power is magical in nature, but she's definitely not muscle-bound despite having a strength score in excess of most great wyrm epic dragons.

GrayGriffin
2016-01-29, 01:18 PM
Besides, my experience is that women don't tend to usually make their female characters particularly talented in physical strength anyway.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

AHAHAAHAHAHAHAH.

AAHHAHAHA.

Seriously? In my experience, almost all the female players I've played with have made their female characters with quite significant physical strength. And so have some of the male players. And of course, these are all in game systems that don't penalize your character based on gender. There aren't even any gender-restricted classes. Because that's not fun.

ComaVision
2016-01-29, 01:32 PM
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

AHAHAAHAHAHAHAH.

AAHHAHAHA.

Seriously? In my experience, almost all the female players I've played with have made their female characters with quite significant physical strength. And so have some of the male players. And of course, these are all in game systems that don't penalize your character based on gender. There aren't even any gender-restricted classes. Because that's not fun.

My current girlfriend always plays male characters but the one female character she played was a Healer. My ex played a female Fighter once as her first character but all weak female characters after that. Every other girl I've played with (and my groups always have at least one woman) have played small female rogue/caster types.

Donnadogsoth
2016-01-29, 01:35 PM
Yeah, but you don't have to "look" muscular to have high stats. HEck, you can theoretically have a scrawny little Halfling with Strength 20 just from level-up bonuses, no magic involved. And she could be the cutest little waif, per the rules.

As far as fictional examples, consider She-Ra. Admittedly, her power is magical in nature, but she's definitely not muscle-bound despite having a strength score in excess of most great wyrm epic dragons.

Well, that's the sort of theoretical silliness that turns me off D&D as written. Halflings bench-pressing the Earth. [shrugs shoulders, palms up] Whatevah floats ya boat.

Magical strength isn't terribly silly, but there's still a question of leverage. A giant with STR 20 should have an easier time rolling a dead dragon over than a halfling of equal strength.

8BitNinja
2016-01-29, 01:35 PM
It's not even a matter of sexism. Yes, in The Real World men are, on average, stronger. But this is a matter of what is fun, not what is realistic.

And I'm not using the "Because Dragons Fallacy" mentioned earlier in the thread, I'm just saying that people should be able to play whatever kind of character they want regardless of gender.

If you want to make a certain character, go ahead

I get that's what's fun, but people were talking about different stats for them

Apricot
2016-01-29, 01:57 PM
Yeah, but you don't have to "look" muscular to have high stats. HEck, you can theoretically have a scrawny little Halfling with Strength 20 just from level-up bonuses, no magic involved. And she could be the cutest little waif, per the rules.

As far as fictional examples, consider She-Ra. Admittedly, her power is magical in nature, but she's definitely not muscle-bound despite having a strength score in excess of most great wyrm epic dragons.

Honestly, this is what I'd say is the real "problem" insofar as the whole women-having-identical-strength deal goes. It's not imagining some lady who just happens to be utterly ripped, it's imagining a delicate lily of a girl packing as much physical power as an Olympic weightlifter. I have about as much of a problem with that as I do with super-skinny prettyboys with swords the size of commercial aircraft: I make 'em anyway, because it's utterly hilarious and I don't always take the games I play super-seriously.

gooddragon1
2016-01-29, 02:00 PM
...Though I wasn't suggesting pregnancy as a negative consequence. (Admittedly, it could be if your goal is to be "effective adventurer," and your female PC is gravid.)

There are actually stats for pregnancy in 3.5 outside of the core books.


Honestly, this is what I'd say is the real "problem" insofar as the whole women-having-identical-strength deal goes. It's not imagining some lady who just happens to be utterly ripped, it's imagining a delicate lily of a girl packing as much physical power as an Olympic weightlifter. I have about as much of a problem with that as I do with super-skinny prettyboys with swords the size of commercial aircraft: I make 'em anyway, because it's utterly hilarious and I don't always take the games I play super-seriously.

I once made an anthropomorphic (not the template, a homebrew thing, and much more humanoid than shark) shark female sorcerer named Semtex if that counts. As per my standards (and because it was 32 point buy) she had 10 strength and no stat below 10.


Well, that's the sort of theoretical silliness that turns me off D&D as written. Halflings bench-pressing the Earth. [shrugs shoulders, palms up] Whatevah floats ya boat.

Magical strength isn't terribly silly, but there's still a question of leverage. A giant with STR 20 should have an easier time rolling a dead dragon over than a halfling of equal strength.

Actually they do, smaller creatures have reduce carrying loads than larger ones. (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/carryingCapacity.htm#biggerandSmallerCreatures)

Also, STR 47 (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/monsters/hunefer.htm):
http://www.wizards.com/dnd/images/EPIC_Gallery/Gallery5a/44191_C5_Hunefer.jpg

STR 45 (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/tarrasque.htm):
http://www.wizards.com/dnd/images/MM35_gallery/MM35_PG240.jpg

Segev
2016-01-29, 02:13 PM
Well, that's the sort of theoretical silliness that turns me off D&D as written. Halflings bench-pressing the Earth. [shrugs shoulders, palms up] Whatevah floats ya boat.

Magical strength isn't terribly silly, but there's still a question of leverage. A giant with STR 20 should have an easier time rolling a dead dragon over than a halfling of equal strength.

Eh, there actually is some of that. And at Strength 20, it shows. Grappling has relative-size modifiers play in, and being comparitively huge is usually a (pun unintended) big advantage. Moreso than pure strength difference.

At ludicrous scores, you wind up with this not mattering. I just assume at that point that, just like you can be Charismatic enough to cause a king to become your devoted slave and hand over his kingdom, you can be Strong enough to not need to worry about leverage. (Of course, if you want to model it more accurately, most leverage problems stem from the fragility of the object being moved, when it comes to super-strength characters. Lift a building? It's not meant to be lifted by the one wall as a single unit...but they do anyway. Or swing it around like a baseball bat, in the case of some antenna-topped sky scrapers.)

8BitNinja
2016-01-29, 02:36 PM
Male or Female, you can still have godlike strength

Anonymouswizard
2016-01-29, 02:50 PM
That's easy! Hookers and blackjack don't provide mechanical benefits (and may provide mechanical penalties), and gold can be spent on things (e.g. magic items) which DO provide mechanical benefits.

Your pack of murderhobos will ignore those hookers and turn down that blackjack (unless they can cheat and guarantee victory) every time, live frugal lives of just enough not to suffer penalties for lack of sleep, and only invest in security to protect their stuff and selves. They're saving for the awesome magic items that make them terrifyingly effective.

Side note: my characters's with 20 ranks of Independent Income, high Wealth, and a Street lifestyle are looked at weirdly in my groups. It's as if they expect me to spend the cash on lodgings instead of magic items.


Again: there are genres, even genres of fantasy, where "penalizing" characters in such ways is perfectly appropriate.

And there are players who don't find those things penalties at all. In my last LotFP game, my players had their characters boink each other in hopes of knocking up the female one. The die roll and searching for evidence to see if it'd happened this time became a high point of the game.

Alright, as this was directed at me I'll expand my statement:

A character should not be penalised mechanically just because of their concept. I'm theoretically okay with gender CAPS on attributes, but not gender penalties/bonuses. In all cases, if the group wants those 'penalties' then I'm happy to give them to them, but in the same way I don't enforce them on my players.

Esprit15
2016-01-29, 03:27 PM
I'm in support of creating social conventions that push people toward one archetype/class/etc. over a mechanical push toward it. It allows gender based roles in society to exist without the mess of what stat goes where.

Talakeal
2016-01-29, 03:42 PM
Ok, as people have said, every once in a while someone has this idea.

It's like Eddie Izzard's sketch about invading Russia.
*invades Russia.* "I've got a new idea!"
*retreating* "It was the same idea, it was the same idea!"

If this genuinely bothers you, you can do what I do. Think of it in terms of outliers.


20 is the absolute maximum human strength (except for high level barbarian berserkers).

10 is by far the most common and most average human strength. If we consider average stats for the genders, a random male villager might have strength 10 or 11, while a random female villager might have strength 8 or 9.

But it's still no problem to make a woman PC with strength 10, it doesn't cost anything extra because you could have made a male PC at no cost instead, and all it means it that she's a tiny bit of an outlier on her gender's strength curve.

If you make a male warrior with strength 18 (about the highest you can reasonably start with), he's a huge outlier on his gender's strength curve. He's stronger than 99% of guys he runs into

If you make a female warrior with 18 strength, she's even more of an outlier, she's stronger than 99.99% of women she'll run into. But that doesn't mean she can't exist. She may have a genetic anomaly giving her abnormal muscle growth or something, but she does exist.

It doesn't matter how many other women match her, you only need this one to exist. In game terms she's as easy to make as a male PC, so it shouldn't cost extra, it just means she's more of an anomaly in the total human population.

Even if you roll for stats and start with 20 strength on a female warrior, it just means she's the strongest woman to have been born in centuries, maybe ever, and that doesn't really matter, so long as you are willing to give her that niche, people would definitely notice someone like that.

You just fluff the stats you do have.

For example, I made a tiefling paladin, she's got 17 strength and 17 constitution, because I rolled two 17's and put them there. I fluffed it as unnatural, demonic strength, even though the tiefling race doesn't boost those stats.

In terms of gamism and balance, all that matters is that you could have made an identical male PC at exactly the same 'cost'.

From a simulationist point of view, you just have to remember that the PC is a single individual, not her entire population. You only have to make fluff for this one, not explain that it was as likely for someone this strong to be male or female. (that can be fluffed away, not every human is made using the character creation rules, they're just handwaved around the averages)

That's actually a really good point. If say, Louis Cyr, had been born a woman, and had strength which was comparable to his reported male strength in the same way that the strongest women have to the strongest men, she would still be just about on par with the strongest men alive today, it is conceivable, albeit extremely unlikely, that someone who is even stronger could be born. Even without mutation or hormonal / environmental factors the genetic lottery can produce some pretty unusual outliers, there is no reason why a PC couldn't be one of those.

Segev
2016-01-29, 03:43 PM
I'm in support of creating social conventions that push people toward one archetype/class/etc. over a mechanical push toward it. It allows gender based roles in society to exist without the mess of what stat goes where.

IT depends what you're going for.

"This is looked down upon/taboo/doesn't happen even though it's possible" speaks to a certain kind of player (which, I admit, I am one of) as a signpost saying, "PLAY THIS CONCEPT."

If you want to have one or more PCs flouting in-game cultural conventions, traipsing over taboos, and engaging in being "different" from the norm in your game, that's fine and it can work well.

If you want to run a game with those conventions in place as things that don't come up as being bucked every session, you probably want to discourage players from playing characters that flout them.

It's all about the kind of game you want to run and your reason for having those conventions, social or mechanical, in the first place.

Talakeal
2016-01-29, 04:11 PM
This is another thing that makes me think that sex-based stat modifiers aren't worth applying. If Character A was raised from birth to be a knight and was well-fed all his life, in reality he'd probably be far stronger than Character B, who is a 'badass escaped slave who was worked half to death in a salt mine before murdering his captors and disappearing'-type character. Back-breaking labor and malnutrition would take a huge physical toll, but we don't say 'sure, you can play him, but he takes a -1 to Strength from malnutrition and another -1 from salt mine labor', so why separate along sex lines?

If you want to make a super in-depth simulationist game, maybe, but otherwise it just feels incomplete.

And what about a man who was hit in the head with a frying pan and now lives his life in a garbage can? Can he be expected to be as strong a triangle man? Personman?


Now if you will excuse me, I have a sudden urge to go dig out my They Might be Giants cassettes.

Esprit15
2016-01-29, 04:45 PM
Well at a certain point, it does become a matter of what you're going for. I think we've all come to a rough agreement that stat modifiers based on sex are a bad idea from a gameplay and story perspective (if only because mechanically balancing it in a way that isn't arbitrary is a massive challenge). If you want a female character who is not going to wrestle anyone to the ground, don't make STR her best stat. If you want certain classes to be male/female exclusive, just make that part of the setting. "Men are all enrolled in wizarding school from the age of 6 to 18, while women are all trained for martial combat during that time." If you run a more serious game, the party will eventually take note of the fact that different social classes are made up of different sexes.

Takewo
2016-01-29, 06:24 PM
Becca Swanson's wiki page lists kgs. Check the 90+ kg category and convert to English scale. Deadlift 290.5kg

And I was comparing her to other weight lifted strongest as recorded by the World Powerlifting Congress from competitions by the same organization.

Sadly, Guiness doesn't separate by gender, so while I can tell your the most weight any human has held off the ground is over 6,000lbs I can't tell you what the largest weight a woman held is.

Typing on a tablet is hard!

That said, you also have to realize that there are a lot less female powerlifters in the world than there are men. And the women with the strongest potential to powerlift may not be in competition. Smaller pool, narrower range for the most part. Again, a social bias against women being strong and muscular limits our understanding.

I am very curious about what is your basis for such a vigorous defence of socially created differences is a perfectly plausible opinion until proven otherwise (Sorry if my paraphrasing doesn't represent your position accurately, I tried to be short and might have missed something).

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.

About the amount of female weight-lifters, if I learned one thing during my statistics course, is that it is not so much about the size of your sample but the quality. This means:

The results of taking 4 people or 40 people for a study will change a lot.
The results of taking 40 people or 400 people for a study will change considerable.
The results of taking 400 people or 4000 people for a study will change a bit.
The results of taking 4000 people or 400000 people for a study won't change much.

Why? Because of this (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_large_numbers).

So, it is not so much about whether we've got the same amount of women weight-lifting or not, but about whether they come from a wide range of social classes, cultures, ethnicities, blah, blah.

About the rest, well, if we give credit to what other people have said that differences in physical strength are practically non-existent until puberty and that after puberty they become bigger, puberty should probably be considered as the chief factor until proven otherwise.

About the argument that our society encourages boys to do more physical things, well, that was true for my mother, who couldn't go about on her fours because she'd make her dress dirty. But when I grew up, we were all expected to do the same hours of physical education at school and train the same skills, we all played the same games, we all climbed fences and trees. Also, we have our beloved middle ages. Women were not locked at home sewing and cooking, not peasant women at least. Most historical books that I've read agree that if a woman's husband was a farmed, they'd have to toil in the farm as well, if he was a tailor, they'd have to do the same job. With a few exceptions, women could and would do any job a man would. Yet, they were still regarded as weaker than men. I do not think it was because society discouraged them from working in the farm.

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.

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.


NOW, on the fact about whether it is a good idea to make a system with different stats for different genders. My question is this: is it relevant?

Alright, let us assume than men are stronger than women. Applying it to a D&D context, does it mean that men always have a greater chance to hit somebody than women?

The handicap with abilities is that in real life we don't work like that. If I lack the strength of my opponent, that doesn't necessarily mean that I am at disadvantage. If something works at your advantage or disadvantage more often that not is a matter of how you use it. Also, we tend to approach one same situation in different ways according to our strengths and weaknesses.

A quick example is once in a summer camp I won a wrestling match against a guy who was far bigger and stronger than I was. I won simply because I used our circumstances better than he did and I was quicker. So, basically, it was a matter of cunning and speed.

A lot of things are involved in a physical combat with weapons. And we tend to cover our weaknesses with our strengths. A swordsman might not be as strong as his opponent, but maybe he is quicker or maybe he's simply learned a different style that allows him to make up for his lack of strength. There's a lot of variables. And, in fact, people I know that practice martial arts (with weapons) generally say that women are not really at disadvantage because of their being weaker than men.

So, my question is this: if strength is going to be mainly used to impact how well you fare in physical combat, is it really relevant that women are weaker than men?

I don't really want to answer the question. I don't like abilities and I think it's a much more complicated issue. So I just leave it here for whosoever managed to read this huge amount of texts and wants to consider it.

PersonMan
2016-01-29, 06:48 PM
I think part of the objection, instinctively speaking, is that ultrastrong females go against type in an unpleasant way. I'm sure someone finds extremely muscular women attractive, but most people don't--cf. any men's magazine or women's magazine; watch any tv show or movie. And although I haven't been keeping up with the fantasy literature I'll wager there are very few such women characters present, but that there are probably quite a lot of extremely muscular men. As noted above, adventurers are exceptional, so it's within the realm of possibility to play such a character, but it will be rare, whether for mechanical reasons or for instinctive ones; i.e., girls who want to play female characters usually want to play ones who are somewhat girly, not built like an ox.

It's been mentioned before, but I'll add that I've played / seen played plenty of male characters with massive strength who aren't walking piles of pure muscle, or really thickly built. People want their character to look a certain way, whether that means pauldrons that would crush their head if they lift their arms, normal proportions on a person who can lift a building or swords that weigh ten times as much as historical weapons and are thrice as long, and unless you're playing a very realistic game I don't see a problem with this sort of thing, especially if other parts of the game show a similarly lax view of things.

If the rules for swimming in lava are more akin to 'take this much damage' than 'you got near the lava and evaporated, what do you mean swim in it?' chances are that you have a strong precedent for ignoring reality in favor of Cool Stuff.


And what about a man who was hit in the head with a frying pan and now lives his life in a garbage can? Can he be expected to be as strong a triangle man? Personman?


Now if you will excuse me, I have a sudden urge to go dig out my They Might be Giants cassettes.

I faintly remember someone bringing this up in the past, but I still haven't heard this. *shrug*

Mr Beer
2016-01-29, 07:38 PM
But to get back on topic. A heavy load for someone in 3.5e D&D is up to 300lbs with a strength of 18. Becca Swanson, one of the strongest women on record, can deadlift 693lbs. The strongest men on record typically lift about 800lbs. The difference is there, but not significant enough, in relation to what the stats mean for game purposes, to matter for half a darn.

LOL, no just no.

Women are significantly weaker than men. Trained female weightlifters are significantly weaker than trained male weightlifters, end of story. As far as I know, Swanson's deadlift is around 600lbs and the male records exceed 1000lbs - 60% more. Amazingly strong as she is, Swanson is a lot weaker than the world class men.

Her best squat is 800lbs IIRC...male equivalent is over 1200lbs - 50% more. Her best bench is under 500lbs, the male equivalent is over 1000lbs - 100% more.

Her total lifts are around 2000lbs. Best male is around 3000lbs - 50% more. Women being 2/3 as strong as men is a decent approximation of the difference right the way from the top (Swanson vs. world class male powerlifters) down to untrained women. It understates the difference in upper body strength, but whatever.

To claim or imply that there is no significant difference between top male lifters and Swanson is just laughable. If she was a man with those lifts, she would be utterly unheard of as a powerlifter.

