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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 5563985" data-attributes="member: 4937">And by that logic, the afore mentioned 15lb sword also exists in the same world as the halfling.  So, by that logic we can make the same 'where does it stop' argument in the other direction?  Does the setting need to bear any particular relationship to reality?I think the answer is, "No.", but I also think that while a setting doesn't have to bear a relationship to reality in general some relationship to reality is preferred and in some cases a strong relationship to reality is definately preferred.So, for a supers game, I might find that differentiating chargen on the basis of a gender choice to be a bad idea.  If on the other hand I was playing Jules Verne inspired 19th century steam punk, or a game set within the 30 years war, I might choose to highlight gender roles and differences.  Well, in the respect that they are both PC's.  Otherwise, they are two entirely different species with entirely different physical characteristics.What does 'that refer to?  I don't even agree that halflings make a good comparison bench mark, so if that is what you refer to then no it doesn't make sense.  It's like using elves as a bench mark for Constitution.  The problem here is that the designers have fetishized their monsters so that pratically nothing in the MM, regardless of weight, size, or life style is less healthy than an elf.   An ordinary rat weighing say 3-5 lbs. is therefore more resistant to damage and a dram of poison than an elf, and this is in violation of the games own guidelines for tiny creatures.  Rather than granting our little rat disease resistance and endurance and say a 5 or 6 Constitution, they give the rat human normal constitution.  But of course to compensate they have to invent 1/4 HD as a category because otherwise hit points would be thrown off.  Much of what is in the game was designed to be good enough for a certain purpose.   Deadlines had to be met and minor issues like the fact that elves were practically the only thing that had a constitution penalty slipped through the cracks.   If I want to rework animals into a realistic framework with characteristics that reflect there actual abilties and weaknesses, then I have to be very careful not to choose as my benchmark something that wasn't realistic in the first place.Obviously, this doesn't matter if realism doesn't matter, and in many cases it may not.   You might not care about the relative bite strength of hyena's and cheetahs, and that's fine.  But if a game is trying to be realistic on a particular subject, arguing against that realism on the basis of the unreality of something else is a spurious argument and I believe disengenious argument.     This disengeniousness of that argument is revealed through statements like this:How the heck should I or anyone know that?  That is a question about people's perceptions?   How should I know whether people typically percieve women as being weaker than halflings?   Won't that depend on how people percieve something that doesn't exist as well as how people percieve women?   How can I answer subjective value questions like that?  I can answer objective questions about the strength of men and women.  I can answer questions about the strength of halflings given assumptions about their strength.   But for questions like, "Does the typical image of a NFL offensive linemen match the typical image of a female chimpanzee for strength?", all I can do is shrug.Are you really asking me what the typical image is, or are you really asking me what I think the typical image ought to be?Again, is that supposed to be an objective question?  How does what I want really have to do with reality.  Things are the way that they are whether I want them to be that way or not.   I have to accept reality, and if I decide to let reality inform some aspect of my game then I have to accept the consequences of that.   The subtext of your questions is that I maybe ought not allow women to be percieved as 'weak', presumably because I ought not like what the percieved consequences might be.Back at you.  100% agreement there.   I'm not sure at all how thats intended to be rebuttle of anything I've said, because that's been the core of my position in this thread since the beginning.  The sentence you were responding to though was about the claim that some people were mixing up there taste in fantasy worlds with reality.   I'm happy with their tastes.   In practice, they are very similar to mine.   I'm not happy with the assertion that if I allow women to potentially be percieved as physically weaker than men that I'm a sexist.   I don't believe pretending that women are physically as strong as men is rooted in a respect for women.  It's just another way of treating women as fragile creatures that have to be protected by men.  It's just another way of treating the perhaps one uniquely male virtue (punching power) as being the primary characteristic people ought to be judged on.   You don't have to be sexist to have a game that doesn't differentiate between the sexes, but by golly if you do differentiate between the sexes it doesn't mean that you are or that you've made an inherently bad decision.Which first of all persumes that having modified the rules, we won't extend that modification to removing halfings and half-orcs (both removed in my game even though I don't apply a strength penalty or cap to female characters in my game), and secondly of all presumes that there is something enherently inconsistant and nonsensical about percieving a human woman as weaker than a halfling.  How is it inconsistent?  I don't think consistant is the word you were actually looking for.   I think the unspoken word in that paragraph was distasteful.</blockquote>

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