Is this offensive?

Does the idea of women having -2 Str/+1 Wis/ +1 Cha offend you?

  • Yes, it offends me personally.

    Votes: 105 47.7%
  • No, I wouldn't be offended by that.

    Votes: 115 52.3%

We clearly also need a rule to represent how women can see 40,000 shades of color that we 1) can't see, and 2) don't care about. Perhaps a +1 to Spot checks (+2 if color / camoflauge is involved).

"Fine, it's not tan, it's taupe, can we go now?"

And guys should get a +1 bonus to Knowledge (annoying sports trivia) checks and a +1 to Listen checks to tell if the sub-woofer is off pitch or the engine 'sounds funny.'
 

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I don't find it offensive. If you want to get historical, okay. Those numbers might work since D&D is quasi-medieval.

IMO, Really the most offensive treatment of women in RPGs came from an old book Fantasy Wargaming by Bruce Galloway. In that book, women had a bunch of negative modifiers and no postivesl...because historically that's how things were done. He also warned gamers about the women's lib movement.

I think Chivalry and Sorcery had something similiar to this as well.

Pendragon, however, I think gave women some penalties to strength. But they could do something neat once a month...







...make a magical potion.
 


Umbran said:
Well, no. It suggests that males have an inherent physical advantage when it comes to strength-tasks that call for a higher center of gravity.
What physical activities show a clear advantage to a woman's body structure? In other words, in which physical competitions will women have a clear and decided advantage over men such that university female competitors can compete with elite male competitors?

If the rowing example is merely a situational strength advantage instead of an inherent strength advantage, then there ought to be corresponding examples of a similar magnitude. If there are no corresponding examples, then perhaps the entirety of situational advantages suggest an inherent advantage.

Judo (or any other martial art that uses throws heavily) also uses pretty much all the muscles in the body - but there the lower center of gravity becomes an advantage, and will allow a smaller or lower-center of gravity person to more effectively apply their strength.
Do female judo competitors occupy a majority of the world's top ranks? I suspect they do not.

Your rowing example, for example, does not address that a person who can lift a lot with his arms may not be able to jump very far, and vice versa, even though they are both strength-based.
No, it doesn't address that. It does show that in a co-ed sport that is strength and endurance based, 5 guys from Fairfax, VA can out-pull the fastest woman in the world.

The Ford F-250 v8 Super Duty doesn't have a situational advantage when towing 5 tons up hills compared to the Ford Fiesta; it's simply a stronger vehicle because of the way it's built.
 

I don't have the article handy, but I've read that size/strength differences between the sexes strongly correlates to a speices preference for bigamy/monogamy.

Speices that maintain multiple female partners per male (historacally speaking) lead to bigger and stronger males and relatively smaller and slighter females on average. As one poster noted earlier, this has a lot to do with competetion and selection. We can tell from the current physical size difference between men and women that humans have been mildly bigamous during our evolution.

Whereas speices that choose a single mating partner for life have very little or no relative difference between the sexes in size and strength.

I think it could be an interesting excerise to explore as a fantasy culture in a campaign. Much of this relates to culture in modern times. One of the reasons I love roleplaying is to sample these kind of different-from-the-norm ideas.

Trying to quantify nebulous things, such as "social intelligence" just seems like a can of worms to me.

I don't think all this worth statting out as system mechanical bonuses/pernalties though. I'd agree with the points that (a) the system is not granular enough and (b) the tools already exist for a player to stress those differences, or perhaps more importantly, break the stereotype if they wish.

Imposing arbitrary and perceived limits from the "real world" restricts players in a fashion I wouldn't be interested in doing. I don't find it offensive, just... mostly meaningless.
 



Felix said:
As rowing uses every single muscle group, does this not suggest that males have an inherent physical advantage when it comes to strength?

To me it demonstrates that nothing will more quickly divorce this vein of discussion from reality than using a very specific, artificial task generally performed under ideal conditions by people the farthest thing from the norm as the basis for generalization.
 

jaded said:
Speices that maintain multiple female partners per male (historacally speaking) lead to bigger and stronger males and relatively smaller and slighter females on average. As one poster noted earlier, this has a lot to do with competetion and selection. We can tell from the current physical size difference between men and women that humans have been mildly bigamous during our evolution.

DAMMIT! I evolved at the wrong time again!



(Some would say that I haven't at all.)
 

No, it would not concern me. Honestly, I fail to see the logic behind the objections towards taking this approach, especially if you are taking this approach to explain or reinforce existing social or biological facts that exist in your world. If the vast majority of the armed forces in your world are male, why not represent the reason behind that with mechanics to support it?


It is a fantasy world, and Humans are just as much of a part of that fantasy world as any other race, or at least they should be. As such, if you do decide that gender differences exist, I highly recommend that you base those differences on the culture and biology of the Humans in your world, and not use real world comparisons as such comparisons do not mesh well with the D&D world in general. Many rules do not, in any way, accurately reflect real world physics, physical capabilities, mental capacity, or environmental conditions in any way.

As such, if you decide to make women weaker, and men more foolish/less commanding and forceful, that should be accurately represented in your game world. I would expect that with such statistic modifiers, men would generally be the physical laborers, soldiers, and thugs/enforcers of the world. Women, with the statistic bonuses, or at least lack of penalty to Wisdom and, more importantly, Charisma, would occupy most of the positions of leadership and administration. It would be an interesting society to model.

Of course, other mechanical sets are available depending on the society you wish to best model. The important thing to keep in mind while building your world with mechanical benefits to represent the simulation you wish to have, is that intrinsic abilities and advantages would shape the entirety of a races developing societies, economies, and so forth. A mechanical benefit indicates a natural advantage (and I personally recommend following the credo of no penalties, only benefits) that would color and alter the roles the different genders had, and have, not only in the current society, but in the beginning of that society as well.


You would probably want to decide the culture and biology of the other humanoid species when doing this, which would give you an impetus to further develop and detail those societies in your world. Since their biology would be truly alien, you would have a real opportunity to differentiate them from their Human counterparts, and make them more than "Humans with pointy ears and stature differentiation".

Essentially, most races that exist in the D&D settings are portrayed or run as Humans, with a different social structure or set of values, but lacking in any truly alien or unique qualities to truly separate them from Humanity. The closest any race has ever come to such representation is the Elves, with different eating, sleeping, and reproductive habits, yet the impact of those differences is virtually never represented in the culture, attitudes, and nature of the Elves themselves.

Also, I would agree with earlier posters that you should not use odd statistic modifiers, as that is simply inefficient design. I actually think doing this could lead to great world building opportunity, as you could truly change the way races and genders are represented mechanically to reflect the realities of your world. Of course, it's up to you whether or not the effort would be worth the time.
 

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