GURPS sex/class/race templates

[Kyle Aaron]

Originally Posted by banditangel

Playing devil's advocate for a bit, but if they have lower ST and body mass, there's going to be less force involved, and thus less potential for injury, neh?

Well, in GURPS terms, it works out even. If you have less ST, then you bash into each-other not as hard, but you also have less Hit Points, which means it's easier to get a Crippling Injury, yeah? In GURPS, the ST12 person falling on their arse is just as likely to get a Crippling Injury as the ST8 person falling on their arse. Which makes sense to me. Little kids injure themselves falling off play equipment all the time, and what sort of ST score do they have?

One could also argue that female players of basketball just tend to be less aggressive (or that females, on the whole, are less agressive)

Yep, you could argue that, and I'd believe you. But women also have lower injury rates for other atheletic events, like high jumps, where aggression is irrelevant to causing injury, unless someone goes beserk and runs into the pole or something...

[prosfilaes]

Originally Posted by Jim Bob

Now, my view is, "**** that. Averages don't affect individuals."

Then why have racial templates at all? In GURPS 4th ed, the plus or minus to ST doesn't affect individuals either.

And if we have gender differences, why not class and racial differences, too?

Even seen the social stigma and wealth rules? There's your class differences. Class differences aren't inherent, either. Racial differences, except for a few extreme examples like Pygmies, are so far in the realm of debate and flame war as to be useless. However, there is clear evidence that women are less strong than men and biological reasons to back it up. Most of the rest of the stuff is still arguable and fuzzy.

You can't have an Ally if you don't trust them - that's why the templates gave women an ally, but not men.

That's not in the rules--remember Ally (Unwilling)? Whether or not they're an ally has more to do with whether they will keep your secret that whether you will trust them with your secret.

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by Jim Bob

Health (Females +1HT):
Agility (either Female +1 DX or males -1DX or Ham-fisted, etc):
Women have a lower rate of injury in basketball, an agility-based sport, suggesting higher agility: 4.88 injuries per women's team, as against 7.75 injuries per men's team. http://www.arthroscopy.com/sp05042.htm. When the women are injured, they're more likely to injure their lower limbs, however. But the overall injury rate for women is 63% of that for men.

That could just as well reflect having more HP (though their smaller mass suggests otherwise). More to the point, that study doesn't seem to consider differing levels of aggressive contact, so it's possible males basketball players get injured more often because they play a game that has more and heavier player-player contact.

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by Jim Bob

Yep, you could argue that, and I'd believe you. But women also have lower injury rates for other atheletic events, like high jumps, where aggression is irrelevant to causing injury, unless someone goes beserk and runs into the pole or something...

What's the comparative injury rate for world-class athletes? I ask this because it's traditional to consider women to be less aggressive, and therefore less ambitious. If that's at all true, it may be that women at lower levels of competition are, on average, more cautious than their male counterparts, and so push themselves just a little less, avoiding some injuries as a result. Presumeably top-level athletes will all be the atypical types who push really hard, regardless of gender, etc., so their injury rates should be unaffected by any gender differences in levels of effort.

[TheDS]

I think we can all agree that men and women are DIFFERENT. Women have complained for a long time that medicines are made for MEN, and that they assume they will be good enough for women, but there are many cases where women should not be taking the same medicines as men.

I think we can all also agree that a GENERIC starting point for women would include having a lower strength level. That doesn't mean she can't buy her strength right back up and nothng has happened, but for the GM looking to make a fairly realistic NPC will need to take into account that the overwhelming majority of women average out to be slightly less strong than the overwhelming majority of men. Were this not true, we would not see so many male-dominated cultures, nor women being the victims of more physical abuse.

There are plenty of other advantages and disadvantages that are based SOLELY on the gender of the person, many of them social, some physical, and some mental. Women think differently than men; that doesn't mean they do any worse at it, but how would you make a fair test that didn't invalidate itself by trying to compensate for the differences? You can't; we'll just take it on faith that our brains are different but equal, and our bodies are different but equal, but one of those differences is that men are stronger than women. I would have no trouble believing they are also more dexterious, though I would probably give it to them in manual dexterity or something like that for game-balance purposes.

[Luther]

Originally Posted by Jim Bob

It's just that every now and then, some scrawny or overweight geek boy with his own natural ST8 and DX8 says, "boyz 4r3 t3h strongerzzzst" and pops up on a message board saying that female characters should get a strength penalty.

At first this was silly, and humorous too.

Now you are beginning to be offensive.

Now, my view is, "**** that. Averages don't affect individuals."

