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Da9iel
Has anyone ever considered adjusting the racial modified limit (and attribute) according to gender? Females are, after all, physically weaker than men both in averages and in maximums. I was considering making all females -1 Str and +1 Cha. Except for dragons. For dragons I would have the males be -1 Str and +1 Cha. (They are more closely related to birds where the males are beautiful and the females are bigger.) biggrin.gif

The only problem I see with this is that Cha is linked to leadership, and men seem to have just as much if not more leadership than women. Perhaps this is due to social constraints (Da Man been puttin em down) dating back to when physical strength was paramount (to fight off those saber-toothed tigers). Maybe Wil would be more apt. I've known a lot of very, very stubborn women. Then I've known some stubborn men too. dead.gif

Back to Cha: I think that encouraging female conjurers and faces would be just fine and dandy. History has witches being more commonly female, and Daisy Mae was always tapped for her "social skills" when those Duke boys were getting into mischief. love.gif
Zenmaxer
this is not a good idea... never ever give a player access to a free bonus. Speaking as a munchkin, that's like calling yourself big-boned in a troll gay bar.
Da9iel
What free bonus? The poor girl needs to get a big strong man to move that heavy couch! wink.gif
Sandoval Smith
What would be the point of doing something like this? It just complicates the creation process for no good reason. At least you avoid the trap of simply penalizing PCs for being females, unlike the arch typical D&D example, where the DM decided all female characters should get a -2 to strength, but balances out by also giving them the 'advantage' of being able to have children.
Da9iel
No point really. Just a way to spice things up a bit. A little more realism and a way to encourage a tad more gender bending in a game that tends to have many more male players than female.
Zenmaxer
Indulge me for a moment...

Female elf

6+3+1

+exceptional attrib...

10(15)

+bonus attrib point...

start charisma of 11

followed by
good reputation
good looking and knows it

That doesn't sound too hideous... until we make her an aspected mage and give her some attrib boosting spells and lil mind control. This is not someone you want in your campaign, especially because she's going to charm herself up some cultured pheromones really fast.
Abstruse
Tell you what, they can stick that in the errata with a note for all the pissed off female gamers, general feminists who hear about it, and the male feminists to send their hate mail and death threats to you personally.

The Abstruse One
Sandoval Smith
Realism in what way? Something like this should be the player's choice, not GM whim. If they want to play a female that looks like she stole the face off a bulldog, well good for her, but in which case the change would be a penalty.

Not to mention that the whole concept really stinks of gender chauvanism. If you want more female characters, just let the players know that a little more diversity would be welcome.

If in the name of realism you feel this is really nessasary, well, it's your game. However, I'd chalk it up there with a random table to see if you trip while walking down the street. It adds to realism, but what's the point?
Kayne
QUOTE
...the whole concept really stinks of gender chauvanism.

Quite. Get rid of the charisma bonus. It's like saying men are the orks of the human species.

Personally, I just remind my players that a strength 6 woman is tres butch.
Cray74
QUOTE (Da9iel)
Has anyone ever considered adjusting the racial modified limit (and attribute) according to gender?

IIRC, AD&D 1st edition did this and was extremely unpopular.

However, neverminding popularity, here's why I wouldn't apply gender-modified attributes.

POINT 1: AVERAGE ATTRIBUTES VS PLAYER CHARACTERS

*Shadowrun character generation is not based on random rolls with an average distribution, but rather determined by player choice (within available points). It is quite possible for every player character in a group to be far outside the attribute bell curve (which, for humans, peaks around 2), and there is no weighting to drive attribute selection back toward a racial average.

*Therefore, PCs regularly ignore average racial attribute distributions.

POINT 2: AVERAGE ATTRIBUTES VS WOMEN

*While women are on average not as strong as men, there are women that match virtually every level of strength encountered by men, except for the very high end of the strength curve (which is only has a very small population in any case). Therefore, as far as PCs are concerned, the same range of strengths is available to women as is available to men.

CONCLUSION

Because SR character creation is independent of attribute averages, but instead only limited by what range of attributes is available, female PCs should not face weighted attributes.

