Ability and skill modifiers by gender

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Celebrim

Legend
To be 100% clear, I don't support the idea of gender-based stat mods. However, logically, this particular argument could be used to eliminate species-based stat mods as well. As in, "Sure, it is true that in the campaign world orc are on average somewhat stronger than humans, this is a game about heroes who are anything but average."

To be 100% clear, I'm agnostic over the idea of gender-based stat mods. I don't really have a strong commitment one way or the other, but for certain settings I can see arguments both ways.

However, logically, you are exactly right. The entire line of reasoning is specious. It sounds good at first, but if you follow it along it eventually comes to a cliff.

The objection that will probably be raised is "Well, it's OK, because orcs aren't real but men and women are." But this implicitly states that the real problem is fear of being offensive.

The real reason behind this is I think a desire to deny all real differences between men and women because pointing out these differences makes people uncomfortable for a lot of perfectly understandable reasons. Saying, "I'm uncomfortable with highlighting the differences between men and women" is one thing. Trying to argue that there is some logical reason why you can't have them other than the discomfort they cause tends to depend on very bad logic.

Saying, "I'm uncomfortable playing in a game where there are highlighted gender differences" is undertandable - although I'd like to note that in the other thread certain female posters who actually do work in professions traditionally associated with manliness, "Of course I have to do my job differently than a man. I'm not a man. That doesn't mean I can't do the job well." It's not a universal truth that all women are afraid of having gender differences highlighted (if you believed that, it would be sexism.)

Now it would be nice if we could have a mature discussion about when and if you should include potentially offensive content in your game - a very important topic - without devolving into calling people sexist, making personal comments about the other posters, or trying to pretend that in reality women are just as strong as men and that if you believe otherwise you are a bad person.
 

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delericho

Legend
I also think there is hard coded sexism in most RPGs, although where I find it probably won't be the same place you find it.

In the published materials (as opposed to what happens around the table), it's primarily in the artwork, although some of the setting/monster elements also exhibit it.

But you totally undermine your point when you conclude it with a logical fallacy like the quoted text. It does not follow that a desire for realism in any aspect of the game conflicts with a setting containing magic or characters above 3rd level.

If your desire for realism is so strong that you feel that you must encode such statistically-minor differences into your game world, then why stop there? Next up is presumably halfling strength modifiers, which are absurd. And then the next thing - bow ranges indoors, perhaps? And the next, and the next, and the next...

So, yes, I took it to it's conclusion - modelling realistic aptitudes for magic, which would be nil. And since 3e characters are superhuman pretty much from the outset, anything but the lowest level characters are out too.

Would you make the same comments regarding a poster trying to come up with realistic values for hardness of different sorts of stone or metal? If someone complained under the rules that stone walls were mechanically nearly as easy to tear up as tissue paper, and that he wanted mechanics that didn't allow characters to dig through walls with their bare hands...

Curiously, we don't see repeated threads about hardnesses of materials. Instead, we see repeated threads from people wanting to impose inferiority on female characters, with "it's realistic" provided as the pretext for their actions.
 

billd91

Not your screen monkey (he/him) 🇺🇦🇵🇸🏳️‍⚧️
To be 100% clear, I don't support the idea of gender-based stat mods. However, logically, this particular argument could be used to eliminate species-based stat mods as well. As in, "Sure, it is true that in the campaign world orc are on average somewhat stronger than humans, this is a game about heroes who are anything but average."

It could, but...

1) I would still want to see generally weaker characters if they're small. Relative size should still be a reasonable factor.

2) The other races aren't real, and contrary to Celebrim's argument, it doesn't boil down to not being offensive. It boils down to not setting up barriers (whether offensive or not) to players who identify with one sex or the other playing what they want.

I suspect most people picking a specific race in D&D or any other RPG are content to work with the differences between that race and the closest analog for the players (usually human). For many players, mechanical differences may be the primary reason they want to play characters of those races.

