Should females be represented differently than males in RPGs?

[Norfleet]

But there is a defense: You use a GUN. Women should be much more enthusiastic about GUNS for this reason.

[DemoGraph]

Yes.

[gerey]

But there is a defense: You use a GUN. Women should be much more enthusiastic about GUNS for this reason.

Women are ******** and believe what they see in Hollywood movies also applies to reality.

Doesn't help that the vast majority of them have never actually been on the receiving end of the full strength of an adult male. Men typically hold back when using force against women, especially friends and family, so this further reinforces their belief that men are just a bit stronger, but not so much as to be the deciding factor.

There's plenty of accounts online of women being shocked to discover just how outclassed they actually are physically against men.

[Tangerine]

Women should not be playable in RPGs, they should only be characters you rescue.

[Chudrick]

Men are objectively superior to women in all ways but childbearing ability, fuckability, usually physical beauty, and a few other minor things like disease resistance and so on. I wouldn't say that they're more charismatic - women are typically clueless about how their behavior affects other people unless they're from a patriarchal culture.

This idea that they sexes are different but equal, as if this is a point-buy system, is false. It's not equal.

The funny thing is that childbearing ability, fuckability, and beauty are all so OP that they rule out all possible male characteristics. In any situation, women have the advantage. This is why we need patriarchy: it enforces equality between men and women by removing women's advantages.

[Trickster]

Women in RPGs should be radically different from men. The worst example of how NOT to design female characters is Baldur’s Gate 3. This screenshots perfectly captures the problem: three girlbosses acting like they’re the main subjects of the history making all the decisions. Replace these women in the scene with men and nothing would change. Their ethics, their behavior - it's all identical to male behavior. This is just example of erasing the fundamental differences between men and women, which can only be described as bio-socio-cultural nihilism.





That’s absurd even by fantasy standards. Unless something is explicitly labeled as a fantasy element, it should follow our world’s logic. And in reality, patriarchy is the natural order— men explored, fought, and survived, earning their social status, while women raised offspring. Girlbosses can’t exist in a world where women bear children, expend energy and time on parenting, and actually nurture their young.

Can women be warriors? Yes, but on a much smaller scale than men, because social, biological, and economic factors push them in a completely different direction. Simply put, if you have a vagina, your primary purpose is to bear offspring. Even in a fantasy world, a woman would have little reason to abandon this fundamental role for something else.

That said, exceptions exist. There are anomalies, individuals who try to bend the natural order to their will. Some women are genetically predisposed to be more like this:



But these are drops in the ocean. Even the strongest woman, after putting in Herculean effort (possibly even using magic), would still lose to a man of equal skills and physique. Why? Because the psychological and sociocultural aspects remain. No matter how much a woman plays the ‘girlboss,’ deep down she’s still a woman—meaning inherently more pliable, much less aggressive than a man.

[Trickster]

Of course, female warriors primarily serve as inspirational figures, "poster girls", for male fighters - a historical example being Russia's Women's Battalion. Therefore, in RPGs, it would make sense to give the rare female warrior a bonus to charisma/charm as compensation for significant strength penalties and the numerous social obstacles she would inevitably face.

But if we're talking about what roles women can have in fantasy RPGs besides warriors, the options are extensive: Merchant, Peasant, Seductress assassin (not the shadow-dagger type, but one who poisons her victims after seduction), Bard, Ruler (with intrigue bonuses - since a woman wouldn't gain power easily and must manipulate others)
Mage (though women could never reach true magical heights for previously stated reasons), Priestess, Cleric, Thief, Seamstress, Cook, Noblewoman, Slave, Concubine

The selection is actually quite broad, so in my vision of fantasy, women have plenty of opportunities.

[rusty_shackleford]

Guards, bandits, etc., being 50/50 male/female is one of my biggest pet peeves in games now.

[rusty_shackleford]

Women in RPGs should be radically different from men. The worst example of how NOT to design female characters is Baldur’s Gate 3.

It was always leaning towards this: women were just men, except female avatar. They acted no differently. The only RPGs I can think of off-hand that behave differently than this are Fallout 1 & 2, Arcanum.
Main difference is now we have to actually deal with characters made by devs who are just man-but-woman-body, it's essentially rampant troonism. They never act like women because libtards completely reject the idea that men and women are inherently different to begin with.

[Trickster]

Guards, bandits, etc., being 50/50 male/female is one of my biggest pet peeves in games now.

I can see women supporting bandits (faction-aligned NPCs with support roles) - maybe a prostitute married to one of them helps them hide, fence stolen goods, that sort of thing. But an actual sword-wielding raider? That's ridiculous. She'd last about 5 seconds before getting passed around the camp.