The fact that women are a lot weaker than men (particularly regarding, but not limited to, upper body strength) is just that, a fact. It's not a societal construct or the machinations of the patriarchy or whatever...it's a plain biological fact. And a full 1/3 difference most certainly would register on most RPG stat scales, D&D being one of them.

Now whether it should be applied to D&D stats is a whole different argument. But let's not confuse what's desirable for game purposes with actual real world facts.

napoleon_in_rag
2016-01-29, 07:55 PM
As far as fictional examples, consider She-Ra. Admittedly, her power is magical in nature, but she's definitely not muscle-bound despite having a strength score in excess of most great wyrm epic dragons.

So out of the stacks upon stacks of fantasy books and media created since 1950, you chose "She-Ra" as an example?

You might as well use "My Little Pony" as a model for RPG warhorses.

You just lost all geek cred.

goto124
2016-01-29, 08:48 PM
You might as well use "My Little Pony" as a model for RPG warhorses.

Should we not? :smalltongue:

To be honest, I can't really think of a flavor of setting where gender differences really help or improve the whole experience. Historical settings make sense (when done carefully), but the male mecha users/female magical girls example was... lemme take a look to answer the question of "why do female mecha users/male magical girls boys spoil the flavor of that setting?"

EDIT: Found the post:


As was said a few times early in this thread, approaching it by giving different abilities to men and women in the sense of powers that neither has in the real world is a viable approach. It avoids making a direct and overt statement that invites an argument over sexism. (It won't avoid it entirely; any difference between them will attract SJWs who will insist it's anti-woman, and anti-SJWs who insist that it's anti-man. Because any difference that is even NOTED, factual or not, is interpreted by such fanatics as proof that there's a bias against their favored category or for the category they see as being unfairly privileged.)

But, for example, if Super Robots require something just a little "more" than the ability to push buttons and pull levers. Something undefinable that makes Super Robot pilots need something other than "merely" a human body to run them... and only men had it. But magic - genuine magic - only manifests in the form of Magical Girls (who are, yes, ALL girls), then you could have an interesting anime setting.

Even if only special people could be either, but all special males are Pilots and all special females are Magical Girls, it would be unique. It would play to stereotypes. It would probably lend itself to being very campy.

If you do something more Fantasy-oriented with a more serious bent and go with "only women can take the Mage class(es), and only men can be fighters," you can easily excuse the former: magic is something that only girls can do in your setting, for some reason. It's harder to justify why women CAN'T be fighters, since "fighters" are supposedly, traditionally, just physically really capable. Best, probably, to say that men can use chi or some similar magic-of-the-body to train up to Z-fighter (as in, Dragonball Z) levels, while women can actually use magic to be Slayers-style (or stronger) mages. [goto's note: this means certain classes are gender-restricted.]

One fictional setting - I believe it was Darkover - had witches and warlocks divided by sex. Witches could use magic on things other than themselves, but not on themselves. They needed, for instance, brooms or carpets they could telekinetically make float in order to fly (by riding them). Warlocks could only use magic on themselves, so they could fly or shapeshift, but they couldn't hurl a fireball or curse somebody else. [goto's note: again, gender-restricted classes.]


So you can do interesting things with it. You can explore how this would shape a society and its expectations of its citizens. But do it carefully, avoiding giving "something special" to just one group and claiming the other is specialized in something both COULD do just because they don't have the "cool thing" to lean on. And definitely don't try to relate it to core stat differences; make it class-based, or powers-based.

I think the bolded part is the answer.

Now, the underlined part is a possible reason we even have gender-based differences in the first place. We've assumed the players are on board with the changes in attitude required for gender-based differences to work, such as "you don't get to change your character's gender and expect everything to work exactly the same as before", "gender actually matters in this setting", etc. Games without gender-based differences lack such differences for a reason: giving freedom to allow players to pick any gender they like without impacting gameplay. If we want gender-based differences, we'll have to move away from that freedom. After all, if gender didn't impact gameplay, gender didn't make a difference did it?

Now, if we want to "explore how this would shape a society and its expectations of its citizens", the players will have to push the boundaries of "girls do this" and "boys do that":


I'm in support of creating social conventions that push people toward one archetype/class/etc. over a mechanical push toward it. It allows gender based roles in society to exist without the mess of what stat goes where.


If you want to have one or more PCs flouting in-game cultural conventions, traipsing over taboos, and engaging in being "different" from the norm in your game, that's fine and it can work well.

If you want to run a game with those conventions in place as things that don't come up as being bucked every session, you probably want to discourage players from playing characters that flout them.

(IMHO, 'every session' is a misnomer, unless the setting's gender-based differences cover a huge part of the PCs' life in-game. Just because gender-based differences exist and impact people in a non-trivial way, doesn't mean everyone's lives revolves around gender-based differences - or bucking them, for the matter.)

As we've already seen, gender-based stat differences are quite a bad idea. I myself support social conventions informing mechanical pushes, such as the aforementioned "night elf females get weapon proficiency because they're trained as warriors". Or gender-restricted classes to give entirely different powers to different genders.

We can have social-convention-based differences (only males are sent to train in swordfighting academy, only females are sent to magic training. A female swordfighter is seen as "unattractive and unmarriageable" while a male mage is seen as "a weak wuss". Female swordfighters are no less effective than male swordfighters, male mages are no less effective than their female counterparts).

We can also have biology-based or inherent differences (sex-based differences that don't arise from social conventions. For example, female can get pregnant but males can't. Or "Slayer magic is powered by the womb/Dragonball Z magic is powered by insert male parts here". Don't be surprised if your players turn up with characters that are intersex, trans, or of any non-standard sex. Prepare your biological explanations enough that you know what to do if someone encounters a spell of sex change).


Now, if a DM runs a game where gender-based differences exist, and tells players "don't even try to question or buck these gender conventions" or gives hard stat modifiers... do DMs do this because they feel the lack of gender-based differences is unrealistic, or breaks their sense of verisimilitude?

raygun goth
2016-01-29, 10:28 PM
You seem to be assuming that societal pressures are so big, so vast, and so important that they can literally override several million years of evolution.

You seem to be assuming that social roles are evolved roles.

What men and women are good at varies not just with culture but the testers - an experiment run to see what men or women look at when they first saw a member of the same or different gender performed in the EU drew the conclusion that women look at the left hand and men look at the crotch. You can't tell me that looking for a wedding ring is biological. They got the results they did because they tested in the EU - testing in North India for spatial reasoning and 3d awareness turns up more women than men. See what men think is attractive in the Middle East and North Africa turns up women merely talking as being physically unattractive - you can't tell me that's "evolved." Research into our prehistoric ancestry is turning up the invention of agriculture being the first time we even started to have anything resembling "gender roles." Before then, everyone contributed to everything pretty much equally - which makes sense. You can't sit around and wait for berries to pick, you have to keep on foot and keep gathering everything you can touch.

Of course, new research is showing that our brains aren't even differentiated until acculturation - and sometimes even for long after that. Randomly distributing MRIs of the brain to doctors and neuroscienists turns up the inability to even tell if the subject is a man or woman, male or female, and follow-up research is turning up the same thing. (http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2015/11/brains-men-and-women-aren-t-really-different-study-finds)


Also? Can we stop using maximums to prove points? Strongman competitors are not normal, male or female. The variations are much closer to 80% and up at the average level - which is not really all that much for D&D to really keep track of, considering that 5 points of a stat is a flat doubling of the previous 5 (a 20 is twice the strength of a 15 is twice the strength of a 10).

Mr Beer
2016-01-29, 11:00 PM
Also? Can we stop using maximums to prove points? Strongman competitors are not normal, male or female. The variations are much closer to 80% and up at the average level - which is not really all that much for D&D to really keep track of, considering that 5 points of a stat is a flat doubling of the previous 5 (a 20 is twice the strength of a 15 is twice the strength of a 10).

Don't know if this is directed at me, but I was making a rebuttal concerning a female powerlifter (not strongman), rather than attempting to imply that the strongest people in the world are typical specimens. That aside, as I mentioned, the female/male strength difference is pretty equal all the way up and it's closer to 2/3 at the average than 80%+.

Donnadogsoth
2016-01-29, 11:07 PM
You seem to be assuming that social roles are evolved roles.

Is sexual attraction a social role? That most men are attracted to women and most women are attracted to men?

Is nursing (breastfeeding) a social role?

The sexes quite strongly appear selected, genetically, to appeal to one another sexually.

Women appear quite strongly selected to breastfeed infants.

There are probably many more examples of things like this: thicker bones in men to offset fighting, more body fat in women to assist in childrearing, wider hips, etc..

It would be strange if men weren't optimised to defend pregnant women, just as it would be strange if women weren't optimised to be pregnant and care for the children they give birth to.

I'm sure there are a million cultures with a million different ways of doing things but the basic genetic imprint of men=impregnate/fight and women=bear children/care for babies has to be there.

awa
2016-01-30, 12:19 AM
Is sexual attraction a social role? That most men are attracted to women and most women are attracted to men?

The sexes quite strongly appear selected, genetically, to appeal to one another sexually.




well the Spartans/ greeks come to mind for societies role in sexual attraction
At least from a casual reading this appears far more complicated then you would assume at least in some edge cases like the high lands of pupa new guinea pre missionaries and a few others

edit
also i don't think men are optimized to defend women that assumes a degree of specialization that humans just don't have we are optimized for throwing things, long distance running and a few other things the fact that men are typical better fighters then women does not mean we are optimized for it they just have to deal with the fact that growing a whole new person inside them requires a lot of expensive bits that men don't have.

Ashtagon
2016-01-30, 01:40 AM
No one can reasonably doubt that in the real world, men are stronger and fast, both on average and at the upper end of trained athletes.

There is some evidence to suggest that women tend to do better than men in situations of extreme deprivation (drought, famine). Whether this is due to extra fat reserves or womb power (http://www.geekxgirls.com/article.php?ID=1878) is not entirely clear.

The jury is out on whether men or women make better leaders or have better social skills. What is clear is that men have taken most of the top positions there, but this may be due to social factors rather than any inherent ability that correlates with gender.

NONE of the above should be used to strengthen or weaken PCs. Interested GMs should feel free to use it to shift the averages (and upper ends) of NPCs. But PCs are by definition exceptional, and within the limits of their species should be allowed to break the norms.

Feddlefew
2016-01-30, 02:52 AM
Is sexual attraction a social role? That most men are attracted to women and most women are attracted to men?

We now know that human default sexuality is somewhere around bi (or "flexible"), much like our close evolutionary cousins, bonobos. Since humans use sex as a social and recreational activity, it's more useful to not be picky about which sex you socialize with in that manner, since the more social connections you have the more likely it is that someone will help you. If I remember correctly, the relative levels of attraction for same/opposite sex partners in the human population forms a nice, neat normal distribution.

However, in our culture humans are/were strongly socialized against homosexual relationships, so of course most people end up in relationships with the opposite sex.


Is nursing (breastfeeding) a social role?

Yes. See: Wet nurses. Men can also lactate, since they have all the equipment for it, although since the onset of lactation is brought on by pregnancy related hormones it's pretty much exclusively done by women, but not necessarily the woman who gave birth to the child.



The sexes quite strongly appear selected, genetically, to appeal to one another sexually.
Sexual attraction in humans is a weird, complicated thing, but we probably shouldn't dig any further than that it's developed and not instinctive, because that's a can of worms that we don't need to open right now.

The only thing I think needs to be mentioned is that humans are generally attracted to signs of good health (which vary based on society), signs of good social standing (ditto), and good social skills.




Women appear quite strongly selected to breastfeed infants.
It comes with being a mammal, yes. That's millions of years of evolution, verses only a million or so for humans being human.



There are probably many more examples of things like this: thicker bones in men to offset fighting, more body fat in women to assist in childrearing, wider hips, etc..

Thicker bones are a result of higher testosterone and activity levels- you can actually tell how much hard labor someone did in life by looking at their bones. Body fat actually provides more protection than muscle pound for pound against blunt force trauma, since it has fewer blood vessels and is just generally a really nice shock absorbing material, which is why organs in most animals are surrounded by a nice protective layer of it. Human women probably have more of it then men do for that reason, not because it helps childrearing.

Besides, other great apes of both sexes don't have layers of fat like humans do, and they seem to be quite capable of raising their own baby. Humans are just generally fatty, for some reason. (Tangentially, that's why we're buoyant enough to swim. Most great apes sink like rocks.)

The wider hips thing is 100% a result of human infants having huge heads, though. Hip proportions are pretty much the only reliable way to sex human skeletons because we just aren't very sexually dimorphic without our tissue.



It would be strange if men weren't optimised to defend pregnant women, just as it would be strange if women weren't optimised to be pregnant and care for the children they give birth to.

Early humans lived in small tribal bands. Pregnant women received aid from family members of both sexes, not just from their mate, and (going of of modern hunter gatherer societies) watching children is everyone's job if they're not busy doing something else at the moment. The idea that men are stalwart defenders doesn't shape up when we look at hunter gatherer societies. A bunch of angry humans throwing rocks are perfectly capable of driving away most predators regardless of the group member's sexes.



I'm sure there are a million cultures with a million different ways of doing things but the basic genetic imprint of men=impregnate/fight and women=bear children/care for babies has to be there.

The only roles that are male exclusive universally in tribes are that men hunt large game (both men and women trap small animals and fish) and extremely physically taking tasks like mining and felling trees. That's pretty much it. I think nursing infants is the only female exclusive role, although food preparation (The most vital human technology, BTW.*) is close.

Women are not passive in sexual selection. Humans do not instinctively associate sex and pregnancy, although we're smart enough to figure out the connection pretty quickly. Humans just (generally, there are exceptions) really like sex.

----

Because people keep mentioning it:

Hunting is a supplemental source of food, not the main one, in hunter gatherer societies (with a couple of exceptions in very cold climates). Generally, women provide most of the food through forging, and meat eaten to provide nutrients that would otherwise be missing from the tribe's diet. Meat is over represented in pop culture because bones don't decay.

*Food preparation should be viewed as a way to predigest food and make use of food sources that would normally be inaccessible. It's the reason why humans can and will eat ANYTHING.

goto124
2016-01-30, 03:58 AM
NONE of the above should be used to strengthen or weaken PCs. Interested GMs should feel free to use it to shift the averages (and upper ends) of NPCs. But PCs are by definition exceptional, and within the limits of their species should be allowed to break the norms.

Why is this in blue, the color of sarcasm? [/genuine confusion]


We now know that human default sexuality is somewhere around bi (or "flexible"), much like our close evolutionary cousins, bonobos. [snip] IIRC, the relative levels of attraction for same/opposite sex partners in the human population forms a nice, neat normal distribution.

I learnt something new today.

Actually, plenty of new things learnt today in Feddlefew's post. Woah.

Ashtagon
2016-01-30, 04:09 AM
Why is this in blue, the color of sarcasm? [/genuine confusion]


There's always my sig. Gray nitpicking seems to be moderately well-known, but green sincerity and dark orchid insanity not so much.

Eggynack uses purple for drama.

Ashtagon likes to go against the flow and use blue for emphasis (instead of bolding, presumably), and I think purple for sarcasm?

Not sure if there are any others.

It makes sense in context.

PersonMan
2016-01-30, 04:37 AM
LOL, no just no.

Women are significantly weaker than men. Trained female weightlifters are significantly weaker than trained male weightlifters, end of story. As far as I know, Swanson's deadlift is around 600lbs and the male records exceed 1000lbs - 60% more. Amazingly strong as she is, Swanson is a lot weaker than the world class men.

Her best squat is 800lbs IIRC...male equivalent is over 1200lbs - 50% more. Her best bench is under 500lbs, the male equivalent is over 1000lbs - 100% more.

Her total lifts are around 2000lbs. Best male is around 3000lbs - 50% more. Women being 2/3 as strong as men is a decent approximation of the difference right the way from the top (Swanson vs. world class male powerlifters) down to untrained women. It understates the difference in upper body strength, but whatever.

To claim or imply that there is no significant difference between top male lifters and Swanson is just laughable. If she was a man with those lifts, she would be utterly unheard of as a powerlifter.

Isn't her point 'real-world woman lifter lifts more than an 18 Strength human in DnD, so it's obviously possible for women to have that much Strength, so applying a penalty doesn't make sense', not 'women powerlifters lift as much as men' (which she even points out in her post, I don't see why you're restating that in so many more words)?

I mean, if the maximum amount you can lift at character creation as a human is significantly less than someone who can lift significantly less than the best real-world lifters, doesn't that just prove that saying 'no you can't' doesn't actually make sense, because it's clearly possible to do more in reality?

Mr Beer
2016-01-30, 05:08 AM
It's singularly pointless to argue with an unrelated person about what a third party did or not did mean, so I'm not going to.

ImNotTrevor
2016-01-30, 05:29 AM
We now know that human default sexuality is somewhere around bi (or "flexible"), much like our close evolutionary cousins, bonobos. Since humans use sex as a social and recreational activity, it's more useful to not be picky about which sex you socialize with in that manner, since the more social connections you have the more likely it is that someone will help you. If I remember correctly, the relative levels of attraction for same/opposite sex partners in the human population forms a nice, neat normal distribution.

However, in our culture humans are/were strongly socialized against homosexual relationships, so of course most people end up in relationships with the opposite sex.


*SOURCE VERY BADLY NEEDED*

All I can find about "Innate bisexuality" is that Sigmund Freud was really into the idea. (And most of his ideas were awful)

The second HUGE problem with this is the following:
Quantifying sexual attraction is damn near impossible, because there are too many other factors involved beyond just "Does seeing naked people of their same sex make them aroused?" You can give it a shot, but I'm pretty much positive that any research on it would be hazy at best.

Looking into the Kinsey Scale distribution has shown pretty much not-at-all your claim. It's highly skewed towards Purely Heterosexual, and turns up again just a little at the exclusively Homosexual end.


http://static5.techinsider.io/image/55db5b85bd86ef0e008b5745-1200-900/kinsey-scale.png
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-xhkjrcVudAc/TY_SkevbGyI/AAAAAAAABRQ/BWj-V-oAuO8/s1600/orientationbyage.jpg <The important part of this one is the Colors on the lines. See all that Red for "Heterosexual?"
and this article: http://www.bisexualindex.org.uk/index.php/curves


This "most people are bi" idea is not supported anywhere I've found. Not even on the Bisexual Index.

Cazero
2016-01-30, 05:53 AM
I am very curious about what is your basis for such a vigorous defence of socially created differences is a perfectly plausible opinion until proven otherwise (Sorry if my paraphrasing doesn't represent your position accurately, I tried to be short and might have missed something).
Because it's a very credible explanation of the variance.
Consider this : in a society where one gender does all the physical intensive activities while the other gender isn't allowed to even try, wich gender will turn out to be the most physically strong? The one that was trained by physical intensive activities.
Men were given the "strong" gender role for a long time. Is that enough on a evolutionary scale to create a sex-based predisposition to power-lifting? Arguable. How long does it take to create a difference in the average of a broad variety of individuals following the trend? Less than twenty years.


