PDA

View Full Version : Intersex PCs



Talakeal
2020-12-23, 02:00 PM
I have noticed that a lot of RPG books these days are going out of their way to be more inclusive of characters who do not fit into "traditional" concepts of sex and gender; for example recently when creating characters for Delta Green I saw the character sheet has gender check boxes for male, female, and other, and I have been advised to add something similar to the character creation chapter in my own game.

In the past, I have had players come to me wanting to play intersex characters in games I was running, and I always said no; mostly because I assumed they were doing it for fetishistic reasons and would creep out the other players.

But now I am starting to think that maybe I should ease up on it. I mean, character's genitals are never referenced in the game as is, why would that suddenly change if they were "nonstandard"?

But, I still am afraid that people would either do it for fetishistic reasons, or just as an attention getter; but then I wonder if that is necessarily even a bad thing? And then I think that some players would be creeped out just by seeing the "other" box ticked on another player's character sheet.


Does anyone have any experience with running a game for intersex PCs or the like? Any advice on how to avoid the pitfalls, or ideas about what the pitfalls even are?

Thanks.


Also, trying hard not to offend anyone with my language, but I am kind of unsure about terminology, so if anyone has any suggestions to improve that I would love to hear them.

Darth Tom
2020-12-23, 02:20 PM
Personally, I would treat it the same as any choice that gives you pause. When I've seen players taking different sex or gender characters, it's mostly because they want to safely explore that identity, so I would assume that's the case here. I haven't personally encountered behaviour that I or my group found disconcerting from that, but maybe we've been lucky. On the other hand, if a player wants to be kender, that worries me because they typically either want to be disruptive (and my group doesn't welcome PVP action) or they want to try playing it positively - which can be fine, if they really know what they're doing, but can go poorly.

In those cases I would try to engage with them before committing to characters and try to gently talk about their motivations. Try to figure out what appeals to them about this character and how that might work.

Also, if you have a problem with players acting fetishistically, it might be worth sitting down with your players and creating some sort of safe word for "this is making me uncomfortable". We have that, it doesn't get used much, but it is very handy.

KaussH
2020-12-23, 02:20 PM
Overall gender issues in a setting can be a huge thing, and make sweeping cultural changes. But thats for a new post.

On a pc basis, i have never had an issue with pcs being whatever they want to put in the box. Sometime a small " how this culture handles x " or " how do you want to play that" is needed. But thats the case for a bunch of backround questions.

So the long and short of it is, i wouldn't just say "other" as that can be insulting to some people, but go ahead and let people play he/she/them/ ect as they want. Dont worry so much about fetishism, that falls under playing poorly.

As an added note, choosing a gender in game doesnt lead to fetishism. You can be a cis male playing a cis male human in game and fetishize yourself just fine.

Xervous
2020-12-23, 06:55 PM
There are current trends that make this a marketable feature for a system. If it doesn’t conflict heavily with the design intent it’s... how do people say it... free real estate?

Anonymouswizard
2020-12-23, 07:08 PM
Intersex conditions are a whole host of conditions that vary a lot. Notably they are slowly getting more exposure in games, D&D 5e itself has two PC races with acknowledged intersex members (elves and lizardfolk), but it's at a very basic level at least partially because of how varied they are.

Gender and nonbinary people are easier to be inclusive towards because it's something you can easily leave off a sheet or make a relatively short write-in section. Honestly my preference these days is to not have it on the sheet, as a NB person myself I feel like having to decide on a gener identify as limiting even if I'm allowed every single one which people identify with.

Talakeal
2020-12-23, 07:12 PM
Intersex conditions are a whole host of conditions that vary a lot. Notably they are slowly getting more exposure in games, D&D 5e itself has two PC races with acknowledged intersex members (elves and lizardfolk), but it's at a very basic level at least partially because of how varied they are.

Gender and nonbinary people are easier to be inclusive towards because it's something you can easily leave off a sheet or make a relatively short write-in section. Honestly my preference these days is to not have it on the sheet, as a NB person myself I feel like having to decide on a gener identify as limiting even if I'm allowed every single one which people identify with.

I started using “gender” instead of “sex” on character sheets because too many play-testers were putting “yes please.” I wish I was joking.

Anonymouswizard
2020-12-23, 07:44 PM
I started using “gender” instead of “sex” on character sheets because too many play-testers were putting “yes please.” I wish I was joking.

Why do we need either? What purpose do they serve?

Talakeal
2020-12-23, 07:56 PM
Why do we need either? What purpose do they serve?

In short, because it is a very efficient, quite probably the most efficient, way to share a tremendous amount of descriptive information about a character.


I am not quite sure what you are getting that though; are you saying that RPGs don't need descriptions on the character sheet? Or that society would be better off if people were gender blind? Or something else?

Anonymouswizard
2020-12-23, 08:08 PM
In short, because it is a very efficient, quite probably the most efficient, way to share a tremendous amount of descriptive information about a character.


I am not quite sure what you are getting that though; are you saying that RPGs don't need descriptions on the character sheet? Or that society would be better off if people were gender blind? Or something else?

Yes. Yes. And yes.

It really gets less information across than you think, at least in my view. I'm also completely fine not having any description fields, or just having it be a space you can write a few sentences in.

Talakeal
2020-12-23, 08:16 PM
Yes. Yes. And yes.

It really gets less information across than you think, at least in my view. I'm also completely fine not having any description fields, or just having it be a space you can write a few sentences in.

Ok then.

I am personally completely uninterested in playing a game that isn't "fiction first" and have trouble coming up with a single word that can tell me more about a person than their sex. Now, one could argue that there are more important words; but I can't think of any that actually carry more information.

At least, for a human.

Faily
2020-12-23, 10:17 PM
Just let people do it. And if it works fine, then it's fine. If it becomes creepy and inappropriate, then stop doing it.

While I'm a cis white woman myself, I've played both male and female characters, and played a variation of gay, straight, bi, and asexual. These days I've kind of preferred to say "Identifies As" rather than write their biological sex. I game with a couple of people who are non-binary, gender-fluid, and one who is trans, and they've been very positive to adopting that descriptor for character profiles.


Ok then.

I am personally completely uninterested in playing a game that isn't "fiction first" and have trouble coming up with a single word that can tell me more about a person than their sex. Now, one could argue that there are more important words; but I can't think of any that actually carry more information.

At least, for a human.


Race (elf, human, dwarf, etc).
Color of skin and/or hair.
Build (built like a brick house, small and waifish, portly, etc).

Not saying that it's wrong that the first thing you see is a person's appearant sex/gender, but that is only an aspect of who they are, and not nescessarily even a major part of how they see themselves.

False God
2020-12-24, 12:00 AM
We're playing a bunch of fantasy creatures which quite literally can range from plant people to shapeshifters with no fixed sex. I've played a few of both (with the former expressing an alien curiosity over humanoid genders and the latter wondering why everyone was so uptight about such things) but it's never a defining element of play.

I tend to find that when people bring their character's sexuality/orientation/general proclivities up a lot, it doesn't matter what they are, it becomes an issue for the table.

RedMage125
2020-12-24, 12:56 AM
Just let people do it. And if it works fine, then it's fine. If it becomes creepy and inappropriate, then stop doing it.

While I'm a cis white woman myself, I've played both male and female characters, and played a variation of gay, straight, bi, and asexual. These days I've kind of preferred to say "Identifies As" rather than write their biological sex. I game with a couple of people who are non-binary, gender-fluid, and one who is trans, and they've been very positive to adopting that descriptor for character profiles.




Race (elf, human, dwarf, etc).
Color of skin and/or hair.
Build (built like a brick house, small and waifish, portly, etc).

Not saying that it's wrong that the first thing you see is a person's appearant sex/gender, but that is only an aspect of who they are, and not nescessarily even a major part of how they see themselves.

I second this advice.

Also, for what it's worth, I'm a cis white male, but I've always sort of viewed elves as a little..."gender-ambiguous", even in previous editions. My most often re-used character concept is an elven mage named Tessrel Moonshadow, who goes by "Tess" to his friends (which is kind of an androgynous nickname). His most recent incarnation in 5e was as an Eladrin Sorcerer. Especially since this was post-MToF, on his character sheet I listed his gender as "Elf". Which I feel says everything that needed to be said in regards to that.

Disclaimer/caveat: I know I just consistently used male pronouns with regards to that character, but that's more in the nature of trying to be concise in language. I personally find "they/them" to be imprecise when trying to describe a single individual, but that is solely from a grammar and syntax point of view. And I am personally ignorant of the correct pronoun to use for such an individual, so I default to "he/him/his" out of simplicity and, quite frankly, laziness.

Scots Dragon
2020-12-24, 01:37 AM
Intersex conditions are a whole host of conditions that vary a lot. Notably they are slowly getting more exposure in games, D&D 5e itself has two PC races with acknowledged intersex members (elves and lizardfolk), but it's at a very basic level at least partially because of how varied they are.

Gender and nonbinary people are easier to be inclusive towards because it's something you can easily leave off a sheet or make a relatively short write-in section. Honestly my preference these days is to not have it on the sheet, as a NB person myself I feel like having to decide on a gener identify as limiting even if I'm allowed every single one which people identify with.

As a trans woman, I like to make that explicit as part of characters I play.

Vahnavoi
2020-12-24, 02:46 AM
I started using “gender” instead of “sex” on character sheets because too many play-testers were putting “yes please.” I wish I was joking.

Haha, that's a classic. :smallbiggrin: In fact, when I readied a bunch of characters for convention play as a GM, I put that on the elf's character sheet. (All of the characters had gender-neutral names and ambiguous or nonsensical dara on the "sex" part of the sheet.)

Personally, I consider sex, gender and sexuality of a character trivial. When I made a randomizer for sex and gender, it deliberately involved a chance to create asexual, trans and intersex characters. I'm not sure why people make a such a big deal about it. Especially in context of speculative fiction, which, before you get to realistic and realistically muted portrayals of various intersex conditions, has always had mythological and exaggarated androgynous and non-sexed beings. Getting creeped out by an intersex human when you could run into a Baphomet-worshipping shape-shifting lust demons or changelings or have your physical sex altered or removed by a magic potion is... quaint.

There's a thing to be said for adding intersex (etc.) option to character creation, though: unless you're going to model human (or non-human) physiology to a very deep extent or going to dwell significantly on some culture's stance on sex and gender (etc.), there honestly isn't much to be done besides noting "yes, these people exists and you can play one if you want to". If you're going to abstract it away to the same degree most systems abstract physical differences between males and females (that is, by not acknowledging any difference), it is even more trivial than it'd otherwise be.

Anonymouswizard
2020-12-24, 05:06 AM
As a trans woman, I like to make that explicit as part of characters I play.

That's fine, I just think that works better as part of a description box long enough to fit a couple of sentences in. 'Charlie is a little under six feet tall, has coffee coloured skin, green knee length hair, grey eyes, and was assigned make at birth but identifies as a woman' is a nice concise description that gets across most things and to me doesn't mean I have to be prescriptive with my character's gender identity.

I'm not against having the space to make such things clear. I'm against the sheet saying I should put such things on it when I don't always want to.

Silly Name
2020-12-24, 05:34 AM
I find myself agreeing with AnonymousWizard that I find no real value in having a "gender checkbox" on any character sheet, and would much prefer having just a big box for character description where the player can write what they feel is important.

As for inclusion of gender identities past "cis man/woman" in your game, there's lots of ways to go around it. You may simply decide to drop any mention of gender and just let players decide for themselves (this is notably easier in certain settings, I think), or include mentions of how the setting treats gender identities past cis men and women - and if going this route you have to make lots of choices. In one of my own settings which is mostly influenced by Mediterranean Antiquity, I've decided to be very ahistorical and just make sexuality and gender identity a non-issue: nobody in that world will give you crap for who you are, unless they're a complete *******.

I'm not against letting players have characters that are a different gender or sexuality from them, at least on principle. The only question I ask myself when receiving such a request is evaluating the person: yes, we have all heard stories about the creepy guy rolling up an elf maiden and bringing their fetishes to the table, but I'm going to kick out that sort of person no matter what. But I consider most of the people I game with mature enough to not have such worries when it comes to playing as something they're not.

They will, however, still giggle like middle-schoolers if they manage to turn an NPC's name into a innuendo :smallsigh:.

Anonymouswizard
2020-12-24, 06:12 AM
I find myself agreeing with AnonymousWizard that I find no real value in having a "gender checkbox" on any character sheet, and would much prefer having just a big box for character description where the player can write what they feel is important.

I think the key is that it should be up to the player if it's on the sheet. 90% of players will put it on, but gender (as well as hair, eye, and skin colour) going on the sheet should be their choice.


The only question I ask myself when receiving such a request is evaluating the person: yes, we have all heard stories about the creepy guy rolling up an elf maiden and bringing their fetishes to the table, but I'm going to kick out that sort of person no matter what. But I consider most of the people I game with mature enough to not have such worries when it comes to playing as something they're not.

I find myself agreeing with this, and find myself glad that the only time I've seen a 'slutty lesbian (well, bisexual) sorceress' character played it was by a woman who knew when to play it up and when to tone it down. Yes the character only wore about three dragon scales, but this came up so rarely most of us just ignored it (I eventually decided she was wearing something over it in my mind, even if that was just a coat or cloak for travelling).

Which brings me to a point, after a certain age most players who have one of these are doing so for entirely mature reasons. I once had a transgender transmuter wizard who was trying to develop a permanent gender-change spell (willing targets only) and who used a mixture of practical (disguise kit proficiency) and magical means to pass as their gender. Unfortunately that game never got very far.

Grod_The_Giant
2020-12-24, 09:13 AM
First, a terminology note: "intersex" is a medical condition where the body displays both male and female sexual characteristics, to a greater or lesser degree. It has nothing to do with your gender or sexuality, and not everyone who is biologically intersex claims it as a label. When in doubt, use "queer." That covers anyone who's not cisgender and heterosexual.

As for queer characters in games? Put me firmly on team "who gives a ****." Mature players will be fine no matter what gender and sexuality they assign to their character; disruptive ***holes will be problems no matter how many limits you put on their character. If the person is worth playing with, let them play whatever identity they want.

As for queer characters in setting? That's a little more tied to what themes you're exploring. Personally, I try to avoid real-world bigotry in my games--there's more than enough of that in everyday life. Regardless of historical context, NPCs will use the right pronouns and not care one whit about the gender of the people you're sleeping with. (And unless I have a firm idea already, I give them a 1/5 chance of being genderqueer themself (with the remaining 4/5 being divided equally between identify as male/identify as female), and if their sexuality ever comes up, I roll 1d6 for their position on the Kinsey Scale.)

As for queer characters and character sheets? Inclusivity is important, but I think the dominant question there is the system's themes. Delta Green, iirc, assumes characters are government agents of some sort, so a "male/female/other" checkbox sort of fits the government-paperwork aesthetic. If your game is heavily focused on romance, it probably does make sense to include separate lines for gender and sexuality; if it's about being abandoned in the wilderness and trying to survive, you might not bother with recording gender at all. If in doubt, you can't go wrong with a blank line.

GentlemanVoodoo
2020-12-24, 09:59 AM
In my circles intersex was more of does it make for interesting characters and contributing to the story. If a concept made more sense to play as one gender versus another we ran with it. The only time I ever was in a game that flat out banned players not doing this was about 2 years ago at an adventure league game. Issue on that was one of the players was being an idiot using the game to force cram social justice jargen down everyones throat. A male playing a trans female orc. It wasn't in the sense of open dialogue discussions on the issues he brought up in roleplay scenes but just that anyone born male was inheritly evil. It got to a point the ladies in the group (3 of 7 players total) were not having it and asked the owner of the comic shop we played at to ban him as he was making the environment toxic for everyone. After that we all agreed for the game which we rebooted, each gender would only play there own gender.

Willie the Duck
2020-12-24, 10:09 AM
But, I still am afraid that people would either do it for fetishistic reasons, or just as an attention getter; but then I wonder if that is necessarily even a bad thing? And then I think that some players would be creeped out just by seeing the "other" box ticked on another player's character sheet.

Regarding fetishistic reasons -- when a person first comes to my gaming group, I have a list of 'community expectations' that I have everyone read (and actually ask them what it said, or otherwise make sure they didn't just pretend to pay attention), and it includes something to the effect of, "Everyone else present at this gaming table are not here to bear witness to your exploration of a personal sexual kink. That is not the purpose of this game. You are perfectly capable of creating your perfect sexual avatar using game rules on your own time." And I tell people that I expect them to respect that. Universally. We also use X cards and when someone takes something too far, anyone and everyone can veto it and retribution for that veto is not tolerated. That is a universal for my game, and this particular situation is no exception.

Regarding attention-getting reasons -- I am continuously mystified* by the number of people online in rpg/nerd communities decidedly worried that someone else just might be doing something unusual to be noticed and/or to be unique in some way. We have multiple over-worn terms for the concept-- snowflake, edgelord, etc. To me it seems decidedly like that grade school insult, "they think they're soooo special!" Like, what exactly is the problem? We are playing power fantasy games where people are getting to pretend they are wizards or cyborgs or billionaire playboy crimefighters -- getting to be special for a few hours out of the week is a primary reason for the existence of these games.
*despite managing teams of people who all fall into this community.

Vahnavoi
2020-12-24, 01:17 PM
The thing about "specialness" is fairly simple: a lot of game masters design their scenarios as something independent of the characters. So if a player then brings in a character incongruous with that scenario, it's going to draw attention away from what the GM has set up.

The follow-up question then becomes "okay, so why not design scenarios dependant on the characters?" And the answer is that players come up with their characters independent of not just the scenario, not just the game master, but the entire game. Their character concept comes somewhere else entirely and the scenario, the game master and the game system are all something to bend to suit that concept.

You can't justify such "specialness" with power fantasy. In fact, games are crappy vehicle for power fantasy. Don't get me wrong, you can get a decent power fantasy out of a game - after the fact, if you're succesfull in a game. Baking that power fantasy into your character concept, before a single game move has been made, is a statement you don't want to play the game, you just want to win it.

However, when it comes to this point (about power fantasy), sex and gender are trivial, because they typically don't give you mechanical power in a game. When they do, it's usually because the game group has silly ideas about what these things mean socially, often to other players rather than anything in the game. Because inside a game world, being intersex, trans, etc. doesn't have to be anything special in a way that'd get anyone attention.

Theoboldi
2020-12-24, 02:23 PM
Regarding attention-getting reasons -- I am continuously mystified* by the number of people online in rpg/nerd communities decidedly worried that someone else just might be doing something unusual to be noticed and/or to be unique in some way. We have multiple over-worn terms for the concept-- snowflake, edgelord, etc. To me it seems decidedly like that grade school insult, "they think they're soooo special!" Like, what exactly is the problem? We are playing power fantasy games where people are getting to pretend they are wizards or cyborgs or billionaire playboy crimefighters -- getting to be special for a few hours out of the week is a primary reason for the existence of these games.
*despite managing teams of people who all fall into this community.

I think this is probably because many of us have had contact with or behaved as that guy at some previous point in our lives. The fear isn't of somebody being unique or stepping out of line, but rather the motivation behind that specialness. That is to say, a desire to stand out among the other people in the room and possess some greater level of significance among them, even at the cost of these other people. Usually, this motivation leads to an unwillingness to engage with the same ground rules that everyone else has agreed to and holds to, and a desire to hog the spotlight.

That's just from an RPG community viewpoint, but I think about sums up why you see that sort of attitude. It's really not a useful assumption to have in every case, as that just ends up causing you a lot of headaches and drives away people who want to explore new concepts, but that seems to be the main reason to me. It's less about "somebody's trying to stand out" and more about "somebody's trying to make what they want more important than what I want". A pretty primal fear, all things considered, with all that implies.


Anyways, in regards to the OP, I don't think there's any need to worry. There's a good >99% chance the player just wants to explore a particular non-binary identity for their character, for whatever reasons that may be. Unless your game explicitly allows sexual content, I doubt they'll be using it as an outlet for those sorts of fantasies, and are really just looking to explore them from a personality and personal experience standpoint. Don't feel the need to include any particular content tailored towards their queer nature either, unless they specifically ask for it. (By which I mean stories that deal with bigotry, difficulties in romance, or other such topics.) You'd only be making a lot of work for yourself and risk upsetting them with topics that hit too close to home.

The Glyphstone
2020-12-24, 04:40 PM
I

Anyways, in regards to the OP, I don't think there's any need to worry. There's a good >99% chance the player just wants to explore a particular non-binary identity for their character, for whatever reasons that may be.

Sadly having read many of the OP's previous threads about their misadventures in Bizarro Gaming World, I suspect there will probably be a very good need to worry. I'll still fully advocate for doing so on the 1% off chance it's legit as you hope it will be, though.

Theoboldi
2020-12-24, 04:47 PM
Sadly having read many of the OP's previous threads about their misadventures in Bizarro Gaming World, I suspect there will probably be a very good need to worry. I'll still fully advocate for doing so on the 1% off chance it's legit as you hope it will be, though.

Bizarro...?

reads OP's username again

Oh no. :smalleek:

Well, even if it's Talakeal's crazy players, I'll stand by my decision.

Talakeal
2020-12-24, 05:34 PM
Wow, lot's of good responses. Thanks!

Wall of text incoming!


Just let people do it. And if it works fine, then it's fine. If it becomes creepy and inappropriate, then stop doing it.

While I'm a cis white woman myself, I've played both male and female characters, and played a variation of gay, straight, bi, and asexual. These days I've kind of preferred to say "Identifies As" rather than write their biological sex. I game with a couple of people who are non-binary, gender-fluid, and one who is trans, and they've been very positive to adopting that descriptor for character profiles.

IMO that is a bit wordy for a character sheet.

I have had trans players, but never a trans character, so it has honestly never come up. Personally, I get enough dysmorphia in real life, I don't want to also have to deal with it in game, so I just play a female character.

From a verisimilitude perspective, the idea of a transperson doesn't make sense in all settings. Most that I play in either have the technology / magic available for people to change their biological sex if they really want to, and most are egalitarian enough and / or primitive enough that they don't have a concept of gender which is divorced from biological sex.

The other problem with "identifies as" is it comes across as obfuscation. If a character in a game is openly trans, that information should be available to the players. If they are not open about it, well, that is kind of where my problem lies. The players should be allowed to notice / figure it out for themselves at some point, but that is going to require an awkward scene which I feel will play like the horrible transphobic "liar revealed scene" in movies like Mrs. Doubtfire or Ace Ventura.



Race (elf, human, dwarf, etc).
Color of skin and/or hair.
Build (built like a brick house, small and waifish, portly, etc).

Not saying that it's wrong that the first thing you see is a person's apparent sex/gender, but that is only an aspect of who they are, and not nescessarily even a major part of how they see themselves.

As I said, species probably says more, but most RPGs I play don't allow nonhuman characters to begin with.

I am kind of floored though, at the idea that hair color or body build would say more about a person than their gender. Even if we are just going by looks, gender influences a whole host of features, as well as fashion, physical capabilities, familial ties, psychology, and role in society. Obviously not everyone conforms to gender norms, but as a quick baseline description it serves well enough.


I tend to find that when people bring their character's sexuality/orientation/general proclivities up a lot, it doesn't matter what they are, it becomes an issue for the table.

Man, you would hate playing with me then. Outside of one shots, I don't think I have had a character in decades whose sexuality didn't determine their narrative arc.

This really seems to be an issue of railroading rather than making people uncomfortable though.

If, for example, I am on a quest to rescue my lady love from the Dark Lord or to prove my worth to her father, the only disruption is if you are playing a game that is too rigid to incorporate player motivations into your story. On the other hand, if the disruption comes from the fact that I am also a woman (which has happened), then I think maybe I am not the problem there.


Disclaimer/caveat: I know I just consistently used male pronouns with regards to that character, but that's more in the nature of trying to be concise in language. I personally find "they/them" to be imprecise when trying to describe a single individual, but that is solely from a grammar and syntax point of view. And I am personally ignorant of the correct pronoun to use for such an individual, so I default to "he/him/his" out of simplicity and, quite frankly, laziness.

Agreed.

I really wish the nonbinary community had chosen to go with an invented pronoun rather than using "they". Reading a plural pronoun for a singular individual always confuses the heck out of me.


That's fine, I just think that works better as part of a description box long enough to fit a couple of sentences in. 'Charlie is a little under six feet tall, has coffee coloured skin, green knee length hair, grey eyes, and was assigned make at birth but identifies as a woman' is a nice concise description that gets across most things and to me doesn't mean I have to be prescriptive with my character's gender identity.

I'm not against having the space to make such things clear. I'm against the sheet saying I should put such things on it when I don't always want to.

In my experience, character sheets have traditionally read like forms or identification cards. I agree that a box for prose is helpful, and my game includes one, but I don't think it needs to take the place of concise fields; I imagine many players would have trouble picking out important details from prose, if they bothered to read it at all.

I don't personally have a problem leaving things blank or writing none on a character sheet, for example under hair color if I am playing a lizard person or constitution if I am playing an undead. But you are still going to have to describe your character at some point, and I imagine most people are going to want a description of at least your biological sex, even if that is androgynous or intersex or whatnot.

Heck, I remember one time when I gave my character a gender neutral name and didn't disclose my gender, and everyone at the table just assumed I was playing a male character. When I finally did disclose my gender, they insisted that I was lying to them, that they all clearly remembered me introducing myself as a man, and that I was now trying to pull a fast one on them with a retcon. That was a VERY uncomfortable conversation that I don't want to ever have to repeat.


In one of my own settings which is mostly influenced by Mediterranean Antiquity, I've decided to be very ahistorical and just make sexuality and gender identity a non-issue: nobody in that world will give you crap for who you are, unless they're a complete *******.

My world is very similar, but people still need to procreate. I can't imagine a world were some sort of man / woman family structure isn't present in some degree, even if it isn't as ubiquitous as our world.


First, a terminology note: "intersex" is a medical condition where the body displays both male and female sexual characteristics, to a greater or lesser degree. It has nothing to do with your gender or sexuality, and not everyone who is biologically intersex claims it as a label. When in doubt, use "queer." That covers anyone who's not cisgender and heterosexual.

I didn't actually mean to discuss the entire spectrum of queer characters, although many of the same issues may crop up. I specifically meant intersex, although I am aware that some schools of though label all transpeople intersex as they have brain structures or hormone levels atypical to cisgendered members of their biological sex.



In this particular case; one of my very good friends has a fetish for / fascination with women with male genitals, either pre-op trans women or naturally intersex individuals. There are numerous more precise labels here, but I don't think any of them are particularly politically correct.

He has on several occasions asked if he could play one in my campaign, and I have previously said no. I am not afraid he is going to disrupt the game with graphic sex scenes or anything of the sort. But I am concerned about how to reveal that information to the rest of the group. If I just don't say anything, it seems weird that none of the other party members wouldn't notice at some point and I am hiding information from the rest of the party. On the other hand, as I said above, I really don't want an awkward and potentially highly transphobic reveal scene. Or, maybe I am just afraid that someone will be creeped out if they notice he has marked "other" on his character sheet.

I had a similar experience in my last campaign, where I had a recurring NPC who was a nymph, and when I made a character sheet for her (as I do for all my recurring NPCs) I used a doodle another friend had drawn, not explicitly for that purpose, which, though not nude or graphic or overtly sexual, had an exaggeratedly feminine "Jessica Rabbit" physique. I never even meant for the players to see it, but I uploaded it to the group drop box where I kept all of my campaign notes, and when one of the players discovered it and shared it with the rest of the group, it resulted in a very awkward conversation where one player called me creepy and another player kept making references to the whizzard and his magical realm.

Heck, I had another experience where a player chose to seduce an NPC to get information. There was no description of the event, but I insisted on RPing out the "pillow talk" as it was very vital to the plot to know exactly what information the PC got from her. But the idea that a male DM was RPing a female NPC that a male PC had had sex with freaked one of the other players at the table out and led to another very embarrassing exchange.

So, yeah. I personally don't introduce graphic or explicitly sexual content into my games, even though I am personally not going to be disturbed by it, but everyone has a different line, and I am very concerned about offending someone else at the table with something I am ok with.



It got to a point the ladies in the group (3 of 7 players total) were not having it and asked the owner of the comic shop we played at to ban him as he was making the environment toxic for everyone. After that we all agreed for the game which we rebooted, each gender would only play there own gender.

That can be a really stressful situation for some people. As a closeted trans-woman, I would never be able to feel comfortable in such a group.

I don't always play female characters, but I can't really enjoy a male character anymore.

My most traumatic gaming horror story involves what I consider that best game I have ever been in. I had been playing an (asexual) female character for three years and absolutely loving it. Then, the game ended, and while we were discussing the follow-up game, one person in the group said to me "Would you mind playing a male character this time, because you are really bad at playing a woman."

And that was traumatic enough for me to ghost the entire group despite it having previously been the best game ever.


Regarding fetishistic reasons -- when a person first comes to my gaming group, I have a list of 'community expectations' that I have everyone read (and actually ask them what it said, or otherwise make sure they didn't just pretend to pay attention), and it includes something to the effect of, "Everyone else present at this gaming table are not here to bear witness to your exploration of a personal sexual kink. That is not the purpose of this game. You are perfectly capable of creating your perfect sexual avatar using game rules on your own time." And I tell people that I expect them to respect that. Universally. We also use X cards and when someone takes something too far, anyone and everyone can veto it and retribution for that veto is not tolerated. That is a universal for my game, and this particular situation is no exception.

