Real life has been eating my energy for gaming and blogging, unfortunately. I'm going to be away from internet access for much of March, so that should cut down on my blogging as well. I put my Skype campaign on indefinite hold, which was sad, as it's been going since 2010. Hopefully I can pick it up again some time in April, with much more prep done.
Anyway, my momentum's been lost for this series, but I'm going to finish it out. First, as promised, two more points about gender differences in D&D:
Point 1: We can't seem to agree about which attribute scores to mess with. Strength seems to be something people usually agree on, but there are myriads of opinions about just about everything else (well, except for Intelligence; at least everyone seems to agree to leave that one alone). Are women more Dextrous or less dextrous than men? Do they have better Constitutions than men or worse? What about Charisma? And what is Charisma? As the definitions of Charisma have changed from Old School to New, has the applicability of Charisma bonuses based on gender changed? And should female characters receive a bonus to Wisdom, what with women's intuition and their generally higher emotional intelligence?
As you can see, this is all very confusing, and there's no way we'll reach any kind of broad consensus among gamers who are open to gender-differentiated attribute scores. What does that mean? I think it means that there's no point in trying to put forward a universal rule of gender-differentiated attribute bonuses. Do what the people sitting around your table think makes sense (within the limits already described earlier, namely, don't send the message that women aren't welcome at your table).
Point 2: One issue that Brendan pointed out in the comments to my last post in this series is that it's still sending a message to women that they are "other" or at least not normal when male characters roll 3d6 six times, straight down the line while female characters get their attributes tweaked.
My solution to that is simple: use only bonuses or penalties. Let's say, for the sake of simplicity and argument, that we decide that male characters should have a Strength advantage over female characters and female characters should have a Constitution advantage over male characters. Instead of giving female characters a +1 to CON and a -1 to STR, give female characters a -1 to STR and male characters as -1 to CON, or, the other way around, give female characters a +1 to CON and male characters a +1 to STR. Both genders get tweaked; neither gender is the mechanical default.
Finally, I promised to describe a situation in which you shouldn't ever use gender-differentiated attribute scores at your table. That situation is simply this: it makes one or more of your players uncomfortable.
See, sending messages is a complex thing. It isn't enough to simply intend well and put work into a message; the sender isn't the only variable when it comes to messages. There is also the receiver of the message, something the sender can't control.
In certain parts of the world, like the US, certain hand gestures are congratulatory or happy or simply signify greeting. The "thumbs up," the "ok" sign and the "peace" sign, especially, for this argument, with the back of the hand facing the recipient, all are happy, congenial ways to shape your fingers and gesture at someone where I currently live; all of those gestures are liable to get you punched out in other areas of the world. Sometimes it's a good idea to learn what gestures mean to your recipients before you gesture, and sometimes it's an even better idea to just leave well enough alone and keep your hands in your pockets, because you'll hurt someone's feelings and it's just not worth it.
It's possible to talk this kind of thing out with everyone in your gaming group, and discuss gender politics at length and share all our hang-ups about gender and how this or that rules tweak makes us feel as a person, as a man, as a woman. It's probably a really healthy conversation to have, actually, except that it's around a gaming table.
See, gaming is, at least the way I play, supposed to be generally lighthearted fun, an escape. While intimate, vulnerable and safe discussions about gender political theory, practice and our daily lives are great, I don't think that gaming should be sparking them on a regular basis. That would both cheapen the very valuable discussions and weigh down the airy gossamer fantasy that gaming is. Have those discussions start because of something else, something that isn't trivial and something that isn't one person imposing rules on others.
If someone at your table doesn't want gender-differentiated attribute score modifiers because of their personal hang-ups and hurts and feelings about gender, gaming isn't the time to work through them. Just go back to rolling 3d6 down the line, or however you roll in your games. It isn't worth it; just stick your hands in your pockets, don't make any well-intentioned hand gestures and enjoy yourselves together around a gaming table for a few hours.
Exploring games that were published before I was born - and the games inspired by them.
> If someone at your table doesn't want gender-differentiated attribute score modifiers because of their personal hang-ups and hurts and feelings about gender, gaming isn't the time to work through them.
ReplyDeleteAnd whatever you gain from having gender mods in the game is a feather in the scale opposite the elephant that is the possibility of the above. Why put it to the test?
I have no interest in the posture "Say now we are not going to let Political Correctness get in the way of our realism" (in a game with 100 hit point fighters and spell level slots for fuck's sake). After all, if you are going that way you may as well go all-out and stick rape in your game.