You seem to be assuming that social roles are evolved roles.
They might be, in a way that have nothing to do with genetics.
Hunter-gatherer societies had high mortality rates. They needed a high natality rate to compensate. The way reproduction works makes males expendables. A society that makes risky jobs a male-only task has a higher chance of survival and will be selected by principles similar to evolution without genetics getting involved.

napoleon_in_rag
2016-01-30, 08:43 AM
No one can reasonably doubt that in the real world, men are stronger and fast, both on average and at the upper end of trained athletes.

There is some evidence to suggest that women tend to do better than men in situations of extreme deprivation (drought, famine). Whether this is due to extra fat reserves or womb power (http://www.geekxgirls.com/article.php?ID=1878) is not entirely clear.



One interesting exception to this is the world of ultra marathon running. Men are much better than women at marathons (26.2miles). But as races get longer the gap between the sexes narrows. It is not unusual for women to place or win in 90+ mile races.

http://www.runnersworld.com/trail-running-training/why-women-rule-ultrarunning

But I agree that none of this should change an RPG. Let the player be the character that they want to be.

Beleriphon
2016-01-30, 10:15 AM
The ethical considerations of such an act are, of course, unthinkable. But it would be the only way to objectively learn the truth. Until such a study has been performed I highly suggest keeping that fact in mind.

Or you can look at the high levels of achievement in sports. Males regularly outperform females at the highest levels in nearly all sporting activities, whether it be race times or maximum lifts in power lifting. Males at the extremes tend to be larger and more heavily muscled, particularly in the upper body. The problem arises when you consider that the differences are a matter of a few percentage points in most cases, and no RPG system has that level of granularity nor do I think we'd want that much.

The only time I've ever seen something like that work is the bariur from Planescape because they were modeled on goats where the rams can be considerably larger and stronger then ewes. It also worked because they were decidedly non-humanoid and could be described without implying something about actual people.

CharonsHelper
2016-01-30, 10:44 AM
I've gotta say - this thread has taken an odd turn.

I was just curious to get some feedback about what people would think about males/females having different stats if they were balanced choices overall. I didn't think that it'd become an argument over whether or not men being stronger in the real world is a social construct. lol

Anonymouswizard
2016-01-30, 11:52 AM
*SOURCE VERY BADLY NEEDED*

All I can find about "Innate bisexuality" is that Sigmund Freud was really into the idea. (And most of his ideas were awful)

The second HUGE problem with this is the following:
Quantifying sexual attraction is damn near impossible, because there are too many other factors involved beyond just "Does seeing naked people of their same sex make them aroused?" You can give it a shot, but I'm pretty much positive that any research on it would be hazy at best.

Looking into the Kinsey Scale distribution has shown pretty much not-at-all your claim. It's highly skewed towards Purely Heterosexual, and turns up again just a little at the exclusively Homosexual end.


http://static5.techinsider.io/image/55db5b85bd86ef0e008b5745-1200-900/kinsey-scale.png
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-xhkjrcVudAc/TY_SkevbGyI/AAAAAAAABRQ/BWj-V-oAuO8/s1600/orientationbyage.jpg <The important part of this one is the Colors on the lines. See all that Red for "Heterosexual?"
and this article: http://www.bisexualindex.org.uk/index.php/curves


This "most people are bi" idea is not supported anywhere I've found. Not even on the Bisexual Index.

Right, self reported is very bad (also interesting to note that younger generations are apparently more bisexual), as in this case some people might be scared to admit that they aren't '100% straight, honest' (to be fair, I class straight as 0-1, bi as 2-4, and gay as 5-6). The responses also change based on whether or not you're asking about what sexuality they identify as or attraction (a lot more 1s there definitely).

Also, the Kinsey scale should so have decimal points. I don't feel like a 2 or a 3.

Raimun
2016-01-30, 11:59 AM
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

AHAHAAHAHAHAHAH.

AAHHAHAHA.

Seriously? In my experience, almost all the female players I've played with have made their female characters with quite significant physical strength. And so have some of the male players. And of course, these are all in game systems that don't penalize your character based on gender. There aren't even any gender-restricted classes. Because that's not fun.

I don't see why you are laughing. Your experience just differs from mine. I think I should underline that I'm always pleasantly surprised when female players make characters with high physical strength. If I had to bet who is going to make the go to-beatstick of the party, I wouldn't bet that a female player would be interested to play that. Of course, if I lost that bet I would still smile. Sure, I know several male players that don't enjoy playing beatsticks either but I would estimate the ratio is higher with women.

And because you seem to be keen on putting words in my mouth, or at least imply that, I want to leave no shadow of doubt concerning the following fact: I don't like game systems (or anything else) that penalize a character (or anything else) based on gender. I were merely observing a trend, which should be of course taken as subjective information. Also, I think it's great that you can say that almost all female players you have played with have made characters with high physical strength.

Besides, strength is just one of the stats. And a one with limited applications at that. Basically, you can apply it to damage, lifting stuff and perhaps to some athletic skills. Even though I personally enjoy playing beatstick-characters now and again, I'm always highly aware how strength is always the most limited stat, no matter the game system. If you were to observe stats based on their efficiency, strength is pretty much never listed as one of the strongest.

Frozen_Feet
2016-01-30, 12:14 PM
I didn't think that it'd become an argument over whether or not men being stronger in the real world is a social construct. lol

You clearly haven't participated in enough threads like this.

It always comes up.

Ashtagon
2016-01-30, 12:22 PM
One interesting exception to this is the world of ultra marathon running. Men are much better than women at marathons (26.2miles). But as races get longer the gap between the sexes narrows. It is not unusual for women to place or win in 90+ mile races.

http://www.runnersworld.com/trail-running-training/why-women-rule-ultrarunning

But I agree that none of this should change an RPG. Let the player be the character that they want to be.

Oddly enough, 90-mile races is one of those corner-cases where the ability of women to cope deprivation better I mentioned balances out the sexes, which is why the gender difference evens out.

wumpus
2016-01-30, 12:57 PM
Oddly enough, 90-mile races is one of those corner-cases where the ability of women to cope deprivation better I mentioned balances out the sexes, which is why the gender difference evens out.

One problem with this data is that women aren't crazy enough* to fill the fields well enough. I remember in the 1990s arguably the top ultra-runner was a woman, and typically easily won the women's title (and claimed not to be racing the men (mostly to make sure that women's money was there I'd assume). Exactly why she needed such a big gap between her and second place was never explained). A common question among race leaders was "where is she"? (not interested in the men behind him). My understanding is that there is enough data for "swimming the English channel": the blokes haven't a prayer of taking the record from the birds.

side comment: L.E.Modesitt Jr. created a fictional society carefully set in freezing mountain areas such that the women were the warriors. It was in the Recluse series and showed up in the "Fall of Angels" and other stories. I know that amazons abounded in fiction, but this one at least gave a good reason for them (and obviously, the good ones could handle warmer climes as well).

[* note, I haven't kept up with ultra-running after dropping out of less-ultra-running (after the early 90s). I know that pro Ironman has equal prize money for men and women, but don't know how that has effected things.]

Malapterus
2016-01-30, 01:34 PM
In my opinion the only time gender should affect your stats is when the character's gender changes. This is, probably, not something that happens often. When it would happen in anything I run, I just move some points from Strength into Dex for male-to-female, and vice-versa, to represent the same physical lifestyle on a body that was (or was not) modified by testosterone.

There is the concept that girls get preferential treatment, and generally are fairer, so changing from male-to-female could also imply a Charisma bonus to represent, the boobies (or fat tail or small horns or whatever males of the species fixate on). The question comes up as to what stat the newly-endowed character should be penalized on - what do we take away that is not completely ignorant? Another mental stat would not be appropriate, but increasing the second most powerful game stat should not be free. My answer would be Constitution, for the same testosterone-related reasons.

This is, of course, assuming mammalian species or reptilian species where the female is still 'the pretty one'. If your characters are playing sentient anthropomorphic ducks (in which case the male has the Strength AND Charisma advantage), this may not work - though if your players are playing sentient anthropomorphic ducks you probably have bigger worries. What would non-sentient anthropomorphic ducks be like? Horrifying, I am sure.

In the case of the Tyrannosaurus Rex, it is fully reversed, where the power advantages go to the female. This is also probably true for Gnolls.

In general I think this should only be used for a laugh. In 3.5 my method could be used for a little min-maxing, since Strength is considered a more valuable stat than Dex (or any other stat) and a player could plan to trade the points in at the earliest possible time. I also once played under a DM who ruled that female characters could not use two-handed weapons because they were not strong enough - weighted down by the boobies, obviously. I don't think that would go over well in the official rules.

For official rules, it should be as so many others on here have said; fluff restricted to things like character classes and weird Feats - like only letting female Drow be clerics, or a silly feat that makes it harder for searchers to find things you've hidden in your bra because the guards are too shy to reach in there.

I hereby dub this feat 'Grapefruit Smuggler'
Prerequisite: Female, Mammal, Charisma 15

Benefit: Items hidden in your bra or corset are at +4 DC to be found when you are searched. For every 2 points of Charisma modifier you have, you may thusly conceal two Tiny items, eight Diminutive or smaller items, or any combination of the above.

Alright, with that out of the way - gender roles for fun or flavor, but never to force your personal views on all your players.

Donnadogsoth
2016-01-30, 01:51 PM
We now know that human default sexuality is somewhere around bi (or "flexible"), much like our close evolutionary cousins, bonobos. Since humans use sex as a social and recreational activity, it's more useful to not be picky about which sex you socialize with in that manner, since the more social connections you have the more likely it is that someone will help you. If I remember correctly, the relative levels of attraction for same/opposite sex partners in the human population forms a nice, neat normal distribution.

However, in our culture humans are/were strongly socialized against homosexual relationships, so of course most people end up in relationships with the opposite sex.

No, we don't know that. We know that men in jail sometimes resort to homosexual acts for relief, but that that is not their first choice. If sexuality is primarily conditioned, then given that most pornography is hidden from social pressures, private porn usage should be thoroughly bisexual.


Yes. See: Wet nurses. Men can also lactate, since they have all the equipment for it, although since the onset of lactation is brought on by pregnancy related hormones it's pretty much exclusively done by women, but not necessarily the woman who gave birth to the child.

Wet nurses started lactation by giving birth.


Sexual attraction in humans is a weird, complicated thing, but we probably shouldn't dig any further than that it's developed and not instinctive, because that's a can of worms that we don't need to open right now.

The only thing I think needs to be mentioned is that humans are generally attracted to signs of good health (which vary based on society), signs of good social standing (ditto), and good social skills.

Finding a man pretty is not the same as wanting to know him carnally.


Thicker bones are a result of higher testosterone and activity levels- you can actually tell how much hard labor someone did in life by looking at their bones. Body fat actually provides more protection than muscle pound for pound against blunt force trauma, since it has fewer blood vessels and is just generally a really nice shock absorbing material, which is why organs in most animals are surrounded by a nice protective layer of it. Human women probably have more of it then men do for that reason, not because it helps childrearing.

Why would women be more likely to be hit than men? Men are doped on testosterone and often very territorial. If anyone should be fat, if fat is such a defense, it should be men.


The wider hips thing is 100% a result of human infants having huge heads, though. Hip proportions are pretty much the only reliable way to sex human skeletons because we just aren't very sexually dimorphic without our tissue.

Yes, as I wrote, women have wider hips to make them better mothers (or mothers at all). Where is this notion coming from that women aren't naturally selected to bear children?


Early humans lived in small tribal bands. Pregnant women received aid from family members of both sexes, not just from their mate, and (going of of modern hunter gatherer societies) watching children is everyone's job if they're not busy doing something else at the moment. The idea that men are stalwart defenders doesn't shape up when we look at hunter gatherer societies. A bunch of angry humans throwing rocks are perfectly capable of driving away most predators regardless of the group member's sexes.

Can you think of any "hunter gatherer" societies where women went to war?


The only roles that are male exclusive universally in tribes are that men hunt large game (both men and women trap small animals and fish) and extremely physically taking tasks like mining and felling trees. That's pretty much it. I think nursing infants is the only female exclusive role, although food preparation (The most vital human technology, BTW.*) is close.

Women are not passive in sexual selection. Humans do not instinctively associate sex and pregnancy, although we're smart enough to figure out the connection pretty quickly. Humans just (generally, there are exceptions) really like sex.

Never said they were. Females are usually the gatekeepers in sexual selection anyway. And women would therefore select for honourable men who were good hunters, fighters, and protectors. Just as men would select as best as able for women who were pretty and nurturing. More traits come along with those ones selected for, there are always variations, but those would be what people would look for in a mate.


Hunting is a supplemental source of food, not the main one, in hunter gatherer societies (with a couple of exceptions in very cold climates). Generally, women provide most of the food through forging, and meat eaten to provide nutrients that would otherwise be missing from the tribe's diet. Meat is over represented in pop culture because bones don't decay.

Even in Europe? How many berries and nuts can a person possibly gather in a year in any given square mile of European wilderness?

Donnadogsoth
2016-01-30, 01:55 PM
It's been mentioned before, but I'll add that I've played / seen played plenty of male characters with massive strength who aren't walking piles of pure muscle, or really thickly built. People want their character to look a certain way, whether that means pauldrons that would crush their head if they lift their arms, normal proportions on a person who can lift a building or swords that weigh ten times as much as historical weapons and are thrice as long, and unless you're playing a very realistic game I don't see a problem with this sort of thing, especially if other parts of the game show a similarly lax view of things.

If the rules for swimming in lava are more akin to 'take this much damage' than 'you got near the lava and evaporated, what do you mean swim in it?' chances are that you have a strong precedent for ignoring reality in favor of Cool Stuff.


You can have your anime waif carrying a 90lb gun if you want, but not in my game.

JoeJ
2016-01-30, 02:26 PM
This is, of course, assuming mammalian species or reptilian species where the female is still 'the pretty one'.

Funny thing about that. I would have agreed that women are generally more attractive than men, but my wife thinks it's the other way around. Go figure.

Feddlefew
2016-01-30, 02:30 PM
Even in Europe? How many berries and nuts can a person possibly gather in a year in any given square mile of European wilderness?

I don't have time to go through everything you just posted, but I think you'd be surprised how many edible plants, insects, and shellfish can be found in, say, Britain. For instance, Garden snails are delicious and highly nutritious, and wild amaranth, wild asparagus, nettles, and burdock are still pretty prolific in some areas. A lot of plants also become edible after blanching, pulping, and rinsing, like acorns.* Second, hunter gatherer societies move around seasonally as new food sources become available, so their range is considerably more than 1sq mile.


*Don't try this at home. If anyone wants to learn how to find edible wildplants, it's best to start with a guide who knows what they're doing. And stay away from mushrooms!

PersonMan
2016-01-30, 02:36 PM
You can have your anime waif carrying a 90lb gun if you want, but not in my game.

That's...nice? Thanks for sharing, I guess, though I don't see how you made the jump from A to 57 here.

Ravian
2016-01-30, 02:41 PM
The closest thing I can think of having sexual differences in an rpg in a way that isn't completely distasteful is in a game called 7th sea.

It's a game where many of the nobles of a world based off of 17th century Europe have sorcerous powers. One of the odd things is that one of the sorcerous bloodlines, sorte fate magic, only appears among women, allowing them to manipulate the strands of fate. Men have something of an equivalent that allows them to be immune to sorte magic, but for the most part this ability is too subtle to be treated like a true sorcery.

In essence this is mainly there to enforce some of the societal realities of that world. Noblewomen of the nation where Sorte is common are actually heavily restricted in opportunities, because noblemen fear that they could use their powers against them if they aren't heavily controlled.

Note that this magic is not something that comes with any corresponding stat differences, it's just something that only a few women have the potential of doing at all, regardless of their stats.

Frankly going back to the original idea of modeling the whole Male Warriors/Female Saints thing in that anime, I wouldn't link it to stats at all. Particularly since its clear that not every woman in that world is a saint and that some of the saints have hefty combat abilities all their own.

That said if you wanted to model a women are spell-casters, men are warriors idea, I would actually prefer to avoid a traditional D&D class system and instead represent magic through something similar to feats. Thus, women in this world are the only ones who can take these magic feats (which are likely only available at character creation) while men use their feats for combat feats or similar ideas. If you really wanted to use a class system, I'd recommend making it more of a prestige class that required the magic feat I'd mentioned, thus effectively only making it available to women.

YossarianLives
2016-01-30, 03:04 PM
Alright, this is basically Feddlefew's argument but I can't help but mention a few things, and yes. I am being selective about which of your points I reply to. I'm too lazy too come up with a counterargument to all of your comments.

No, we don't know that. We know that men in jail sometimes resort to homosexual acts for relief, but that that is not their first choice.
This is a gross generalization.

If sexuality is primarily conditioned, then given that most pornography is hidden from social pressures, private porn usage should be thoroughly bisexual.
I'm much too stupid to figure what this means, I'm also tired.

Why would women be more likely to be hit than men? Men are doped on testosterone and often very territorial. If anyone should be fat, if fat is such a defense, it should be men.
Hold it there, tex. Let me get this straight, you don't believe a scientifically proven fact, females having more fat in their bodies, because you think that men should be better warriors than females? Do some research, on average women have more fat in their bodies than men.

Can you think of any "hunter gatherer" societies where women went to war?
Like I said, I am an idiot so I don't really know. But it seems to me that this plays into the theme of social-constructs. I'm pretty sure women are completely capable of murdering things so the only reason I can think of for women not to fight in wars is a cultural taboo.

Never said they were. Females are usually the gatekeepers in sexual selection anyway. And women would therefore select for honourable men who were good hunters, fighters, and protectors. Just as men would select as best as able for women who were pretty and nurturing. More traits come along with those ones selected for, there are always variations, but those would be what people would look for in a mate.How, exactly, do you know this? We lack recorded history from the period, we only know about such cultures through surviving art and archaeology.

Man, I feel like one of those really angry people on the internet.

Feddlefew
2016-01-30, 03:38 PM
I think one of the many factors he isn't taking into account is that being injured in combat is not something every male will go through, since hunting strategies for humans can pretty much be summed up as "Throw things at it until it dies" and/or "Chase it around until it keels over from exhaustion"; no close quarters fighting involved.

Women, on the other hand, need to be able to withstand massive trauma when they give birth, and recover quickly enough to be able to move themselves and their child out of harms way if needed. Usually they'd have someone, like a close female relative or several, helping them, but they'd still need to be able to withstand pushing another, smaller human through an extremely sensitive ring of nerves without passing out.