Regarding attention-getting reasons -- I am continuously mystified* by the number of people online in rpg/nerd communities decidedly worried that someone else just might be doing something unusual to be noticed and/or to be unique in some way. We have multiple over-worn terms for the concept-- snowflake, edgelord, etc. To me it seems decidedly like that grade school insult, "they think they're soooo special!" Like, what exactly is the problem? We are playing power fantasy games where people are getting to pretend they are wizards or cyborgs or billionaire playboy crimefighters -- getting to be special for a few hours out of the week is a primary reason for the existence of these games.
*despite managing teams of people who all fall into this community.

I agree with the first paragraph on its own. I agree with the second paragraph on its own. But, taken together, they read like "kink-shaming" to me.

I don't see why it is ok for someone to play Thor because they like the fantasy of being a powerful Viking god, and ok to be Tony Stark because they like the fantasy of being a billionaire super genius, but not ok to play She Hulk because they are attracted to large muscular women or not ok to play Starfox because they like the fantasy of never being rejected by a woman.


The thing about "specialness" is fairly simple: a lot of game masters design their scenarios as something independent of the characters. So if a player then brings in a character incongruous with that scenario, it's going to draw attention away from what the GM has set up.

The follow-up question then becomes "okay, so why not design scenarios dependent on the characters?" And the answer is that players come up with their characters independent of not just the scenario, not just the game master, but the entire game. Their character concept comes somewhere else entirely and the scenario, the game master and the game system are all something to bend to suit that concept.

You can't justify such "specialness" with power fantasy. In fact, games are crappy vehicle for power fantasy. Don't get me wrong, you can get a decent power fantasy out of a game - after the fact, if you're successful in a game. Baking that power fantasy into your character concept, before a single game move has been made, is a statement you don't want to play the game, you just want to win it.

However, when it comes to this point (about power fantasy), sex and gender are trivial, because they typically don't give you mechanical power in a game. When they do, it's usually because the game group has silly ideas about what these things mean socially, often to other players rather than anything in the game. Because inside a game world, being intersex, trans, etc. doesn't have to be anything special in a way that'd get anyone attention.

RPGs are generally rigged in favor of the PCs; you don't win all the time (or at least shouldn't imo) but baring something going disastrously wrong you generally triumph in the end.

I don't necessarily think that power fantasies need to go hand in hand with mechanical bonuses though.


I think this is probably because many of us have had contact with or behaved as that guy at some previous point in our lives. The fear isn't of somebody being unique or stepping out of line, but rather the motivation behind that specialness. That is to say, a desire to stand out among the other people in the room and possess some greater level of significance among them, even at the cost of these other people. Usually, this motivation leads to an unwillingness to engage with the same ground rules that everyone else has agreed to and holds to, and a desire to hog the spotlight.

That's just from an RPG community viewpoint, but I think about sums up why you see that sort of attitude. It's really not a useful assumption to have in every case, as that just ends up causing you a lot of headaches and drives away people who want to explore new concepts, but that seems to be the main reason to me. It's less about "somebody's trying to stand out" and more about "somebody's trying to make what they want more important than what I want". A pretty primal fear, all things considered, with all that implies.


Anyways, in regards to the OP, I don't think there's any need to worry. There's a good >99% chance the player just wants to explore a particular non-binary identity for their character, for whatever reasons that may be. Unless your game explicitly allows sexual content, I doubt they'll be using it as an outlet for those sorts of fantasies, and are really just looking to explore them from a personality and personal experience standpoint. Don't feel the need to include any particular content tailored towards their queer nature either, unless they specifically ask for it. (By which I mean stories that deal with bigotry, difficulties in romance, or other such topics.) You'd only be making a lot of work for yourself and risk upsetting them with topics that hit too close to home.

Well said.

Vahnavoi
2020-12-24, 06:44 PM
RPGs are generally rigged in favor of the PCs; you don't win all the time (or at least shouldn't imo) but baring something going disastrously wrong you generally triumph in the end.

So are most single player video games; a typical game still involves a lot of trial, error and outright failure no matter how strongly the game's narrative skews towards power fantasy. The same point applies: you get your fantasy after the fact, if you play the game succesfully. It is a reward for playing the game. Psychologically, it's an exercise in delayed gratification. (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delayed_gratification) Trying to bake your fantasy into your character concept shows inability or unwillingness to delay gratification, and there's a host of reasons to not prefer such players.


I don't necessarily think that power fantasies need to go hand in hand with mechanical bonuses though.

Mechanical bonuses are most obvious, which is why I made a specific point about them, but for power fantasy, any kind of power works. But if you don't have power, you can't have power fantasy; if being intersex doesn't draw a great deal of attention in the game, you can't use being intersex for attention-seeking. So on and so forth. The point I was making was that if a specific thing, in this case playing an intersex character, clearly doesn't bring power and attention in a game, you typically don't neds to worry about players doing that thing for those motives.

Willie the Duck
2020-12-24, 09:49 PM
I agree with the first paragraph on its own. I agree with the second paragraph on its own. But, taken together, they read like "kink-shaming" to me.

I don't see why it is ok for someone to play Thor because they like the fantasy of being a powerful Viking god, and ok to be Tony Stark because they like the fantasy of being a billionaire super genius, but not ok to play She Hulk because they are attracted to large muscular women or not ok to play Starfox because they like the fantasy of never being rejected by a woman.

I am seriously confused by this reaction. You were the one worried about people choosing characters "for fetishistic reasons" and that they "would creep out the other players." If someone is engaging in a given fantasy in a way that is not imposing their sexuality upon their gaming neighbors, then they aren't crossing a line.

Talakeal
2020-12-25, 01:35 AM
I am seriously confused by this reaction. You were the one worried about people choosing characters "for fetishistic reasons" and that they "would creep out the other players." If someone is engaging in a given fantasy in a way that is not imposing their sexuality upon their gaming neighbors, then they aren't crossing a line.

Do note that my very next sentence was, "I am no longer sure if that is even a bad thing."

This is really a matter of nuance and degrees, and I am not sure I can really explain it well. I have been in groups where simply playing a gay character or stating that a western town contained a brothel was considered "imposing sexuality on people." When I was a stupid hormonal teenager, I also played in some games which bordered on FATAL territory. I am pretty sure that appropriate line is somewhere between the two.

Likewise, there is a line between disruptive behavior and simply engaging in the game. If I want to play James Bond, seduction is part of the game; but on the other hand being the Dead Ale Wives guy who ignores the dungeon crawl in favor of picking up girls in the tavern is probably disruptive.

I have also played in games where simply having a normal, vanilla, relationship is seen as disruptive because the DM can't accommodate a character who needs to provide for their family or wants to maintain social bonds while also being an adventurer. Who is in the wrong here? The DM whose plot can be so easily derailed, or the PC who insists on derailing it? I don't know, probably both.

At this point in my life, I really don't have a problem with the guy who has a furry fetish always choosing to play a Tabaxi, and I don't think anyone else should either. Likewise, it won't creep me out they decide to go into great detail describing their character's sex organs or want to RP graphic sex scenes, but it probably will creep other people at the table out, and understandably so.

I think that generally, you are only going to shock people if something is obviously sexual and also unusual. If I want to play a bard with 18 charisma who uses seduction as a tool, that is obviously sexual, but isn't really unusual. If I want to play a guy with bright blue skin and three eyes, that is unusual but not obviously sexual. Neither of those are likely to shock or creep someone out unless they get too graphic. But, if I want to play a satyr with impossibly large genitalia, that is both obviously sexual and unusual, which will probably shock people.

But, as I said, I am no longer sure if that is a bad thing.

I am not sure if that made my point any clearer. I doubt it.

Bohandas
2020-12-25, 01:52 AM
I don't know about intersex, however I do know that in D&D several of the official character races are functioning sequential hermaphrodites (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sequential_hermaphroditism) by default. The Changelings can change their physical form - including whether they are male or female - at will, and the Dromites - while usually neither - are capable of temporarily becoming either one given the correct circumstances.

EDIT:
Regarding Trans characters, it might be pointed out that the vast majority of Warforged could be considered trans simply from the fact that they have a gender identity at all, despite being constructs. Even the Lord of Blades, who is a radical robot supremacist, seems to identify as male.

Telok
2020-12-25, 10:22 PM
Haha, that's a classic. :smallbiggrin: In fact, when I readied a bunch of characters for convention play as a GM, I put that on the elf's character sheet.


Classic? It's practically traditional, I saw it semi-regular 30 years ago. Of course 20 years ago I also had a dwarf whose sex space had "beard" written in it and claimed that the dwarven equal of male/female/him/her/etc. was also "beard".



Getting creeped out by an intersex human when you could run into a Baphomet-worshipping shape-shifting lust demons or changelings or have your physical sex altered or removed by a magic potion is... quaint.

Had a player who once looked under a daemon's robes. They were +2 robes, which is why it was wearing them. Since a description was asked for I thought for a moment and said "several large fish hooks baited with whole squid". Nobody brought it up again after that.

Honestly if I were designing character sheets I'd try to fit in a short description box and a couple spots for things like virtues, hangups, personality traits, or personal goals.

SwordCoastTaxi
2020-12-26, 01:03 AM
Why do we need either? What purpose do they serve?
They create additional diversity in gaming.

Actually, those characters create an almost entirely new language. They don't operate like the usual, which I find, as a GM, interesting.

They look at the setting differently and their social choices diverge enough to impact "what happens next". I have a transgender supervillain that can turn player expectations upside down. Only because that character's expectations of what the world is differs dramatically from most people.

These can be useful inclusions.

Bohandas
2020-12-26, 01:23 AM
Had a player who once looked under a daemon's robes. They were +2 robes, which is why it was wearing them. Since a description was asked for I thought for a moment and said "several large fish hooks baited with whole squid". Nobody brought it up again after that.

So I guess your players aren't fans of the Hellraiser films then? Because that's right along their lines. You could probably write for them.

Anonymouswizard
2020-12-26, 04:57 AM
They create additional diversity in gaming.

Actually, those characters create an almost entirely new language. They don't operate like the usual, which I find, as a GM, interesting.

They look at the setting differently and their social choices diverge enough to impact "what happens next". I have a transgender supervillain that can turn player expectations upside down. Only because that character's expectations of what the world is differs dramatically from most people.

These can be useful inclusions.

And that is why we should include specific boxes for gender and/or sex on the character sheet, instead of just letting people write whatever they want in a description box?

Cluedrew
2020-12-26, 09:56 AM
I started using “gender” instead of “sex” on character sheets because too many play-testers were putting “yes please.” I wish I was joking.Its like saying "yes" instead of "both" when someone asks a this or that question. A silly code answer that (I guess) means not asexual. Of course even there are some nuisances it skims over but close enough.

Still I would generally go with the blank description box myself. Covers gender and sexuality, species and race, hair, eyes, skin, build, blemishes and personality. Apocalypse World did something in the middle with an open ended box but a list of prompts/options which (this being Apocalypse World) was different from playbook to playbook.

JNAProductions
2020-12-26, 11:11 AM
I don't know about intersex, however I do know that in D&D several of the official character races are functioning sequential hermaphrodites (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sequential_hermaphroditism) by default. The Changelings can change their physical form - including whether they are male or female - at will, and the Dromites - while usually neither - are capable of temporarily becoming either one given the correct circumstances.

EDIT:
Regarding Trans characters, it might be pointed out that the vast majority of Warforged could be considered trans simply from the fact that they have a gender identity at all, despite being constructs. Even the Lord of Blades, who is a radical robot supremacist, seems to identify as male.

Interesting way to think of that.

To address the general topic, if a player is disruptive, there's a good chance they're gonna be disruptive whatever they play. But, at the same time, I'd still recommend a talk with the player before doing anything drastic-if a player is being more sexual than the others are comfortable with, or more graphically violent, or more ANYTHING than is appropriate, they may not realize that they're causing issues. So, let them know, give them a chance to do better, and only if they ignore the talk or cannot control themselves should you take major action.

Talakeal
2020-12-26, 12:31 PM
Its like saying "yes" instead of "both" when someone asks a this or that question. A silly code answer that (I guess) means not asexual. Of course even there are some nuisances it skims over but close enough.

Still I would generally go with the blank description box myself. Covers gender and sexuality, species and race, hair, eyes, skin, build, blemishes and personality. Apocalypse World did something in the middle with an open ended box but a list of prompts/options which (this being Apocalypse World) was different from playbook to playbook.

I think the joke is that they are pretending to think the person asking the question is offering to have sex with them.

I don’t think a blank box works. Information is much easier to find and retain on a form. Plus, I don't think many players would fill it out without a prompt, let alone read anyone else’s, and I want a system that encourages players to at least put a minimum of thought into purely cosmetic character details.

Silly Name
2020-12-26, 01:08 PM
I don’t think a blank box works. Information is much easier to find and retain on a form. Plus, I don't think many players would fill it out without a prompt, let alone read anyone else’s, and I want a system that encourages players to at least put a minimum of thought into purely cosmetic character details.

How often do you reckon players look over each other's character sheets, without it being part of a core mechanic? I know I've sometimes gone over a friend's sheet, but it was mostly to check their build - not really paying attention to the cosmetic stuff.

If you want to encourage this by using "check-boxes" (which I agree are a good way to make people feel compelled to fill in these details), just make it clear in the text detailing character creation that you're not limited to binary gender, and you should be fine.

Anonymouswizard
2020-12-26, 01:18 PM
I don’t think a blank box works. Information is much easier to find and retain on a form.

And unless this information is important in a game, why does it matter?


Plus, I don't think many players would fill it out without a prompt, let alone read anyone else’s, and I want a system that encourages players to at least put a minimum of thought into purely cosmetic character details.

You won't believe how many character sheets I've seen where all the appearance details are blank.

And so what if most people don't fill it out? Most people don't bother to track what clothes their character is wearing. People should only fill out what'ss important to them and the game rules, and shouldn't feel compelled to give any additional details.

The advantage of a blank box is that it gives a player free reign to decide what's important about their character and isn't prescriptive. The disadvantage is that it gives no inherent starting point. And to go beyond sex and gender I want players to be able to define what's important to them without feeling like they're doing it wrong. That can be gender, but honestly if a player wants to put in their character's voice pitch, standard hairstyle, or to go with the immaturity theme breast size* then they totally should be allowed to treat it as important as gender.

Unless it's actually important to the game concept. Gender/sex rarely is, but could be in more historically accurate settings with strong gender roles.


* Okay, I've seen fully mature women do this as well as teenage boys, like with everything it's how it's approached that matters.

Talakeal
2020-12-26, 03:29 PM
And unless this information is important in a game, why does it matter?

I know it doesn't matter to everyone, but it matters to me.

I enjoy fiction first games which I can clearly visualize in my mind.

Deciding subtle details of your character is, for me, the most fun part of the game, and in my experience it isn't really a huge imposition on even the most hack and slash players to decide a few basic details about their character.

Honestly, alignment is that thing that is usually left blank on character sheets in my game because I don't enforce it and people are embarrassed about actually writing Chaotic Evil on their sheet but also don't want to get crap about not acting in accordance when they write Lawful Good.



Unless it's actually important to the game concept. Gender/sex rarely is, but could be in more historically accurate settings with strong gender roles.

Barring one shots, I have literally not played a game in the past twenty years where gender and sex didn't play a huge role in the game.


* Okay, I've seen fully mature women do this as well as teenage boys, like with everything it's how it's approached that matters.

Yeah. While I certainly know what my character's figure looks like, I have never written down anything that specific, and in my experience the only players who ever have are adult women.

Anonymouswizard
2020-12-26, 03:55 PM
I know it doesn't matter to everyone, but it matters to me.

I enjoy fiction first games which I can clearly visualize in my mind.

Deciding subtle details of your character is, for me, the most fun part of the game, and in my experience it isn't really a huge imposition on even the most hack and slash players to decide a few basic details about their character.

Honestly, alignment is that thing that is usually left blank on character sheets in my game because I don't enforce it and people are embarrassed about actually writing Chaotic Evil on their sheet but also don't want to get crap about not acting in accordance when they write Lawful Good.

Cool, I also like fiction first games and designing minute details of my character's appearance, sometimes down to individual items of clothing including undies. But at the same time I don't think we should make any of that stuff required. I do tend to prefer to game with people who care about it, but they also tend to be the kind of player who tends to be fine with a blank description box.

What is alignment? Are you supposed to update that everytime you change your position? (honestly alignment only worked in oD&D, BD&D, and 4e)


Barring one shots, I have literally not played a game in the past twenty years where gender and sex didn't play a huge role in the game.

And I've played maybe one where it actually mattered. And that was for an NPC and a GM making a point about institutional sexism (a businesswoman who everybody saw as a man because her mutant power was 'appear as the most innocuous person possible in this situation').

As a side note, I pulled out my copy of Cyberpunk 2.0.2.0. and saw what the game saw as important for a character. Name, role, stats, skills, augmentations, gear, some backstory bits, hair, ethnicity, clothing, appearance affectations, the languages you speak, but not your character's gender or sex. It makes some sense when you consider that these physical details are all things that could serve as gang identification, but it's still interesting considering the time the game was released.


Yeah. While I certainly know what my character's figure looks like, I have never written down anything that specific, and in my experience the only players who ever have are adult women.

Also the only players I've actually seen playing sex-focused high-Charisma sorceresses and bards have been adult women.

I'm actually going to start writing it down more, but that's because I'm also already to begin writing fairly detailed outfits on my sheets.

DwarfFighter
2020-12-26, 06:02 PM
I don't have much to add to this debate other than making the observation that playing an Elf - an entirely distinct species of humanoid - must surely be more "alien" than playing a trans-gender character.

If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen{Scrubbed}.

-DF

BisectedBrioche
2020-12-27, 07:25 AM
All I have to say is:


Every character I've ever played is trans until confirmed cis (this extends to non-D&D fictional characters).
It takes 0 effort for the DM to agree that my character can be trans.
I appreciate RPGs that go out of their way to include trans characters in the lore (c.f. Pathfinder), but I've never had a problem including a trans character in a game where the players weren't transphobic.



One thing I'll bring up is when I mentioned that I was going to be playing a trans woman in a game, a friend asked me why I'd want to, when I could just be playing a cis girl. It took me a while to even work out this was a question, but, the tl;dr would be; Why wouldn't I want to make a character like me in some respects?

Scots Dragon
2020-12-27, 08:51 AM
All I have to say is:


Every character I've ever played is trans until confirmed cis (this extends to non-D&D fictional characters).
It takes 0 effort for the DM to agree that my character can be trans.
I appreciate RPGs that go out of their way to include trans characters in the lore (c.f. Pathfinder), but I've never had a problem including a trans character in a game where the players weren't transphobic.



One thing I'll bring up is when I mentioned that I was going to be playing a trans woman in a game, a friend asked me why I'd want to, when I could just be playing a cis girl. It took me a while to even work out this was a question, but, the tl;dr would be; Why wouldn't I want to make a character like me in some respects?

This forum needs a like function.

Cluedrew
2020-12-27, 10:12 AM
I don’t think a blank box works. Information is much easier to find and retain on a form. Plus, I don't think many players would fill it out without a prompt, let alone read anyone else’s, and I want a system that encourages players to at least put a minimum of thought into purely cosmetic character details.The box itself is a prompt through. I mean you can just leave some blank space on a page or label it something like notes. But honestly I don't write down gender and such things because usually people can figure it out when I say my character's name is Ammanda or Greg. OK maybe if its an elf named Falytra it could be hard to tell, but I usually play humans because I usually play in human focused settings.

But back to the boxes. Or at the extreme empty lines. What is entered is free form but you have prompts for what should be filled in. Instead of "description" have two boxes, "appearance" and "personality" and that sort of thing.


One thing I'll bring up is when I mentioned that I was going to be playing a trans woman in a game, a friend asked me why I'd want to, when I could just be playing a cis girl. It took me a while to even work out this was a question, but, the tl;dr would be; Why wouldn't I want to make a character like me in some respects?For me there is this element of "Why not?" People ask why did you make this character [something] like it takes more energy. I mean telling a story about being [something] could take a lot of energy if it is a major focus but telling any story well can take a lot of energy. And as a background detail its not that hard. I spent over a year knowing a friend of mine was queer (LGBT+) but not knowing what type of queer because they just said someone else was also queer and beyond that it never came up. Even when it did it was just because they told me, not because it was obvious from the situation.

And hi from Hero Oh Hero.

Anonymouswizard
2020-12-27, 10:52 AM
One thing I'll bring up is when I mentioned that I was going to be playing a trans woman in a game, a friend asked me why I'd want to, when I could just be playing a cis girl. It took me a while to even work out this was a question, but, the tl;dr would be; Why wouldn't I want to make a character like me in some respects?

So much wanting to smash like.



I once played in a game where a character didn't reveal their sex until the penultimate session. They presented androgynously for most of the game, were referred to by a male name because they hadn't come to the initial meeting with a prepared pseudonym, and my character literally failed a roll to recognise them all prettied up. I'm not sure the character even had a gender identity, they just liked looking pretty occasionally.

I've also played both quietly and openly agender characters, including at least one AI. Because who needs gender when you can print out a new body with a week's notice (M&M, I had the Immortality power that brought me back within the week, and explicitly printed new bodies every time I spent PP). Although never established in the game the bodies began big, bulky, and masculine (because my precious character had built that body) and became sleeker and more androgynous as time went on.

To be fair that character could also had a police siren that popped out of their head when running to the scene of a crime. God I loved playing Autocop.

Talakeal
2020-12-27, 01:31 PM
I once played in a game where a character didn't reveal their sex until the penultimate session. They presented androgynously for most of the game, were referred to by a male name because they hadn't come to the initial meeting with a prepared pseudonym, and my character literally failed a roll to recognise them all prettied up. I'm not sure the character even had a gender identity, they just liked looking pretty occasionally.

I've also played both quietly and openly agender characters, including at least one AI. Because who needs gender when you can print out a new body with a week's notice (M&M, I had the Immortality power that brought me back within the week, and explicitly printed new bodies every time I spent PP). Although never established in the game the bodies began big, bulky, and masculine (because my precious character had built that body) and became sleeker and more androgynous as time went on.

To be fair that character could also had a police siren that popped out of their head when running to the scene of a crime. God I loved playing Autocop.

Man, English sucks.

To clarify, are you talking about gender or biological sex?

Because yeah, characters like robots without a sex are one thing; but most people who present as non binary still have an apparent physical sex, and even if they don't if you are traveling and adventuring with for years on end are going to, eventually, see you with your trousers off.


The box itself is a prompt through. I mean you can just leave some blank space on a page or label it something like notes. But honestly I don't write down gender and such things because usually people can figure it out when I say my character's name is Ammanda or Greg. OK maybe if its an elf named Falytra it could be hard to tell, but I usually play humans because I usually play in human focused settings.

But back to the boxes. Or at the extreme empty lines. What is entered is free form but you have prompts for what should be filled in. Instead of "description" have two boxes, "appearance" and "personality" and that sort of thing.

For me there is this element of "Why not?" People ask why did you make this character [something] like it takes more energy. I mean telling a story about being [something] could take a lot of energy if it is a major focus but telling any story well can take a lot of energy. And as a background detail its not that hard. I spent over a year knowing a friend of mine was queer (LGBT+) but not knowing what type of queer because they just said someone else was also queer and beyond that it never came up. Even when it did it was just because they told me, not because it was obvious from the situation.

And hi from Hero Oh Hero.

For me, a form is the simplest way to find information and to remember to include things.

For the record, character sheets in my system have both specific entries to fill and a blank box to fill in what you think is important, but given a choice between the two I much prefer the former.

And yeah, coming up with a character takes energy. I want people to invest energy in their characters.


For the record, I am not talking about check boxes; that is way too restrictive and clutters up the sheet. I am talking about blanks you can fill with a specific prompt.


All I have to say is:


Every character I've ever played is trans until confirmed cis (this extends to non-D&D fictional characters).
It takes 0 effort for the DM to agree that my character can be trans.
I appreciate RPGs that go out of their way to include trans characters in the lore (c.f. Pathfinder), but I've never had a problem including a trans character in a game where the players weren't transphobic.


One thing I'll bring up is when I mentioned that I was going to be playing a trans woman in a game, a friend asked me why I'd want to, when I could just be playing a cis girl. It took me a while to even work out this was a question, but, the tl;dr would be; Why wouldn't I want to make a character like me in some respects?

A DM who won't let someone be trans is a real jerk.

I really want to include trans characters in my setting, but I just can't think of a way to do it naturally. My setting is one where traditional gender roles never really existed, and one can change biological sex through alchemical means, so I don't think you would see many of the same kind of trans people as you do irl, and going out of my way to point out ithat they were assigned a different gender at birth just in an NPC's write-up screams of othering and tokenism to me.

For me, personally, the fantasy overcomes the need to identify with the character. I get enough dysphoria in real life, for me gaming is an opportunity to relax and not worry about wanting to be a woman, and just be a woman.


And I've played maybe one where it actually mattered. And that was for an NPC and a GM making a point about institutional sexism (a businesswoman who everybody saw as a man because her mutant power was 'appear as the most innocuous person possible in this situation').


Again, are we talking about gender, biological sex, or sexuality?

I have played both trans and cis characters, and have played both gay and straight characters, and I have played male, female, and androgynous characters*, and all of them have histories and personalities that are influenced by it.

The thing is, for me the game is as much about why my character is in the dungeon as it is the dungeon itself, and usually there is some measure of familial motivation for that, and familial bonds are all about sex and sexuality.

And that's in games like D&D, in more RP heavy games, it plays a bigger role. For example, the character I have played the most in Mage is ostensibly asexual, but is obviously in love with her best friend. This has a huge impact on how I RP that character and the plot's she is involved in.

*Although as I am understanding my RL gender identity better I play more and more gay ciswomen as I don't like dealing with the stress of being closeted in game.


What is alignment? Are you supposed to update that everytime you change your position? (honestly alignment only worked in oD&D, BD&D, and 4e)

Yeah, alignment is pretty dumb. I mostly ignore it, but it is necessary for a few spells and effects. Other games have better systems like allegiances or humanity, but players still tend to ignore it more often than not.

BisectedBrioche
2020-12-27, 03:07 PM
"Biological sex" is more complicated than a distinction from gender. Gender identity is, in fact, a sex marker. Three of the other markers can be changed (hormones, secondary sexual characteristics and genitals).

Trying to define a nonbinary person by their Assigned Gender At Birth (AGAB) is incredibly rude, and deserves no justification in my book (besides, in my experience you can't tell what someone has, or had, in their pants unless they tell you; and that's not a common situation).

Bohandas
2020-12-27, 03:29 PM
"Biological sex" is more complicated than a distinction from gender. Gender identity is, in fact, a sex marker. Three of the other markers can be changed (hormones, secondary sexual characteristics and genitals).

Biological sex is defined by gamete production.

From a strict scientific standpoint even genetics doesn't define it, as in nature we see species with things like Sequential hermaphroditism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sequential_hermaphroditism) and Temperature dependent sex determination (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temperature-dependent_sex_determination)

Talakeal
2020-12-27, 03:33 PM
"Biological sex" is more complicated than a distinction from gender. Gender identity is, in fact, a sex marker. Three of the other markers can be changed (hormones, secondary sexual characteristics and genitals).

Trying to define a nonbinary person by their Assigned Gender At Birth (AGAB) is incredibly rude, and deserves no justification in my book (besides, in my experience you can't tell what someone has, or had, in their pants unless they tell you; and that's not a common situation).

I don’t think I agree with you, but I really don’t want to argue about such a sensitive topic, especially not here.

I don’t want to be rude to anyone. How would you suggest describing a nonbinary character to players? What if they ask for clarification?

Anonymouswizard
2020-12-27, 03:42 PM
"Biological sex" is more complicated than a distinction from gender. Gender identity is, in fact, a sex marker. Three of the other markers can be changed (hormones, secondary sexual characteristics and genitals).

Trying to define a nonbinary person by their Assigned Gender At Birth (AGAB) is incredibly rude, and deserves no justification in my book (besides, in my experience you can't tell what someone has, or had, in their pants unless they tell you; and that's not a common situation).

Considering that a change in hormones can have an affect on primary and secondary sexual characteristics (although my knowledge is technically second hand). It really isn't clear cut, even if you want to sit in the 'Anonymouswizard doesn't exist' camp.

One thing that's stuck in my mind since I seriously started thinking about gender identity stuff is the memory of an episode of House where at the end House misgenders a patient because he's just discovered that she has an intersex condition (not the commonly thought of 'ambiguous trouser contents' one). I didn't think much of it at the time, but it's stuck in my mind as an example of how people try to be prescriptive and binary with regards to 'biological sex',


Biological sex is defined by gamete production

Citation?


I don’t want to be rude to anyone. How would you suggest describing a nonbinary character to players? What if they ask for clarification?

Explain it? I mean, some of us have to do it in real life.

BisectedBrioche
2020-12-27, 03:48 PM
I don’t think I agree with you, but I really don’t want to argue about such a sensitive topic, especially not here.

I don’t want to be rude to anyone. How would you suggest describing a nonbinary character to players? What if they ask for clarification?

Clarify that they are nonbinary.

Theoboldi
2020-12-27, 03:49 PM
Explain it? I mean, some of us have to do it in real life.

I do believe Talakeal meant how you would describe the character physically, say when the players are first meeting them and have no idea about who they are.

