PCs are exceptional individuals. I don't understand what the average woman has to do in any way statistically with the gleaming deadly female samurai with STR 9. As far as I'm concerned, any gender based average for normal people no longer applies when you have your skin and muscles and bones replaced with alloy and kevlar, or when you suck in magic from the planet that is powerful enough to change men into orcs and trolls and use it to reinforce your muscles and boost your STR attribute.

Because the same 0-6 range for attribute values (modded by race) that are used to make runners are the same values used to make every NPC from the most hardcore, chromed-out cyberzombie mage to the most mundane across-the-board 3's person imaginable.

Average != max. Average is not even dependant on the range, just on the weighted statistical percentage above and below the average. Debating the difference between a racial maximum of 8 and a racial maximum of 9 has no intrinsic correlatory effect on the average of 3.

Whether you support the idea or not, at least use valid arguments.

i'm not sure i'd call it 'blatant sexism'. guys do tend to be stronger than gals, and the strongest guys are stronger than the strongest gals. i'm not sure it's a fact that needs to be reflected in SR, but that doesn't change the basic truth--nor does it make pointing out that truth misogynistic.

well, okay. i meant more the Str thing.

Well, then I would argue that in my mind, the difference between a 1 and a 2 or a 2 and a 3 is a big difference. Bigger than whatever average difference there might be in strength between men and women.


Furthermore, on average, women seem to be more accurate with firearms than men. Does that mean that women should get +1 dice with ranged combat tests?

Some women seem to be extremely flexible even if they don't stretch that much, but that isn't so common with men. Does that mean women should get +1 dice to Escape Artist checks?

Oh, but wait....lots of these really flexible women also tend to be pretty small. Maybe the +1 dice should only apply if you have a Body of 2.

Oh, but wait....when I used to do judo as an undergrad back at the Cornell judo club, I found that the women there tended to have excellent technique, even though they didn't have as much raw physical power as me. (I'm a 200 pound male, so I have more raw physical power than a lot of men, too). In terms of speed and application of efficient mechanics to wrestling, especially against people who were bigger than them, some of them were really terrific and to this day I remain impressed with them. Maybe women should get +1 dice to Groundfighting....but ONLY if their opponent is bigger than them.

Oh, but wait....there were also some smaller men who were like that too. Men can get the +1 dice to Groundfighting as well...but only if their Body is 2!

Can you imagine trying to keep track of all these little tweaks that would follow from messing with attributes based on gender?

I think that if you try to model that you just get into sets of rules that are both problematic in terms of game balance and kind of pointless because I don't even think that anyone cares that much.

er, your argument really doens't make a lot of sense. the proposal is for an across-the-board stat mod for both genders. you're talking about subsets of genders. i could take your argument in the opposite direction, and say that it's silly to give stat mods to different races--all this business with figuring out what race should have what mods is just complicated and silly, really.

Something to consider: while men have greater brute strength (as measured by the lifting events) women tend to have greater endurance... so a woman could, on average, lift less, but could lift 75% of her maximum more times than a man could. Since strength is the stat for both of those situations, it would average out anyway.

Furthermore, men tend to be bigger, yeilding a higher body stat. But women live longer, and tend to have a higher pain tolerance (child bearing would do that!), which balances it out.

Women are thought of by society as sexier, which could mean a higher charisma stat. But remember "glass ceilings" and other ways in which sexism holds women down? Those would balance out charisma.

Women and men also have different average specializations in intelligence (men tend to be better at visual imagery tests, while women tend to be better at logic tests).

And as said above, all this is average case. Your particular individual, or the runner you create, may be no where near the center of the bell curve. You can have a woman who is physically not very beautiful, but who is adept at navigating corporate culture, who can bench 200lbs without difficulty, and likes sports, and that's not a problem at all. If a player really wants a gender modifier, they can take it as an edge or flaw of appropriate points.

JaronK

I think JaronK has a good point. I beleive all the attributes have two 'halves' so to speak - body relates to both size and fitness/overall holistic health, Charisma is both looks and personality. You can have someone who is body 6 but actually quite skinny - they're just ultra healthy so resist disease and so on better, heal from injury quicker. Of course, how the damage soaking aspect goes with that I'm not too sure because a bigger person would soak better.. but I think you see where I'm going. Given this, the quickness thing - men tend to be able to attain faster speeds, but women are generally more dextrous.

Given that, it makes all the attribute averages as averages of both sexes. You could give either of them a +1 in certain attributes, sure, but what number do you use as the base for that sex to add the +1 to? if you use the average, it means that you're saying women, for example, are actually MUCH better at whatever bonus it is, far better in fact, that is actually the case. You'd be overcompensating.

