Genderbending in fantasy settings?

Which fantasy settings/games have the most genderbending and related themes?

My vote goes to Pathfinder/Golarion:
>girdle of masculinity/femininity (from early editions of D&D)
>elixir of genderswap (because the girdle being a "cursed item" wasn't PC)
>cowl of the hag (item that gives witch powers and illusions the wearer into an old woman)
>hermaphrodite tieflings (on the table of random tiefling traits and one tiefling NPC)
>WotR lesbian NPC couple where the one's genderswap is a plot point
>the infamous trap in Shattered Star
>pic related: the Forgotten Pharaoh in Mummy's Mask, a female possessed by the male villain's mask (reminiscent of a certain FR NPC)

I know other settings like Faerun have a lot too though.

Other urls found in this thread:

d20pfsrd.com/magic-items/cursed-items/
paizo.com/threads/rzs2pyhf&page=4?Is-The-Pathfinder-Setting-Ethically-Problematic#188
d20pfsrd.com/Magic-items/cursed-items/#TOC-Girdle-of-Opposite-Gender
paizo.com/threads/rzs2pyhf&page=4?Is-The-Pathfinder-Setting-Ethically-Problematic#166
pathfinderwiki.com/wiki/Ayavah
pathfinderwiki.com/wiki/Talk:Ayavah#Gender
img.4plebs.org/boards/tg/image/1450/32/1450325095392.png
img.4plebs.org/boards/tg/image/1450/32/1450325160227.png
pathfinderwiki.com/wiki/Shardra_Geltl
paizo.com/paizo/blog/v5748dyo5lgcn?Meet-the-Iconics-Shardra-Geltl
cam.ac.uk/research/news/males-and-females-differ-in-specific-brain-structures
stanmed.stanford.edu/2017spring/how-mens-and-womens-brains-are-different.html
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroscience_of_sex_differences
twitter.com/SFWRedditImages

Bump because that's hot.

starts with an F, ends with an L, rhymes with malal

I don't think FATAL had much genderbending. The awful spells are a bit more creative.

What shattered star trap? Got a place I can look?

>Kick a sarcophagus because I forgot rule number fuckin 1 of adventuring.
>Immediately slain by a Phantasmal Killer, and wake up as a copy of the Runelord of Lust.

tl;dr if you trigger a trap on a sarcophagus you die and your consciousness and soul end up in a particular woman's body.

Bump

That's a sexy mummy-ILF.

Does the mask have to stay on?

Oh, you meant a dungeon trap,

The subject matter made me think you were talking about the other kind of trap.

A few of the examples, that one included, aren't necessarily gender fuckery. That trap, for example, makes a party member conform to a static body, rather than make it a theme that they've swapped sex.

Don't be pedantic, it's still gender bending if the character was male.

ofc

Corellon is literally a god of queer shit.

>The subject matter made me think you were talking about the other kind of trap.
In retrospect I should have been more specific.
t. OP

>>elixir of genderswap (because the girdle being a "cursed item" wasn't PC)
That's not really the reason the elixer was made. It was made as a way to transform without eating an item slot.

When some SJW complained about genderswapping being a curse a dev piped in and said that the girdle is a curse because it goes against the wishes of the wearer. The Elixer of Gender swapping actually doesn't work if the drinker doesn't want it too.

Not sure about Faerun, but IRL Egypt ruler queens did wore (in official representations, anyway) the beard like in the pic.

can't cursed items normally be removed, just without lifting the curse?

>a dev piped in and said that the girdle is a curse because it goes against the wishes of the wearer.
iirc one employee gave that reason but another said it shouldn't have been cursed. so split view.

>d20pfsrd.com/magic-items/cursed-items/
>d20pfsrd.com/magic-items/cursed-items/
Also link to the post saying it shouldn't?
>paizo.com/threads/rzs2pyhf&page=4?Is-The-Pathfinder-Setting-Ethically-Problematic#188
Here's the employee explaining it. I'm not calling you out or anything, but PF is the most lied about game on Veeky Forums so when people make claims like "he said she said" I like to see back up for future reference.

