Things in a rulebook that make the game an instant drop for you

>Aren't they the most easiest dice to find
While it's technically true, with how many gameshops exist + the internet, it's not hard at all to find ANY type of dice. Hell, assuming you're not even a filthy pirate, you're likely reading the book inside of a store that will SELL you these funky dice for cheap. In fact, local bookstores in my area are now selling polyhedral dice even though they aren't game/specialty stores.

Declaring you only use d6 because the dice are easy to find is a great way to broadcast that your game is intended for people who can't even be bothered to step inside of a book store on their own and would need to scalp their yahtzee supplies to get a game going.

>"We use non-binary success to make those failure rolls less BORING!"

Why is this a bad thing?

>abstract wealth

Yes please. Fuck granular wealth systems, they're always overcomplex and provide no benefit over a well designed abstract wealth system.

>Fail-forward, don't let the players run into any ACTUAL hardships that might burst their safe space

>Forced roleplay mechanics

>System spends more than one paragraph making snide, backhanded remarks towards the way other RPGs do something

>Uses a word for the Referee of the game other than DM, GM, Referee, or Keeper

>I don't understand what fail forward means

>Uh oh, you rolled really poorly with this life-threatening psycho holding a knife against your throat with 2 HP left who has stated he wants nothing more than to kill you!
>. . .he instead knocks you out and locks you up! "I'll deal with you later!"
>Whoops, looks like he accidentally left the key inside the lock. What do you want to do?

I understand fail-forward perfectly fine.

Your example proves that you don't.

You're just proving his point. If you could give a good example you would have instead of just going "no, you're wrong!"

Failing forward relies on the idea that success or failure should both drive the story forward. If failure is always a dead stop, it makes consist storytelling impossible, although there are also cases when nothing else makes sense, such as the stupid example he used earlier.

Without the extra bullshit that makes nothing but a lethal ending appropriate, though, it is a vaguely accurate example of failing forward. Being captured rather than killed after losing a fight.

The big stupid though is that failing forward is all about creating extra challenges and complications. It's not like fake QTE's in games, where the same thing happens either way, but that a sub-optimal outcome should still lead somewhere, to keep the game flowing and events moving, but that it should be more difficult, less ideal or otherwise a greater problem.

An example from a game I ran had the PC's chasing someone they needed to get information from. They got unlucky and failed the chase, instead ending up lost in a bad area of the city and being ambushed by thieves. It was a hard fight that got more than a few of the PC's injured and cost them some resources to survive, but from the surviving enemies they got a clue about where they could find the person they'd been chasing.

A failure is still a failure, and they suffered for it, but it doesn't put a roadblock in the way of progress.

>what do you mean my demon cannot be a saint!
>there is no redemption system at all?

It was never only those people

As I understand it...

It is a Chase Scene, you fail whatever you're using to catch the villain. Instead of just "Haha the Batmobile lost its wheel and the Joker got away" it is "During the chase Batman managed to grab the Joker's coat and it ripped, but it spilled the contents of his pocket which included a vital clue that Batman can use to find the Joker later."

Now the PC (Batman) has a chance to move the story forward, but still failed in his objective (Catching the Joker).

Zweihander uses fail-forward skill checks when the players are not actually in any danger, but the characters have reason to think they are.

For example when sneaking toward a bandit camp, the GM knows there are no patrols in the area, but the players don't. If the characters fail a fail-forward sneak check and snap a twig, it doesn't actually alert anyone, but the fear that it might stresses the characters out - and accumulated stress is really bad in that game.

>GURPSfag detected

It's okay, I like GURPS too.

Ok, that makes a little more sense. But at a certain point you just have to have a dead stop failure. Otherwise you rapidly get to the point where you're defying coincidence just to keep the players from losing, and nothing they really do matters.

Also, I prefer to put in redundancies, so if they do manage to completely fuck up one avenue, they have two or three others to pursue. E.g., if they fail to catch the enemy, they have to find another source of that information, or follow up on a different lead entirely. But individual trails can still completely dead end if they fail.

Yeah, dead stop failures do exist, but the point is to make them the exception rather than the rule. Those pivotal moments when it's victory or death matter all the more if they're scarce.

>I don't understand what fail forward means

I do. It's a meme created by Koebel and LaTorra when they ripped off Dungeon World and pretended they knew shit about narrative gaming. For fuck's sake, these faggots wrote an entire blog post about how a boring dragon can be made really scary if the DM describes it well and puts in his own fiat bullshit. Seriously. They spent about 1000 words explaining the obvious.

