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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 5555479" data-attributes="member: 4937">One thing that this thread has brought me to realize is just how fair and reasonable the original 1e D&D implementation of gender differences was.  Compared to a penalty, a cap on the starting maximum is such a unintrusive nod to realism, that it's hardly constraining at all.  The likely hood that you'd roll up a character that couldn't be female (without cheating) is exceptionally small, and it really lets you select from a character at the far end of the bell curve without worrying about where the middle may be.I'm continually impressed by the sheer gameability of D&D, and that as someone who as a snot nosed arrogant 20 year old was absolutely sure that D&D was just about the worst designed system ever.  Hat tip to Gygax though. Yeah, the converse of that is another system that I really like and admire that's the D6 system in its old form (such as 1e Star Wars).  In there they had point, and mostly had only minimum and maximum traits, and it too often felt like your choices were meaningless unless you were going to play some one dimensional character.  It would be as if the only reason to play a man was to play a muscle bound character.  I've seen the Star Wars racial templates played with for balance (and played around with them some myself) and one mechanic that always struck me as interesting was making it easier for one race to advance certain characteristics.  It's less applicable to a level based system than it is to a skill based system like D6, but I really like that and found it modelled the difference between diverse aliens far better than just a series of minimum and maximum attributes.  Without it, there was little reason ever to get away from human.Of course it still doesn't get us away from sterotypes completely, but that's not entirely a bad thing.  Or at least, since we can't seem to get away from them, we might as well try to make a virtue out of a vice.  A sterotype, especially within a story, doesn't have to be demeaning, nor does a sterotype necessarily mean that the resulting character doesn't gain in skilled hands depth and individuality.</blockquote>

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