In other words, if you're going to start penalizing female characters for strength, then the number of male PCs getting away with any above average attribute is equally "unrealistic." I mean, really. How many humans have Intelligence and Willpower scores above 2-3?

Shadowrun PCs aren't average people. They don't have average lives, average jobs, or average strength. Character generation reflects that: they can pick any attribute score they want, irrelevant of averages.
Pistons
I can move my own couches, thank you very much. Now that I've gotten that out of my system, it's not a good idea for the reasons Cray74 wrote. Aside from genetics that may predispose someone toward greater or lesser ability in one area or another, everyone has the same potential to excel in anything they choose. It's a matter of how it's nurtured in the formative years, and the training and care given later on, that sets some people at higher levels than others.
Apathy
QUOTE
While women are on average not as strong as men, there are women that match virtually every level of strength encountered by men, except for the very high end of the strength curve...the same range of strengths is available to women as is available to men

This seems like a non-sequiter to me. You state that men have a higher upper limit to their strength curve, and then say that the same range is available to both women and men.

Di-morphism (distinguishing characteristics between the sexes) exists. It's silly to say that men and women are the same. We're equal, but we're different. Women, on average, have better balance and eye-hand coordination (+1 Quickness), and tend to have more emotional/social intelligence (+1 Charisma). Men, on average, have greater muscle mass and muscle density (+1 Strength) and greater bone density along with larger overall size (+1 Body). This is consistent for both the average human and the extreme olympic quality athletes and leaders[edit: although it's pretty much impossible to objectively measure charisma]. Some of this is social imprinting, and the gap between performance of the sexes is narrowing with the advent of laws like title IX in the US, but there will always be some physiological differences between us.

I agree in principle with the idea that it's a more realistic model, but think that it messes up the game too much. It'll create scenarios where all sams and adepts are men and all mages and faces are women. And it'll become a big point of contention among those that think of this as a sexist perspective. I'd suggest that it's more trouble than it's worth.

[edit] I apologize if my stating this offends anyone on the forum - that was definately not my intent.
iPad
QUOTE (Zenmaxer)
big-boned in a troll gay bar.

Sorry but this is the quote of the month talker.gif
Lindt
QUOTE (Zenmaxer @ Sep 24 2004, 06:37 AM)
Speaking as a munchkin, that's like calling yourself big-boned in a troll gay bar.

Looks like I have a new .sig

But seriously, bad form and asking to get your hoop beaten. Bad Idea.
Cray74
QUOTE (Apathy)
This seems like a non-sequiter to me. You state that men have a higher upper limit to their strength curve, and then say that the same range is available to both women and men.

If it seems like a non sequitor, I wasn't clear enough.

To clarify: My point was that the small area where the genders do not have overlapping strengths is negligible and dismissable. Therefore, for the purpose of quantifying attributes in a game - a process that pins down the vast and subtle variations in attributes into a few, crude increments - the same ranges should be available for both genders.

QUOTE
Women, on average, ... Men, on average,


Except, to reiterate, Shadowrun's character creation doesn't factor in averages. You get to pick whatever attribute score you want, ignoring the bell curve.

Wait. I've got an idea. If we're going to start applying averages to attribute selection, how about we add a rule to make above-average attributes harder to get for everyone?

For a human character, if a player wanted an attribute other than 2, he'd have to pass a roll. Something like, roll 2d6 and try to equal or exceed a TN.

Attribute 3: TN 8 (41.67% chance of getting the attribute)
Attribute 4: TN 9 (27.78% chance of getting the attribute)
Attribute 5: TN 10 (16.67% chance of getting the attribute)
Attribute 6: TN 11 (8.33% chance of getting the attribute)
Exceptional attributes: TN12 (2.78% chance of getting the attribute)

This would, after all, be more realistic, correct? You could add a modifier on the roll to make it harder for women to get higher strength scores, rather than simply denying them the high strength scores.
Apathy
It seems like the Becks system does a good job of requiring characters to devote extra resouces in order to get higher-than-average scores. (Though I admit it's not canon).
Zenmaxer
:: nods :: I'm with 74 here, and with Pistons.