The problem with Fail-forward philosophy is that there is never a clear example of when failing forward should stop. The example I used was cartoonish, sure, but it the point was made that using fail-forward and adhering to it will cause a break in the narrative and relieve tension in the story. It makes the players think "I don't have to worry about failure, because I will accomplish my goals regardless."

A more realistic example is if the players get caught on all sides by a pack of powerful, hungry animals and proceed to lose the fight spectacularly. There is no logical way that these animals can give up killing the players and eating them, so this would result in failure. But fail-forward philosophy being applied cheapens the situation in an unsatisfying way.

>Oh, the animals just leave now. They're done with you
or even worse, deus ex machina.
>Oh look! Someone more powerful than you was in the area and scared them off!

>"B-b-b-but failure means they could lose something important to them"
All that does is encourages players to make characters with no emotional connection to anyone to counter a DM making cheap drama.

Also the concept you seem to be talking about there is "breadcrumbs" which is used in adventure.mystery games, not actual fail-forward philosophy.

The fundamental flaw is that you assume you always have to apply it. It's a useful principle, but if there's no basis for it then of course you don't apply it. If there are people who argue you should, then they're fucking stupid.

I mean, in a proper game, your characters would have to fuck up spectacularly to get into that kind of situation.

Reissues that update everything for the modern era and current political climate.

>All that does is encourages players to make characters with no emotional connection to anyone to counter a DM making cheap drama.

Get better players. Struggling through adversity and dealing with that kind of thing can create some of the most fun moments of roleplaying, and I say that as someone who has experienced it from both sides of the screen.

>no benefit

In what possible way is actually controlling what you buy and knowing how much you have instead of an absurd immersion ruining abstraction bad?

Abstract wealth is pointless in anything other than a game like Rogue Trader where the player is throwing around planetary levels of wealth.

This, to continue my Batman example...

The Dead Stop Failure would be climactic battle on the Joker's Zeppelin filled with his Patented Laughing Gas. If Batman fails to defeat the Joker, the Joker will spread his poison over the city and countless lives will be lost. How much of an advantage the Joker has in the battle will depend on how often Batman had to fail forward. If the Batman bumbles through he'll only see the Zeppelin as it launches and has no time to prepare, putting him at a severe disadvantage. If Batman aces things, he's got the Batwing and missiles the balloon before it leaves the dock and confronts the Joker in its burning wreckage with little danger to the innocent citizens of Gotham City. But in both cases he still must face personal peril in bringing in the Clown Prince of Crime.

If anything having some Fail-Forwards ups the stakes and makes the climax all the more exciting.

Abstract wealth can give you the exact same amount of control and understanding of your buying power, if not more so, without having to deal with granular bookkeeping bullshit. Granular wealth is a mechanic that should die forever.

Abstractions are supposed to make things simpler. Concrete wealth only requires kindergarten-level math and is totally intuitive. Abstract wealth always requires looking up a bunch of tables and always has issues where buying and selling things in different orders can leave you with different amounts of money at the end.

Sounds like you've just been using some shitty abstract wealth systems.

>d20
>classes
>spells per day
>levels
>HP per level
>x% chance for your firearm to explode and hurt you lulz
>abstract HP
>alignments
>critical anything
>anal circumference charts
>armor class
>weapon damage as die type
>genders not having a mechanical impact
>high/heroic fantasy
>"hard" science fantasy
>effect does X to Y unless Y is being held/worn by someone.

I think that the mistake you're making is that there's no risk of player death in "fail forward" game philosophy, when all it means in effect is that the game doesn't come to a stop until someone passes a skill check.

The traditional example of failing forward is a thief trying to unlock a door in a dungeon. All "failing forward" means is that instead of a failed check meaning the game stops until someone else finds a way to open the door, the process of opening the door alerts nearby threats that attack the group. That's far from a "safe space" bubble, as you characterize it: the most common way to "fail forward" is to fail forward directly into a threat.

>genders not having a mechanical impact

You had me up until then. Good effort.

My favorite system is Runequest actually. Really the thing that this system has done is spoiled me on having hit locations.

I hate that most RPG's you're just a bag of hitpoints. In Runequest you get arms damaged and can't use weapons or get limbs/heads chopped off.

Yes, but it makes rewards/roleplaying kind of bullshit.

"The Governor offers you a rich reward for your resources. It's a +2 bonus to your next wealth roll."
"Which means what exactly?"

It's counter-intuitive and breaks immersion. I've never seen a system that does it well. I'm not saying it can't be done well, but I've never seen it done.