Do correct me if I am wrong there, Talakeal.

Talakeal
2020-12-27, 03:50 PM
Explain it? I mean, some of us have to do it in real life.

To clarify:

IRL my experience is that most nonbinary people look just like cis men and cis women, and I do not know that they are nonbinary until somebody tells me.

In a game, the GMs job is to describe the world to the players. How would you describe a scene which includes a non binary NPC without ever making reference to their biological sex?

Anonymouswizard
2020-12-27, 03:58 PM
To clarify:

IRL my experience is that most nonbinary people look just like cis men and cis women, and I do not know that they are nonbinary until somebody tells me.

In a game, the GMs job is to describe the world to the players. How would you describe a scene which includes a non binary NPC without ever making reference to their biological sex?

Without using gendered words?

EDIT: to clarify, you could easily describe my RL look as 'about five and a half feet tall, significantly overweight, with glasses and shoulder length slightly curly brown hair', at least once I pick up a new razor.

Bohandas
2020-12-27, 04:04 PM
Citation?

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5031617/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7062084/

Now that I think of it, my initial definition was technically overbroad, as it could be construed to include gamete motility and mating type (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mating_type) in addition to relative size.

EDIT:
Also I suppose it also depends on if you use "defines" te refer to a per-se definition, or colloquially to refer to a cause, as one of the articles also describes it as being 'defined' by genetics in the latter colloquial sense of being caused by them, although the per se definitions are given earlier in the article as such: "Mammals possess two sexes, defined in terms of the size of the gametes (sex cells) that they produce; males produce small, motile and numerous sperm while females produce large, sessile and well-provisioned eggs"

BisectedBrioche
2020-12-27, 04:09 PM
To clarify:

IRL my experience is that most nonbinary people look just like cis men and cis women, and I do not know that they are nonbinary until somebody tells me.

In a game, the GMs job is to describe the world to the players. How would you describe a scene which includes a non binary NPC without ever making reference to their biological sex?

In my experience, a nonbinary person might look androgynous, they might look close to their AGAB, or they might not.

I don't want to speak over NB people, but as a trans woman, I know for a fact that people tend to be very bad at discerning someone's AGAB. Especially when they're confident they're an expert at it.

In any case, children's shows and video games haven't had much trouble introducing nonbinary characters, so I doubt a GM would.

Scots Dragon
2020-12-27, 04:19 PM
In any case, children's shows and video games haven't had much trouble introducing nonbinary characters, so I doubt a GM would.

The obligatory chaotic neutral shapeshifting lizardfolk/yuan-ti rogue type would be pretty fun to play, honestly.

Anonymouswizard
2020-12-27, 04:20 PM
In my experience, a nonbinary person might look androgynous, they might look close to their AGAB, or they might not.

I don't want to speak over NB people, but as a trans woman, I know for a fact that people tend to be very bad at discerning someone's AGAB. Especially when they're confident they're an expert at it.

I'm a NB person who presents as my AGAB, mainly because I haven't done serious clothes shopping in the last couple of years and it helps avoid the abuse. I keep meaning to add more accessories to my outfits, pick up some noticeable earrings and bangles and such as well as some more feminine clothes, but this year kind of got in the way. I really wish that I looked more androgynous, but sadly I didn't draw a genetic straw that made it easy.

Scots Dragon
2020-12-27, 04:22 PM
I'm a NB person who presents as my AGAB, mainly because I haven't done serious clothes shopping in the last couple of years and it helps avoid the abuse. I keep meaning to add more accessories to my outfits, pick up some noticeable earrings and bangles and such as well as some more feminine clothes, but this year kind of got in the way. I really wish that I looked more androgynous, but sadly I didn't draw a genetic straw that made it easy.

I'm a trans girl and I feel that hard.

I got hit with the genetic straw of 'let's make you into a tall, broad-shouldered person who could be mistaken for wearing old Hollywood werewolf makeup'. Really cannot wait to start hormones.

Anonymouswizard
2020-12-27, 04:29 PM
I'm a trans girl and I feel that hard.

I got hit with the genetic straw of 'let's make you into a tall, broad-shouldered person who could be mistaken for wearing old Hollywood werewolf makeup'. Really cannot wait to start hormones.

Relatively short (about average human height) but broad here, with a relatively 'traditionally masculine' face structure. Honestly if I could narrow the shoulders a bit and soften the jawline I think I could manage to pass as whatever I wanted.

BisectedBrioche
2020-12-27, 04:51 PM
Relatively short (about average human height) but broad here, with a relatively 'traditionally masculine' face structure. Honestly if I could narrow the shoulders a bit and soften the jawline I think I could manage to pass as whatever I wanted.

FWIW, as a trans girl, I have a similar problem, and I found (even before HRT) makeup could make a massive difference.

KaussH
2020-12-27, 05:17 PM
I don’t think I agree with you, but I really don’t want to argue about such a sensitive topic, especially not here.

I don’t want to be rude to anyone. How would you suggest describing a nonbinary character to players? What if they ask for clarification?

Sure.
"Jack is about 7 feet tall, bright eyed, tan in complexion and pretty thin. They are dressed as a sailor and have long hair that looks like it hasnt been trimmed for ages. Their vest is covered in colored talismans, and they have a pouch that is clearly bulging with material components giving sign they are a spell caster . They do not looked to be armed with anything larger than a personal knife. "

Then if a player asks. "They look pretty androgynous overall. You might have to ask them. "

GreatWyrmGold
2020-12-27, 05:39 PM
In short, because it is a very efficient, quite probably the most efficient, way to share a tremendous amount of descriptive information about a character.
I disagree heartily. It's a pretty okay way to communicate a tremendous amount of assumptions people will have about that character, but that's about it. Even then, that depends on other information outside the sex/gender box and (of course) the cultural context of both the character and the observer.
Let's ignore the differences between gender stereotypes in Western/Middle Eastern/Japanese/Indian/African/etc etc etc culture and focus specifically on the variety of stereotypes for femininity within American culture. (Though before I start, I'd like to emphasize that I'm describing these stereotypes, not endorsing them.)

I can't in good conscience not mention the Madonna/Whore dichotomy—the way women tend to be categorized as "virgins" or "sluts," diametrically opposed stereotypes, depending on all sorts of arbitrary qualities that generally don't appear on a character sheet.
Beyond that, we obviously have age; we expect different things of little girls, tweens, young women, old ladies, etc. We also have subcultures within American culture, which cuts both ways; people expect different things from (say) Texan, West Coast, and Midwestern women, and Texans/West Coast/Midwestern people have different expectations about women. A woman's build also affects things; we make vastly different assumptions about slender, buxom, fat, etc women. Obviously, class affects things, too; we assume different things about a poor inner-city mom, a suburban mom, and Elon Musk's wife despite all of them being women and moms. Oh yeah, we make vastly different assumptions based on marital status, especially when we combine that with age. "Middle-aged wife" and "Middle-aged single bachelorette" conjure up vastly different images, don't they? Heck, whether or not the middle-aged wife has kids affects things pretty significantly, and whether those kids are "hers" or not even more. (Birth-moms are good, stepmoms are bad. Again, diametrically opposed stereotypes.)

And that's just scratching the surface. I haven't mentioned intersectionality (how race, sexuality, cis vs. trans women, etc etc) affect things, or the way personal presentation influences things, or that many of these assumptions are probably wrong in the first place.
(Sticking to genre expectations doesn't make things any better, by the way; all the same stuff applies. Arguably it applies more, because fictional archetypes are more detailed and diverse than typical stereotypes.)

TL;DR: Yeah, that was kind of the point. Anyways, sex/gender is a terrible synecdoche for personality/description/whatever. You need all sorts of other information just to start making assumptions about a character. From a D&D perspective, class gives you more information in about the same amount of space (or a bit more for multiclass characters). From an alternative perspective, sex/gender still isn't helpful.



I'm not sure why people make a such a big deal about it. Especially in context of speculative fiction, which, before you get to realistic and realistically muted portrayals of various intersex conditions, has always had mythological and exaggarated androgynous and non-sexed beings. Getting creeped out by an intersex human when you could run into a Baphomet-worshipping shape-shifting lust demons or changelings or have your physical sex altered or removed by a magic potion is... quaint.
On one side of the fence, you have marginalized groups who want to have their existence recognized and their voices heard. On the other, you have traditionalists who want this not to happen, whether out of some BS "moral" concern or because they want to preserve an inequity they personally benefit from. It's almost a law of sociophysics that these two forces will be (roughly) equal in passion and volume; if they weren't, the marginalized groups would soon be either accepted or concealed.

As a culture, we're in the process of transitioning from a state where this isn't a big deal because there's only one option to one where it isn't a big deal because nobody cares. Until then, it's worth making a big deal about, for the good of the former group. (Or for the bad of them, if you're an effing a-hole.)


That said, your point about speculative fiction messing with stuff is a good one. Picking Order of the Stick because we're familiar with it: The gag about a sex-changing belt makes trans binary characters basically impossible to include in the comic. Either they have used the belt to physically transition, or you need to explain why they can't; either way, you risk that character's arc becoming about being trans, specifically in a speculative context. That's not inherently bad—stories like Dreadnought do it well—but it requires care (especially for cis authors) and needs to be in the right story. You can't just drop a trans character into a setting which naturally screws with gender.
That's not an inherently bad thing, of course. The casual way Rich threw a sex-changing belt into the story carelessly has ruined the story for at least one fan (wish I could find the post where he mentions that), but it can be done well. The trick, as with everything in writing, is to be careful how you write it. Don't just trivialize things that are important to some people, don't misrepresent demographics/identities, stuff like that.



So are most single player video games; a typical game still involves a lot of trial, error and outright failure no matter how strongly the game's narrative skews towards power fantasy. The same point applies: you get your fantasy after the fact, if you play the game succesfully. It is a reward for playing the game. Psychologically, it's an exercise in delayed gratification. (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delayed_gratification) Trying to bake your fantasy into your character concept shows inability or unwillingness to delay gratification, and there's a host of reasons to not prefer such players.
On the other hand, if your fantasy isn't baked into your character, it feels out of nowhere, like you wrote a Mary Sue instead of a normal character.
Incidentally, the label "Mary Sue" is more often applied to marginalized groups (especially but not exclusively women) than to straight white cis men. Also like "Mary Sue," the problem isn't the power fantasy, it's the context. Mary Sues aren't bad because they're cool, or overpowered, or even because they're boring, but because of how they warp the story around them to be about how they're kewl and awsum.
The same applies to overt fantasies at the gaming table; they're only bad if the player tries to bend the game around their fantasy. As far as fantasies go, it's hard to get less disruptive than "I am [x], but not marginalized".




In one of my own settings which is mostly influenced by Mediterranean Antiquity, I've decided to be very ahistorical and just make sexuality and gender identity a non-issue: nobody in that world will give you crap for who you are, unless they're a complete *******.
I think this is a good choice for most settings. If you're not going to explore bigotry in a story (at least a little), it's best to leave it out; it's like conservation of detail (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheLawOfConservationOfDetail), except that the details are hardships and trauma to a certain subset of your audience.
Traditional RPG settings have a unique problem when building (published) settings—they will be used to tell stories about basically everything, from epic tales of good and evil to intimate character studies to pulpy nonsense with no intentional themes, often at the same time. This is a bit less severe for small, focused TRPGs (or settings for larger TRPGs which are similarly focused—almost everything in Krynn is ties back to its epic divine conflict), but for the D&D settings most people are going to use/draw from, flexible generic fantasy is the order of the day.



I really wish the nonbinary community had chosen to go with an invented pronoun rather than using "they". Reading a plural pronoun for a singular individual always confuses the heck out of me.
Speaking as a cis guy, it seems like several were attempted but none caught on (especially in the general population). I haven't really looked into it, though.


I agree with the first paragraph on its own. I agree with the second paragraph on its own. But, taken together, they read like "kink-shaming" to me.

I don't see why it is ok for someone to play Thor because they like the fantasy of being a powerful Viking god, and ok to be Tony Stark because they like the fantasy of being a billionaire super genius, but not ok to play She Hulk because they are attracted to large muscular women or not ok to play Starfox because they like the fantasy of never being rejected by a woman.
Because one is "normal" and one is "aberrant". I guess "it's weird if people realize you like large muscular women but not if people realize you like being a large muscular man" also plays into it, but that's basically a circular argument.



The advantage of a blank box is that it gives a player free reign to decide what's important about their character and isn't prescriptive. The disadvantage is that it gives no inherent starting point.
As a tangent, this is the only useful purpose I think alignment serves. If you have to figure out whether your character is good/evil and lawful/chaotic, you need to think at least a little about who they are as a character (and, consequently, how they're different from you). For novice roleplayers, this is a good thing; it gets them thinking along the right lines. (Think of it as the RP equivalent of one of those unobtrusive tutorial boxes that just tells you that X makes you jump.)
But as more and more new TRPG players have experience with VRPGs (and non-RPGs with some kind of explicit roleplay-ey choices, e.g. Telltale-style adventure games and many visual novels), and as 5e has introduced traits/flaws/bonds/etc that do much the same thing, alignment becomes less and less useful without losing its limitations. (Granted, the limitations are loosened by removing alignment's mechanical effects.)



For me there is this element of "Why not?" People ask why did you make this character [something] like it takes more energy.
That assumption makes more sense if you realize that, broadly speaking, there exists "default" for fictional characters. This varies somewhat with what role a character fulfils in a narrative, but in general (especially for protagonisty types) the "default" is white (or at least ambiguously non-POC, ie anime characters) (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Mukokuseki), non-LGBTQ, able-bodied, attractive, male, etc.
To paraphrase a somewhat memetic tweet (https://twitter.com/emmahvossen/status/1138841342921060354?lang=en), this creates two genders, male and "deliberate"; two sexualities, straight and "deliberate"; etc. Even if a writer's choice to write a black/trans/whatever protagonist (or anything else varying from a role's "default," e.g. a male "distressed damsel") isn't actually deliberate, many people will assume it was because it isn't "the default". Many of those will furthermore assume that it must be significant, for the same reason a character having wings, three eyes, or pink hair seems significant—it's incongruous with expectations.

On one hand, the idea of a "default character" isn't BS; everyone starts with a certain set of assumptions about each character they write that they never get around to questioning (most obvious with able-bodiliness). On the other hand, sometimes an artist just gives their characters weird hair colors. (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/YouGottaHaveBlueHair) And it's obviously worth pointing out that certain Animal Crossing fans found people of color more incongruous/significant than talking animals.



This forum needs a like function.
Quoted for truth.

In general, I mean. I wish I could express support/agreement without just quoting them and saying "Quoted for truth" or something.

Cluedrew
2020-12-27, 05:44 PM
For me, a form is the simplest way to find information and to remember to include things. [...] For the record, character sheets in my system have both specific entries to fill and a blank box to fill in what you think is important, but given a choice between the two I much prefer the former. [...] For the record, I am not talking about check boxes; that is way too restrictive and clutters up the sheet. I am talking about blanks you can fill with a specific prompt.Right but you can still adjust the labels by the blanks (a blank line is just a small blank box) to prompt the kind of information the game needs. I don't know exactly what you are going for (is this Heart of Darkness still?) but Gender/Sexuality might be a good label. A bit long because its two words but they are usually grouped together anyways and you can just write "male" or "female" with cis- and straight being implied if you are at that level. But if you want to try to cram in that they were assigned female at birth, are presenting male to adventure but are non-binary and are bisexual, poly and panromantic go ahead. Honestly it sounds silly when I list it like that but that isn't really that out there.

But back to the blanks, on the other hand if you don't need sexuality you could do race/gender to cover things like "human trans-man" and "robot".


And that's in games like D&D, in more RP heavy games, it plays a bigger role. For example, the character I have played the most in Mage is ostensibly asexual, but is obviously in love with her best friend. This has a huge impact on how I RP that character and the plot's she is involved in.Asexual but not aromatic. Two separate things that only usually match. The main character of a series I want to write is that actually and my sexuality and romantic-whatever don't match either. Also I learned a surprising amount about other posters today.

Anonymouswizard
2020-12-27, 05:47 PM
FWIW, as a trans girl, I have a similar problem, and I found (even before HRT) makeup could make a massive difference.

Dyspraxia and the associated problems with fine motor control have honest;y stopped me from trying.

Bohandas
2020-12-27, 06:02 PM
On one side of the fence, you have marginalized groups who want to have their existence recognized and their voices heard. On the other, you have traditionalists who want this not to happen, whether out of some BS "moral" concern or because they want to preserve an inequity they personally benefit from. It's almost a law of sociophysics that these two forces will be (roughly) equal in passion and volume; if they weren't, the marginalized groups would soon be either accepted or concealed.

As a culture, we're in the process of transitioning from a state where this isn't a big deal because there's only one option to one where it isn't a big deal because nobody cares. Until then, it's worth making a big deal about, for the good of the former group. (Or for the bad of them, if you're an effing a-hole.)

What we should be moving towards is a society without any gender norms at all. What people are doing now is just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. Attempting to reform a system that's simply not worth keeping around at all.

Talakeal
2020-12-27, 06:27 PM
What we should be moving towards is a society without any gender norms at all. What people are doing now is just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. Attempting to reform a system that's simply not worth keeping around at all.

I actually agree with this.

As I mentioned on the LBGTQ+ thread a few weeks ago, as someone who comes from a background of second wave feminism I actually have trouble comprehending what non-binary even means.


Right but you can still adjust the labels by the blanks (a blank line is just a small blank box) to prompt the kind of information the game needs. I don't know exactly what you are going for (is this Heart of Darkness still?) but Gender/Sexuality might be a good label. A bit long because its two words but they are usually grouped together anyways and you can just write "male" or "female" with cis- and straight being implied if you are at that level. But if you want to try to cram in that they were assigned female at birth, are presenting male to adventure but are non-binary and are bisexual, poly and panromantic go ahead. Honestly it sounds silly when I list it like that but that isn't really that out there.

I don't know if I was referring to any one specific game; I am currently playing or preparing to play Delta Green, Changeling, D&D 5, and Heart of Darkness, so it could have been any of them. When I talked about designing my own character sheet that was in reference to Heart of Darkness, the sheet in that says "gender" but really means biological sex.


Sure.
"Jack is about 7 feet tall, bright eyed, tan in complexion and pretty thin. They are dressed as a sailor and have long hair that looks like it hasnt been trimmed for ages. Their vest is covered in colored talismans, and they have a pouch that is clearly bulging with material components giving sign they are a spell caster . They do not looked to be armed with anything larger than a personal knife. "

Then if a player asks. "They look pretty androgynous overall. You might have to ask them. "

See, in that case I would just assume they were a guy because Jack is a typically masculine name and seven foot tall woman are all but unheard of. If they had an obvious secondary sexual characteristic such as a beard or breasts, I would wonder why the DM didn't mention it. I am also wondering how I know their name and their pronouns before I ever talked to them.


I disagree heartily. It's a pretty okay way to communicate a tremendous amount of assumptions people will have about that character, but that's about it. Even then, that depends on other information outside the sex/gender box and (of course) the cultural context of both the character and the observer.
Let's ignore the differences between gender stereotypes in Western/Middle Eastern/Japanese/Indian/African/etc etc etc culture and focus specifically on the variety of stereotypes for femininity within American culture. (Though before I start, I'd like to emphasize that I'm describing these stereotypes, not endorsing them.)

Real people don't have classes. Profession might tell you a little about someone, but not really. If you say someone is, say, a delivery driver, I have no idea what they look like, what their personality is, what their roll in society is, or what their fashion is when they are out of uniform.

Even with class, the last character I played in D&D was a ranger, I challenge you come up with even a single statement about my character that you can infer from that without tautologies.

Even if we ignore societal factors, we can infer a whole host of physical tendencies based on gender. Its weird that this is even a controversial statement, like every MMO I can think of has different character models for sex, but none of them have different character models for class.


I'm a trans girl and I feel that hard.

I got hit with the genetic straw of 'let's make you into a tall, broad-shouldered person who could be mistaken for wearing old Hollywood werewolf makeup'. Really cannot wait to start hormones.

I hear you.

Cluedrew
2020-12-27, 07:41 PM
That assumption makes more sense if you realize that, broadly speaking, there exists "default" for fictional characters.I'm trying to ignore it. Actually breaking from that default seems to be the hardest part of it.


In general, I mean. I wish I could express support/agreement without just quoting them and saying "Quoted for truth" or something.Usually I add why I agree, highlight my favourite point that kind of thing. I like to a put a bit more work into it to show that my agreement is more than a passing fancy.

Scots Dragon
2020-12-27, 09:40 PM
FWIW, as a trans girl, I have a similar problem, and I found (even before HRT) makeup could make a massive difference.

I really need to get on learning the ropes of that.

BisectedBrioche
2020-12-27, 09:44 PM
What we should be moving towards is a society without any gender norms at all. What people are doing now is just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. Attempting to reform a system that's simply not worth keeping around at all.

Problem there is that whenever I see this expressed, it's never an attempt to deconstruct the gender binary and propose a radical shift forward; it's an attempt to shame (or outright misgender) trans people for rejecting their AGAB, but worded to sound woke.


Dyspraxia and the associated problems with fine motor control have honest;y stopped me from trying.

That's fair. Stuff costs more than it's worth anyway.

Scots Dragon
2020-12-27, 10:04 PM
Problem there is that whenever I see this expressed, it's never an attempt to deconstruct the gender binary and propose a radical shift forward; it's an attempt to shame (or outright misgender) trans people for rejecting their AGAB, but worded to sound woke.

See: the entire concept of Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminism. Which shouldn't get to call itself feminism.

Duff
2020-12-27, 10:45 PM
Others have kind of addressed this but:

In short, because it is a very efficient, quite probably the most efficient, way to share a tremendous amount of descriptive information about a character.

Is often true, and when it is, you should include gender in your description. But if it's not obvious, then it's not carrying a lot of information and isn't helpful.
For example, a Warforged from D&D...
"Sprag is a tall lean warforged with themes of brass and oak in their look and a resting face that looks angry". I can check "male" and use "he" but those tell you nothing unless he actually cares about pronouns
"A skinny human bundled up with furs. When they pull their hood back, their black hair is in scalp plaits. When they take off the thin ivory glare-goggles (medieval sunglasses), their eyes are so dark its hard to see where pupal and iris meet". Does ticking "Female" tell you anything?
How about "A skinny human bundled up with furs, decorated with scenes of hunting and battle typical of a man from the northern hunting bands. When they pull their hood back, their black hair is in scalp plaits which is more typical or a woman from those parts." - and surly the description here is giving information relevant for roleplay which ticking a box wouldn't help at all

Psyren
2020-12-28, 01:38 AM
Small correction for you Talakeal - Intersex is just one of many, many options for gender expression besides the standard "male" and "female." A category called Other isn't, and shouldn't be, considered a synonym for that one very specific label - and I would recommend not using "Other" at all.

Rather, if you want your game to be more inclusive, the easiest solution is to have Gender be a freeform (and optional) field at character creation. Instead of being an array of checkboxes between discrete options, just let the player themselves state how they would like to identify (if they wish to do so.) In fact, a far more important field would probably be asking what pronouns they prefer to use rather than asking them to sort themselves underneath a potentially imprecise or limiting label.

Bohandas
2020-12-28, 04:20 AM
Problem there is that whenever I see this expressed, it's never an attempt to deconstruct the gender binary and propose a radical shift forward; it's an attempt to shame (or outright misgender) trans people for rejecting their AGAB, but worded to sound woke.

Doing things and caring about things is the problem. You're still thinking in terms of different norms that are adapted to you, not in terms of not having any norms at all. They need to be extinguished along with a great deal of other norms (for example, do we really still need the institution of marriage, or indeed [rule violating topic redacted] in general? I don't think so). I preach against these things not for the sake of the counterculture or of the establishment but because I don't want to be bothered with them, from either side.

EDIT:
I have a very good analogy but I'm not allowed to post it because it involves American history

EDIT:
and for the record I'm 1.) Aromantic, so I'm under the LGBTQAI umbrella, and 2.) Often wear ladies' pajama bottoms as underwear because I care considerably more about comfort than I do about gender.

Vahnavoi
2020-12-28, 09:23 AM
@GreatWyrmGold:

What you brought up about belts of gender change (or whatever it's called) is a bit different for what I was going for.

My point was about arbitrariness of getting creeped out by a real thing when fantastic version of that thing is all over the place. Yours is about underexamined speculative elements. This is an issue with fantasy, especially kitchen-sink fantasy, because it's hallmark of the genre to be wasteful with speculative elements. This leads to situations where you can't do realistic representation, or maintain suspension of disbelief, except by selectively ignoring some speculative elements.

If you want to think about underexamined elements when it comes to sex and gender, the aforementioned belt is really just the tip of a really big iceberg. In fantasy, characters often have souls, true names and true forms, etc. . The underpinnings of settings are frequently idealist and essentialist, so the nature of intersex or trans people can be highly particular and different from what one could argue in reality.

Cluedrew
2020-12-28, 10:51 AM
Doing things and caring about things is the problem. [...] I preach against these things not for the sake of the counterculture or of the establishment but because I don't want to be bothered with them, from either side.A world were no one does anything nor cares about anything sounds absolutely miserable, not to mention short-lived. I doubt you meant it at that extreme but I think the problems exist before that extreme. I have been siting here for a while figuring out how to say it in detail but at a high level I think just accepting varying from a norm is easier and probably more useful than pretending there isn't a normal. There is, no one is exactly that but there are averages and some features are more common than others.


I'm Aromantic, so I'm under the LGBTQAI umbrella,If this has lead to some particular experiences that informed your position (I could see some annoying matchmaker stories) that's great, share them as you see fit. But don't use the umbrella as a shield.


The underpinnings of settings are frequently idealist and essentialist, so the nature of intersex or trans people can be highly particular and different from what one could argue in reality.I've one or two attempts at mixing fantasy with gender issues in a "fundamental" way. Such as that transgendered people look like they feel in the spirit world. Still I haven't read that many fantasy stories that have tackled gender issues at all.

Talakeal
2020-12-28, 11:56 AM
See: the entire concept of Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminism. Which shouldn't get to call itself feminism.

I already mentioned this in another thread, but it makes perfect sense to me. As a radical feminist myself, I find gender to be a harmful social construct that should be abolished. At the same time, modern trans theory seems to hold to opposite ideals, that gender is something that is special and sacred and a vital part of everyone’s identity afaict.

Note, this in no way excuses mistreatment, erasure, or discrimination against trans people.



Small correction for you Talakeal - Intersex is just one of many, many options for gender expression besides the standard "male" and "female." A category called Other isn't, and shouldn't be, considered a synonym for that one very specific label - and I would recommend not using "Other" at all.

Rather, if you want your game to be more inclusive, the easiest solution is to have Gender be a freeform (and optional) field at character creation. Instead of being an array of checkboxes between discrete options, just let the player themselves state how they would like to identify (if they wish to do so.) In fact, a far more important field would probably be asking what pronouns they prefer to use rather than asking them to sort themselves underneath a potentially imprecise or limiting label.

I don’t use checkboxes, that was Delta Green. I have a blank space which you can fill out however you like.

But its really for physical sex (which can be changed in my setting) rather than gender.

I am not sure the concept of gender expression really makes sense in my setting as it takes place in an egalitarian 19th century society, and the common tongue is explicitly stated to be gender neutral by default.

But again, I don’t really understand modern trans theory, and everytime I try and research it all I can find is people so worried about offending someonee they wont make definitive statements at all.

If the players want to play with modern notions of gender identity or pronoun usage that is obviously their right, but I am not sure if the game designer should make a stand on it one way or the other.

Psyren
2020-12-28, 02:40 PM
I don’t use checkboxes, that was Delta Green. I have a blank space which you can fill out however you like.

But its really for physical sex (which can be changed in my setting) rather than gender.

I am not sure the concept of gender expression really makes sense in my setting as it takes place in an egalitarian 19th century society, and the common tongue is explicitly stated to be gender neutral by default.

But again, I don’t really understand modern trans theory, and everytime I try and research it all I can find is people so worried about offending someonee they wont make definitive statements at all.

If the players want to play with modern notions of gender identity or pronoun usage that is obviously their right, but I am not sure if the game designer should make a stand on it one way or the other.

I guess the underlined bit is part of what's confusing me specifically. What do you mean exactly when you say "physical sex?" The PCs' genitalia? Other characteristics like a deeper voice or facial hair? If it's the former, I'd question why that really needs to be a field in a roleplaying game at all, and if it's the latter, you can prompt players for that information without implying any connection between it and their character's gender.

Consider the D&D 5e Adventurer's League character sheet as an example - it has no field for gender at all, it simply asks players to list the things that someone meeting them would be able to observe, like eyes, skin, hair, height, and weight. It then has larger freeform spaces labeled "appearance" and "backstory" that, if a player desires, they can easily use to disclose their character's gender/pronouns. I don't think the designers were "taking a stand" by structuring the sheet this way, just being inclusive.

Bohandas
2020-12-28, 04:18 PM
I already mentioned this in another thread, but it makes perfect sense to me. As a radical feminist myself, I find gender to be a harmful social construct that should be abolished. At the same time, modern trans theory seems to hold to opposite ideals, that gender is something that is special and sacred and a vital part of everyone’s identity afaict.

This is the issue I have as well,

[redacted]

Scots Dragon
2020-12-28, 04:47 PM
This is the issue I have as well, they've taken something that is irrelevant at best (and anathema at worst) and turned it into somethig sacred.

