Maxperson
Morkus from Orkus
Not really. Lots of controversial things are said by comedians for humor all the time. Feel free to be offended if you like, though. Be offended by little actions is the in thing the last few decades.
D&D 5E Do you miss attribute minimums/maximums?
- Thread starter Carlsen Chris
- Start date
Not really. Lots of controversial things are said by comedians for humor all the time. Feel free to be offended if you like, though. Be offended by little actions is the in thing the last few decades.
Obryn
Hero
Don't mistake my thinking it's a really dumb post for "being offended."
Gradine
🏳️⚧️ (she/her) 🇵🇸
The fact that you can't simulate everything doesn't imply that you have to justify everything you do simulate. If it's good to properly simulate something, but you can only reasonably simulate one more thing, then you should simulate a thing even if it's just a random choice between the remaining things.
If I only have enough time to tidy the house or mow the lawn, I shouldn't allow myself to be paralyzed with indecision just because I have no good reason for choosing one over the other. If I have to flip a coin to choose, I should do so. The idea that you have to justify every action is status quo bias.
So when you "question" those who choose to simulate the male-female strength discrepancy you're really just saying "boo" to it. Which is fine as far as it goes and why I don't personally support it: it upsets women (and a few sensitive men). The chorus of boos is pretty loud. That's a good enough reason not to simulate it (at least in the RAW). No need to concoct sophistic arguments against it that feature the word reality in scare quotes.
I'm sorry, but any choice you make when designing your game is a choice you make for a reason. Presumably the reason is that you believe that that choice will make your game better. That your game would be worse without it. And when that choice is bound to be deeply unpopular (as sex-based stat adjustments have been for a very, very long time) you are going to be asked to justify why you feel your game is better with them and worse without them. Otherwise you wouldn't even bother to invite the controversy, right?
So why would sex-based stat adjustments make a game better? Why would not even bothering with it make the game worse? There's going to be a lot of people shouting "boo" (and I'll make no bones that that is exactly what I'm doing), so what justifies inviting the controversy and the objections? Again, I don't buy simulationism as a true justification. There's so many things you can choose to simulate instead of or alongside stat adjustments that aren't being done. Yes, many (though not all!) of those things are harder to simulate than simple stat adjustments, but if simulation is really the goal isn't that hard work going to be worth it? Laziness isn't a trait I normally associate with simulationism.
Also, there are a lot of things you can choose to model in a simulationist game that isn't going to tick a bunch of people off (justifiably so, I would argue). I mean, I don't want to believe ticking a bunch of people off (a specific group of people, no less) is the end-goal itself, which is why I'm asking for the reason why this particular choice was made.
If that answer is really "I want to model the real world as much as possible, but everything else is just too hard to do" then I guess that says everything we need to know about how much thought and care is actually being put into the end product. And right now that seems to be the best case scenario.
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Good question. I must answer that before I proceed with such an idea.
I have some reasons to include mechanical differentiation between genders, but I'm not sure if I want to continue. However, since you asked...
I cannot write a wall of text right now, so I'll be painfully brief:
1) I want each choice made at character creation to matter.
2) It would solve other issues I'm facing, including character identity.
3) Desire to model old myths and legends, along with some video-games.
4) Giving the previous points, the realism in the Str discussion comes into play.
5) I would make an important and good-hearted philosophical question. However, it involves things like politics and even religion. Such subjects are beyond this forum's scope, I'm afraid.
Still, I need to do some research before continuing, and there will be extra work to balance things. No need to sharpen forks against me XD
I have some reasons to include mechanical differentiation between genders, but I'm not sure if I want to continue. However, since you asked...
I cannot write a wall of text right now, so I'll be painfully brief:
1) I want each choice made at character creation to matter.
2) It would solve other issues I'm facing, including character identity.
3) Desire to model old myths and legends, along with some video-games.
4) Giving the previous points, the realism in the Str discussion comes into play.
5) I would make an important and good-hearted philosophical question. However, it involves things like politics and even religion. Such subjects are beyond this forum's scope, I'm afraid.
