Should females be represented differently than males in RPGs?

[gerey]

No one has to explain anything since most people don't care

Okay, you're wrong and I'm right.

Glad I don't have to explain why you're wrong and we can all move onto more productive topics.

[MadPreacher]

Oh @Roguey Gary didn't even have Strength in LA. The only stats he had were Health, Speed, and Precision. He avoided using the basic stats that every other RPG out there was using to stop Lorraine from suing him.

[Roguey]

When you can actually present a valid argument against AD&D's original rules on sexual dimorphism I'll listen. I may laugh at your idiocy, but I'll listen.

I was never arguing "against" them. I just said they're unnecessary to have. The proof is almost every RPG in existence. These strength caps appeal to a handful of people.

[MadPreacher]

When you can actually present a valid argument against AD&D's original rules on sexual dimorphism I'll listen. I may laugh at your idiocy, but I'll listen.

I was never arguing "against" them. I just said they're unnecessary to have. The proof is almost every RPG in existence. These strength caps appeal to a handful of people.

Uhuh... You contradicted yourself within two sentences. You then trotted out Gary Gygax and his game LA that didn't even have a Strength stat to protect himself from a lawsuit by Lorraine Williams the CEO of TSR.

[GhostCow]

This discussion is really gay because y'all are too focused on ttg. In ttg you can homebrew your own rules so who gives a ****? It's more interesting to discuss this in the context of crpgs where you can't homebrew.

[WhiteShark]

This discussion is really gay because y'all are too focused on ttg. In ttg you can homebrew your own rules so who gives a ****? It's more interesting to discuss this in the context of crpgs where you can't homebrew.

This discussion is really gay because y'all are too focused on vidya. In vidya you can mod your own rules so who gives a ****? It's more interesting to discuss this in context of ttrpgs where you can't mod. :^)

[GhostCow]

This discussion is really gay because y'all are too focused on ttg. In ttg you can homebrew your own rules so who gives a ****? It's more interesting to discuss this in the context of crpgs where you can't homebrew.

This discussion is really gay because y'all are too focused on vidya. In vidya you can mod your own rules so who gives a ****? It's more interesting to discuss this in context of ttrpgs where you can't mod. :^)

Dumb post. You don't have to learn to code to homebrew in ttg. Literally anyone who knows how to read and do basic math can homebrew ttg rules.

[WhiteShark]

This discussion is really gay because y'all are too focused on ttg. In ttg you can homebrew your own rules so who gives a ****? It's more interesting to discuss this in the context of crpgs where you can't homebrew.

This discussion is really gay because y'all are too focused on vidya. In vidya you can mod your own rules so who gives a ****? It's more interesting to discuss this in context of ttrpgs where you can't mod. :^)

Dumb post. You don't have to learn to code to homebrew in ttg. Literally anyone who knows how to read and do basic math can homebrew ttg rules.

Admittedly that was pretty much a shitpost, but I am tired to death of the argument that TTRPG system design doesn't matter because you can just rule zero everything. Yeah, duh, you can mod the rules however you want, but if that is what is requried, what was the point of the system to begin with? Falling back on rule zero is the Oberoni Fallacy:

This my my [sic] take on the issue.

Let's say Bob the board member makes the assertion: "There is an inconsistency/loophole/mechanics issue with Rule X."

Several correct replies can be given:

"I agree, there is an inconsistency/loophole/mechanics issue with Rule X."
"I agree, and it is easily solvable by changing the following part of Rule X."
"I disagree, you've merely misinterpreted part of Rule X. If you reread this part of Rule X, you will see there is no inconsistency/loophole/mechanics issue."
Okay, I hope you're with me so far. There is, however, an incorrect reply:

"There is no inconsistency/loophole/mechanics issue with Rule X, because you can always Rule 0 the inconsistency/loophole/mechanics issue."
Now, this incorrect reply does not in truth agree with or dispute the original statement in any way, shape, or form.

It actually contradicts itself--the first part of the statement says there is no problem, while the last part proposes a generic fix to the "non-problem."

