Which is worse, downplaying gender differences or overplaying them?

>sensible commentary on gender

Thanks user, always puts me in a good mood to read an intelligent response in a trollbait thread.

And real world statistical data is irrelevant to by default exceptional people living in fantasy worlds

I try. I think it's nice to discuss the way we would like things to be, but it's also necessary to recognize the way things are. Should women barefoot submissive and men hyper-violent club-draggers? No, but there are absolutely some people like that alive, right now, who legitimately believe that is the way things should be. In a game of pretend, I don't see why such a thing is totally unacceptable to role-play, or negative at all. That sort of qualification is entirely dependent on who you play with.

I was joking, pal. Relax.

Well the worlds strongest man (going by lift loads and comparing them to 3.pf)
Has a strength of 22
The worlds strongest woman has a strength of 18

there is no fun being a pants-wearing take-no-shit girl who sticks it to the man if society dont care what she does

"Realism" != "Believability"

I have seen shit in real life that broke my suspension of disbelief and question if everyone around me was fucking with me specifically. It ain't pleasant, but it's pretty illustrative of what these arguments are ACTUALLY about-- common social perception of norms and what elements would fit into a standard fantasy RPG's "plot" better.

(And you probably knew that already, but you're just a damn sperg what gets uncomfortable when there's no "correct" answer.)

The best possible compromise between realism and feminism is for females to have -2 str but +2 dex. But women and bugmen will still reeeeee over that, so just go neutral and avoid the drama.

Realistically speaking, there would be far less of a disparity in strength, dex and perceptive skills if there were horrible dangerous, magical threats, and sneaking deadly things everywhere in tghe world like there is in a fantasy world than there is in this one. Sure, things were dangerous, but if the entire world were Australia? there would be a much smaller disparity between male and female strength, and a lot more twins.

>And even we don't really know how much those two affect people.
What are you 15? Biology is key. Do you think women want to leave there baby's with strangers so they can go to work? Nature is stronger than society. Fact is society has developed from nature. The roles men and women have are because of our nature and not because of some social input from space.
Some women are X but most women aren't.
Some men are Y but most aren't.
That's why most gender roles are true.
That said. It's a fantasy game. If you wanna play it with a communist mindset that's up to you. I prefer my games where the women are dressed in burkas and chained to the household choirs. They are happier that way.

Realism also does not automatically break suspension of disbelief, and it's the best metric next to setting-consistent internal logic by which to measure verisimilitude, oh autist calling the social other-than "sperg".

If the question is "What common social perception of norms and what elements would fit into a standard fantasy RPG's 'plot' better?" then I already answered that more than adequately by saying
>whatever functions in the real world
>unless the setting says otherwise

I'm not uncomfortable by the lack of a "correct" answer. In fact, I gave an incredibly reasonable and specific answer to that question, and you're reacting hard enough to call me a sperg and project because I didn't take a non-nonsensical, hard-line stance one way or the other.

One of us here is uncomfortable, and it's certainly not me. I'm sorry that the right answer is almost never one part of a polarized dichotomy, especially in the intricacies of complex social interactions such as gender identity and/or roles.

Yes, we know, because you won't ever shut up about it, fucking Gorean idiot.

I live in Australia, its actually not even deadly here, a couple of venomous spiders and snakes but thats really it
We dont have anything big like lions or tigers or elephants
Most dangerous thing here is crocodiles and theyre rare

...I'd like to take a moment just to praise you for not being a "depends on the setting!" autist or so ready to jump at shadows in fear of /pol/ that you can't hold a discussion.

That said, I'd argue that such an environment would quite possibly lead to even stricter social norms if there were anything approaching civilized areas-- Y'know, points of light style bullshit-- By virtue of any given civilization NEEDING an expendable half of society at ALL times in such a setting, and that while the opportunity would be there for women warriors-- Hell, they'd almost have to exist, tragedy happens-- They wouldn't be particularly common or desired by pretty much any institution, even if individuals often found 'em hot.

Like, all societies would be on the equivalent of war footing at all times, and maintaining population growth would be difficult at best.

Why do you think such a common type of setting would by default lead to your claims? Especially the "twins" portion-- That's just confusing to me.

They're both bad.

