D&D 5E The Pilosus, a player race with 6 Genders for your 5th edition Sci Fi setting

dwayne · May 8, 2019

Scott Graves said:
I read the description. I have to say I find them to be horrible people as a race for their treatment of the "genderless" variety. They make orcs seem pleasant and friendly. After all orcs treat everyone equally. Equally bad. But equally. Seems to me though that once artificial insemination became an available technology for them it would hit their culture like reliable birth control hit our world.

Yes, it was done purposely, and there is a reason behind this which will not be covered in the race description but as part of the setting i am putting together and adventures i have planed.

dwayne · May 8, 2019

tglassy said:
This is...an interesting take on what it would mean to have more than two genders. But I think it sort of points out the reason why all animals known to reproduce sexually (with more than one parent, as opposed to asexually, where there is only one parent) only have two genders.

It’s complicated. It’s overly complicated. If any one of the five genders is not present, no children can be had. What happens if, back in their more primitive days, a natural disaster happens to a village and a third of their population dies, resulting in an entire gender being killed off? The result is the population no longer pro creates, and dies.

In the same village with only two genders, where the females, being the ones necessary to carry and deliver the next generation, are protected vigorously, and the males, being larger and stronger but ultimately expendable, defend and protect them, you wind up with more women than men (because men do all the dangerous work), and therefore have over 50% being women, and so if that natural disaster comes and kills a third of the population, you have a very, very large chance of many women surviving and at least one man. A single man of any age in a village of women can restart the population in as little as one generation.

Having more than 2 sexual genders required for procreation almost ensures the species would die out early. Now, you sort of handle that with them having such large litters at a time. But I’d imagine on their home world, they’d have been in a situation where they were more like prey animals or something, with high mortality rates, which would necessitate such high number of offspring. I assume they have these litters often, as their entire society is about getting it on. Without a high mortality rate, your looking at population growth so fast as to be unsustainable. Assuming equal ratio of birth of all five genders, and if they have a litter every year for just five years, then 5 becomes 155 in five years, with 150 of them being under the age of 5 and only 5 parents. Give it 20 years, and if all 150 split into families of 5 and have five litters, then 5 years later there are 930 under the age of five. That’s after only 25 years from one family having offspring. That’s 186 family units. 25 years later, you have an additional 5,580 kids. 25 years later that becomes 33,480 kids. Then 200,880. Then 1,205,280. Then 7,231,680.

In 200 years, a single family unit goes from 5 people to over 200 Million. Now, if you have a planet full of these things? With millions of families? Each of those families would number 200 Million in 200 years. Even starting with 1,000 families, you reach 200 Billion in 200 years. Humans went from roughly a billion all told 200 years ago to 7 billion now, and most of that in the last fifty years. If these things were at 1 Billion 200 years ago, they would have 100,000,000,000,000,000 members. That’s 1 septendecillion.

They’re worse than rabbits, and would fill a world in just a few generations if they had no checks in place. Once they reached a technological level where they could defeat whatever it is that used to keep their population in check, they would spread throughout the galaxy like a virus.

Which, by the way, is the story of the Krogan race in Mass Effect.

On a side note, one thing I have learned is if something is worth doing it is worth doing right. If you do not want people to focus on the grammar and spelling of something you have put your time and effort into, make sure there are no such issues before you post it for all to see. It is natural to want to show off your work as soon as it is ready, but nobody will see the work through its flaws. I’m not saying this as a put down, I’m saying it as a fellow writer who has gone through this kind of deal before. Never, never, never post a first draft anywhere. Never. Rule of thumb is to only ever post final drafts. Your work should be polished and shining, error free. Let someone else proofread, and don’t get discouraged when they sent it back to you covered in red correction marks. This is how a writer gets better. Sometimes we can’t see the problems with our own works until someone else points them out. This is ok. The good thing about writing mistakes is that a quick edit will fix them.

they don't really need birth control, as if there are too many they just don't reproduce and can suppress the whole birth process if need be. I was going to go more in detail with much of each of these races but as it looks like everyone and their cousin wants to not help with the mechanics and would rather nit pick at the other i will refrain from posting any more and remove the ones i have until i am done.