Placing emphasis on manhood and womanhood has traditionally been the purview of troglodytes and reactionaries.

That's really not a good faith reading of the trans experience, to put it as diplomatically as possible.

Anonymouswizard
2020-12-28, 04:56 PM
That's really not a good faith reading of the trans experience, to put it as diplomatically as possible.

I've not met a single trans person where manhood or womanhood wasn't important to them. Maybe that's a case of me having a small sample size, but IME a trans woman wants you to know and care that they're a woman.

EDIT: to be clear, I agree with Scots Dragon.

Scots Dragon
2020-12-28, 04:59 PM
EDIT: to be clear, I agree with Scots Dragon.

I take more than a little issue with the importance we place on our own gender and the recognition thereof being compared to reactionary thought, yeah.

BisectedBrioche
2020-12-28, 05:46 PM
This is the issue I have as well, they've taken something that is irrelevant at best (and anathema at worst) and turned it into somethig sacred.

Placing emphasis on manhood and womanhood has traditionally been the purview of troglodytes and reactionaries.

{Scrubbed}

Bohandas
2020-12-28, 05:55 PM
If this has lead to some particular experiences that informed your position (I could see some annoying matchmaker stories) that's great, share them as you see fit. But don't use the umbrella as a shield.

I mean, a bit, because since I don't date or anything the whole man/woman schtick plays less of a role in my life. I've never been on a date, I've never been interested in dating, and since I'm also not interested in the stereotypical roles or activities of either men or women the only place it really ever comes up is in a medical setting.

[redacted]

EDIT:
I think I'm gonna drop out of this thread before we get yelled out for discussing beliefs and politics

Satinavian
2020-12-29, 03:30 AM
Personally i have no problem including Intersex PCs. Not that i expect it to matter that much anyway as most intersex variants can easily pass as one or the other and won't be treated as special by the ransom NPC stranger.

I have far more problems allowing Trans characters. You can't play a Trans character without knowing what men and women even mean in the setting. And the portrayal won't be convincing if you don't agree about that with the other players. IME either the setting has detailed description of gender roles because they are somehow special, then you can use those but Trans won't mean nearly the same as for us. Or it doesn't and everyone at the table comes with their own, very different assumptions. And even if you solve that problem, there is the problem of acceptance. How does the society react to a Trans person.

But if we would be playing modern urban fantasy or "the real world but with X", sure, go ahead and play Trans characters because we can assume that gender roles and acceptance are pretty much identical.




Personally i am agender and both transgender and cisgender seem equally strange and hard to understand. But who cares ? There is way more about a person than gender and you can get by with mostly ignoring it.

GreatWyrmGold
2020-12-29, 11:28 AM
I'd like to start with something:

The core of sexism (and gender norms) is the idea that your sex is a fundamental aspect of who you are. To be a male means you are strong, stoic, productive. To be a female means you are passive, empathetic, nurturing. Some form of gender essentialism is the underlying assumption at the root of all gender norms; if nothing is seen as essential to masculinity or femininity, there is nothing for a norm to latch onto.

What could be a bigger refutation of gender essentialism than someone assigned female at birth turning out to be a man, or vise versa?


What we should be moving towards is a society without any gender norms at all. What people are doing now is just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. Attempting to reform a system that's simply not worth keeping around at all.
I don't agree with your take.
First off, the idea that LGBTQ+ issues aren't important because they can be resolved if we move to a genderless society is kind of sickening? It would be one thing if eliminating gender norms was a practical short-term political goal, but it isn't. I put "end gender" somewhere below "end capitalism" and above "steal underwear" on the "practical plans to make the world better" scale.
Second off, I disagree with the idea that LGBTQ+ activists aren't eroding gender norms. Fighting for acceptance of identities which conflict with gender norms inherently weakens them.

It's possible you're talking about some other group less relevant to the discussion at hand, but you're being friggin' vague and using arguments I've heard used against LBGTQ (well mostly trans) people. (Speaking of which, does anyone remember which ContraPoints video Natalie Wynn mocked this exact argument in?)


Doing things and caring about things is the problem. You're still thinking in terms of different norms that are adapted to you, not in terms of not having any norms at all. They need to be extinguished along with a great deal of other norms (for example, do we really still need the institution of marriage, or indeed [rule violating topic redacted] in general? I don't think so). I preach against these things not for the sake of the counterculture or of the establishment but because I don't want to be bothered with them, from either side.
"I'm opposed to traditional norms. That's why I am arguing against people who are actively fighting against the norms society wants to impose on them, and not the people imposing norms on them."
Hopefully you could see why people think this line of argument is just a way to shut down trans people while sounding woke.


and for the record I'm 1.) Aromantic, so I'm under the LGBTQAI umbrella
Same. That hasn't stopped me from having dumb takes about trans people. The difference is that I didn't stumble across an opportunity to air them until after I realized they were dumb.



I think I'm gonna drop out of this thread before we get yelled out for discussing beliefs and politics
If I might be blunt to someone who's abandoned the thread, BS. This whole thread would have been shut down ages ago if the existence/experience of LGBTQ people was considered "political".



I already mentioned this in another thread, but it makes perfect sense to me. As a radical feminist myself, I find gender to be a harmful social construct that should be abolished. At the same time, modern trans theory seems to hold to opposite ideals, that gender is something that is special and sacred and a vital part of everyone’s identity afaict.
Which is made clear by the way that they accept non-binary and even agender people. Oh wait.
Also, this is one of those contexts where "radical feminist" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TERF) is a red flag.



Real people don't have classes. Profession might tell you a little about someone, but not really. If you say someone is, say, a delivery driver, I have no idea what they look like, what their personality is, what their roll in society is, or what their fashion is when they are out of uniform.

Even with class, the last character I played in D&D was a ranger, I challenge you come up with even a single statement about my character that you can infer from that without tautologies.

Even if we ignore societal factors, we can infer a whole host of physical tendencies based on gender. Its weird that this is even a controversial statement, like every MMO I can think of has different character models for sex, but none of them have different character models for class.
I find the claim that no MMO has different models for different classes suspicious, because I can think of several (admittedly non-MMO) games that do.

Anyways, I'd like to note three important factors about the "class conveys more information thing".
We're discussing TRPG characters, so "Real-life people don't have classes!" is inherently meaningless.
D&D classes aren't professions. If they were, every PC would have the Adventurer class, because they're all in the same line of work. A character class in D&D is an archetype, a collection of traditional skills, weaknesses, and quirks that your character will embody to some extent or another by the nature of the game.
Class doesn't need to define your character well for my argument to be true, it just needs to define your character better than gender. Which it does.

Now, onto physical appearance. First, you're wrong; while there are muscular guys with bushy beards, hourglass-shaped women, and other people whose sex defines their physical appearance, there are also plenty of people whose sex doesn't. There are muscular women, bishonen dudes, and everything in between. Sex affects appearance, but so do a million other factors, and if sex defines a character's appearance they're probably the kind of yahoo who puts "please" in the blank.

And given that my argument has never been "Sex/Gender has zero impact on what someone looks like," you're inherently asserting that it's the most important factor in determining someone's appearance, which...no. Going back to character class, that obviously has a huge impact on a character's appearance. Which is a more significant visual difference—a guy in a robe vs. a gal in a robe, or a guy in robes vs. a guy in plate armor?



I'm trying to ignore it. Actually breaking from that default seems to be the hardest part of it.
I see no value in trying to ignore a problem. For one thing, it seems like that would make it harder to avoid falling into it yourself. For another, I generally consider it useful to have some idea why people think what they think, especially when it seems bizarre to me.

Vahnavoi
2020-12-29, 11:48 AM
What could be a bigger refutation of gender essentialism than someone assigned female at birth turning out to be a man, or vise versa?

That's not a refutation of essentialism at all if the core idea is that the person's identity as the gender they "turn out to be" is a fundamental part of their self-identity, determined at birth. It's merely a refutation of gender physicalism in favor of gender idealism.

Talakeal
2020-12-29, 01:18 PM
I guess the underlined bit is part of what's confusing me specifically. What do you mean exactly when you say "physical sex?" The PCs' genitalia? Other characteristics like a deeper voice or facial hair? If it's the former, I'd question why that really needs to be a field in a roleplaying game at all, and if it's the latter, you can prompt players for that information without implying any connection between it and their character's gender.

Consider the D&D 5e Adventurer's League character sheet as an example - it has no field for gender at all, it simply asks players to list the things that someone meeting them would be able to observe, like eyes, skin, hair, height, and weight. It then has larger freeform spaces labeled "appearance" and "backstory" that, if a player desires, they can easily use to disclose their character's gender/pronouns. I don't think the designers were "taking a stand" by structuring the sheet this way, just being inclusive.

Our sex influences (but doesn't determine) nearly every facet of our physical forms, as well as having some degree of influence over psychological, social, and fashion. To me it is a very useful descriptor. Along with age and race, it is used in virtually any descriptor you will hear if someone is trying to locate someone, for example a missing child poster or a police bulletin.

Likewise, sex appears on every piece of identification I own and I need to input it in the vast majority of forms I fill out. Aside from 5E D&D (and those that omit "fluff" entirely) I cannot think of a single character sheet which doesn't have a place to mark one's sex.

I really don't think including a field for sex is nearly as controversial as you are making it out to be.

Also, I may be emotionally a bit too close to the issue to give an unbiased answer. Being able to play as a female character is very important to me, and as I child I would frequently get into trouble from my parents or other kids for being the "weirdo who pretends to be a girl" that being told there shouldn't be a place for sex on the character sheet feels like being told to get back in the closet. Obviously that isn't what you meant, but it is how it feels to me on a raw emotional level.


Which is made clear by the way that they accept non-binary and even agender people. Oh wait.
Also, this is one of those contexts where "radical feminist" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TERF) is a red flag.

As I said, radical feminism and modern trans theory are, afaict, fundamentally incompatible philosophies. While someone CAN use a difference in philosophy to be a bigot, it is obviously not a requirement.



I find the claim that no MMO has different models for different classes suspicious, because I can think of several (admittedly non-MMO) games that do.

I can't think of a CRPG which doesn't have different models for male / female but does have different models for classes, except for maybe Ultima Exodus from the 80s. I am sure there is one out there, but I sure can't think of one. The closest I can recall are games like Diablo or Borderlands where classes are essentially premade characters whom you get to rename.




Anyways, I'd like to note three important factors about the "class conveys more information thing".
We're discussing TRPG characters, so "Real-life people don't have classes!" is inherently meaningless.
D&D classes aren't professions. If they were, every PC would have the Adventurer class, because they're all in the same line of work. A character class in D&D is an archetype, a collection of traditional skills, weaknesses, and quirks that your character will embody to some extent or another by the nature of the game.
Class doesn't need to define your character well for my argument to be true, it just needs to define your character better than gender. Which it does.

If we are defining class that narrowly, what games outside of D&D even have classes?



Now, onto physical appearance. First, you're wrong; while there are muscular guys with bushy beards, hourglass-shaped women, and other people whose sex defines their physical appearance, there are also plenty of people whose sex doesn't. There are muscular women, bishonen dudes, and everything in between. Sex affects appearance, but so do a million other factors, and if sex defines a character's appearance they're probably the kind of yahoo who puts "please" in the blank.

And given that my argument has never been "Sex/Gender has zero impact on what someone looks like," you're inherently asserting that it's the most important factor in determining someone's appearance, which...no.

Ok, so what are we disagreeing about then? We both agree that sex influences someone's appearance, but does not determine it. Are we just arguing about the relative skill?


Which is a more significant visual difference—a guy in a robe vs. a gal in a robe, or a guy in robes vs. a guy in plate armor?

Unless they are wearing a mask, I would say sex. Maybe you are different, but I look at people's faces first and foremost. And if they are wearing a mask, well yeah, I guess, but you might as well ask to take eye color off of a character sheet because they might be wearing sunglasses.

The thing is though people change clothing. I would expect most characters to spend most of their lives out of their "adventuring garb" while changing sex is somewhat rarer and a more serious event. And even so, most clothing is designed for one sex or the other; even armor made for women is a different shape than armor made for men.

Cluedrew
2020-12-29, 04:58 PM
I see no value in trying to ignore a problem. For one thing, it seems like that would make it harder to avoid falling into it yourself. For another, I generally consider it useful to have some idea why people think what they think, especially when it seems bizarre to me.Before I begin I would like to say I am speaking only on the level of creating characters and system design. I do have some larger views but I don't feel like discussing them at this time. Not that I don't enjoy unwrapping thoughts sometimes but not right now.

I'm not ignoring a problem I am just ignoring what the traditional character types are expected; what the default or stereotype is for that role. Not that it is perfect every time, hence my comment about the hardest part, but usually once I catch an assumption writing a character who doesn't follow it is usually fairly easy. So I know what the stereotype is for a lot of character types. But I "ignore it" in that it doesn't change what I think my character should look like. Outside of some times where the relationship to the stereotype is important but out-side of some meta-aware stories I usually don't do that. (And again I'm not claiming to be completely free of implicate biases, I could even tell you some of the weird ones in retrospect.) And if I "fall" into it, so what? Sure there are extremes in terms of consistency and offensiveness that are problems but if I write a "big dumb jock" because... well did you expect the tall one struggling in school to join the chess club? If they want to they can but the last character I wrote didn't. They pretty much fit that stereotype and as I was making them I was aware of that. But it fit the character so I went ahead, and they weren't quite "the" stereotype at the end but they were pretty close.

So by ignoring the stereotype I mean... actually default is a good word for it because I am trying not to use it as a default but also I ignore it in that I don't put a lot of importance on where the character ends up in relation to their stereotype. And without getting into the deeper reasons as to why, that is how this relates to making characters.

GreatWyrmGold
2020-12-29, 06:00 PM
That's not a refutation of essentialism at all if the core idea is that the person's identity as the gender they "turn out to be" is a fundamental part of their self-identity, determined at birth. It's merely a refutation of gender physicalism in favor of gender idealism.
In principle, you're right. In practice, I think the overlap between misogynists and transphobes is telling...as is the amount of sexism being "justified" by physical characteristics of men and women.



I really don't think including a field for sex is nearly as controversial as you are making it out to be.
I don't think you understand my position. I don't think that including a field for sex is "controversial". I think that sex is not the most important blank on a character sheet. That is, in fact, the only position I have taken in this entire discussion, and I took it in opposition specifically to someone who claimed it was.
It can be a useful descriptor, but only when combined with others. If all I know about your character is that he's male, I know basically nothing about him except what pronoun to use. Ask me to draw or describe them, and I'll be way off base. Tell me that they're a dwarf, or a barbarian, or that their strength is 18, and I'll get much, much closer to your strong dwarf barbarian guy, because those blanks are more descriptive than the sex field.



As I said, radical feminism and modern trans theory are, afaict, fundamentally incompatible philosophies. While someone CAN use a difference in philosophy to be a bigot, it is obviously not a requirement.
I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. "Yes, radical feminism is used to justify transphobia." It feels like a decent start to a response, but it's missing something. Like, for instance, how your position is different from the bigots'?


If we are defining class that narrowly, what games outside of D&D even have classes?
These games. (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ClassAndLevelSystem)
But even games without classes have other blanks. Shadowrun has races, cyberware, etc, for instance. And they have other more informative blanks. I'd argue that knowing a character is 6'4" or an unusually low Toughness score is more informative than gender.


Ok, so what are we disagreeing about then? We both agree that sex influences someone's appearance, but does not determine it. Are we just arguing about the relative skill?
A significant part of this disagreement seems to be about what I'm arguing. Which has been very frustrating.


Unless they are wearing a mask, I would say sex. Maybe you are different, but I look at people's faces first and foremost. And if they are wearing a mask, well yeah, I guess, but you might as well ask to take eye color off of a character sheet because they might be wearing sunglasses.

The thing is though people change clothing. I would expect most characters to spend most of their lives out of their "adventuring garb" while changing sex is somewhat rarer and a more serious event. And even so, most clothing is designed for one sex or the other; even armor made for women is a different shape than armor made for men.
1. I never notice a person's face first unless they're close enough that I can pick out details as soon as I see them. If there's any significant distance between us, I'm going to notice their clothes first, because most clothes are bigger than heads. Moreover, I'm going to notice what's unusual about someone first, and most characters (and many people) have more unusual things in their clothing than in their faces.
2. Male and female faces are statistically distinct, but they aren't radically distinct, even if you exclude feminine-looking men and masculine-looking women (who exist). A three-piece suit and a tracksuit, on the other hand, do look radically different, and there aren't any three-piece/tracksuits that look like track/three-piece suits.
3. Outside certain gender-specific clothes like dresses, I'd argue that clothing made for men and women looks pretty similar within any given category. A suit jacket made for women is going to be cut differently than one for men, but you're never going to mistake it for a women's tracksuit jacket. (Assuming tracksuit tops are called jackets.)

In short: I call your bluff.



I'm not ignoring a problem I am just ignoring what the traditional character types are expected; what the default or stereotype is for that role. Not that it is perfect every time, hence my comment about the hardest part, but usually once I catch an assumption writing a character who doesn't follow it is usually fairly easy. So I know what the stereotype is for a lot of character types. But I "ignore it" in that it doesn't change what I think my character should look like.
It sounds like we have different ideas of what it means to "ignore a default". It sounds like you mean "don't use the default option," but I meant "ignore the presence of a default option".

Talakeal
2020-12-29, 06:35 PM
I don't think you understand my position. I don't think that including a field for sex is "controversial". I think that sex is not the most important blank on a character sheet. That is, in fact, the only position I have taken in this entire discussion, and I took it in opposition specifically to someone who claimed it was.
It can be a useful descriptor, but only when combined with others. If all I know about your character is that he's male, I know basically nothing about him except what pronoun to use. Ask me to draw or describe them, and I'll be way off base. Tell me that they're a dwarf, or a barbarian, or that their strength is 18, and I'll get much, much closer to your strong dwarf barbarian guy, because those blanks are more descriptive than the sex field.



The text you are quoting is in response to Psyren, not you.

That being said, I still disagree with everything you are saying here, but I don't really think there is anything objective to argue over at this point.


I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. "Yes, radical feminism is used to justify transphobia." It feels like a decent start to a response, but it's missing something. Like, for instance, how your position is different from the bigots'?

Not sure if I can come up with a good analogy here that doesn't violate the forum rules.

Maybe try looking up the difference between TIRFs and TERFs?

I don't support any sort of discrimination towards trans individuals, and my only real objection to philosophy is the amount of labeling and gate-keeping I get. If you want to go into specifics we can, but I am not really sure if it is an appropriate line of discussion for this thread.


These games. (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ClassAndLevelSystem)
But even games without classes have other blanks. Shadowrun has races, cyberware, etc, for instance. And they have other more informative blanks. I'd argue that knowing a character is 6'4" or an unusually low Toughness score is more informative than gender.

Do note that most of those are either very old systems or D&D derivatives.

But yeah, I know they have other blanks, which is why I was comparing classes to professions, but then you told me you were exclusively talking about classes.



I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. "Yes, radical feminism is used to justify transphobia." It feels like a decent start to a response, but it's missing something. Like, for instance, how your position is different from the bigots'?


[url=https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ClassAndLevelSystem]1. I never notice a person's face first unless they're close enough that I can pick out details as soon as I see them. If there's any significant distance between us, I'm going to notice their clothes first, because most clothes are bigger than heads. Moreover, I'm going to notice what's unusual about someone first, and most characters (and many people) have more unusual things in their clothing than in their faces.
2. Male and female faces are statistically distinct, but they aren't radically distinct, even if you exclude feminine-looking men and masculine-looking women (who exist). A three-piece suit and a tracksuit, on the other hand, do look radically different, and there aren't any three-piece/tracksuits that look like track/three-piece suits.
3. Outside certain gender-specific clothes like dresses, I'd argue that clothing made for men and women looks pretty similar within any given category. A suit jacket made for women is going to be cut differently than one for men, but you're never going to mistake it for a women's tracksuit jacket. (Assuming tracksuit tops are called jackets.)

In short: I call your bluff.

Not sure what "bluff" you are referring to. I just disagree.

Mr Beer
2020-12-30, 01:31 AM
It depends. If they want to be intersex, fine. I'll probably ask whether they identify as male, female or neither but it doesn't particularly matter since I generally run combat heavy generic fantasy games where gender identity is window dressing. And some races may be intersex/indeterminate anyway, for which binary gender identity would be atypical.

I have occasionally run games set in real-world times and places which considered sex and gender to be synonymous. Intersex people would be unlikely to identify as such. Adults who identify as a gender they were not assigned at birth would need to "pass" to avoid problems.

Players who want to break these norms would usually be welcome to do so but could expect pushback from mainstream society and may be rendered useless in some social situations (as would other characters from the non-dominant demographic).

TL;DR didn't read, generally "yes no problem", occasionally "yes but".

EDIT

Concerns about non-binary choices = edgelord aren't a problem IMO. I'll probably pick that up before Session One if the player's intention is to be an edgelord and their chosen line of attack is gender identity.

Vahnavoi
2020-12-30, 04:07 AM
In principle, you're right. In practice, I think the overlap between misogynists and transphobes is telling...as is the amount of sexism being "justified" by physical characteristics of men and women.

Not what I'm contesting or talking about at all. Mine's more of a philosophical point that becomes relevant when you try to bring these sets of beliefs into a game. Let me show you what I mean by using fantastic tropes:

In a setting with True Names, who you are, the essence of your being, is decided by that Name. So even if you are born physically a human, if your True Name defines you as a dragon, you are a dragon, anyone who knows your True Name will acknowledge you as a dragon, and by realizing your own True Name, possibly, you will physically turn into a dragon, because that is your True Form. (Example inspired by Ursula Le Quin's Earthsea series.)

It should be easy to spot how this applies to sex and gender. For example f you are given a feminine Name, you are a woman - because femininity is an archetype, an ideal, something more fundamental than just the temporary physical state of your body. You can be made to look, think and behave like a man, but this will not change your Name and who you truly are. At best, it just means living in denial of your true identity, at worst, it is a form of spiritual harm.

That's essentialism, but more importantly it's the exact kind of essentialisn that you'd find in a fantasy game. And if you look, you can see it underscoring thoughts and behaviours of real people. I didn't choose True Names as an example by accident. Real people believe names are identity. That's why choosing a new name upon transitioning is such a big deal, why "deadnaming" someone is bad and why some people ritually burn their old personal records when receiving new ones. There's mundane psychological factors behind all these behaviours, of course, but those psychological factors gave rise to the idea of True Names in the minds of ancient people and from there they've trickled into fantasy.

TaiLiu
2020-12-30, 10:30 PM
But you are still going to have to describe your character at some point, and I imagine most people are going to want a description of at least your biological sex, even if that is androgynous or intersex or whatnot.
Aside from the fact that a solid sex/gender dichotomy is untenable, why wouldn't pronouns or words like woman or androgynous or whatnot work? Why would someone need to know a character's "biological sex"?

"Would you mind playing a male character this time, because you are really bad at playing a woman."
Yikes. I'm sorry that happened to you. What does that even mean?

anthon
2020-12-30, 11:59 PM
When I was lad, long long ago in the times of fairies and dragons,

where was i going with this... hic..

Ah yes, i was watching a school play. The school play was Camelot. There was a Merlin and an Arthur and Knights of the Round table. There was romance and everything.

And the entire cast was girls, because this was a parochial school for girls only.


Roleplaying has been a form of Theater for a really long time. Ever since Gygax took the minis games of strategies and assigned importance to dialog and narrative, we have been part thespian, part historical tactician.

Playing the opposite sex is 100% mandatory for DMs, or the entire universe only has 1 gender except the players.

Playing a non-sex is also 100% mandatory for DMs who have things like gelatinus cubes, evil robots, golems, and so on.

Sometimes gender differences don't matter. For example, if you are playing a short scene with a Treant, whether you are a male tree or female tree makes nearly Zero difference,

unless you are replaying the Seduction scene from Last Unicorn.

But D&D has been genderfluid long before it became a political topic. So has theater. Shakespeare? Greek Plays? Playing different roles is normal.


As to this intersex stuff, well that's just one more role challenge, and if you've spent a few hours playing rocks and trees, or sexless robots, its probably not very interesting. In anime, they have all sorts of characters that look like the opposite sex. Women who look like men in Project A-Ko. Men who look like women in 70% of all modern anime. That goes back to the japanese Novel Tale of Genji. China and Korea have that aesthetic as well. Back in Advanced Dungeons and Dragons days,

So did American rock stars.

kiss, poison, white snake, boy george, dead or alive, etc.

Gender Bending is completely normal in Theater and Pop Music.

Did you know there's a cross dressing girl in almost every Chinese Drama? I just finished perhaps 250 episodes of Chinese shows, ranging from historical dramas to martial arts tragedies to magical plane shifting goddess romances with Fox and Flower incarnations, and other than everything being in Mandarin, they ALL have at least one cross dressing girl in them.

The Mulan effect is ancient. There's even cross-gender characters in the Mahabharata, including one scenario with Arjuna.

So lighten up.

Satinavian
2020-12-31, 01:58 AM
Aside from the fact that a solid sex/gender dichotomy is untenable, why wouldn't pronouns or words like woman or androgynous or whatnot work? Why would someone need to know a character's "biological sex"?

Yikes. I'm sorry that happened to you. What does that even mean?
How do you arrange dynastixally relevant marriages without knowing the sex of a person ? Gender is not a concern when deciding where someone can fit in a family tree. Sex is.

Considering how powerful PCs often get, that can come up in every other campaign in settings where marriage is important way to form alliances or where a strong aristocracy based on lineage exist.
Coincidently, if you are a species that can't produce offspring with any race that is common where the group is, NPCs are consideribly less interested in the PCs sex.


As for description, another mechanism is at fault. If something is not mentioned, people fall back to some default in their imagination. If someone is not described as particularly muscular or fat or lean or tall or small, they get imagined as "average". I've even seen more than enough cases where race/species was not mentioned and people fell back to "human". Ethnicy is assumed to be the most common of wherever the character hals from or the game starts unless further mentioned. And while there is no clear case for hair, people tend to assume the presence of hair unless the description includes "bald" and that it fits the ethnicy.

But for sex there is no default. That is why people want to know whether they should imagine a man or a women. That is even more so the case as the above "default to average" demands a pretty average male/female body.
Now a description as "andogynous" or stating that the person is really hard to pin down from look alone does solve that issue as well because it carries roughly the same amount of information about the look as the sex does. But without it, something is missing.

vasilidor
2020-12-31, 05:08 AM
for a moment I thought I had something to say, but then I thought better of it, this is not the place for it.
That said I have an android character in Starfinder that does not believe that gender applies to it anymore than it does for a toaster. It refers to be called an it and will not acknowledge you if you try to call it he, she or they. he is male, she is female and they are plural. It is singular and none of those other things.

Anonymouswizard
2020-12-31, 05:39 AM
How do you arrange dynastixally relevant marriages without knowing the sex of a person ? Gender is not a concern when deciding where someone can fit in a family tree. Sex is.

Considering how powerful PCs often get, that can come up in every other campaign in settings where marriage is important way to form alliances or where a strong aristocracy based on lineage exist.

Bah, give adopted children full rights, or let nobles without children nominate heirs. What's more important is that you avoid a chaotic transition, which means an heir (that the other key position holders don't dislike) exists.

Now true, if you're being historically accurate such things are generally not socially acceptable. But that's why I called out more historically accurate games earlier in the thread as being cases where maybe sex actually matters.


for a moment I thought I had something to say, but then I thought better of it, this is not the place for it.
That said I have an android character in Starfinder that does not believe that gender applies to it anymore than it does for a toaster. It refers to be called an it and will not acknowledge you if you try to call it he, she or they. he is male, she is female and they are plural. It is singular and none of those other things.

I've never got the 'they is plural and therefore bad' argument, but that sounds perfectly normal for a Starfinder Android. I remember the book calling out turn being all over the gender spectrum and some engaging in body modding to express that. An android insisting on being it would fit right in.

I've developed one setting that did have gender neutral pronouns, but they were explicitly a corruption of they/them/their. The result of people making a slight difference over centuries to make things a little more clear.

BisectedBrioche
2020-12-31, 08:18 AM
They has been used as singular in certain contexts for centuries (indeed, someone complaining about singular they/them while unthinkingly using it for the very hypothetical person they're talking about is something of a meme), so even if you want to quibble about it as a personal pronoun that's not an issue. Not to mention going back even further "you" was strictly either formal or plural (not unlike the French Tu/Vous distinction).

Plus it's more or less been accepted as the goto gender neutral pronoun (to the point that certain works with gender neutral characters who everyone wasn't sure how to refer to have started using it :smallwink:) anyway (with neopronouns being the alternative).

Scots Dragon
2020-12-31, 08:33 AM
They has been used as singular in certain contexts for centuries

It's actually older than the singular use of the word 'you', since the thees-and-thous were what was originally used for that, and singular they appears in the Canterbury Tales. In a form of English which is barely legible to modern audiences, at that.

And whoso fyndeth hym out of swich blame, / They wol come up and offre a Goddés name.

This dates back to the late 14th century, over six hundred years ago.

jayem
2020-12-31, 10:24 AM
It's actually older than the singular use of the word 'you', since the thees-and-thous were what was originally used for that, and singular they appears in the Canterbury Tales. In a form of English which is barely legible to modern audiences, at that.

And whoso fyndeth hym out of swich blame, / They wol come up and offre a Goddés name.