3.5 even points out that many cursed items are desirable if you know they're cursed. The example given is a wand of fireball that heals damage instead of inflicting it - it's one of the best healing items in the game, and the curse is that it tricks you into using it on enemies (with some variants it even screws with your senses so that you don't notice what it's really doing).

One cursed item even mentions this in its description - the sword that forces you into a barbarian rage is said to be a highly desirable item for fighters, with many people actively seeking it out.

In addition to that, many of the random curses aren't harmful. There's stuff like "the first time you use this item, your hair grows slightly longer; this never happens again".

I have no idea if this was kept in PF.

There's also the -2 sword, which forces you to draw it in place of any other weapon and reappears on your person if separated from you.

A ton of PCs (particularly those who didn't need weapons to fight) would carry around a -2 sword made out of adamantine, so that if they were ever captured and thrown in prison they'd be able to break their way out.

Then there's the item that's supposed to read other peoples' thoughts but instead broadcasts your own thoughts. There's plenty of cases where that would be useful.

Thanks. Exact quotes:
d20pfsrd.com/Magic-items/cursed-items/#TOC-Girdle-of-Opposite-Gender
>The change is permanent unless undone with curse-removing magic. Once its magic takes effect, the belt can be removed without effort.
>the belt can be removed without effort.

paizo.com/threads/rzs2pyhf&page=4?Is-The-Pathfinder-Setting-Ethically-Problematic#188
>Sean K Reynolds:
>It is a cursed item because it changes your gender *whether you want it to or not.*
>That's why the girdle of opposite gender is a cursed item. It doesn't matter that some people might want to change their gender... the item doesn't give the wearer a choice.

Another example for OP
paizo.com/threads/rzs2pyhf&page=4?Is-The-Pathfinder-Setting-Ethically-Problematic#166
>Arshea's followers often spend time living as both genders,

The mask is the death mask of an evil male pharaoh who is possessing the woman wearing it.

(also it's Golarion, not Realms, and I don't think there were many female rulers in Ancient Egypt, so not much precedent.)

>Implying you wouldn't genderswap if it was a) a biologically perfect transformation into the other sex and b) reversible.
I would in an instant, being able to act as two different people alone opens up a world of opportunities.

>Paizo developers insert their magical real item into the game 'forcing players to switch to the opposite gender' and have it be a 'cursed item that permanently changes your gender and can only be reversed with remove curse'
>SJWs complain that it's transphobic.
>Everyone else complains that it's only 'curse' is just to magical realm the game.
>Paizo either defends it's use, or blaming it on lack of communication.
How is it a cursed item if the only thing that changes aren't actually stats, but just "you have boobs and a pussy lol"

I imagine it would be a problem if there was any differances between men and women in terms of rights in the setting... which Paizo went for the egalitarian route, so its mostly pointless apart from the character wanting to be uncursed because their friends are laughing at them now.

>How is it a cursed item if the only thing that changes aren't actually stats, but just "you have boobs and a pussy lol"
>Muh stats are everything
Your own family won't recognize you anymore, your reputation is down back to zero because you're not who you once were in the eyes of anyone who didn't witness you transforming, any licenses, contracts and doccuments you had now have another person's name in them.

If you can't see why forceful or accidental gender swapping is a curse, you're a min-maxing retard with zero roleplaying or narrative IQ.

Honestly, a story of an explicable genderchange in the modern era, without any of the 'male chauvanist punished by walking in a women's shoes' tired shlock, would be a fucking fascinating story.

On the one hand, trying to prove you are yourself is nigh impossible. On the other hand, with today's electronic medium you could get pretty far using all of your old passwords and bank accounts considering those are still valid. The longer you do it the more likely someone is going to try and nail you for a rather extreme case of identity theft, but whats the alternative? You have no history. Maybe a DNA test can pass you off as a relative, but you better pray to god your fingerprints didn't change. Because your dental records certainly did.