>genders not having a mechanical impact
Sneaky, almost got me

Came here to say this.

>three stupid and wrong opinions, plus one that never actually happened and you just made up

Wew lad.

>"rules light system"
>uses like 6 kinds of proprietary dice where most of them are for very similar things

You're not very bright.

Yeah, I mean, there's no clear example because they usually figure you'll know when it's time to stop by yourself.
That's the thing with rules, you know, most don't state exceptions outright, it's up to the people to understand when the benefits from breaking them or drawbacks from following them outweigh the opposite.

Fair, that kind of mechanic can be easy to fuck up and do badly. Still, with your example they could just provide some solid descriptions of various levels of wealth and what the bonuses could represent, to ensure it was easy to understand.

The immersion thing is a bit weird to me, but peoples immersion seems very variable. I'm never bothered by having to deal with game mechanics, but suddenly having to start beancounting to account for my travel rations and arrows is the absolute worst thing if I'm trying to get into the fantasy of a big damn hero.

Thread hijack lol.

>The fundamental flaw is that you assume you always have to apply it
My main complaint was someone presenting it as a hard-coded rule in their rules to begin with.

Is this not normal?

>Get better players.
If I could do that, do you think I would even come here?

>that there's no risk of player death in "fail forward" game philosophy
That's what fail-forward philosophy is, isn't it? Instead of them failing and losing their character, the story should continue and the failure should be anything other than death. I have seen games encourage this part of the philosophy, and I have even seen other games that outright remove death as a mechanic to propagate this, let alone the systems and blogs that encourage this philosophy who berate "Killer DMs" for harming their precious players.

>All "failing forward" means is that instead of a failed check meaning the game stops until someone else finds a way to open the door
I also have a problem with this as well. This IS the traditional go to example of fail-forward, but ultimately it's heavily flawed. If there's no penalty, then there should be no roll and the thief should unlock the door automatically if it's within their skill reach.

>the most common way to "fail forward" is to fail forward directly into a threat.
And then when you fail that threat, the philosophy encourages you to make the fall into another threat, and another threat, but never ACTUALLY follow through with it.

kill yourself porkeye

5e, at least I think it's 5e, has a line in it akin to "characters can be whatever [out of place sexual persuasion/expression] you want and everyone has to deal with it". That's not what it said at all, but the line had this weird double meaning that you can do what you want with your group which doesn't need to be fucking stated, while also implying that there will be no repercussions and that conventional mores even apply in a fantasy setting. The line was out of place, pandering, and a little insensitive on top of being fucking ignorant.

>beancounting to account for my travel rations and arrows

The GM I've played the most with eschewed this completely, and adjusted the amount of gold the party got down by the appropriate amount. Worked out fine for the games we were playing, but there are some kinds (hardcore dungeon crawls, explorationg games) where you might want to do said beancounting or come up with another reasonable mechanic to enforce the sense of limited resources.

The type of dice used doesn't matter. The only exception is if the game uses dice specifically designed for it, because that's just pants-on-head retarded.
Non-binary successes are a safeguard against shit GMs/players more than anything, to enforce some variety in results other than "you do it" and "you fuck up forever".
Nothing wrong with universal systems either, really - although the rules for those tend to either be dull as shit or obnoxiously complex.
As for inclusiveness, pandering exists everywhere. I'm sure the developers realize that if people want to player their special snowflakes and the group is partial to it, they'll do it in literally anything, from D&D to Shadowrun, and they don't need to be told it's possible. But they want the bennies from appealing to a certain audience, which is currently more widespread than the sort of audience that hates it.

>Trusting people to know when to break the rules reliably and safely
Do you even belong here?

Your main problem seems to be with extremists and idiots, not with the principle itself.

Failing forward is a tool that can be useful for keeping the flow of the game going. It's not something to use without thought or to always apply it no matter what.

I run narrative focused games where PC death is very rare, but I never say it's impossible. Even if I avoid it most of the time and focus on alternate consequences, there's always the chance a time will come when nothing else makes sense or is more appropriate to happen, and I'm lucky enough to have players who'll often agree with me and accept it, even enjoy playing out a heroic sacrifice or a tragic death.

Every system I design has abstract wealth, fight me. Anything you do in the game should serve the narrative, which can include resource management, but granular money management is inane and boring.

I suppose I should be specific. This is my key problem with granular wealth systems. When I might have tens or hundreds of thousands but there's still all kinds of little, pointless things that cost a couple of coppers and managing it is just aggravating and pointless.