It doesn't follow the rules of debate and discussion, and thus should never be used.

Simple enough.

[GhostCow]

This discussion is really gay because y'all are too focused on vidya. In vidya you can mod your own rules so who gives a ****? It's more interesting to discuss this in context of ttrpgs where you can't mod. :^)

Dumb post. You don't have to learn to code to homebrew in ttg. Literally anyone who knows how to read and do basic math can homebrew ttg rules.

Admittedly that was pretty much a shitpost, but I am tired to death of the argument that TTRPG system design doesn't matter because you can just rule zero everything. Yeah, duh, you can mod the rules however you want, but if that is what is requried, what was the point of the system to begin with? Falling back on rule zero is the Oberoni Fallacy:

This my my [sic] take on the issue.

Let's say Bob the board member makes the assertion: "There is an inconsistency/loophole/mechanics issue with Rule X."

Several correct replies can be given:

"I agree, there is an inconsistency/loophole/mechanics issue with Rule X."
"I agree, and it is easily solvable by changing the following part of Rule X."
"I disagree, you've merely misinterpreted part of Rule X. If you reread this part of Rule X, you will see there is no inconsistency/loophole/mechanics issue."
Okay, I hope you're with me so far. There is, however, an incorrect reply:

"There is no inconsistency/loophole/mechanics issue with Rule X, because you can always Rule 0 the inconsistency/loophole/mechanics issue."
Now, this incorrect reply does not in truth agree with or dispute the original statement in any way, shape, or form.

It actually contradicts itself--the first part of the statement says there is no problem, while the last part proposes a generic fix to the "non-problem."

It doesn't follow the rules of debate and discussion, and thus should never be used.

Simple enough.

I started to write a reply to this, but I don't play TTG and I think TTG is kind of gay (don't @ me bro, it's just my preference). I'm really only interested in discussing this stuff in relation to crpgs.

[NaturalSelectionist]

If there was a bigger market for "D&D the way it used to be" it would have been filled.

This might take the cake for dumbest line in the thread. Tons of woke garbage completely bombs, and yet continues to be made. Video game funding is as tied to final sales expectations as funding for movies is, and look at how Hollywood continues to churn out garbage that half the country is sick of while making almost nothing to appeal to the half of the country they've lost. Companies continue to use advertisements that appeal to niche sexualities and interracial pairings that only a few percent of the population are into while alienating white men and women who still make up the largest share of the consumer audience. If you think that video game developers are exempt from the same non-market forces responsible for movies and advertising going to ****, you must play nothing but indie games that don't need a budget.

[WhiteShark]

I started to write a reply to this, but I don't play TTG and I think TTG is kind of gay (don't @ me bro, it's just my preference). I'm really only interested in discussing this stuff in relation to crpgs.

In the end it's the same discussion. RPGs are a genre where the writing and the mechanics are supposed to align. The mechanics are, in effect, the natural laws of the game world. When the mechanics are incongruous with the world presented to us, it's a problem for immersion. Thus when the game presents what seem to be in every respect humans except that females (and children, as is common in JRPGs) have abilities equal to those of adult men, it's jarring.

It's obvious that fantasy will diverge from reality, but it must do so in a believable way or it becomes unrelatable. That's why I have said and will say again, if there must be female adventurers who can compete with men and function in combat, there ought be an explicit setting reason for that. Without one, my only choices are to ignore it (damaging immersion) or to invent my own headcanon to explain it (damaging immersion).

[GhostCow]

In the end it's the same discussion. RPGs are a genre where the writing and the mechanics are supposed to align. The mechanics are, in effect, the natural laws of the game world. When the mechanics are incongruous with the world presented to us, it's a problem for immersion. Thus when the game presents what seem to be in every respect humans except that females (and children, as is common in JRPGs) have abilities equal to those of adult men, it's jarring.

It's obvious that fantasy will diverge from reality, but it must do so in a believable way or it becomes unrelatable. That's why I have said and will say again, if there must be female adventurers who can compete with men and function in combat, there ought be an explicit setting reason for that. Without one, my only choices are to ignore it (damaging immersion) or to invent my own headcanon to explain it (damaging immersion).

