Quote from: noisms;568662I think it's a minefield both politically and scientifically. That said, I don't necessarily have a beef with a DM saying male characters get +1 STR and -1 WIS or something, but I doubt I'd use such a rule.

The only other thing that I would say is, let's be realistic in the way we depict strong women. If your female character is STR 18 she ain't gonna look like Scarlett Johansson. More like an East German shot putter circa 1984.

see my post on size and strength.

Quote from: jibbajibba;568667see my post on size and strength.

It's a nice idea but I think D&D stats are quite abstract anyway. The reason I suggest that, if I was to do such a thing, I would make it "men get +1 STR and -1 WIS" (if you keep the ceiling of 18) is that all it does is make men slightly stronger on average and slightly less wise on average, which I think reflects reality reasonably well.

I'd probably never do it in practice though, because what's the point? It's one of those things with no upside. The benefits are tiny (maybe makes things slightly more realistic) in comparison to the drawbacks (will open a huge can of worms that it's not worth dealing with).

Quote from: jeff37923;568106Some stuff I leave in, even if it is distasteful, because it makes the setting more believeable and thus helps immersion.

This came up in a couple of Traveller games that centered around colonization. Part of the social structure of these newly established colonies was that homosexuality was discouraged and frowned upon because it was seen as more about sexual gratification than it was about making babies and getting the colony's population to grow.

Now, that is distasteful, but would IMHO realisticly reflect the nature of newly established colony. Would it remain over the generations as the colony grew? No, probably not as the need to make babies slowly became less and less of a cultural imperative.

Why?

How about just taking the ancient Greek Society point of view and citizens have kids as a 'duty to the community' - but its perfectly alright to have lovers of any gendere you feel like - as long as you try to have kids at some point.  
Then the rest of your life fuck/make love with whatever gender you want to.

- Ed C.

Quote from: Koltar;568671Why?

How about just taking the ancient Greek Society point of view and citizens have kids as a 'duty to the community' - but its perfectly alright to have lovers of any gendere you feel like - as long as you try to have kids at some point.  
Then the rest of your life fuck/make love with whatever gender you want to.

- Ed C.

What was that ancient Greek motto? A woman is for children, a boy is for love, and a goat is for pleasure? I think that's something we can all get behind. Er, pun intended.

I don't think random ranges from 1-6 or 1-20 have enough granularity to properly represent the highest levels of athletic endeavour, there's no way to meaningfully represent the difference between a split second variation among the top runners and a split second variation among the top runners compared to an average man running down the street across such a small scale.

Anyway if societal considerations are bothering people that much why not take them to extremes?

Imagine for example how much damage a troupe of assassin whores could do. They could join the camp followers of an army, becoming spies, killers, poisoners and saboteurs. I mean its perfect, whores can come and go as they please. They could join the staff of a castle and sleep around, getting information. They could set up station at a strategic inn or tavern for the same reason, or even set up spy networks in the form of brothels. They could break sieges wide open from the inside.

A devastating card for any sovereign to be able to play!

Quote from: The Traveller;568673I don't think random ranges from 1-6 or 1-20 have enough granularity to properly represent the highest levels of athletic endeavour, there's no way to meaningfully represent the difference between a split second variation among the top runners and a split second variation among the top runners compared to an average man running down the street across such a small scale.

Anyway if societal considerations are bothering people that much why not take them to extremes?

Imagine for example how much damage a troupe of assassin whores could do. They could join the camp followers of an army, becoming spies, killers, poisoners and saboteurs. I mean its perfect, whores can come and go as they please. They could join the staff of a castle and sleep around, getting information. They could set up station at a strategic inn or tavern for the same reason, or even set up spy networks in the form of brothels. They could break sieges wide open from the inside.

A devastating card for any sovereign to be able to play!

You see that might well be the most sexist of all the posts so far... The asusmption is that a woman can be a whore as part of a disguise and its no biggie. What about your male PC playing a male prostitute as part of his assasin's disguise....

Quote from: jibbajibba;568674You see that might well be the most sexist of all the posts so far... The asusmption is that a woman can be a whore as part of a disguise and its no biggie. What about your male PC playing a male prostitute as part of his assasin's disguise....

You missed my point - I'm taking the backwards assumptions of our putative medieval society to extremes in combination with the idea of female warriors. It works on lots of levels, efficiency wise.

I've played a fair bit of HarnMaster, which is one of the few games that do modifiers based on sex.  In HM3, human females have -2 to their height, -3 to their frame roll (that affects weight), and +2 to their Aura stat that defined magical aptitude.  Both Khuzdul (dwarves) and Sindarin (elves) have no sex-based modifiers.  

As someone earlier mentions, women being shorter and lighter than men isn't really a controversial point, so this didn't seem like a can of worms to me.  Contrast this, say, with the stat modifiers from the d20 module "The Greenland Saga" - described in the following sidebar:

QuoteGender and Reality

Fantasy games often describe a world of equality between men and women.  While this may be a desirable utopia, it is in no way the reality of medieval Europe.  Women in the pre-machine age are not the physical equals of men.  Therefore, lower the strength score of female player characters by three, but never to less than three.  Raise their dexterity by one and constitution by one.  Life is not fair.  Deal with it.

That is a can of worms.  

The biggest issue I have with attribute modifiers is the potential for selective realism.  If you take pains to represent the order 10% stat differences from gender - but you ignore other effects - then that suggests something about what you are trying for.  That particularly applies to the Greenland Saga, where the nods towards realism seem extremely selective.  (The only other nods towards realism from basic D20 System are: (1) remove all weapon/armor proficiencies and spell use from clerics, and (2) triple the cost of the Swim skill.)

