[Setting riff] Y the last man on various famous settings.

[Particle_Man]

In the comic Y the Last Man, all the men just up and die in the same moment, world-wide.

I was wondering what would happen if something a bit like that happened in settings like Eberron, Forgotten Realsm, Greyhawk, Golarion, Krynn, etc.*

I would change it somewhat and let male animals live. But I would not let male deities or outsiders live.

So how would the settings deal with the change? Would some divine portfolios go vacant? Would Krynn suddenly favour Evil since the Good Dragon God died (as well as Raistlin, the only only being really able to stand up to the Evil Dragon God)?

*I will say that this means that trans men die and trans women live.

[The Glyphstone]

In most cases, the price of diamond dust is going to go through the roof as the 9th level+ level Clerics start working overtime to Raise or Resurrect people. Ebberon's lack of high level casters will be the exception.

[Mehangel]

Honestly I dont think it will effect the setting as much as one would think. In addition to the ability to simply raise the dead, there are a plethora of ways to change gender allowing for re-population. Not to mention that there are a number of real-life species that are not born one gender or another and often change gender based on their situations (clownfish I am looking at you); this says nothing of the countless outsiders (whether good, bad, chaotic or axiomatic) who possess no true anatomical gender.

[Afgncaap5]

Are we limiting death to humanoids? Or will this also affect dragons, giants, monstrous humanoids, and intelligent magical beasts? If it's magical in nature, it may also affect male-personality Warforged. How about Outsiders and Fey?

And will the death just be regular death? Or are you thinking "permadeath" where attempts to rez a guy fails? Or, possibly worse, will rez attempts succeed only to have the characters instantly die again right then and there? Will treks taken to the afterlife suddenly be devoid of male creatures? Will Strahd suddenly go from being an undead vampire in Ravenloft to being a really well-dressed corpse?

Attempts at gendercide in D&D may have far-reaching implications, but likely only if those implications extend to the typical ways that people can circumvent, ignore, or forestall death. This is clearly the kind of thing that a DM is pulling on a group of players so the need for the effect to follow most rules can be waived, but there'll be a lot of in-world reactions that are filtered through the rules.

And since this is a discussion based on Y...

...is this a magical Death Effect, and will the tiny handful of guys with Death Ward cast on themselves at the time be unaffected?

[Particle_Man]

Interesting:

Now what if all those raising and resurrection attempts fail? And on further analysis (astral travelling, plane shift, etc.) it is discovered that the male petitioners and male souls have vanished into oblivion, and that outsiders die when they present themselves as male or polymorph/alter themselves into a male form?

Remember, my setting has the *GODS* that are male die too, as per the OP.

Clown fish get to live, as animals get to live in my scenario. ;)

[Coidzor]

Vecna comes out as a Transwoman inexplicably 2 months beforehand.

Asmodeus takes a vacation before things go to hell-er.

Takhisis loses her taste for villainy with no underlings to boss around and no gods really interested in offering her a challenge or gets really, really bored at any rate.

Boccob doesn't even notice as he retroactively has his gender changed at the dawn of time and continues to read uninterrupted as everything goes down.



Chronomancers get *real* weird for a while.



The Lady of Pain Mazes the wave of death for destroying her Dabus and remakes them.



Hell: Glasya and Baalphegor rule hell, along with Erinyes and a handful of other devil types and Duchesses of Hell. For the most part, though, Hell is no longer a power in the planes. They may temporarily institute a few Night Hags as nobility while they try to recover. The deposed Lady of the First is probably able to escape from her prison and reclaim her power and position guarding the gates of Baator.

The Yugoloths: Come in both male and female in all varieties, so they're vastly weakened and they lose their top leadership, but they fare much better than the other fiends on the whole.

Carceri: The Demodands and their creator are now extinct.

The Abyss: Lolth and the Queen of the Succubi become the two dominant forces in the abyss as the only entities that command the loyalties of a massive quantity of female demons. As more demons are male, however, the Abyss, as a whole, at least temporarily, ceases to be much of a concern for anyone.

Mechanicus: The Modrons are unaffected or gone, IIRC, and the Formians are well-situated to take over so long as they can bring back one or two males to life or turn some females or as-yet-ungendered eggs male so they can breed with the Queens.

Limbo: The Slaad are gone.

The Upper Planes: Seem to be a mix of male and female of the various types, but their power is still greatly reduced.



No freaking clue what happens for species that are true hermaphrodites or that are asexual and self-reproduce.

[Zanos]

I don't think many outsiders actually have genders. The picture of pit fiends seems to lack any equipment either way, and many outsiders reproduce asexually.

Deities likewise don't really have genders unless they're ascended humans. They're just forces of nature. Even if they do die, So is usually fairly brisk with making sure jobs are being done, so critical deities will be reincarnated at a reasonable pace.

Many high level spell casters would be perfectly safe as their divinations would warn then and they can take precautions. Many are also lichen or some other forms of monstrous immortal that renders gender fairly meaningless.

[animewatcha]

Well...with a carefully worded Wish...

[Vaz]

In most cases, the price of diamond dust is going to go through the roof as the 9th level+ level Clerics start working overtime to Raise or Resurrect people. Ebberon's lack of high level casters will be the exception.
Locate a Dead Cleric and make a Spellstitched Undead?

[Particle_Man]

And now I am going to be even more unfair (To paraphrase Q from Star Trek TNG: "Let us be ridiculously unfair!"):

This Event was not forseen by any mortal or god, so Vecna, Boccob, all those contingency spell wizards (at least the male ones) etc., die too. No "suddenly I am retroactively female" loopholes. And yes, it also kills undead that "were" male, down to "male" skeletons collapsing while "female" skeletons do not.