Edit: I'll get to some of the other stuff later.

Mr Beer
2016-01-30, 04:30 PM
I've gotta say - this thread has taken an odd turn.

I was just curious to get some feedback about what people would think about males/females having different stats if they were balanced choices overall. I didn't think that it'd become an argument over whether or not men being stronger in the real world is a social construct. lol

Clearly you have underestimated the insidious power of the patriarchy, so potent that it has literally made womyn weaker than men.

As always, GURPS is a good system choice here, since everything is point based. If you want a realistic gender disparity, you can give women a template like (ST-1) or (Arm ST -1, Lift ST -1, HP+1) or (Arm ST -2, Leg ST +1) or whatever you feel most closely models reality. They then have extra points to spend.

That way you don't need to hunt for some arbitrary compensating statistic.

I haven't played such a game but wouldn't have a problem with it if the GM had some ultra realistic setting they wanted to try out. I'd sort of expect a bunch more ancillary rules for purposes realism if we are that concerned about modelling female ST though.

Donnadogsoth
2016-01-30, 07:16 PM
Why would women be more likely to be hit than men? Men are doped on testosterone and often very territorial. If anyone should be fat, if fat is such a defense, it should be men.
Hold it there, tex. Let me get this straight, you don't believe a scientifically proven fact, females having more fat in their bodies, because you think that men should be better warriors than females? Do some research, on average women have more fat in their bodies than men.

No, I'm saying that if fat reserves are there to help someone survive injuries they should be present in men moreso than women, because men are the ones who would get beat up more often through contact with other, enemy males. Given it's women who have the extra fat, this suggests they have it as part of their reproductive role; consider the weight gain women (always? apparently?) experience during pregnancy, weight that is subsequently only shed with difficulty, almost as if nature wanted it that way.


Originally Posted by Donnadogsoth
Can you think of any "hunter gatherer" societies where women went to war?
Like I said, I am an idiot so I don't really know. But it seems to me that this plays into the theme of social-constructs. I'm pretty sure women are completely capable of murdering things so the only reason I can think of for women not to fight in wars is a cultural taboo.

Strange that such taboos would develop. Men really got the smelly end of the stick on that one.


Originally Posted by Donnadogsoth
Never said they were. Females are usually the gatekeepers in sexual selection anyway. And women would therefore select for honourable men who were good hunters, fighters, and protectors. Just as men would select as best as able for women who were pretty and nurturing. More traits come along with those ones selected for, there are always variations, but those would be what people would look for in a mate.
How, exactly, do you know this? We lack recorded history from the period, we only know about such cultures through surviving art and archaeology.

Aren't all those Lorne Greene's New Wilderness episodes serving me right, in seeing that the bucks fight each other for the doe in rutting season, and even then after all that battle she might capriciously refuse to mate. Are women “bucking” the trend here?

As for selecting, are we to imagine that women who selected for dishonourable men across ten thousand centuries had the same reproductive success as those who selected for honourable men? Or that women aren't likewise selected by men, by nature, to be good mothers (or at least passable mothers)?

Ravian
2016-01-30, 07:34 PM
Personally I'll say that one of the main reasons why it was considered the man's job to fight the wars and hunt the beasts is because women are more necessary for reproduction. If all but a few men in a tribe died, then the remainder can still sire children from every woman in only a short amount of time. Meanwhile if most of the women die, then you have to wait through pregnancy and nursing periods for every new child.

That said, it's not like there were never tribes where women didn't fight. The Scythians were the inspiration for the Greek legends of amazons, and the Amazons in turn influenced the naming of the Amazon rain-forest because explorers saw the native tribes had female hunters among them.

ImNotTrevor
2016-01-30, 09:20 PM
Right, self reported is very bad (also interesting to note that younger generations are apparently more bisexual), as in this case some people might be scared to admit that they aren't '100% straight, honest' (to be fair, I class straight as 0-1, bi as 2-4, and gay as 5-6). The responses also change based on whether or not you're asking about what sexuality they identify as or attraction (a lot more 1s there definitely).

Also, the Kinsey scale should so have decimal points. I don't feel like a 2 or a 3.

Self report is the ONLY way to accurately measure it.

Remember what I said about sexuality being something insanely difficult to objectively quantify?

And notice that your blanket statement of "younger people are more bi" has a hitch. TEENAGERS are more bi.

Being Bi, alternatively gendered, etc, is the new "edgy." It's the new Emo for this generation. No, seriously. Look at Tumblr and see if you honestly believe someone can be Spacegendered. Look at how many people have genders that they ADMIT TO MAKING UP. Genders are the new Original Character Do Not Steal. A lot of the really weird sexualities are likely the same. The problem is that EVEN THEN, nothing in the curve suggests that Bisexual is the norm.

NOT EVEN THE BISEXUAL INDEX. An actual group for advocacy for bisexuals says that people who report bisexualoty as the default or center of the curve are misinformed and don't understand how bell curves work.

And while I've cited 3 sources, you're sitting pretty on 0 as if you have an argument at all. At least mine is backed up. A lot. And by Bisexual groups, too. Get outta here with that crap.

Anonymouswizard
2016-01-30, 10:08 PM
Self report is the ONLY way to accurately measure it.

It is still an objectively horrible way to collect data, because people want to seem good. It's really one of the worst ways to accurately measure anything. I just don't have the time to look for the evidence.


Remember what I said about sexuality being something insanely difficult to objectively quantify?

So instead of trying to quantify it we rely on people who all interpret it in vaguely different ways to give us our data? Sounds shakey at best. I'd take an outside measurement of arosal any day, even if it's very primitive.


And notice that your blanket statement of "younger people are more bi" has a hitch. TEENAGERS are more bi.

Ahem.


http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-xhkjrcVudAc/TY_SkevbGyI/AAAAAAAABRQ/BWj-V-oAuO8/s1600/orientationbyage.jpg

Looking just at 2-4, we can see an increase in younger generations, with the apparent 'cutoff' being around 40. From 40 to about 16 (counting backwards) the number of people identifying as bisexual grows steadily. Additionally, we can say that between 16 and 25 less than half the population identifies as non-completely heterosexual, assuming said graph is representative of the larger population.


Being Bi, alternatively gendered, etc, is the new "edgy." It's the new Emo for this generation. No, seriously. Look at Tumblr and see if you honestly believe someone can be Spacegendered. Look at how many people have genders that they ADMIT TO MAKING UP. Genders are the new Original Character Do Not Steal. A lot of the really weird sexualities are likely the same. The problem is that EVEN THEN, nothing in the curve suggests that Bisexual is the norm.

I've never tried to argue that bisexuality is the norm. I think the norm is somewhere around that boundary between straight and bi, entirely based on the people I know.

Also, the 'spacegendered' thing you talk about, is not something I've experienced. About a third of my friends are in the QUILTBAG (unoriginal acronym do steal), and the biggest questions I've heard are along the lines of 'can somebody be agender' (posed by me, because I lump all 'third genders into queergender, which is what those I've met identified as). Also, we all seem to be fine with the Kinsey scale plus asexual (plus pansexual for 'why should their gender matter', with bi as 'likes both genders but might think it matters'). I'll agree that we're university students who aren't tumblrites, but then again I steer well away from such places.


NOT EVEN THE BISEXUAL INDEX. An actual group for advocacy for bisexuals says that people who report bisexualoty as the default or center of the curve are misinformed and don't understand how bell curves work.

I've never disagreed with them, I just think the peak's at 1, not 0. Again, personal experience.


And while I've cited 3 sources, you're sitting pretty on 0 as if you have an argument at all. At least mine is backed up. A lot. And by Bisexual groups, too. Get outta here with that crap.

Wow, so it's now an academic argument? Well, the best source for one thing you seem to take issue with was gladly provided by you, and the rest I can't look up because I cannot read academic papers on research methods or sexuality while on a phone, so you'll have to except opinion as opinion.

Do you want a ladder to help while you dismount?

goto124
2016-01-30, 10:15 PM
In my opinion the only time gender should affect your stats is when the character's gender changes. This is, probably, not something that happens often. When it would happen in anything I run, I just move some points from Strength into Dex for male-to-female, and vice-versa, to represent the same physical lifestyle on a body that was (or was not) modified by testosterone.

You mean, when a character biological sex changes? I get nitpicky about stuff like this, sorry.

To be honest, if it's a magic sex-change, I would rather keep the physical stats as well. The body has already been modified by testosterone, you just gave it breasts, wider hips, and a bunch of new organs. Most of the muscles are still the same.

A change of Charisma due to society's perception is interesting! I wouldn't give a flat bonus though. Instead, I would grant bonuses situationally. For example, a flirty shopkeeper may give discounts to the newly female PC, while a group of elders in a patriarchal tribe may dismiss the newly female PC as being 'emotional' and 'hysterical'. Remember that Charisma isn't just attractiveness, it's about force of personality and the ability to convince people of whatever you want them to think.

Oh, and nice thoughts on how species affects the Charisma bonus :smallbiggrin:


a silly feat that makes it harder for searchers to find things you've hidden in your bra because the guards are too shy to reach in there.

Firstly, I lol'd.

Secondly, I figured the guard are less "too shy" and more "don't want to be remember as That Guy Who Groped A Lady".

Segev
2016-01-31, 12:39 AM
So out of the stacks upon stacks of fantasy books and media created since 1950, you chose "She-Ra" as an example?

You might as well use "My Little Pony" as a model for RPG warhorses.

You just lost all geek cred....um, why? Is my example poor? Just because you might have another you like better (I hope it's not just because you equate obscurity with "geek cred") doesn't make She-Ra a poor example. There's also Supergirl and various other female bricks (flying and otherwise), but She-Ra serves my purposes adequately as an example, here.



(IMHO, 'every session' is a misnomer, unless the setting's gender-based differences cover a huge part of the PCs' life in-game. Just because gender-based differences exist and impact people in a non-trivial way, doesn't mean everyone's lives revolves around gender-based differences - or bucking them, for the matter.)"Every session" may be an exaggeration; my point was more that, say, if you're running L5R and want to play up that Utaku Battle Maidens are, in fact, all girls, you make it a rule that boys can't take the school. If you're okay with playing with violating that convention, it's going to be important to the setting. Whether your "Male Battle Maiden" is a ronin who doesn't advertise his knowledge of their techniques, or an Utaku who hides his masculinity, it's a MAJOR point in the campaign, even if it doesn't come up each and every session. The Battle Maidens would absolutely murder any male they found out had learned their secrets, and kill his teacher(s), too, if they thought for a moment they knew the student was male (and maybe anyway for being stupid enough to be fooled). As an example.

If you want to run the mecha pilots are boys/magical girls are girls setting straight, without having the "wow, that's unusual!" thing be a major point, you forbid boys from being magical boys and girls from being mecha pilots as part of the chargen rules. If you set up a rule then allow PCs to break them, the breaking of that rule is going to be significant to your game's tone and will change it considerably.


As we've already seen, gender-based stat differences are quite a bad idea. I myself support social conventions informing mechanical pushes, such as the aforementioned "night elf females get weapon proficiency because they're trained as warriors". Or gender-restricted classes to give entirely different powers to different genders.Technically, this IS a stat difference. So is my suggestion of simply making having the appropriate sex a prerequisite for entry into the given class or acquisition of the given power. But I agree, restrict specifically for the overt differences you want. "Women are just better at this thing both men and women have" and the converse are only going to make people mad.



Women appear quite strongly selected to breastfeed infants.An interesting article I saw a couple of years ago posited that the human male attraction to breasts might be related to our social bonding to our mates more than to breastfeeding fitness testing. It pointed out that humans are, if not unique, at least rare in being a species which mates face-to-face, and that this was a biological aid in bonding with our mates emotionally and socially so that offspring would benefit from two primary providers. Since breasts are a female secondary sexual characteristic that is on her front, anything which helps select for male partners who engage in mating behaviors which make him more likely to stick around would lead, in theory, to preferential genetic propagation. Therefore, male humans were preferentially selected for those that like looking at female human mammary glands. Which led to selection of females based on having eye-catching ones.

I am not sure how much credence I give this article, mind. But I thought the take on the subject interesting as a contrast to the standard assumption that it's all about selecting a mother for one's children who can feed them sufficiently well in their infancy.





Never said they were. Females are usually the gatekeepers in sexual selection anyway. And women would therefore select for honourable men who were good hunters, fighters, and protectors. Just as men would select as best as able for women who were pretty and nurturing. More traits come along with those ones selected for, there are always variations, but those would be what people would look for in a mate.This, actually, IS a social construct, and a very modern and Western one. In a lot of the more overtly patriarchal societies of yore (and an unfortunate number that still exist today, particularly in third-world countries), women are not gatekeepers at all; they're objects bought, paid, and traded for. Even in marriage. They do not have the right, privilege, nor power to refuse if their husband wishes to mate with them.

Moreover, this social construct of Western society tends to lead to the stereotype that men are always eager for sex and will rarely, if ever, turn it down (and that doing so is a hard choice for them when they do), but that women have to be talked/seduced/tricked into it, or at least make the choice based on what's "in it for them" aside from the sex itself. We can see it in just about any fiction involving a guy and a girl and one being in some state of undress. It is invariably the girl who is embarrassed and offended, and the guy who is embarrassed and ashamed (unless the guy is a creeper or the girl is actively seducing the guy).

In ancient Greece, it was assumed the opposite: men could take or leave sex, but women were constantly horny and wanted it all the time. Men had to restrain their wives' sexual urges, supposedly. Their fiction looks different than ours in a lot of ways because of this. (They still had the "man chases girl" thing going on, but when the nymphs ran from men, it was a sign of how WEIRD nymphs were, and that they were malicious teases, not a reinforcement of the idea that men wanted it and women didn't.)

Anyway, my point here is that the "gatekeepers" of sexual contact being one sex or the other is very much a social construct.

Feddlefew
2016-01-31, 12:42 AM
No, I'm saying that if fat reserves are there to help someone survive injuries they should be present in men moreso than women, because men are the ones who would get beat up more often through contact with other, enemy males. Given it's women who have the extra fat, this suggests they have it as part of their reproductive role; consider the weight gain women (always? apparently?) experience during pregnancy, weight that is subsequently only shed with difficulty, almost as if nature wanted it that way.

You're mixing up cause and effect here. Humans are abnormally fatty for great apes. Testosterone just pushes the ratio of muscle : fat towards muscle, because that's what Testosterone does. It's a package deal- if something gets X, it also gets T, Q, and Z.

Most of the weight gain during pregnancy is in fluids and tissues, such as enlarged mammary glands and uterus + placental mass, and a couple pounds of extra blood. Now, women do gain some fat, but there's a variety of factors that influence how much, such as the genes which make stressed humans store extra food in fat, the genes do the same but in response to a sudden increases in caloric requirements, ect. ect. ect.

Human to human fighting probably wasn't that common. If we look at the genetic and fossil records, we see relatively few bones with obvious signs of death by other humans, even from other hominid populations, and from the genetic records we're pretty damn certain that many other hominids went extinct at least partially because humans absorbed them into the human population. Why risk loosing some of your own by fighting when you could have a night of wild debauchery and gain some new friends and family members?

Edit:


An interesting article I saw a couple of years ago posited that the human male attraction to breasts might be related to our social bonding to our mates more than to breastfeeding fitness testing. It pointed out that humans are, if not unique, at least rare in being a species which mates face-to-face, and that this was a biological aid in bonding with our mates emotionally and socially so that offspring would benefit from two primary providers. Since breasts are a female secondary sexual characteristic that is on her front, anything which helps select for male partners who engage in mating behaviors which make him more likely to stick around would lead, in theory, to preferential genetic propagation. Therefore, male humans were preferentially selected for those that like looking at female human mammary glands. Which led to selection of females based on having eye-catching ones.

I am not sure how much credence I give this article, mind. But I thought the take on the subject interesting as a contrast to the standard assumption that it's all about selecting a mother for one's children who can feed them sufficiently well in their infancy.

I think this is one of the more likely explanations of the ones I've seen. The other one was that enlarged breasts signal that the other person is female, since humans are very androgynous compared to other great apes.

How much milk a human is capable of producing isn't correlated at all with breast size, so we know that's not why humans have constantly enlarged ones. Look at other mammals- they only develop breasts during pregnancy, and their breasts go away shortly after weening.

Marlowe
2016-01-31, 02:53 AM
You can have your anime waif carrying a 90lb gun if you want, but not in my game.

I'll have my character carry whatever equipment I see fit within normal encumbrance rules, thank you very much. And I'll use whatever picture in whatever style I see fit to depict him or her or it, be it "anime waif", oiled bama-bait, or short tubby guy with glasses. And it is not within your powers to tell me or anyone else they can't.

JoeJ
2016-01-31, 03:15 AM
I'll have my character carry whatever equipment I see fit within normal encumbrance rules, thank you very much. And I'll use whatever picture in whatever style I see fit to depict him or her or it, be it "anime waif", oiled bama-bait, or short tubby guy with glasses. And it is not within your powers to tell me or anyone else they can't.

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

Talakeal
2016-01-31, 03:23 AM
I'll have my character carry whatever equipment I see fit within normal encumbrance rules, thank you very much. And I'll use whatever picture in whatever style I see fit to depict him or her or it, be it "anime waif", oiled bama-bait, or short tubby guy with glasses. And it is not within your powers to tell me or anyone else they can't.

Keep in mind, he said you can do it if you want just not in his game. While I feel that it is far better to reach a compromise, I do think that a GM would be well within their rights to turn away a player whose character didn't fit the theme of the game that they are running.

Feddlefew
2016-01-31, 03:27 AM
Keep in mind, he said you can do it if you want just not in his game. While I feel that it is far better to reach a compromise, I do think that a GM would be well within their rights to turn away a player whose character didn't fit the theme of the game that they are running.

I think this would be a situation where the "No Game > Bad Game" rule applies.

Marlowe
2016-01-31, 04:15 AM
Quite; if somebody is going to start dictating to me what my character looks like, even more so if he starts dictating to me what sort of equipment I can use based on what my character looks like, that's a fair indicator it's time to leave this guy alone with a dog-eared copy of "Warlock of Firetop Mountain" and start my own game. With blackjack. And hookers. And blackjack-playing hookers.

ImNotTrevor
2016-01-31, 04:34 AM
There was a bit here about measuring, I swear.
As far as the reporting method goes, (since I forgot to quote it) you can only use what...you can use. Until someone comes up with a way to objectively quantify sexuality without any sort of potential bias, we have to use Self Report. (while the people investigating our hypothetical perfect method do an entirely different kind of work)

Self Report isn't universally bad. It's not as good as Purely Subjective, but it is sufficient for the things that are hazy anyways (such as measuring one's place on a spectrum we can't really measure.) It's quite literally the best available measuring stick, and it still produces a pretty normal bell curve, just that the center is somewhere between 0 and 1.