First off, the charisma issue that you raise is social conditioning, Apathy, beyond a shadow of a doubt. We're a male oriented society, and we're programmed to respond more strongly to women socially and sensually. Ex: A guy in a speedo is a joke, a girl in a bikini is erotic.

Quickness does not measure hand-eye coordination exclusively, or even to a significant degree. Balance, yes, but coordination, not normally. Otherwise, a wee watchmaker would need a quickness of 5-6 to get his job done.... which, incidentally, would let our subject scoot along at a respectable clip of 2 m/s while _walking_. Oh and think about what his jump is going to look like, too. Sounds a lil absurd for a 75 year old gear guru. On the other hand, quickness is related to balance, but that's definately only an average and so can be disregarded anyway. Ms. Samurai Samantha isn't gonna be average.

I'd like to mention that many shadowrunners could easily give olympic athletes a run for their money, if you're looking at combat oriented munched chars... and is there really another kind of combat char?

Finally, game balance. Bonuses to attribs that don't cost build points are an invitation to broken characters, and forcing players to pick "packages" like gender based bonuses will create greater specialization of characters. Basically it's like a free edge from the standpoint of most gamers, with the downside of being really annoying if you want to do something unimaginable and run say... a male Face.

Let me remind you that attrib max rounds up. +1 to racially modified max is very very dangerous. Finally, I really don't like BeCKs. Shadowrun characters are specialized by nature and BeCKs can make skill acquisition quite difficult.
Black Isis
I always found it amusing that the people who would suggest things like this are usually not exactly paragons of physical prowess themselves. wink.gif

It's silly. The variance in the physical "strength" of women and men (which is a vague enough term) is not really worth talking about when you're talking about exceptional individuals anyway, and the Shadowrun attribute system is not granular enough to bother making this distinction even with normal individuals (considering there's only two steps between "average" and "physically unable to move").

I'd have a problem with giving women a Charisma bonus just for being women just as much. It's stupid. Women aren't any more charismatic on average than men, trust me. nyahnyah.gif
Apathy
QUOTE
I always found it amusing that the people who would suggest things like this are usually not exactly paragons of physical prowess themselves.

I would definately agree that I don't fit the image of the sleek and trim shadowrunner myself lick.gif. Had not meant to imply that I was talking about myself.

I also agree with everybody's assessment that the different limits shouldn't be part of the game, and said so in my first post. I guess we arrived at the same conclusion for different reasons.

A quick question: I thought average human stats were supposed to be 3s? In SR3 did they change to average=2?
Cray74
QUOTE (Apathy)
A quick question: I thought average human stats were supposed to be 3s? In SR3 did they change to average=2?

Oops, they might be 3.

I might be misremembering All Flesh Must Be Eaten and other games with that engine, which uses a very similar attribute system to SR, but definitely sets the average at 2.
UpSyndrome
I don't like the idea of implementing any extra systems that give people the opportunity to munchkin more than they already do, which is quite a bit.

Also, Shadowrun isn't the place for gender discrimination. Oh, except for this one bit from the Pheremone Scanner table in SOTA2063:
QUOTE
menstruating (females only):                      -2

smile.gif

-Joe
Apathy
Agree on both points
mmu1
QUOTE (Cray74)
To clarify: My point was that the small area where the genders do not have overlapping strengths is negligible and dismissable. Therefore, for the purpose of quantifying attributes in a game - a process that pins down the vast and subtle variations in attributes into a few, crude increments - the same ranges should be available for both genders.

Having gender modifiers in games is a bad idea. It's an unnecessary limitation imposed in the name of realism, that does game balance no good and doesn't make the game any more fun.