[Unhelpful Contrarian]

Women in RPGs should be radically different from men. The worst example of how NOT to design female characters is Baldur’s Gate 3. This screenshots perfectly captures the problem: three girlbosses acting like they’re the main subjects of the history making all the decisions. Replace these women in the scene with men and nothing would change. Their ethics, their behavior - it's all identical to male behavior. This is just example of erasing the fundamental differences between men and women, which can only be described as bio-socio-cultural nihilism.





That’s absurd even by fantasy standards. Unless something is explicitly labeled as a fantasy element, it should follow our world’s logic. And in reality, patriarchy is the natural order— men explored, fought, and survived, earning their social status, while women raised offspring. Girlbosses can’t exist in a world where women bear children, expend energy and time on parenting, and actually nurture their young.

Can women be warriors? Yes, but on a much smaller scale than men, because social, biological, and economic factors push them in a completely different direction. Simply put, if you have a vagina, your primary purpose is to bear offspring. Even in a fantasy world, a woman would have little reason to abandon this fundamental role for something else.

That said, exceptions exist. There are anomalies, individuals who try to bend the natural order to their will. Some women are genetically predisposed to be more like this:



But these are drops in the ocean. Even the strongest woman, after putting in Herculean effort (possibly even using magic), would still lose to a man of equal skills and physique. Why? Because the psychological and sociocultural aspects remain. No matter how much a woman plays the ‘girlboss,’ deep down she’s still a woman—meaning inherently more pliable, much less aggressive than a man.

While true I largely give up the idea that games devs will have the such approach in games since it’s politically not acceptable to the point it’s more acceptable removing black or other diverse races in game than to address biological differences between the sexes.

[Stack of Turtles]

This screenshots perfectly captures the problem: three girlbosses acting like they’re the main subjects of the history making all the decisions.

Don't they get beaten up by the actual main character, though? That's how women act in real life, so it seems pretty fair.

[DemoGraph]

Ruler (with intrigue bonuses - since a woman wouldn't gain power easily and must manipulate others)

This's actually a stereotype that we don't see enough if we talk about medieval fantasy.

Tribal and feudal societies often had a division of labor. Men were responsible for war, crafts and formal trade - that is, good production. While women were responsible for good distribution according to the communal needs (it was in an oversimplified way described in Engels' "The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State"). They also watched over communal morals, resolved everyday disputes, determined children's labor distribution and had a significant informal power over relations (partly based on ability of sex deprivation). We don't see this role represented at all, though women could easily be represented as the leaders of village councils. Add some magic and you have two power hierarchies, male and female one, different in scope, but both powerful.

Though this approach contradicts ideologies of individualism and free market and should be unfamiliar to modern consumer in general.

[Xenich]

Regarding physical characteristics, the data suggests:

Women have higher resistance against disease than men (this is not universal, but generally true)
Women recover from fatigue faster than men* (It seems unclear if this is because it simply takes longer for men to recover because they are stronger? More research needed. I couldn't find any studies on e.g., how long to recover after a marathon.)
Women recover from dermal injury faster than men (this also seems to make them more susceptible to autoimmune diseases, however)

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1368970/
https://www.thieme-connect.com/products ... -2563-9449
https://academic.oup.com/endo/article-a ... 47/2455362
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11216897/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38383754/

This would be a good place to start if you wanted to put women in your RPGs.

Wouldn't the fact that women bone/muscle density is much lower than men also be a consideration in terms of damage taken? Would that be constitution, or maybe a separate category?

A man is much more resilient to force taken than a woman. It is why in many spousal abuse cases, a man who full on fists a woman often breaks/shatters bones on impact, an occurrence that would not be the case in most men vs men conflicts.

You would think this weakness would translate to various types of force and impact conditions, increasing chance of injury in many combat situations?

[Norfleet]

Wouldn't the fact that women bone/muscle density is much lower than men also be a consideration in terms of damage taken? Would that be constitution, or maybe a separate category?

Constitution is already weird: a catchall stat that covers your resistance to disease and poisoning and your ability to survive being thrown off a building or kicked by a horse, not to mention hitpoints, your ability to keep going after some of these things happen. These are, obviously, all different things in real life, and only tangentially related, if at all.

[gerey]

Even in medieval times you had (rare/exceptional) women that did things outside their social mores, so the issue is not the existence of such women, but the percentage of them.

Now, this doesn't mean a woman should be a warrior or knight, since that's just stupid, unless there's a lore reason that justifies her ability to fight against men that outclass her physically.

On the other hand, women can be thieves or spies, especially if they're using their charm/looks to slip past security (or disguising themselves).