In my mind, the modifiers assigned to different races are far and away different from any that would be assigned by gender differences. Racial mods tell the player "This is how you differ if you choose to play this race within our fictional framework" but gender mods tell the player "This is how we feel the game mechanics should model the gender differences we believe exist."
 
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Celebrim

Legend
In the published materials (as opposed to what happens around the table), it's primarily in the artwork, although some of the setting/monster elements also exhibit it.

I figured where you'd go first would not be where I'd go. I won't quibble with your assessment, but its not what I was thinking about. Where I would go would be:

1) The general priviledging of physical combat as the means of conflict resolution seen in many if not most RPGs, signifying the supremacy of martial virtue and its close association with male virtue over other sorts of virtues. And in general, the strong reluctance by many DMs to allow conflicts to be resolved in any other way. For example, many DMs just by fiat don't allow diplomacy, divination, subterfuge or even evasion. Or if they do allow it, they penalize it in some fashion, such as talking your way past a monster yields no XP and fewer tangible rewards in the form of treasure (loot being a traditionally martial reward). The only way gauranteed to work is force of arms.
2) In D&D in particular and in many games generally, the priviledging of strength as the primary and easiest means of obtaining combat supremacy and imposing your will on the enemy. In D&D this is generally the result of the hit point mechanic and the lack of an active defence mechanism, so that the battle tends to go to the combatant doing the most damage and wearing the heaviest armor. This system is largely unrealistic, and its unrealistic precisely in that requires a woman to be manly in order to compete on the one field of conflict the game primarily cares about - war. Moreover, probably this is one of the major reasons that Fantasy games, with their emphasis on melee combat, are far more popular than games in any other more modern genera. It's only in melee combat that a man's dominance of size and upperbody strength gives a truly considerable advantage over women. With firearms, women either are or are nearly the equal of men, and the same is generally true of 'push button' warfare. While there is a small gap between the best male FPS players and the best female players, the gap is not nearly so huge as between male and female melee combatants and the gap is far easier to close with far fewer biological limitations.

If D&D didn't priviledge 'maleness' so much already, it would be far easier to impose gender differences without it being seen as describing women as being inferior. But because we generally assumed the superiority of maleness for the purpose of the game, any attempt to impose physical differences on the two results in huge disparities in capability that aren't generally seen in the real world.

This priviledging of maleness in the game is seen in things like the half-orc racial template. It's an negatively unbalanced stat template on a creature that gets virtually no racial advantages, but its ok, because strength is considered by the game to be better than intelligence or charisma (or apparantly than intelligence and charisma combined).

If your desire for realism is so strong that you feel that you must encode such statistically-minor differences into your game world, then why stop there? Next up is presumably halfling strength modifiers, which are absurd. And then the next thing - bow ranges indoors, perhaps? And the next, and the next, and the next...

Why not? I've encoded harsher penalties for weighing 40lbs than exist in the RAW. I've changed missile weapon ranges. And the next and the next and the next. I'm probably already way further along towards a ruleset that encorporates elements of realism than you are going to get by brainstorming. How do you know that all these things don't also bother the person who wants to encode gender differences?

Curiously, we don't see repeated threads about hardnesses of materials.

Sure we do. I've seen them several times back when the house rules forum was its own forum. I was rather surprised to see this particular topic reoccur so soon, but I wouldn't have at all been surprised to see another variation of: "What's the realistic hardness of bronze, and iron weapons?" or "How can I keep the players from tunneling through stone with a magic sword/their bare hands at a high rate of speed?"
 
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Umbran

Mod Squad
Staff member
Supporter
... the so called 'feminists' who in these threads typically want to act like fundamentalist young Earthers and deny reality....


As if you don't know that real-world religion isn't appropriate?

Enough's enough. When so many figure it is okay to break the rules to justify themselves, the conversation's no longer useful to the boards.

Thread closed.
 

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