On the other hand, I really hate it when one of these threads pops up and people start posting nonsense in an attempt to be PC. The physical differences between men and women - primarily in terms of upper body strength and overall bone and muscle mass - are extremely significant. Within the population at large, women have (depending on whose data you look at - the military, for example, claim some of the largest differences, people writing on negative stereotypes in weight training the smallest) 40-60% the upper body strength of men, and 70-80% the lower body strength. Men are 25 to 30% heavier, on average. That's neither negilible nor dismissable.
Austere Emancipator
You're still talking about averages there. Cray74 repeatedly made it clear he wasn't, he was talking about the theoretical limits. 40-60% the upper body strength obviously cannot hold true for the theoretical limits when the women's weightlifting olympic record in the 58-63kg series is 242.5kg, and men's record in 56-62kg is 325.0kg.

However, to manage even 242.5kg you'd have to have a STR of 11 and roll decently with SR3 basic rules. With the advanced Athletics rules in SRComp, there's no fucking way an unaugmented human could ever manage that, as s/he'd need to have a STR of 11 and still roll 8 successes at TN 13 with 11 dice (if I'm reading that right).
Arethusa
Not to get involved here (other than to say I agree with Cray), but I do need to debunk a lot of a pseudoscience that's been thrown around here.

For one, men absolutely have much lower muscle density than women, and if you compare two equally strong olympic lifters of opposing sexes, you will notice that the man is visibly gigantic while the woman is not— yet they can lift exactly the same amounts of weight. Moreover, body is an iffy thing; you can argue that women have a naturally stronger immune system and can withstand more physical trauma than otherwise equal men (naturally in place to aid in child bearing/rearing). Of course, there's marginal evidence on both sides, but I think it's beyond safe to say that what little of this is not bullshit is marginal at best and neither significant nor reliable enough to be worth implementing mechanically.
Sandoval Smith
Well, Cray's first post neatly summed up what I'd been trying to say. To rephrase my last post, this is one of those bits of realism that you could try and include in your game, but I completly fail to see the point.
Apathy
[my comment retracted because I'm just being a pain in the ass about it and the whole thing's pointless...]
mmu1
QUOTE (Austere Emancipator @ Sep 24 2004, 10:59 AM)
You're still talking about averages there. Cray74 repeatedly made it clear he wasn't, he was talking about the theoretical limits. 40-60% the upper body strength obviously cannot hold true for the theoretical limits when the women's weightlifting olympic record in the 58-63kg series is 242.5kg, and men's record in 56-62kg is 325.0kg.

Theoretical limits?

In the super-heavyweight class in the last olympics, the men's record was 472kg, women's was 305. That does compare men weighing 105+ kgs and women weighing 75+ kgs, not men and women of equal weight, but that just goes further to prove my point about differences in max size and strength - both on average, and at the extremes.

Incidentally, keep in mind that those listed weights are arrived at after adding scores for more than one type of lift, IIRC - not after lifting that much weight in one go.
mmu1
QUOTE (Arethusa)
Not to get involved here (other than to say I agree with Cray), but I do need to debunk a lot of a pseudoscience that's been thrown around here.

For one, men absolutely have much lower muscle density than women, and if you compare two equally strong olympic lifters of opposing sexes, you will notice that the man is visibly gigantic while the woman is not— yet they can lift exactly the same amounts of weight.

All you need to do to see this is complete bullshit is actually look at weightlifting results.

For example, again, the Athens Olympics... Men's record in the 66-77kg category: 375kgs. Women's record in the 75kgs + category: 305.
Otaku On Acid
People, hobbies are good. Arguing on dumpshock over biology and political correctness is bad. Let's go with wasting more time on the first and not the second.
Jason Farlander
...but what if you consider arguing to be a hobby?
Wounded Ronin
I think gender average strength or gender average skill with guns is actually irrelevant to character creation.

Any shadowrun character you make is not an average person.

Look at it this way:

If I make a SR character with Strength 6, but the average strength is supposed to be 3, does that average strength actually have anything to do with my character? No.

So, whether or not your average woman is weaker than your average man has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not you make a female character with STR 10 or something.
Austere Emancipator
QUOTE (mmu1)
Incidentally, keep in mind that those listed weights are arrived at after adding scores for more than one type of lift, IIRC - not after lifting that much weight in one go.

