Quote:Original post by aCynic2

BG series: Imoen is a thief/mage, Dynaheir, Viconia, Jaheira, Aerie, Branwell, Skie and Alora are thieves.
Compare that to: Jan, Edwin...Xan...
in ToB, in Watcher's Keep in the 2nd to last level, there is a red, green, purple, blue globe puzzle. When a mage is produced, it's a female. Most antogonist spell casters are male, btw.

NWN: Sharwyn was a bard, Linu, Nathyra is a wizard and assassin, The Valshares is a cleric, so too is the Seer, J'Nah, Heurodis.
NWN2: Qara, Elanee, Glina and Heatha...the female vampires are spell casters...Neeshka is a thief, I suspect Light of Heavens had a high dex because she was hard as hell to hit, Zhjaeve is a cleric.

For the BG1 part, how do you mean "compare that to"? Youve mentioned female mages and thieves, and then male mages, including an elven male mage (low constitution). So yes... I compare them, and in terms of their abilities, they have no penalties or bonuses from being male or female.

For NWN... again, none of them have any penalties of bonuses because they are female or male. Also - Linu was a cleric = high hit points class and moderate combat abilities. Compared to Tommy = high dex thief.
NWN2... Qara was a mage, yes, but compare that to her male elven counterpart wizard, Sand. And on the other side, theres Shandra Jerro who is a rough and ready fighter. And Light of Heaven is a heavily armoured paladin... being in heavy armour, her AC cant come from a high dex.

There are a few stereotypes in those games that show some specific characters fitting certain stereotypes. But there are also characters who counter those stereotypes, and none of the games give different stats for being male or female.
More importantly, none of those games ever give the player different stats for being male or female. They are all great examples of why stat differences between the sexes arent necessary.

Do y'all think that in a game where the player is playing above average characters in terms of ability that gender differences should not show up in the case of physical attributes?

btw, in my design, the character creation process involves creating multipliers for the attributes which would be multiplied by the characters attribute throughout the game, as in a male might have a multiplier of X+.2 and females X-.2 X being whatever the player selects. then the attribute would be multiplied by that throughout the game, so there would be as much impact on the attribute at the start of the game as there would be when the attribute is maxed out. Point being, it is a system that allows for a sort of bonus while still allowing the opposite sex to have higher stats in that attribute, some females can still be stronger than males. Should such a system be entirely player controled or should gender based differences be incorporated into it?

I strongly disagree with the concept of having stat differences for the genders. To say that men are physically stronger on average is one thing, but to nerf the ability of women to perform certain tasks no matter how they spec is irritating and unnecessary.

The player is not roleplaying your average jack or jill, but an exceptional person. So, for example, if I want to play a man whose beauty outshines Helen of Troy who can multitask better than anyone, and has little upper body strength but all the stamina in the world, and I roll a character in your game and find all or any of these things impossible because of your rigidly defined terms, I am going to feel that your game is limiting and somewhat stereotype-enforcing. (atypical examples were intentionally used in this post)

I'll tell you something: most female gamers I see who want their characters to fit female stereotypes will self-select for those stereotypes. I.e., they will roll mages, archers, healers, and other characters with low physical attributes. The female players who want a high strength score shouldn't be kept from that because your view of their roll in your setting is more limited than theirs.

And believe it or not, most women I know who game will not, the majority of the time, play characters that require a high strength score to begin with. Due to societal molding or whatever, they simply don't find that choice attractive.

However, you absolutely should not penalize the ones who do find that choice attractive.

I've 'never' found that a gender based stat changes benefits a game. In theory it could, if you were trying to make the 'ideal' warrior, he would have to be male, but I don't think that gender should really have an impact at all, let alone something major. By major I mean that a person who would usually play a female warrior would play a male one because his stat boosts are significantly higher. Therefore, balancing of the stats shouldn't have to happen, and having a constant multiplier by a stat is also irrelevant. The constant multiplier ( male multiply strength by 1.2, women multiply it by 0.8) or similar seems a particularly bad idea except that if you were able to choose a trait that would grant women that extra boost that men get (a woman normally has a strength multiplier of 0.8, but choosing THIS trait grants her 1.2, while sacrificing whatever she had a bonus multiplier in). It'd make the balancing bit easier, possibly. I just think that if I want to play a male wizard, I shouldn't be strongly tempted to be female for extra magic strength (or anything else), and vice versa, for all class/gender combinations.