Looking just at 2-4, we can see an increase in younger generations, with the apparent 'cutoff' being around 40. From 40 to about 16 (counting backwards) the number of people identifying as bisexual grows steadily. Additionally, we can say that between 16 and 25 less than half the population identifies as non-completely heterosexual, assuming said graph is representative of the larger population.



Look again. Far left.
Under 15 heterosexuality pops back up again. I stand by my assumption, which a transgendered friend of mine has brought up to me herself. We both have concern that since using Sexuality and Alternative Genders is becoming a new way to be rebellious and edgy, once that bubble bursts it could seriously do damage to the ACTUAL LGBT community. Nothing in that data can suggest any sort of causal relationship, so I won't go as far as claiming that as truth, just one of my big concerns that being around young people has caused for me.
That's why I made the specific exception of Teenagers. 16 and up. Obviously the study probably didn't include individuals younger than 10 because it's unlikely kids younger than that would even understand the question. (Obviously it would vary slightly, but you have to make the cutoff somewhere.)




I've never tried to argue that bisexuality is the norm. I think the norm is somewhere around that boundary between straight and bi, entirely based on the people I know.

Also, the 'spacegendered' thing you talk about, is not something I've experienced. About a third of my friends are in the QUILTBAG (unoriginal acronym do steal), and the biggest questions I've heard are along the lines of 'can somebody be agender' (posed by me, because I lump all 'third genders into queergender, which is what those I've met identified as). Also, we all seem to be fine with the Kinsey scale plus asexual (plus pansexual for 'why should their gender matter', with bi as 'likes both genders but might think it matters'). I'll agree that we're university students who aren't tumblrites, but then again I steer well away from such places.



I've never disagreed with them, I just think the peak's at 1, not 0. Again, personal experience.

Sorry, I mixed you up with the person who originally made the claim. My bad, I apologize. (I personally think it's likely between 1 and 0, because...well...things never line up so nicely as that.)



Wow, so it's now an academic argument? Well, the best source for one thing you seem to take issue with was gladly provided by you, and the rest I can't look up because I cannot read academic papers on research methods or sexuality while on a phone, so you'll have to except opinion as opinion.

Do you want a ladder to help while you dismount?

Herp Derp. Again, I confused you for someone else. So that's my bad. I didn't mean to seem high-horsey, but spreading blatantly false information as God's Own Truth and seeing people take it at face value gets my dander up something fierce. It's my bad, tho.

But yes, anyone who was ACTUALLY making the argument that it's a bell curve with 3 as the center would need to provide some damn good sources before I'd accept it as anything other than ramblings.

Anonymouswizard
2016-01-31, 06:54 AM
As far as the reporting method goes, (since I forgot to quote it) you can only use what...you can use. Until someone comes up with a way to objectively quantify sexuality without any sort of potential bias, we have to use Self Report. (while the people investigating our hypothetical perfect method do an entirely different kind of work)

Self Report isn't universally bad. It's not as good as Purely Subjective, but it is sufficient for the things that are hazy anyways (such as measuring one's place on a spectrum we can't really measure.) It's quite literally the best available measuring stick, and it still produces a pretty normal bell curve, just that the center is somewhere between 0 and 1.

Sorry, I'm just someone who really dislikes self reporting, because I know people have a tendency to bend the truth (as in, going by what I know, people will move their sexuality closer to hetero to seem 'normal', but then again bias).


Look again. Far left.
Under 15 heterosexuality pops back up again. I stand by my assumption, which a transgendered friend of mine has brought up to me herself. We both have concern that since using Sexuality and Alternative Genders is becoming a new way to be rebellious and edgy, once that bubble bursts it could seriously do damage to the ACTUAL LGBT community. Nothing in that data can suggest any sort of causal relationship, so I won't go as far as claiming that as truth, just one of my big concerns that being around young people has caused for me.
That's why I made the specific exception of Teenagers. 16 and up. Obviously the study probably didn't include individuals younger than 10 because it's unlikely kids younger than that would even understand the question. (Obviously it would vary slightly, but you have to make the cutoff somewhere.)

I'd be interested in another surview of the same group, 5 years later. If it shows that heterosexuality is still experiencing that massive spike. I'm personally suspicious is what is happening is that there are many people who did what I did until I was about 18, which is deny that they are above a 0 on the Kinsey scale because they don't like men and women equally. The trend from 16-40 of slowly increasing heterosexuality is really interesting though, and I want to know why it's there (and why 60+ seems to be straight or gay).


Sorry, I mixed you up with the person who originally made the claim. My bad, I apologize. (I personally think it's likely between 1 and 0, because...well...things never line up so nicely as that.)

Herp Derp. Again, I confused you for someone else. So that's my bad. I didn't mean to seem high-horsey, but spreading blatantly false information as God's Own Truth and seeing people take it at face value gets my dander up something fierce. It's my bad, tho.

It's probably my mistake, I probably didn't make it clear enough that it was mainly me rambling. I wasn't totally aware in my last post, because it was 2-3 in the morning.


But yes, anyone who was ACTUALLY making the argument that it's a bell curve with 3 as the center would need to provide some damn good sources before I'd accept it as anything other than ramblings.

Well yeah, being totally indiscriminate with your partners means that bisexuality might be reduced in prominence (since heterosexual males might sire more offspring than bisexual males, although I don't think there'd be that much difference between bisexual and heterosexual woman due to the whole '9 month pregnancy' deal). I'd agree that you'd need proof to argue it being centres on 3.

The Insanity
2016-01-31, 08:34 AM
In my games orc males and females of a particular subrace use different stats. Males are dumber but more physically powerful than females.
I also have a human kingdom where males are stronger, tougher and smarter than females, but females are wiser, more charismatic and dextrous than males.

Clistenes
2016-01-31, 10:01 AM
The main problem is, men on average are bigger and stronger than women are, but, what can you give to women in exchange that is both realistic and balanced?

I have heard speak of Constitution because women are supposedly more resilient to some diseases, but on the other hand, men have more blood and have thicker bones, so they should have more hit points.

I have heard speak of Dexterity, but while women are more flexible, seem to be better at acrobatics and have thinner fingers, it doesn't seem that they have better reflexes or better aim, or that they are better at artisanal work.

I have heard about Wisdom, but if you suggest that women are more intuitive you will be pissing both men who don't like the suggestion that they have a lower mental stat, and women who will feel offended because they will be reminded of the old "female intuition vs male logic" sexist stereotype.

Intelligence and Charisma? I won't touch that with a 20' pole.

So in the end, it's better to forget the issue. Ability scores are unrealistic anyways. Characters with STR 18 are as strong as heavy horses, and no human being is that strong in the real world.

The Insanity
2016-01-31, 10:05 AM
My only advice would be: if you want to make males and females different stats-wise, don't bother with realism.

Segev
2016-01-31, 11:08 AM
I'll have my character carry whatever equipment I see fit within normal encumbrance rules, thank you very much. And I'll use whatever picture in whatever style I see fit to depict him or her or it, be it "anime waif", oiled bama-bait, or short tubby guy with glasses. And it is not within your powers to tell me or anyone else they can't.

To be fair, he said you could, "but not in [his] game." Which is a legal thing to do: if he's DMing and doesn't want to allow you to have an aesthetic that conflicts with the physical reality he wishes to enforce for his setting, he can tell you not to. So if he insists that an 18-strength halfling must have visible muscles, he can insist on this for the same reason he can insist that, if you're going to use the Winged template to be able to fly, you must, in fact, have wings (and not refluff it to some other explanation for your flight).

I won't say I agree with the decision - that would depend on the game and what it is he's insisting on - but it IS within his rights to speak for HIS games. And within yours to refuse to play in them if you don't like his rules.

Segev
2016-01-31, 11:22 AM
We both have concern that since using Sexuality and Alternative Genders is becoming a new way to be rebellious and edgy, once that bubble bursts it could seriously do damage to the ACTUAL LGBT community. Nothing in that data can suggest any sort of causal relationship, so I won't go as far as claiming that as truth, just one of my big concerns that being around young people has caused for me.

It's also been made a cause celeb, with social rewards of being called "brave" and more-than-social rewards of getting preferential treatment on official levels (whether out of fear of accusations of bigotry or out of a compassionate condescention - its own form of rather ugly bigotry). Obviously, it has its downsides, but when you can surround yourself in an armor of social justice and self-righteous defenders and you - as teens are wont to do - perceive yourself as ALREADY being persecuted and ostracized, this gives you an explanation for why anybody who makes you feel bad is a bad person, since it's obviously because of their bigotry.

Now, I'm not trying to say it's better to be LGBT than not, socially. Nor that they have "unfair advantages" or anything like that. My point here is that the making of it into a cause celeb combined with it being "edgy" and a way to rebel without actually having to make one's own unique identity (because the subculture comes with a stereotyped one you can put on without having to think about it) probably is inflating the self-reporting in certain demographics, and yes, is likely causing more harm than good for those who legitimately are of those persuasions.

All of that said... I'm not sure that it actually bears on this thread.



Regarding the point of the charts in the first place, I think it undeniable that sexual attractiveness is at least somewhat socially-conditioned. Pre-industrial era Western ideals of beauty favored a lot more fat and paler skin. Voluptuous women may not have been obese, but they were definitely not illustrating an hourglass figure (not until the corset, for whatever reason, became popular). In fact, part of the reason for the huge bell-shaped and butt-platform dresses was to exaggerate the width of the woman's hips, because that was "healthy childbearing" size, and was considered sexy. Men, too, were more desirable if they were a bit pudgy.

This is because we tend to value signs of leisure time while still looking healthy (so truly obese people never were "hot," just as we tend not to think the super-vein-cut mountain-of-muscle guys are "hot" nor the exaggerated stick-thin girls with balloons on their chests and hips are "hot"). They indicate that you have plenty of resources to supply yourself, your mate, and your offspring. So physical cues to that social status become conditioned in our young brains as "sexy," because we are learning machines that seek out patterns to identify the best mates to sate basic biological urges of family-building.

So yes, there is social conditioning in what you find "sexy."

Anonymouswizard
2016-01-31, 11:29 AM
Quite; if somebody is going to start dictating to me what my character looks like, even more so if he starts dictating to me what sort of equipment I can use based on what my character looks like, that's a fair indicator it's time to leave this guy alone with a dog-eared copy of "Warlock of Firetop Mountain" and start my own game. With blackjack. And hookers. And blackjack-playing hookers.

It's not unfair to say 'your character can't look like X' in your own game. In the game I hope to run this summer I'm actually outlawing giant, top-heavy men because I think it goes against genre, but also requiring that anybody with Water 4+ (Water is essentially the Strength/Dexterity/Constitution stat, although most of the combat aspects are split off into Metal) to be toned*.

Of course, you also have the right to say 'I don't want my Water 5 character to have visible muscles, I'm not going to play your game' or 'I want my Water 5 character to look light Arnold Schwarzenegger, I'm not going to play your game'. I'd hope we can come to a compromise (I'd be more willing to compromise on the early desire than the latter, specifically because nobody looks like that in the stories I'm emulating), but if a specific set of stats and body type is the only thing you're willing to play, then I'll ask if you actually want to play now you know the style I'm going for.

On another noted, surely you want D&D-playing hookers :smalltongue:

* note that I don't mean large muscles here, I mean visible muscles, and even then a Water 1 Metal 1 character can wield a massive Dao if they really want to.

napoleon_in_rag
2016-01-31, 11:34 AM
My major problem with this thread is this.

All roleplaying games sacrifice realism for playability when you look at the game mechanics. Because a truly realistic rpg would not be fun.

Take D&D: The stats, hp, ac, weapon modeling, proficiencies, levels, classes, alignment, saving throws, etc. All unrealistic when you look at them closely.

So with all of that, why does this topic keep coming up as the thing that has to be fixed?

I mean we are talking about a game with elves, dragons, and magic. Why do people think the fact that men and women can have the same stats is the most unrealistic thing about the game?

Segev
2016-01-31, 11:47 AM
My major problem with this thread is this.

All roleplaying games sacrifice realism for playability when you look at the game mechanics. Because a truly realistic rpg would not be fun.

Take D&D: The stats, hp, ac, weapon modeling, proficiencies, levels, classes, alignment, saving throws, etc. All unrealistic when you look at them closely.

So with all of that, does this topic keep coming up as the thing that has to be fixed?

I mean we are talking about a game with elves, dragons, and magic. Why do people think the fact that men and women can have the same stats is the most unrealistic thing about the game?

To be fair the OP was about trying to create this in a game's mechanics to specifically induce play-style choices, in the same way that half-orcs are not usually going to show up as Wizard or Sorcerers. I suggested that, if he really wants to do that on gender-lines, he should make it simply more explicit. Rather than stat adjustments which could lead to arguments about realism and sexism and the like, just say that, if you want women to be mages and men to be clerics, only female characters can take mage classes and only male ones can take cleric classes.

Donnadogsoth
2016-01-31, 12:34 PM
An interesting article I saw a couple of years ago posited that the human male attraction to breasts might be related to our social bonding to our mates more than to breastfeeding fitness testing. It pointed out that humans are, if not unique, at least rare in being a species which mates face-to-face, and that this was a biological aid in bonding with our mates emotionally and socially so that offspring would benefit from two primary providers. Since breasts are a female secondary sexual characteristic that is on her front, anything which helps select for male partners who engage in mating behaviors which make him more likely to stick around would lead, in theory, to preferential genetic propagation. Therefore, male humans were preferentially selected for those that like looking at female human mammary glands. Which led to selection of females based on having eye-catching ones.

I am not sure how much credence I give this article, mind. But I thought the take on the subject interesting as a contrast to the standard assumption that it's all about selecting a mother for one's children who can feed them sufficiently well in their infancy.

Regardless of the purpose of inflated mammaries in the mating game, it's instinct for women to breastfeed their infants. That was my point.


This, actually, IS a social construct, and a very modern and Western one. In a lot of the more overtly patriarchal societies of yore (and an unfortunate number that still exist today, particularly in third-world countries), women are not gatekeepers at all; they're objects bought, paid, and traded for. Even in marriage. They do not have the right, privilege, nor power to refuse if their husband wishes to mate with them.

Moreover, this social construct of Western society tends to lead to the stereotype that men are always eager for sex and will rarely, if ever, turn it down (and that doing so is a hard choice for them when they do), but that women have to be talked/seduced/tricked into it, or at least make the choice based on what's "in it for them" aside from the sex itself. We can see it in just about any fiction involving a guy and a girl and one being in some state of undress. It is invariably the girl who is embarrassed and offended, and the guy who is embarrassed and ashamed (unless the guy is a creeper or the girl is actively seducing the guy).

In ancient Greece, it was assumed the opposite: men could take or leave sex, but women were constantly horny and wanted it all the time. Men had to restrain their wives' sexual urges, supposedly. Their fiction looks different than ours in a lot of ways because of this. (They still had the "man chases girl" thing going on, but when the nymphs ran from men, it was a sign of how WEIRD nymphs were, and that they were malicious teases, not a reinforcement of the idea that men wanted it and women didn't.)

Anyway, my point here is that the "gatekeepers" of sexual contact being one sex or the other is very much a social construct.

(1) What ancient Greek fiction would you recommend that details their topsy-turvy sex lives?

(2) Do you think primeval human societies were relatively free, like the modern West, or relatively unfree, like the aforementioned disastrous third-world countries? If they were relatively free, why wouldn't women be naturally sexually conservative (for the obvious reason that they have the most to lose in pregnancy) and men be sexually liberal?

Segev
2016-01-31, 01:54 PM
Regardless of the purpose of inflated mammaries in the mating game, it's instinct for women to breastfeed their infants. That was my point.No argument there, then.




(1) What ancient Greek fiction would you recommend that details their topsy-turvy sex lives?Referring to it as "topsy-turvy" seems a bit odd, considering that they wouldn't have found it so. The quintessential work for this, though, is Lysistrata (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysistrata), a play which was considered a comedy to the ancient Greeks because of how preposterous the threat was.

We see it executed in modern fiction all the time, but our modern culture takes it seriously: the woman threatens to cut the man off from sex in order to get his compliance, and he's portrayed as dismayed by the idea while she's not bothered much if at all.

To the ancient Greeks, however, the idea that the woman would refuse the man sex is as silly as if we were to see a modern sitcom where the husband decides to punish the wife by refusing to have sex with her until she stopped some behavior he found objectionable. The way our modern culture perceives it, the threat would be considered nonsensical.

Or if the football team in a high school comedy threatened to cut off the cheerleaders from sex. We see the reverse taken and played seriously, but that? That'd be considered ludicrous, because as you noted, in modern western society, women are seen as the "gatekeepers." (Making men the [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghostbusters]Keymasters[/ur


(2) Do you think primeval human societies were relatively free, like the modern West, or relatively unfree, like the aforementioned disastrous third-world countries?Relatively unfree, definitely.


If they were relatively free, why wouldn't women be naturally sexually conservative (for the obvious reason that they have the most to lose in pregnancy) and men be sexually liberal?Ah, but they also have the most to GAIN in pregnancy, given that bloodlines are so very important in many cultures. And, like it or not, men DO tend to have a sense of responsibility towards their offspring. Many ignore that sense, doing their best to crush it, but it's as instinctive as anything else.

But just because they have the most to lose doesn't mean they're any more going to show restraint than men. Look at how often the concept of the woman using pregnancy to "trap" her man in a relationship comes up in fiction.

Moreover, the stereotypical "women have to be talked into it" perspective doesn't rely on the woman thinking beyond the heat of the moment. It relies on the notion that men are horn-dogs and women are not. Heck, a lot of the portrayal has the guy being talked into doing ridiculous things, into agreeing to all sorts of stuff he wouldn't normally, putting up with all sorts of risks and humiliations, all just hoping to get laid.

I'm pretty sure that girls like sex as much as boys do. The notion that women saying "no" is easier than men saying "no" when opportunity arises is cultural.

GrayGriffin
2016-01-31, 02:01 PM
It's also been made a cause celeb, with social rewards of being called "brave" and more-than-social rewards of getting preferential treatment on official levels (whether out of fear of accusations of bigotry or out of a compassionate condescention - its own form of rather ugly bigotry). Obviously, it has its downsides, but when you can surround yourself in an armor of social justice and self-righteous defenders and you - as teens are wont to do - perceive yourself as ALREADY being persecuted and ostracized, this gives you an explanation for why anybody who makes you feel bad is a bad person, since it's obviously because of their bigotry.

