Women and Children first?

[Dannyalcatraz]

So they would be like 33 x 15 x Ham

Or maybe 36 x 24 x 36 x Ham.

I hope its not too salty, though- I have sodium-dependent high BP.

(OTOH, you have to die from something, why not 36 x 24 x 36 x Ham?)

 

[S'mon]

Sure, in the real world. In a D&D setting, I generally tend to take the equality suggested by the gender-neutral ability score system and run with it.

We'd be a completely different species, we'd look completely different, and think very differently. I don't really know why anyone would want to apply rules for generating adventurer PCs to the whole species, anyway. I don't apply a STR penalty to female PCs because I (and WotC) want female warrior PCs to be a viable choice, but that's irrelevant to the STR of the typical female NPC.

 

[S'mon]

BTW Martin Van Creveld in "The Transformation of War" has an interesting discussion on female warriors. He points out that insurgent/guerilla armies often have female fighters, but traditionally they all get removed if the insurgents win and become a regular State army, because at that point they threaten the manly-warrior status of their male peers. His key point is that for males, fighting is as much or more about status as it is about the pursuit of rational goals, and allowing women to fight threatens that status *unless* the enemy is so overwhelmingly powerful (as it is for guerillas) that taking up arms against it makes the male warrior's status unquestionable.

 

[Victim]

It occurs to me that the other thing being neglected by those suggesting females of other D&D species as noncoms due to physical differences (in addition to the obvious generalization that because such differences exist in humans they must exist in other sapient species) is the presence of magic. If females of a species are more likely to display magical talent - either through greater likelihood of inheriting the ability (sorcerers), through greater aptitude with magical studies (wizards), or through preference of the divine (clerics & druids) - then the relative power of each gender within the society would not be so disparate. In a short-lived gameworld homebrew, I had a city where women ruled for exactly this reason; they held all knowledge of magical power & men were strictly forbidden to learn magic. Strength in battle is more than strength at arms.

In an extremely simplified model, comparative advantage suggests that as long as men have some sort of physical advantage, then women will specialize in magic even if they're actually no better at it.

 

[Nerfwright]

My dwarves have two genders, but there are roughly twice as many males as females. Mating is accomplished via both male-female pairs and male-male-female triads. Triad-inceptions reinforce multiclan ties, and are more likely to result in twin births, which are good for clan size, and considered lucky. I thought of defining their DNA as a dense quad-helix; but that's probably going too far for a fantasy setting's needs.

Some triads that form are long-term and effectively permanent, but couples also exist and customarily have shorter term (but still recognized) assocaitions with thirds for romantic reasons. Of course there are still sovereign reasons to have these relationships generate heirs such as for male-male couples, and between clans as well.

 

[Clavis]

BTW Martin Van Creveld in "The Transformation of War" has an interesting discussion on female warriors. He points out that insurgent/guerilla armies often have female fighters, but traditionally they all get removed if the insurgents win and become a regular State army, because at that point they threaten the manly-warrior status of their male peers. His key point is that for males, fighting is as much or more about status as it is about the pursuit of rational goals, and allowing women to fight threatens that status *unless* the enemy is so overwhelmingly powerful (as it is for guerillas) that taking up arms against it makes the male warrior's status unquestionable.

That's an excellent point. I think that too often we gamers forget human stupidity and greed when designing fantasy cultures. We have our societies do things because it would be fair and rational for them to do them, forgetting that human beings are inherently irrational and greedy. Sure it would be rational for our game cultures to be egalitarian, just, accepting of magic, non-racist, etc. There's no rational reason every fantasy city shouldn't have continual light orbs as streetlights, just as there's no rational reason modern cities couldn't be serviced by nearby solar-powered vertical farms. But just as there's too many people who make money on the oil-intensive way farming is currently done, the local lightlighter's guild and chandler's guild would probably assassinate any mage who threatened their business interests.

