Gender in Mechanics

[John Morrow]

I believe I said that it was acceptable when fighting irredeemable evil *which varies by campaign*. I did not say genocide was acceptable when dealing with creatures that are 'often evil'.

One of the questions raised by the way alignment is treated in the Monster books when it qualifies the alignment with a word like "usually" or "often", is whether that means that the creature could be of any alignment or just some other alignments. For example, a Goblin is "Usually Neutral Evil". Does that mean a Goblin can be Lawful Good or does that mean that a Goblin could be "Lawful Evil", "Neutral Evil", or "Chaotic Evil" but still always "Evil"?

Leif, the Aliens analogy is *not* incorrect. There are a huge number of intelligent species in D&D that see humans as prey. If it is ok to exterminate the Aliens, as the protagonists would obviously love to do (in self defense) then it is Ok to exterminate Red dragons. Kythons. Orcs (in those campaigns where they are always evil rather than just sometimes, which includes my current one).

In fact, depending on which book you read, the Mind Flayers need sentient humanoids to reproduce, which is pretty much exactly like the Aliens.

edit: No matter your view on it, Ripley is *killing the babies of sentient species* in that movie, and i agree with her reasons for doing so.

This raises yet another issue, which also comes up in discussions of other hominids and such. What does it mean to be sentient? Were the aliens "sentient" in the sense that they were free moral agents or were they simply "sentient" in the sense that they were self-aware, could communicate with one another, and were clever? The one does not necessarily imply the other. A lot of what we associate with sentience could simply human nature.

As I pointed out elsewhere, humans make the moral choices that they make, in part, due to emotional resonse. Monkeys deal with certain experiments the same way that humans do, despite lacking the same level of sentience, because they have the same emotional rsponses that humans do. But what if you changed all that and replaced it with a system that provides different emotional responses, such as enjoying the suffering of others rather than feeling empathy? What would that mean?

When both predator and prey are sentient, hunting and war cannot be considered greatly different. Except less corpses get wasted. (See the cannibalism thread.) What part of predator vs prey is incompatible with war in your world view? Among humans, wars often start because those guys have something the other guys want. It makes no difference if the thing that the other guys want is your flesh or your gold...if they kill you to get it, you are just as dead.

I highly recommend Lawrence Keeley's book War Before Civilization which deals with several of these issues, including the artificial distinction between small scale homicide and warfare in societies and why groups of people go to war. It's interesting and well written (as opposed to being dry and academic).

 

[John Q. Mayhem]

I agree with Rikandur.

 

[John Morrow]

But then I read that killing the "women and children" of evil races is defined as evil in the Book of Exalted Deeds. Now that males and females are equally martially proficient amongst humanoid races, what do people make of this?

Babylon 5, a show that had women not only as fighter pilots but also as ground combat forces, had a quote by Ivanova (no less) concerning the death of "women and children", too.

I think our society is still a bit schizophrenic (in the non-clinical, multiple-personality sense) about women in combat, as illustrated by the whole Jessica Lynch situation in Iraq. On the one hand, society wants to say "You go girl!" and let women do whatever men do. On the other hand, society winces at the though of women actually getting blown away or molested by enemy troops in combat. There was a low-budget 1986 movie called Opposing Force that fairly fully and brutally deals with this problem.

 

[jmucchiello]

Given the harsh granularity of d20 ability scores, I would say the differences between a reality based race's male and female members would only show up in the odd versus even values of their standard ability scores. Ability scores in the MM assume an average member of the species have 3 10s and 3 11s (before racial modifiers) in their ability scores. Perhaps in the average female elf the 3 11s are found in Dex, Int and Cha and in the average male elf the 3 11s are found in Dex, Wis and Cha. This subtlety has no game impact really since for a given individual member of the race, the numbers can be distributed in any manner.

Where it could be interesting in a fantasy setting is when the male and female members of the race are radically physically different. For example, some campaigns might say that satyrs and nymphs are the same species. Their average ability scores are radically different than one another. Creating a playable race with similarly radical divergence could be interesting as long as it wasn't over done. (I'm thinking Dennis McKiernan's take on dwarves would qualify (if I'm remembering the right author).)

 

[John Morrow]

Given the harsh granularity of d20 ability scores, I would say the differences between a reality based race's male and female members would only show up in the odd versus even values of their standard ability scores.

Actually, with respect to modern real world humans and strenth, that's not true. The difference would likely be 3-4 points of strength in D&D 3.X. Based on weightlifting world records and US military studies concerning strength capabilities, on average and at the maximum, women are about 3/4ths (70%) as strong as men in their lower body and a bit better than half (55%-60%) as strong as men in their upper body. As I pointed out earlier, this is because of (A) size differences and (B) body fat percentages.

One military study showed that a 24 week, 90 minute a day training program could bring women up to about 90% of the capability of men not given the same special training. Assuming that the hard life of a pseudo-Medieval D&D setting was the equivalent of this special training and ignoring the fact that men weren't given the special training though would probably have a rough life, too, that's still a full single point in D&D terms. And that's at the average, not at the maximum. The maximum is likely still reflected in those world records.