Still, I need to do some research before continuing, and there will be extra work to balance things. No need to sharpen forks against me XD
)
TheCosmicKid
Hero
I think you and @Libramarian are saying the same thing in different ways. I think Libramarian could stand to improve the way he's saying it, because currently it comes off as... not so good ("a few sensitive men"? *sigh*). But ultimately you both agree that inviting the controversy makes the game worse and that's a decisive reason not to use sex-based ability adjustments.
I don't think you're being fair to simulationism here. Any simulation is going to have to have a cutoff level of detail it goes into. D&D, for instance, limits carrying capacity based on objects' mass and doesn't bother dealing with volume. Yes, you could do the "hard work" and add volume to the game, turning inventory management into a 3D geometry puzzle; no, it is not necessarily "worth it". It's not "laziness", or a poor sign of "how much thought and care is actually being put into the end product", for the D&D writers to avoid that. And I don't think you'd say that it is.
In fact, I'm going to reach here and guess that you wouldn't be saying these things at all if you didn't want to attack the character of the people who are using simulationist justifications for sex-based ability adjustments. Now, don't think I'm saying not to attack their character. Normally attacking character is considered a bad thing in civilized discourse, but their position is pretty damn suspicious. Remember, though, that Libramarian isn't actually one of these people, nor are loads of other gamers and designers who are facing the tricky decision of where to draw the line between detail and playability. So... just take a step back and refocus your attacks on that which deserves to be attacked, okay?
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Gradine
🏳️⚧️ (she/her) 🇵🇸
This is completely fair; I agree that I'm not necessarily trying to drag simulationists themselves through the mud, but how I phrased my argument it could certainly be read that way. That's on me, and I apologize for it. On a second read I also think I was being unfair to Libramarian and the points they were arguing, and I apologize for that also.
That said, I also believe that it is entirely fair and justifiable to be suspicious of the motivations behind wanting to implement "women are physical weaker than men" rule in an RPG. A lot of times, especially in this day and age, these types of decisions seem hide behind a shield of "simulationism" but also with the implicit (if not outright explicit) goal of riling up female gamers and others who'd like to see the hobby be a little more inclusive and welcoming, a kind of "screw you" to "SJWs" or whatnot. I'm not saying that's what's happening here, but it is a reality of our hobby, and one that I think everyone here has been dancing around (I would guess due to forum rules), but I think has been implicit on both sides (e.g; mentions about not caring about catering to the "PC" crowd). I've been trying, with those questions, to give the individuals in this particular discussion the benefit of the doubt (and I thank Igwilly for engaging in them!) but I was also trying to coyly indicate my own suspicions, when it would be have been more fair (and less jerk-ish) to be more direct about it.
Celebrim
Legend
I guess I shouldn't be too surprised at all the directions this thread has taken. Rapid fire takes.
a) Reality isn't 'sexist'. The value of women or men as persons isn't based on their ability scores. Any of their ability scores.
b) It's trivially true that the upper bounds of strength and athletic ability in men is much larger than women. Every female athlete is aware of that and lives with that. If you can't, well, reality isn't sexist.
c) There are still women that can kick my butt. For anything I do, there is some woman out there that is better than me. Only a small percentage of men can claim otherwise.
d) I've never felt the need for upper bounds on strength on the basis of gender, because the practical upper bounds are generally much higher than starting PC's are allowed to reach. And for PC's above these upper bounds, in a fantasy setting, you might as well be talking about characters like Wonder Woman, whose strength is not capped by any mortal maximum anyway.
e) That said, I don't feel that having upper bounds for strength on the basis of gender would be sexist if the existed to reflect some gritty realistic campaign setting, such as say 17th century Europe or 16th century Japan. For such a setting though, I'd probably prefer to use some sort of character burner strategy for chargen that would in fact produce characters whose abilities were strongly linked to their gender precisely because society forced persons down particular life paths and alternatives just weren't available. Afterwards of course, the PC's lives could depart in any direction that the story led.
f) Even if reality isn't sexist, insisting on reality in a game can be sexist if the reason for doing so is actual belief in the inferiority of women or to belittle women.
g) The vast majority of RPGs are built around the core conceit that the single most important characteristic a person can have is martial prowess. It is interesting to me that of all the things that could be important to a game, martial prowess is probably the one you could choose where men have a definite advantage over women. Food for thought.