You could easily fill a whole book with one guy turned girl trying desperately to prove to his friends, family, and government that this isn't some kind of elaborate ruse. Even if you forgive telling the government the truth for obvious reasons, your close friends and relatives are people you probably are not willing to suddenly drop forever.

The girdle of the opposite gender existed. before pathfinder.

>implying that's not why OP is asking

>any licenses, contracts and doccuments you had now have another person's name in them.

Pretty certain it just changes your gender, not your name.

>Ma'am, this document is in regards to a Sir Rodger Fredrickson. I will take the liberty of giving you the benefit of the doubt and presume you to be merely wasting my time with silly jokes.

>You could easily fill a whole book with one guy turned girl trying desperately to prove to his friends, family, and government that this isn't some kind of elaborate ruse.
I feel like there's more interesting things to do with that premise than just convincing people you are who you say you are, but I can't think of them.

That's why you always give your kid a name like Sam, Alex, Danny, Francis, Chris, or Uniqua.

>Like any of this stuff really matters in a medieval fantasy setting and you couldn't just say you're related to said person and no one would fact check you because you have the documents and it's the medieval era.
It's a curse in the laziest way possible, especially for the time period and official 'implied' setting. Also, you're an adventurer, unless you're doing some real high-level shit then you're usually not going to be worried about your tax records.

>But... But my modern setting!
Pathfinder is a medieval fantasy era game, it should be obvious that I was only thinking about it in said context.

>>Also, you could just strait up tell people "I was cursed" and it fits within the narrative, because it's a world with magical items and wizards who can polymorph, people know what this shit is.

>I was cursed, really
Implying that's not what a creeper, villain, rogue or handfull of trickster spirits would say.
Also I'm not paying you for slaying those goblins because I hired a male barbarian to do it, not a crossdressing stripper.

>tfw no GM I know would run a game in gif related setting

>How is it a cursed item if the only thing that changes aren't actually stats, but just "you have boobs and a pussy lol"
Ask every Fable player.

...

But user, it's got everything! Magic haunted springs that turn you into whatever drowned in them, over-the-top possibly-lethal martial arts based on literally anything and everything, insane love dodecahedrons, the works!

No, I know. It's just that by the latter chapters of the manga, the world gone completely off its rocker, what with a cult of mountain destroying kung fu beastmen

I literally lowered my stats and had to eat 10 kilos of celery to stop looking like female Shreck

>and b) reversible.
>being able to act as two different people
I'd still do it without these.

>I feel like there's more interesting things to do with that premise than just convincing people you are who you say you are, but I can't think of them.
There are more things to do; the issue being, like you said, those things being -more interesting-. After you manage to regain your identity (to whatever extent you can) it's really just a bland story about the character itself if no other action is taken.

Say the MC gets swapped, manages to recover enough of their ID to keep their standard of living, doesn't lose their support network of friends and family, and by the grace of the Monad doesn't lose their job (or at least is shuffled around somewhere safe). What then? You have a slice-of-life with fish-out-of-water story wherein the only real notes are the situations that occur when the sex swap causes problems:

>oh fuck i just got my first period/boner in the middle of P.E. class/board meeting presentation
>damnit i just want a drink at the bar why won't this guy/girl lay off suspend your fucking disbelief you jaded whores
>ugh pissing/shitting in the opposite public bathroom is embarrasing
>how do i deal with these feels/aggression
>ok so i'm a guy/girl now and i still like guys/girls, am i straight or am i gay

None of those are interesting in and of themselves, only so if you write it well enough. That sort of episodic nonsense is better suited for an anime or cartoon, which they are! In order to make it an interesting story, you need to either make the plot and gender bending more important than the character, or make the setting enticing enough to overshadow it just the same. In the end, the base story just doesn't have much going for it without a support beam that will eventually make it a footnote. Or so I think.

