D&D 5E Do you miss attribute minimums/maximums?

[Caliban]

I presented some arguments as to why mechanical differentiation between genders can beneficial to my game, and I think some of them still applies to D&D.
It just got lost in the thread.
And I think you touched in an important question @Celebrim .

P.S.: to be fair, the more we discuss, the more I like the idea. I just don't know why.

At no point did I say all players felt this way. You can houserule it for your home game however you want.

I don't remember your post, but I don't think I would agree that game mechanical differences for the sexes would really be "beneficial" to the game. At best, they would be neutral (in my opinion).

 

[Igwilly]

[MENTION=284]Caliban[/MENTION] , I was referring to a home-made system I'm making. I remember have mentioned.
Sorry for the lack of clarity ^^
Anyway, just a comment.

 

[TheCosmicKid]

And there is nothing wrong with "kick butt" girl as escapist fantasy, but as it becomes increasingly the universal depiction of what it means to be an empowered woman - indeed as what it means to be a valued and valuable woman - it's increasingly striking me as being actually disparaging of real women, because in reality no woman can actually meet that standard. Worse, kick butt action girl almost invariably still looks exactly like a Barbie doll. So now I have to put up with this sort of crap becoming the standard that my very real daughters are judging themselves by because its the standard that they see being defined for women.

[...]

Second of all, melee warrior is not the only way to contribute as a D&D character. Vastly more characters at my table treat Strength as a convenient dump stat than as an essential feature anyway.

You say that permitting super-strong woman warriors out of escapist fantasy may cause harm by telling girls they have to be like that in real life to be valuable, but then you turn around and acknowledge that being a super-strong warrior is not the only way to be valuable even in the context of the game. If female characters under the core D&D rules' gender-blind ability score system really were all super-strong woman warriors, if that were the "universal depiction" as you claim, then yes, you might have some real cause for alarm. But this is manifestly not the case.

 

[Caliban]

[MENTION=284]Caliban[/MENTION] , I was referring to a home-made system I'm making. I remember have mentioned.
Sorry for the lack of clarity ^^
Anyway, just a comment.

No worries.

 

[billd91]

It's not a bucket of nonsense, or at least, my response to it is not a bucket of nonsense. I have a daughter that is a soccer player. The corrosive woman hating crap you've been spreading in this thread is the sort of thing that has impacted my daily life. So no, I'm dead serious about this subject.

Wow are we down the rabbit hole. Obryn spreading women-hating crap? That's about the most newspeak thing I've heard around here in a long while.

Yes, but what's going on is now you are insisting this corrosive woman hating nonsense has to inform every single game else it is "sexist". But let me back up and explain myself.

Increasingly in our society we are trying to be affirming of women, and that's all to the good. But, unfortunately, increasingly the touchstone of how we are affirming to women is to show women not as they are, but solely as the exist in a fantasy that is either unrealistic or simply not available to 999,999 out of every million women. That touchstone is that we portray women as "kick butt" action heroes, and not merely kick butt action heroes, but specifically as persons who despite weighing 130 pounds can wade into a room full of burly men and toss them around without any real effort. This portrayal is increasingly not confined even to fantasies like "Wonder Woman", but is pervading more and more of fiction, including fiction that is ostensibly realistic.

And there is nothing wrong with "kick butt" girl as escapist fantasy, but as it becomes increasingly the universal depiction of what it means to be an empowered woman - indeed as what it means to be a valued and valuable woman - it's increasingly striking me as being actually disparaging of real women, because in reality no woman can actually meet that standard. Worse, kick butt action girl almost invariably still looks exactly like a Barbie doll. So now I have to put up with this sort of crap becoming the standard that my very real daughters are judging themselves by because its the standard that they see being defined for women.

And so yes, I'm rather bothered by this crap, especially as I see it pushed more and more as a universal standard for what makes something sexist or not sexist (which is as much to say what makes it actually moral).

No man can meet the standard either without looking like a dehydrated, abdominal exercise model - yet there's no limit to the number of those out there. And in much larger numbers than women in the same roles. And you're quibbling because women are actually enjoying when a character they identify with are getting a bit of that spotlight too? Worse, you're implying it's misogynist? That sounds more like trying to turn the term around because depictions of women are daring to tread on masculine territory and women are actually professing to enjoy it rather than be pigeon-holed in more appropriately feminine roles.