h) Yet it's also true in the vast majority of settings that there are plenty of character archetypes that have exceptional martial prowess, but whose prowess doesn't depend on bulging muscles at all. I find it interesting though that no one complains (or complains equally) about the fact that, for example, the rules provide for women to be stronger than men, because trading smaller muscles for (for example) greater magical aptitude would in most systems make choosing female characters something power gamers would (and do) do. This isn't limited to my homebrew. The inclusion of female characters into first person shooters has made power gamers in those games exclusively prefer female characters because the female character by being smaller (but otherwise exactly equal) to the male character has advantages in reduced visibility and even reduced hit box.
i) There are plenty of men who validate the bulging muscles of fantasy women who are themselves sexist. The ancient Greeks had a profoundly sexist culture, but they lusted after women with bulging muscles and martial prowess and made up stories about them. They also thought the perfect woman would be a man with breasts. I'm not particularly impressed by people who take up this topic about how sexist someone else is, when their idea of a non-sexist depiction of a woman seems to be a sexually aggressive, physically strong woman with the same tastes and preferences stereotypical of man. Men with breasts, indeed. Loving and admiring women as primarily as they exist in a fantasy as opposed to primarily as the exist in reality, is about the most sexist thing I can think of.
a) Reality isn't 'sexist'. The value of women or men as persons isn't based on their ability scores. Any of their ability scores.
b) It's trivially true that the upper bounds of strength and athletic ability in men is much larger than women. Every female athlete is aware of that and lives with that. If you can't, well, reality isn't sexist.
c) There are still women that can kick my butt. For anything I do, there is some woman out there that is better than me. Only a small percentage of men can claim otherwise.
d) I've never felt the need for upper bounds on strength on the basis of gender, because the practical upper bounds are generally much higher than starting PC's are allowed to reach. And for PC's above these upper bounds, in a fantasy setting, you might as well be talking about characters like Wonder Woman, whose strength is not capped by any mortal maximum anyway.
e) That said, I don't feel that having upper bounds for strength on the basis of gender would be sexist if the existed to reflect some gritty realistic campaign setting, such as say 17th century Europe or 16th century Japan. For such a setting though, I'd probably prefer to use some sort of character burner strategy for chargen that would in fact produce characters whose abilities were strongly linked to their gender precisely because society forced persons down particular life paths and alternatives just weren't available. Afterwards of course, the PC's lives could depart in any direction that the story led.
f) Even if reality isn't sexist, insisting on reality in a game can be sexist if the reason for doing so is actual belief in the inferiority of women or to belittle women.
g) The vast majority of RPGs are built around the core conceit that the single most important characteristic a person can have is martial prowess. It is interesting to me that of all the things that could be important to a game, martial prowess is probably the one you could choose where men have a definite advantage over women. Food for thought.
h) Yet it's also true in the vast majority of settings that there are plenty of character archetypes that have exceptional martial prowess, but whose prowess doesn't depend on bulging muscles at all. I find it interesting though that no one complains (or complains equally) about the fact that, for example, the rules provide for women to be stronger than men, because trading smaller muscles for (for example) greater magical aptitude would in most systems make choosing female characters something power gamers would (and do) do. This isn't limited to my homebrew. The inclusion of female characters into first person shooters has made power gamers in those games exclusively prefer female characters because the female character by being smaller (but otherwise exactly equal) to the male character has advantages in reduced visibility and even reduced hit box.
i) There are plenty of men who validate the bulging muscles of fantasy women who are themselves sexist. The ancient Greeks had a profoundly sexist culture, but they lusted after women with bulging muscles and martial prowess and made up stories about them. They also thought the perfect woman would be a man with breasts. I'm not particularly impressed by people who take up this topic about how sexist someone else is, when their idea of a non-sexist depiction of a woman seems to be a sexually aggressive, physically strong woman with the same tastes and preferences stereotypical of man. Men with breasts, indeed. Loving and admiring women as primarily as they exist in a fantasy as opposed to primarily as the exist in reality, is about the most sexist thing I can think of.
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