Time travel did not see this either (time travel is weird, but somehow, from now on, time travellers from the future of the Event come from a future where all the men died, even though before the Event time travellers from the future came from a future where that had not happened).

For the purpose of eventually running this campaign I am going for the effects, not the loopholes, so I will keep unfairly plugging loopholes (though I am grateful for people mentioning them so that I can know what loopholes to plug for my campaign). I am also interested in what campaign worlds would be affected in what ways, because that could determine which campaign world would be most interesting to try this Event in).

Too add to the troubles, no males are born after the event either. So there is a bit of "we gotta figure out how to make new kids!" built into this scenario as a campaign motivation for those races that reproduced sexually.

[Segev]

In light of your desire to plug all loopholes, I suggest that you a) decide what happens if somebody uses bestow curse or a Belt of Gender-Swap to go from female to male AFTER this has happened (do they insta-die or do they become male and get around it?), and b) that you determine if it's possible to wish or miracle the dead back to life-but-as-women, and whether reincarnate can bring them back, but as females.


All that said, one way to close the loopholes rather neatly is to steal a page from an episode of Young Justice, and have it instead be a massive multiversal bifurcation. Instead of dropping dead, all the men just...vanish. (What's really happened is the men saw the same thing happen to all the women; they're in parallel dimensions that are unreachable from each other, now.) Swapping sex shunts you to the other realm, or fails outright as the laws of the new realms forbid the existence of the opposite sex.

[Zanos]

I think the issue is that fantasy settings are just...weird. Entities exist that are neither conclusively male or female, can choose to present as one in ways that are purely external like deities, disembodied souls that wander the planes, and centuries old spellcasters who's gender is about as meaningful as the price of tea in china. You've already mentioned that transwomen survive, so genetic birth is right out as a determining factor. As an aside, that could also help alleviate the reproduction problem.

So how do we determine whether or not something is a man? I think we should use the size of their miserable pile of secrets.

[Uncle Pine]

In most cases, the price of diamond dust is going to go through the roof as the 9th level+ level Clerics start working overtime to Raise or Resurrect people. Ebberon's lack of high level casters will be the exception.

Fun fact: this would help mass resurrection by a huge margin, considering the material component for Resurrection and the likes is "diamonds worth a total of at least 10,000 gp". If the price of diamonds go up by x1,000, suddenly you can resurrect 1,000 people with the amount of diamonds previously needed to resurrect a single one.

[thethird]

I would change it somewhat and let male animals live.

Why keep the animals? I mean they have shorter lifespans and their impact would be felt faster.

One of my most pressing concerns was what happens when all male carrion insects die causing the female population to not be able to reproduce and die eventually causing a decrease on the speed of decomposition of bodies, which there would be plenty as apparently all males are dead now.

Followed by the death of all female bees (a bee has a lifespan of 150 days give or take) due to there not being males to repopulate with. Without bees and other pollinating insects plant pollination is going to take a hit.

While the impact won't be felt short term in forests (trees have a really long lifespan) crops are going to be greatly affected. Let's say there are two harvesting seasons between the all males die and the crops start to not be pollinated and thus yield a lot less fruit.

Suddenly your worry moves from whom I'm going to reproduce with to what I'm going to eat. Unfortunately most work animals are herbivorous. So you eventually have either starving herbivorous animals or... Omnivorous animals becoming carrion feeders. After all without decomposing insects there are a lot of corpses laying around, ripe with bacteria of course.

A sheep lives for twelve years, a cow lives for twenty years. How would the decrease of grain impact on their lifespan?

As we approach the generational change, thirty years from all male are dead, there are almost no animals left...

What do we eat now is a more pressing concern that how we reproduce tomorrow.

---

Of course since that's not the premise of the discussion...

Self resetting traps of create food and water become a common occurrence. Along with self resetting traps of a spell that would allow females to bear child without male intervention, I'm guessing the book of erotic fantasy has something to allow that.

Overall the ratio of boobs to mouths has gone up while the ratio of nipples to mouths has remained stable.

[Zanos]

Along with self resetting traps of a spell that would allow females to bear child without male intervention, I'm guessing the book of erotic fantasy has something to allow that.
Well, if you don't mind them being evil half-fiends, you could go with Dragon Magazine's searing seed...

[Coidzor]

Too add to the troubles, no males are born after the event either. So there is a bit of "we gotta figure out how to make new kids!" built into this scenario as a campaign motivation for those races that reproduced sexually.

Are Transwomen still born? If so, then you're likely to see non-harem humanoids move to a harem model.


Well, if you don't mind them being evil half-fiends, you could go with Dragon Magazine's searing seed...

Obviously this calls for a FATAListic answer. I am a terrible person.


I don't think many outsiders actually have genders. The picture of pit fiends seems to lack any equipment either way, and many outsiders reproduce asexually.

Deities likewise don't really have genders unless they're ascended humans. They're just forces of nature. Even if they do die, So is usually fairly brisk with making sure jobs are being done, so critical deities will be reincarnated at a reasonable pace.

Some lack physical sex and a few lack gender, but a lot of them have gender in some form or another.

Hell is a Patriarchy, after all, and Erinyes are very female in all the ways that matter, which is part of why they fit into the hierarchy in a weird way.

Pit Fiends and Balors have to do something to make Half-Fiends and Tieflings, and they aren't the types to be much fussed about getting shape-changing magic in play if they have genitals.


As for deities, almost all deities have a gender, even if it's just to specific aspects of them. IIRC, there's more deities with male and female aspects or that are both male and female than there are deities with no gender at all.