Now, I'm not trying to say it's better to be LGBT than not, socially. Nor that they have "unfair advantages" or anything like that. My point here is that the making of it into a cause celeb combined with it being "edgy" and a way to rebel without actually having to make one's own unique identity (because the subculture comes with a stereotyped one you can put on without having to think about it) probably is inflating the self-reporting in certain demographics, and yes, is likely causing more harm than good for those who legitimately are of those persuasions.

All of that said... I'm not sure that it actually bears on this thread.

Um, really? Really? REALLY? Do you realize you're repeating the exact type of homophobic rhetoric that many teens are faced with when they first come out? "Oh, it's just a phase." "Oh, you're doing this for attention."

And ****ing hell, coming out as anything is scary, and I'll gladly call anyone who manages to come out brave for it. It took me forever to admit to myself that I liked girls, despite that attraction already appearing in middle school. It took me even longer to tell people about it.

Segev
2016-01-31, 02:20 PM
Um, really? Really? REALLY? Do you realize you're repeating the exact type of homophobic rhetoric that many teens are faced with when they first come out? "Oh, it's just a phase." "Oh, you're doing this for attention."

And ****ing hell, coming out as anything is scary, and I'll gladly call anyone who manages to come out brave for it. It took me forever to admit to myself that I liked girls, despite that attraction already appearing in middle school. It took me even longer to tell people about it.

I know it's hard and scary. However, if you have somebody whose goal is to say "look at me! I'm unique and special!" but they want to do it in a way that gets them praise and social protection, the truth is that right now "coming out" is a relatively safe way to do it. Yes, there are still problems. Yes, you risk being ostracized and victimized. No, it's not all roses and candy-canes. I'm not saying it is. I'm saying it is inflated by a number of jerks who want to exploit what they perceive as a free ride to being special without increasing their feeling of victimization. Because they already, deservedly or not, feel like they're victimized by "society." So clearly that's why. It's not that they're anti-social brats with entitlement complexes who would never have decided they must be LGBT if they didn't think their clique would band together to call them "brave," it's that they're LGBT and the whole world is against them.

It does make it harder for those who are legitimately LGBT; they are faced with the loud, obnoxious pretenders and wanna-bes getting up in people's faces and making it into exactly the kind of destructive culture that focuses ire on it in order to justify their self-righteous indignation and sense of self-importance. I extend my condolences that this is the case.

It pains me that this issue cannot be treated seriously without having glory-hounds rush all over it for their 15 minutes of fame. But that doesn't change that these harmful actors are being the loudest and "proudest" members of the community, for as long as the cause celeb lasts and can give them their fame and self-image boosting.

Again: there are people who really are LGBT. They are not who I'm talking about. My response to the issue on an individual basis is to say "okay" if somebody comes out. It doesn't change anything; they're still who they were and unless they also reveal some horrible crime against other people they've committed, it doesn't really effect anything about who they are insofar as my relationship with them goes. If they're one of the glory-seeking idiots, it still doesn't matter. If they're legitimately LGBT, it still doesn't matter. It's irrelevant unless, for some reason, it impacts me dating them. Which...I can think of only one case where it would, and that'd be rather sad. Otherwise? It's not my business, and if you choose to share it, I will accept it and not worry about it. Just don't shove it in my face and demand I give you special attention or treat you differently because of it. Which most legitimately LGBT people won't do.

I'm a huge advocate of treating people as people, and not giving them special treatment in a positive or negative sense based on any "group" with which they identify or are a member by virtue of something other than their actions. (e.g., I have little patience for members of, say, ISIS, but I don't care if you're Muslim, as long as you're not acting in the name of your faith to harm me or anybody else. Similarly, I have no problem with white people, but take issue with the KKK.)

Anonymouswizard
2016-01-31, 03:28 PM
Um, really? Really? REALLY? Do you realize you're repeating the exact type of homophobic rhetoric that many teens are faced with when they first come out? "Oh, it's just a phase." "Oh, you're doing this for attention."

And ****ing hell, coming out as anything is scary, and I'll gladly call anyone who manages to come out brave for it. It took me forever to admit to myself that I liked girls, despite that attraction already appearing in middle school. It took me even longer to tell people about it.

I'm going to say I'm sorry, but it was never scary for me to come out to other people, although it was to myself. That may be because at the time I was confident in my sexuality, I literally interacted with nobody who had problems with LGBT people on a regular basis. Might just be because of my strange situation though, knowing that before I came out.


I know it's hard and scary. However, if you have somebody whose goal is to say "look at me! I'm unique and special!" but they want to do it in a way that gets them praise and social protection, the truth is that right now "coming out" is a relatively safe way to do it. Yes, there are still problems. Yes, you risk being ostracized and victimized. No, it's not all roses and candy-canes. I'm not saying it is. I'm saying it is inflated by a number of jerks who want to exploit what they perceive as a free ride to being special without increasing their feeling of victimization. Because they already, deservedly or not, feel like they're victimized by "society." So clearly that's why. It's not that they're anti-social brats with entitlement complexes who would never have decided they must be LGBT if they didn't think their clique would band together to call them "brave," it's that they're LGBT and the whole world is against them.

The thing is, I've never met anybody like that in real life. I've met those who have no problem displaying their sexuality, but nobody who has tried to say 'I'm unique and special'. One person who might have played up being a 1 on the Kinsey scale as a 2, someone who refused to admit she was technically in a lesbian relationship but apparently wanted to be bisexual (ah, best friends are weird), many people who you couldn't tell from straight, and then myself who has joked about 'not being bi enough for LGBT'. I'm seriously wondering if it's just an internet phenomenon (and I now claim 'xenosexual' as being attracted only to other ethnicities, 'spacesexual' as being attracted to extra-terrestrial beings, and 'idiot' for me for even bothering to define them).


It does make it harder for those who are legitimately LGBT; they are faced with the loud, obnoxious pretenders and wanna-bes getting up in people's faces and making it into exactly the kind of destructive culture that focuses ire on it in order to justify their self-righteous indignation and sense of self-importance. I extend my condolences that this is the case.

Is it really that different in other places? The only pretender I've seen was trying to gain cred with some friends.


It pains me that this issue cannot be treated seriously without having glory-hounds rush all over it for their 15 minutes of fame. But that doesn't change that these harmful actors are being the loudest and "proudest" members of the community, for as long as the cause celeb lasts and can give them their fame and self-image boosting.

So we need a test for being LGBT? How about if you sleep with someone of the oppose-no, that'll exclude asexuals and a good number of transsexuals who aren't gay/bi. Umm.... I'm out of ideas.


Again: there are people who really are LGBT. They are not who I'm talking about. My response to the issue on an individual basis is to say "okay" if somebody comes out. It doesn't change anything; they're still who they were and unless they also reveal some horrible crime against other people they've committed, it doesn't really effect anything about who they are insofar as my relationship with them goes. If they're one of the glory-seeking idiots, it still doesn't matter. If they're legitimately LGBT, it still doesn't matter. It's irrelevant unless, for some reason, it impacts me dating them. Which...I can think of only one case where it would, and that'd be rather sad. Otherwise? It's not my business, and if you choose to share it, I will accept it and not worry about it. Just don't shove it in my face and demand I give you special attention or treat you differently because of it. Which most legitimately LGBT people won't do.

Maybe the best way to stop these 'glory seeking idiots' is to do the obvious thing and treat LGBT people as people, and be excepting of it, as you claim to do. Heck, I know the only reason I didn't come out to my parents for over a year was because I kept forgetting because I knew they wouldn't care, most of my friends seem to be bi/pan/gay, and nobody's shoved it in anybody's face.

The main impact being bi has had on my life is a friend trying to set me up with one of his wife's male friends (and I'm certain if I ever visited them, one of the two would try to set me up with someone), which really only never happened because I pointed out he had the same name as my dad. It seems to be in an environment where it's considered as interesting a fact as if you're growing your hair out you don't run across many pretenders.


I'm a huge advocate of treating people as people, and not giving them special treatment in a positive or negative sense based on any "group" with which they identify or are a member by virtue of something other than their actions. (e.g., I have little patience for members of, say, ISIS, but I don't care if you're Muslim, as long as you're not acting in the name of your faith to harm me or anybody else. Similarly, I have no problem with white people, but take issue with the KKK.)

Oh boy, I'm just going to go over here, and resume trying to get my Buddhist friend to teach me about Buddhism. These topics are too inflammable for me.

Feddlefew
2016-01-31, 04:18 PM
(1) What ancient Greek fiction would you recommend that details their topsy-turvy sex lives?

(2) Do you think primeval human societies were relatively free, like the modern West, or relatively unfree, like the aforementioned disastrous third-world countries? If they were relatively free, why wouldn't women be naturally sexually conservative (for the obvious reason that they have the most to lose in pregnancy) and men be sexually liberal?

Why don't you read some Greek mythology (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/22381/22381-h/22381-h.htm#page7)? Mythology is a reflection of a culture's beliefs and values, so I think you might find it enlightening. :smallsmile:

Anyway, human mating strategy can be broadly generalized a "Serial Monogamy with Extra Pair Copulation." Looking at human physiology, we know a few things about ancient human mating strategies:

1) Human penises are squeegee shaped, a trait found in animals where both sexes mate repeatedly in close succession. Humans also lack the phalic bones found in most mammals, and are (I think) the only mammal to use exclusively blood pressure. It's probably a handicap used by males to indicate good health, like colorful plumage on birds.
2) Humans have larger testis, which is a trait found in species with non-monogamous females, but not huge testis, which is a trait found in highly promiscuous species. For instance, most great apes have tiny genitalia because one male dominates all the females in the group. Humans and bonobos, on the other hand...
3) Humans have hidden ovulation and don't go into heat, unlike like other primates, which changes how mating strategies have to work. This means mating with as many females as possible is less effective than having a few that the individual mates repeatedly with. Females also need to mate often to reproduce, since humans have a low success rate for pregnancy even if fertilization occurs (about 1 in 7).

Looking at behavior, we know that Hunter Gatherers are pretty chill have higher rates of in-group cooperation and resource sharing that agricultural societies. They're also "fiercely egalitarian" (https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-learn/201105/how-hunter-gatherers-maintained-their-egalitarian-ways), which is necessary for long the long term survival of small bands. Hunter Gatherers also typically use bilateral kinship, which means they trace kinship (which family you belong to) through male and female lines. Here's a pretty interesting paper (http://ipem.anth.wsu.edu/sites/ipem.anth.wsu.edu/files/Hill_etal-HGnetworksV3.pdf) (PDF WARNING!) talking about how inter group marriage is used to extend a group's access to resources and forge alliances, and individuals of both sexes transfer between bands. Humans also have low sexual dimorphism in body mass when compared to other primates, indicating that human males usually didn't fight with each other.

Second, extra pair copulation (http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0099878), where a female in a monogamous relationship mates with other males, is a very important mating strategy across the animal kingdom, since it 1) provides greater genetic variation to her offspring, and 2) Decreases aggression in males and forces them to behave more socially, since they can't be sure where all their offspring are. This has a net benefit for the population as a whole, because local males work together to defend their entire territory against predators and to forge for food.

Edit: Anyway, we've gotten really far off topic.

Edit 2: I have redacted bits people were taking issue with.

CharonsHelper
2016-01-31, 04:21 PM
Regarding the point of the charts in the first place, I think it undeniable that sexual attractiveness is at least somewhat socially-conditioned. Pre-industrial era Western ideals of beauty favored a lot more fat and paler skin. Voluptuous women may not have been obese, but they were definitely not illustrating an hourglass figure (not until the corset, for whatever reason, became popular). In fact, part of the reason for the huge bell-shaped and butt-platform dresses was to exaggerate the width of the woman's hips, because that was "healthy childbearing" size, and was considered sexy. Men, too, were more desirable if they were a bit pudgy.

I've wondered if that was because they were 'different'. Back in the day - most people were dirt poor, had trouble getting enough to eat, and worked under the hot sun all day. Therefore they were thin and tan. Women who were paler and somewhat more voluptuous were different, and it might have been that which made them especially attractive for the time period. Sort of like people generally being more attracted to red-heads. (I've also wondered whether or not the art exaggerated those characteristics in portraits/paintings.)

Anyway - moot to the point at hand.

Spiryt
2016-01-31, 04:40 PM
Looking at behavior, we know that Hunter Gatherers are pretty chill. They're also "fiercely egalitarian" (https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-learn/201105/how-hunter-gatherers-maintained-their-egalitarian-ways), which is necessary for long the long term survival of small bands. Hunter Gatherers also typically use bilateral kinship, which means they trace kinship (which family you belong to) through male and female lines. Here's a pretty interesting paper (http://ipem.anth.wsu.edu/sites/ipem.anth.wsu.edu/files/Hill_etal-HGnetworksV3.pdf) (PDF WARNING!) talking about how inter group marriage is used to extend a group's access to resources and forge alliances, and individuals of both sexes transfer between bands. Humans also have low sexual dimorphism in body mass when compared to other primates, indicating that human males usually didn't fight with each other.


Eh, depends on what you mean by 'not fighting each other"....

Perhaps fighting between males in 'pack' isn't as prevalent as among other big mammals, I don't know.

But to make up for this, hunter gatherer humans were fighting brutal wars with other humans since most ancient times.

Wouldn't call that 'pretty chill'.

Australian Aborigens were still doing it as one of the last large group of 'primal' people.

Pregant woman bound and slaughtered some 10 000 years ago (http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/ancient-brutal-massacre-may-be-earliest-evidence-war-180957884/?no-ist)


I would suspect that this 'Chilled HG' can quite likely be 'Noble Savage' thing once again, though there's not that much data, so it's hard to tell.

Clistenes
2016-01-31, 04:54 PM
Looking at behavior, we know that Hunter Gatherers are pretty chill. They're also "fiercely egalitarian" (https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-learn/201105/how-hunter-gatherers-maintained-their-egalitarian-ways), which is necessary for long the long term survival of small bands. Hunter Gatherers also typically use bilateral kinship, which means they trace kinship (which family you belong to) through male and female lines. Here's a pretty interesting paper (http://ipem.anth.wsu.edu/sites/ipem.anth.wsu.edu/files/Hill_etal-HGnetworksV3.pdf) (PDF WARNING!) talking about how inter group marriage is used to extend a group's access to resources and forge alliances, and individuals of both sexes transfer between bands. Humans also have low sexual dimorphism in body mass when compared to other primates, indicating that human males usually didn't fight with each other.

Most Philippino ethnic groups practiced head hunting for religious reasons and as a way to gain prestige among their own people. In some groups, the chief usually was the warrior who had collected most heads. They usually took revenge against attackers sending their own headhunting expeditions, and vendettas could last for several generations.
Many of those head-hunting groups were hunters-gatherers or had a primitive slash-and-burn agriculture.

The Yanomami are hunter-gatherers with a primitive slash-and-burn agriculture. They are among the most violent groups in the world: They don't just send expeditions against other groups to kill the men and steal the girls (they tend to starve to death many girls, so they have a deficit of females) but there is also a great deal of intra-group violence.

The Asmat of Papua were head-hunters and cannibals. Their custom dictated that they had to kill a man from another group for eveyr child that was born among them. Otherwise, the child remained nameless.

The Andamanese were hunter gatherers who didn't even know how to light fires (only to keep them lit) and didn't even kept dogs. You won't get a "purer" hunter-gatherer group. They used to horribly torture their captured enemies.

Feddlefew
2016-01-31, 04:57 PM
Eh, depends on what you mean by 'not fighting each other"....

Perhaps fighting between males in 'pack' isn't as prevalent as among other big mammals, I don't know.

But to make up for this, hunter gatherer humans were fighting brutal wars with other humans since most ancient times.

Wouldn't call that 'pretty chill'.

Australian Aborigens were still doing it as one of the last large group of 'primal' people.

Pregant woman bound and slaughtered some 10 000 years ago (http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/ancient-brutal-massacre-may-be-earliest-evidence-war-180957884/?no-ist)


I would suspect that this 'Chilled HG' is quite likely 'Noble Savage' untrue, once again, though there's not that much data, so it's hard to tell.

I'm focusing on in-group relationships right now, since we were talking about sexual selection. But, yes, warfare between different groups of humans are a pretty consistent factor in human history. I say "Pretty Chill" in comparison to agricultural societies, where individuals have fewer reasons to share resources (such as land and animals) and more reason to fight with each other to amass them, since day-to-day survival is less dependent on cooperation and more dependent on how many resources an individual has on hand.

Edit: I view humans as generally being morally myopic; there are exceptions and we've gotten better overall with time, but we're still capable of being horrible people, especially in large groups.

Mr Beer
2016-01-31, 05:21 PM
I remember reading that the primary cause of death in Papua New Guinea hunter-gatherers was murder. By some alarming high factor.

The 'peaceful tribe' myth is likely a myth.

Clistenes
2016-01-31, 05:44 PM
I remember reading that the primary cause of death in Papua New Guinea hunter-gatherers was murder. By some alarming high factor.

The 'peaceful tribe' myth is likely a myth.

In the case of the Yanomami, the anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon suffered a lot of flak because his research of the Yanomami didn't came to the conclusion that they were nice, peaceful noble savages, but mean, violent and warlike. The facts didn't fit the noble savage narrative, and that offended many people.

chagnon has accused of making gross generalizations, that he saw some groups of Yanomami doing very violent stuff and he extended that behaviour to all the ethnic group, but the fact is, he didn't lie about what he saw.

Feddlefew
2016-01-31, 06:19 PM
I'll retract what I said about HG tribes being more peaceful, but my other points about human reproductive strategy (Anatomy and Physiology, EPC, and importance of extended kin groups for maintaining peaceful inter-band relationships) still stand.

Edit:


In the case of the Yanomami, the anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon suffered a lot of flak because his research of the Yanomami didn't came to the conclusion that they were nice, peaceful noble savages, but mean, violent and warlike. The facts didn't fit the noble savage narrative, and that offended many people.

chagnon has accused of making gross generalizations, that he saw some groups of Yanomami doing very violent stuff and he extended that behaviour to all the ethnic group, but the fact is, he didn't lie about what he saw.

I thought it was because he set up a peaceful meeting between two tribes settlements to observe how they behaved during the resulting feast and exchanges, and that lead to a joint raid in which they killed several people from a neighboring, non-Yanomami settlement?

Edit 2: He was cleared after they determined that he had no way of knowing that the last stage of a peaceful inter-settlement meeting was to preform a raid on a third settlement, by the way.

CharonsHelper
2016-01-31, 06:32 PM
I thought it was because he set up a peaceful meeting between two tribes settlements to observe how they behaved during the resulting feast and exchanges, and that lead to a joint raid in which they killed several people from a neighboring, non-Yanomami settlement?

