Genders - What's the difference?

[Celebrim]

I myself think that once a game starts having characters that can destroy cities with a spell, or travel between planes, then reality is pretty much out the window.

Do you really or do you think it is out the window in just special contexts? I'd be very much surprised if you really felt it was out the window and I've never yet played the game where it was. For one thing, a game in which reality was out the window would require so much exposition to understand, that it could only be played by people who'd spent a life time contemplating alternatives.

But it's amazing how people who won't bat an eye at the idea of giant flying birds, or humanoids a hundred feet tall, will suddenly start talking about the ramifications of skeletal structure and musculature cross sections when talking about about the strength of human men and women.

To begin with, how do you know I don't bat an eye at giant flying birds or humanoids a hundred feet tall. I used to play with the GULLIVER house rules for GURPS 3e. I think that more than sufficiently demonstrates a commitment on my part to internal physical consistancy.

But beyond that, while I have no problem with someone saying, "In my fantasy reality, insects can weigh 400 lbs and still be agile and women are as strong as men" (and my rules reflect that), I equally have no problem with "In my fantasy reality, insects can weigh 400 lbs and still be agile, but women are realistically less strong than men." Those are entirely preferences and I don't see them as unreasonable.

And this is actually getting to the crux of the problem, which is more fundamental than simple stat bonuses; the depiction of men as the baseline for people, and the othering of women as something abnormal.

Oh dear. So, I suppose you have no problem with humans being the baseline for races? Having two possible genders to select would not being having "men as the baseline for people". Men are the baseline for people by default when you don't have gender selection. When you don't have explicit mechanical gender selection, then you are playing a man mechanically and your non-male gender is fluff. (This is another thing that gets lampooned well in 'Dorkness Rising'.) In my case, the baselines for women is that they are identical to men; you only get away from that baseline deliberately.

In my opinion, you've got it exactly backwards: "Why is the default assumption that a female character has to essentially be a pretend male..."? Indeed. That is exactly it.

Why is it that in order to express respect for femeninity you have to pretend it doesn't exist? Why is it that to express respect for women, you have to value them for excelling at the traditional martial virtue of "beats people up good", and if they are not burly she-males that kick butt and have casual sex then in some fashion we aren't portraying 'strong women' and we are sexist? I see it exactly the opposite of that. All these females with 18 STR and capable of out brawling 250 lb hulks are merely demonstrating our hatred or discomfort with feminity. They aren't women at all, but men in sexy woman suits. We may prefer fantasy women to real ones, but that discomfort with reality doesn't make one less sexist.

Holding that men and women are of equal legal, social, moral, and spiritual worth in no way requires me to live in a fantasy where they are identical. I can choose to do so for the purpose of a fantasy game, but some one chooses to not do so I don't regard it as a moral failing. (And perhaps quite the opposite.)

Consider: why do you have the traits "Fairer Sex" and "Second Class Citizen"

Well, first of all, "second class citizen" is intended to cover all situations where the character is discriminated against in the society whether for racial reasons (the character is a half-goblin) or social reasons (such as the character is a slave). My world is heavily grounded in the ugly realities of the ancient world, which often as not, are not so distantly removed realities as we'd like to think. So it certainly wasn't created with women only in mind.

Secondly, "Fairer Sex" was created as an alternative to forcing someone with a female character concept into conforming to reality because in the fantasy world - much as I disapprove of the sterotype - the character concept of 'kick butt woman' exists. I'm not going to force someone not to play a Sydney Bristow, Kim Possible, Beatrix Kiddo, etc. etc. if that is what they want, but frankly I find the model to be inherently sexist (and unnecessary).

Mary Edwards Walker didn't win awards for valor because she could out punch heavy weight champion boxers. Leigh Ann Hester has martial credentials that are second to none, but doesn't need to be put into a ring to prove it. There isn't some sort of competition where women have to have male upper body strength and melee skill to be valuable, least of all in a world where magic is real.