I mostly agree with this, but I'm not really sure how I can put this to make it sound good and make sense. The most simple way I can put this is that I don't care what other people are doing in a single player game. If the writing is pozzed in that there are a bunch of women running around going hulk smash in full plate armor, this is ******** and turns me off. Keep that **** out of the writing and how the NPCs are built, but if the players want to do that with their own characters then I don't give a **** and they should have that option. What other players do in a single player game doesn't effect me at all.

That aside, no one complains about JRPGs where the girls have massive amounts of strength and can roll with the boys even though it's pretty much never explained, so I'm not entirely sold on the idea that the writing and mechanics have to be 1:1 for a game to be good. Imagine someone making this complaint about Fire Emblem. It would be laughable. It doesn't bother me in JRPGs because it's not being done to make a political statement. It's just being done because men like cute girls.

[WhiteShark]

I mostly agree with this, but I'm not really sure how I can put this to make it sound good and make sense. The most simple way I can put this is that I don't care what other people are doing in a single player game. If the writing is pozzed in that there are a bunch of women running around going hulk smash in full plate armor, this is ******** and turns me off. Keep that **** out of the writing and how the NPCs are built, but if the players want to do that with their own characters then I don't give a **** and they should have that option. What other players do in a single player game doesn't effect me at all.

So let the dev make the world as it should be and then let players mod or use CheatEngine or whatever. This sort of argument leads to things like "casual" difficulty settings because who cares if other players don't have to actually play the game to "enjoy" the story, right? Or, arguably worse, the nu-D&D approach of letting a member of any race take any ability score increase because we wouldn't want to restrict the players' freedom, after all. Player freedom becomes a false idol when it comes at the cost of setting consistency.

That aside, no one complains about JRPGs where the girls have massive amounts of strength and can roll with the boys even though it's pretty much never explained, so I'm not entirely sold on the idea that the writing and mechanics have to be 1:1 for a game to be good. Imagine someone making this complaint about Fire Emblem. It would be laughable. It doesn't bother me in JRPGs because it's not being done to make a political statement. It's just being done because men like cute girls.

But people do complain about that sort of thing. I'm complaining about it right now. There's a whole host of RPG players who won't even touch JRPGs, and part of it is because of things like this. If avid JRPG players don't complain about this, it's because the games are so far removed from anything that makes sense that they've never even tried to consider what sort of world the mechanics are depicting, or because they simply ignore it. Either way it means they can't take the world seriously.

You know what? I like cute girls. I've made female parties in JRPGs. I appreciate that Japs aren't (consciously) trying to push a political message with their female characters. All the same, it pains me that so rarely do they take the final step of explaining why. I just want a reason, that's all I ask. This is a case where you can have your cake and eat it too. She's a valkyrie? Nice. Demigod? Sure, why not. From a secret order of female assassins whose minds and bodies are hardened with magic? Sounds good. Homunculus? Right on. Dragon in human form? That's a classic.

You see what I'm saying? All it takes is a little thought for the setting and you can make it fit (even if it's arguably still subversive). Not doing that is pure laziness on the part of the writers.

[MadPreacher]

That's why I have said and will say again, if there must be female adventurers who can compete with men and function in combat, there ought be an explicit setting reason for that.

In Myths, it's because the players created 3 men and 3 women to make 3 married couples. Since the players selected 1 main character they have 5 secondary characters that function identically to a hireling and the entire group travels together due to them being nomadic at this stage of the game.

[GhostCow]

So let the dev make the world as it should be and then let players mod or use CheatEngine or whatever. This sort of argument leads to things like "casual" difficulty settings because who cares if other players don't have to actually play the game to "enjoy" the story, right? Or, arguably worse, the nu-D&D approach of letting a member of any race take any ability score increase because we wouldn't want to restrict the players' freedom, after all. Player freedom becomes a false idol when it comes at the cost of setting consistency.

