I can usually estimate a man's weight, based on athleticism but I'm always off on visualizing women's mass/weight.  Probably because I can't get a straight answer without a withering glare when I ask.

So I accidently blundered into this: https://i.huffpost.com/gen/1470673/original.jpg

Cool stuff.  We could argue endlessly about how realistic it is in a lower tech world nutritionally etc, but some of the raw-power sports like hammer toss showcase a 'real' woman's physique.

The above is higher res, one graphic.  Below are low-res.

That's from a set of photos of both female and male athletes. Here's a more complete set, including the men:
https://imgur.com/a/cOTTF

They're scans from this book:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0060195533

The photographer's website (warning: nudity)
https://howardschatz.com/

I agree that it's very useful as a visualization tool. It shows how wide a range of body types there are among peak athletes.

Female Gymnasts are so tiny!

Noteworthy how the more women participate in raw-power sports, the more they give up a feminine appearance to compete.

Quote from: Pat on November 19, 2020, 01:27:35 PM
I agree that it's very useful as a visualization tool. It shows how wide a range of body types there are among peak athletes.

Shows how sports have become really body-type specific as well.

Notice how each sport tends to have body types that are optimized for their sports Specific particular physical activities.

A interesting rundown on the phenomenon:
https://www.ted.com/talks/david_epstein_are_athletes_really_getting_faster_better_stronger?language=en

I don't understand how anyone can stand on their tip-toes. It looks painful.

Quote from: Ratman_tf on November 19, 2020, 02:10:21 PM
I don't understand how anyone can stand on their tip-toes. It looks painful.

Trained for it from when they are very young.

I have two cousins that did ballet - one went professional.

Bare foot, their toes do not look normal...

Quote from: Jaeger on November 19, 2020, 02:37:12 PMI have two cousins that did ballet - one went professional.

Bare foot, their toes do not look normal...

My grandma's toes were like that. Back in the late 90s, my sister worked on improving toe shoe designs for a college thesis. I would have expected the situation to have improved since then.

Quote from: Ratman_tf on November 19, 2020, 02:10:21 PM
I don't understand how anyone can stand on their tip-toes. It looks painful.

Actually, all my female relatives in one branch of the family (second cousins on down) have a minor genetic quirk, short achillies tendons or something, that causes them to be much more comfortable walking on the balls of their feet than on the flats. 

Quote from: Pat on November 19, 2020, 01:27:35 PM
That's from a set of photos of both female and male athletes. Here's a more complete set, including the men:
https://imgur.com/a/cOTTF

They're scans from this book:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0060195533

The photographer's website (warning: nudity)
https://howardschatz.com/

I agree that it's very useful as a visualization tool. It shows how wide a range of body types there are among peak athletes.

Thanks for the links I may throw down for the book.

This is why elves, dwarves and so on have never interested me much. There's so much variation among normal healthy humans that we get lots of opportunities to play people very different from ourselves - and that's just looking at their bodies, add in all the many and various cultures through the world and its history, it's amazing.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron on November 19, 2020, 05:57:29 PM
This is why elves, dwarves and so on have never interested me much. There's so much variation among normal healthy humans that we get lots of opportunities to play people very different from ourselves - and that's just looking at their bodies, add in all the many and various cultures through the world and its history, it's amazing.

Elves Dwarves and even halflings worked because they give the players an explicit archetype to play. Culture and body type. Each race embodying a specifically exaggerated aspects of human virtues and vices.

They do not work so much now because of the proliferation of non-human races in fantasy. Too many non human races and none of them are special anymore. And when you divorce them from any and all of their previous mythological and archetypical associations - they are just human skinjobs at this point.

What really gets me is just how different the shape of peeps can be. Human beings really do come in a staggering array of shapes and sizes!

Quote from: Jaeger on November 19, 2020, 07:20:04 PM

Quote from: Kyle Aaron on November 19, 2020, 05:57:29 PM
This is why elves, dwarves and so on have never interested me much. There's so much variation among normal healthy humans that we get lots of opportunities to play people very different from ourselves - and that's just looking at their bodies, add in all the many and various cultures through the world and its history, it's amazing.

Elves Dwarves and even halflings worked because they give the players an explicit archetype to play. Culture and body type. Each race embodying a specifically exaggerated aspects of human virtues and vices.

They do not work so much now because of the proliferation of non-human races in fantasy. Too many non human races and none of them are special anymore. And when you divorce them from any and all of their previous mythological and archetypical associations - they are just human skinjobs at this point.

Greetings!

Quite right, Jaeger.

You know though, that makes me kind of sad and melancholy.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: Jaeger on November 19, 2020, 07:20:04 PM
And when you divorce them from any and all of their previous mythological and archetypical associations - they are just human skinjobs at this point.

One of the best side-effects of my decision to forego the OGL/d20SRD approach for writing my own game system was the need to go back to the actual myths for my monsters and races instead of having the default D&D lists and the skeletal fluff-text as my start point.

The biggest problem with fantasy races isn't their number per se (back in the old days Balrogs and Vampires and anything else from the Monster Manual could become PCs with GM permission). It's that 40+ years (and particularly the last 20 under WotC/Paizo) of watering them down has turned them all into little more than a stat bump and a couple of "x/day" features for a lot of people rather than something distinct (and now the SJWs want even those distinctions disolved.

The solution to that isn't to just make a human-only soup; it's doing the work to reinvigorate the races. When's the last time a book spent more than a handful of paragraphs on anything beyond a race's game stats?

Take a look at 5e. Once you strip away all the half page illustrations most of its races are barely 3 columns with a fairly useless double-spaced paragraph of two of purple prose from one of the novels as an opener and plenty of oversized headers to disguise that there's no "there" there beyond the most general of stereotypes.

As long as that's your design paradigm, then yes, races are mostly just a cluster of mechanical benefits you pick because they synergize well with your class... human skinjobs as you say.

But rather than just do away with non-human races, the other alternative is to paint them in bold colors again.

ex. Elves are exiled spirits from the Realm of Dreams (a.k.a. Arcadia or Fairyland) desperately seeking to use their mastery of illusion to recreate the paradise they've lost. They are immortal but small in number (the only way one can even have a child is for another elf to die and their spirit reincarnate) and very alien due to adherence to dreamworld logic vs. that of the conscious human mind and are quite hostile to any who would pierce their personal illusions (and yes, outside of the rare PC, they are by and large treated as monsters rather than kingdoms of pointy-eared humans).

The point is, as soon as you start adding some real meat back to them instead of the generic gruel they've been ground down to, a lot of the races suddenly become more interesting again.

Quote from: LiferGamer on November 19, 2020, 11:59:05 AM
I can usually estimate a man's weight, based on athleticism but I'm always off on visualizing women's mass/weight.  Probably because I can't get a straight answer without a withering glare when I ask.

I'm surprised they got that many women together to grease up and wear skimpy outfits for a camera shoot, and no one complained? I'm sure there was a much bigger event/encounter/save-roll connected with this.

I'm not surprised at all. It's par for the course in various health magazines.

While the clothing is revealing, that relevation isn't intended to be sexual, but rather educational. The simple standing poses (or some pose they would regularly adopt as part of their chosen sport) further emphasize that purpose.

And the key point being conveyed as education is "this is what healthy people of various sporting professions actually look like... not the distorted Hollywood and videogame appearances."