Goremand
Since: Sep, 2010
Oct 20th 2011 at 2:15:30 PM
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Really? I've played a few RPG video-games (video games count too, right?) with different stats for the genders. In Oblivion, for example, women tend to get lower Strength, but higher Personality.
Men are, on average, physically stronger than women (although I don't deny that there are women who'd take most men in a fight), and so women get a few points in other areas to compensate. I wouldn't say this is INCREDIBLY sexist (maybe a little).
Anyway, what matters is that I know these games exist, and I know there are people who choose gender based solely on stats. So the sentence you cut seems to me to be true.
- I cut the sentences "Their reasons are generally the same as the ones mentioned above, though it's also somewhat more common to see game systems with different starting stats for the two sexes. In such games, you might see cross playing for the purposes of Min-Maxing as opposed to roleplaying." entirely. Because in 20 years of roleplaying and over two dozen systems, except for FATAL (known as the worst and most offensive RPG ever for many reasons) I've never seen any tabletop RPG system that assigns stat differences based on a character's gender, because that would be considered incredibly sexist. Stat modifiers based on class or species differences, yes... for example, in AD&D, only a fighter could have Strength stat of 18/100, no other class. But you could have a female fighter with maxed out strength, just as you can have a male pretty-boy. Even GURPS only has an (optional) table that lists expected minimum strength in relation to height and weight for human characters, on the idea that someone who is 2 meters tall and weights 130 kg usually won't have a strength of mere 08 (with 10 being the average for humans) unless he is a couch-potato or very weak, while woman are, on average, smaller and lighter than males and thus need less muscle power to move around. But nothing stops you from creating a small, frail male character or a large, strong female pro-wrestler build like a Valkyrie in the RPG systems I know. Even in real life, some people are a lot stronger than they look, i.e. women working on a farm or female hospital nurses that lift bedbound grown men twice their weight every day.
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