What would be interesting is a race where the females are actually more magically powerful, but are nonetheless oppressed by the weaker males through cultural manipulation. Sure, the race would be better able to defend itself if it used all of its resources. But that would be morally wrong...

 

[ruleslawyer]

The challenge of such a philosophy is that you end up missing out on nearly every dominant human culture up to the 1970s or so in your gaming world. Romans? Spartans? Athenians? Thebans? Mongols? Habsuburgs? Franks? Vikings? Saxons? Normans? Iriquois? Aztec? Maya? You end up with a pale pastel idealized liberal 21st century version of all of them. For me, I prefer both my history and my game cultures unsanitized.

Conversely, leaving matriarchal or matrilineal societies out of a fantasy world (something that a number of writers are guilty of doing) similarly ignores historical richness. Look at medieval Kerala. Swamps, huge houseboats, extended families living in gigantic temple-palace compounds, and women acting as the leaders of clans and directing companies of yogic martial artists wielding whip-swords? I mean, that's just cool 4wesome. (Or there's Minoan Crete. A culture with bull-worshiping nude acrobatic priestesses seems equally fun in a... er, different sort of way.)

My goblins are pretty much exactly like KM's orcs: A matriarchal society in which lazy, corpulent (and larger) females send out the males to hunt, gather, and fight. The females, with their leisure time and aura of holiness (each is considered a "sacred consort" of the tribe's particular deity, who is usually male) have mastered magic, and so in most cases are spellcasters. Orcs, OTOH, are a male-dominated society in which the females are kept deep in the caves making little orclings. I have societies that are sexually dimorphic or not, polygamous, polyandrous, bee-like, and so on.

 

[S'mon]

What would be interesting is a race where the females are actually more magically powerful, but are nonetheless oppressed by the weaker males through cultural manipulation.

I think it's been a common belief in historical societies that women are more magically powerful, so this wouldn't be a big stretch.

One good model for a matriarchal society is the lion pride one, which also fits some real world human societies quite well. Basically the females do the work, effectively head the family groups, organise the societal structures. The males laze around and fight each other.

 

[TeutonicBerserker]

Much as westerners are loathe to talk about it openly or in mixed company, humans have a large degree of sexual dimorphism. Though there are individual differences, in general human men are both larger and stronger than human women--and quite significantly so. (Compare the average, median, and mean height and weight of men and women in any study if you doubt this--or if you want to look at extreme cases of both sexes, compare the height and weight of NBA players to that of WNBA players). That's genetics. It's not true of every real life species (and in some it even works the other way) but it is most likely one of the more significant reasons that women have not generally taken a combat oriented role in most (evolutionarily speaking) successful human societies.

But if you're looking for a reason that combatants of non-human tribes are generally male, sexual dimorphism and population growth (as mentioned before, the reproductive capability of a society is more significantly limited by the number of females than by the number of males).

Excellent post.

 

[el-remmen]

Personally, I like to disrupt established tendencies based on specific tribes/cultures. So, for example, while I have established orc females to be treated by breeding stock chattle by the males of their race, I might at some point have them run into a tribe where the females actually have a say in their society, or even rule it. . .

Generally speaking different rules apply for the different genders among different speicies of humanoids in my game - esp. since despite physical dimorphism, gender itself is a social construction - so I try to play around with the roles whenever possible and relevent (i.e. I am not going to waste 20 minutes of game time to talk about the mating dances of the male kobold unless it has something to do with an adventure).

Of course our own cultural outlooks are so much with us that I find that even when we come up with weird and out there possibilities it can be difficult to remember them, or know how to present the details of it.

For example, in Aquerra there is no way to tell a male from female lizardfolk until it comes time to do the deed - However, I find that everyone just assumes all the lizardfolk they meet are male (having weird names that don't indicate gender probably doesn't help). Something else different I have done with them is that a village's eggs are all kept in two or three clutches regardless of who laid them and no one has specific responsibility over the young. Motherhood and fatherhood have little meaning in their culture.