I've gotta say - it says something about a culture when the only proper way to end a peaceful meeting is to team up to go murder some other people. lol

Mr Beer
2016-01-31, 06:46 PM
In the case of the Yanomami, the anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon suffered a lot of flak because his research of the Yanomami didn't came to the conclusion that they were nice, peaceful noble savages, but mean, violent and warlike. The facts didn't fit the noble savage narrative, and that offended many people.

I'm not surprised, some people dislike having their assumptions challenged and react angrily. Makes me LOL when it's implied that tribal people are/were basically hippies with spears.

I saw some interview on TV that drove the mindset home. This guy, I think from Papua New Guinea, was talking touchingly and crying as he spoke of being alone, now that his brother had been murdered. Then he cheered right up as he re-enacted the retaliatory raid he participated in. They burned the enemy village's huts and attacked them as they fled. He got pretty animated while miming the frenzied spear stabbing.

Feddlefew
2016-01-31, 07:04 PM
I've gotta say - it says something about a culture when the only proper way to end a peaceful meeting is to team up to go murder some other people. lol

It was the case study in my anthropology class for why you don't interfere with the group you are observing*, since it can lead to bad ****. If I remember, what happened was that usually the neighbors would notice something was up because there'd be liaisons going back and forth between the two groups, but since the anthropologist was acting as the liaison that time....

*Except in the most extreme of circumstances, like a major natural disaster strikes or if you're part of a relief group providing aid.

Marlowe
2016-01-31, 07:36 PM
To be fair, he said you could, "but not in [his] game." Which is a legal thing to do:

No. It is not legal. It may not be unfair. It may be within the customs and practices of the group. But it is not legal.

I know of no set of rules where the DM/GM/Storyteller or whatever is permitted by the rules to dictate what visual references are used by the players for their characters. I certainly have not seen any set of rules that allowed the game manager to break core game mechanics such as equipment and encumbrance simply over what visual aids the players are using.

The statement to which I objected is a neat portmanteau of "The customs of my group are the same as official game rules", and "my personal opinion is of more objective value than yours". Both of which are poisonous and bizarre little conceits that litter these forums, and gaming forums in general, with confusion, misinformation, and unpleasantness and which do not deserve the slightest apologia.

goto124
2016-01-31, 08:23 PM
Technically legal. Whether or not it's a good idea is another story :smalltongue:

Appearance can play a big part in the setting though. For example, if your character with the Winged template is refluffed into having no actual wings yet still flying, can an archer still shoot at those wings to cripple the character? If that character were to enter a high-security area, the guards would normally demand those wings be clipped. Or a society may discriminate against winged people. If a PC has no actual wings, said PC is having the cake and eating it too, at least in a setting where "having wings is both a blessing and a curse".

Let's take the example of STR leading directly to humongous muscles, being unable to be skinny. Perhaps in this setting, societies rely on being able to easily identify super-strong people. Various places may discriminate them, keeping a watchful eye on whoever has "suspiciously too much muscle". Normally, to hide your muscle, you would have to cast a spell of Disguise, or otherwise jump through similar hoops. Muscle mountains may even be disallowed from certain places (if they can even fit in there at all - try squeezing into a burrow meant for gnomes when you've got more bulk than a human). The setting demands it shouldn't be too easy to be both skinny and strong.

In-universe sexism can even be brought into this. A man who's a mountain of muscle may be admired, yet an woman who's a mountain of muscle may be shunned. Or vice versa if you're in a society of Amazonian women. I can see a DM not allowing players to refluff their 18 STR (wo)men into waifs to enforce the "you can't have your cake and eat it too" part of the setting.

Disallowing change of appearance can serve a purpose, usually those of "doesn't fit the purpose of the setting" and of verisimilitude.

One could argue that gender-based differences falls under "disallowing the refluff of appearance". Indeed, most games don't have gender-based differences, any more than the enforcement of "anyone with more than 15 STR has humongous muscles". But... here we are, discussing how such differences could be made to work in a setting.

Thus, we get back to... if you want mechanics to increase verisimilitude, start with the worldbuilding, adjust mechanics later. Mechanics for game balance is a different thing.

Donnadogsoth
2016-01-31, 08:56 PM
No argument there, then.



Referring to it as "topsy-turvy" seems a bit odd, considering that they wouldn't have found it so. The quintessential work for this, though, is Lysistrata (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysistrata), a play which was considered a comedy to the ancient Greeks because of how preposterous the threat was.

We see it executed in modern fiction all the time, but our modern culture takes it seriously: the woman threatens to cut the man off from sex in order to get his compliance, and he's portrayed as dismayed by the idea while she's not bothered much if at all.

To the ancient Greeks, however, the idea that the woman would refuse the man sex is as silly as if we were to see a modern sitcom where the husband decides to punish the wife by refusing to have sex with her until she stopped some behavior he found objectionable. The way our modern culture perceives it, the threat would be considered nonsensical.

Or if the football team in a high school comedy threatened to cut off the cheerleaders from sex. We see the reverse taken and played seriously, but that? That'd be considered ludicrous, because as you noted, in modern western society, women are seen as the "gatekeepers." (Making men the [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghostbusters]Keymasters[/ur

Relatively unfree, definitely.

Ah, but they also have the most to GAIN in pregnancy, given that bloodlines are so very important in many cultures. And, like it or not, men DO tend to have a sense of responsibility towards their offspring. Many ignore that sense, doing their best to crush it, but it's as instinctive as anything else.

But just because they have the most to lose doesn't mean they're any more going to show restraint than men. Look at how often the concept of the woman using pregnancy to "trap" her man in a relationship comes up in fiction.

Moreover, the stereotypical "women have to be talked into it" perspective doesn't rely on the woman thinking beyond the heat of the moment. It relies on the notion that men are horn-dogs and women are not. Heck, a lot of the portrayal has the guy being talked into doing ridiculous things, into agreeing to all sorts of stuff he wouldn't normally, putting up with all sorts of risks and humiliations, all just hoping to get laid.

I'm pretty sure that girls like sex as much as boys do. The notion that women saying "no" is easier than men saying "no" when opportunity arises is cultural.

Not convinced yet, but stuff to chew on. Thanks.

wumpus
2016-01-31, 08:56 PM
No. It is not legal. It may not be unfair. It may be within the customs and practices of the group. But it is not legal.

I know of no set of rules where the DM/GM/Storyteller or whatever is permitted by the rules to dictate what visual references are used by the players for their characters.

Try finding anywhere a player can overrule the dungeonmaster in D&D(0e) and AD&D(1e). The entire concept is unthinkable in those two games (and for a long time, a lot of games flowed directly from them). Especially in the idea that you can have a stripling with 18 (or 18(00)) or someone spectacularly beautiful with a charisma of 6 or so. You talking about a somewhat modern concept from roughly the 1990s and later. Before that it just wasn't true.

Marlowe
2016-01-31, 09:15 PM
As somebody said in an earlier thread about an equally silly subject; "Bringing up specific game/edition practices in a general forum is a jerk move". Especially since the edition you're using as proof has been dead for a long, long time.

Goto, you are using the Winged template; a D&D mechanic, and then using it as part of an argument that requires called shots and crippling criticals. A damage mechanic that does not exist in D&D. So...I don't know what game you think you're talking about. It doesn't matter in that situation whether the "winged" character is physical wings or not, because the example circumstance where it would matter doesn't occur in the same game.

"Legal" is not the same as "permitted practice within your group." You want to say it's "legal" for a GM to dictate such things to the player, much less mess with basic rules to shortchanged a player based on the way the character is supposed to look, there needs to be rules that say that. "It's the way we've always done it", "It's the way we used to do it", and "Nobody has ever complained before", are not arguments that hold any weight.

goto124
2016-01-31, 09:40 PM
Goto, you are using the Winged template; a D&D mechanic, and then using it as part of an argument that requires called shots and crippling criticals. A damage mechanic that does not exist in D&D. So...I don't know what game you think you're talking about.

Neither did I, admittingly. I wasn't even aware that the Winged template was in specific reference to DnD, as opposed to a hypothetical example in a hypothetical game.


"Legal" is not the same as "permitted practice within your group." [snip]

My fault, didn't clarify what 'legal' actually meant.

Marlowe
2016-01-31, 09:56 PM
Savage Species. LA+2.

Or you could have the Half-Fey Template, have wings and LA+2, and a load of powers that scale with your level.

Out of interest, is anyone else having a hard time thinking of any actual examples of "anime waifs with 90lbs guns?" At least cases where the "waif" isn't a Cyborg or a Vampire or the gun isn't some sort of magic device that's probably not really that heavy?

I mean, we've got Roberta here:http://45.media.tumblr.com/68ed067723c4ee2173954028fcb001ad/tumblr_n6g9pnqvIA1r3ifxzo1_500.gif but since Roberta can break knives with her teeth I think the issue of her firing a braced barret rifle without assistance is the last thing we should be worried about.

Segev
2016-01-31, 10:01 PM
No. It is not legal. It may not be unfair. It may be within the customs and practices of the group. But it is not legal.

I know of no set of rules where the DM/GM/Storyteller or whatever is permitted by the rules to dictate what visual references are used by the players for their characters. I certainly have not seen any set of rules that allowed the game manager to break core game mechanics such as equipment and encumbrance simply over what visual aids the players are using.

The statement to which I objected is a neat portmanteau of "The customs of my group are the same as official game rules", and "my personal opinion is of more objective value than yours". Both of which are poisonous and bizarre little conceits that litter these forums, and gaming forums in general, with confusion, misinformation, and unpleasantness and which do not deserve the slightest apologia.

If nothing else, there's "rule 0" and the fact that the DM runs the table and approves all characters. If he doesn't approve, the character isn't played. We can think he's wrong for this all we want, but it's his game, and he's the one with rule 0 to apply if all else fails. You are welcome not to play if you don't like a DM's rules about how character stats tie to appearance, but saying "it's not legal" is rather silly. Any rule the DM is open and honest about applying is "legal." DMs only CAN cheat when they hide things from the players. (That doesn't mean they're necessarily being FAIR, nor that you should put up with it, but...)


Out of interest, is anyone else having a hard time thinking of any actual examples of "anime waifs with 90lbs guns?" At least cases where the "waif" isn't a Cyborg or a Vampire or the gun isn't some sort of magic device that's probably not really that heavy?

I mean, we've got Roberta here:http://45.media.tumblr.com/68ed067723c4ee2173954028fcb001ad/tumblr_n6g9pnqvIA1r3ifxzo1_500.gif but since Roberta can break knives with her teeth I think the issue of her firing a braced barret rifle without assistance is the last thing we should be worried about.Not really, no; usually, when an anime character is far stronger than they look, it's a supernatural or technological source of strength.

Donnadogsoth
2016-01-31, 10:08 PM
This concern for the "legal" dimensions of gaming strikes me odd. I'm imagining people flipping pages and looking up subclauses. I don't run "legal" games. The system is a metaphor for the "reality" of the gaming world. I can break or bend the system as I will. And one of my rules is that there is some correlation between physical strength and the ability to handle enormous firearms. Now, hey, if the girl is an android or cyborg or magical or the gun is made of hyperfoam or you're drawing a fantasy picture of her to look like she's undernourished or has a disproportionately large head or has wings or whatever, well, why didn't you say so? By all means, carry on.

Marlowe
2016-01-31, 11:33 PM
Simply put; "Strength equals carrying capacity" wasn't implied by the statement you made. What you said was that you wouldn't allow a "waif" to carry a large weapon. Strength wasn't included as a factor in your statement. Your frame of reference was size. You were saying that "Strong=big". And that if the players didn't play along with that assumption, you were going to bend the rules to penalise them or not let them play altogether.

You might, to use a D&D example, say it's odd for a 4'10" 90-lb human to have a strength of 18. Well, nobody raises an eyebrow at 3'5" 30-lb Halflings with strength 16. That's just the game it is.

What your statement implied was that you regarded your opinions and assumptions as more important than the rules, and that you expected players to kowtow to the former. Which moves the game from an objective framework in which to participate to an exercise in the players attempting to guess your preferences and play along with them. And that, simply put, isn't a game.

At least, not the sort of game I'm interesting in playing.

Feddlefew
2016-02-01, 02:27 AM
Well, if I had to do it, I would give men a +1 to strength (or equivalent) and women +1 to constitution (or equivalent), since constitution represents a lot more than just "how much damage you can take before you die" in most systems, and includes ability to heal and resist diseases/poisons and whatnot.

Female sex hormones generally speed healing and increase immune system response, while male sex hormones generally slow and decrease them, respectively. The exceptions comes with healing of fractures(for testosterone) and inflammation (for estrogen), where the opposite effect occurs. We're still not entirely sure why the sex hormones are used in this manner, and it seems to be pretty universal in mammals, but you can read more about it here (http://www.jci.org/articles/view/15704) and here (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2441466/).

(Personally, I think this one might fall under the "stupid kludge" category of evolutionary adaptation, since mammalian sexual differentiation is determined by hormonal balance instead of being on/off like some animals.)


(Other notable stupid kludges include "Hey, we can totally stick the blood vessels and nerves in front of the retina! No need to tack that thing down to the rest of the eyeball.", "Let's run some vital arteries through holes in the neck vertebra without doing anything to prevent pinching!", and the perennial favorite "Wouldn't it be funny if we lowered the epiglottis so it doesn't cover where the nasal passages connect to the trachea?")

.... But first I'd consult my players and see if they were cool with these changes, because honestly that wouldn't be good DMing if I just pulled something like this it out of the blue on them. :smallsmile:

goto124
2016-02-01, 02:32 AM
Evolution is a tinkerer, not a designer. Or at least, that's what I heard. Can't remember where it came from.

I wouldn't toss in sex- or gender-based differences without first asking "why do I even want this?"

I mean... sure you could have +1 Con to females and +1 Str to males but... what does it /do/? How does it improve gameplay? Game mechanics? Roleplay? Verisimilitude?

Feddlefew
2016-02-01, 02:52 AM
I look at it this way: If someone at my table argues that the game would be more realistic with sexual dimorphism again, this is what I'll propose. It's exactly as pointless as I see adding it to the game, and maybe someone might use it to bump an odd stat up to an even stat, but otherwise it doesn't have as much impact on the game as a major change would.

Edit:
Evolution does optimize sometimes, but its usually only one trait and the drawbacks tend to be harsh. For instance, some flowers can only be pollinated by one insect, and have been honed by millions of years of evolution to attract that particular insect to the exclusion of all others, enhancing their ability to get pollen from flower to flower since the insect will go only to flowers of its species. The insect is often also honed by evolution to seek out and pollinate that kind of flower, giving it a source of food that other insects can't get to. Of course, they're both now dependent on each other for survival; the insect can't go to other flowers for food, and the flower can't be pollinated by other insects. So if one goes, so does the other.

Cazero
2016-02-01, 03:34 AM
Evolution is a tinkerer, not a designer. Or at least, that's what I heard. Can't remember where it came from.
There. (http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=3169)
I never understood whatever the argument about male nipple was. Having them has no downsides I can think of, wich means there is no evolutionary pressure against them, so they're unlikely to disappear randomly. Not having them is an increase in sexual dimorphism, wich would probably make the DNA sequence more complex, so they're unlikely to be absent in males when they appear in females. And once again, uncountable random iterations boringly conforms to what probability dictates.

Anonymouswizard
2016-02-01, 05:58 AM
When it comes to evolution, don't think A+, think of it as striving for a passing grade (E-). Evolution cares if it survives, if member A survives until the end of its life and member B is better adapted and survives until the end of it's life evolution does not discrimate between the two. Close enough is good enough.

Segev
2016-02-01, 08:57 AM
Evolution is a process. It's a tool of a designer, not a designer itself. (My Ph.D. is actually in Computational Intelligence, so this is a subject I love to prattle on about. My apologies in advance.)

Evolution is a tool that allows a designer to optimize whatever he is evolving to suit a specific purpose, without the designer having to know what the best possible configuration is. In fact, its power lies - in part - in its ability to come up with configurations that a rigorous algorithmic approach would not. Evolution tries just about anything, but is guided by sticking close to what has already worked and varying around that. It can flip out and try totally random things, depending on the mutation settings, but it exploits already-discovered optima more often because more survival occurs in that region.

The designer's job is to clearly define what it is he's trying to optimize. Not the form of the optimal solution, but a way of evaluating the solution's success rate. How good is any given solution? The designer MUST be able to answer this question. His second job is to define search parameters. This means he defines how the evolutionary algorithm is allowed to alter its designs, how much it relies on existing successes, how long it lingers on less-successful approaches before moving on to totally new areas, and how radically it will mutate when it decides to mutate.

Higher mutation rates lead to more wild exploration of possibly unseen solutions, but slows down convergence and can lead to failure to find the best solution in an optimal region. Lower mutation rates can lead to being stuck on the first relatively-good solution.

There are many, many papers on the nature of the "shape" of the solution space and the best algorithms to use to explore and exploit them.

But the core point is that evolution doesn't "think." It is NOT a designer NOR a tinkerer. It's a tool for a designer. A powerful, awesome tool that's a lot of fun to play with!

The Insanity
2016-02-01, 10:34 AM
Out of interest, is anyone else having a hard time thinking of any actual examples of "anime waifs with 90lbs guns?" At least cases where the "waif" isn't a Cyborg or a Vampire or the gun isn't some sort of magic device that's probably not really that heavy?

I mean, we've got Roberta here:http://45.media.tumblr.com/68ed067723c4ee2173954028fcb001ad/tumblr_n6g9pnqvIA1r3ifxzo1_500.gif but since Roberta can break knives with her teeth I think the issue of her firing a braced barret rifle without assistance is the last thing we should be worried about.
Not sure what the word "waif" entails, but I can't believe you used a character from Black Lagoon as an example and completely forgot about Gretel.
http://orig07.deviantart.net/649e/f/2008/045/6/c/gretel_2_by_snake465.png

wumpus
2016-02-01, 10:43 AM
When it comes to evolution, don't think A+, think of it as striving for a passing grade (E-). Evolution cares if it survives, if member A survives until the end of its life and member B is better adapted and survives until the end of it's life evolution does not discrimate between the two. Close enough is good enough.

Not quite. For sexual species, there is a strong motive for finding a good mate. For leking species, any male that can't get that A+ grade will never produce offspring (much less true the more monogamous you get, although genetic testing shows that any species this side of anglerfish males has cheaters). If potential mate sees both member A and member B, and mates with one of them, it doesn't matter how good a grade member B gets or how long it lives. It is selected against.

