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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Libramarian" data-source="post: 7650089" data-attributes="member: 6688858">Given that in the PHB intro one of the example characters is  female, and it says "feel free to switch the male level titles to   female. This is fantasy, what's in a name? In all but a few cases,   gender makes no difference to ability!" I think Gygax (or whoever, I've  heard that some rules in 1e were actually written by other people) just  couldn't resist distinguishing between males and females when he was  writing max Str by race (which is actually an important balancing rule  in 1e). Some guy playing a dwarf probably complained that it didn't make  sense for his Str to be capped lower than the female human max.Of note is that the 1e Wilderness Survival Guide gives females more  endurance to thirst and hunger than males. (Also a mistake, but it's  evidence that these rules come from a misguided simulationist impulse,  not the belief that one gender is superior)I would say one of Vance's themes is that people who are very  intelligent and articulate can be cruel, horny, greedy bastards too. I  read once that his son thinks this comes from Vance's  experiences during the Great Depression, when all of a sudden everyone  was desperate and out of work, and willing to do nasty things to get by. I don't detect any misogyny.His main trick is the contrast between content that is brutal and awful,  but described with ornate language and swingy, ballroom dance prose. If  you don't find it amusing or you think he just uses big words out of  writerly pretentiousness then you don't get it. I actually find this  pretty interesting from a DMing perspective. It works especially well  with creepy fantasy monsters, like the grue and Chun the Unavoidable.I think there are a couple things people can learn from Vance about how to present NPCs:- Use intelligent monsters and play them like psychopaths -- intelligent and somewhat reasonable, but still totally incorrigible- Describe monsters elliptically, letting the players' imagination put the pieces togetherI think Beauty Dasce from the Demon Princes would be a killer D&D  villain. Actually that whole series is a great model for a D&D  campaign (hunting down serially five bizarre, insane-with-power crime  lords--in D&D they could be actual demons!).Agreed, but Chris Perkins said that a few weeks ago and we already had a thread about it.</blockquote>

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