Genders - What's the difference?
- Thread starter Jon_Dahl
- Start date
ExploderWizard
Hero
Someone should have had this talk with you a long time ago. 
JustKim
First Post
Last week I played a Baldur's Gate-era CRPG called Arcanum for the first time, and was surprised to find that playing a female character meant a couple of things. First, it meant I would be penalized in Strength and thus inferior at melee. Second, it meant I had only three races to choose from while male characters get like twelve.
Because I'm not interested in the experience of playing a male character, my choices were greatly limited.
One of the most reassuring sights when I play a CRPG these days is when I select the female gender for my character and read the line "women of (generic fantasy realm name) are in every way the equals of their male counterparts". Many games don't seem to even feel the need to point this out anymore. The days of relegating female characters to leather-clad and supporting roles are gone. That makes me happy.
I'm not really a fan of arbitrary sticking points for realism in RPGs in general, but I think a line absolutely needs to be drawn where you start actively excluding people. It doesn't give me any comfort at all whether limiting my character choices makes sense historically or physiologically. It only gives me a very low opinion of whoever is excluding me.
Because I'm not interested in the experience of playing a male character, my choices were greatly limited.
One of the most reassuring sights when I play a CRPG these days is when I select the female gender for my character and read the line "women of (generic fantasy realm name) are in every way the equals of their male counterparts". Many games don't seem to even feel the need to point this out anymore. The days of relegating female characters to leather-clad and supporting roles are gone. That makes me happy.
I'm not really a fan of arbitrary sticking points for realism in RPGs in general, but I think a line absolutely needs to be drawn where you start actively excluding people. It doesn't give me any comfort at all whether limiting my character choices makes sense historically or physiologically. It only gives me a very low opinion of whoever is excluding me.
Aus_Snow
First Post
What if I played a half-Elf/half-Dwarf? Do I get the best of both worlds, or the worst?
Vitally important questions, both!
My gosh, could this be a case for... house rules?! Oh my.
TwoSix
Everyone's literal second-favorite poster
It's pretty easy to accept "no difference between genders" if you also accept that character creation rules don't have to be world modeling rules.
Sure, on average, men are stronger. But a D&D hero isn't constrained by the limitations of the mundane individual.
(Or, at least, doesn't have to be constrained, no offense to simulationists/fiction-firsters/whatever all y'all call yourself these days.)
Sure, on average, men are stronger. But a D&D hero isn't constrained by the limitations of the mundane individual.
(Or, at least, doesn't have to be constrained, no offense to simulationists/fiction-firsters/whatever all y'all call yourself these days.)
Exactly.
On average, people engulfed in fire suffer burns and scarring. On average... hell, we could go on for days doing this.
So let's ask: what's accomplished by assigning sex-based penalties? Or bonuses, for that matter.
the Jester
Legend
Not mechanically for pcs, unless there are options that make males and females both superior in some ways. The whole "wimminz have lower stats, or even at best" approach of 1e was pretty sexist and a good way to help exclude female gamers from the hobby.
On the other hand, social mores are awful fun to play with, especially if well thought-out.
Zhaleskra
Adventurer
I own a game where you don't get a choice of gender with one species: pick that species and your character is a hermaphrodite, period. Because it's a template based skill based game, you get the same starting stuff as everyone else of your species. Then you get to mess with it.
Thasmodious
First Post
I tried to rep Mallus, but, you know... And I love barastrondo's rep comment "selective realism isn't realism".
Any gender differences are differences noted over very large samples and not reliable indicators of differences between individuals. Fantasy women may or may not be physically weaker than men on average, but that doesn't mean Kallie the Barbarian has to be weaker than Karl the Barbarian. We're creating adventurers not statistically averaged individuals. We all buy our ability scores one point at a time...
Any gender differences are differences noted over very large samples and not reliable indicators of differences between individuals. Fantasy women may or may not be physically weaker than men on average, but that doesn't mean Kallie the Barbarian has to be weaker than Karl the Barbarian. We're creating adventurers not statistically averaged individuals. We all buy our ability scores one point at a time...
Similar Threads