If magic is a thing, and there are no restrictions on gender, then there could be female magic casters - naturally, with the caveat that depending on how (or if) the magical ability is gained, such women would be far too valuable to risk sending into the wild.

Women being clerics is another thing that really comes down to the worldbuilding. Obviously, females being clergy is not something that was too widespread IRL, but there were certainly instances of that happening here and there.

[TKVNC]

Even in medieval times you had (rare/exceptional) women that did things outside their social mores, so the issue is not the existence of such women, but the percentage of them.

Now, this doesn't mean a woman should be a warrior or knight, since that's just stupid, unless there's a lore reason that justifies her ability to fight against men that outclass her physically.

On the other hand, women can be thieves or spies, especially if they're using their charm/looks to slip past security (or disguising themselves).

If magic is a thing, and there are no restrictions on gender, then there could be female magic casters - naturally, with the caveat that depending on how (or if) the magical ability is gained, such women would be far too valuable to risk sending into the wild.

Women being clerics is another thing that really comes down to the worldbuilding. Obviously, females being clergy is not something that was too widespread IRL, but there were certainly instances of that happening here and there.

Women have in almost all civilisations been subservient tp men; once this is understood, as well as the genetic reasons for this - you can start to mess around with it.

Ignoring the above means that you'll never make anything that's not girlbossery.

[Norfleet]

meaning inherently more pliable, much less aggressive than a man.

I would not count on them to be less aggressive. The thing with women is that they don't have the luxury of running up a graduated scale of aggression levels starting with displays and moving on to limited violence. I've observed this with the wife: She isn't less aggressive or more pliable, she just skips all the stages where a man would react with increasing levels of aggression and does nothing right up until the point a man might react with moderate aggression, going instantly from 0 to KILL at that point with basically no warning. Women don't get to have escalating level of physical confrontation, they have to attack without warning and take their opponent by surprise with total savageness. Otherwise they lose.

It's like the evolution of the non-rattling rattlesnek, because rattlesneks that rattle get killed, while those that strike and run without warning are the ones who are thus surviving encounters.

[Norfleet]

Now, this doesn't mean a woman should be a warrior or knight, since that's just stupid, unless there's a lore reason that justifies her ability to fight against men that outclass her physically.

Generally, the reason is "homelessness" and "mental illness", especially when it becomes down to being a murderhobo adventureman.

If magic is a thing, and there are no restrictions on gender, then there could be female magic casters - naturally, with the caveat that depending on how (or if) the magical ability is gained, such women would be far too valuable to risk sending into the wild.

I don't see any reason why there couldn't be, or even that they might even be MOSTLY women, since you can't argue from any position of reality when you're talking about MAGIC, which, you know, isn't real.

Obviously, females being clergy is not something that was too widespread IRL, but there were certainly instances of that happening here and there.

It was actually fairly common in pagan religions, where women had entire subsets of gods for their interests and thus appropriate clergy.

[SoLong]

They're presented differently in reality despite all their efforts to change that, so I don't see why a fictional representation should be different.

There is a simple test I like to do for any kind of vomit-inducing diversity: if I close my eyes, how much diversity is still there?

Because 9 times out of 10, I can no longer tell if the person talking is male, female, black or white or even an alien. (Except for pitch when it comes to female.) The reason is that the writers and developers draw inspiration only from the narrow pool of Everywhere, Los Angeles, where everyone is some disgusting grey blob in the multicultural post-modern soup.

[anvi]

I like Cleve's advanced approach. Females should have lower strength. I would also give them high CHA, lower INT, and negative DEX.

[anvi]

Once per game month they should receive a Damage Over Time bleeding debuff. Also using swords should cause extra bleeding. And when they sheath the sword there should be a chance they backstab themselves with critical damage. Could maybe give them a slight bonus to baking skill.

[rusty_shackleford]

If you were curious if a small STR penalty was too much to accurately model women, here you go.

Data collected from various studies(skeletal muscle mass, grip strength, powerlifting totals, etc.,) to model a Strength ability score based on real world observable data of peak athletic ability. Not mine, and I don't have the sources.

(Ability modifier does not mean D&D modifier, but a shift in score)


Regarding accuracy:
I cross-referenced the powerlifting total data to the 1e STR rules(military press) based upon some conversion formulas I looked up and it's quite close, the main difference being AD&D STR is linear so the men would cluster closer together in a more accurate D&D modeling, but a similar spread between men/women.


Nearly everyone underestimates the difference in strength between men & women.

[Oyster Sauce]

If you were curious if a small STR penalty was too much to accurately model women, here you go.