Also note that for many, many critters (and I'm guessing more the non-sexual, but obviously budding is expensive), they produce vast numbers of offspring per individual. Either that species is exploding in an exponential blast (any biological growth where each individual produces *any* more offspring than itself is exponential. Having many just makes the curve that much higher) or roughly one offspring gets a passing grade out of the vast array of offspring. A+ doesn't always cut it, only valedictorians* (as in best of the total offspring) need apply.

Not to say that member B couldn't hit the lottery and somehow manage to land in an ideal ecosystem. But the cut off is valedictorian, not E-.

* the old school, one per class.

SimonMoon6
2016-02-01, 11:02 AM
Something worth noting about stats, too:

In the actual world, you can increase your strength by very notable margins by training it. In most TRPGs, you can only do it through extraordinary means.

So there's a lot more realism missing. Lift and lift and lift and you might hit 18 Str. I dunno, just so long as the characters themselves are reasonable, I don't think rules are needed.

Well, here's the thing: that only goes so far. And in many games, you can raise your ability scores (+1 point every 4 levels in 3.x or you just pay various point costs in the various point cost games). But if you want to bring reality into it, the strongest woman will never be as strong as the strongest man, even if she's training her strength as much as realistically possible.

But also, reality is very nearly a "zero sum" game. if you start lifting weights and exercising, well, that's time that isn't being spent, say, reading books (maintaining your intelligence), hanging out with friends (maintaining charisma), or, uh, playing videogames (maintaining dexterity). So, it would be completely realistic for someone to gain STR while losing points of INT, but I haven't seen a game system yet that acknowledged that you *lose* abilities that you don't continue to maintain and if you gain new abilities, you must be failing to maintain your old ones. You can't just gain skills in reality; over time, you'll forget all the stuff you learned ten years ago, if you're not practicing it.


If you insist on statistical realism in your game, begin by having each player roll percentile dice. If they get 50% or less, then the character died in childbirth.

Now roll again. 30% or less? Died of childhood diseases.

Ah, a fan of the Travellers RPG, I see.


Or accept that it's a fantasy, and don't penalize people for their characters sex.

I would see it as "giving people different bonuses for their sex" not a penalty. Should we penalize people for their choice of race or class? Well, we do, but it's more like they get different bonuses. So, women wouldn't be as strong? They would be better at other things. Are men being penalized for not being as good at the other things? No. Are women being penalized for being less strong? No, as long as they have comparably useful "other things" to balance it.

But it is mostly a verisimilitude issue. Like unhealthy elves, short dwarves, and so forth. I could make a 6 foot tall character and call him a dwarf (after all, dwarves are still medium size) but that's just weird. I'll never understand why some people are okay with racial modifiers but not gender modifiers... well, I can see why a person who wants to run nothing but physically strong female characters would, in the same way that someone who wants to play "tall" dwarves would have an issue with verisimilitude.

OTOH, you could refluff things, but then you have to. Why are women just as strong as men? Well, the goddess Minerva (or whoever) came down from on high and blessed *every* *single* woman individually with superhuman female strength, putting them exactly on par with men. That's silly, but no more silly than the unverisimilitudinous "men and women are physically equal" thing.

And if women can have equal strength, can men get all the women's superpowers, like childbirth? After all, they have to be equal!

Cazero
2016-02-01, 11:11 AM
If potential mate sees both member A and member B, and mates with one of them, it doesn't matter how good a grade member B gets or how long it lives. It is selected against.
That's not "getting an A+". That's "crushing your neighbour E- with your D".

If I don't want to be eaten by a dragon, I don't need to be fast. I only need to be faster than you.

OldTrees1
2016-02-01, 11:11 AM
Not quite. For sexual species, there is a strong motive for finding a good mate. For leking species, any male that can't get that A+ grade will never produce offspring (much less true the more monogamous you get, although genetic testing shows that any species this side of anglerfish males has cheaters). If potential mate sees both member A and member B, and mates with one of them, it doesn't matter how good a grade member B gets or how long it lives. It is selected against.

Also note that for many, many critters (and I'm guessing more the non-sexual, but obviously budding is expensive), they produce vast numbers of offspring per individual. Either that species is exploding in an exponential blast (any biological growth where each individual produces *any* more offspring than itself is exponential. Having many just makes the curve that much higher) or roughly one offspring gets a passing grade out of the vast array of offspring. A+ doesn't always cut it, only valedictorians* (as in best of the total offspring) need apply.

Not to say that member B couldn't hit the lottery and somehow manage to land in an ideal ecosystem. But the cut off is valedictorian, not E-.

* the old school, one per class.

:smallconfused: You reference leking but not the lek paradox(strong female mate choice not leading to runaway selection) which negates your post?

Frozen_Feet
2016-02-01, 11:27 AM
As somebody said in an earlier thread about an equally silly subject; "Bringing up specific game/edition practices in a general forum is a jerk move". Especially since the edition you're using as proof has been dead for a long, long time.

Let me express an opposing opinion: especially in a general forum, one should specify which game one is talking about.

If that isn't done, one of two things will happen: a) people will end up discussing a hypothetical Schrodinger's game, without actually accounting for existing game systems and how well they worked, or b) everyone will assume you're talking of d20 D&D, because that's the most popular version on these boards.

As for "dead editions", my game books didn't vanish in thin air because a new edition of the game was released. Nothing stops me from playing AD&D, Twilight 2000, Cyberpunk 2020 or other "obsolete" games.

And while plural of anecdote is supposedly not data, if I can run 1st AD&D with its original stat and demihuman level caps with new players, without most or any of the issues brought up in these threads, it suggests the criticism is, at the very least, incomplete.

Segev
2016-02-01, 12:25 PM
If I don't want to be eaten by a dragon, I don't need to be fast. I only need to be faster than you.

Let's be honest. When it's a dragon chasing you, you need to be faster than the dragon. He will barely slow down swallowing the guy you outran while he keeps chasing you.

Donnadogsoth
2016-02-01, 01:08 PM
Simply put; "Strength equals carrying capacity" wasn't implied by the statement you made. What you said was that you wouldn't allow a "waif" to carry a large weapon. Strength wasn't included as a factor in your statement. Your frame of reference was size. You were saying that "Strong=big". And that if the players didn't play along with that assumption, you were going to bend the rules to penalise them or not let them play altogether.

You might, to use a D&D example, say it's odd for a 4'10" 90-lb human to have a strength of 18. Well, nobody raises an eyebrow at 3'5" 30-lb Halflings with strength 16. That's just the game it is.

What your statement implied was that you regarded your opinions and assumptions as more important than the rules, and that you expected players to kowtow to the former. Which moves the game from an objective framework in which to participate to an exercise in the players attempting to guess your preferences and play along with them. And that, simply put, isn't a game.

At least, not the sort of game I'm interesting in playing.

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.

Takewo
2016-02-01, 01:10 PM
Not quite. For sexual species, there is a strong motive for finding a good mate. For leking species, any male that can't get that A+ grade will never produce offspring (much less true the more monogamous you get, although genetic testing shows that any species this side of anglerfish males has cheaters). If potential mate sees both member A and member B, and mates with one of them, it doesn't matter how good a grade member B gets or how long it lives. It is selected against.

Also note that for many, many critters (and I'm guessing more the non-sexual, but obviously budding is expensive), they produce vast numbers of offspring per individual. Either that species is exploding in an exponential blast (any biological growth where each individual produces *any* more offspring than itself is exponential. Having many just makes the curve that much higher) or roughly one offspring gets a passing grade out of the vast array of offspring. A+ doesn't always cut it, only valedictorians* (as in best of the total offspring) need apply.

Not to say that member B couldn't hit the lottery and somehow manage to land in an ideal ecosystem. But the cut off is valedictorian, not E-.

* the old school, one per class.

I disagree. Pandas.

8BitNinja
2016-02-01, 01:31 PM
It really depends on the game

In real life, men are usually stronger than women, while there are exceptions and steroids, the latter being illegal in my country, you don't really see it

In D&D, this may appear more often. Magic is not really seen outside the adventuring life, technology is usually middle ages tech, and people are pretty normal (for the most part). D&D is a likely candidate for this

Now take Shadowrun for example. People have cybernetic parts and you can pick up a minigun at a Home Depot. The Adepts use magic to augment themselves physically and are not the kind of fireball chuckers wizards. People are usually exposed to various things in their life which can affect their physical health very early. Plus, you are all a bunch of metal heads who decide to spend your life fighting corrupt businesses. Shadowrun would not be a good idea for this

Segev
2016-02-01, 01:47 PM
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.

Show me an exact formula for how large I must be to have a given Strength score, and I'll consider whether to argue with or comply with it.

You certainly have the right to make these kinds of declarations for your game, but "halfway realistic" is either incredibly arbitrary or it's going to be open to some really fiddly discussions about science and physics and biology.

And once you have non-humans involved...are they even using the exact same biology that humans do?

So while I respect your right to make these kinds of rulings, stats are abstractions and the exact boundary values will have to be defined if you're going to insist that size equates to stat maxima and minima.

Donnadogsoth
2016-02-01, 02:15 PM
Show me an exact formula for how large I must be to have a given Strength score, and I'll consider whether to argue with or comply with it.

You certainly have the right to make these kinds of declarations for your game, but "halfway realistic" is either incredibly arbitrary or it's going to be open to some really fiddly discussions about science and physics and biology.

And once you have non-humans involved...are they even using the exact same biology that humans do?

So while I respect your right to make these kinds of rulings, stats are abstractions and the exact boundary values will have to be defined if you're going to insist that size equates to stat maxima and minima.

Grab me Twilight: 2000 or Phoenix Command or Millennium's End or any nonmagical, military or quasi-military setting's rules that looks like some research was put into the encumbrance tables. D&D is disqualified for the role if its rules (regardless of setting) allows for someone, without some kind of scientific or magical explanation, the size of a large cat firing a machinegun from the hip.

I guess a 30 lb ant might be very strong for its size. Are halflings like ants? They might be terrifying if they were. But I have never read any explanation for superstrong halflings before, nor encountered them in literature or cinema, and think these sorts of stat possibilities are just game balance artefacts, not representations of anything remotely real.

8BitNinja
2016-02-01, 02:18 PM
Grab me Twilight: 2000 or Phoenix Command or Millennium's End or any nonmagical, military or quasi-military setting's rules that looks like some research was put into the encumbrance tables. D&D is disqualified for the role if its rules (regardless of setting) allows for someone, without some kind of scientific or magical explanation, the size of a large cat firing a machinegun from the hip.

I guess a 30 lb ant might be very strong for its size. Are halflings like ants? They might be terrifying if they were. But I have never read any explanation for superstrong halflings before, nor encountered them in literature or cinema, and think these sorts of stat possibilities are just game balance artefacts, not representations of anything remotely real.

Ants are strong because of the high force per square inch, not force

Since they are smaller, the force is more concentrated

Segev
2016-02-01, 02:44 PM
I have never read any explanation for superstrong halflings before, nor encountered them in literature or cinema.

If this is your criterion, then it seems the only thing Halflings can be are burglers and dagger-wielding scamps, with the occasional obesity problem. Since I believe the only non-D&D literature or cinema about them is Tolkien's work. Wherein we have no spellcasting halflings, no Halfling paladins, fighters, nor druids.

Wardog
2016-02-01, 03:15 PM
I've gotta say - it says something about a culture when the only proper way to end a peaceful meeting is to team up to go murder some other people. lol

Lots of animals fight others of their own kind. Many live in groups, and will fight those from other groups.

Apparently, humans and dolphins are the only species where two unrelated groups will team up to attack a third.

Anonymouswizard
2016-02-01, 03:23 PM
Let's be honest. When it's a dragon chasing you, you need to be faster than the dragon. He will barely slow down swallowing the guy you outran while he keeps chasing you.

Nah, if a dragon can only eat X people, then you need to be able to run faster than X of the people in the group (I'd suggest going for 1.5X just to be on the safe side). Of course, if the dragon has wyrmlings it's time to move the town a few hundred miles in the opposite direction (kinda holds true if they don't have wyrmlings to be honest).


Show me an exact formula for how large I must be to have a given Strength score, and I'll consider whether to argue with or comply with it.

You certainly have the right to make these kinds of declarations for your game, but "halfway realistic" is either incredibly arbitrary or it's going to be open to some really fiddly discussions about science and physics and biology.

And once you have non-humans involved...are they even using the exact same biology that humans do?

So while I respect your right to make these kinds of rulings, stats are abstractions and the exact boundary values will have to be defined if you're going to insist that size equates to stat maxima and minima.

GURPS gives height ranges for the various Strength scores as well as weight ranges for Skinny, Normal, Overweight, and Obese (maybe fat, I'm not sure) again based on your Strength score. It doesn't strictly require you to use them, but the fact that they talk about what each weight category means implies that you're supposed to use them when considering human characters (if you want to have different weights for different species I just suggest saying e.g. most elves will fall in the skinny column, most dwarves will fall into the overweight column, these are treated as being 'normal').

Mr Beer
2016-02-01, 03:52 PM
I guess a 30 lb ant might be very strong for its size. .

Ants are strong because, roughly speaking, strength increases in proportion to the cross-sectional area of muscle (i.e. squared) and mass increases in proportion to it's volume (i.e. cubed).

Take a man of normal size, double his height, now he is 4x as strong (2x2) but he weighs 8x as much (2x2x2). So he is stronger than a normal guy but proportionally weaker.

Take the same guy, halve his height, now is only 1/4 as strong but he weighs 1/8 as much. So he is weaker than a normal guy but proportionally stronger.

Now take normal guy and reduce him to 1/100th of his height, making him Ant Guy. He is 1/10K as strong and weights 1/1000K as much. Now he is x100 as strong, proportionally speaking. If normal guy can lift his own bodyweight, Any Guy can lift 100x as much. He is super strong.

So a dog-sized ant probably isn't very strong, in fact it will collapse under it's own bodyweight and then asphyxiate because tracheae don't work for large creatures.

wumpus
2016-02-01, 04:39 PM
As somebody said in an earlier thread about an equally silly subject; "Bringing up specific game/edition practices in a general forum is a jerk move". Especially since the edition you're using as proof has been dead for a long, long time.


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).

CharonsHelper
2016-02-01, 04:43 PM
So a dog-sized ant probably isn't very strong, in fact it will collapse under it's own bodyweight and then asphyxiate because tracheae don't work for large creatures.

Not to mention needing an endoskeleton.

That's two things all bug monsters/aliens have to have to make sense. Endoskeletons to go with their exo, and complex circulatory systems. (A bullfrog is about as big as you can get with a simple one.)

PersonMan
2016-02-01, 05:19 PM
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.

What sort of explanations do you consider good?

Is something like 'X grew up in a mountain village near an ancient portal to the Abyss. Tiny holes remain, and the tribe has a ritual in which all newborns are brought to it; during this time X absorbed some of the demonic energy seeping into the material plane and has been somewhat off ever since'. Several types of demons are depicted as being quite thin (for example, Babaus with their stick-arms and 21 Strength) but still being inhumanly strong, so this could justify something like reddish eyes, an unusually thin build and a penchant for emotional outbursts.

Would you be up for something like that, or would you demand something more?

EDIT: I guess what I'm asking is: is the attitude 'normal people aren't like that, how are you special enough to be like that? Explain' or 'convince me with something while I try to poke holes in your explanation'?

Aquillion
2016-02-01, 05:27 PM
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.The same way that 90-lb human can take multiple smacks to the face from a broadsword and a bunch of arrows to the chest and still be barely injured?

These are heroes. D&D isn't supposed to represent normal people, it's supposed to represent near-mythological figures of legend. All the rules are set up for that. Swole!halfling isn't any more ridiculous than any of the other characters we use as a matter of course.

(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.)

Donnadogsoth
2016-02-01, 05:54 PM
What sort of explanations do you consider good?

Is something like 'X grew up in a mountain village near an ancient portal to the Abyss. Tiny holes remain, and the tribe has a ritual in which all newborns are brought to it; during this time X absorbed some of the demonic energy seeping into the material plane and has been somewhat off ever since'. Several types of demons are depicted as being quite thin (for example, Babaus with their stick-arms and 21 Strength) but still being inhumanly strong, so this could justify something like reddish eyes, an unusually thin build and a penchant for emotional outbursts.

Would you be up for something like that, or would you demand something more?

EDIT: I guess what I'm asking is: is the attitude 'normal people aren't like that, how are you special enough to be like that? Explain' or 'convince me with something while I try to poke holes in your explanation'?

There's no arguing with magic. Anything's possible in its light.

Azreal
2016-02-01, 06:05 PM
I have yet to read through this whole thread, but I would like to mention Talislanta as a system where some species do have different stats between Male/Female. Also your Race very much determines what you can build and it makes sense.
Example: A short gnome-like race will never be as a good a Warrior as the Race that was genetically and magically built to be Warriors. Not every Race has magic potential and different cultures have different "schools" of magic available to them.

Donnadogsoth
2016-02-01, 06:24 PM
The same way that 90-lb human can take multiple smacks to the face from a broadsword and a bunch of arrows to the chest and still be barely injured?

These are heroes. D&D isn't supposed to represent normal people, it's supposed to represent near-mythological figures of legend. All the rules are set up for that. Swole!halfling isn't any more ridiculous than any of the other characters we use as a matter of course.

(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.)

That's why I don't use D&D rules, or if I had no choice I would rule that "multiple smacks to the face and a bunch of arrows to the chest" of a hero would be not real hits but amount to some mussed hair and ripped tunics. The last 1 or 2 hit points would be "you got hit for real." The rest is wardrobe damage and fatigue. That's what I'd do if I were playing that way.

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?

My interest in heroes is in some strong sense what real people can accomplish, with a minimum of built-in unreality. Reality being a bit of a bastard, it's fun, and expedient, to make accommodations for a certain amount of unreality. A village archer who's a gloriously fantastic shot, for example, or a slightly rigged medical aid system to help people not die of small cuts, or downplaying the fatigue associated with carrying loot (but not too downplayed, as the dynamic of “escape the monster by dropping treasure” is interesting in itself); I've even thrown in a bona fide magical healing potion which has saved a player from having to roll up a new character. But I draw the line at a condition such as being very short be not a disability in some respects, as if a character with no legs had legs, or a blind man could see. If I were to play a halfling character I would be interested in that character as someone from another world, who faces an intimidating “uphill world” just as I would expect playing a human entering a halfling realm to be facing a similarly intimidating or frustrating “downhill world”.

Aquillion
2016-02-01, 07:06 PM
That's why I don't use D&D rules, or if I had no choice I would rule that "multiple smacks to the face and a bunch of arrows to the chest" of a hero would be not real hits but amount to some mussed hair and ripped tunics. The last 1 or 2 hit points would be "you got hit for real." The rest is wardrobe damage and fatigue. That's what I'd do if I were playing that way.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.