This sounds kind of elitist to me. Why should I care if people play games on casual mode? I've recently been reading a bit of /v/ even though I hate 4chan, because I've been enjoying Fire Emblem Engage and I want to read what other people are saying about it. I see a lot of anons saying stuff like "Oh, you used the dlc Emblems? You didn't actually beat the game" or things like "If you aren't playing on maddening/classic then you aren't a real gamer". To me, those anons just seem like huge losers that have nothing going on in their lives other than being able to brag about how good they are at vidya. It's actually kind of sickening. I do agree that your example about the races is **** though and I certainly don't advocate for anything like that. Races should be unique and add flavor.

That aside, no one complains about JRPGs where the girls have massive amounts of strength and can roll with the boys even though it's pretty much never explained, so I'm not entirely sold on the idea that the writing and mechanics have to be 1:1 for a game to be good. Imagine someone making this complaint about Fire Emblem. It would be laughable. It doesn't bother me in JRPGs because it's not being done to make a political statement. It's just being done because men like cute girls.

But people do complain about that sort of thing. I'm complaining about it right now.

You are literally the first person I've seen complain about this in relation to JRPGs.

There's a whole host of RPG players who won't even touch JRPGs, and part of it is because of things like this. If avid JRPG players don't complain about this, it's because the games are so far removed from anything that makes sense that they've never even tried to consider what sort of world the mechanics are depicting, or because they simply ignore it. Either way it means they can't take the world seriously.

Strong wahmen is not a reason I see being used by people who don't play JRPGs to hate on them. Usually I see them complaining about how they hate teenagers and children, especially lolis, or maybe they hate bishonen and giant swords. Not liking the anime art style is another common complaint.

You know what? I like cute girls. I've made female parties in JRPGs. I appreciate that Japs aren't (consciously) trying to push a political message with their female characters. All the same, it pains me that so rarely do they take the final step of explaining why. I just want a reason, that's all I ask. This is a case where you can have your cake and eat it too. She's a valkyrie? Nice. Demigod? Sure, why not. From a secret order of female assassins whose minds and bodies are hardened with magic? Sounds good. Homunculus? Right on. Dragon in human form? That's a classic.

You see what I'm saying? All it takes is a little thought for the setting and you can make it fit (even if it's arguably still subversive). Not doing that is pure laziness on the part of the writers.

You're not wrong that it can add to the setting, but I don't think it's necessary. At least not with JRPGs. JRPGs are heavily rooted in anime, and anime has always been about absurdity and the rule of cool above all else. Obviously there are exceptions, but this is what that particular type of media was founded on, and that's probably why I have different standards for JRPGs and western RPGs. I think this is also why people who play a lot of JRPGs don't complain about this stuff. They just want to see cute girls and cool absurd ****.

[MadPreacher]

JRPGs are heavily rooted in anime, and anime has always been about absurdity and the rule of cool above all else.

You have just explained why the expectation is different between western RPGs and JRPGs. The rules of the setting are different. This means JRPGs have different science etc... behind the scenes. But do go on and keep sniffing your own farts while intentionally being obtuse when it comes to western RPGs.

[GhostCow]

JRPGs are heavily rooted in anime, and anime has always been about absurdity and the rule of cool above all else.

You have just explained why the expectation is different between western RPGs and JRPGs. The rules of the setting are different. This means JRPGs have different science etc... behind the scenes. But do go on and keep sniffing your own farts while intentionally being obtuse when it comes to western RPGs.

Bro you are really failing hard at this "be nicer to people" thing that you were telling me about the other day. Really doing my best to be as nice to you as I can in all of our interactions here, but you have a huge problem with being unnecessarily combative and rude in your posts. Just saying.

[MadPreacher]

Bro you are really failing hard at this "be nicer to people" thing that you were telling me about the other day. Really doing my best to be as nice to you as I can in all of our interactions here, but you have a huge problem with being unnecessarily combative and rude in your posts. Just saying.

I wasn't rude to you in the slightest. I didn't call you a name or anything, so you must be imagining things. This also has nothing to do with what I said. You have a real problem with answering people's points when they destroy you. Man up and say you were wrong about the entire thing. That's it.

