Women and Children first?

[the Jester]

In my campaign it varies by race. Dwarves are definitely patriarchal; elves are very egalitarian, leaning towards matriarchal power structures. To the orcs, females are chattel, but for trolls, it is the female that usually achieve power and dominance.

My real contribution to this thread, however, is a Drow weapon from a friend's campaign: a sword +1, +5 vs. women and children.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

Myself, my next homebrew, whenever I'll made one, will have dwarves and elves as respectively the males and females of the same species.

Well, that explains why they are both declining.

 

[Andor]

Myself, my next homebrew, whenever I'll made one, will have dwarves and elves as respectively the males and females of the same species.

But which one is which?

 

[Andor]

Oh, let's be real here, you would have one breeding couple and nine lonley spinsters who each become pregnant, coincidentally shortly after the one remaning male drops by to help them fix something in their home...

You're missing the point here. Technically humans are a 'weakly monogamous' species, which is why you'd be right if we were talking about humans. But there are strongly monogamous species in which a male is no more going to mate with a female he isn't bonded to anymore than you are going to pop out one of your eyes with a spork and pop it in the microwave for a late night snack.

 

[TeutonicBerserker]

The problem is, of course, that that's irrelevant for fantasy races. There's absolutely no necessary reason to have dwarven men be larger and stronger than dwarven women. Not even one race has women be the dominant culturally (like gnolls based on hyenas might be) or in adventuring (like lionesses and hunting.) Nor is biological reproduction a necessity: I'd love to see a campaign where elves were cuttings from trees or in which dwarven children were made from the shaving of a female's beard, for example.

Part of what you are addressing is to what degree are your fantasy races fantastic/magical and to what degree they are realistic/biological. Unique origins for fantasy races are great; every gaming group plays their own version of D&D and none is more 'right' or 'wrong' than anyone else's, BUT the assumptions presented in the D&D game (as published since 1974) is that demihuman & humanoid races reproduce as we would expect them to.

The other part of the issue you are addressing has more to do with the fact that the sociology of many humanoid races has been scarcely described, if at all. And yes I would have Gnolls society be matriarchial.

Every race's gender is a pathetic copy of the human.

Appropriate considering that every race is a pathetic copy of humankind. Really why are so many races humanoid (bipedal, human-like torso, etc) and not completely inhuman? IMO it has to do with human psychology. A bipedal humanoid is a competitor and foe while a quadrupedal creature is a just type of animal, albeit a monstrous or unique one.

When a company like WotC replicates these kinds of gender disparities for EVERY RACE except for the evil black one...

IIRC egalatarian regular elves are long established.

...then it's pretty clear that it's either a failure of imagination on their part or an implicit statement on that company's perception of the limitations of its core customers.

Grounding non-human races in familiar biological and social terms isn't an indication of 'lack of imagintion' any more than assuming that dwarves need to breathe oxygen or that elves must eat or they will die. Unless explicity stated otherwise, there are alot of things that can and should be taken for granted. Does Faerun have gravity similar to Earth's or is terminal velocity reached at five feet? Do Gnomes have a human-like circulatory and central nervous system or are they immune to critical hits? I could go on.

None of these assumptions imply any semblance of intellectual limitations on the part of D&D designers or players.

You resurrected a two-month old thread just to say that?

Is this better?