This dates back to the late 14th century, over six hundred years ago.

Which is odd as IIRC he (as a southener) he tends to use "he, her, hem" for the 3rd person plural (which is even more confusing).


That hem hath holpen, whan that they were seeke.


But yes, for a Robot to be pedantic according to a rigid and simplified grammar, sounds quite in character.

KaussH
2020-12-31, 12:23 PM
How do you arrange dynastixally relevant marriages without knowing the sex of a person ? Gender is not a concern when deciding where someone can fit in a family tree. Sex is.

Considering how powerful PCs often get, that can come up in every other campaign in settings where marriage is important way to form alliances or where a strong aristocracy based on lineage exist.

Well... since this is a game that may have access to magic and/or super science, why would sex matter?
Cloning, divine magic, arcane homunculus, polymorph, full body conversion, birth creshes, ect. With powerful pcs biological restrictions ( if you even have them in game) dont have to be restrictions.

For that matter, the sociology/ political make up of the game need not match how we currently have marrages work.

Talakeal
2020-12-31, 01:34 PM
Well... since this is a game that may have access to magic and/or super science, why would sex matter?
Cloning, divine magic, arcane homunculus, polymorph, full body conversion, birth creshes, ect. With powerful pcs biological restrictions ( if you even have them in game) dont have to be restrictions.

For that matter, the sociology/ political make up of the game need not match how we currently have marrages work.

That's actually kind of really horrifying. The idea that you could be forced to change your sex / gender to make you fit into an arranged marriage is a level of body horror I don't think I want in my campaign.


It's actually older than the singular use of the word 'you', since the thees-and-thous were what was originally used for that, and singular they appears in the Canterbury Tales. In a form of English which is barely legible to modern audiences, at that.

And whoso fyndeth hym out of swich blame, / They wol come up and offre a Goddés name.

This dates back to the late 14th century, over six hundred years ago.

The thing is, them is always used to refer to an unspecified third person who could of either gender. One out of a pool of possibilities rather than a known individual.


for a moment I thought I had something to say, but then I thought better of it, this is not the place for it.
That said I have an android character in Starfinder that does not believe that gender applies to it anymore than it does for a toaster. It refers to be called an it and will not acknowledge you if you try to call it he, she or they. he is male, she is female and they are plural. It is singular and none of those other things.

That is a very interesting character trait, but I don't think its technically correct; no pun intended. "It" is defined as an inanimate object, which a sapient robot clearly isn't. I can see a primitive AI insisting they were not a person to avoid emotional attachment, but one that is advanced enough to have hurt feelings over the wrong pronoun probably doesn't fit that category, so it more comes across as an active attempt at distancing oneself from humans.


Yikes. I'm sorry that happened to you. What does that even mean?

No idea. I could come up with a lot of guesses, but I was far too embarrassed to actually ask at the time and instead ghosted the whole group.



Aside from the fact that a solid sex/gender dichotomy is untenable

Could you please elaborate on this? I am having trouble parsing that sentence.


As for description, another mechanism is at fault. If something is not mentioned, people fall back to some default in their imagination. If someone is not described as particularly muscular or fat or lean or tall or small, they get imagined as "average". I've even seen more than enough cases where race/species was not mentioned and people fell back to "human". Ethnicy is assumed to be the most common of wherever the character hals from or the game starts unless further mentioned. And while there is no clear case for hair, people tend to assume the presence of hair unless the description includes "bald" and that it fits the ethnicy.

But for sex there is no default. That is why people want to know whether they should imagine a man or a women. That is even more so the case as the above "default to average" demands a pretty average male/female body.
Now a description as "andogynous" or stating that the person is really hard to pin down from look alone does solve that issue as well because it carries roughly the same amount of information about the look as the sex does. But without it, something is missing.

This. Very much this.

Although I would like to add, many people do default to male if no gender is specified. As I think I mentioned upthread, I once didn't specify my character's gender in a Werewolf the Apocalypse game. In werewolf you tend to have Hollywood Native American names like "Talking Bear or Laughing Skunk" so my name was androgynous. When several months in I mentioned my gender (it came up because we were choosing mates) everyone insisted that I had told them I was playing a man and acted like I was trying to pull a fast one or something.

Cluedrew
2020-12-31, 01:57 PM
How do you arrange dynastixally relevant marriages without knowing the sex of a person ?Wait, wait, wait. Back-up.

You are playing a game where players are arranging dynastic marriages? Or are you arranging dynastic marriages between the player characters? If so that is cool but I don't think it is very common.

Eldan
2020-12-31, 02:47 PM
Dynastic marriages aren't a rare plot point in my games, yeah. Never between PCs so far, though. I did have a PC who ran away from an arranged marriage once, though.

Satinavian
2020-12-31, 03:02 PM
Wait, wait, wait. Back-up.

You are playing a game where players are arranging dynastic marriages? Or are you arranging dynastic marriages between the player characters? If so that is cool but I don't think it is very common.
Sometimes PCs arrange, sometimes NPCs arrange. Usually the marriage is between a PC and an NPC, but we did have political marriages between PCs and cases where PCs arranged marriages between NPCs as well.

We often play politic heavy games.

Grek
2020-12-31, 04:06 PM
That's actually kind of really horrifying. The idea that you could be forced to change your sex / gender to make you fit into an arranged marriage is a level of body horror I don't think I want in my campaign.
I think the implication is that it's more of a "The court wizard will polymorph you into a female toad. Once he's done, lay your eggs into this cauldron. It will be taken to the Dux of Austbridge, who will be polymorphed into a male toad to fertilize them. The wizard will handle the process of turning the resulting child back into a human to serve as your heir." sort of thing. Or possibly two blood samples and al alembic sort of thing.

TaiLiu
2020-12-31, 04:15 PM
How do you arrange dynastixally relevant marriages without knowing the sex of a person ? Gender is not a concern when deciding where someone can fit in a family tree. Sex is.
I think other people addressed this already. But if you really wanna guarantee biological children, there're a wide array of concepts that you'd want to appeal to other than "sex," which is, again, incoherent. "Fertility" is probably an important premise. "Genitalia," perhaps.

Could you please elaborate on this? I am having trouble parsing that sentence.
It's common for people to refer to a sex/gender distinction. Hence strings like: "her gender is female and her biological sex is male." But it's hard to make sense of this in any literal way:

(1.) What does "sex" refer to? If it refers to a set of biological traits, then what is the sex of an individual who only has a proper subset of said traits? What exactly are the biological traits that separate the sexes?

(2.) How useful is the concept of "sex" for humans?

(3.) How do you distinguish between "gender" and "sex" in any clear-cut way?

There's also the problem of transmisogyny and transphobia. Calling someone biologically x whose gender is y is obviously not a great thing.

No idea. I could come up with a lot of guesses, but I was far too embarrassed to actually ask at the time and instead ghosted the whole group.
I would probably leave too, actually. It's a lil bit of an alarm bell re: the group.

Satinavian
2020-12-31, 04:33 PM
Well... since this is a game that may have access to magic and/or super science, why would sex matter?
Cloning, divine magic, arcane homunculus, polymorph, full body conversion, birth creshes, ect. With powerful pcs biological restrictions ( if you even have them in game) dont have to be restrictions.

For that matter, the sociology/ political make up of the game need not match how we currently have marrages work.
I rarely play D&D.

In most cases the available magic would not have allowed to do that or only with prohibitive drawbacks.
In settings and magic systems where those options readily exist, they are used. But i didn't have an arranged marriage in any of those so far.

RedMage125
2020-12-31, 11:48 PM
They has been used as singular in certain contexts for centuries (indeed, someone complaining about singular they/them while unthinkingly using it for the very hypothetical person they're talking about is something of a meme), so even if you want to quibble about it as a personal pronoun that's not an issue. Not to mention going back even further "you" was strictly either formal or plural (not unlike the French Tu/Vous distinction).

Plus it's more or less been accepted as the goto gender neutral pronoun (to the point that certain works with gender neutral characters who everyone wasn't sure how to refer to have started using it :smallwink:) anyway (with neopronouns being the alternative).
Honestly, I was the one to bring it up as an issue back on page 1, and my contention with is solely on grammatical/syntactical grounds. I will, of course, respect those who wish for that to be used as their pronoun, and use it accordingly.

It was also mentioned upthread that "they/them" gets used because coming up with a new word out of whole cloth didn't seem to "stick" with most people. So "they/them" continues to get used. And I admit that I do not have a better solution.

But, on a deep-seated (and solely grammar-nazi-related) level, it galls me to use a plural pronoun to indicate a specific, singular individual whose identity is known. This is the same part of me that internally vomits when someone says "irregardless". That really is my only beef with that use of the word.

But it's my problem, not theirs. I recognize that I have weird quirks about what words should and should not be used. "Polyamory", for example, is a terrible word. Mixing Greek and Latin roots into one word...it's a linguistic Frankenstein. Should be "Polyphilia".



It's actually older than the singular use of the word 'you', since the thees-and-thous were what was originally used for that, and singular they appears in the Canterbury Tales. In a form of English which is barely legible to modern audiences, at that.

And whoso fyndeth hym out of swich blame, / They wol come up and offre a Goddés name.

This dates back to the late 14th century, over six hundred years ago.


The thing is, them is always used to refer to an unspecified third person who could of either gender. One out of a pool of possibilities rather than a known individual.


Thank you Talakeal.

"They" when used in singular for an unspecified person is grammatically correct. And it's true for today's grammar as it was for Chaucer.

Kane0
2021-01-01, 02:18 AM
Does anyone have any experience with running a game for intersex PCs or the like? Any advice on how to avoid the pitfalls, or ideas about what the pitfalls even are?


I play most tabletop games with my father, brother and/or wife plus a few friends in their 20s and 30s, so thats my reference point.

My table keeps to a vague ‘PG’ rating, its just the most convenient setting for everyone to play at without hitting bad moments. Sexual content is mild at best, if it does come up it’s downplayed (like the classic ‘fade to black’ sex scene).

So the sex/gender/orientation of a player and/or character matters zero in a mechanical sense and near zero in a narrative one. If they want to draw attentipn to it thats fine, it’s a character trait and honestly will probably have more bearing on the game than alignment anyways.

RPGs are about roleplaying, its in the name. Usually as someone that isnt yourself. Playing as someone with nonstandard sexy bits to me isnt that different to playing someone woth the opposite sexy bits. Chances are you wont ‘do it justice’ but as long as there is no malicious intent and nobody else your playing with becomes uncomfortable i see no reason to stop it from happening.

Also, the belt of genderswapping has been a thing in D&D for decades so yeah, for those that feel strongly about including it there is probably more benefit than those that feel neutral or mildly against it (your table might differ).

KaussH
2021-01-01, 04:46 AM
I rarely play D&D.

In most cases the available magic would not have allowed to do that or only with prohibitive drawbacks.
In settings and magic systems where those options readily exist, they are used. But i didn't have an arranged marriage in any of those so far.

Most of my examples are not dnd either, just general magic and science games.

Satinavian
2021-01-01, 07:20 AM
Most of my examples are not dnd either, just general magic and science games.
Most magic systems don't provide working clones or arcane homunculi for family building. What you usually can get is cosmetic alteration and fertility control. Polymorph might or might not work. Sometimes it is self only, sometimes the duration not enough or it has other limitations.

And why even go through all those hoops if you could just chose the correct species and sex for your arranged marriage ?

RedWarlock
2021-01-01, 07:36 AM
I'm a cisgender gay guy who STRONGLY identifies as male gendered (I suspect I even have a mild form of dysphoria from my visual presentation not being as masculine as my mental image for myself; but that's a whole other psych paper..). I work out and lift weights to degrees others would consider excessive, trying to lose fat and show muscle. I have a footlong beard, and I feel a thrill when I notice more fuzz on my chest or shoulders popping up. I modify my hormone levels to get as hypermasculine as I can. (and no, it's not dysmorphia, I see myself very well, there's no deception there. Totally different thing.)

I also love, trust, and support my friends, family, and loved ones who identify as trans, enby, agender, and so on. (Also, I'll say one thing for an earlier mentioning of "queer" as a blanket term. Self-identification, and usage for broad categorization like "queer theory" in academia, are okay, but it still has enough stigma that applying it to others in absentia is potentially offensive.)

Some folks have a very strong gender identifier in their minds. Some folks don't. And most people don't think about it very hard, because they've never experienced any amount of mismatch or dysphoria that would cause them to question it, and never talked to someone about how theirs differs, so they don't realize other folks have a different amount of identifier, whether less or more, and thus they assume that it's like that for everyone. (It's like how some people don't figure out they're colorblind until later in life, just because the circumstances never really came up to make them examine it.) Folks who want to get rid of all gender norms are probably folks who don't have strong identifiers, and assume everyone else is like them internally, and the world would be better off for it. They don't understand as easily how folks think who DO have strong identifiers.

2020 put a LOT of stress on my gender identity, because I'd been able to make so much progress in my physical condition, getting my body more overtly masculine, less fat, more muscle, than I'd ever managed, that when the gyms closed for months and my condition backslid, and I gained a ton of weight back, and I realized how close to my gender-presentation euphoria I was, because I lost it. It put me in a REALLY dark place that I won't get into for the sake of trigger warnings.

But it really helped me understand how others think and feel about gender.


"Polygamy", for example, is a terrible word. Mixing Greek and Latin roots into one word...it's a linguistic Frankenstein. Should be "Polyphilia".

That felt off, so I looked it up. Polygamy IS accurate greek, it's all greek going back to roots. Same as "Monogamy", all greek. (Wiktionary lists it going through ecclesiastical latin, but it's greek at the base, for "monos-", "poly-", and "gamos".) Latin's corresponding prefix is "multi-", not "poly-".


Recorded since 1591, from Late Latin polygamia, from Ancient Greek πολυγαμία (polugamía)

Ecclesiastical/late latin probably bastardized in a lot of things, but that happens to a lot of languages over time.

BisectedBrioche
2021-01-01, 08:14 AM
Honestly, I was the one to bring it up as an issue back on page 1, and my contention with is solely on grammatical/syntactical grounds. I will, of course, respect those who wish for that to be used as their pronoun, and use it accordingly.

It was also mentioned upthread that "they/them" gets used because coming up with a new word out of whole cloth didn't seem to "stick" with most people. So "they/them" continues to get used. And I admit that I do not have a better solution.

But, on a deep-seated (and solely grammar-nazi-related) level, it galls me to use a plural pronoun to indicate a specific, singular individual whose identity is known. This is the same part of me that internally vomits when someone says "irregardless". That really is my only beef with that use of the word.

But it's my problem, not theirs. I recognize that I have weird quirks about what words should and should not be used. "Polygamy", for example, is a terrible word. Mixing Greek and Latin roots into one word...it's a linguistic Frankenstein. Should be "Polyphilia".

I used to be the same way when I was younger. But as I learnt more about languages, I came to realise linguistics should be descriptive, not prescriptive.

I live in a country with a lot of weird pronunciations (I was born near the city of Loughborough - two ough's, both pronounced differently :smallwink: ). These came about because the pronunciations changed as people used them without writing them down, but the spelling remained the same (creating a fascinating set of shibboleths). So which is the right one? Obviously what people call it now, because anything else wouldn't be useful. A purely logical analysis on the words for something leads to the simple conclusion; "It works because it's consistently called that, no matter why". Someone barging in to "correct" things only makes communication muckier; not somehow more correct.

By the same reasoning, a person's pronouns are like their name; what they say goes. Trying to "correct" them on either is as futile (and rude) as telling the locals of a town or country you know what its called better than them (and as a Briton, I know precisely how well that goes).

Scots Dragon
2021-01-01, 08:21 AM
Unfortunately we Britons also have to deal with some nastiness WRT trans issues lately. Makes some of the more tonedeaf stuff in this thread look pretty tame.

BisectedBrioche
2021-01-01, 08:20 PM
Isn't that the truth...

RedMage125
2021-01-01, 11:16 PM
That felt off, so I looked it up. Polygamy IS accurate greek, it's all greek going back to roots. Same as "Monogamy", all greek. (Wiktionary lists it going through ecclesiastical latin, but it's greek at the base, for "monos-", "poly-", and "gamos".) Latin's corresponding prefix is "multi-", not "poly-".



Ecclesiastical/late latin probably bastardized in a lot of things, but that happens to a lot of languages over time.

So..I meant "Polyamory" from the get go (hence why I said it should be "polyphilia"). Turns out, I misspelled it, and it auto-corrected to "polygamy" and I did not catch it. You're right, Polygamy is all Greek. But "Polyamory" is the aforementioned Linguistic Frankenstein.

Multiamory or Polyphilia would be correct. "Polyamory" is...etymologically disgusting.

Anonymouswizard
2021-01-02, 02:24 AM
So what? Why does it matter if the word I use to describe my relationship(s) mixes language roots?

Unless I'm trying to get a cheap laugh out of somebody. But I think Unknown Armies and it's section on what schools of magic are called says it best. Most people do not care enough about language roots g to switch to a 'correct' word.

anthon
2021-01-02, 03:30 AM
I think the implication is that it's more of a "The court wizard will polymorph you into a female toad. Once he's done, lay your eggs into this cauldron. It will be taken to the Dux of Austbridge, who will be polymorphed into a male toad to fertilize them. The wizard will handle the process of turning the resulting child back into a human to serve as your heir." sort of thing. Or possibly two blood samples and al alembic sort of thing.

This was actually not far from the plot line for a Cyberpunk adventure in the supplement "When Gravity Fails". Except the PCs were sold into prostitution and had their minds hijacked with personality modifier chips. I'm reminded of those magical curses where the person can talk about anything except exactly what needs to be communicated to lift their curse, like their name or identity.

Scots Dragon
2021-01-02, 06:26 AM
So what? Why does it matter if the word I use to describe my relationship(s) mixes language roots?

Technically using the word is mixing languages to begin with since it’s being used as part of a sentence in English.

Anonymouswizard
2021-01-02, 06:35 AM
Technically using the word is mixing languages to begin with since it’s being used as part of a sentence in English.

Shhhhhhhh, we might run out of words if the prescriptivists catch on!

Ashiel
2021-01-02, 02:31 PM
I have noticed that a lot of RPG books these days are going out of their way to be more inclusive of characters who do not fit into "traditional" concepts of sex and gender; for example recently when creating characters for Delta Green I saw the character sheet has gender check boxes for male, female, and other, and I have been advised to add something similar to the character creation chapter in my own game.

In the past, I have had players come to me wanting to play intersex characters in games I was running, and I always said no; mostly because I assumed they were doing it for fetishistic reasons and would creep out the other players.

But now I am starting to think that maybe I should ease up on it. I mean, character's genitals are never referenced in the game as is, why would that suddenly change if they were "nonstandard"?

But, I still am afraid that people would either do it for fetishistic reasons, or just as an attention getter; but then I wonder if that is necessarily even a bad thing? And then I think that some players would be creeped out just by seeing the "other" box ticked on another player's character sheet.


Does anyone have any experience with running a game for intersex PCs or the like? Any advice on how to avoid the pitfalls, or ideas about what the pitfalls even are?

Thanks.


Also, trying hard not to offend anyone with my language, but I am kind of unsure about terminology, so if anyone has any suggestions to improve that I would love to hear them.

It really depends heavily on your group, who you want to associate with, and why. None of the transwomen in our group transitioned to Schrodinger's gender, so "other" probably wouldn't be very popular with our group if it was intended to identify people similar to us. Further, I can confirm that there's an unfortunate number of people in these hobbies that certainly would be very fetishistic with "other" as a gender, to the point that oversexed gender-abnormal characters on RPG discord servers have become something of a "that-guy" meme for a lot of people I've met, so I sympathize with your concerns.

That said, "other" can mean a lot, including just having no sex at all, which might be appropriate for things like oozes, constructs, or elementals. Even in those cases, they might actually have gendered personalities such as in the case of the sapient swords in Tales of Destiny (old PS1 game) or Warforged, since there are discernible differences between masculine and feminine personalities and behaviors (because if there weren't then there would be no such thing as male or female genders at all and by proxy the transwomen in our group would be invalid).

Honestly instead of having some sort of checkmark system like "male, female, other", most every character sheet I've ever seen just has it as a blank write-in, which is probably for the best since you can write in whatever you want, even if whatever you want is completely made up nonsense that can only exist in an RPG capable of producing a 20th level psionic sandwich. It's pretty much a blank check to do as you will and that's probably the best way to handle it.

--

All that being said, having some sort of physical or mental non-conformity to typical sexual norms can make for compelling characters as a facet of them, not necessarily as their whole. It could be something that motivates or demotivates them. There's been quite a few characters in my campaigns that have certain gender-based quirks that have influenced their lives and experiences. One example was a character of mine named Faith. She was a powerful knight, but part of the reason she became a warrior was because of a sexual birth defect that made her incapable of having children and made her less suitable as a mate in their society, so instead of settling down and getting married she tried to serve her family in a less traditional role and became a knight as a part of a religious order. During the course of the campaign, she eventually fell in love with another PC who saved her life (with the sentiment being mutual), and later still another PC devised a way to restore her ability to have children, at which point she and the aforementioned romantic interest settled down to rule a keep and the surrounding village and have a family.

Another character that springs to mind was a vampire NPC who was biologically male but was otherwise female in both identity and mannerisms. Due to not having access to sufficiently high level magics to make any sort of permanent alterations, she instead lived as a woman using the age old method of getting good at passing via Disguise checks, and was sufficiently good enough at it that she would pass in any normal social interactions. Even then, it was one aspect of her character, not the whole. It was just one of the difficulties or complexities of her life that made her human, not wholly dissimilar to other difficulties people face such as having an estranged family because you decided to be an adventurer instead of taking over the family business, or being the only dwarf/elf couple for a hundred miles. She surely didn't draw attention to her non-conformity (and wouldn't want to) and the PCs had no clue initially until they overheard her having a verbal spat with some of catty vampires in her coven that referred to her as Victor instead of Victoria to taunt her.

But even in both of these cases, marking anything other than "female" or maybe "female (see notes)" on a character sheet's descriptive bits would feel very inappropriate since it wouldn't be anything that were outwardly obvious to anyone in the way that hair, skin, eye color, height, and similar attributes would be. These would only be things that you would be aware of in very specific contexts or in confidence between the characters (such as when the aforementioned knight told her love interest that she couldn't have children and he should find someone else that wasn't a 'dead end', and such personal interactions are very character developing moments).

Sharur
2021-01-03, 05:09 AM
From my personal viewpoint, people are (needlessly) hard to understand, computer code is easy to understand, so lets start with an anecdote about programming:

In Object Oriented Programming, the equality of two objects is determined by the output of a function (often, but not always, defined by one of the two compared objects). These functions need not be the same, such that "A.equals(B)" might evaluate to true, but "B.equals(A)" evaluates to false.

Likewise with gender (and sex, including intersex): What an individual's gender or sex, or even what "values" are available, is dependent on what evaluation function is being used, which is in turn dependent on who is doing the evaluating. Some might see gender is an intrinsic value of individual, that only said individual can determine, while others view it as extrinsic, determined by external factors such as genitalia, chromosomes, secondary sexual characteristics, behavior, etc., often according to societally set standards. Still others use different evaluations for different purposes (e.g. the requirements for classification of personal attraction vs. mating/life partner vs. social role/status can be quite different).

Thus the answer to what an individual's gender is "it probably depends on what evaluation method is being used."

So why have it on a character sheet? Because it forms part of the character and probably affects interactions between the PC and NPCs (and potentially other PCs), even if mechanical differences have been excised from the game. If, for example, to pull an example out the air, the Order of the Stick were attacked in their rooms at an inn (where traditionally Haley and V share a room and the boys bunk together in another room), the party might fair very differently depending on whose rooms were attacked first (potentially assuming the whole party's isn't alerted and their first action is not to group up).


Bah, give adopted children full rights, or let nobles without children nominate heirs. What's more important is that you avoid a chaotic transition, which means an heir (that the other key position holders don't dislike) exists.


But then, from where will spring all of our lovely political plots and intrigues and civil wars and intra-family assassinations? From whence will spring completely incompetent and supremely arrogant ***holes who are so supremely convinced they inherently better than the "low born peasants" be they the PCs or their allies?

Anonymouswizard
2021-01-03, 08:41 AM
But then, from where will spring all of our lovely political plots and intrigues and civil wars and intra-family assassinations? From whence will spring completely incompetent and supremely arrogant ***holes who are so supremely convinced they inherently better than the "low born peasants" be they the PCs or their allies?

Getting rid of the requirement for heirs to be biological children doesn't get rid of any of that. A nominated heir, or even an elected monarchy, means that the nobles are suddenly competing for a much bigger prize.

Imagine the drama when guilds start fighting for a vote.

Grek
2021-01-03, 01:06 PM
Honestly, for a D&D setting something like the Imperial Exam system crossed with Fairy Tale Questing for the hand of the Prince(ess) in marriage makes a lot more sense. There's clearly some extreme variance in competency between the average and the best available and competency is based largely on surviving adversity, not on inherited advantages. (Being rich doesn't give you more XP!) Obviously you want to set up some challenges where you need to be at least this good to pass, get confirmed by the local clergy to possess the appropriate moral characteristics, get checked by the local wizards to make sure you're not cursed/under any compulsions/secretly a doppelganger and then ultimately asked to go on some sort of quest to fully prove your worth (read: go adventure and get as many levels as you can before the current King dies). Couple that with the ability to marry/adopt anyone the King says so into the family and have them be a legitimate heir and there you have it.

Anymage
2021-01-03, 04:22 PM
Presumably the king is the strongest adventurer out there (ignoring for a moment how adventuring skills don't necessarily overlap with good rulership skills like diplomacy and governance and instead focusing on just being so strong that no other adventurer can stroll in and take the crown off your head by force), and also commands the resources of the state. If they do have children, why wouldn't they want to give their children every advantage possible and leverage their significant advantages towards that end?

As long as people still have the urge to leave nice things to their kids and the things they leave are significant enough, hereditary positions will tend to pop up in practice even if they aren't officially written down anywhere.

Ashiel
2021-01-04, 02:22 PM
Presumably the king is the strongest adventurer out there (ignoring for a moment how adventuring skills don't necessarily overlap with good rulership skills like diplomacy and governance and instead focusing on just being so strong that no other adventurer can stroll in and take the crown off your head by force), and also commands the resources of the state. If they do have children, why wouldn't they want to give their children every advantage possible and leverage their significant advantages towards that end?

As long as people still have the urge to leave nice things to their kids and the things they leave are significant enough, hereditary positions will tend to pop up in practice even if they aren't officially written down anywhere.

It seems unlikely that your typical ruler is a super badass adventurer type, nor would they need to be, anymore than a ruler of a nation IRL needs to be something like a top-class navy seal. The power of kings and queens has always been the social influence they wield, since a mob of peasants could grab and hang a king from a tree like a festive pinata; their knights to decide that they're ruining the country and assassinate them; etc.

Likewise, It seems unlikely that unless succession by conquest or subversion was the norm (which would probably produce chaos) most rulers would vary wildly in combat potential, and you would pretty much never have cases of "boy-kings" and the like.

I think it's probably more plausible that generally rulers have specialized staff for things like a personal guard, magicians, intelligence agents, and patriotic loyalists and such for many of their doings. Or in the case of obviously evil rulers, they dangle carrots of benefits of a corrupt government to people who would happily oppress others but not have ambitions to rule the country themselves (similar to how evil dictators IRL have goons that could easily murder the evil dictators themselves but don't because their lives as goons are more comfortable than the poor people they are oppressing).

EDIT: That said, there is a pretty good precedent for high level individuals (adventurers or otherwise) to also be hyper competent in things, it seems likely that they do become rulers if that's something that interests them; and with the countless ways of attaining immortality or pseudo-immortality, some countries might actually be incredibly stable due to having the same good ruler for generations because magic is awesome like that.

Anonymouswizard
2021-01-04, 02:46 PM
It seems unlikely that your typical ruler is a super badass adventurer type, nor would they need to be, anymore than a ruler of a nation IRL needs to be something like a top-class navy seal. The power of kings and queens has always been the social influence they wield, since a mob of peasants could grab and hang a king from a tree like a festive pinata; their knights to decide that they're ruining the country and assassinate them; etc.

This, adventurers are generally too mobile to form a political power base. Although pre-3e D&D did assume that at 9th level you settled down into researcg or politics, it also assumed that you were nowhere near the level of king (I believe the Rules Cyclopedia points out that you'd have equivalent resources to a Baron, and honestly a rather impoverished one if you built your own castle/mansion). But at that point logistics and politics are supposed to take up much, much more of your time than adventuring.

In many games it can be even harder to justify. Your mage might have incinerated the authority, but they can't hold onto power if they can be killed from half a mile away with a sniper rifle. And whole destructive power is great, abuse it too much and you've got nowhere to rule.


it's why in 3.X most rulers are either 2nd-3rd level Aristocrats or Experts, or have one on hand. They're much more likely to have the skills to hang onto power.

RedMage125
2021-01-05, 03:34 AM
So what? Why does it matter if the word I use to describe my relationship(s) mixes language roots?

Unless I'm trying to get a cheap laugh out of somebody. But I think Unknown Armies and it's section on what schools of magic are called says it best. Most people do not care enough about language roots g to switch to a 'correct' word.

I'm going to quote what I said in regards to this, to answer your question.