Whoops, right you are. The female record Clean & Jerk in Athens was 182.5kg in the +75kg category, which would only require 4 successes against TN 13 with 11 dice, if you have a STR of 11. Still quite impossible to attain.
spotlite
I believe you can make athletics skill tests to increase your effective quickness for running. Could/does the same not apply to lifting? If you had weightlifting as a specialisation that's a bunch of dice to increase your effective Strength if you get successes for that specific test - there's a specific technique involved in weightlifting remember. An olympic level lifter probably has the skill at 6-8. That turn gives you extra dice for that test, and increases the maximum you can lift. The target numbers not any lower, but with rerolls you can probably get the odd success, which is picking it up but maybe not holding it. But it certainly becomes possible to both lift the weight in terms of allowance and in terms of number of dice applied to the test, and get enough successes to hold it for the necessary time.

I'm not getting into the gender modifier argument because I think its already been pretty much resolved and anything else is unagreeable cos there's plenty of data and studies to prove whatever the hell you want.
RedmondLarry
I think more men than women are likely to stay inside on a sunny day and play with dice and pieces of paper, or even just talk with each other over the internet about playing with dice and pieces of paper. Does that make men weaker? wink.gif

It's a great day outside, here in Redmond. See you all much later.
spotlite
Its a crappy evening here in Leeds, UK. So enjoy yourself you smug "£$%^! biggrin.gif
Zenmaxer
What tables are you using to calculate TNs, AE?
Austere Emancipator
SRComp, in the advanced Athletics rules section, Lifting and Throwing. The maximum weight you can attempt to lift overhead is STR x 12kg, and to do that you need to do a STR test against a TN of (weight / 10). Every additional success raises the amount you can lift by 10%. Or some such crap.

The rules could easily be read to mean you just can't lift anything heavier than STR x 12kg, and that's it. In fact, it's far easier to read the rules like that.
Fygg Nuuton
the fact that i was beaten up by a girl in grade school makes me think twice against it wink.gif
RedmondLarry
What were you doing at a Grade School in the first place?
How long do you think your bruises will last?
Edward
It is true that average and maximum strength are greater for men than women.

2 points why you shouldn’t model it in the game.

1) It is not politic.

2) The difference is less than the game resolution can show. A difference of 1 would be justified if the racial maximum were about 100.

Edward
Fygg Nuuton
QUOTE (OurTeam)
What were you doing at a Grade School in the first place?
How long do you think your bruises will last?

the doctors say i will make a full recovery sometime next week wink.gif
Da9iel
Whoah! extinguish.gif Easy there! extinguish.gif I'll agree that this all is essentially unnecessary, but for crying out loud! extinguish.gif Suggesting that the strongest man in the world is only 0% to 1% stronger than the strongest woman in the world (we are dealing with attribute maximums) is crazy talk. extinguish.gif Sheesh. I expected pooh-poohing. Of course I realize that there are lots and lots of women stronger than me (str=3). Anything I said to indicate otherwise was followed by the I-am-just-joking-and-talking-out-of-my-hinder smiley.

But, first to give my share on the str side.

QUOTE (mmu1 on Sep 24 2004 @ 11:55 AM)
In the super-heavyweight class in the last olympics, the men's record was 472kg, women's was 305.


If max str of (human) women = 8 and max str of (human) men = 9, that's fairly generous. I'm not talking about averages here. I don't care if every male character has a strength of 3 and every female character has a strength of 5. I'm trying to model max attributes.

Now, the big brouhaha over the charisma bonus. I agree, it's not really fair to say that women have a charisma bonus in real life. We can't measure charisma in real life. There's no charisma event in the olympics. But, if I wanted to balance the strength penalty with a bonus A) because it is fair and B) because it is accurate. I know that women are not inferior to men. While men may have a small premium in the max strength scale, I know that women have similar premiums elsewhere in life. I ruled out Body despite the whole birth thing. Women can be tough! but that would probably be (more of) a game breaker. I ruled out quickness because the movement/running thing doesn't model real life. I toyed with a Willpower bonus (as you can see in the initial post). I decided against Int because as far as it can be measured, the results are mixed. extinguish.gif I ended up with Charisma partially because there is some...uh...because this horribly sexist and evil culture in which I live often considers women to be more charming. Of course women can be quite the opposite, but I'm trying to get the range of an immeasurable here.