Man, you're arguing about a bunch of shit I never claimed or even insinuated because you're butthurt and would rather respond to your boogeyman than my post. That's fuckin' great.

To respond to literally the one thing you said that has any bearing on what I said:

>whatever functions in the real world
>unless the setting says otherwise

The real world is inconsistent and doesn't "function" in one manner, but the real world also doesn't produce clean narratives of the type you see in fiction. This is not a workable solution.

In general downplaying is good for deconstruction, overplaying is good for satire.

This is Veeky Forums, we don't have healthy balances around here.

To do that, I would actually have to have experience of being a woman tho
I can only emulate being a woman

>Who the fuck has 40 STR that's a mortal, non-beast character?

>depends on the setting autist

Yes, because taking a polarized stance on a vague ass question that's already been discussed into the ground is sooooo much more intellectually stimulating. Fuck off, pseud. Forcing a dichotomy isn't intelligence - it's quite literally a logical fallacy.

I addressed your response point by point, actually.

>"Realism" != "Believability"
to which I responded
>Realism also does not automatically break suspension of disbelief, and it's the best metric next to setting-consistent internal logic by which to measure verisimilitude, oh autist calling the social other-than "sperg".

And then you stated
>what these arguments are ACTUALLY about-- common social perception of norms and what elements would fit into a standard fantasy RPG's "plot" better.
to which I responded
>whatever functions in the real world
>unless the setting says otherwise

You also accused me of
>And you probably knew that already, but you're just a damn sperg what gets uncomfortable when there's no "correct" answer
to which I countered
>I gave an incredibly reasonable and specific answer to that question, and you're reacting hard enough to call me a sperg and project because I didn't take a non-nonsensical, hard-line stance one way or the other.
and
>One of us here is uncomfortable, and it's certainly not me. I'm sorry that the right answer is almost never one part of a polarized dichotomy, especially in the intricacies of complex social interactions such as gender identity and/or roles.

>the real world is inconsistent
The real world has all kinds of levels of consistency and inconsistency, exactly as any good setting should as well.
>the real world doesnt produce clean narratives of the type you see in fiction
That's fundamentally false, especially considering almost all narrative developmental arcs are grounded in reality, but believe what you want.
>this is not a workable solution
Except for all the times it is?

If you have a disparity in the genders as wide as you do humans in this world, and you send up the 'disposable' people to kill things, then you end up with the weaker, less hardy, and (according to the people on Veeky Forums who care about such things) less perceptive sex without guardians to defend them or their children. You literally brred in weakness doing this, because the higher fatality levels reduce the breeding male numbers, which means they have more women to protect, who cannot protect themselves, and therefore die to the monsters who sneak/brutalize/magic their way into encampments. Net result is a hemorrhage of population and onset of societal death.

But if you breed for stronger, more hardy, and more perceptive females, they can defend themselves and the children while the men are away, as well as suffering less during pregnancy. Women who have twins (which is a genetic predisposition) and men who get women pregnant with twins will also breed more often because it's a good quality, increasing the number of twin births. Net result is a stronger general population with less disparity between the sexes.

If you magical realm it, you end up a with a population of no-gender dimorphic people who all have mamrries and whose men and women have equal beauty/ugliness,
so men can care for children whose mother has been killed, even if he can't have any more himself.

People who play to gender stereotypes 100% of the time are uninventive at best and >inb4 shrieks of "SJW!!!1!!" for insinuating the mere possibility of this sexist at worst. Characters should be individuals first and foremost, especially in most games where you play exceptional outliers and not your run-of-the-mill everymen; you shouldn't necessarily defy convention for the sake of defying convention, but you shouldn't stick to convention for the sake of sticking to convention either.

Attribute scores are not linear measurements. You can't substract 10% off them.

I was joking. It's a joke. I was not being serious.

Okay, sorry about that.

That's actually kinda interesting, made me think about how exceptional the PC's really are

>Yes, because taking a polarized stance on a vague ass question that's already been discussed into the ground is sooooo much more intellectually stimulating. Fuck off, pseud. Forcing a dichotomy isn't intelligence - it's quite literally a logical fallacy.

Where the hell am I asking for a polarized stance? I have literally already asked for nuance from a fella I tend to use an opposite interpretation from for standard points of light setting. And assuming that's what's being discussed is hardly a massive leap, given that's the overwhelmingly vast majority of what is actually played by folks.