But it's my problem, not theirs. I recognize that I have weird quirks about what words should and should not be used. "Polyamory", for example, is a terrible word. Mixing Greek and Latin roots into one word...it's a linguistic Frankenstein. Should be "Polyphilia".
This was a related tangent in regards to the topic...vis use of "they" as a singular pronoun, and how my issue with it is purely grammar-based, but also recognizing and acknowledging that I am very particular about "right" and "wrong" grammatical issues. And that such is my own hangup.

So the answer to your question is: "Nobody said that it did matter if the word you use mixes language roots." It was a tangential statement in relation to a subject of discussion.

Kardwill
2021-01-05, 08:55 AM
Aside from 5E D&D (and those that omit "fluff" entirely) I cannot think of a single character sheet which doesn't have a place to mark one's sex.

I just looked at my gaming library, and I found several of them.

- Fate Games (Fate Core, Dresden Files RPG, Bulldogs!, Dresden Accelerated, Legend of Anglerre, spirit of the century... Yeah, I'm a Fate Fanatic ^^) : Those character sheets only have a "description" field, and a "species" field when genre-appropriate.
Fate is a system built around what is important for the PCs. Characters, and what makes their identity, is at the heart of the system. Yet the description field is freeform, so that you can put whatever you please. If sexual or gender identity is important for your character, then you'll probably integrate it to one of your aspects (Small sentences describing what your character is about, their core concept, their trouble... that get to orient the gameplay and the story), but it's the player's decision to put them there or not.

- Apocalypse World : a very "story first" game. And with sex rules, to boot! (Every "character class" has a gameplay effect when they have sex with another PC) But no "gender" or "sex" box on the character sheet, only a general "looks" box. There are prompts during character creation to fill that "looks" box, and one of these prompts is "male/woman/ambiguous/transgressive/concealed", so the player explicitely don't have to write down wether their character is male or female.

- Monster of the week : an Apocalypse World clone about buffy-like monster hunters. Same as AW, but without the sex/gender stuff in the prompts. For example, the "looks" prompts for "the Chosen" character class (Buffy-like chosen ones) are : "Kid, teen, young, burnt-out / Fresh face, haggard face, young face, haunted face, hopeful face, controlled face / Preppy clothes, casual wear, urban wear, normal clothes, neat clothes, street wear"

- Monsterhearts : an "Apocalypse World" clone that is explicitely about exploring teenage drama and sexuality. Yet, there are no "sex" box on the character sheet. There are prompts to fill out the "identity" field, but they are about "name", "look", "eyes" and "origin", and there is no reference to sex nor gender in them (for example, the "look" prompts for the "mortal" character class are "quiet, desperate, awkward, beautiful, displaced")

- Heroquest : A game with freeform stats, set in an antiquity setting with very strong traditional gender roles. Yet, it's up to the player to decide if they want to put their sex/gender in the "distinguishing characteristic" field, or even to have a stat like "strongest steadwife of the Dundealos tribe"


Sure, I also have a lot of games with a "sex" field on top of the character sheet. Mostly older, traditional ones. But all the games I just presented are "narrative first, game later" RPGs, and yet, every one of them let the player decide if they want to talk about their PC's sexual characteristics, and how they want to describe them.
And sure, many players will put stuff like "a black-haired, amber-eyed, man in his mid-tenties with twin daggers and a slender build". But it's nice to have the option to put something else.

After all, who would check under the furs of your wookie warrior? ^^

Powerdork
2021-01-05, 01:43 PM
I've heard tell of a game that does have a gender selection but that does it in an unusual way. (https://briebeau.com/thoughty/2019/12/gender-in-sleepaway/)

Talakeal
2021-01-05, 07:13 PM
snip

That is kind of proving my point though.

AFAICT, those are all narrative games, and none of them have any sort of prompts for how to describe your character on the sheet.


I've heard tell of a game that does have a gender selection but that does it in an unusual way. (https://briebeau.com/thoughty/2019/12/gender-in-sleepaway/)

Having read the entire article, I am now significantly more confused than I was when I started.

Anonymouswizard
2021-01-05, 07:42 PM
I've heard tell of a game that does have a gender selection but that does it in an unusual way. (https://briebeau.com/thoughty/2019/12/gender-in-sleepaway/)

Yeah, I'm confused, While I get that the game is based on a genre and concept I ave zero experience with, I just don't get it. To mde this doesn't sound like gender. I'd argue those are 'presentations', which are to me a very different thing to do with how the person decides they will interact with the outside world.

Which is something more RPGs should talk about, and darn I need to change something on the character sheet for mine (and now I'm much happier with it). But the difference and interaction between gender(/sex) and presentation is something that's important to people and society and one that deserves to be explored.


For the record, this is how my game currently deals with this stuff:
Outward Presentation is a description of what you show the world. This is where physical sex would go, but it's about how you want to be viewed and the means you use to achieve it.

Inner Thoughts are about what happens behind the scenes, the methods and facts your character uses to make decisions. Gender identity, or lack thereof, may or may not be involved.

Driving Objectives are what you think you want. Pretty simple.

Defining Events are moments in the backstory and gameplay that reinforce any of the above.

I'm still working on how they'll impact the game, it might end up boiling down to them each giving an additional Trait but I want to try to link them in with some kind of metagame currency.

Cluedrew
2021-01-05, 08:19 PM
I'd argue those are 'presentations', which are to me a very different thing to do with how the person decides they will interact with the outside world.My reaction was "well I am glad it spoke to you because I don't get it". Also I think it might be the opposite, who are you on the inside. I know several characters who I could easily describe as "Lighthouse in the Darkness" or "Rusted Sword", but that isn't really there gender. Although the Lighthouse one would probably describe their gender as "Doesn't Matter" instead of male/female/nonbinary so there is some ground for more exotic descriptions. But really Apocalypse World's system is about exotic as I can get before I start loosing track.

137beth
2021-01-06, 09:38 AM
Aside from 5E D&D (and those that omit "fluff" entirely) I cannot think of a single character sheet which doesn't have a place to mark one's sex..



That is kind of proving my point though.

AFAICT, those are all narrative games, and none of them have any sort of prompts for how to describe your character on the sheet.


The games Kardwill mentioned do not "omit 'fluff' entirely." They are, in fact, very fluff-heavy. You appear to be moving the goalposts by declaring that "narrative" games don't count.

Talakeal
2021-01-06, 10:30 AM
The games Kardwill mentioned do not "omit 'fluff' entirely." They are, in fact, very fluff-heavy. You appear to be moving the goalposts by declaring that "narrative" games don't count.

Keep in mind that I specified the character sheets rather than the game itself.

More than that, I was specifically talking about character sheets that had fields for descriptive details (age, height, weight, sex, ethnicity, hair color, eye color, etc.). I honestly wasn't even thinking about character sheets that just had a blank space where you can write whatever description you want without prompting.

Although, in my experience, narrative games don't really care about the fiction so much as they do about telling a dramatic story. They tend to operate on "fridge logic" rather than concerning themselves with the details of the world. For example, Apocalypse World's power which allows you to simply enter a scene whenever it would be dramatic regardless of where you were previously in a sort of "Jason Voorhes teleports when he is off camera" sort of way.

Anonymouswizard
2021-01-06, 10:32 AM
My reaction was "well I am glad it spoke to you because I don't get it". Also I think it might be the opposite, who are you on the inside. I know several characters who I could easily describe as "Lighthouse in the Darkness" or "Rusted Sword", but that isn't really there gender. Although the Lighthouse one would probably describe their gender as "Doesn't Matter" instead of male/female/nonbinary so there is some ground for more exotic descriptions. But really Apocalypse World's system is about exotic as I can get before I start loosing track.

I mean, again, this is a genre I have no experience with. But I really would not have put 'gender' on that field and we could quibble all day and come up with admit fifty better words if we really want to because we'll all see these terms as receiving something different. It's definitely a setup that speaks to a certain variety of people, maybe more than one kind of person. But I feel they there's a lot is important context that the authors are leaving out because they've either said it before or think it's obvious.

Although I'm not innocent of describing my gender in nonstandard ways ('magic 8 ball' is a particular favourite), to me these tend to be fairly easy to explain if people don't get them ('reply hazy, ask again later'). So I'm really wondering what the context is that would in theory allow me to make the link, assuming there is any.

Psyren
2021-01-06, 12:37 PM
Our sex influences (but doesn't determine) nearly every facet of our physical forms, as well as having some degree of influence over psychological, social, and fashion. To me it is a very useful descriptor. Along with age and race, it is used in virtually any descriptor you will hear if someone is trying to locate someone, for example a missing child poster or a police bulletin.

Likewise, sex appears on every piece of identification I own and I need to input it in the vast majority of forms I fill out. Aside from 5E D&D (and those that omit "fluff" entirely) I cannot think of a single character sheet which doesn't have a place to mark one's sex.

I really don't think including a field for sex is nearly as controversial as you are making it out to be.

Also, I may be emotionally a bit too close to the issue to give an unbiased answer. Being able to play as a female character is very important to me, and as I child I would frequently get into trouble from my parents or other kids for being the "weirdo who pretends to be a girl" that being told there shouldn't be a place for sex on the character sheet feels like being told to get back in the closet. Obviously that isn't what you meant, but it is how it feels to me on a raw emotional level.


I'm not at all saying you are wrong for wanting a dedicated field for gender expression. I personally think such a field is inherently less practical than simply encouraging it to be included as part of a much larger freeform "background", "outlook", or "expression" space, given the concept's potential mutability/fluidity (even day-to-day or moment-to-moment for some) as well as how many possible permutations of the concept there are, but your game can certainly have a shorter and more traditional line for it like the D&D 3.5 sheet does. That practicality is why I'm highlighting the official sheets of more modern games, like D&D 5e and Pathfinder 2e, as positive examples to draw from, because I believe they came to a similar conclusion with their own designs.

Where I do think your understanding might potentially have flaws however, is in your continued conflation, or at least a seeming lack of precision, when using the terms "sex" (especially the term "physical sex") and "gender." When you say something like "being able to play as a female character is important to me" I'm not at all disputing that (in fact I wholeheartedly agree that being able to express your character's identity is important), but I'm also not clear whether you're referring to sex, gender, or both simultaneously; which attributes you believe play a role in that expression, and whether or how the game plans to enable gender identities/expressions that don't fall neatly into discrete buckets like "male," "female" or intersex."

And you're correct, many traditional documents like driver's licenses and loan applications do have such a field - but I would counter that that field's presence on those documents has caused no small amount of pain and frustration for trans/nonbinary individuals too. "Lots of existing documents have that field" is Appeal to Tradition, which is a fallacy for a reason.

So to take this all the way back to the opening post - this thread began with you asking for any potential pitfalls when trying to be more inclusive of nuanced gender expression to be brought to your attention. All I'm trying to do is highlight one such potential pitfall - namely, quite literally "othering" any gender expression that doesn't fit neatly within a box labeled "male" or "female" like the Delta Green game did, but also highlighting that a short freeform field labeled "gender" or "sex" may not be that much better for such a nuanced concept. That's all I'm saying :smallsmile:

Satinavian
2021-01-07, 09:09 AM
So to take this all the way back to the opening post - this thread began with you asking for any potential pitfalls when trying to be more inclusive of nuanced gender expression to be brought to your attention. All I'm trying to do is highlight one such potential pitfall - namely, quite literally "othering" any gender expression that doesn't fit neatly within a box labeled "male" or "female" like the Delta Green game did, but also highlighting that a short freeform field labeled "gender" or "sex" may not be that much better for such a nuanced concept. That's all I'm saying :smallsmile:

The thread was and is about intersex characters, not gender expressions. Intersex is a term used for biologically not male or female, it has little to do with gender and is certainly completely different from nonbinary.

BisectedBrioche
2021-01-07, 09:39 AM
The thread was and is about intersex characters, not gender expressions. Intersex is a term used for biologically not male or female, it has little to do with gender and is certainly completely different from nonbinary.

It is a broad medical term with a long and complicated history which ties into the way sex and gender are described, classified and treated by society. It doesn't exist in a vacuum.

Anonymouswizard
2021-01-07, 10:30 AM
The thread was and is about intersex characters, not gender expressions. Intersex is a term used for biologically not male or female, it has little to do with gender and is certainly completely different from nonbinary.

We've been discussing gender identity as well as physical sex since page 1, it's not exactly off topic by this point.

Looking at the games I personally own, the rough trend seems to be: rules-heavy includes a sex or gender box, rules medium (roughly Fate level) includes a description box, and anything goes for rules light. Not a hard and fast rule, D&D 5e is noticeably missing sa dedicated sex box despite being rules heavy*. but a rough trend.

* It's trying to be rules-medium, but insists on having tons of combat-related rules. And I can already here the 'you need rules for combat' crowd lining me up to tell me I'm wrong.

Xervous
2021-01-07, 10:36 AM
We've been discussing gender identity as well as physical sex since page 1, it's not exactly off topic by this point.

Looking at the games I personally own, the rough trend seems to be: rules-heavy includes a sex or gender box, rules medium (roughly Fate level) includes a description box, and anything goes for rules light. Not a hard and fast rule, D&D 5e is noticeably missing sa dedicated sex box despite being rules heavy*. but a rough trend.

* It's trying to be rules-medium, but insists on having tons of combat-related rules. And I can already here the 'you need rules for combat' crowd lining me up to tell me I'm wrong.

Will you accept a “dammit 5 why couldn’t you decide on plenty of rules for combat AND skills, or few for both”?

Duff
2021-01-07, 08:04 PM
I already mentioned this in another thread, but it makes perfect sense to me. As a radical feminist myself, I find gender to be a harmful social construct that should be abolished. At the same time, modern trans theory seems to hold to opposite ideals, that gender is something that is special and sacred and a vital part of everyone’s identity afaict.

Not quite. From what I understand, Trans theory* holds that for some individuals, their gender is important to them. This should be respected.
I've seen no-one insisting my gender is important since (to me) it's fairly low on my list of identities



* This may be skewed by the people who are likely to stay in my friendship group

icefractal
2021-01-07, 08:26 PM
More than that, I was specifically talking about character sheets that had fields for descriptive details (age, height, weight, sex, ethnicity, hair color, eye color, etc.). I honestly wasn't even thinking about character sheets that just had a blank space where you can write whatever description you want without prompting.

Although, in my experience, narrative games don't really care about the fiction so much as they do about telling a dramatic story.The amount of character description on PbtA sheets isn't large, but it's more than what D&D generally has.

I mean, "eye color", really? Yes, I eventually notice eye color, but it usually comes behind several things like "style of clothes"*, "build" (height/weight doesn't really cover it, it's both over-precise and insufficient information), "scruffiness", "physical demeanor" (how someone stands and moves, their resting expression), and "distinctive features" (sometimes eye or hair color is a distinctive feature, but not always).

While short PbtA-style descriptions don't necessarily get people picturing the same thing, I think they usually get people picturing a compatible thing in terms of theme / style. Meanwhile, you can know that a character is [male, 6'1", 190 lbs, brown eyes, black hair] and still have not only a different mental picture but an entirely different impression than the creator did.

*I know this is covered by inventory, technically. But I'm not a fashion expert, and so saying something like 'loose, colorful, trendy clothes' or 'army surplus survival gear' actually conveys more information than listing the exact articles of clothing which I'd probably have to look up.

Anonymouswizard
2021-01-07, 08:58 PM
Not quite. From what I understand, Trans theory* holds that for some individuals, their gender is important to them. This should be respected.
I've seen no-one insisting my gender is important since (to me) it's fairly low on my list of identities



* This may be skewed by the people who are likely to stay in my friendship group

I once had a discussion with my girlfriend on if the legal concept of gender should be abolished. I'd go into it more but I can't here, suffice to say that for some goals it's the 'short term hassle, long term ease' option and the opposite for other causes.

I doget annoyed by having to put down my gender for things that don't need it, especially as a lot of the time I don't have the option to go nonbinary. It might be a cause of me disliking it on characters sheets (I'm a bit more ambivalent on sex fields, but wouldn't mind seeing them go). Then again my gender identity wanders between 'lightly male' and 'lightly female' and my sexuality between 'more attracted to women' and 'I wish I had the confidence to ask cute boys out', I'm not exactly in a large enough demographic for most form makers to care about.


Oh, for the record, if I was putting things on a character sheet in the order I tend to find them important when imagining someone:
-Relative height
-Weight/size (it helps build a silhouette)
-Hair colour
-Hair length (almost never on character sheets, why?)
-Skin colour
-Clothes they're wearing, including what that tells me about the gender they're presenting (again, why is it rarely given it's own section?)
-Hat?
-Eye colour, but only if we're comfortable enough to make eye contact
-Oh look it's a kitty!
-What's tucked between their legs

Notably people's order of importance will be different, I think eye colour is more important to most people than to me, but honestly making that list Going back to a characyer sheet I've designed for a game I've paused development on made me realise just how much space I'd given to the 'hair' field based on the assumption it'll include length/style.

Psyren
2021-01-07, 09:42 PM
Intersex is a term used for biologically not male or female, it has little to do with gender and is certainly completely different from nonbinary.

How do you define "biologically not male or female," especially in an RPG context? Chromosomes? Anatomy?

Lord Raziere
2021-01-07, 10:01 PM
How do you define "biologically not male or female," especially in an RPG context? Chromosomes? Anatomy?

I can think of a few ways: robot, digital AI, golem, alien species that doesn't reproduce sexually, spirit of an abstract concept above any meaning of biology, technically ghosts are dead and thus don't have biological parts and thus cannot be biologically anything, same with any intelligent undead such as vampires, liches, and so on (they are technically necrological in nature), elementals are pre-biological beings in that are living fundamental forces that can lead to biology's existence but themselves are not biological, animated objects don't have biology, and neither do energy beings...

there is a lot of things that aren't really biologically anything in rpgs, so its really broad.

Psyren
2021-01-08, 01:59 AM
I can think of a few ways: robot, digital AI, golem, alien species that doesn't reproduce sexually, spirit of an abstract concept above any meaning of biology, technically ghosts are dead and thus don't have biological parts and thus cannot be biologically anything, same with any intelligent undead such as vampires, liches, and so on (they are technically necrological in nature), elementals are pre-biological beings in that are living fundamental forces that can lead to biology's existence but themselves are not biological, animated objects don't have biology, and neither do energy beings...

there is a lot of things that aren't really biologically anything in rpgs, so its really broad.

All of which are valid character concepts, but don't really fit with "Intersex" either. (Well, maybe the alien species does, but somehow I don't think a game like Starfinder is what the OP had in mind.)

Satinavian
2021-01-08, 02:26 AM
How do you define "biologically not male or female," especially in an RPG context? Chromosomes? Anatomy?

Does your species reproduce sexually ? No -> You don't have a sex
If Yes, does your species actually have different sexes to do so ? No -> You don't have a sex any more than there is a sex to a snail
If Yes, does your body conform to one of those sexes ? Yes -> You have that sex
No or only partial or it has attributes of several sexes that usually don't come bundled -> You are intersex.

It is not really different for fantasy worlds, you can do the same steps in our world. And here the third question would look at chromosomes and anatomy as part of the body to evaluateand variations in both areas can get the specimen the intersex label.


Also it is common to treat being undead just as a condition and not something that actually changes your sex.

Psyren
2021-01-08, 02:43 AM
Does your species reproduce sexually ? No -> You don't have a sex
If Yes, does your species actually have different sexes to do so ? No -> You don't have a sex any more than there is a sex to a snail
If Yes, does your body conform to one of those sexes ? Yes -> You have that sex
No or only partial or it has attributes of several sexes that usually don't come bundled -> You are intersex.


What does it mean for your body to "conform to one of those sexes?" And what "attributes" are expected to be "bundled" for someone to be "biologically X" or "biologically Y?" Is there are a threshold for such attributes that, once met, your body can be considered to be "conforming?"

I think there are pitfalls in assuming that there exist universal standards or answers for such things, as opposed to the distinctions being largely arbitrary conventions - especially when those conventions are often assigned at birth based on a more limited range of such "attributes" for the individual in question.

Satinavian
2021-01-08, 03:23 AM
Of course there is subjectivity left. That is why this kind of evaluation is usually left to the medical profession. Or to Zoologists.

But when discussing how to treat/include intersex PCs you don't have to make that evaluation. If a player doesn't want to play an intersex character you don't examine the discription closely for stuff that does not match the stated sex. You likely won't even get a detailed description of their bits to form an opinion about them. You just assume they are average. If a player does want to play an intersex character, that player usually has a clear idea how the characters body fits the label and that is usually obvious enough.

The important point is that determining the sex of a human is not fundamentally different than determining the sex of a dog or a frog or a bee with intersex as a catch-all category for everything that does not fit the established sexes.

KaussH
2021-01-08, 10:50 AM
How do you define "biologically not male or female," especially in an RPG context? Chromosomes? Anatomy?

In one of my settings, elves have 3 genders, one of which is intersex, and has actively both sets of genitila. Orcs (not a playable race) can switch from male to female much like an amphibian, so depending on conditions they may well fit as well.

Talakeal
2021-01-12, 12:59 PM
I'm not at all saying you are wrong for wanting a dedicated field for gender expression. I personally think such a field is inherently less practical than simply encouraging it to be included as part of a much larger freeform "background", "outlook", or "expression" space, given the concept's potential mutability/fluidity (even day-to-day or moment-to-moment for some) as well as how many possible permutations of the concept there are, but your game can certainly have a shorter and more traditional line for it like the D&D 3.5 sheet does. That practicality is why I'm highlighting the official sheets of more modern games, like D&D 5e and Pathfinder 2e, as positive examples to draw from, because I believe they came to a similar conclusion with their own designs.

IMO it is much easier to put data into fields than write it out long form. Easier to write out, easier to organize, easier to remember everything, and easier to find what I need. Of course, it is also nice to have an extra miscellaneous space for details which you feel are important but don't fit into any of the fields.

Also, in my experience specific prompts are a lot easier for people who are having difficulty coming up with something, or just don't care. A "hack and slash" guy who just cares about the numbers would probably leave a descriptive field blank or close to it, but can probably be drawn out of their shell a bit if asked specific questions about their character's appearance like what color hair they have.


Where I do think your understanding might potentially have flaws however, is in your continued conflation, or at least a seeming lack of precision, when using the terms "sex" (especially the term "physical sex") and "gender." When you say something like "being able to play as a female character is important to me" I'm not at all disputing that (in fact I wholeheartedly agree that being able to express your character's identity is important), but I'm also not clear whether you're referring to sex, gender, or both simultaneously; which attributes you believe play a role in that expression, and whether or how the game plans to enable gender identities/expressions that don't fall neatly into discrete buckets like "male," "female" or intersex."

The problem is there isn't a good word for "biological sex".

Sex can mean it, but can also mean sexual intercourse.
Gender can also mean it, but can also mean the social construct.

I decided to go with the latter because it sounds better to me.


I generally try and ignore gender. I find it to be unnecessarily constraining for both men and women, and I frankly don't understand what non-binary even means (but would like to). As I said before, my game is set in a 19th century society without strongly enforced gender roles and where biological sex can be changed alchemically, so I don't think that an exploration of modern notions of gender really fits in any case.


And you're correct, many traditional documents like driver's licenses and loan applications do have such a field - but I would counter that that field's presence on those documents has caused no small amount of pain and frustration for trans/nonbinary individuals too. "Lots of existing documents have that field" is Appeal to Tradition, which is a fallacy for a reason.

Appeals to tradition, authority, and popularity are not themselves arguments, but they are very strong evidence of something.

I am not quite sure how one would even go about making a logically sound argument when discussing how useful something is a description.


We've been discussing gender identity as well as physical sex since page 1, it's not exactly off topic by this point.

Looking at the games I personally own, the rough trend seems to be: rules-heavy includes a sex or gender box, rules medium (roughly Fate level) includes a description box, and anything goes for rules light. Not a hard and fast rule, D&D 5e is noticeably missing sa dedicated sex box despite being rules heavy*. but a rough trend.

That was my appraisal as well.


Not quite. From what I understand, Trans theory* holds that for some individuals, their gender is important to them. This should be respected.
I've seen no-one insisting my gender is important since (to me) it's fairly low on my list of identities

Yeah, but as I recently said on the off topic board, I have had several people recently tell me that gender is something that everyone is innately born with and / or something that transcends social or physical definition. One guy even went so far as to insist that if he were a sexless robot who had lived alone on a desert island his whole life with no knowledge of human society or culture, he would still identify as male because the concept of masculinity is an intrinsic and inborn part of his identity.


The amount of character description on PbtA sheets isn't large, but it's more than what D&D generally has.

I mean, "eye color", really? Yes, I eventually notice eye color, but it usually comes behind several things like "style of clothes"*, "build" (height/weight doesn't really cover it, it's both over-precise and insufficient information), "scruffiness", "physical demeanor" (how someone stands and moves, their resting expression), and "distinctive features" (sometimes eye or hair color is a distinctive feature, but not always).

While short PbtA-style descriptions don't necessarily get people picturing the same thing, I think they usually get people picturing a compatible thing in terms of theme / style. Meanwhile, you can know that a character is [male, 6'1", 190 lbs, brown eyes, black hair] and still have not only a different mental picture but an entirely different impression than the creator did.

*I know this is covered by inventory, technically. But I'm not a fashion expert, and so saying something like 'loose, colorful, trendy clothes' or 'army surplus survival gear' actually conveys more information than listing the exact articles of clothing which I'd probably have to look up.

Eye color is fairly straightforward and difficult to change. Style, demeanor, and scruffiness are all much harder to describe and much easier to change.


I once had a discussion with my girlfriend on if the legal concept of gender should be abolished. I'd go into it more but I can't here, suffice to say that for some goals it's the 'short term hassle, long term ease' option and the opposite for other causes.

I doget annoyed by having to put down my gender for things that don't need it, especially as a lot of the time I don't have the option to go nonbinary. It might be a cause of me disliking it on characters sheets (I'm a bit more ambivalent on sex fields, but wouldn't mind seeing them go). Then again my gender identity wanders between 'lightly male' and 'lightly female' and my sexuality between 'more attracted to women' and 'I wish I had the confidence to ask cute boys out', I'm not exactly in a large enough demographic for most form makers to care about.


Oh, for the record, if I was putting things on a character sheet in the order I tend to find them important when imagining someone:
-Relative height
-Weight/size (it helps build a silhouette)
-Hair colour
-Hair length (almost never on character sheets, why?)
-Skin colour
-Clothes they're wearing, including what that tells me about the gender they're presenting (again, why is it rarely given it's own section?)
-Hat?
-Eye colour, but only if we're comfortable enough to make eye contact
-Oh look it's a kitty!
-What's tucked between their legs

Notably people's order of importance will be different, I think eye colour is more important to most people than to me, but honestly making that list Going back to a characyer sheet I've designed for a game I've paused development on made me realise just how much space I'd given to the 'hair' field based on the assumption it'll include length/style.

Is what's between their legs visible? Because if so its going to draw my eyes pretty quickly, but normally this isn't the case if someone is clothed.

On a more serious note though, for whether someone is a man or a woman is probably the first thing I notice about them, particularly if they have visible secondary sex characteristics like beards of breasts.

I would say less than one percent of people are androgynous enough that you can't tell their sex right off by looking at the shape of their face or body, and I can only recall once in my life when I accidentally misgendered someone.


What does it mean for your body to "conform to one of those sexes?" And what "attributes" are expected to be "bundled" for someone to be "biologically X" or "biologically Y?" Is there are a threshold for such attributes that, once met, your body can be considered to be "conforming?"

I think there are pitfalls in assuming that there exist universal standards or answers for such things, as opposed to the distinctions being largely arbitrary conventions - especially when those conventions are often assigned at birth based on a more limited range of such "attributes" for the individual in question.

Now we are getting into continuum fallacy territory.

Just because one can't point to an exact point where someone becomes intersex doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

Kane0
2021-01-12, 03:10 PM
One big box marked ‘Description’

Edit: and if you’re worried about players leaving it blank insert prompts in the players handbook

Anonymouswizard
2021-01-12, 03:48 PM
Is what's between their legs visible? Because if so its going to draw my eyes pretty quickly, but normally this isn't the case if someone is clothed.

How often are characters in your games devoid of clothes down there? Not that there aren't signs while wearing clothes (and thus products designed to alter those signs), but generally less noticeable ones.

As for it drawing the eyes? It depends on the person looking and the situation. Even then that pretty much just tells you what their trouser contents are.


On a more serious note though, for whether someone is a man or a woman is probably the first thing I notice about them, particularly if they have visible secondary sex characteristics like beards of breasts.

I did explicitly note 'gender they present as', but I do legitimately find it less important than hair length. Unless, of course, I'm trying to get their trousers off.


I would say less than one percent of people are androgynous enough that you can't tell their sex right off by looking at the shape of their face or body, and I can only recall once in my life when I accidentally misgendered someone.

And I know people who get misgendred multiple times a day despite presenting as their preferred gender. A focus on sex causes some people a lot of problems?

Xervous
2021-01-12, 03:53 PM
One big box marked ‘Description’

Edit: and if you’re worried about players leaving it blank insert prompts in the players handbook

What sort of leading prompts would you suggest?

Scots Dragon
2021-01-12, 04:05 PM
How often are characters in your games devoid of clothes down there?

That sort of thing really depends on the nature of the campaign.

Satinavian
2021-01-12, 05:30 PM
That sort of thing really depends on the nature of the campaign.
The last time for me literally in the gaming session i had two hours ago.