One of the Iconic characters is trans.

Of course! In any story the premise and goal are only as interesting as the author can imagine how to elaborate on them. Being stuck as the other gender and dealing with it need imaginative elaboration, like character drama, inner monologue, some other journey the character is on (from a fantasy quest to surviving at high school), and obstacles that are thrown in his or her way. The sex swap problems aren't just things for the MC to explore at their leisure, they're obstacles to come into action in combination with other plot points (the board meeting where the first boner/period happens is key to the story, accidentally going into the wrong bathroom leads to a vital conversation or a confrontation).

>hermaphrodite tiefling
Whos the NPC?

Ayavah
pathfinderwiki.com/wiki/Ayavah
pathfinderwiki.com/wiki/Talk:Ayavah#Gender

Her initial description in Magnimar, City of Monuments listed "hermaphrodite" as her sex instead of male or female as normal for NPC one-line stats. When she got a full stat block in A Song of Silver (see pics below), her sex was simply left off, despite every other NPC in that chapter having male or female listed before their race and class. A lowkey way of being quieter about it without actually retconning it.

Before the publication of A Song of Silver, PFwiki had already decided to sanitize her as you can see from the links above. They listed her as female even though no source then or since says that, only uses female pronouns, and explicitly uses a different word where it would say female for female NPCs.

img.4plebs.org/boards/tg/image/1450/32/1450325095392.png
img.4plebs.org/boards/tg/image/1450/32/1450325160227.png
Pics SFW. No retcon, the subtext is all still there.

Who says you'd look different instead of just replacing your dick with a vag?

...

Maybe the curse is only changing your gender without changing anything else. It'd still work as advertised and it'd be an actual detrimental curse.

>smaller frontal bone
No offence, but wouldn't that make women dumber on average or is there something compensanting for it?
I know that the size of the brain is only correlated with intelligence, but wouldn't a smaller neocortex makes you less intelligent?

If it just changes your dick for a vagina it's turning you into a werid hermaphrodite, not the opposite gender.
At most you'd look like your twin sister, but no, you won't look like just yourself without a dick.

Isn't intelligence roughly based on brain:body ratio? Otherwise whales and elephants would be genius (INT 18+). Women have smaller bodies.

That's not how brains work.

I'd enjoy a more low-fantasy world that still has genderbending.

>brain is only correlated with intelligence
Nope. The quality and quantity of neural pathways does.

Sexist.

Women do have a slightly smaller brain and less gray matter than men. That doesn't change their mean intelligence, although it does change the IQ dispersion curve for the whole population of men vs women.

Forgot to add "smaller brain by weight & volume, although with a larger number of connections in certain parts". It's really the connections that matter.

What about a female party member donning the cursed girdle, becoming a female to male trap?

I would consider any item that forcibly changes your appearance to be cursed, even if it doesn't change your stats.

>Faerun
was degenerate shit in 1987

the girdle stays on

>unless undone with curse-removing magic
Aw man, they nerfed it. It used to be totally irreversible unless you got a god to intervene. Which would be really rough if you hit the 10% chance of it removing your genitals entirely. Without removing your libido. Hope you like butt stuff.

>The Elixer of Gender swapping actually doesn't work if the drinker doesn't want it too.
Wrong, it provides no save. The only cure is drinking it again.
Of course, you might never get the chance to.

>FATAL rhymes with Malal
What?

The girdle is disguised as another kind of magic belt. The elixir is easily identifiable.

Sneaky.

But doesn't that still need normal identifying magic? If it was mislabeled...

worthwhile existed before Pathfinder.

>tfw want to play this game now

gotchu covered pal

You just reminded me, I've actually read a webcomic with this exact premise, especially with the whole issue of proving your identity.
Yeah, found it, here you go:
:
http//archiv.comicgate.de/webcomics/she-s-me-oh-no-im-a-girl

I read it years ago, so I don't remember if it's actually any good, but it's pretty much a perfect match for what you described.

