Difference between males and females in RPGs.

[laclongquan]

Anyway, if you want to create difference between males and females, make up some cultural reasons for female-only professions/abilities/knowledge.

Poisons? Because manly mans dont need to know about stinking effeminate knowledge such as poisons and female know about them. Never mind that poison is just another side of herbal remedies knowledge.

Bargain skill/Diplomatic skills. because manly men bash other over the heads if the prices are not right or the others refuse to disclose infomation. Only weak girls engage in diplomatic discussions and bargain prices, yes?

And playing as prostitute/call girl/hetaera...

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

Not really, knight training also involved training in courtesy and diplomacy.

 

[Zeus]

I find it strange that every time the subject of whether men and women should have the same stats comes up, people mention that there have been female warriors throughout history. No one's disputing that fact, but the question isn't, should female characters be allowed? It's, should there be statistical differences between male and female characters?

There have also been children warriors throughout history. It doesn't mean they're as strong as an adult male, it just means they're strong enough to pick up a gun/sword/etc.

 

[Carlos' Bitch1]

You know what really destroys my suspension of belief? Picket fences that cannot be jumped or kicked over. That is what destroys my suspension of belief.

In a fantasy world I can accept a lot of things: strange creatures, magical spells, never having a bout of gastro, strong females...but picket fences stopping people dead in their tracks?

 

[Lyric Suite]

You are complaining about picket fences stopping folks in their tracks in a world that has people shooting lighting bolts form their finger tips? lol u r dumb

 

[Carlos' Bitch1]

You are complaining about picked fences stopping folks in their tracks in a world that has people shooting lighting bolts form their finger tips? lol u r dumb

Picked fences? As opposed to Line fences perhaps?

Sorry, you would say lieing fences wouldn't you..my apologies. I actually mentioned Fireballs being shot from their fingertips. Try to use this correctly the next time you feel the need to continually follow me into every thread for revenge trolling.

Hmm, here I was thinking vindictiveness was a female trait...At least I now understand how VD feels. Perhaps my menagerie of angry followers will grow.

 

[JarlFrank]

I totally agree with Blackadder here. Magic is good if properly explained, ridiculous looking armors can be excused, but... why the fuck can I neither climb nor hack down a stupid fence?!

Especially annoying when they're used as level borders. And especially in first/third person 3D RPGs.

 

[Raghar]

Picked fences?

The town of Rome is a short distance from Green Bay, Wisconsin - close enough to hear the games on Sunday afternoons, but not close enough to keep normalcy from infiltrating the town. A lot of the usual happens in Rome, but in unusual ways. Home invasions are nothing new, but in Rome, the perpetrator leaves behind dirty bathwater, women's underwear and a rubber duck. Potatoes and household appliances become instruments of violence and death, the mayor is a bank robber sentenced to serve her term in office, the coroner likes his work a little too much and cows incubate human embryos.

You mentioned this right?


Back to differences.

Obviously males have a higher strength per kg of mass, thought there are some small exceptions that have only higher strength per muscle mass. (See GURPS - skinny disadvantage) The major difference is however arm length. In sword fight a length of arms is quite important as it allows longer reach and stronger leverage.

On the other hand, women tends to have higher endurance, which translates into taking bags from point A to B easier, and working better at watch. More sensitive skin translates into more interesting behavior when they are tied up. However, tying up a muscular male and beating him up properly would result in extracting a correct information more likely, than by doing the same with a woman.

 

[deuxhero]

which is why in those societies where women-warriors were comparatively common

Which societies were these?

Comparatively common is the qualifier here, but Medieval Japan got them

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onna_bugeisha

The number is limited among women of Samurai class only, and then only among families that stress on training women with martial weapons. They mostly train Naginata which is long-assed blade-on-a-stick, which help in less-strong women (long leverage for both stab and slash). Bow too, since you engage from afar and less-strong, less-stamina is not pronounced if you can substitute with fine hand-eye coordination/skill.

Oh yeah, bow require much strength and stamina.

Having a weapon that the main method of use consisted of crippling legs before the enemy got close tends to make strength pointless beyond a point.

Ultimately, beyond cultural bits in the game world making dialog and quests altered, it isn't worth the time, effort ect to do. It's just "realism" for the sake of "realism", which is always bad.