As with the D&D/Blizzard use that gender doesn't matter, D&D never (to my knowledge) made a distinction stat-wise on gender, but a few classes are exclusive. Since D&D made no distinction, Blizzard never made any distinction (for obvious reasons). Their use of making women more magic-based is purely not based on stats granted by gender, it's just design.

this post is a wee bit on the long side, and sort of an expansion of the topic of equality in gaming, and deals not only with the concept of stat differentiation, but also the stereotypes created and enforced by this, so if you decide that this deviates a bit too much from the topic at hand, you're more than welcome to skip the rant. ^_-

I think the most important thing to recognise here is that realism is not always better, and if we're not going to give the women distinct social advantages that are coded as part of the game, why should we try to create a generic distinction between characters as far as statistics go?

On some level, game design is about choosing when realism is better than a more platonic outlook, and in terms of character equality, I find that creating an illusion of equality works better on many levels.

if I were female, I imagine I would be fairly annoyed if games gave women higher stats based on 'female intuition' and a certain feebleness nested in the whole 'damsel in distress' argument.

Personally, if I were a female playing serious games (and trust me they do exist, as well as women on the internet for that matter) I would despise the continuous weakness shown by female characters and enforcement of negative stereotypes. Because lets face it, in most video games, women are objects placed in the game to either be saved, or 'romantic' interest with breasts larger than their damned heads (which of course are filled with sawdust), and often times the latter as a result of the first.

most female gamers, due to the generally competitive and adrenaline pumping nature of games, are once behind the controller, or keyboard, just as bloodthirsty and badass as we like to think we are as we fight the hordes of undead, or bunnyhop our way to victory with a glock, and the presence of these weak, pathetic, hyper-sexualised women must drive them insane.

How many times have you wished you were able to kill a team-mate or group member in a single-player game for being a whiny little so and so? now imagine having this burning urge to destroy every character of your gender, and you will feel some of the frustration of female gamers, since most female characters have a tendency to be spandex clad, helpless sexpots, who in the presence of any one of the male characters has a tendency to start drooling and profess her eternal love of <insert character name here>

firemonk3y > I can relate to some of your concerns. But like it or not, feminine sexuality is not a fictional male fantasy. Or at least it isn't where I live. Have you ever been to a north american shopping mall? Personally, I wish it would calm down a little. Some public areas are starting to look like barbie doll clone factories.

Hmm... I was thinking of console-style RPGs (ie: FF) when I wrote my last post. In these games, characters are usually pre-made and girls happen to fit mage classes better while the guys make better fighters.

If it's like most Western-RPG where you can customize every little detail about your characters' look so that the player can be identified to their avatar, then make both genders equal. It's a little silly to provide the choice between a male and a female for a warrior if the male is superior in every way.

I think there's also a slight amount of unfairness in making women weaker and compensating with Charisma, because the typical RPG's gameplay is 90% combat, while Charisma will come into play once in a while in a few dialgoue trees, where not having the charisma just means you get to fight the guy you're talking to.

I have a feeling that a lot of guys would suddenly change their mind and NOT want Strength vs Social stat differences if they were designing a game where there's no combat and it mostly involves winning debates. Or worse, they'd start talking about how men are more aggressive and dominant, and should get a bonus to debating while women could instead get a bonus to being polite.

Quote:Original post by makeshiftwings
I think there's also a slight amount of unfairness in making women weaker and compensating with Charisma, because the typical RPG's gameplay is 90% combat,

There are quite a few games out there that promote dialog over combat. And even those that do not usually give "strength in dialog" a lot of weight. It usually means you get what you want a hell of a lot faster. In a few games, being excellent with dialog can mean zero combat.

I don't think balance is the problem. And I don't think real-world sexism or the gender of the human player is very related. The problem is that no one wants their character's potential to be restricted by their fictional gender.

Quote:I have a feeling that a lot of guys would suddenly change their mind and NOT want Strength vs Social stat differences if they were designing a game where there's no combat and it mostly involves winning debates.

I think a lot of guys don't want it already. I seriously doubt the problems associated with gender differences in games have anything to do with our real world sex (ie, not just "guys"). I've role played both genders countless times, and I wouldn't want women to be inferior any more than a real female playing the game.