Now, to break down the "point by point" bullshit where you thought you were responding to me...

In claiming that realism was not believability, I was not claiming realism AUTOMATICALLY breaks suspension of disbelief. I'm claiming that talking about "realism" compared to "setting-consistent logic" or even "narrative focus" is such a distant fucking second that it's not even in the same realm. It might BE the next best option, but it doesn't matter, because it's still crap. Why?

>whatever functions in the real world

Is such a vast and broad notion that you can't fit all of the limits of it in a fucking game, and moreover, even if you succeeded, it wouldn't make for a good narrative, you goddamn chucklefuck. We bind characters in Shadowrun to being Shadowrunners because narrative focus is inherently interesting, dipshit.

Moreover, I'm sorry that you just LOVE the smell of your own farts, but your answer being "reasonable" has no bearing on it being useful, relevant, or correct. Moreover, it was the DEAD OPPOSITE of being specific-- You literally just whined about "the real world" in order to justify the death of narrative focus that isn't setting-specific.

Finally, you end by showing that you don't know how fiction works, and by showing that you think you're not massively influenced by your ideological biases but calling 'em "reality." Such wow.

Depends a lot on what you are playing.
On a D&D 3.5 high fantasy superheroes game it makes no sense to have gender diferences because the pcs are pretty much demigods.
If you are playing something more down to earth you might want to have those, but you might downplay it for a Xena type character.

I've noticed that every player I've ever had who wanted more 'strong women' etc. in the game suddenly changed their tune when half the random mooks they had to slaughter were girls.
Almost like they only wanted equal representation in the good aspects.

Bench press world record
Female: 272 kg
Male: 335 kg (raw), 487 kg (with bench press shirt)

Deadlift world record
Female: 290 kg
Male: 460 kg (raw), 500 kg (with wrist straps)

Clean & Jerk World Records (69 kg)
Female: 158 kg
Male: 198 kg

C & J world record (no weight limit)
Female: 193 kg
Male: 263 kg

Male athletes tend to be almost twice as strong as their female counterparts. The difference is even higher with “normal” people.

this
problem is most of Veeky Forums rarely does or witnesses intense physical feats, let alone how much men outstrip women in such feats

Neutral roleplay is the only way to actualy roleplay a adventuring PC. If you didn't treated female PCs as males, you wouldn't really have a adventuring party

to add to that, in 3.5 the absolute maximum a human can go without magic is 23 in any 1 stat
Which mean that the moment any PC gets a stat of 24 or higher they are better in that stat than any human ever will be in real life

I think that if you make certain skill sets (for example: make a subset of magic that draws power from a mother goddess that is only available to women that have had kids) unavailable to certain races or sexes and/or impose occasional penalties for being whatever in certain circumstances (A sexist guard that will not be convinced to stand aside by a female pc). that can really enrich a setting and make a roleplaying session more engaging but if you aren't willing to go that in depth you should just stick to neutrality.

it really is, playing with women being less strong than men, would involve men always outstriping women at every step in combat
Much like in real life though
Women do have advantages over men in real life, but none of those advantages for player characters

>What are finesse weapons?

>Men are also more dexterous than women

I don't understand how you idiots think men and women have different stats. They have the exact same statline.
I can only assume
hasn't ever played anything but fatal.

Well shit. I thought we were going with the "Men = STR, Women = DEX" thing that someone else brought up. I'm pretty sure I've seen that somewhere, but it's pretty irrelevant anyway.

What if you have a sister so you have a general understanding of how the other half lives and you can empathize with woman easily because they're just people.

Yeah. You cannot have dex without str

You actually totally can. Otherwise, video game champions would be swole. They're not.

Follow the discussion user.

While dex and str aren't the same thing in many(most?) settings, it doesn't really the minimum sense. Our muscles doesn't work the way most authors think it does.

I normally don't care and it never really comes up. I suppose that gender roles are in place and that women tend to have less upperbody strength, but that doesn't ever apply to my players.

It totally makes sense, as people with high dexterity in real life often have little muscle mass.
People like video game champions, surgeons, clockmakers, and the like generally aren't known for being muscular or strong.

Their brains work differently. Different hormones.

Heck, even gymnasts and such aren't that strong.