Honestly, "Fairer Sex" isn't realistic either though. It's purpose is to provide some degree of balance to the option of playing a female in a game that relative to real life puts a much greater emphasis on the value of beating things up. I doubt even in the ancient world martial prowess was quite as key to success in life as it is in a fantasy RPG, and its that unreality that I have to deal with.

, and not say, ", instead of say, "Masculine virtue" and "Gentleman's Privilege"?

Courage? Noble Rank? Personally, I'm pretty much inclined to say "Why not?" providing you can back up the words with mechanics of some sort. What mechanics did you have in mind behind the ideas, or are you just throwing words around? As soon as you can define what either means in game terms, I'd probably consider them.

And don't EVEN try to respond with "realism"- we both know that actual historical roles for women were far more complex and variable than that. There were far more complex dynamics at work than the "weak oppressed manipulators" stereotype that games such as Pendragon (the John Normen of rpgs) would have us believe.

Maybe so, but by and large those real roles didn't include 'front line martial combatant'. The game itself is skewed however to valuing martial combat and prowess. That's why the game 'revolves around men'. For the most part, war and battle are 'a man's world' with women as intruders, and to the extent that you make the game about war and battle you are making it revolve around "masculine virtue". You don't make the world revolve around men by having stat differences. You make the world revolve around men by making prowess in melee combat the standard by which people are judged to have worth. Because if that is your standard, then it doesn't matter whether you have stat differences, you are saying essentially the only thing that matters is that one thing that men uniquely excel at and the only way for a women to be valuable is for her to pretend to be a man in female form.

 

[Janx]

It's different because I don't have any choice whether or not to be a woman in real life. If I want to play a character I can relate to, I'm going to want to play a female character. If playing a female character has game mechanics attached, and those game mechanics discourage some choices, then I myself am discouraged from playing those roles unless I step out of my comfort zone and play a male character.

If I'm a young girl just getting into D&D and want to play who I'd like to be in a fantasy world, I'm being told that even a fantasy world is not enough to put me on equal terms with boys.
If I'm just having lighthearted fun with my friends and we play D&D with these rules, I'm having stereotypes thrown in my face. If I play an inferior female warrior, it's always going to be lauded over me that I'm not quite as good as a male warrior. Any time I miss an attack by 1 point, it will be because my character is a woman. Please let that sink in: my heroic fantasy character can fail solely on the basis that she is a woman.

A hobby I would otherwise enjoy would be tainted.

That nails it right there. For the purposes of a lets pretend game, let's not saddle the girls with artificial constraints. If the cost of that is "muscle bound women warriors with 18 str)" and their chain mail is no longer a bikini, no big loss, because it was all in our heads and I've still got Elmore art to look at.

 

[Gryph]

I haven't read the entire thread yet so this may have been covered.

I have always been fortunate in having female players in my gaming groups. Since some of those groups date back to those days of differing characterstic adjustments/maxima for different genders, I have been involved in this discussion a few times.

The best comment by one of the women was, "It isn't fun". After that I and the rest of our gaming group abolished gender adjustments and never gave it another thought.

We play rpgs for fun and escapism and, for a lot of us, some level of wish fulfillment. As others have said in this thread, why get hung up on realism on this one point, especially if its going to impinge on someone's fun.

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

Ok, I know that this is a sensitive subject, but... In RPGs, should there be difference between genders?

As far as ROLEPLAYING goes, most definitely a resounding YES. Mechanically? Why bother? Attempting to FORCE mechanical limitations/advantages between genders isn't going to provide the roleplaying lead which is what you really want.

This concept must be totally alien to younger gamers, but old school enworlders still remember the 70's. We had a game called "AD&D 1st edition". It was a massive game back in the day.
Halfling females had the lowest STR-cap, but if you made a male halfling character, the cap was higher. All genders had difference in weight, height and STR-cap. There was no benefit from playing a female character, and I don't remember anyone ever raising their voice over that issue. Nowadays we only have differences in size, and no one is arguing that. But that's where the differences end.