>The problem with Fail-forward philosophy is that there is never a clear example of when failing forward should stop. The example I used was cartoonish, sure, but it the point was made that using fail-forward and adhering to it will cause a break in the narrative and relieve tension in the story. It makes the players think "I don't have to worry about failure, because I will accomplish my goals regardless."
THAT'S NOT HOW FAILING FORWARD WORKS.

FAILING FORWARD JUST MEANS THE ACTION CONTINUES RATHER THAN STOPPING

DEATH IS STILL ON THE CARDS AS THE END TO THE ADVENTURE

FAIL FORWARD JUST MEANS IF YOU ROLL THE DICE, SOMETHING HAPPENS IF YOU FAIL

An example:

You're hanging by your fingertips by the cliff edge. What do you do
>uhh call for help - rolling for, I don't know, luck.
Hmm, bad roll. Your calling gets a giant spider crawling towards you. It's going to bite your fingers.
>shit shit shit I stab it with my knife. Roll.. aw, shit, another low roll
The spider dodges back, and bites your other hand. You start falling. Any last actions?
>I try to grab something as I fall, a cliffside edge, roots, anything!
Sorry, dice really want you dead. You fail to grab something, and you die splattered at the bottom of the cavern.

See, at NO POINT did rolling keep the situation the same. Calling didn't get no-one coming over, trying to stab the spider but failing didn't mean the guy's still hanging on the ledge, failing to grab something didn't mean the guy's still falling.

SOMETHING HAPPENS EACH TIME, INSTEAD OF NOTHING WHEN YOU ROLL THE DICE.

THAT IS ALL IT MEANS SERIOUSLY

>>I'm never bothered by having to deal with game mechanics, but suddenly having to start beancounting to account for my travel rations and arrows is the absolute worst thing if I'm trying to get into the fantasy of a big damn hero.

Mechanically that's true, I've rarely seen that in practice.

Minor costs such as arrows, stays at inns, rations, etc. are generally hand-waved and ignored in all but the most hardcore of campaigns. It's just assumed you refill when you get back to town and the costs ignored. Money is used for important items (weapons, important consumables like potions, armor, luxuries, bribes, transportation, etc).

I've had players micromanage those things in a few campaigns but that was because the focus was survival and it was actually hard to find those things.

Actually you're wrong

>Good Editing
>Clear divisions of Fluff and Crunch sections

Why do you suck so bad at this, Shadowrun. I just want some magical cyberpunk.

>Your main problem seems to be with extremists and idiots, not with the principle itself.
My main problem is actually with games that present it as a hard-coded rule, meaning that the system is designed to force you to take this route and engenders this type of playstyle in an extremist manner. Which is what the thread is about.

I also have problems with any philosophy that tries to put a padded glove on a game, which is ALREADY a safe space for a player to encounter various failures and learn from them. I have no qualms about not making every failure punishable by death, but rather I use it as the situation calls for it.

>I run narrative focused games where PC death is very rare, but I never say it's impossible.
Yes, and I bet you're the type of DM who says "I don't kill PCs unless they do something REALLY stupid", right? Sorry, as a player, I hate that type of nonsense. But you do you.

You're so hilariously wrong it's not even worth responding to.

Eurgh. I wish more books did it. One of my favourite games, Legends of the Wulin, is a posterchild for the opposite, and it's a crying fucking shame. A great game crippled by awful editing and layout.

I've provided a concrete example of how failing forwards doesn't mean characters can't die. How about YOU show ME how failing forwards means characters are fucking invincible always succeeding in their goals?

Can you name a game which has it as a hardcoded rule? Because I've never heard of them.

>You're so hilariously wrong it's not even worth responding to.

No, I'm pretty sure what he's talking about is the common definition of 'failing forward'. What you're talking about is something weird and extreme and dumb.

I like d6 only games because they're the dice most commonly sold in bigass bricks.

How about you stop having a tism spasm and maybe human beings will actually want to talk to you.

>Yes, and I bet you're the type of DM who says "I don't kill PCs unless they do something REALLY stupid", right? Sorry, as a player, I hate that type of nonsense. But you do you.

...No? But I already clarified this in the post you replied to, so I'm not sure why you said this. Did you just not read the rest of the paragraph?

It gets me irrational when people think dungeon world isn't an excuse to murder player characters for fucking up bad. Instead of failing meaning the players get to try again, failure now means you got more problems, and those problems build until usually two or three characters are dead and the others can barely recover let alone carry on.