Data collected from various studies(skeletal muscle mass, grip strength, powerlifting totals, etc.,) to model a Strength ability score based on real world observable data of peak athletic ability. Not mine, and I don't have the sources.

(Ability modifier does not mean D&D modifier, but a shift in score)


Regarding accuracy:
I cross-referenced the powerlifting total data to the 1e STR rules(military press) based upon some conversion formulas I looked up and it's quite close, the main difference being AD&D STR is linear so the men would cluster closer together in a more accurate D&D modeling, but a similar spread between men/women.


Nearly everyone underestimates the difference in strength between men & women.

Joan of Arc

[ThulsaDoomer]

If you were curious if a small STR penalty was too much to accurately model women, here you go.

Data collected from various studies(skeletal muscle mass, grip strength, powerlifting totals, etc.,) to model a Strength ability score based on real world observable data of peak athletic ability. Not mine, and I don't have the sources.

(Ability modifier does not mean D&D modifier, but a shift in score)


Regarding accuracy:
I cross-referenced the powerlifting total data to the 1e STR rules(military press) based upon some conversion formulas I looked up and it's quite close, the main difference being AD&D STR is linear so the men would cluster closer together in a more accurate D&D modeling, but a similar spread between men/women.


Nearly everyone underestimates the difference in strength between men & women.

Interesting chart, mainly reinforces many other studies or graphs I've seen over the years. Just check the militaries benchmarks for men and women, if people genuinely believe women are so equal to men in strength and endurance, why have women consisently failed to make it past week 2 of the US' special forces programs? I recall one American general in an interview stating that "If a woman could carry 80 pounds of troop gear for more than two hours, I would have her in my unit, but they cannot and so they have no place as soldiers". I am probably butchering his words, but that was the jist.

I imagine the problem derives from most modern writers and activists never having worked physical jobs that relied on your fellow mans strength and capabilities or else injuries or death could occur. Oddly enough, women don't exist in these places where legitimate concerns for safety arise, or they outright deny wanting to be involved. I've had women, even managers, tell me that I had to do these tasks because I was the most capable, aka, a man, and could be trusted to do it without **** ups or safety concerns. It is odd how real life constantly reinforces traditional beliefs when you exit liberal bubbles.

[rusty_shackleford]

If you were curious if a small STR penalty was too much to accurately model women, here you go.

Data collected from various studies(skeletal muscle mass, grip strength, powerlifting totals, etc.,) to model a Strength ability score based on real world observable data of peak athletic ability. Not mine, and I don't have the sources.

(Ability modifier does not mean D&D modifier, but a shift in score)


Regarding accuracy:
I cross-referenced the powerlifting total data to the 1e STR rules(military press) based upon some conversion formulas I looked up and it's quite close, the main difference being AD&D STR is linear so the men would cluster closer together in a more accurate D&D modeling, but a similar spread between men/women.


Nearly everyone underestimates the difference in strength between men & women.

I should add that the between-race data is probably not too great to be accurate, I suspect in reality if each race had an equal focus on strength training etc., the difference would all be within 2 points, maybe 3 for the south asians/abbos, but the intra-sex data is robust

[Fulcanelli]

Guards, bandits, etc., being 50/50 male/female is one of my biggest pet peeves in games now.

I can see women supporting bandits (faction-aligned NPCs with support roles) - maybe a prostitute married to one of them helps them hide, fence stolen goods, that sort of thing. But an actual sword-wielding raider? That's ridiculous. She'd last about 5 seconds before getting passed around the camp.

Dubois from Justine is a great example of a ruthless female bandit done properly.

[Rand]

Dubois from Justine is a great example of a ruthless female bandit done properly.

You're going to have to explain this reference.

[TKVNC]

If you were curious if a small STR penalty was too much to accurately model women, here you go.

Data collected from various studies(skeletal muscle mass, grip strength, powerlifting totals, etc.,) to model a Strength ability score based on real world observable data of peak athletic ability. Not mine, and I don't have the sources.

(Ability modifier does not mean D&D modifier, but a shift in score)


Regarding accuracy:
I cross-referenced the powerlifting total data to the 1e STR rules(military press) based upon some conversion formulas I looked up and it's quite close, the main difference being AD&D STR is linear so the men would cluster closer together in a more accurate D&D modeling, but a similar spread between men/women.


Nearly everyone underestimates the difference in strength between men & women.

I should add that the between-race data is probably not too great to be accurate, I suspect in reality if each race had an equal focus on strength training etc., the difference would all be within 2 points, maybe 3 for the south asians/abbos, but the intra-sex data is robust

I love how the White lifting total is just Eddie Hall's record. As for the deviation, this is probably more based on average height, and frame, than potential is my guess.