Anonymouswizard
2021-01-12, 06:39 PM
That sort of thing really depends on the nature of the campaign.

Well sure, but my partners haven't agreed to play yet.....


Oh, and setting and situational stuff I guess.

I remember 19 year old me being very interested in Cyberpunk 2020 when running across the Lifepath tables and seeing that one of the options was 'naked'. Mid-twenties me though is happy that got replaced in the new edition.

Scots Dragon
2021-01-12, 07:17 PM
Well sure, but my partners haven't agreed to play yet.....


Oh, and setting and situational stuff I guess.

I remember 19 year old me being very interested in Cyberpunk 2020 when running across the Lifepath tables and seeing that one of the options was 'naked'. Mid-twenties me though is happy that got replaced in the new edition.

Random nudity can work in some settings if it's handled with the proper amount of maturity, balanced out with the right level of immaturity.

A cyberpunk setting could make it work. Probably best for more loincloths-and-scale-bikinis type Sword & Sorcery though.

Anonymouswizard
2021-01-12, 07:41 PM
Random nudity can work in some settings if it's handled with the proper amount of maturity, balanced out with the right level of immaturity.

A cyberpunk setting could make it work. Probably best for more loincloths-and-scale-bikinis type Sword & Sorcery though.

Oh sure, and there's one game I own which I wish just included a line saying 'some groups wear no clothing, please treat it maturely'. It's rarely come up in my games due to sa tendency since about 2014 to have been playing city-based games in relatively modern eras, and any situations it might have appeared in were glossed over because everybody agreed it would be boring.

As I said, setting and situational stuff. It ust came after me making a really bad joke.

In Cyberpunk it's more a problem of the one in ten chance of your character's default outfit being nothing, no matter what, and rolled randomly than the nudity itself. In cyberpunk games once you get past a certain point of enhancement it can get to 'does it matter' territory, and I've created (but not played, I know few people who'd run cyberpunk games) characters who avoided certain augmentations, noticeably dermal armour, because the character wanted it to matter. Plus I'm a sucker for a Molly Millions-style razorgirl, which means that integrated armour is at best fourth on my list of priorities, and modesty closer to twentieth (but generally fulfilled because practical clothing tends to be modest).

I have nothing against nudity in games. It's just that, in my personal experience, it tends to be rare and an entire campaign can go by without it coming up.

Satinavian
2021-01-13, 03:00 AM
I have nothing against nudity in games. It's just that, in my personal experience, it tends to be rare and an entire campaign can go by without it coming up.Yes, it is rare, but not that rare.

- Your whole boby needs to be checked for signs of demonic corruption.
- You did something that completely ruined your outfit even if you yourself survived (possibly by being supernaturally durable)
- The systems version of polymorph/shapechange does not extend to clothing and equippment and when you change back, you are naked
- You don't bath/swin clothed but swimsuits are not a thing in the setting
- Your culture does not actually use clothing

All things that happened not too far ago at one of my tables. But as those tables are in the middle of Europe where the nudity taboo is far less strong, none of that was actually a plot point or something particularly noteworthy.

Kardwill
2021-01-13, 04:32 AM
Eye color is fairly straightforward and difficult to change. Style, demeanor, and scruffiness are all much harder to describe and much easier to change.


Eye color is also mostly irrelevant to someone's appearance. Unless those eyes are very striking. How often do you remember the eye color of a character in a novel? Or the eye color of a fellow PC in game? Or the eye color of your own character, if you don't check it on the sheet.

I don't shy away from eye contact, but yet, I'm unable to tell you the eye color of my colleagues, including the ones that just left my office, and of most of my friends. And I can't really remember my own mother's eyes, even if I saw her this morning (Brown-ish? with some gold? Or was there some green?).

Demeanor, style, attitudes, built, mannerism, body odor are much more descriptive. "Brown eyes" is just an information, dry and mostly useless. "Inquisitive eyes, darting in every direction as I take in my surroundings" or "dead eyes looking into the distance and never making eye contact" are descriptions that give the character life. "A balding, heavily built man with a round belly and slouched shoulders, freaquently wiping sweat from his brow when he's nervous" is more descriptive that "1,77m, 115 kg, blond hair". A general image of the striking elements of your character are more important than biometric informations, because they will both guide your roleplay and keep in the mind of your fellow players. Maybe they won't have the exact description of your character, but they will have an image of what the character looks like.

And yes, those subjective descriptions can change. But it doesn't happen very often. We build an "image" of our PCs, and that image rarely changes, unless as part of a disguise or an character-evolution (like the fretting newbie becoming a self-assured veteran) that the player will usually describe. But usually, the caracter will stay the same and won't really change attitude nor style.

Eldan
2021-01-13, 07:42 AM
Yes, it is rare, but not that rare.

- Your whole boby needs to be checked for signs of demonic corruption.
- You did something that completely ruined your outfit even if you yourself survived (possibly by being supernaturally durable)
- The systems version of polymorph/shapechange does not extend to clothing and equippment and when you change back, you are naked
- You don't bath/swin clothed but swimsuits are not a thing in the setting
- Your culture does not actually use clothing

All things that happened not too far ago at one of my tables. But as those tables are in the middle of Europe where the nudity taboo is far less strong, none of that was actually a plot point or something particularly noteworthy.

Huh. You're right. I was about to say we don't feature nudity much in our games, but then I remembered we recently had an assassination attempt on some of the PCs in a sauna.

Eldan
2021-01-13, 07:42 AM
Eye color is also mostly irrelevant to someone's appearance. Unless those eyes are very striking. How often do you remember the eye color of a character in a novel? Or the eye color of a fellow PC in game? Or the eye color of your own character, if you don't check it on the sheet.

Unless it's GRRM and every time someone's eye colour is mentioned, you start a 20 page speculative thread about a character's secret ancestry somewhere.

Xervous
2021-01-13, 09:27 AM
Unless it's GRRM and every time someone's eye colour is mentioned, you start a 20 page speculative thread about a character's secret ancestry somewhere.

Or it’s Stormlight Archives where eye color determines social caste and changing eye color indicates someone found a fantasy!lightsaber.

Anonymouswizard
2021-01-13, 11:23 AM
Yes, it is rare, but not that rare.

- Your whole boby needs to be checked for signs of demonic corruption.
- You did something that completely ruined your outfit even if you yourself survived (possibly by being supernaturally durable)
- The systems version of polymorph/shapechange does not extend to clothing and equippment and when you change back, you are naked
- You don't bath/swin clothed but swimsuits are not a thing in the setting
- Your culture does not actually use clothing

All things that happened not too far ago at one of my tables. But as those tables are in the middle of Europe where the nudity taboo is far less strong, none of that was actually a plot point or something particularly noteworthy.

And none of them have happened at a table I played at for six years, mainly because things like bathing are just glossed over (and our characters tended to shower at home anyway). The one time any of those examples would have come up (, checking for demonic possession) anything or psychic couldn't detect had to be done by professional demonic possession specialists.

Like, I play in the UK where the nudity taboo is somewhere between the US and Europe. It probably would have up if we played in a single equivalent to pre-1940s, but I haven't for a while.


Or it’s Stormlight Archives where eye color determines social caste and changing eye color indicates someone found a fantasy!lightsaber.

Darn, now you've reminded me of the cosmere Jedi.

Talakeal
2021-01-13, 12:36 PM
How often are characters in your games devoid of clothes down there? Not that there aren't signs while wearing clothes (and thus products designed to alter those signs), but generally less noticeable ones.

As for it drawing the eyes? It depends on the person looking and the situation. Even then that pretty much just tells you what their trouser contents are.

Are we talking about in game or in real life at this point? I thought we were discussing what people notice when they look at someone.


I did explicitly note 'gender they present as', but I do legitimately find it less important than hair length. Unless, of course, I'm trying to get their trousers off.

Different people I guess. I rarely notice hair length at all unless it is extremely long or short.



And I know people who get misgendred multiple times a day despite presenting as their preferred gender. A focus on sex causes some people a lot of problems?

That's unfortunate. But I really see that more of a problem with language and gender roles vs whether or not sex is a useful description.

I would ask for more details, but that's probably rude. As a guy with long hair, I do occasionally get mis-gendered by someone who sees me from the back though.


Eye color is also mostly irrelevant to someone's appearance. Unless those eyes are very striking. How often do you remember the eye color of a character in a novel? Or the eye color of a fellow PC in game? Or the eye color of your own character, if you don't check it on the sheet.

I don't shy away from eye contact, but yet, I'm unable to tell you the eye color of my colleagues, including the ones that just left my office, and of most of my friends. And I can't really remember my own mother's eyes, even if I saw her this morning (Brown-ish? with some gold? Or was there some green?).

Again, different people notice different things I guess.

I have no problem remembering the eye color of family, friends, and ex-girlfriends / previous close friends. For coworkers and fictional characters I have created, I can remember about four out of five.

Still though, my point was not that eye color is hugely important as a descriptive factor, just that it was well suited towards being on a form because it is relatively simple and unchanging.



Demeanor, style, attitudes, built, mannerism, body odor are much more descriptive. "Brown eyes" is just an information, dry and mostly useless. "Inquisitive eyes, darting in every direction as I take in my surroundings" or "dead eyes looking into the distance and never making eye contact" are descriptions that give the character life. "A balding, heavily built man with a round belly and slouched shoulders, frequently wiping sweat from his brow when he's nervous" is more descriptive that "1,77m, 115 kg, blond hair". A general image of the striking elements of your character are more important than biometric informations, because they will both guide your roleplay and keep in the mind of your fellow players. Maybe they won't have the exact description of your character, but they will have an image of what the character looks like.

And yes, those subjective descriptions can change. But it doesn't happen very often. We build an "image" of our PCs, and that image rarely changes, unless as part of a disguise or an character-evolution (like the fretting newbie becoming a self-assured veteran) that the player will usually describe. But usually, the character will stay the same and won't really change attitude nor style.

There are advantages and disadvantages to forms and to freeform descriptions.

I prefer to have both, I just lean toward forms if I had to choose. It is easier for me to keep track of information that way, and I find that many players will, without prompting, either write almost nothing or write so much that the important bits get lost in a sea of purple prose.

I would personally have real trouble trying to describe a real person using descriptions like you gave above, let alone trying to guide my role-play with it. Most people just don't have consistent expressions or body language or dramatic mannerisms, let alone one's that convey their personality.

But, on the other hand, maybe someone who is more visually acute than I am gets more out of subtlety than absolutes.

Psyren
2021-01-14, 12:47 PM
Now we are getting into continuum fallacy territory.

Just because one can't point to an exact point where someone becomes intersex doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

I'm not saying such a point doesn't exist; I'm saying it's not universal, and there are a lot of ways it can vary among individuals. A short field labelled "biological sex" or even just "sex" therefore isn't likely to do the concept justice; you made this thread to ask for honest feedback, and in summary, that's mine.


One big box marked ‘Description’

Edit: and if you’re worried about players leaving it blank insert prompts in the players handbook

This is in fact what 5e and PF2e ended up doing, and is the approach I'm most aligned with personally. I'm also fine with "Features", "Background", "Traits" and similar.

Anonymouswizard
2021-01-14, 02:25 PM
Different people I guess. I rarely notice hair length at all unless it is extremely long or short.

Which is why I'm generally a proponent of a Description box rather than a form (although I'm fine with a form if it leaves enough space for other stuff).


That's unfortunate. But I really see that more of a problem with language and gender roles vs whether or not sex is a useful description.

I would ask for more details, but that's probably rude. As a guy with long hair, I do occasionally get mis-gendered by someone who sees me from the back though.

It's a problem with people making assumptions based on physical characteristics. People tend to make a lot of assumptions based on jawline, hair length, and breast size. Sadly, British politeness means I can't slap a shop attendent if they misgender people I know.

I personally get misgendered quite a bit, but that's because I tend not to bother one way or another and society tends to assume male by default, so unless I start making efforts to make girl mode feminine (which I should, but I always forget to buy me some jewellery and shirts) people will address me as male unless I correct them (also I look fairly masculine by default, but nothing some strategic changes can't fix).


Okay, here's what it would take for me to be happy with a form-like character sheet: give field for both sex assigned at birth and gender identity, and make at least the second one long enough to include a few words.;Generfluid tending female' is enough to make me happy, although I'm sure there's people out there on the internet who would write a six page story on their character's gender identity.

BisectedBrioche
2021-01-14, 02:56 PM
It's a problem with people making assumptions based on physical characteristics. People tend to make a lot of assumptions based on jawline, hair length, and breast size. Sadly, British politeness means I can't slap a shop attendent if they misgender people I know.

I personally get misgendered quite a bit, but that's because I tend not to bother one way or another and society tends to assume male by default, so unless I start making efforts to make girl mode feminine (which I should, but I always forget to buy me some jewellery and shirts) people will address me as male unless I correct them (also I look fairly masculine by default, but nothing some strategic changes can't fix).


Okay, here's what it would take for me to be happy with a form-like character sheet: give field for both sex assigned at birth and gender identity, and make at least the second one long enough to include a few words.;Generfluid tending female' is enough to make me happy, although I'm sure there's people out there on the internet who would write a six page story on their character's gender identity.

Sadly {Scrubbed} I can't kick out a customer who does something similar.

I can correct colleagues, though. ^_^

Lemmy
2021-01-14, 05:16 PM
I only had 1 intersex PC in my games so far...

It was years ago and I didn't even know what it meant. So I just asked if it had any mechanical effect in the game and what the character looks like (as that may impact how NPCs interact with it).

The player didn't want to have any mechanical effect, it was a role-playing choice... And gave me a description of the character (Well... An image and "They look like this, but with these minor changes...").

So... I said "OK". And that was it.

I suppose I could've thought up how the society of the region where the game took place reacts to intersex PCs... But, since sexuality in general doesn't have a lot of "screen time" in my games, and I didn't know much about intersex people (and still don't, TBH), I just ruled it was uncommon enough that society had no standard response to it... And let the player decide how this would affect the character's backstory, personality and behavior, if at all.

The player seemed to be satisfied... And enjoyed playing her character, so... Success!

In general, my standard policy for role-playing choices that don't have any mechanical impact and don't disrupt the campaign is "Sure... Why not?".

Frogreaver
2021-01-14, 08:04 PM
"Biological sex" is more complicated than a distinction from gender. Gender identity is, in fact, a sex marker. Three of the other markers can be changed (hormones, secondary sexual characteristics and genitals).

Trying to define a nonbinary person by their Assigned Gender At Birth (AGAB) is incredibly rude, and deserves no justification in my book (besides, in my experience you can't tell what someone has, or had, in their pants unless they tell you; and that's not a common situation).

I think some people also find it incredibly rude that anyone would insist they refer to you by anything other than your AGAB.

Which is one place where table problems can easily arise with that stuff.

False God
2021-01-14, 10:10 PM
I think some people also find it incredibly rude that anyone would insist they refer to you by anything other than your AGAB.

Which is one place where table problems can easily arise with that stuff.

I never understand this objection. We have names right? We were given these things at birth, essentially against our will. William, Jenny, Carl, Frank, but noone gets upset when William wants to be called Billy, or when Jenny goes by Sue, or when Carl goes by his dead-great-grandfather's name Ashby. They need give no greater reason for it other than "I prefer to be called Frank." To refer to them as Francis shows a disregard for their value in your eyes as a person, that they are not equal, that you get to determine what they are called and how you refer to them.

Why? To whose benefit is it? Not theirs certainly. Why do you need power and control over others lives?

Further, I don't typically refer to people as "guy", or "girl". I know the names of everyone at my table. I don't call the guy players "dude" or "bro" or "chick" or "woman" because it's non-specific and can lead to confusion when I'm talking to people. I refer to them as Billy, Sue, Ashby or Frank, so it's clear who I'm talking to.

When I want to get the guy named Frank's attention, I say "Hey Frank!" I don't go "Hey male-person!" because that's silly and confusing.

To continue, you may never know that Frank used to be Francine. There may be nothing about them that gives away a switch in sex and gender(unless that's something you're looking for, which is...weird to say the least). Learning that later and then switching over to calling them Francine and referring to them as a girl takes more effort on your part, especially to unlearn that you originally knew them as the boy Frank. Except to establish that you get to determine what they are called, not themselves.

So why insist on silliness? If Jake the boy wants to be Jenny the girl, call them Jenny. They're happy, and nothing about your life became any more difficult. The only thing you've given up is control over others, which you were never entitled to in the first place.

Frogreaver
2021-01-15, 01:19 AM
I never understand this objection. We have names right? We were given these things at birth, essentially against our will. William, Jenny, Carl, Frank, but noone gets upset when William wants to be called Billy, or when Jenny goes by Sue, or when Carl goes by his dead-great-grandfather's name Ashby. They need give no greater reason for it other than "I prefer to be called Frank." To refer to them as Francis shows a disregard for their value in your eyes as a person, that they are not equal, that you get to determine what they are called and how you refer to them.

Names don't typically come with any preexisting baggage right? I mean if I demanded to be called by the name "Lord President Frogreaver greatest in the land" you don't think people would have a problem with that and refuse to do so?


Why? To whose benefit is it? Not theirs certainly. Why do you need power and control over others lives?

What benefit do you get by forcing others to use a specific pronoun to refer to you? We both know it's been common practice for quite some time for people to use the pronoun corresponding to ones AGAB. Why insist on asserting your power and control over their lives?


Further, I don't typically refer to people as "guy", or "girl". I know the names of everyone at my table. I don't call the guy players "dude" or "bro" or "chick" or "woman" because it's non-specific and can lead to confusion when I'm talking to people. I refer to them as Billy, Sue, Ashby or Frank, so it's clear who I'm talking to.

When I want to get the guy named Frank's attention, I say "Hey Frank!" I don't go "Hey male-person!" because that's silly and confusing.

I don't think it's hard to understand that different people do different things.


To continue, you may never know that Frank used to be Francine. There may be nothing about them that gives away a switch in sex and gender(unless that's something you're looking for, which is...weird to say the least). Learning that later and then switching over to calling them Francine and referring to them as a girl takes more effort on your part, especially to unlearn that you originally knew them as the boy Frank. Except to establish that you get to determine what they are called, not themselves.

Sure. And the flipside is that they may have found it offensive that you hid that from them. And they may also find it controlling that you are telling them they need to use pronouns differently than they always have just to accommodate you.


So why insist on silliness? If Jake the boy wants to be Jenny the girl, call them Jenny. They're happy, and nothing about your life became any more difficult. The only thing you've given up is control over others, which you were never entitled to in the first place.

Seems pretty clear: It's about not being controlled by others who should be able to understand that some other people prefer to use the pronoun corresponding to someone's AGAB. Why are ya'll the privleged ones that should get made happy here instead of those that prefer to use pronouns based on AGAB? What becomes more difficult in your life for making them happy? Does anything about your self identity actually change regardless of whether they call you a he or a she?

I mean consider for a moment how different the conversation and reaction would go if you said: I get some people want to use the pronoun corresponding to my AGAB and if that's the only way they are comfortable that's cool. I view myself currently as best being defined by the pronoun X. I prefer when I'm referred to by X but if someone is really not comfortable with that then I get it and they should use whatever they are comfortable with. IMO, if you show you are willing to accommodate their viewpoints and feelings, many of them will be willing to accommodate yours too, or will come around to it before long. I really think the biggest pushback to what you want is due to a perceived attempt that what you are actually doing is trying to control and force people into doing what you want them to.

Satinavian
2021-01-15, 03:59 AM
I never understand this objection. We have names right? We were given these things at birth, essentially against our will. William, Jenny, Carl, Frank, but noone gets upset when William wants to be called Billy, or when Jenny goes by Sue, or when Carl goes by his dead-great-grandfather's name Ashby. They need give no greater reason for it other than "I prefer to be called Frank." To refer to them as Francis shows a disregard for their value in your eyes as a person, that they are not equal, that you get to determine what they are called and how you refer to them.How difficult changing your name is can be very culture and country dependent. There are places where officially declaring that you are some other gender than previously assumed just gives you a viable reason to change your name but the name change still has to follow certain rules and has to be approved. Sure, there are artists aliases and nicknames but a person who does not want to be referred to by their real, official, hard to change name would be seen as quite strange. It seems that names don't carry much weight in the Anglo world, but that is far from universal.

It seems nowadays easier to get people to respect ones preferred gender than to respect a self-chosen name (that does not come with a gender switch). There is some awareness that Trans-people exist and many are willing to accomodate them even if they don't really get the concept but i don't see similar tolerance towards people who feel their name is off.


The only problem with referring to people with pronouns fitting the gender they say they are instead of ones you guess fom their appeareance is that actually have to memorize their gender. Which, honestly, you actually don't need for anything else. But for the record, it is still something i very much think everyone should try to do as some kind of generally expected curtsy


It is very different in game as gender there might have significant impact on your social opportunities and how accepting the ingame culture is of anything resembling Trans behavior might differ as well. But it is basically impossible to discuss this without going ino details about specific settings and the expectations there.

Psyren
2021-01-15, 04:03 AM
@Frogreaver: If someone tells you their preferred pronouns, and you purposefully ignore their wishes, at the very least that indicates a lack of respect for them as a human being. I can only hope that's not what you're advocating for.

Requiring a moniker like "lord president X greatest in all the land" to accompany your name at all times is argumentum ad absurdum.

BisectedBrioche
2021-01-15, 05:29 AM
I think some people also find it incredibly rude that anyone would insist they refer to you by anything other than your AGAB.

Which is one place where table problems can easily arise with that stuff.

Some people find it incredibly upsetting when married women keep their maiden name, what's your point?

Misgendering a trans person for any reason (short of not outing them as trans when they don't wish to be) is wrong, and I don't feel that needs any further qualifier.

Frogreaver
2021-01-15, 09:00 AM
Some people find it incredibly upsetting when married women keep their maiden name, what's your point?

Misgendering a trans person for any reason (short of not outing them as trans when they don't wish to be) is wrong, and I don't feel that needs any further qualifier.

No one is misgendering anyone though. They use gender to refer to something different than you do. They use it to refer to AGAB and everyone agrees on what someone's AGAB is. You use gender to refer to how you internally perceive yourself (a bit more nuanced I'm sure). So the offense you feel is essentially you getting offended by a semantical difference and that offense is causing you to offend them by insisting they use gender pronouns in a way they prefer not to and equating their preferred use with morality, ie right and wrong.

Anonymouswizard
2021-01-15, 09:59 AM
No one is misgendering anyone though. They use gender to refer to something different than you do. They use it to refer to AGAB and everyone agrees on what someone's AGAB is. You use gender to refer to how you internally perceive yourself (a bit more nuanced I'm sure). So the offense you feel is essentially you getting offended by a semantical difference and that offense is causing you to offend them by insisting they use gender pronouns in a way they prefer not to and equating their preferred use with morality, ie right and wrong.

Well they're wrong then. They might be right off they used the word sex, but certainly not for gender.

AGAB also really leaves out a lot of complexity and assumes that it's based entirely on genitals, whereas you can have nonambiguous genitals and be chromosomally or hormonally* intersex. Language isn't clear cut, but standard convention is 'physical=sex, mental=gender'.


Heck, I get misnamed a lot, and it's very annoying. Despite my preferred name only being the syllables long and my ANAB, everybody insists on using a diminutive. And it's really annoying. But it's only a hundredth as annoying as presenting as one gender and people insisting that you are another one.

* I'm not sure if this is officially an intersex condition, but there are people whose sex hormones aren't classically 'male' or 'female'.

False God
2021-01-15, 10:04 AM
Names don't typically come with any preexisting baggage right? I mean if I demanded to be called by the name "Lord President Frogreaver greatest in the land" you don't think people would have a problem with that and refuse to do so?
Names can come with a LOT of baggage. Maybe you were named after your Uncle Kelly, but it turns out that Kelly is a psycho and did some horrible things, but since you've got the same last name (father's brother) there's a lot of confusion and every time you tell someone your name they're like "Oh, Kelly Jones the guy who killed 5 people and ate the ears?" So you go by Rick.

{Scrubbed}

Kardwill
2021-01-15, 10:26 AM
So the offense you feel is essentially you getting offended by a semantical difference
Nah, the offense they feel is that their will is ignored. Just like you would be offended if someone called you an obnoxious nickname, you told them to stop and use your real name or your prefered nickname, and the person still insisted about using the obnoxious one "because it's the nickname that I heard when other people talk about you". Forgeting about a person's preferences or not knowing about them happens, but ignoring it on purpose is rude.

Kardwill
2021-01-15, 10:37 AM
I would personally have real trouble trying to describe a real person using descriptions like you gave above, .

And I would too. But we're talking about characters, not real people, and iconic characters are easier to describe with those attributes.

I mean, I could pretty easily give a description of Indiana Jones by using attitudes, demeanor, facial expressions, general built and garments. But I'm completely unable to tell you how tall Harrison Ford is, or what is his eye color :)

KaussH
2021-01-15, 11:01 AM
No one is misgendering anyone though. They use gender to refer to something different than you do. They use it to refer to AGAB and everyone agrees on what someone's AGAB is. You use gender to refer to how you internally perceive yourself (a bit more nuanced I'm sure). So the offense you feel is essentially you getting offended by a semantical difference and that offense is causing you to offend them by insisting they use gender pronouns in a way they prefer not to and equating their preferred use with morality, ie right and wrong.

If someone gives you their name and/pronoun, people should use them as given.
If someone comes up to you and says " hi i am bob" and you go " you look like a doug to me, so i will call you that instead" that is seen as rude and a jerk move. Same goes for a given pronoun. It doesnt matter what others think they should be. What they give is what they are and if that makes someone else upset well... their body, name,gender, ect.

( and yes mistakes happen, moreso when you knew them as x and now its y, thats a whole diff issue)

Frogreaver
2021-01-15, 12:33 PM
Names can come with a LOT of baggage. Maybe you were named after your Uncle Kelly, but it turns out that Kelly is a psycho and did some horrible things, but since you've got the same last name (father's brother) there's a lot of confusion and every time you tell someone your name they're like "Oh, Kelly Jones the guy who killed 5 people and ate the ears?" So you go by Rick.

{Scrub the post, scrub the quote}

1. You didn’t even address the point of the paragraph you responded to.

2. Don’t respond then. If you want to refuse to see how others view your demands on them then that’s on you.

JNAProductions
2021-01-15, 12:43 PM
Frogreaver, I don't like the pants you're wearing. You should wear a skirt instead.
And only wear blue shirts-no other colors allowed.

Feels kinda ridiculous, doesn't it? I shouldn't be allowed to dictate how you present yourself. If you want to wear sweats with a red shirt, that's your choice, and it's certainly not harming anyone else.

Likewise, if someone who's AMAB presents as female, it's not hurting anyone else. Respect her wishes, and don't force your own onto her. If you make mistakes, that's okay-I had an experience where I met a woman who was early in her transition, and didn't realize she was presenting as a woman. I referred to her with a male pronoun, and she looked upset at that-so I apologized, and made sure to not make the same mistake again. But there's a world of difference between making a mistake and intentionally misgendering someone.

Frogreaver
2021-01-15, 07:36 PM
Well they're wrong then. They might be right off they used the word sex, but certainly not for gender.

Sorry, but you don't get to define words for others. If by gender they mean AGAB, then they are certainly using the correct pronoun to denote that concept. At that point it would be objectively incorrect of them to use a pronoun that didn't correspond to the AGAB.

That's exactly where the pushback is too. Demanding someone change their definition to yours never goes over well. We see the issues of that stance everyday on the internet as most debates ultimately boil down at their core to people using words differently and both sides stay entrenched.

What does someone referring to you/others by the pronoun associated with their AGAB harm anything?

*Now if they are demanding you refer to yourself/themselves by the pronoun associated with your AGAB I'd be pushing back on them just as hard.

JNAProductions
2021-01-15, 07:44 PM
Because some terrible people will literally murder someone if they present differently from their AGAB.

Trans folk face a crapton of prejudice and hate and all manner of badness. Don’t make it worse.

Edit: Frogreaver, how would you feel if you were a feminine-looking man or a masculine-looking woman, and people called you by the wrong pronoun?

Frogreaver
2021-01-15, 08:06 PM
Frogreaver, I don't like the pants you're wearing. You should wear a skirt instead.
And only wear blue shirts-no other colors allowed.

Feels kinda ridiculous, doesn't it?

Not really. Because like most adults I don't care what a random person on the internet thinks I should or shouldn't do...


I shouldn't be allowed to dictate how you present yourself.

100% Agreed. Only issue here is that someone else using your AGAB isn't dictating how you present yourself.


Likewise, if someone who's AMAB presents as female, it's not hurting anyone else.
100% agreed.


Respect her wishes, and don't force your own onto her.
100% disagree. Respect is a 2 way street. She/he can call herself by whatever pronoun she/he wants. No issue there. The issue is demanding things from others.


But there's a world of difference between making a mistake and intentionally misgendering someone.

When half the world uses a different definition of gender than you, the only mistake IMO is not realizing that's the reason they are (from your perspective) 'misgendering' you. I would think it would be hard to take offense at someone 'misgendering' you when you realize that it's due to different definition, ie semantics.

Of course that assumes that the offense being taken isn't due to something deeper, like wanting everyone in society to accept you as if you were no different in any meaningful way from a male/female that matches their AGAB. That's a fine thing to want. I see the appeal, but I don't see how you can claim the moral highroad by demanding others do anything.


Because some terrible people will literally murder someone if they present differently from their AGAB.