 

[laclongquan]

Actually, the mention of historical female warrior is to say that they can and could and did. There're many reasons why they are not popular, widespread.

They are breeders. 2 guy and 40 female can repopulate the tribe but 30 females will do it so much slower, and 20 will be slower than that. So from a survival point of view females are not expendable in warrior role. Or in another words: they are important enough that they should not be wasted on warrior role.

They simply cant do it as well as the male. Oh, there's exceptions, but in a pregunpowder role this is a deal killer. Guns alleviate somewhat but only somewhat. Strength, Stamina, Endurance, etc... The proof of that is in modern sports. You ever seen girls and boys, men and women, playing on the same rules/measure anywhere?

Then why we want female option? Because it's the freedom we always talking about. We cant play a girl just because the devs make it so? Lame. And when we play a girl we dont want to be limited without good reasons. A girl cant play warrior? Why? There's historical precedents, isnt there? etc and etc...

And the artificial difference that game devs enforced on us that we want to remove? mostly because those are so artificial and not reasonably explained. They sounds so forced. On the other hand we dont mind gameplay differences ala Fallout 2.

 

[PorkaMorka]

The problem with accurately modeling gender differences in RPGs is that it doesn't introduce a thoughtful and interesting choice for the player.

Rather, the choice is clear... make male characters. In most roles women are strictly inferior.

On average, relative to males, women are significantly inferior to males in strength and speed. We know this from modern athletics. Even using massive amounts of steroids (not available in medieval times), women athletes still can't keep up.

We also know from women competing in unarmed fights that these issues make them quite bad at unarmed fighting as well, even if you make sure the levels of skill are similar and even if you limit the size disadvantage.

From these two factors, we can conclude that women would be bad at medieval fighting. This would be especially true in fights where people wore armor.

But on the other hand, we can't really give them a higher intelligence than men.

So they would be "ok" magic users, but very inferior in most other classes.

Maybe they would be good diplomats, but I'm not sure if they'd warrant a bonus to charisma. Really it would be more of a reaction modifier, as in more egalitarian cultures they'd get a reaction bonus, but in some traditional cultures (common in medieval times), people would be disdainful of a female coming up to parlay, so they'd get a reaction penalty.

Even if you give them a bonus to charisma though, the physical disadvantage is still a biiiiiig problem.

That's realistic, but not super interesting gameplay wise. I'd still do it though.

 

[Carlos' Bitch1]

How about other female types?

Let us take, for example, an Elf. It is an entirely made up creature, and differs greatly depending on what backstory you wish to base it from, if you even want to do that at all.

Another way they could get around it is by totally ridding the fantasy universe of humans, making them look exactly the same, but giving them different abilities according to how the developer wishes.

How about it? Would this clear up all the suspension of disbelief issues in your fantasy game?

 

[laclongquan]

PorkaMorka, what you said is true. However, real life provide answer in that case:

Female-only professions: barmaids, potion makers, clerks, merchants (stationery shopkeepers) traders (mobile shopkeepers with guards) etc.

Female-only skills: potion, bandage, medicine, writings, etc...

The important thing is that you provide a clear cultural and economical reasons for them to be female-only. Background writings is of utmost important.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

Maybe they would be good diplomats, but I'm not sure if they'd warrant a bonus to charisma. Really it would be more of a reaction modifier, as in more egalitarian cultures they'd get a reaction bonus, but in some traditional cultures (common in medieval times), people would be disdainful of a female coming up to parlay, so they'd get a reaction penalty.

Even if you give them a bonus to charisma though, the physical disadvantage is still a biiiiiig problem.

I'd give them a social skills bonus (which wouldn't be the same as Charisma).

 

[Phelot]

IF it was a dialogue heavy game then I think it might be cool if women are less likely to be attacked by antagonists while a man would be treated much worse. It might also be kind of interesting to explore the idea that a female warrior simply wouldn't be taken as seriously as a male counterpart... which is probably true.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

To be honest one thing that is weird is that we consider being a character that fights in hand to hand combat some kind of an advantage. For some reason we think that being on the front and risking death or mutilation is some kind of "privilege" and that a female character becomes worse because she doesn't get that kind of a "privilege" unless she's the best of the best females.