The '70's was indeed a different time, but it is in part in thanks to the changing attitudes of that era that we have come to learn more about the REAL differences between males and females, not just the perceived ones. 1E was designed and operated on what are NOW significantly outdated perceptions but there ARE still practical differences between men and women in the real world. In a fantasy world - if you feel it is necesary for YOUR PLAYERS - you can institute mechanical differences between the sexes to suggest whatever paradigm you want. As far as the core game rules are concerned, however, there's more and better reasons to avoid trying to forcibly implement such considerations.

In my game I treat PC (creation of) women and men the same, although I feel really frustated about the fact that 150-lbs PC can have the same strength as 300-lbs PC...

This is strictly an issue with height/weight data not being tied to actual attributes. Personally, I don't percieve of strong women characters in RPGS as looking like female weightlifters - I tend to picture them looking more like Sarah Conner in Terminator 2, or Vasquez in Aliens; strength not from muscle bulk but muscle conditioning.

Men and women are the same, women just are lighter and shorter? In the farms 18-year old girls often participate in hauling the logs with men or is there some reason why women stay home and men do physical work in your fantasy world? Or do they?

Despite decades of relentless political correctness I at least perceive my own game worlds to be fairly old-fashioned in regards to gender roles and expectations, but player characters who defy those expectations are seen as being just as "outside the norm" as all other player characters are anyway. Characters who blow away gender stereotypes are generally not singled out simply because of being un-stereotypical. I try to think of player characters as being unstereotypical regardless of gender - and NPC's treat them as unstereotypical for THAT reason.

 

[Crothian]

That nails it right there. For the purposes of a lets pretend game, let's not saddle the girls with artificial constraints. If the cost of that is "muscle bound women warriors with 18 str)" and their chain mail is no longer a bikini, no big loss, because it was all in our heads and I've still got Elmore art to look at.

Why do people assume that this has to be done negatively in such a way that would restrict options? 3e and 4e D&D and many other RPGs out there have completely done away with the idea that certain character types can only be certain classes or roles.

What about game options like feats or prestige classes or traits or advantages flaws or whatever options the game calls them that have specific gender requirements? This type of thing while rare is still something that is seen in some games and all of them I can think of are for females only. I don't recall seeing anything like this that was male only. Do people have a problem with these as well?

 

[Celebrim]

That nails it right there. For the purposes of a lets pretend game, let's not saddle the girls with artificial constraints. If the cost of that is "muscle bound women warriors with 18 str)" and their chain mail is no longer a bikini

But, it is "muscle bound women warriors with 18 str" that is unreal and artificial. For the purposes of "let's play pretend", I agree we can have female STR 22 melee brawlers, but for the purposes of this discussion lets not pretend that the lack of contraint is real and the constraint is artificial.

Likewise let's not pretend that adhering to unreality of fantasy swordswomen is what gives us women in mail hauberks rather than chainmail bikinis. It's the unreality of the muscle bound kick butt warrior that gives us and is tied to the "chain mail bikini". Quite the contrary, it is going to be the game designer/master who insists on reality who is most going to oppose the "chainmail bikini". I take this to the degree that my game doesn't even use the word "chainmail" nor "plate mail" or any other oxymoron. Fantasyisms like "studded leather armor" don't appear on the equipment table.

The muscle bound women in the chain mail bikini is ultimately a male centric fantasy that is less about empowering women than it is about demystifying them for a bunch of introverted boyish nerds. That it is also a fantasy that can be enjoyed by women is undoubted and unsurprising; afterall, I like bonnet dramas even though they are ultimely female centric fantasies.

...no big loss

With that I agree. The presence or absence of a female template (or male template) doesn't strike me as a thing of particularly great moment. I personally don't care that much either way. To the extent that I've been getting up on my soap box to denounce not having gender templating in a game, it's mostly because I don't like hearing this argument simplified down to "you're immoral to have gender templates" as if the argument was that clear cut and simple.