tglassy · May 8, 2019

Charlaquin said:
Mmm... This really depends on how you define gender. Modern gender theory, as it pertains to humans, would disagree. Most scholars on the subject nowadays agree that gender is performative, and there are plenty of animals that have more than two sex-related roles that different members of their species perform. Even if we go with the now largely scientifically outdated concept of sex and gender being interchangeable, it is far more complex than the traditional male/female binary, even for humans. Plenty of animals have more than two clear-cut sets of sex characteristics, including humans, and plenty of animals change sex characteristics under certain conditions (humans not included). Granted, there are no species on earth that require more than two parents to produce offspring, but saying that all species on earth that reproduce sexually have only two genders is an oversimplification on multiple levels. The data is clear, gender and sex are both spectra, in humans and other animals alike, so I see no reason the same wouldn’t be true of fantasy races and/or fictional life forms from other planets. Requiring more than two members of the species for reproduction would be an extraordinary biological oddity and would therefore demand extraordinary fictional justification, but the idea of a race with more than two genders is downright pedestrian to anyone with a working knowledge of either gender studies, zoology, or both.

Anytime someone on the right speaks of gender they are speaking of one's role in reproduction. Not their role in society. "Modern Gender Theory" is an attempt to rewrite the definition of various terms in order to advance an agenda. The two sides are, in essence, speaking different languages, as the words they are using hold different meaning to each one using them. Doing this has caused much confusion in our society, even to the point where you have congressmen saying if a transwoman has a penis, it is a "biologically female penis", which is a statement that is so intellectually fallacious it almost breaks my brain to consider.

What role a person has in society is cultural and has nothing to do with reproduction. If you strip away all culture and society, along with all laws and language, and leave the human at it's bare minimum, little more than an animal, the only purpose of having more than one biological sex, or gender, or whatever you want to call it, is reproduction. What role they have in reproduction is straightforward and obvious to anyone without an agenda. In fact, everything about a person's physiology is dictated by their role in reproduction. Females being generally smaller and more nurturing, are also very vulnerable during pregnancy, and therefore the male is stronger and larger and more expendable, in order to protect her during that time.

Now, that is simply the biological make up, and is best shown during a cave man society, with no laws and no culture. Once you add culture, you add "societal roles", which is what many on the left mean when they say "Gender theory." Or at least, that's as best as I can tell, since I've never actually heard what these other 'gender roles' are. I only ever hear that there are dozens, no examples are ever given.

Whether a culture follows that biological design is completely irrelevant to reproduction. Whether a culture allows for eunuchs, or has Warrior Women, or allows for male prostitutes, is completely beside the point and has nothing to do with biological reproductive roles. Two parents, one female, one male, are absolutely, unequivocally, undeniably, scientifically required in order to procreate, regardless of what their roles are in society. One sperm, one egg. Two sperms, or two eggs, will never create life in and of themselves. Now, you can circumvent that with through cloning and other such things, but that has nothing to do with the natural design, nor does it have to do with one's 'roll' in their culture. Culture is a made up construct. Biological imperative is not.

So when I say "No animal that reproduces sexually has more than two genders", I define Gender as one's general role in reproduction, divorced from their societal or cultural role.

dwayne · May 8, 2019

tglassy said:
Anytime someone on the right speaks of gender they are speaking of one's role in reproduction. Not their role in society. "Modern Gender Theory" is an attempt to rewrite the definition of various terms in order to advance an agenda. The two sides are, in essence, speaking different languages, as the words they are using hold different meaning to each one using them. Doing this has caused much confusion in our society, even to the point where you have congressmen saying if a transwoman has a penis, it is a "biologically female penis", which is a statement that is so intellectually fallacious it almost breaks my brain to consider.

What role a person has in society is cultural and has nothing to do with reproduction. If you strip away all culture and society, along with all laws and language, and leave the human at it's bare minimum, little more than an animal, the only purpose of having more than one biological sex, or gender, or whatever you want to call it, is reproduction. What role they have in reproduction is straightforward and obvious to anyone without an agenda. In fact, everything about a person's physiology is dictated by their role in reproduction. Females being generally smaller and more nurturing, are also very vulnerable during pregnancy, and therefore the male is stronger and larger and more expendable, in order to protect her during that time.