Actually, while I do include rape from time to time in the worlds I run, I don't do sex-based attribute differences. One is something people do (I don't have NPCs rape PCs, just to be clear) and can be fought, or the people who do it punished; the other tends to be used just to tell women that they're inferior, and has no dramatic possibilities or challenge to overcome.
DeleteRoger: That, and the fact that I think gender-differentiated attribute score ranges may be too complicated for the games I run are the reasons that I don't plan on introducing gender-differentiated attribute score ranges into my games any time soon. If I know everyone at the table well enough that 1) I don't think any of them will have a problem with it and 2) if they do have a problem with it, they know me well enough that they won't think I'm a monster, though, I don't see why I shouldn't be able to suggest using gender-differentiated attribute score ranges.
DeleteLong response, sorry!
ReplyDeletePart1:
Technically, there are no female strength limitations in *D&D*. This rather selective and reductionist rule, a rather crude(and unnecessary, imo) attempt to represent biological sexual disparity in a fantasy setting, was inserted in *AD&D* for no clear reason I've been able to fathom. On top of this measure's questionable usefulness, a detailed examination of the strength chart in the Player's Handbook will show that the limitations listed in the table for human females do not reflect 'reality'.(As some defendants of M/F Strength disparities in AD&D will sometimes claim. Of which, click on my Gygax quote below and note Virel's comment.) Of course, quantifying Reality over and against Fantasy is apt to be a self-defeating enterprise anyway.
As to the issue generally:
Considering the fact that this rule ceased to exist circa 1989 in official materials, and likely earlier at many gaming tables, I find it odd that this has came up as a widespread topic of conversation, save perhaps in fora that specialize in delving into the oddities of past gaming ages. On an anecdotal note, when I started gaming in 1985, I knew of no-one who used this rule. Since then, I've read quite a few gaming magazines, and trawled RPG websites with next to no instances of anyone mentioning that they employ it(a thread on this subject at *Dragonsfoot* revealed that only a handful of the AD&D 'Old Guard' *sometimes* enforce this rule! :-) ). My gaming friends' and acquaintances' experience with AD&D groups range back to ~1982 and they knew of no-one who utilized M/F max scores either! Hell, by *1985*, Unearthed Arcana's Cavalier sub-class allowed females to surpass AD&D's sex-based limitations through training. Endorsed by Gygax, no less.
On the subject, here's Gygax responding to a question about his current view on female strength limitations back in 2005:
"Why I decided on realism in regards to male/female strength is beyond me. After all in a fantasy game that doesn't make a great deal of sense. I suppose I just wasn't thinking the matter through in regards the genre. I do not have such differentiations in the Lejendary Adventure game."
An aside: note the restrictions placed on fantastical creatures like Elves, Gnomes, Halflings, and Dwarves in AD&D. How would one measure these? Consonantly, non-human's strength scores are *also* adjusted by sex. Are there works referencing the biological makeup of 'demi-humans' with detail on their sexual dimorphism for would be fantasy RPG designers? :-)
For my own sake, I'm going to number my responses to you.
Delete1) I realize that gender-differentiated attribute score ranges are only in official AD&D products; I talk about them being in AD&D products in my first two posts of this series. I, however, play D&D, so my thoughts about gender-differentiated attribute score ranges are applicable to the D&D that I play.
2) Regarding the realism of gender-differentiated attribute score ranges, I tend to agree with Gygax in the post you linked to:
"As for the actual difference between males and females, I am quite comfortable with the limits I placed in the book...unless steroids are taken into account. Males have some 30% more muscle mass, IIRR, and they are taller and heavier than females. All of that matters in combat."
Also, see my first point of this post. Each group, if it decides to use gender-differentiated attribute score ranges, should figure out what makes sense to them. If we're discussing realism, though, then gender-differentiated attribute score ranges make sense to me; that, in and of itself, is not, I don't think, a convincing reason to use them, all by itself.
3) I find neither gender-differentiated attribute score ranges' unpopularity nor the fact that Gygax couldn't figure out why he introduced one to be convincing reasons not to use them. Those are just appeals to the majority and to authority.
Convincing reasons, for me, are 1) gender-differentiated attribute score ranges send a misogynistic message, 2) they make a player uncomfortable, 3) they overly complicate the game or 4) they aren't fun. If you can argue one of those reasons, I'm interested.
4) Restrictions on fantastical creatures, like all other aspects of fantastical creatures, should be made up by whoever is writing them and changed to taste by whoever is running them.