[Ratcatcher]

I think TTG is kind of gay (don't @ me bro)

Cazzo!

It's def not gay if penii don't touch during a session.

[GhostCow]

Bro you are really failing hard at this "be nicer to people" thing that you were telling me about the other day. Really doing my best to be as nice to you as I can in all of our interactions here, but you have a huge problem with being unnecessarily combative and rude in your posts. Just saying.

I wasn't rude to you in the slightest. I didn't call you a name or anything, so you must be imagining things. This also has nothing to do with what I said. You have a real problem with answering people's points when they destroy you. Man up and say you were wrong about the entire thing. That's it.

Wrong about what exactly? You keep throwing all these crazy accusations around and I never have any idea wtf you are talking about, which is why I didn't respond to whatever the hell you were trying and failing to get at.

You literally told me you hate me yesterday over a discussion about game mechanics

[MadPreacher]

Wrong about what exactly? You keep throwing all these crazy accusations around and I never have any idea wtf you are talking about, which is why I didn't respond to whatever the hell you were trying and failing to get at.

Maybe you should read the conversation to bring yourself back to reality. Either that or learn English.

You literally told me you hate me yesterday over a discussion about game mechanics

This is a lie since I don't hate anyone. @JarlFrank can tell you that I don't. I just dislike people and I didn't even say that. Now since you are being patently dishonest and lied about something I said, "**** off and die you pathetic worm." Welcome to being the first person on my ****** list.

[GhostCow]

This is a lie since I don't hate anyone. @JarlFrank can tell you that I don't. I just dislike people and I didn't even say that. Now since you are being patently dishonest and lied about something I said, "**** off and die you pathetic worm." Welcome to being the first person on my ****** list.

In your own words:

Otherwise, I'm done with this conversation as it is going nowhere and you have zero interest in being honest about it. I hate dishonest people for the record.

Classic you. Getting overly emotional, acting extremely pompous, and raging at people over video games until you get so assmad about arguing that you hit the ignore button. All while I was going way out of my way to be calm and polite. You'll never change

[Konjad]

The best female in an RPG is Patty.

Probably helped that the writer was a woman and a good writer.

[JarlFrank]

I had that argument with someone on the KotC2 discord before. Pierre put stat differences between female and male characters into the game and someone complained hard. Apparently that's discriminatory against female players who want to play a fighter, as their fighter can't be as effective as a male fighter due to the -1 STR.

So I explained to him that D&D 3.5, the edition KotC2 is based on, has many ways to play fighters that don't rely on maxed out strength. You can go for DEX-focused fighter builds with feats like weapon finesse. In the books, there's even a fighter prestige class that's a heavily dex-focused mobility fighter (the dervish) whose official artwork is a nimble dancing girl. That's your female fighter character right there!

But the guy I argued with claimed I'm a bigot or something and just don't want women to have fun with the game. Because forcing players to use all the tools the ruleset supplies, instead of just going for the most obvious straightforward approach, is being mean to them or something. I kept repeating how there's a lot of different approaches to fighter classes that work fine with -1 STR, but he claimed that it's "not the same". His problem was that female characters couldn't be the exact same as male characters.

But here's the joke: That's the whole ******* point of character creation in an RPG.
Characters in an RPG are supposed to be different. If they all played the same, you may as well just fire up a Doom or Quake map. Having stat differences for male and female characters is a good thing because it increases variety between character playstyles. You can't play a female fighter the exact same way you would play a male fighter. That makes the choice of sex more than cosmetic, it gives it gameplay relevance. Which is the exact opposite of "belittling" female characters.

[rusty_shackleford]

Nothing stops a woman from creating a male fighter.

[cpmartins]

Nothing stops a woman from creating a male fighter.

I'd argue the modern universities would do that, after all they can't roleplay with a gender they hate. That would be literally torture.

[Luckmann]

[...] having to play a certain gender for the stats you want is gay.

If the game requires min-maxing and has stats that are completely useless for a given type of character, that game is already pretty ****.

