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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The Crimson Binome" data-source="post: 7708128" data-attributes="member: 6775031">Because meta-gaming is bad. It is definitionally the opposite of role-playing, which is the reason why many people choose to play an RPG in the first place. Just because other games have done it, that doesn't make it good or acceptable. Since you seem to have missed the memo about meta-gaming being a bad thing, consider an analogy. For a significant period in the eighties and nineties, it was not uncommon for a game to present stat modifiers based on the gender of the character. More often then not, men would have a bonus to Strength and women would have a bonus to Dexterity or Charisma or something. Some particularly egregious examples would just give women penalties across the board.And then one day, someone realized that it was a bad idea. They realized that most of it was based on out-dated stereotypes, it didn't have a place in modern gaming, and it was better to let female characters be on an equal footing with their male counterparts. Eventually, the rest of the community got on board with that, and now the only games that include gender-based stat modifiers are those old games which we critique for being so ridiculous.Now imagine that you're excited for this new Conan game that's coming out, and the first thing you notice when you crack open the .pdf is that women are -2 to Thews and +2 to Seduce. How would that make you feel about the game as a whole? Would you just accept it as something common in a lot of other games? Or would you find it distasteful, and be disappointed in the game for including it? Would you house rule it away? Would you be comfortable joining a group that was playing the game, without knowing how they handled the issue? Or would you cringe, every time it came up?And it's not just the mechanic, itself, that's the problem. It's the mindset that goes along with creating that rule in the first place. I could probably house rule 'bennies' and Fate points out of Savage Worlds and FATE respectively, but the whole books are written to reinforce the tone that those mechanics are supposed to reflect. Stat modifiers for women usually exist to reinforce the idea that they aren't capable as heroes, and are meant to be rescued. Why would I want to support a game that intentionally chooses to do that?</blockquote>

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