I don't think I've explained that very well. OK, example. We're proposing that Quickness is an area where women could get a +1. And that for a human, as written, the racial average is 3, which is an average of all members of that species, including both sexes. So what then are the numbers this average of the sexes is worked out from? It surely cannot be that men's quickness average is 2 and women's 4, can it? 2 points difference? Surely not. It is much more likely to be a much closer margin, say 2.75 and 3.25. In either case, I don't think its enough to warrant a full point bonus or penalty to either sex.

I dunno. It just seems unnecessarily complicated for something that is so marginal as to not really make that much difference and which could be covered by an simple Edge. If you want those bonuses to have a 'prime' example of your sex, then pay for it with a Bonus or Exceptional Attribute Point or something. Or just spend the extra attribute/2 extra build points at chargen!

Damn sexist men calling women superior in unmeasurable attributes!!

Edited for clarity.

Is that supposed to be sarcastic?

Either way. It doesn't matter.

As far as women and Judo style maneuvers, keep in mind that has more to do with the center of gravity. The person with the lowest center of gravity will generally flip their opponent of equal skill. Also, you should think about mentality, at 6'2" and over 200 lbs I don't see many people as a threat, at least I didn't until I worked as a bouncer. I'd rather go up aganist a heavy tall guy than the short wiry girl any day.

So you since learned the error of that common view. The big hulking mass is probably use to being able to over awe people, and gets frustrated when it doesn't happen, but when the hamemr goes down, he'll be easier to handle. A smaller woman is less likely 5to blow her top, but when we do, well, the last would-be mugger I faced got his arm broken in 3 places, a ruined my hose and broke the heel off my shoe.

I have been working late hours and unable to respond to any posts, ie I dropped a hotly debated thread before I finished having my say, but I will take a quick crack at this subject anyway.

I think a case could be made that at the very least female PCs can't take the exceptional strength edge that would increase their maximum physical strength possible. Maybe you could allow male PCs to round up when dealing with strength racial maximums to represent the fact that males are stronger? Females round down on physical skills as currently stated. So what if you get more male samurai from this ruling? We are only talking about a couple of points of difference at the very extreme end of the human genetic envelope.

I don't see that females are any more charismatic than males either though. I think physical power is just something males have over females. In fact I would go so far as to say to round up on all physical attributes for male characters and down for females as normal. And disallow any excepional physical attribute edges for females as well. If it came up in any game I referee, this is how I would do it.

Where is the balance? Forget balance, there is none. There is no balance in real life either. Males are simply much more physical than females from years of evolution. A ruling like this is just to add realism. No way the designers could incorporate it into the game for fear of being labeled something politically incorrect. This would have to remain purely a house rule in my opinion.

As far as game terms go this system would be unfair to females wanting to be shadowrunners. Yes it gives males an evolutionary advantage in physical prowess. Which is realistic. And that is what this little ruling is all about. Males simply had to fight for the right to mate. In nature, the species that males have to combat for procreation, the males are physically more powerful. The last balancing factor that females should not lose track of though is that they are the very reason males are bigger and stronger. There is no game mechanic that covers desire, but this power is probably far more useful than an extra +1 or +2 to stats. If the referee plays a realistic campaign that is.

Btw, I am happily married and I have a loving daughter that means the world to me, thank you. This post is not meant to be sexist. It is meant to be realist. Just offering a possible house rule that makes sense.

I wonder if anyone noticed the article in CNN that predicts female sprint times will beat male times in about fifty years. I didn't give it a second thought at first, but it made some interesting points. Namely, women have historically had worse times for several reasons, biology was never mentioned. Most cultures, our own included, has a stigma against females being 'strong', so why do we wonder why, on average, they don't fare as well? There are fewer trying and they have to work harder to do it. As the freedoms of the sexes equalize, I suspect we'll find the gender gap in a lot of fields diminish. One thing worth noting is that among the wealthy in shadowrun, the gender gap is very equal (although now that I think about it, do any of the big corps have a female CEO? Hmm...)

I'd say giving women a strength penalty is about on par as giving them a charisma bonus. It isn't a biological restriction nearly as much as it is a cultural one. Put it in if you want there to be a bigger difference between the sexes, especially for NPCs. If you play more by canon, in which there really is no appreciable difference between males and females, except in the streets, then don't bother.

No female CEOs. Closest is Buttercup. Wilhelmina was pretty up there before her ouster, though.

~J

There are a lot of fairly powerful women in most of the corps though -- Nadja Daviar in Ares, Watanabe in Renraku, Samantha Villiers in Novatech....

Going off of nexumi's point, I honestly have to say that I'm very surprised at how readily many people here have accepted the 'fact' that women just can't equal men physically. 100 years ago, the 4 minute mile was considered a ridiculous impossibility. Now, high schoolers beat it in basically every school in America. There is far less definite, incontrovertible evidence out there than many people would have you believe.

That they can't? Jury's out. That they usually don't?