Women should have lower stats than men, yes. If that's not the case in a setting, there should be justification for it. All media having inexplicably and impossibly exceptional women is tiring. Divine blessing, magic, the Force, whatever, but at least give a reason.

I don't think that women need lower stats across the board, there's such a thing as a reasonable suspension of disbelief, and plenty of games allow for ability scores/attributes/etc. that can be construed as playing to things that the female gender excel at (consciously or subconsciously), such as social manipulation and seduction (Charisma, Beauty), empathy (Charisma, Wisdom, as ridiculous as the latter may sound), physical flexibility/stretch tolerance/viscoelesticity (Agility, Dexterity), and when it comes to pure intelligence/IQ, the difference is largely negligible and debatable in some part (such as how men occupy both the peaks and valleys, so if we impose this on a very generalized ruleset, I think it becomes hard to argue that men absolutely should have higher scores).

Other than that I agree completely, and I'm all for gender discrepancies in basic stats for player characters. Men and women are not equal or the same, and presenting it as such is ridiculous. But similarly, I'd be fine with this differing heavily depending on race - I could see elven men and women being virtually identical to eachother, or lizardfolk having the buff women and sleek men, or some race such as thri-kreen straight-up having female queens unplayable for player characters.

But more than that, more than the question of statistics and player characters, I think the difference in representation overall is even more important when it comes to what you describe. Even if men and women are presented as equal in terms of ability scores and attributes for player characters or the ruleset in general, that doesn't necessitate that they are or should be presented as equal in general sense within the game's universe. When push comes to shove, I do not care overly much that men and women are given the same statlines. What is worse is what you describe, where impossibly exceptional women just crop up in ridiculous roles that would never have been considered reasonable in the real world, and without any genuine explanation or logic. That is far worse than anything that has to do with pure mechanics.

[JarlFrank]

Nothing stops a woman from creating a male fighter.

But then she won't feel herself represented in the game REEEEEEEEEEEEE

You can't argue with these people. All they care about is "representation", the concept of playing a character that isn't a self-insert is utterly foreign to them. Which is why we have ridiculous **** like combat wheelchairs in modern RPGs, so the cripples can feel represented to.

If I were a cripple and got the chance to play an escapist fantasy game, the last thing I would do is play as a cripple character who needs accessibility ramps in dungeons...

[Luckmann]

I never said anything like that. Women can be [paladins].

Despicable.

This is GM enforced trannyism!

******* nonsense. Not only is it ******* gay to not be able to play different genders in a game - very much akin to a claim that a writer somehow can't write characters of the opposite gender without being a ****** (I can only assume that there is some kind of insecure projection going on here), but the only thing this is is GM-enforced verisimilitude. Which is arguably the entire and only real job of the GM to begin with.

Nothing stops a woman from creating a male fighter.

But then she won't feel herself represented in the game REEEEEEEEEEEEE

This mindset of the post-woke tourist influx into the (C)RPG sphere actually genuinely infuriate me. I would go so far as to say that a full half of the point of roleplaying games is to actually divorce from yourself and create different characters that are, on one fundamental level or another, different from yourself. This entire garbage paradigm of "inclooooshion" in the interest of "create yourself!" and then playing some kind of ****** power fantasy is wholly alien to the core concepts of the medium since its inception.

That doesn't mean that you're meant to play some kind of freakshit lolrandumb ****-twinkie, and I think I can say that I think that every single character I've ever played has aspects of me somewhere in its DNA, but I think that every single character I've ever played has always also been different from me on some very fundamental level, whether it's an attempt to present a very alien psychology or divorced culture, or just some quirk played up to eleven.

But you were never meant to just play yourself with superpowers. Anyone that pitches "representation!" or "being able to see yourself in a character!" should not only be ignored, but passively silenced, possibly with a pillow.

[GhostCow]

Nothing stops a woman from creating a male fighter.

This is how it starts. First she plays a male fighter and then next thing you know she's cutting off her tits, writing emulators, and sacrificing her children to moloch