The whole 'realism' vs. 'unrealism' argument that seems to be the dominate mode of debate in this thread strikes me as a proxy argument, because ultimately I can't figure out why it would be worth having if it wasn't. It's a simple fact that women have about 3/4's of the strength of men for a given body weight, and are only about 85% of male size. This extends over the full range of human atheletic ability. This is a far large difference in ability that is expressed by any of the D&D racial templates, so any talk about how it isn't realistic because men and women don't differ that much is bizarre. Whatever really underlies the argument, it can't be the facts of human physical ability.

 

[Gryph]

It can go the other way as well. A male player plays a male PC in order to better identify with him. Lets say that the same game that gives the female PC a STR penalty gives males a CHA penalty. If this guy wants to play a bard and be the best mechanically, he would have to play a female.
My bard could suck solely on the basis that he is a man.

Oh, and don't forget that expressing any displeasure at this disadvantage would possibly get me laughed at for wanting to play a sissy bard in the first place in some areas.

Great example...oh wait, that game doesn't exist.

 

[pawsplay]

Oh dear. So, I suppose you have no problem with humans being the baseline for races? Having two possible genders to select would not being having "men as the baseline for people". Men are the baseline for people by default when you don't have gender selection.

Race is quite a different thing unless, as I would be surprised to find out, we have real-life dragonborn posting on this forum. Yeah, it does kind of suck that men are considered the baseline. But if you try to model real-world differences "accurately" (ignoring such context as whether these so-called humans live on Earth), for virtually all game systems, the difference is going to be one "point" or less. That's virtually by definition, most games do not define attributes any more finely than being in the same statistical band, and as noted previously, men and women overlap a lot in most areas.

So, you basically have two choices. Make one sex the default, and the other a "variant race," meaning that a female human has the same relationship to a human that a drow does to an elf, ... or, defining a genderless human and requiring everyone to take a gender template. I think there are definitely reasons to prefer the second approach.

 

[pawsplay]

The whole 'realism' vs. 'unrealism' argument that seems to be the dominate mode of debate in this thread strikes me as a proxy argument, because ultimately I can't figure out why it would be worth having if it wasn't. It's a simple fact that women have about 3/4's of the strength of men for a given body weight, and are only about 85% of male size. This extends over the full range of human atheletic ability.

Do you mean for statistically average humans, or for men and women participating in the same activity?

This is a far large difference in ability that is expressed by any of the D&D racial templates, so any talk about how it isn't realistic because men and women don't differ that much is bizarre.

If by far larger you mean, a good deal less large. Let's suppose we go with your 75% of 85% figure, which would give each average woman 63% of the lifting ability of a man. Assuming a man averages Str 10 in D&D3e, that gives him a base carrying capacity of 33 lbs. A woman would then average 21 lbs. That translates into Str 7.

That would imply men and women actually average 8.5 and 11.5 respectively, since 10 is said to be the average of everybody. That is only a +3 difference, for just about the most favorable test (raw lifting capacity) for men I know of, other than baseball throwing. That is exactly the same as the +1 Str and +2 for lifting capacity I gave earlier, which as I said was generous (which the .75 times .85 is generous as well, since I suspect we are not comparing people who naturally gravitate to the Fighter profession to each other). That makes the difference considerable less than the published differences between any given "strong" race compared to a human (with the possible exception of some early 3.0 third party stuff with odd ability modifiers).

Even if you aggregate the differences I suggested before, you don't get a whole race's worth of differences.

EDIT: Fixing the typo Dracorat caught.

 

[NewJeffCT]

Race is quite a different thing unless, as I would be surprised to find out, we have real-life dragonborn posting on this forum.

Bite your tongue - I know of at least three dragonborn who post on this forum on at least a semi-regular basis. Not to mention two tieflings and an aasimar. And, it's hard to keep track of all the elves & dwarves on the forums...