As to this: 'If someone at your table doesn't want gender-differentiated attribute score modifiers because of their personal hang-ups and hurts and feelings about gender, gaming isn't the time to work through them.':
ReplyDeleteIn the same vein: perhaps the motives, i.e. the 'personal hang-ups and hurts and feelings about gender', that drive someone to suggest or justify the inclusion of sexually biased attribute score modifiers in a fantasy game should be examined instead? But, I doubt many people want to use AD&D to 'work out' their worldviews at the game table. Or anywhere else, for that matter.
Opposition to the M/F strength maximums in AD&D(or fantasy RPGs generally, though very few seem to) doesn't automatically boil down to someone's 'hang-ups'. There are varied and sundry reasons to reject this limitation, like: exception to arbitrary design, the fact that Gygax's statistical modelling is incorrect, player's dislike of the rule, differing views of the fantasy genre, a desire to emulate a specific world/character, and so on. But none more germane than this: (A)D&D is *not* an accurate simulation of anything approaching 'reality', a truism which is stressed in *all* the rulebooks of the various Editions. Attempting to closely approximate some semblance thereof(especially in a substrate like human biology), is often counterproductive to enjoying a rousing game of adventure. Especially one where humans can alter the laws of physics with undefined and eldritch energies somehow stored in their minds(and in many cases are actually *forgotten* when deployed, no less!), gargantuan, often hyper-intelligent, talking lizards fly(not even glide, but *fly*) on flimsy membranous wings, ambulatory, screaming, mushrooms roam vast underground caverns, Owlbears even *exist*, and the Gods pop in for pick-up streetfights.
5) I think you may be misunderstanding what I was saying where you quoted me. I'm saying, "if someone at your table has an emotional problem with using gender-differentiated attribute score ranges, *don't use them,* no questions asked, no arguments proffered. Just drop the idea."
Delete6) Just as you point out that "opposition to the M/F strength maximums in AD&D(or fantasy RPGs generally, though very few seem to) doesn't automatically boil down to someone's 'hang-ups,'" suggesting, justifying or using gender-differentiated attribute score ranges doesn't automatically boil down to someone's bad motives.
If this series of posts has a thesis, it's that it is possible to use gender-differentiated attribute score ranges in non-misogynistic, non-bad ways. I think that's been pretty well established by my second post in this series.
7) That said, I do think that the *particular execution* of gender-differentiated attribute score ranges by Gygax in AD&D was misogynistic and bad in ways that should be evident from what I've said in my last two posts in this series. This abuse, however, should not abolish the use of gender-differentiated attribute score ranges.
8) I never wrote, or even implied, that opposition to gender-differentiated attribute score ranges necessarily stems from "someone's 'hang-ups'." I wrote that the one reason a player at my table could have for opposing gender-differentiated attribute score ranges *that would end the conversation immediately and make our table not use gender-differentiated attribute score ranges,* as opposed to leading to more conversation and negotiation as we tried to arrive at a rule that we all liked, is that they have "personal hang-ups and hurts and feelings about gender" that cause them to feel uncomfortable with gender-differentiated attribute score ranges.
To make that extra clear: if a player of mine says, "using gender-differentiated attribute score ranges makes me feel uncomfortable," I say, "OK, we won't use them."
If a player of mine says, "I don't like using gender-differentiated attribute score ranges because of, 'exception to arbitrary design, the fact that Gygax's statistical modeling is incorrect, player's dislike of the rule, differing views of the fantasy genre, a desire to emulate a specific world/character… etc.'" I say, "OK, let's talk about that and see if we can discuss why we feel that way and see if we can't negotiate and come up with a solution that we're both OK with. This is the way I treat the vast majority of rules in my game, which I heavily homebrew.