1) then what's the point in having templates?

2) templates can be used for NPCs and world building.

3) if some players have fun playing average people why on earth
you keep bashing them from forum to forum? (I refer to yours rpg.net posts)

Originally Posted by Jim Bob

The idea is to scare 'em off, Charles;) They just want to pull out one little worm from the can. I dump the whole damned can on their head. Then maybe they'll learn to keep the can closed.

We are all adults, no need of yours educative lessons.

The only thing you have been good about is to write a buch of half documented opinions. No facts.

[cmdicely]

Originally Posted by Rupert

That could just as well reflect having more HP (though their smaller mass suggests otherwise).

It could also reflect that, because of testosterone, males can more easily increase their muscle strength higher in relation to the strength of their bones and joints, making it easier for them to injure themselves through overexertion. You'd really need a more detailed analysis not just of how many injuries but what kinds before you could draw a conclusion.

[Kyle Aaron]

Originally Posted by Luther

3) if some players have fun playing average people why on earth
you keep bashing them from forum to forum? (I refer to yours rpg.net posts)

I never criticised anything that people found fun. I criticised their babbling on internet messages boards about boys being stronger, and how this should be modelled in rpgs, but OMFG NO OTHER DIFFERENCES SHOULD BE MODELLED NO NO NO.

We can't model other differences, because they're not statistically significant. The difference between male and female sprint performance over 100metres is 1 second. This, they say, is significant. The difference between African and European sprint performance over 100metres is 1 second. This, they say, is insignificant.

Why? Could it be because those writing are male, and European? Could that be the reason that a 10% difference in high-level competition is significant, except when it's not significant?

I didn't post this on rpgnet, because it'd be instantly reported as a Rule 5 violation. Whereas here, well, if uncle ted can get away with saying, "all moslems are terrorists", I ought to be able to say that women have better dexterity than men without getting banned.

We are all adults, no need of yours educative lessons.

Except in grammar. Extra "s", there, Luther. (Sorry, buddy, you left yourself wide open there, just had to take that jab!)

Look, if people are thinking that strength's the only statistically significant difference between men and women, and that class and racial differences are non-existent, they're simply wrong.

What I'm trying to show is that the guys who talk about giving male characters free extra strength, they don't really want a "realistic" game. They want a game that looks like an action movie. Because if they wanted a "realistic" game, then they'd put in other gender/race/class differences, and they'd have 85% of people have some version of the Pacifism disadvantage. Yet they don't. So, obviously, either they don't want "realism", or they don't know what "realism" is beyond action movies.

Or, more likely, they haven't thought it out. Rpg forums, this one included, are full of rules queries and game discussions that show people haven't thought things out. I don't mean, someone missed half a line on page 476. When the rules are so long, everyone will miss something. I mean, they're asking questions which show that they've never actually tested the rules in play, and/or that they've not tried to see what the real world's like before trying to match it to the rules - it was in a movie I saw.

When gamers say, "realism", they don't mean, the real world - they mean, Die Hard. You can get bruised, but you live, everyone's a ruthless killer except the girls, and the role of the girls is to stand around screaming.

The only thing you have been good about is to write a buch of half documented opinions. No facts.

I think you missed the links I provided, Luther. If the results of studies by universities aren't "facts", I'm not sure what facts are. In any case, this is a post to an internet message board, not a doctoral thesis.

[Kyle Aaron]

Originally Posted by cmdicely

It could also reflect that, because of testosterone, males can more easily increase their muscle strength higher in relation to the strength of their bones and joints, making it easier for them to injure themselves through overexertion. You'd really need a more detailed analysis not just of how many injuries but what kinds before you could draw a conclusion.

None of that is modelled in GURPS. In GURPS, people who fall over or bash into each-other take the same damage, proportionally, and are thus as likely to injure themselves seriously. So, if some group of people get less injuries, it must be because they have higher DX.

Whether the higher DX comes from "look before you charge" or pure DX is irrelevant in GURPS terms. If you fall over a lot, you must have low DX. If you fall over less than some other guy, you must have higher DX.

GURPS does not model testosterone and aggressiveness in sports and joint and muscle and tendon strength etc etc. It just calls all this, "ST, HT, DX."

So, in GURPS terms, women have higher DX than men.

[Kyle Aaron]

Originally Posted by Rupert

What's the comparative injury rate for world-class athletes? I ask this because it's traditional to consider women to be less aggressive, and therefore less ambitious.

Well, I do know that women jumpers (high and long and pole vault) have lower rates of injury than men, here in Australia.

But I already mentioned that above.