It's not about being entitled to PC survival. It's about the fact that the entire story grinding to a halt because the characters failed to spot a secret door is deeply unsatisfying and requires patchwork solution. If, like you, the GM has backup solutions and the players know they exist, there's no problem. The rule exists to prevent bad story construction resulting in a 'welp you lose because you rolled bad'.
Some people misunderstand it to mean nobody dies ever. Sure, it COULD lead to that if someone was fucking stupid - but as designed, its most extreme variety is only delaying the victory or death to suitably dramatic moment, like facing a proper villain rather than a random bandit group.
It's basically putting the story above the game part. Which is purely up to taste.

And there IS a penalty, on that note. Always. It's just the penalty isn't game-ending. It doesn't have to be in order to be a penalty, you know? If someone fails to open the door, they could instead do it so loudly it draws some guards, turning the whole thing into a clusterfuck. It's a penalty, it's not 'you lose, defeated by the mighty door'. See the difference?

And the last point boils down to you not understanding that rules aren't meant to be followed forever, again.

I read it, but it didn't really disagree with my synopsis of the type of DM you are. Death is to be avoided at all costs unless the players are specifically asking for it, am I wrong?

You're right, but most DMs turn failing forward into "I'm scared of the PCs dying because then they won't get to see the ending to my oh-so-original donut steel adventure" and start wanking them off.

Hell, I've been guilty of it too. But that doesn't excuse it. The main issue is failing to distinguish the "forward" meaning moving the story forward (correct) as opposed to moving the characters forward (wrong).

>dungeon world
Oh dear, you're retarded

So "failing forward" just means "shit on the player characters when they fail a basic check until they all end up dead and/or turtling because they can't do anything."

Nice meme. Thanks for reminding me why Apocalypse World mechanics should have stayed in Apocalypse World, where they actually worked. Not in fucking heroic fantasy where you start out with as many hit points as an elder dragon.

>I also have a problem with this as well. This IS the traditional go to example of fail-forward, but ultimately it's heavily flawed. If there's no penalty, then there should be no roll and the thief should unlock the door automatically if it's within their skill reach.

Typically, this IS supposed to be what failing forward is coupled with. The original rules for Apocalypse World, for example, stress that players do not roll if there isn't a meaningful consequence to failure. If the only narrative risk to unlocking a door is that the door takes a very long time to open, then most systems that employ a "fail forward" philosophy will also say to just let the door open.

>And then when you fail that threat, the philosophy encourages you to make the fall into another threat, and another threat, but never ACTUALLY follow through with it.
I think this is where your misunderstanding with failing forward is causing issue. The only thing that failing forward is intended to be a stopgap against is nothing happening as a result of a skill check. Nowhere has a writing on failing forward - at least as far as I am aware - suggested that the consequence of failing to safely navigate a narrow ledge isn't still falling down a pit, or that the consequence of failing a roll in combat isn't still getting stabbed, and both of these are things that are fully expected to deal the appropriate damage and potentially kill a player.

The only thing that failing forward means is that a player who fails a roll to gather information gets bad information instead of no information, or that a player who fails a roll to negotiate with NPCs is betrayed or led into a bad situation instead of stonewalled. I think it might be the "forward" that's throwing things off. It's not about providing a safety net for players, because things that are expected to kill player characters are still supposed to be able to kill them. It's just a matter of keeping things moving towards those threats faster.

Side note: in dungeon world, there's three types of result for a roll:

Success
Success with a price (fail forwards)
Failure (also fail forwards)

If you do well enough to succeed, good job, you're done.

If you don't get it done good enough you can switch one problem for another (run out of ammo, monsters turning up, the eye of sauron is upon you, whatever).

If you fail, something else happens but it's still moving the story forwards towards your inevitable demise.

The success with a price is where you get to choose if you want to die to get something done, as the ultimate price.

Failure is just where you may just flat out die.

>It uses a 20 sided dice for its main resolution system
>Its rules are just holdovers from the 70's kept to preserve the system's identity
>It promotes obsession over "builds" and general gamey bullshit
These three things always bugged me.

>shit on the player characters when they fail a basic check until they all end up dead and/or turtling because they can't do anything
You only make the players roll when they do something that matters, idiot. That's basic GMing.

It just so happens players will do a lot of stupid things that matter in keeping their dumb asses alive.

Yes, you're wrong.

Whenever a fight happens in my games, it will always be for a specific reason- I don't do 'random encounters'. There will be a reason why people are fighting, something to lose and something to gain. Most often, the goals of their opponents won't include the explicit death of PC's, so they won't be on the table outside of unusual circumstances. However, if things come to a head and someone is out for blood, if that PC goes down that PC is very probably dead.

