Gender and Reproduction in Fantasy races

[Shemeska]

The only thing I've done in my campaign (3e Planescape) that might fall into this regards yugoloth gender. If you go with the flavor from 'Faces of Evil', they're all hermaphrodites. Among the lesser yugoloths it's less obvious since many of them are only vaguely humanoid, and among the nyca/arcana/ultroloths they tend to adopt one normal sex role of male or female if they're around other races where this matters, and physical gender is pretty much an open question.

Now this little factoid has largely just made for some amusing insults against one or two greater yugoloths who, both being able to shapechange at will and having adopted one sex role and physical gender (though the PCs aren't exactly looking up anyone's sorcerer's robes here), might take offense at insinuations regarding this.

Sex isn't any sort of focus for the campaign in any way, though sexual tension is all good and fine in its place and proper context, but outside of some off color and in character jokes, it hasn't made much of a focus. It's not like I've been giving out XP for sex with randy archfiends (I don't really tally XP, and besides, that one time it was all a mental construct... really...).

But outside of that little bit, I've briefly mentioned the bit about female Baatezu being sterile, and I've had one instance of a pregnant (arch)fiend, and one instance of a pregnant celestial. If the plot requires detail than it gets detail, but all in its proper time and place.

 

[somekindofjerk]

About the strangest thing I've done with reproduction IMC has to do with trolls, which reproduce by budding similar to some plants and aquatic invertebrates. Also, a sufficient piece of severed troll (arm and shoulder, entire body split in twain, and the like), left in a shady, humid environment will sprout several nubs at the point of the disconnect, eventually growing into a new troll with vague memories inherited from it's parent. Thus it's especially important to burn away all of a slain troll. Other than that, I tend to keep relatively human races along more conventional lines (elves, dwarves, gnomes, goblinoids, ogres, and the like). The less humanoid a sentient is the more like their natural world analogue they are: Gnoll matriachues, female driders cradling egg cases, or covered in swarms of driderlings, female chuul remaining underwater while incubating the eggs attached to the rear legs, patches of sahuagin egg purses, elder mycanoids perched atop well-guarded piles of fruit or other organinc material covered in "mold," etc.