Now, that is simply the biological make up, and is best shown during a cave man society, with no laws and no culture. Once you add culture, you add "societal roles", which is what many on the left mean when they say "Gender theory." Or at least, that's as best as I can tell, since I've never actually heard what these other 'gender roles' are. I only ever hear that there are dozens, no examples are ever given.

Whether a culture follows that biological design is completely irrelevant to reproduction. Whether a culture allows for eunuchs, or has Warrior Women, or allows for male prostitutes, is completely beside the point and has nothing to do with biological reproductive roles. Two parents, one female, one male, are absolutely, unequivocally, undeniably, scientifically required in order to procreate, regardless of what their roles are in society. One sperm, one egg. Two sperms, or two eggs, will never create life in and of themselves. Now, you can circumvent that with through cloning and other such things, but that has nothing to do with the natural design, nor does it have to do with one's 'roll' in their culture. Culture is a made up construct. Biological imperative is not.

So when I say "No animal that reproduces sexually has more than two genders", I define Gender as one's the general role in reproduction, divorced from their societal or cultural role.

A person who understands and who i agree with completely, but that all aside i still not posting till more complete but will be stealing this as it is 100% how i see it.

Charlaquin · May 8, 2019

tglassy said:
Anytime someone on the right speaks of gender they are speaking of one's role in reproduction. Not their role in society. "Modern Gender Theory" is an attempt to rewrite the definition of various terms in order to advance an agenda. The two sides are, in essence, speaking different languages, as the words they are using hold different meaning to each one using them. Doing this has caused much confusion in our society, even to the point where you have congressmen saying if a transwoman has a penis, it is a "biologically female penis", which is a statement that is so intellectually fallacious it almost breaks my brain to consider.

The bolded statement is either a misunderstanding of Sandra Bem’s cognitive theory of gender schema, an anti-left bias or both. Gender theory is not a redefinition of anything, it is a theory explaining how sex-linked characteristics are maintained and transmitted within a culture. To be fair, I don’t think most people on the left really understand this theory either, and some do misuse its terms in support of their political views. But if the right and the left are speaking different languages, the language the left uses is the one that’s supported by scientific study. As famous right winger Ben Shapiro is so fond of saying, facts don’t care about your feelings, so the language I will use is the one supported by facts, not the one that is politically correct in right wing circles.

tglassy said:
What role a person has in society is cultural and has nothing to do with reproduction. If you strip away all culture and society, along with all laws and language, and leave the human at it's bare minimum, little more than an animal, the only purpose of having more than one biological sex, or gender, or whatever you want to call it, is reproduction. What role they have in reproduction is straightforward and obvious to anyone without an agenda. In fact, everything about a person's physiology is dictated by their role in reproduction. Females being generally smaller and more nurturing, are also very vulnerable during pregnancy, and therefore the male is stronger and larger and more expendable, in order to protect her during that time.

Males being generally larger and stronger is a sex characteristic. Nurturing behavior in females is a sex-related behavioral trait, which is maintained and propogated through cultural schema. There is nothing about having a penis that prevents a male from nurturing young, and nothing about having a vagina that necessitates it. Nonetheless, it is a feminine trait, because it is part of the cultural schema that defines femaleneness in human society.

tglassy said:
Now, that is simply the biological make up, and is best shown during a cave man society, with no laws and no culture. Once you add culture, you add "societal roles", which is what many on the left mean when they say "Gender theory." Or at least, that's as best as I can tell, since I've never actually heard what these other 'gender roles' are. I only ever hear that there are dozens, no examples are ever given.

“Cave man society” absolutely had a culture, and while it may not have had laws as such, it absolutely had traditions and taboos. You cannot have a functioning social group without social norms and expectations. And within any social group there will be social norms and expectations surrounding sex-related behavior.

tglassy said:
Whether a culture follows that biological design is completely irrelevant to reproduction. Whether a culture allows for eunuchs, or has Warrior Women, or allows for male prostitutes, is completely beside the point and has nothing to do with biological reproductive roles. Two parents, one female, one male, are absolutely, unequivocally, undeniably, scientifically required in order to procreate, regardless of what their roles are in society. One sperm, one egg. Two sperms, or two eggs, will never create life in and of themselves. Now, you can circumvent that with through cloning and other such things, but that has nothing to do with the natural design, nor does it have to do with one's 'roll' in their culture. Culture is a made up construct. Biological imperative is not.