>He can't run alternate hormone configuration emulations
>he can't simulate drugs on demand
>he can't turn off unpleasant stimuli when needed
fucking casuals

all of those things are a very specific niche of manual dexterity and do not cover dexterity as a whole.

Using video game champions is fucking pathetic.
Better example would be olympic athletes.

You need some basic strength for raw physical agility, but still not much strength. like
points out, olympic gymnastics aren't all that strong either. neither are the figure skaters. Or the ribbon twirlers.

>the scientifically verified 10% difference in physical capability between human males and females

Easy way to spot an idiot: they make wild claims without any proof.

>points out, olympic gymnastics aren't all that strong either
Of course they're. Do you think a random neckbeard have the strenght to do what they do?

No, a gymnast would.
You know, those guys who aren't all that strong.
You really need to pay attention to what people write.

Pretty much. In real life it's more like 30%

If someone's got raw manual dexterity, they have good dex.

I'm yet to see someone with "bad" dex then

>He's never seen someone with bad handwriting, poor video game play, shakey hands, or anything in those lines
Where do you live that's populated only by overmen, user? I want to go there.
Can I get in if I have nerve damage in my hand? It's not very agile any more, but the other one still works.

Depends on the tone you're going for. I've been in games where gender differences were up-played and an important part of society and it made those individuals who were exceptions to that rule even more impressive, and I've been in games where men and women are treated totally equally in every regard.

Both are tonal shifts, and both can be put to good use or bad use. Done poorly I'd argue overplaying is worse because it can be magical realm or legit hateful tier, while the worst underplaying is going to do is be totally acceptable to most people. There's an argument if you're playing a historical game but if you're treating everyone equally at any point in history you're already playing a fantasy and should think of it as such.

Gender is something social by default. You can do whatever you like with that.
Sex differences meanwhile, is a more complicated situation.

I would argue that downplaying gender differences is worse because it comes off as propaganda and sends people a message that there are no gender differences. Overplaying differences, regardless of what kind of differences they are, is how you create caricatures and they're low resolution representations of how someone is in relation to other people. So, really, the argument is whether 0 or 100 is closer to 50, and the mathematical answer is neither, but from a psychological perspective, both 50 and 100 are something, 0 is not. So, claiming 0 when the answer is 50 is a bigger lie than claiming 100 when it's 50.

That's my answer in a vacuum, anyways. If you're talking about an adventuring party, then the reality is that everyone is going to be of a particular masculine persuasion, because adventuring is on the masculine side of the scale, right? The only super feminine people (men or women) who'd be in an adventuring party would be individuals looking to surround themselves with meat -- and I mean that in every sense of the word.

A matter of taste and degree, really. If I were to set a universal rule to do one or the other, it would be to overplay them. Exaggerating differences is much better for helping people understand the world around them than extinguishing them.

It's all fraught with danger in the end. After all, tyranny is the deliberate removal of nuance.

OP asked what was worse, not what was more true to life.

He's just low dex himself and so sets the bar very, very low.

Overplaying. It's a fantasy game

And I say this as one of the biggest "women are not physically suited for combat" fags out there.

That's not entirely true. Gender for most of English-speaking history had two definitions, one was a more kosher synonym for sex and the other was an uncommon synonym for genre. Gender meaning lifestyle choices or whatever is a 20th century invention, extrapolating for how we use pronouns or how other languages use words. I don't think you'd actually even disagree with that, right? We call men masculine, which means "man-like", and we call women feminine, which means "woman-like", and if we call a car or a boat feminine, we're not saying it has a vagina, we're saying it's feminine, like those people who have vaginas. But a man, too, can be feminine and a woman, too, can be masculine, they're just not the norm. I think you'd agree with this for the most part, right?

The thing is, those things don't happen thanks to society, they happen thanks to biology. If little boys and little girls are given a choice between dolls and swords, girls will almost always pick dolls and boys will almost always pick swords, without anyone indoctrinating them to behave in that way.

This was made disastrously clear with David Reimar, who John Money made famous by lying about. He had a botched circumcision and so was emasculated and raised as a girl, but by age ~10 he realized something was terribly wrong because he didn't act like a girl, he acted like a boy - because he was a boy - and, of course, he eventually killed himself.