It's possible, however, to assume that other races have far less sex dimorphism than humans. One theory that I've read is that dimorphism is related to reproductive strategies. The more competative the males are for mates, the more dimorphism you get. In a monogamous society where nearly all males get the opportunity to find a mate without having to beat up another male, you could have no dimorphism. Humans, in the big scheme of things, have very little dimorphism (compare, for example, Gorillas).

Of course it's also impossible to just ignore all of this entirely and assume that dimorphism simply doesn't exist in your fantasy world.

 

[barsoomcore]

Of course it's also impossible to just ignore all of this entirely and assume that dimorphism simply doesn't exist in your fantasy world.

I love you guys.

What a cool thread. One of my favourite things is listening to knowledgeable people talk to each other about interesting things.

Carry on.

 

[Remathilis]

Uh... threads like this make my head hurt....

1.) The current system of generics in regards (at least in humans, which I'll focus on) on race and gender is mostly one of PCness. For much the same reason as we've argued here, D&D avoids giving gender or human ethnicity different racial traits. Pretty much so that an african woman wouldn't look at some artificial score modifers and say "these don't represent me." Much like hp not representing broken bones, this is an abstraction for ease of play.

2.) Women and Children are the classic "non-combatants." While there may not be any measurable difference between males and females (as in ability score), they do have different cultural importance. Assuming a fairly typical pseudo-midieval setting, males worked the fields or performed a craft, females tended to home and offspring. Males would be the ones sent to form local militia so that women could raise the kids. Now, even if our D&D females COULD (by virtue of ability scores) serve JUST as well as their male counterparts, they would still probably be left to tend the homefront. Of course, you COULD create a different society, but more of these logicistcal ideas would need to be worked out. Again for simplicity, the males would fight, the females tend to home.

3.) Elite females, such as PCs, break rule two wide open. However, PCs are never described as typical, so...

4.) Slaughtering females (the carriers of future generations) and children (said future) would result in loss of the entire culture. Slaying the males would mean the culture is (at best) diffused into another neighboring culture (as was the historical case.) At worst, it ment one or two generations til extinction.

5.) The Absolute Alignment System states that while orcs are evil, they have a "right to life." There is no real "first strike" doctorine in D&D, you fight orcs because the orcs are threatening your farmlands. If the orcs move, you don't need to crusade to hunt them, you thank your lucky stars they're gone. If the orcs retreat to the moutains, you keep vigil til they come again to attack. The endless cycle. Only a few things (undead, demons) are so irrivocably evil that they warrant no mercy at any cost. Neither though, produce mostly defenseless women or children though.

Moral: Its just a game. Don't kill babies, do kill raiding orcs, and follow your heart when you find orc babies.

 

[JackGiantkiller]

John...I just didn't have the moral or intestinal fortitude to say it straight out. i was giving credit in areas where women are strong to avoid an appearance of prejudice. I didn't have the guts to take up the sexual dimorphism and extremely different mass and fat to muscle ratios. An unfortunate truth, learned by myself in the very same military that produced the studies you mention...the good big guy beats the good little guy. Every time. Assuming equal skill or even in many cases somewhat greater skill on the little guy (or woman's) part...the big guy wins. Luckily for me, I'm the big guy.

The above is not opinion, unlike most of my posts. It is fact. In hand to hand, the big guy almost always wins. Muscle enables one to take hits as well as dish them out.

Biologically, men are designed to kill things.


Remathilis...if they are evil, they don't have a right to life, in a pre-modern worldview. Note your own use of the word, 'crusade'. That is exactly the sort of first strike D&D type cultures engage in. If you don't hunt Evil because its evil, then adventurers can never be pro-active. They can never seek out the dragons lair, never go down *into the goblins caves and kill them* which is a pretty standard D&D activity.

Besides. Ask a dwarf what they think of letting the orcs retreat to the mountains. Or an elf what they think of letting the orcs hide in the woods. Wherever orcs are, somebody is getting raped, murdered, burned. That's what orcs do. that's what they are for. They aren't analogs of any real human group. They are monsters we can kill without regret. That's why they exist.

 

[Darkness]

If you don't hunt Evil because its evil, then adventurers can never be pro-active. They can never seek out the dragons lair, never go down *into the goblins caves and kill them* which is a pretty standard D&D activity.

D&D adventurers generally don't look for and fight evil creatures because they happen to have a certain mindset; they do it because the creatures in question have already done something evil.

They are rarely completely pro-active.

 

[Dark Jezter]

Women tend to have higher pain thresholds, and can sustain extended effort better, men have more 'fast twitch' musculature and snap into action slightly more quickly. Etc.

I dispute the claim that women can sustain extended physical effort better than men can. A couple of years ago, the Isreali Army studied the effects of military life on men and women, and found that men could be marched for 50 miles while women had trouble making it more than 30 miles. This was attributed to a 10% higher level of hemoglobin in men, which carries oxygen to the muscles and helps sustain extended physical activity.

Also, I've never seen any hard evidence that women have higher pain thresholds than men. Such claims tend to be based around speculation that, since women go through childbirth, they must have higher pain thresholds then men. Of course, since pain threshold varies wildly from individual to individual (I know a guy who calmly drove himself to the hospital after accidently cutting off his finger with a saw, and another guy who howled like a banshee when he bruised his knee) it's next to impossible to gauge accurately in scientific studies.