9) This is as good a response to any concerning your last points about reality and gaming: http://nitessine.wordpress.com/2008/05/19/argumentum-ad-fireballum/
Why are you trying to introduce a gender based penalty into *D&D* in the first place?(I'm assuming you simply want to stick with D&D, as opposed to utilizing AD&D, where this restriction is specified in the rulebook.) You say: "If this series of posts has a thesis, it's that it is possible to use gender-differentiated attribute score ranges in non-misogynistic, non-bad ways", but you don't address why you feel the need to utilize M/F score differences in the game. None of your posts mentions your rationale, only how you might go about doing so. This: "I think that it's possible to use gender differences in attribute scores to send messages other than, "women are looked down on here;" " is left unexplained. What message is that? And why does it *need* to be sent? Does the fact D&D rules do not represent real-world strength differentials between the human male and female bother you so much that this needs to be 'corrected' in your game? This leads, as you have mentioned in the previous posts, to more tweaking of *other* scores(with the proposed score modifications for men as well, to be more 'realistic' as regards their abilities). Not to mention there is ever more data to factor in if you utilize the latest reports on expanding human performance in various areas of life(as Virel did in the Gygax post I linked. To show Gygax's thinking on the subject in modern times as a point of interest, rather than to justify any argument). And are you going to stop with PC races? Are you going to apply the same rules to bisexual monsters in D&D? Will say, male and female Orcs or Giants or Ogres or Owlbears or War Horses or Dragons have their abilities altered due to sex?(AD&D varied fighting ability in some monsters, particularly humanoids in this manner, as you might recall.) If not, why differentiate the PC sexes' scores? Do varying sexual ability scores(whether PC or NPC) add to a player's enjoyment of your game? Your enjoyment as DM? These questions aren't to say you might not find these tweaks entertaining, even worthwhile for your game, as many people seemingly enjoy tinkering with rules as an adjunct to the RPG pastime, but honestly, I'm just puzzled as to your reasoning for this rules change.
DeleteThe article you linked concerns only 'realism' in fantasy gaming, not gaming in general.(Its 'self-obvious' facts are rather stringent opinion, however.) I never suggested that realism in a fantasy game was 'irrelevant', only that it's difficult to implement in a satisfactory way.(and more specifically germane, that in my opinion the sex-based ability scores in AD&D were 'unnecessary'.) In regards to that, my statements here: 'Of course, quantifying Reality over and against Fantasy is apt to be a self-defeating enterprise anyway.' and 'Attempting to closely approximate some semblance thereof(especially in a substrate like human biology), is often counterproductive to enjoying a rousing game of adventure.' does not even come close to an attempt to shut down conversation about the amount of 'reality' allowed in one's imaginary realms.(Note 'apt' and 'often'.) The humorous list that follows elaborates on the notion that outlandish D&D-isms that are taken for granted and are odd bedfellows with any notion of reality. I think it would be obvious that the lines are drawn somewhere, and that it varies from campaign to campaign, even within the same rules set.
Use of phrases like ""personal hang-ups and hurts and feelings about gender" that cause them to feel uncomfortable with gender-differentiated attribute score ranges." and the like does make it sound like you are categorizing someone as a knee jerk opponent of your argument, imo.
Thanx for your reply.
Unfortunately, I'm about to be without internet access for a few days in a few hours and I need to pack, so I don't have time to respond at length. Two points though.
DeleteI think my particular phrasing with "personal hang-ups and hurts and feelings about gender" is causing some confusion about how legitimate and serious I think "hang-ups and hurts and feelings" are. I think they are very legitimate and important; I'm not trying to devalue them by my phrasing and I'm sorry if my phrasing caused misunderstanding on that point. Human beings are affected by stuff that happens to them in ways that make emotions get in the way of cold, hard, unfeeling logic. I think that's a wonderful, integral part of being human and when someone's strong emotions, based off of hurtful life experiences, cause them not to be strictly rational, I believe that the proper response is to honor their emotions and hurts and not try to talk them out of what they feel. When my emotions and hurts and hang-ups get in the way of my rationality (and, believe me, I have them and they do get in the way of my rationality), I hope people treat me the same way.
While I'm theoretically OK with gender-differentiated attribute score ranges in my game, if properly executed, I probably won't be using them any time soon, largely for the point you make which is basically "why?" I don't really see a need for them in my game right now.
What was bothering my about the discussion that made me decide to write this series wasn't that people were coming down on the side of not using gender-differentiated attribute score ranges, but that it was being assumed that gender-differentiated attribute score ranges necessarily sent bad messages. Like I point out in my second post in this series, that's not true; gender-differentiated attribute score ranges can actually be set up to give female characters an advantage in terms of attribute scores and can be used to send welcoming messages to women and "misogyny isn't tolerated at this table" messages to men. I don't find that that particular message needs to be sent to players at my table, as, so far as I can tell, my female gamers feel welcome and my male players all agree that misogyny is bad, so I'm not stressing about including gender-differentiated attribute score ranges in my game anytime soon. If I thought that those messages needed to be sent, though, one way I'd consider doing so (though hardly the only way- talking, for example, would be a more important way to get the message across, but there's no reason to use only one medium at a time either) would be with gender-differentiated attribute score ranges.
I hope that answers the biggest issues you raise in your last reply.