Social behavior is part of our biology as well. Certainly large societies have more complex social structures, whose expectations may deviate further from what we observe in smaller, more “naturalistic” social groups. But the idea that culture is “made up” and not derived from biology is nonsense. All psychological phenomena are ultimately physiological in nature, and that includes social behavior.

tglassy said:
So when I say "No animal that reproduces sexually has more than two genders", I define Gender as one's general role in reproduction, divorced from their societal or cultural role.

Ok, but even under that definition of gender, the statement, "No animal that reproduces sexually has more than two genders" is inaccurate. If you’re defining gender as role in sexual reproduction, then you must acknowledge that there are many species with more than two such roles. Eusocial animals such as bees and naked mole rats have fertile queens, infertile workers, and fertile drones. Two sexes, three genders. Animals with complex mating behaviors like many birds have dominant males who attract mates through performances and non-dominant males who impersonate females and mate with the dominant male and his females. Some species of amphibians have makes, dominant females who can can metamorphosize into males when no males are present in their social group, and non-dominant females who cannot. Again, facts don’t care about your feelings, and the fact is, sex and gender are just plain more complicated than the PC right wants to believe.

Umbran · May 8, 2019

dwayne said:
Each on carries part of the total of what is needed to make their life form, like in a recipe each is needed other wise ti will not happen.

Note that this is not how such works in on our world.

There are many life forms on our world with more than two sexes/genders - but it is not that you need genetic material from each to procreate. It is, instead more a restriction on who you can successfully mate with.

Gender A can mate with B. Gender B can mate with A, C, or D. Gender C and mate with B, but not A or D. And so on.

dwayne · May 8, 2019

Umbran said:
Note that this is not how such works in on our world.

There are many life forms on our world with more than two sexes/genders - but it is not that you need genetic material from each to procreate. It is, instead more a restriction on who you can successfully mate with.

Gender A can mate with B. Gender B can mate with A, C, or D. Gender C and mate with B, but not A or D. And so on.

and your an expert on alien life forms and xenobiology as well as first hand knowledge of all life in the universe, this is a fictional trace with a made up biology so really as i created them they can do and be what ever i want them to be. If i want 45 genders i could do this or not i chose 6 because well anything more just seemed well to stupid. But in the end your response is not truly helpful but yet another person trying to impose their opinion of what they think is correct as to the creative part. As I was and had been pointed out i just wanted feed back on the mechanics of this not the fluff write up for which it will for ever be my choice and do not require or feel the need to have help with. Please don't think i am up set or mad as you are not the first and certainly will not be the last to try and change another idea to fit your own perspective of the what things should be or how you feel they are. But unless you have a PHD in biology and have explored the whole universe and documented every life form there of, then all you know is what you have read. But my imagination surpass that of the knowledge i know and lets me say what if and explore ideas that may in their little box think are stupid and would or can not be. Albert Einstein quote. "Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution."

Charlaquin · May 8, 2019

[MENTION=25437]dwayne[/MENTION], I appreciate that you came seeking feedback on the mechanics of your custom race, not the underlying fiction or the presentation. But unfortunately, the existence of more than two genders and how gender relates to sex are far too controversial of topics to reasonably expect this thread not to turn into an argument about that. As well, I understand this is a draft, and you intend to revise spelling and grammar later down the line, but those things very obviously need work now, and people are naturally going to be too distracted by it to ignore it and just give feedback on the mechanics alone. Any time you present a piece of work for public consumption, even if your aim is only to solicit feedback for a particular aspect of that work, you need to be prepared to receive feedback about the work in its entirety, because that’s what you’re going to get. The best way to do that is to make sure that your work is polished to the best of your ability before releasing it publicly, and to accept critique of its presentation along with critique of the qualities you were primarily seeking it for.

Gradine · May 8, 2019

As much as I just love it when folks with far greater confidence in their grasp of human natural and social science than actual grasp of human natural and social science give long lectures completely denying the existence of myself and others, I'd be just so much happier if we could constrain the conversation in this thread to the make-believe space people and their potentially interesting social and biological characteristics rather than veering any further than we already have into outright bigotry. Thank you!