How about for example treating having a bunch of better warriors as body guards and not having to enter the toughest fights as an advantage?

 

[Mastermind]

because it makes no sense - there's nothing physical that women are inherently better at

That's not true actually. Women have better immune systems.
http://www.nationalreviewofmedicine.com ... 05_23.html

So some disease/poison resistance could be thrown in, though disease and poison would have to be genuine threats in the game for the bonus to matter. They also tend to live longer, though I'm not sure how that could be translated in stat bonuses.

 

[Zeus]

There's the commonly held belief that women have a higher tolerance for pain. I'm not sure how it'd factor into physical combat, but if an evil wizard zapped the party with some sort of pain ray, male characters could drop a lot faster.

Also, purely from a game balance standpoint, if players weren't happy unless their female characters could lift just as much weight as those big stinky men, there are always gender-specific enchanted items.

"In this campaign, women are -2 STR. But they get +2 STR high heels."

I'm kidding about the heels. Gender-specific magic items can be badass. Anyone remember the orb of destruction dealy from Red Sonya? It was like the One Ring, the Light of Judgment and the Ark rolled into one.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Aside from simply being more valuable on the reproduction side of things, women strong enough to actually fight are especially valuable in that regard, since they can pop out babies that are more likely to be strong. Having the strongest 20% of your tribe's women wiped out is probably worse in the long run than losing the weakest 40% of them.

As far as statwise in games, it makes little sense, since, as everyone pointed out, adventurers aren't normal people. There should be maybe 1/10th as many female adventurers (More among professions that don't require strength, witches/priests etc.) but there's no reason they should be weaker. If the top 10% of men are adventurers, the top 1% of women should be able to hold their own even in physical matters. Absolute physical limits don't come into play until you're looking at like the top .1% of men.

Ultimately it's a fantasy world anyways. You could make the 'humans' in your world like spotted hyenas, where the females have all the testosterone and the men are puny wimps. Who gives a fuck.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

Aside from simply being more valuable on the reproduction side of things, women strong enough to actually fight are especially valuable in that regard, since they can pop out babies that are more likely to be strong. Having the strongest 20% of your tribe's women wiped out is probably worse in the long run than losing the weakest 40% of them.

It could be turned into an advantage - for example cNPCs being more likely to sacrifice themselves for female PC's safety than for male PC and less likely to expect the female PC to do risky risky stuff.

As far as statwise in games, it makes little sense, since, as everyone pointed out, adventurers aren't normal people. There should be maybe 1/10th as many female adventurers (More among professions that don't require strength, witches/priests etc.) but there's no reason they should be weaker. If the top 10% of men re adventurers, the top 1% of women should be able to hold their own even in physical matters. Absolute physical limits don't come into play until you're looking at like the top .1% of men.

The penalties should be there because adventurers tend to run into the .1% of men from time to time.
Also, top 1% of women would still be physically weaker than the top 1% of men.
In AD&D, statistically, about 6% of men have strength of 18 and 1,44% of men are stronger than the strongest woman (but only 0,06% have strength of 18/00).

 

[Damned Registrations]

That assumes theres an equal number of men and women adventurers. Juggle the numbers however you want, the 10 picked out of strongest .00001% of women will be the shit out of the 10 picked from the strongest 1% of men.

 

[Zeus]

Adventurers aren't normal people, and neither are World's Strongest Man/Woman competitors. These aren't people who muck about in caverns, searching for treasure and slaying beasts, all they do is lift heavy stuff.

But like I said in the Scars of War thread, Becca Swanson is the only woman ever to squat over 800 pounds, and Paul Edward Anderson did 1,202. Seems like there's a significant maximum strength difference to me.

 

[bhlaab]

FYI gender is a social construct

 

[bhlaab]

But like I said in the Scars of War thread, Becca Swanson is the only woman ever to squat over 800 pounds, and Paul Edward Anderson did 1,202. Seems like there's a significant maximum strength difference to me.

FYI correlation does not imply causation

 

[Damned Registrations]

You also have to (impossibly) factor into account the fact that far far fewer women even attempt to weight train compared to men. The difference between their maximum potential might be significantly smaller, and is being exaggerated by having a larger pool of men to draw from to pick the best out of.