~J

What does Shadowrun have in common with anything usual?

It never states how the stats are achieved and what kinds of therapy, training, and manipulations are undertaken to obtain equality in attributes, nor need it. For all the mechanics care, the woman with a strength of 10 has sacrificed her female genes to do so. I can think of no reason to create rules for something that is better dealt with in character, both in terms of end results and fun.

Certainly. If you'll note, I haven't been a proponent of actual stat mods during any of this, though I admitted that some of them could at times be arguable if you're approaching this in certain ways.

~J

Moving a proportional mass to power ratio down a track at a certain speed is one thing, but pressing a weight over your head and massing a huge powerful body able to absorb trauma more easily is another. In a non sexist world we would not have men and women's competitions....it would just be human competitions. I kind of doubt that is anywhere near the next century or two regardless of how fast a woman who changed the hormone levels in her body with steroids runs a mile.

At the end of the day it comes down to this. There are physical and mental differences between the sexes and there are physical differences between the different races of homo sapiens. The important thing about the differences is that they are only significant when a large sample population and normal distribution is used. Inter-person differences in a small population group can completely mask the underlying racial/gender differences.

Men tend to be bigger and stronger than women because there are more big strong men in most a local sample populations. If you swapped the all the men from Iceland and Thailand, then took Iceland to be your sample population you would have to say that women tend to be bigger and stronger.

Do not apply any gender based attribute modifies to SR character generation, it is not a probability based generation system.

Just for the sake of keeping the rules form over flowing with minute modifiers I would say no to Gender based modifiers.

Let's not kid our selves though, men are physically stronger than woman. That's just the way it is. Are there woman who are really strong? Yes. But the strongest woman will never be strongest man.

Is that bad? No. Men and woman are different. Different isn't a weakness. It is just different.

So keep the game simple and keep the gender differences RP only.

Not that I would necessarily incorporate the following into a game that I run, but...

I think if there is a need for a distinction to be made, then I would incorporate bits of what was proposed by (I believe) Rory Blackhand previously. I would disallow females from taking the Exceptional Strength Edge, but would also restrict males from the Exceptional Quickness Edge. I would also round down these respective Attributes (Quickness for males and Strength for females) instead of rounding up when calculating Maximum Attribute Rating.

I don't believe any more than this needs to be done.

As to all the crap about men being idiots around women...have y'all seen the stats on women that stay with abusive husbands 'because they love them'? Hasn't anyone heard about women losing their heads over guys that they know are bad for them, but they can't help themselves? It runs both ways guys...if it didn't we'd have died out as a species quite some time ago.

Women are idiots. OK, i'll bear that in mind next time a woman in the office curses 'men' under her breath. I don't think it'll stop me getting fired, but it would be oh so worth it...

We have put up with female's sexism for far too long! Rise my brothers! Throw off the shackles of 'your share of the housework!' Deny the cruel-breasted race from wearing your coats after you get out of a nightclub because they were too fashion obsessed to bring one of their own even though its december and ten below! Cease and desist your spider patrols men, and refuse to put up those shelves - we're on strike!

(not that a grinning face is going to save me from the wrath about to pour on my head - especially if my s/o reads this post - I'm sure...)

I'm going to assume either you're making a poor poor joke, or we now have a wonderful explanaition as to why you don't get 2nd dates

This is so going nowhere. It's starting to become as cool as a flame thread on www.bullshido.com.

I disagree. The first part of my post is a direct answer to the question asked by the thread-starter. The second part was in response to the seemingly overwhelming opinion that only men suffer from hormone- and/or love-induced stupidity. No flames are, or indeed were intended.

After watching a programme called "Body Shots" on Friday night about how alcohol actually effects the body, I think men should get a bonus to willpower. I shall explain.

Alcohol affects the brain in a particular way, starting with the frontal lobes (highest part) and progressing back to limbic system (low part), it slows down rate at which the brain functions. It has a secondary effect on women, an increase of testosterone to the levels found in a sober man. Everybody who has been exposed to drunken people should have noticed that women tend to "get drunk" faster than men; the thing is they aren't any more drunk than men, just that they don't have the ability to cope with that level of testosterone. Of course, after prolonged drinking men also lose the ability to cope and turn into twats.

Because of this, men should have a higher willpower, afterall their hormonal emotions are permenatly set to "drunk woman" and yet mostly manage to cope.

...Perhaps being drunk is less noticable in men because we're idiots even when we're sober?

http://erintoughill.com/

I'll bet she didn't get a -1 to STR, and she's probably stronger than many males. Look at that muscle tone.


Be sure to check out the Techniques section; the link is on the bottom of the page.

rrowwr. regardless, "stronger than many males" doesn't really have anything to do with "upper limits on strength according to gender". you can pic up an issue of Flex magazine any month of the year and find ten guys in it that are stronger than her.