A +1 usually more than offsets a -1, so I thought that using what is probably the leased appreciated stat in the game would be a little more balancing. Maybe I should have used Body or Willpower. Meh. I'll forget the whole thing. Nice thought in theory, but I'm all out of halon. Thank you all for the . . . uh . . . vigorous exchange of ideas.
Crimsondude 2.0
And here I spent all these years assuming that the average racial stats reflected the aggregate average of all people in that race.

Silly me.
CircuitBoyBlue
I don't think men should have any penalties to their maximum willpower, but any female without active invisibility should have a target number of 2 on all social tests used against men. Such as fast talking/persuasion/interrogation/all-round ruining of the one's life/etc... We're idiots when the other sex is around. We even know it, and we would rather be idiots than not have them around. Maybe gender max intelligence for men should be like a 0 or something.

But joking aside, accusing people of opposing gender modified stat limits out of a desire to be "PC" is ridiculous. "PC" is a term come up with by reactionaries that realized nobody liked them anymore when the continued to harbor wrong views when the rest of society had moved on. The term was probably born in a Ku Klux Klan war room as a means of making mainstream society look weak. Nobody here's opposing these modifications to avoid appearing insensitive toward anyone; they brought up the spectacularly valid point that averages have nothing to do with character creation, and the difference at the maximum end of the scale, if it actually exists, is trivial in a system where a human staying within the confines of his or her racial maximum is rated on a scale of 1-6, 3 being average and two steps down from that being considered barely ambulatory. As far as the charisma attribute goes, you might have a valid point in that it can't be measured in real life, and therefore opponents of gender modified limits can't use statistical evidence against you on that, but it also means that you can't prove any real need for women to be capable of being 1/6 more charismatic than men. If you want to get into anecdotal evidence, I would say that all joking aside, people tend to notice the charismatic actions of the opposite sex more than those of the same sex. For example, I never find myself thinking "Gee, my friends are nice. I like hanging around them." It's probably true, but I never notice it. I just sort of know that hanging around them is what I do. On the other hand, everytime a woman says something nice to one of my friends (unfortunately I can't use myself as an example in this one), they damn well make note of it and replay the moment in their heads 1,000 times. Also, people in general are morons, and charisma works really REALLY well against someone who, like me, is probably 2 steps away from thinking he's a toaster and only about half a step away from thinking that the British Empire needs to be stopped before American hegemony is threatened. Women are no more charismatic than men, and if there's a difference in the averages in strength between men and women, it doesn't affect character creation in any way. If there's a difference in the maximums, beside being impossible to prove (the strongest people in the world might not be the ones at the Olympics), the difference would probably not be very statistically significant (I failed statistics a few times, so I have no idea how to calculate that).

And to prove that this post isn't motivated by any plot to be "PC," I'd just like to add that I think various segments of society need to be irrationally feared, including the British, women, and the construction workers that woke me up this morning.
Crimsondude 2.0
We're idiots when attractive women are around. We can be rather cold bastards to the ugly ones.
3Threes
the key is to be a cold bastard around the hot ones so they think you don't think they are attractive which makes them insecure enough for you to be able to approach them on much better terms

-3Threes
Da9iel
Right. . . . sarcastic.gif
Die blaue Reiterin
ohhhhhh.... now I understand your intimidation techniques *dumb blond laugh*
CircuitBoyBlue
No, we're stupid when any female is around. We ARE cold bastards sometimes when a female that we're not attracted to is around, but that doesn't make us any less stupid. And also, a female doesn't have to be attractive for us to be attracted. Deceiving them is always justice, though, because we deceive each other enough that to not treat females like crap would be sexist.
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