First of all, that's irrelevant. The thrust of my question was do all RPGs have to conform to permitting this escapist fantasy, else they ought to be condemned as sexist. Second of all, melee warrior is not the only way to contribute as a D&D character. Vastly more characters at my table treat Strength as a convenient dump stat than as an essential feature anyway. So, lets say the game isn't D&D, would it be fine if for whatever reason if you wanted to play as a female character, you had to find an alternative approach to contributing in combat than assuming you were the strongest person in the room? Because, out in the real world, real female police officers really do have to deal with this real life, and really don't have to have their ego's petted about being just as strong as men to value themselves as police officers and women. So to me, if you are insisting that the game has to do this because of some excuse like "escapist fantasy" (which is a crappy excuse), you are devaluing actual real women because you prefer fantasy women to real ones.

No kidding you can contribute to an RPG without being a melee warrior. That's not the point. The point is by penalizing female characters because of some ill-considered devotion to "realism" in that regard you're also penalizing female players by reducing the ways they can excel within the game. If the male player has 10 fully competitive options while the female player has 9, how welcoming is that to women? How are they supposed to feel about a game that gives their male peers more options than them? In a world history with centuries of even worse offerings, I'm not sure I'd tolerate that as a woman, not when it's an effing game.

Why? Seriously. Why? Stop giving me this axiomatic crap like it doesn't need an answer, because I think that it's far from obvious that an RPG - which is a cooperative pastime - has to feel "fair" in the sense you are using the word.

Like hell it's not. It's a fantasy game in which people get to play people more adventurous than themselves, larger than life, capable of tremendous feats of heroism. It's patently obvious that the game has no valid reason to privilege one category of players over another.

It's not even clear to me that not being able to be the strongest character in the game because you are female isn't "fair", because in the real world you just can't, and it's certainly not clear to me that every RPG has to not be informed by reality. But to the extent that RPGs must not be informed by this particular reality, again it strikes me that you are devaluing real women because you prefer fantasy ones.

Again, what's the real world have to do with who gets to have the strongest strength score in a fantasy game? Nothing. The differences between men and women in the real world are not important enough to model in a fantasy RPG. Certainly not when doing so runs the risk of limiting the appeal to the market of women gamers. Any game company that does that deserves the trouble it will bring them (and lack of players it will also bring).

Let me reinforce this again. I believe if you are saying, "Female characters have to be allowed to be just strong as men, otherwise they are unattractive as a choice", that what you are saying is equivalent to saying "women aren't as good as men". And there does seem to be a lot of people who are saying, "Female characters have to be allowed to be just strong as men, otherwise they are unattractive as a choice", so I am hearing a lot of people saying "women aren't as good as men". Challenge me on that equivalency as you like, but do not assume I am not being serious.

"Women aren't as good as men"? What do you mean by that? Are you trying to say that because someone says female characters, in a game where they aren't as competitive as male characters because of the rules, are less attractive as a choice means that they're saying that "women aren't as good as men" in reality? If you are, that's a terrible logical leap to make and wrong. Rather, there are a good many of us who value our female peers and fellow players and therefore wouldn't tolerate a game that presents their gender in a way that renders it inferior in choices or capability. It doesn't matter if my wife isn't as strong as I am, if she wants to play a strong, hammer-wielding paladin, she should be able to do so without hindrance and without having to play a character gender she doesn't identify with.

 

[Obryn]

Yes, but what's going on is now you are insisting this corrosive woman hating nonsense has to inform every single game else it is "sexist". But let me back up and explain myself.

Increasingly in our society we are trying to be affirming of women, and that's all to the good. But, unfortunately, increasingly the touchstone of how we are affirming to women is to show women not as they are, but solely as the exist in a fantasy that is either unrealistic or simply not available to 999,999 out of every million women. That touchstone is that we portray women as "kick butt" action heroes, and not merely kick butt action heroes, but specifically as persons who despite weighing 130 pounds can wade into a room full of burly men and toss them around without any real effort. This portrayal is increasingly not confined even to fantasies like "Wonder Woman", but is pervading more and more of fiction, including fiction that is ostensibly realistic.

And there is nothing wrong with "kick butt" girl as escapist fantasy, but as it becomes increasingly the universal depiction of what it means to be an empowered woman - indeed as what it means to be a valued and valuable woman - it's increasingly striking me as being actually disparaging of real women, because in reality no woman can actually meet that standard. Worse, kick butt action girl almost invariably still looks exactly like a Barbie doll. So now I have to put up with this sort of crap becoming the standard that my very real daughters are judging themselves by because its the standard that they see being defined for women.