Trans folk face a crapton of prejudice and hate and all manner of badness. Don’t make it worse.

I'm with you. Let's condemn all that. Is your argument really that people would be good using the AGAB if it wasn't for that hate and fear? If that's all it is you'd find alot more allies. But that's not really the case is it?


Edit: Frogreaver, how would you feel if you were a feminine-looking man or a masculine-looking woman, and people called you by the wrong pronoun?

Apparently on the phone and such I am a feminine sounding man as I often get referred to as female at drive thru's and over the phone when I call into businesses. Slightly annoying, but 99% of the time I let it slide and most of those times I don't even correct them. Only time I don't is when I'm already agravated at them or their company for other reasons and I use that as ammunition.

IMO. It's hard to get mad at someone when you realize they have a legitimate reason for doing something.

Anonymouswizard
2021-01-15, 08:08 PM
What does someone referring to you/others by the pronoun associated with their AGAB harm anything?

Because words can cause offence and dig up mental pain, because it implies that the speaker does not except the person as the gender they wish to present, and many more besides. Because I know people who can't return home without fear of essentially being tortured unless they present as their AGAB.

On a very simple, genericised level, because of the reason a British spy show had to be renamed when exported because the title, a term for spies, is a racist slur in some places. This was not the intended meaning, but the fact that the name got changed not to offend people is a good thing.

If somebody is actively presenting female and asks you to use female pronouns how difficult is it for people to use said pronouns even if that person's name was, or even is, Edward Cecil Henry Smythe, In cases where you knew this person before they came out it's understandable that there may be an adjustment period, but otherwise it is equivalent to intentionally using the wrong name.

Eddie Izzard has stated that she doesn't mind people not using her preferred pronouns, but it's still polite to do so. I don't believe that Elliot Page has said the same thing, so you should use he/him/his to show that you accept his gender identity.


Remember it's only another three years until Eddie Izzard comes out as genderfluid yet again. Because people always seem to forget that she is.

Cluedrew
2021-01-15, 08:25 PM
To Frogreaver: (Or Lord President Frogreaver greatest in the land if that wasn't sarcastic.) One thing you haven't explained is why do you want to use AGAB as the basis for pronouns anyways. Most of your arguments have been more along the lines of it not being worse (not getting into the counter arguments here) and not why there is a good reason to do it?

For the sake of honesty I should point out I will be very surprised if you have a good reason but I can't say its impossible. It might be impossible to outweigh all reasons in the other direction.

Frogreaver
2021-01-15, 08:26 PM
Because words can cause offence and dig up mental pain,

Sure. Have you ever stopped to consider that forcing someone into using words they don't prefer could also cause offense and dig up mental pain?


because it implies that the speaker does not except the person as the gender they wish to present,

I think you are right that this is typically the case now. But 2 things.
1. Is it really that implausible that someone could insist that they use your AGAB pronoun while fully accepting that you are currently presenting as female?
2. Why does it matter if they accept you as you wish to present? Is it actually harming you if they don't?


Because I know people who can't return home without fear of essentially being tortured unless they present as their AGAB.


That's terrible. But you still can't force those parents to accept them and if you somehow managed to you would just be shifting the torture and fear onto the parents, which isn't particularly good or right either IMO.


If somebody is actively presenting female and asks you to use female pronouns how difficult is it for people to use said pronouns

It's not the difficulty of the request, it's that what you are requesting goes against how those people use pronouns and the word gender. Making that request is offensive to them. The same question can be reversed: How difficult is it to use the pronouns the way they want them to be used?

BisectedBrioche
2021-01-15, 08:33 PM
A person's name and pronouns are how they're addressed. Deliberately misnaming or misgendering someone is an insult in pretty much any context (be it by refusing to remember someone's name, a child calling his classmate a girl as an insult or coming up with an insulting nickname). Even without bringing trans people (who by definition have been forced to identify as something they're not for at least part of their lives) into it.

If you accidentally say something rude, you either apologise or double down on it, and turn it into a deliberate insult.

Trying to turn that around and saying "actually, the effort to call you by the right name/pronouns is just too much; I'm the real victim here" just doesn't fly.

Roland St. Jude
2021-01-15, 09:06 PM
A person's name and pronouns are how they're addressed. Deliberately misnaming or misgendering someone is an insult in pretty much any context (be it by refusing to remember someone's name, a child calling his classmate a girl as an insult or coming up with an insulting nickname).Sheriff: In case it needs to be restated, this is the case here on this Forum.


If you accidentally say something rude, you either apologise or double down on it, and turn it into a deliberate insult.

Trying to turn that around and saying "actually, the effort to call you by the right name/pronouns is just too much; I'm the real victim here" just doesn't fly.And I will add to this that here on this Forum, we don't accept sophistry and semantic excuses for what is plainly bad (rule violating) behavior.

Anonymouswizard
2021-01-15, 09:09 PM
EDIT :Cutting this down to the one bit I really wanted to say.


I think you are right that this is typically the case now. But 2 things.
1. Is it really that implausible that someone could insist that they use your AGAB pronoun while fully accepting that you are currently presenting as female?
2. Why does it matter if they accept you as you wish to present? Is it actually harming you if they don't?

1) Yes, they've shown that either they aren't listening to me or don't care about my feelings.
2) Nonacceptance is the first step on the road to systematic oppression.

Frogreaver
2021-01-15, 10:11 PM
EDIT :Cutting this down to the one bit I really wanted to say.



1) Yes, they've shown that either they aren't listening to me or don't care about my feelings.
2) Nonacceptance is the first step on the road to systematic oppression.

Based on the above I do not believe this can be openly discussed here without breaking the rules. I respectfully bow out.

KaussH
2021-01-15, 10:28 PM
Based on the above I do not believe this can be openly discussed here without breaking the rules. I respectfully bow out.

Well.... it has been openly discussed here, without breaking the rules, by a number of people with slightly diff version on the topic. The big diff seems to be everyone else is " well, what works for them"

On that note, that seems to be good point to work with. What works for your players that are effected by it.
I think a small description is good, but then i like to note key points for my charicter to help me keep them in mind.

Cluedrew
2021-01-15, 10:30 PM
A person's name and pronouns are how they're addressed. Deliberately misnaming or misgendering someone is an insult in pretty much any contextThe exception being nicknames the named likes or doesn't mind. But then they will not ask you to stop which is an (perhaps the) important difference.

BisectedBrioche
2021-01-16, 06:41 AM
The exception being nicknames the named likes or doesn't mind. But then they will not ask you to stop which is an (perhaps the) important difference.

Interestingly enough, under English Common Law, someone's legal name is basically "whatever people call you". So a nickname someone accepts is legally as much their name as whatever they have on their papers.

It also means it's super easy to change your name here.

Anonymouswizard
2021-01-16, 07:58 AM
Interestingly enough, under English Common Law, someone's legal name is basically "whatever people call you". So a nickname someone accepts is legally as much their name as whatever they have on their papers.

It also means it's super easy to change your name here.

I believe it's a bit more complicated, but yeah there's no strict definition of a legal name here.

Yeah, I just double checked out, and to legally change your name you just write a certain phrase on a piece of paper, sign it under your dead and new identities with your address, and get two witnesses to put their signatures and addresses on it. Plus sending it to the courts with less money than it reaches to buy Cyberpunk 2077 to get it on public record, but you don't have to do that for it to be your legal name. This is a great thing. I also believe it's more about record keeping than making the change legal.

I'm considering doing it to add a couple of feminine names to my legal name. It means I'll have five names instead of three, but hey, more names is good names. If it wasn't for lockdown I could get it fully legally binding with two phone calls and a train ticket.

RedMage125
2021-01-16, 12:29 PM
Well, this thread has turned fascinating.

I have never understood the mindset of people who act like refusing to use preferred pronouns is "forcing something on them". To me, it always just seemed like a jerk move.

To Frogreaver's credit, I think he explained it in a way that, at least academically, makes sense. I can at least understand a little bit of why they think what they do.

I mean, I still disagree with him. But I understand a little better now. I think that's something that has value, in and of itself. I'd prefer to understand where my disagreements with others stem from, rather than just believe they're unreasonable A-holes.

Floret
2021-01-16, 12:56 PM
I mean, I still disagree with him. But I understand a little better now. I think that's something that has value, in and of itself. I'd prefer to understand where my disagreements with others stem from, rather than just believe they're unreasonable A-holes.

While I agree it's always nice to be able to at least know where others are coming from... The problem with the perspective he proclaims isn't just that I disagree pronouns should be use that way (Although I do.) The problem is that it's mostly fiction. While I don't want to claim (and have no basis for such claim anyways) that Frogreaver doesn't believe what he's saying... He isn't gonna act like he says he does.

If AGAB is indeed that important for a person in determining what pronouns to use, they'd have to either live in constant uncertainty or avoidance of pronouns alltogether - or have to be naive enough to truly believe they can tell AGAB perfectly. Including in text-only internet conversations.

But even outside, birth assignment is hardly clearly visible in all people. Sure, you'll have reasonable luck guessing based on context clues, but your hitrate will never truly be 100%. (And, no. No matter how well you think you can clock trans people... You can't. And if you think you're perfect at it? You're probably even worse.) But... that is not using them according to AGAB, it is using them based on what you guess their AGAB most likely is. Which means you use them based off of gender presentation. And not off of AGAB.

The only situation where there can be an active choice between using pronouns based off AGAB or gender presentation, is if you know they do not line up. The only situation, where the active linguistic choice comes up at all, is to actively and knowingly misgender a trans person. I'm... sceptical if I can consider that a deeply held belief separate from just plain transphobia.

(Also, if you insist on using "he" for trans women, because you know they're trans? In a lot of cases, you mostly just make yourself unintelligeble. There was a conversation a while back where Blair White of all people pointed out something to Ben Shapiro - if you were to talk about her, in public, to a stranger, and mentioned "That man over there", people just wouldn't understand who you mean.)

I cannot truly consider this a valid position.

Because, simply put, pronouns just don't work off of AGAB. How they work happens to coincide with AGAB most of the time, but humans have simply never used them that way - because for all but a small minority of the people you interact with, you don't know their AGAB. And even in this thread explicitly about it has been made by less than half the participants. Somehow that doesn't stop Frogreaver, who claims to use pronouns based off AGAB from using gendered pronouns for other commenters.

Frogreaver
2021-01-16, 07:59 PM
Well, this thread has turned fascinating.

I have never understood the mindset of people who act like refusing to use preferred pronouns is "forcing something on them". To me, it always just seemed like a jerk move.

To Frogreaver's credit, I think he explained it in a way that, at least academically, makes sense. I can at least understand a little bit of why they think what they do.

I mean, I still disagree with him. But I understand a little better now. I think that's something that has value, in and of itself. I'd prefer to understand where my disagreements with others stem from, rather than just believe they're unreasonable A-holes.

Thank you. That's all I was hoping for. And it's okay to disagree!

Scots Dragon
2021-01-17, 01:49 AM
It's not the difficulty of the request, it's that what you are requesting goes against how those people use pronouns and the word gender. Making that request is offensive to them. The same question can be reversed: How difficult is it to use the pronouns the way they want them to be used?

Because they're my gender and pronouns, not theirs.

If someone can't respect that, they're a jerk.

Satinavian
2021-01-17, 02:51 AM
Interestingly enough, under English Common Law, someone's legal name is basically "whatever people call you". So a nickname someone accepts is legally as much their name as whatever they have on their papers.

It also means it's super easy to change your name here.
Yes, that is why i said names don't carry much weight in the Anglosphere. It is often very different elsewhere. It is not uncommon that you have to prove at court that you have a really good reason to change the name which will otherwise be denied and even then you are limited in what kind of changes you are allowed to make.

137beth
2021-01-17, 10:41 AM
Some people find it incredibly upsetting when married women keep their maiden name, what's your point?


Some people also find it very upsetting when adopted people use their adopted parents' last name. I've heard the phrase "biological last name" brought up in such discussions, which sounds to me like a phrase someone would use if they knew "biological" was a vaguely science-ey sounding word, but didn't know what it actually meant.


Interestingly enough, under English Common Law, someone's legal name is basically "whatever people call you". So a nickname someone accepts is legally as much their name as whatever they have on their papers.

It also means it's super easy to change your name here.

In the U.S., the difficulty of changing your legal name varies wildly by state. However, it turns out there are very few cases where you actually need to use your legal name. I filled out and signed a lease with a fairly large real estate company under the name "Ben." Ben is not my legal name, and it never has been, but that didn't matter. The only time I have to use my legal name is on government documents.

Cluedrew
2021-01-17, 11:02 AM
Interestingly enough, under English Common Law, someone's legal name is basically "whatever people call you". So a nickname someone accepts is legally as much their name as whatever they have on their papers.I was actually thinking of nickname as in the sense of something only a couple people refer to you as. Your point stands I just felt I should clarify.


To Frogreaver's credit, I think he explained it in a way that, at least academically, makes sense. I can at least understand a little bit of why they think what they do.Do you think you could explain it? I did not follow the argument at all.

Actually I'm not entirely sure if there was an argument beyond "don't force me to change how I use pronouns" which isn't wrong but also doesn't explain why they don't want to use gender identity pronouns in the first place. I can easily believe there is a good reason for that position I would be shocked if it outweighed the reasons one should use identity pronouns. But maybe Frogreaver just hasn't... encountered some of the reasons why you should. After what some people I know have gone through I will take that inconvenience in a heartbeat to help out.

Talakeal
2021-01-17, 11:49 AM
For the record, I did not mean to discuss gender identity in this thread, although I think I may start a new topic on the issue as it has raised many new questions for me.

I do state that I do consider myself genderqueer, support people's right to transition (to whatever extent they like) with full legal rights and privileges, and will not (intentionally) misgender someone regardless of their preferred pronouns. I know that I personally use female avatars online and, for me, being misgendered in those situations is a feeling akin to walking along a trail and realizing the stick in front of me is actually a snake, and I can't imagine how much more hurtful it must be in face to face dealings.

Also, thank you to everyone for keeping this civil and to the moderators for allowing us to discuss such a sensitive topic!


I'm not saying such a point doesn't exist; I'm saying it's not universal, and there are a lot of ways it can vary among individuals. A short field labelled "biological sex" or even just "sex" therefore isn't likely to do the concept justice; you made this thread to ask for honest feedback, and in summary, that's mine.

This is in fact what 5e and PF2e ended up doing, and is the approach I'm most aligned with personally. I'm also fine with "Features", "Background", "Traits" and similar.

I was asking for advice about intersex characters, not about character sheet design, which is only tangentially related.

Not that I am not willing to have that discussion.

As I have said, I prefer sheets that have both forms and open ended boxes, and my own system uses both. But, if I had to choose one, I personally find forms easier to use and get everyone on the same page for description (avoiding power gamers with numbers only sheets or long winded purple prose from frustrated author types like myself).

AFAICT the PF2 sheet has no space for "fluff" whatsoever, which is imo the worst of all.


Which is why I'm generally a proponent of a Description box rather than a form (although I'm fine with a form if it leaves enough space for other stuff).



It's a problem with people making assumptions based on physical characteristics. People tend to make a lot of assumptions based on jawline, hair length, and breast size. Sadly, British politeness means I can't slap a shop attendent if they misgender people I know.

I personally get misgendered quite a bit, but that's because I tend not to bother one way or another and society tends to assume male by default, so unless I start making efforts to make girl mode feminine (which I should, but I always forget to buy me some jewellery and shirts) people will address me as male unless I correct them (also I look fairly masculine by default, but nothing some strategic changes can't fix).


Okay, here's what it would take for me to be happy with a form-like character sheet: give field for both sex assigned at birth and gender identity, and make at least the second one long enough to include a few words.;Generfluid tending female' is enough to make me happy, although I'm sure there's people out there on the internet who would write a six page story on their character's gender identity.

Ok, to clarify, are the people you are talking about being misgendered cisgendered or genderqueer?

Because, again I am talking about physical sex as a description, not about gender identity.

I really wish our language had a word for physical sex that lacked that baggage of either sex or gender as well as gender neutral pronouns, it would make these sort of discussions, and life in general, so much easier.

EGplay
2021-01-17, 12:40 PM
I really wish our language had a word for physical sex that lacked that baggage of either sex or gender as well as gender neutral pronouns, it would make these sort of discussions, and life in general, so much easier.

Just a quick pop-in to say that a common term for this would be phenotypic sex (that which can be directly seen).

BisectedBrioche
2021-01-17, 05:22 PM
The trans community use AGAB, or Assigned Gender At Birth.

Which is typically synonymous with "sex", insofar as it's based on a doctor looking at someone's privates and making a decision, which is usually what someone means when they say "biological sex".

Talakeal
2021-01-17, 06:31 PM
Both phenotype and AGAB work, but share two problems. First, they are a mouthful to say, and second they exclude people who have medically (on in an RPG magically) transitioned.

Anymage
2021-01-18, 01:26 AM
"Phenotypic" does mean what I think you want to mean. Would a stranger seeing this person think that they're male, female, uncertainly androgynous, or something else? (Where "something else" is a robot or a sentient shade of blue or something else to which biological ideas like physical sex are irrelevant.) And in practice you can just have a "gender" line on your sheets (because as was mentioned way up thread, "sex" will just be a magnet for "yes please" jokes), explain in the rulebook that it's for what someone taking a quick look at you would guess (because "phenotype" is a word that even many RPG dweebs who like arcane terminology might not be familiar with), and leave the blank long enough that someone who really wants to fill in something like "androgynous" or "nonbinary" is free to do so. It won't be too hard to communicate in the rulebook that you're more concerned with presentation and build than chromosomes or genitalia.

Satinavian
2021-01-18, 01:54 AM
I just use 'sex'.

AGAB as a word has the problem that it is still about a gender, a social construct and how people treat someone growing up. It is good for the Trans-community to be be able to differentiate between what gender a society applied and used and what gender a person feels they belong too.

But that is not exactly what Talakael is looking for. Even if the results are nearly always the same as society does assign a gender based on their observation of the sex after birth.



phenotype has the weird problem that it is usually contrasted with genotype and implies the latter is completely ignored. That would result in many kinds of intersex poeple to be not classified as such when only considering pnenotype. So it is not completely the same as "biological sex" or "sex". Though, unless you actually try for procreation, it should not matter. So phenotype does capture well most what could possibly be relevant for a character sheet.

Morty
2021-01-18, 02:45 AM
This thread's premise still feels like a long exercise in splitting hairs. Why not just have the players write down the gender their character identifies/presents as and then, if the shape of their body comes up, deal with it in that instance? As has been suggested before, I'm pretty sure.

Satinavian
2021-01-18, 02:59 AM
Because gender is social and it makes not much sense to discuss gender of a character without also discussing the society the character comes from and what gender actually means there.

Frogreaver
2021-01-18, 03:51 AM
Because gender is social and it makes not much sense to discuss gender of a character without also discussing the society the character comes from and what gender actually means there.

I'm confused here. Are you saying that in D&D the PC's gender should reflect the gender his/her society would assign to him/her and not whatever gender he/she personally identifies as?

Anymage
2021-01-18, 04:08 AM
This thread's premise still feels like a long exercise in splitting hairs.

Welcome to half the gender discussions on the internet. The other half are essentially "you're either a boy or a girl, that's just SCIENCE" and happen in places you're probably happier avoiding.

Satinavian
2021-01-18, 04:22 AM
I'm confused here. Are you saying that in D&D the PC's gender should reflect the gender his/her society would assign to him/her and not whatever gender he/she personally identifies as?
I say that the whole idea what "feminine" or "masculine" even mean, aside from the physical, is something a character has from their society. When a character will identify as a gender, that will always reflect and be based on the society. Even when the society disagrees because the concept of transgender is not well established there.

When you don't know the culture the character comes from, then the statement "the characters gender is female" carries basically no information. Aside from maybe pronoun use. If the characters language even has pronouns based on gender.

Morty
2021-01-18, 05:56 AM
Because gender is social and it makes not much sense to discuss gender of a character without also discussing the society the character comes from and what gender actually means there.

The relationship between a character's identity and their society's gender norms is a very individual thing and needs to be discussed at the table. But as far as the character sheet is concerned, the character is the gender that the player says they are and no one but the player has any say in it. That's the long and short of it.


Welcome to half the gender discussions on the internet. The other half are essentially "you're either a boy or a girl, that's just SCIENCE" and happen in places you're probably happier avoiding.

I wish those happened only in places I could avoid without just dropping off the Internet altogether.

Satinavian
2021-01-18, 05:59 AM
The relationship between a character's identity and their society's gender norms is a very individual thing and needs to be discussed at the table. But as far as the character sheet is concerned, the character is the gender that the player says they are and no one but the player has any say in it. That's the long and short of it.I don't disagree with that at all.

But what exactly does this tell the other players about the character ? If they don't know the culture for referrence, the characters gender provides less information as the characters favourite colour.

EGplay
2021-01-18, 06:50 AM
Both phenotype and AGAB work, but share two problems. First, they are a mouthful to say, and second they exclude people who have medically (on in an RPG magically) transitioned.

bit of a mouthful I agree but as I understand the term, Phenotypic would be the sex you transitioned into (when post-op).


Welcome to half the gender discussions on the internet. The other half are essentially "you're either a boy or a girl, that's just SCIENCE" and happen in places you're probably happier avoiding.

Yeah, momma Jones (YT OBGYN) actually had to do a video explaining that her "you don't get to be offended by science" merch isn't transphobic.
It's technically agnostic, but effectively supportive çause guess what? most science agrees it is a real thing. And you don't get to be offended by that.

(For instance, apart from the intersex spectrum inbetween M/F and the less usual chomosome pairings (XXX, XXY, XYY, X, Y), apparently about 1 in 450 or so has a different phenotypic sex than their chromosomes would suggest.
And that's just their private parts, let alone the wide spectrum of brain development, personality, and self image.)

Cluedrew
2021-01-18, 08:17 AM
(For instance, apart from the intersex spectrum inbetween M/F and the less usual chomosome pairings (XXX, XXY, XYY, X, Y), This is the fact that always makes me laugh when people say that there are only two genders. Ignoring the identity layers doesn't make me laugh because... yeah. But the fact that one the other side of all that is this scientific fact they state with such confidence and is completely wrong.

Morty
2021-01-18, 08:23 AM
I don't disagree with that at all.

But what exactly does this tell the other players about the character ? If they don't know the culture for referrence, the characters gender provides less information as the characters favourite colour.

Not having a "gender" box or replacing it with a "pronouns" one are valid choices.

Anymage
2021-01-18, 09:27 AM
This is the fact that always makes me laugh when people say that there are only two genders. Ignoring the identity layers doesn't make me laugh because... yeah. But the fact that one the other side of all that is this scientific fact they state with such confidence and is completely wrong.

Yeah. You have one side that says that gender is a purely artificial, arbitrary social construct while also saying that someone who wants to change theirs comes from a deep, innate place. And the other side saying that gender is a fixed empirical fact while also crapping on people who are walking, talking evidence favor of gender having a strong innate component. In real life I've generally learned not to bother with these discussions.

In games? My ideal is when it isn't so obtrusive that people will comment on it or make any sort of stink, while still allowing people who want to explore the space to do so. There might be wrinkles (like two choices for a binary system are way easier to program into something than a whole host of bespoke pronouns), but there's no point to excluding anybody.


Not having a "gender" box or replacing it with a "pronouns" one are valid choices.

We live in a world where most forms call it "gender" rather than "sex" because of the obvious jokes. Never mind that a list of pronouns would be a pretty long field. Once released out into the wild (and Talakeal's group does not sound like a bunch of social justice hippies), how much are you expecting anything other than a bunch of apache attack helicopters?

Talakeal
2021-01-18, 11:25 AM
Yeah. You have one side that says that gender is a purely artificial, arbitrary social construct while also saying that someone who wants to change theirs comes from a deep, innate place. And the other side saying that gender is a fixed empirical fact while also crapping on people who are walking, talking evidence favor of gender having a strong innate component. In real life I've generally learned not to bother with these discussions.

In games? My ideal is when it isn't so obtrusive that people will comment on it or make any sort of stink, while still allowing people who want to explore the space to do so. There might be wrinkles (like two choices for a binary system are way easier to program into something than a whole host of bespoke pronouns), but there's no point to excluding anybody.

In my experience most people on both sides of hot button political issues take extreme and obviously wrong positions simply as a way to deny the other side any traction. For example, most psychologists agree that all human behavior is a combination of genetic factors, learned behaviors, and experiences / environmental factors, but when debating things like addiction or sexuality people tend to boil it down to arguments of choice vs inborn identity.


We live in a world where most forms call it "gender" rather than "sex" because of the obvious jokes. Never mind that a list of pronouns would be a pretty long field. Once released out into the wild (and Talakeal's group does not sound like a bunch of social justice hippies), how much are you expecting anything other than a bunch of apache attack helicopters?

Not to take this discussion into a forbidden area (we have been so good so far) but I would say my group is pretty close to "social justice hippies" and I have had players in the past whom I would certainly put into that category.

But yeah, while the online gaming community might be pretty progressive about such things, society at large doesn't seem to be. If I, for example, asked my coworkers what pronouns I should call them by, I think they would either laugh at me or be offended by asking as they don't see any difference between sex and gender and would likely take such questions as an insult to their masculinity.


This thread's premise still feels like a long exercise in splitting hairs. Why not just have the players write down the gender their character identifies/presents as and then, if the shape of their body comes up, deal with it in that instance? As has been suggested before, I'm pretty sure.

My intent in creating the thread was asking about whether or not it was appropriate to play a character with a nontraditional biological sex. AGAICT the answer was an overwhelming "of course" so we started discussing character sheet layout and genderqueer characters.

Xervous
2021-01-19, 08:13 AM
Out of curiosity, what terminology do other languages use on typical forms?

Asmotherion
2021-01-21, 04:21 AM
I mean, if you're really keen on the specifics, you could ask what gender they were born as, and what they dress as.

But, in medieval fantasy, I don't really think it's that relevant, unless you run a very specific kind of adult game that includes some of the most infamous 3rd party books. If a player wants to portray something other than their genetically assumed gender, they can use either mundane disguises or magic to portray their appearance exactly as they want.

Other than that, it's not something that will be relevant in a game, the same way a lot of things in a player's extended backstory won't be relevant to the game. If they want to add something to their character, it's up to them, but it's not going to affect the gameplay in any significant way.

In other types of games, it may be more relevant (anything that has to do with future or contemporary for example). But people in medieval times are not very likelly to be aware of things like that, and would realistically interact with such a character is a purelly binary way.

Overall, if you suspect that introducing a type of character in your game would ruin the tone of game you're going for, don't shy away from banning it, the same way you'd ban a player from playing an elf in a historic-based game or a Furry in a humanoid city-based game for example. You can work with your players to make a concept they will be happy with, but never let your players bully you into permissiveness.

Alcore
2021-01-21, 04:42 AM
Does anyone have any experience with running a game for intersex PCs or the like? Any advice on how to avoid the pitfalls, or ideas about what the pitfalls even are?

Thanks.not running but i have had a few tiefling whose hips don't match the body frame. Tieflings from demons often have a symmetry problem so it was passed off as a racial thing. Unless you are running a porn game i wonder how it will effect anything... so few monsters affect only one gender.

What is the point?

It feels like debating orc or ork.


Make sure the player fully understands the game being played. Stamp down on fetchish crap as soon as it comes about. Gender rarely comes up in game; most GMs i have met are too scared to rp NPCs that are sexist.

Ravens_cry
2021-01-23, 04:14 AM
Hmm, this was a freeform chat role play, but I came up with a minotaur race where the cis women were all fully completely functional in each phenotype.
The reason in-universe was that minotaur in that world were once unaging and all male. But even an unaging race of mighty warriors will have their numbers dwindle, so they cried out to their gods for an answer. And, lo, Aphroditus answered, creating women with both traits in return for the minotaur's immortality.
As for in general, I don't really see much need for much actual rules for it? There's very few RPG where this matters, and even if it comes up, it can easily be handled in role play with very little, if any, crunch behind it. The above could be explained in a bit of fluff text and a couple lines, at most. in the racial traits, for example.

quinron
2021-01-31, 10:08 PM
Just as a wrinkle to add to this discussion: I recently ran a game with a close friend who's still kind of working out their precise gender identity, but is definitely not feeling their assigned gender. They made a character who was a runaway prince that they either decided later or only told me later was asexual and assigned female at birth. But they didn't want it to be a thing, didn't expect it to come up in the game, and didn't see it as relating in any way to their character's separation from his family.

And I got a little frustrated over how I was supposed to handle that. Because I wanted to respect my friend's choices and interests in this game; they were definitely there for the roleplaying and expressive aspects and only halfway interested in the actual gameplay, but I like having them there. But if we're viewing this fantasy world through the lens of human history - which is definitely the lens I wanted to establish their character's home kingdom through - then a royal heir who is either incapable of or unwilling to produce offspring is a major concern for the family; continuation of the bloodline is the most important goal of a traditional monarchy.

And that, I think, is why I'd agree with some of the previous posts here: if you're going to include material in your game where gender and/or sex is a major issue, you should also include plenty of material where it isn't. And you should make it clear to players which is which. And I think it can be worth having both. As much as most folks probably don't want to play escapist fantasy that makes them deal with the frustration and anguish they already face in their day-to-day, it might also be pretty rewarding for them to be able to vicariously triumph over the people who bring on or worsen that frustration and anguish. Just make sure everyone at the table is aware of and cool with the way the world works.