Quote from: Premier;568576True, but having said that, there's a difference between "You want to play an anachronistic feminist (/racial equality adherent/whatever)? Cool, you get to do that. You'll be going uphill in a world where nobody shares your ideals, but if you persevere, you might even make a difference." and "You want to play an anachronistic feminist? Cool, you get to do that, and in order to make sure you're playing in an emotional safe environment, the entire world will also share your anachronistic views. You'll be completely accepted as a feminist, no struggle there."

Which is a pretty succinct explanation of how modern feminism has gotten itself all mixed up with a modern sense of entitlement.

QuoteTherefore, lower the strength score of female player characters by three, but never to less than three. Raise their dexterity by one and constitution by one. Life is not fair. Deal with it.

I love that tough-guy posturing at the end. If they really wanted to model how "life is not fair," the female strength penalty (operationally, not artificially balanced for weight differences) would be more like a realistic -6 and there wouldn't be those completely unsupported DEX and CON consolation prizes. To offer those bonuses as a sop to fairness but follow it up with that epigraph is just priceless.

Then again, I see nothing wrong with allowing someone to play a five-sigma-outlier female muscle brute. Who's afraid that Herrnstein and Murray are going to show up at the end of one of your game sessions and give you statistical demerits? I don't think we are in any danger of lulling people into the illusion that men and women actually have equal height and physical strength by playing a fantasy dice-rolling game.

Quote from: Roger the GS;568818I love that tough-guy posturing at the end. If they really wanted to model how "life is not fair," the female strength penalty (operationally, not artificially balanced for weight differences) would be more like a realistic -6 and there wouldn't be those completely unsupported DEX and CON consolation prizes.

Your problem here is a shitty collection of rulesets that don't account for skill. Was Arnie in his prime faster than a five hundred pound tiger, or stronger? Strength doesn't matter, only skill. Children in Africa kill lions with spears as a test of manhood, but of course some people just don't get that.

One such was a player of mine, hell bent for leather on boosting his stats. This went on for some time until I ran a minigame for him, called The Arena. He faced a sequence of increasingly powerful animals, and beat every single one.

Then I put him up against a one-eyed knight. Before he could even draw his sword that knight had twirled his morningstar twice round his shoulder and planted it in the character's eye from fifteen paces away. It was merely an example to illustrate the point, he was up right as rain for the next game, but he stopped trying to pump his STR up that extra notch thereafter.

Quote from: The Traveller;568823Your problem here is a shitty collection of rulesets that don't account for skill. Was Arnie in his prime faster than a five hundred pound tiger, or stronger? Strength doesn't matter, only skill. Children in Africa kill lions with spears as a test of manhood, but of course some people just don't get that.

One such was a player of mine, hell bent for leather on boosting his stats. This went on for some time until I ran a minigame for him, called The Arena. He faced a sequence of increasingly powerful animals, and beat every single one.

Then I put him up against a one-eyed knight. Before he could even draw his sword that knight had twirled his morningstar twice round his shoulder and planted it in the character's eye from fifteen paces away. It was merely an example to illustrate the point, he was up right as rain for the next game, but he stopped trying to pump his STR up that extra notch thereafter.

I don't understand why, but my power gamers seem to lose 2x or more tha amount of characters as the role-players.   I might have gotten the ruleset right...

Quote from: CRKrueger;568645Anyone use gender mods at your table or in the game you've made or are making?

What do you gain, what do you lose, what do you think?

I find it rather silly for reasons already mentioned, scores are already granular enough to distinguish between average, above average and 'trained athlete', I don't think putting a penalty in there based on gender is really going to enhance anything.  And it doesn't really do what most people think it does anyway.  It doesn't keep the top end slightly different, it shifts the entire curve for women downward.  If necessary, you could say that (in D&D) women top out at 16 or 17 Strength.  I would probably go with 17, since males would then be the only ones with percentile strength.  

Even then, according to the PHB (1st Ed), Strength roughly translates to 10lbs per point for a standing military press.  So 18 Strength isn't even near human capacity.  Quick internet searches show that to be in the 450-500lb range for men, but little information for women.  The best information I could find put them in the 250-300lb range.  I did find these, however:

Kara Bohigian 402 Bench at 148
Kara Bohigian 551 Squat
Kara Bohigian 501 Deadlift

Any one of which is adequate to prove this woman has far exceeded 18 Strength.  Granted, for men, the world record for Bench Press is an astounding 1,075lbs.  And of course, these are records set by people who have trained their whole lives to do exactly that one thing, lift a lot of weight.

So, upwards of 30 Strength, I guess we could say women start to lag behind men.  Down at the normal PC range of 3-18, there really is no solid reason to say women categorically are two points weaker than men.

Even further along the path, I found Powers and Perils recently on the interwebs*.  Being from the early 80s, I expected there to be the penalty to strength for human females, but what kind of struck me is that females of all races have a penalty to Strength.  Dwarf Females have a de facto penalty, in that males have a +1 adjustment, while females have a 0 adjustment.  Even if there is a proven significant dimorphism in non-world-class-athlete humans, that is pretty slim evidence that fantasy races would follow.

But the erroneous statistical methodology of subtracting two points from every individual because the average may be two points lower is rather enough for me to ignore that sort of thing.  You can't interpolate the results back into data with any degree of accuracy.


* I am not 100% sure of the legality, so I will not be posting links, sorry

Quote from: LordVreeg;568835I don't understand why, but my power gamers seem to lose 2x or more tha amount of characters as the role-players.   I might have gotten the ruleset right...

Awesome.

Ignore isms and let the playing group decide how to tackle things.

Peasy.