Sounds reasonable to me.

One of the demon lords in the Book of the Damned grants a boon to turn you into a hag. A female, attractive hag specifically.

The widow's cruelty boon from the hag demon lord Mestama.

Me too probably, if you kept your male mind and don't become burdened by self-destructive hypergamy. A cunning man in a beautiful woman's body would be a really easy life to live.

>A ___ in a beautiful woman's body would be a really easy life to live.

Shardra Geltl, the iconic shaman dwarf. Crystal Frasier, the PF developer who created her, is trans too.
pathfinderwiki.com/wiki/Shardra_Geltl
paizo.com/paizo/blog/v5748dyo5lgcn?Meet-the-Iconics-Shardra-Geltl

>smaller frontal bone
>No offence, but wouldn't that make women dumber on average
Nope. People with ADHD experience their entire frontal lobe almost completely shutting down when they try to concentrate, but if you test their intelligence they're at the same level as everyone else.
>or is there something compensating for it?
Yes and no, female brains work a bit differently than male brains.
>I know that the size of the brain is only correlated with intelligence
Somewhat, it's more the structure. If half of your cerebral cortex is removed at a young age (this is a procedure of fatal seizure-inducing NDs), your brain will develop pretty normally, with only motor skills being heavily affected.
>but wouldn't a smaller neocortex makes you less intelligent?
In relation to the rest of your brain, it can. But not at a significant level until you start getting into microcephaly. Otherwise your brain will just get more chunky and dense to compensate. Microcephaly is actually caused by an inability to do that effectively during gestation, which carries into adulthood.

Is she transgender though? From that story it seems like she was born female, her parents tried to raise her as a boy because it was more prestigious in conservative dwarven society, but later she fully embraced being female in her adult life.

Thanks! That was interresting.

Yes. See the comments on the Paizo blog link. The author is just extremely obtuse about explaining herself.

Women's neurons are wired differently than men. It's more side to side then front to back, so a smaller frontal lobe doesn't mean as much to them. It is also part of why when women go crazy they go CRAZY.

Incidentally, damage to the frontal cortex can turn you into a psychopath.

Where can I read more about these gender differences?

I always knew Pathfinder was shit but now it's FATAL tier shit. Not bad.

cam.ac.uk/research/news/males-and-females-differ-in-specific-brain-structures

stanmed.stanford.edu/2017spring/how-mens-and-womens-brains-are-different.html
(This one will piss off the people who like subtracting points from dex and int for women.).

The links from this article are worth persuing of you don't like the article itself..
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroscience_of_sex_differences

I guess they pronounce it Fay-tal. Or they pronounce Malal as May-lel.

>Why is SKR becoming the voice of reason?
Because when SKR joined Paizo they took advantage of his reputation and made him the official scapegoat for any unpopular decisions by the dev team. When it comes to PF only about half of his stupid comments are his own opinions, the others were pushed on him by writers who didn't want to hurt their image.

You could theoretically just take huge vacation from work/quit your job and say that you were getting some major sex reassignment surgery during that time from some crazy doctor. Then once the paperwork gets switched to your new sex you could move somewhere else and start a new life.

This implies you have medium to high level of wealth. If a cashier at McDonald's suddenly became a lady that might be more difficult.

If it's not pointing out how women should have int penalties compared to men, it's fake science.

This.

Forgotten Realms has a lot of casual genderbending and sex changing, even aside from curses from belts or goddesses. You can take a day trip to a major city, pay a wizard, and come back a different sex. And then change your mind a week later.

>You can take a day trip to a major city, pay a wizard, and come back a different sex. And then change your mind a week later.
That probably applies to all D&D settings.

They were talking about a genderbending book.

list?

>Wake up in the body of the biggest slut who ever existed.

Mike Shel had a fetish in mind when he wrote that adventure.

But JJ is the one who wishes he was Sorshen.

This is the most /r9k/ post I've ever seen.

how so??