It's not about players being stupid, it's about what makes sense in context.

I find that Apocalypse World's engine also works really well in The Sprawl, since it sticks to the harm clocks instead of DW's bloat HP and the level of character-driven grit that AW encourages also ends up being a good fit for Cyberpunk.

There's a lot that DW does wrong, and I feel the biggest issue is that AW's mechanics just aren't meant for heroic fantasy.

>It's about the fact that the entire story grinding to a halt because the characters failed to

>The only thing that failing forward is intended to be a stopgap against is nothing happening as a result of a skill check.

That's not really fail-forward philosophy though. Fail-forward means that an abject failure is turned into a chance of success or a minor setback. While your example with the door could be likened to fail-forward, in reality what you're talking about is the breadcrumbs philosophy, the idea that the adventure should always be "solvable" and not have a single point-of-failure that could prevent it from being solved, something codified with the Gumshoe system.

This is a little different because it's mostly talking about fixing gaps in design on the DM's side rather than fixing problems with the skill system on the Players side, which is more or less what Fail-forward philosophy attempts to address. Which is the second problem I've always had with the door example. The problem with the door example isn't that the players choked on a single point and now the adventure sucks, it's the fact that the DM designed the adventure in such a way that the adventure failed due to bad rolls.

Something closer to the fail-forward philosophy would be the example Dungeon World gives in their handbook of the thief sneaking through the mansion (at least I think it was DW), where they failed, then alerted the guard, but the guard wasn't FULLY alert yet, as opposed to the thief failing and alerting the household entirely.

Two of these points can be applied to GURPS and GURPS is fucking great. Especially because it uses 3d6 and not a single funky die.

Then I misjudged you completely. Carry on.

I'm in a game that uses 1d6 as the only fucking dice, execute me please.

simpled6 isn't bad brah

Often times failing your goal, surviving and having to move on with the repercussions can be far more cutting than getting a blank slate free of your past fuckups.

This is what super lethal GMs miss out on. They're not being harsh, they're always giving players an easy out.

Those are, in fact, the campaigns that stick with you much longer. Not just losing but FAILING, and having to see the consequences thereof, really eats at players.

Actually, as a player, I tend to hate this. It feels more like I got by on luck and because of a passive DM rather than my own skill, and even when I die I feel like I learn something from my character's death and improve.

But I play OSR, so what do I know?

OSR failure can be more than a party wipe. Sometimes you have the choice to run and that can be a worse failure.

Normally I just have multiple routes, with the locked door either being the safest or most direct way.

different approaches and all that

Saying 'this sort of rule system works well if you ignore this part of it' isn't really a stellar defense. I mean yeah most groups will ignore the minor costs you're right, but those rules are still there, I'd rather just play the system that doesn't have those in the first place.

Running away isn't failure in OSR, though. It's a means of survival. The only real failure in OSR is retirement or death.

It's a matter of group preference. My groups enjoys gender having both a narrative and mechanical impact. We feel that it gives your choice of character gender a greater meaning than just "lul penis/tits."

It does help that we don't use humans as a playable race. It deters people from sperging out about feminists/misogyny and such.

The only complaint I've gotten is that I didn't give a transgender character the full mechanical benefits of both sexes.

>The only complaint I've gotten is that I didn't give a transgender character the full mechanical benefits of both sexes.

I sincerely hope this was only a moment of idiocy on your player's part, because even objectively that doesn't make any fucking sense.

Snouts & Slaves

The line was in the section about character sex, right above the section about character weight.

It says:

>You can play a male or female character without gaining any special benefits or hindrances. Think about how your character does or does not conform to the broader culture’s expectations of sex, gender, and sexual behavior. For example, a male drow cleric defies the traditional gender divisions of drow society, which could be a reason for your character to leave that society and come to the surface.

>You don’t need to be confined to binary notions of sex and gender. The elf god Corellon Larethian is often seen as androgynous or hermaphroditic, for example, and some elves in the multiverse are made in Corellon’s image. You could also play a female character w ho presents herself as a man, a man w ho feels trapped in a female body, or a bearded female dwarf who hates being mistaken for a male. Likewise, your character’s sexual orientation is for you to decide.

If that triggers you then you have lead an extremely sheltered life. Fantasy, literature, and actual history is full of examples of people who defy gender norms or even blur the lines. Loki & Odin, Eowyn, Vivec, Joan of Arc, Mulan.