Women aren't just weak men without a penis, the sexes are intrinsically different at a variety of levels that transcends just what you see on the outside, and these differences exist on a bell curve and there's much overlap for sure, but that doesn't mean the differences don't exist or that there's a third gender in the middle or whatever.

And if someone asks if you're a dude, they're not asking if you prefer dolls or swords, they're asking whether you have a Y chromosome. This is something everyone knows. Before they go to college.

Gender and sex are also contained as much in your brain as in your DNA. Trannies show up as having brain structures that fit more with the gender they identify as, for example.
But like you say, you can't really indoctrinate that into people - the brain has some fantastic plasticity, but there are things that aren't going to be changed by outside influence; no amount of social interaction is going to cure my 'tism.

I'd keep in mind that Adventurers are outliers in almost every way. Sure, people often dream about going out and see the world but very rarely does anybody have the will to go out and see it. More than that, most wouldn't survive their first big fight with bandits or wolves or what have you.

So gender differences apply to other people, NPCs, not adventurers.

Every scrawny Nerd here could beat up a physically fit women, probably more than one at the same time.
When I was in highschool we had a PE Martial Arts class taught by a female Police officer. We had to hold back not to hurt her..

You've clearly not met many scrawny nerds, then. My emaciated 5'5 ass can't beat my sister in an arm wrestle. That or your police officer teacher had martial arts training but that wasn't expected of her job because de-escalation is a thing or she's a traffic cop or something, you can know the technicals of martial arts without being strong in the slightest.

Also is this a bait to post musclegirls? This feels like an excuse to post musclegirls.

Yeah, I had someone argue with me once that a PC's deadlift capability was best approximated by the rule about "how much can a character lift overhead" based on their Str score. Deadlift.

>Exact same statline
Dude

I just wish both sides would shut the fuck up about it and leave the 98% of people around them to get on with just, you know, playing bloody games.

Not compared to powerlifters but compared to other athletes they absolutely are

In my setting men and women are almost identical outside of appearance and sexual characteristics because I don't fucking care

>You don't have to be strong to do things gymnasts can do because gymnasts aren't strong
Cool argument bro, it's so symmetrical

Berserk when Casca got her period was one of the best "women in combat" depictions ever honestly.

>that pic
hnnnggh
Seriously though user how are you so embarassingly weak? Head over to Veeky Forums for Pelor's sake

Being op of this thread.

you don't play many games, do you?

>My emaciated 5'5 ass can't beat my sister in an arm wrestle.

you are genuinely pathetic

>strong compared to other atheletes
kek

forum.bodybuilding.com/showthread.php?t=452977

>gymnast salt
Yeah, so strong. Just like them ribbon dancers.

Or maybe we go with a better idea and tell you to shut your retarded mouth.

Sure am.
Point being I exist and many women beat me in a fight, ergo it stands to reason there are other men whom could beat women in a fight, especially if the woman is a trained and practising combatant and the man is not.
This means user's prior statement about "every scrawny nerd here could beat up a physically fit woman" is incorrect.

You're an idiot. As some other anons have sort of gestured toward, the gap is actually greater than ±4. If we assume the traditional normal curve of 3-18 is representative of men's strength and place the overlapping normal curves of real world strength on that, the actual strength mod you get out for women is -6. And, in fact, in a medieval society it would most likely be even bigger as heavy manual labor used to be far more common among men, pushing their average up, while it's also well documented that into the early 20th century women were significantly smaller on average than they are in the modern day -- thus driving the women's average down.

>Lifestyle means we should increase the average
But surely if you're playing some kind of female adventurer, as one is likely to be in a fantasy game, then things such as the commonality of heavy labour shouldn't be taken into account when attempting to calculate STR as the adventurer HAS been doing physical labour most if not all of their life? The adjustments are supposed to be based on genetics, yes? An orc is genetically predisposed to be stronger, for example.
Unless you're using a system in which you also decrease STR for Clerics, decrease INT for Barbarians, etc.

Itt: People who cannot lift a bread box making judgements about strength.

You're the soyboy exception that proves the rule.

Also, consider suicide.

Why does everyone get that saying wrong in the exact opposite of the way it was meant to be used?
And why would someone resort to reddit /b/ shit like "kys" when on Veeky Forums?