And so yes, I'm rather bothered by this crap, especially as I see it pushed more and more as a universal standard for what makes something sexist or not sexist (which is as much to say what makes it actually moral).

Oh my god, allowing male and female characters in Dungeons and Dragons to be equally competent at any class they choose is not 'corrosive, woman-hating nonsense.'

Let me reinforce this again. I believe if you are saying, "Female characters have to be allowed to be just strong as men, otherwise they are unattractive as a choice", that what you are saying is equivalent to saying "women aren't as good as men". And there does seem to be a lot of people who are saying, "Female characters have to be allowed to be just strong as men, otherwise they are unattractive as a choice", so I am hearing a lot of people saying "women aren't as good as men". Challenge me on that equivalency as you like, but do not assume I am not being serious.

And - like I said - you know that's nonsense. That's not what anyone is saying. They are saying that codifying this inequality into the rule-set of Dungeons and Dragons means that you are limiting the archetypes that female characters can excel at.

Because here's what you're twisting up - you're taking a statement like "female and male characters should not have sex-based limits or penalties on their attributes in the D&D rule-set" and mechanical statements like, "penalizing female characters' stats makes them less optimal choices for many classes" and trying to turn that into some kind of commentary on the real world. In other words, taking an affirmation of in-game equality, and trying to twist it into "insisting on equal stats for male and female characters in D&D is the real sexism" That's seriously messed up.

Here - let me give you an example. One of my players, Katie, has been playing in my games for like a decade and a half. For the next game, I tell her, "Okay, so in this setting, female characters will have a -4 to strength because of physiology and a -2 to intelligence to represent their lack of education, relative to men." Do you think her response would be...

(a) "Wow, Obryn, that's kind of messed up and I'm not sure I want to particpate in this game."
(b) "Oh, thank goodness, I got tired of the sexism inherent in your failure to apply penalties to my badass female characters, and I will be happy to conform to classes that are better suited to my womanly limitations."

But if I remember right, you were also the guy who thought that game stores shouldn't ban sexist behavior because it keeps women from having the opportunity to deal with and/or shut down sexist behavior, so this is kind of par for the course. (e: I might be confusing you with someone else, and if so, I apologize for misremembering. e2: No, you were the guy who said it's probably not really sexism when women are treated poorly at conventions and the like. Okay.)

 

[Igwilly]

Ok, I thought that we were doing fine, but...
You just made stuff up. Completely ex nihilo.
For instance, NO ONE ever mentioned Int penalties, or so big of a Str penalty.
Second, there are a bunch of people that, even IF they apply a rule like this, balance is still a prime concern for them - which means tradeoffs.
Third, believe it or not, Str is not the sole factor in a Warrior's performance. In fact, I know examples that say quite the opposite.
Now, I suggest everyone to read what he wrote and think about it. That was... intense.

 

[MoonSong]

Are we going to tackle the horribly racist D&D next? It's not as if there has ever been an edition where all racial abilities were equal. Even in 5e some races are better than others, yet I only see people here saying that making things unequal based on sex is sexist and big bad wrong fun.

Well, hobbits have been extinct for thousands of years and elves, dwergar and orcs only live on in folk lore. I don't think they are meant to stand for any actual human ethnicity so I don't see how is this racist.

 

[BookBarbarian]

Wow. I'd like to thank the participants of this thread for helping come to the decision that I absolutely do not miss attribute minimums and maximums.

 

[Obryn]

Ok, I thought that we were doing fine, but...
You just made stuff up. Completely ex nihilo.
For instance, NO ONE ever mentioned Int penalties, or so big of a Str penalty.

Dude, chill, I know and so does everyone who's been following along. I was exaggerating for effect. Replace that with "-2 to Strength" or "-2 to Strength and +2 to Charisma, with men getting vice-versa" if you see fit. I don't think any of these scenarios change my hypothetical in the least, or makes (b) remotely plausible.

Second, there are a bunch of people that, even IF they apply a rule like this, balance is still a prime concern for them - which means tradeoffs.
Third, believe it or not, Str is not the sole factor in a Warrior's performance. In fact, I know examples that say quite the opposite.
Now, I suggest everyone to read what he wrote and think about it. That was... intense.

I did read it, and just like the rest of his posts this thread, it's overpuffed and overlong sophistry, designed to paint regressive views of gender roles as forward-thinking (and vice-versa). Those of us who have been here for a while have seen it before.