van Riebeeck said:

Ogryns, Squats... various other weird and wonderful variations of humans popped up due to environmental effects, which is slightly unrealistic considering the rate of human evolutionary process, but its a big galaxy further complicated by weird magical warp stuff, which is the unknown variable in the equation. As for co-existant homo sapiens, up until 24,500 years ago there where still neanderthals running around some parts of Europe.

As for the physical advantages/disadvantages of the sexes, it really is so negligable and highly variable across a population not to be worth the while to differentiate. I've known women communications riggers and rock climbers that have all the upper body strength, stamina and coordination that their male counterparts have, which is a trained and exercised part of physical development.

I think a big mistake here is the assumption that male or female characteristics would result in a flat bonus or penalty on characteristics. They don't. If anything, they would affect the range of said characteristic, but the weakest man alive may still not be stronger than the weakest woman, owing to the simple fact that both genders originate from the same type of cell and development is largely identical (which is why things like hermaphroditism in humans exist).

Anyways, if you really want to create a rule for this*, don't take the cliché "-4 STR" approach but rather work with expanding the range, just like biology actually works. For example, you could either allow Re-Rolls of a "benefited" characteristic (like "Tearing"), or let a player roll 5d5-3 (2-25) or 3d10-1 (2-30) instead of the usual 2d10 (2-20).

As to what stats would be affected, I would say that males clearly have an advantage when it comes to strength, whereas statistics show that females tend to be better shooters, warranting a Ballistic Skill advantage. This balances nicely in that both are combat statistics merely having an effect on the style of warfare, but not trying to force the characters into specific roles cultivated by centuries of oppression (kitchen, sandwhich, etc) - in essence, a fighter can still be a fighter, a man just has a certain chance to deal more damage in close combat whilst women have a certain chance to make better snipers.

(*: as has been said before, the characters in this RPG are not even intended to conform to some average)

As far as the STR/CHA 18 paladin example is concerned, I would say that the same reasoning would apply to males as well. Apart from Charisma not depending solely on the body, of course.

A waifish female paladin Lynata, not so much as a female paladin per se. But you are fully correct, the look of a character should more or less be in sync with its statistics. And strength just asks for quite a bit of musulature, both in males and in females. You also note fully correctly that charisma is more then just the looks, but, alas for our shallow race of men, that first impression is still so vital. I think I do not say nonsensen when I state that in general musulature that would be considered good looking on a man will be found less attractive on a woman, however unfair this might be. As such, a freakishly strong woman will seldom be considered handsome...even if she might be a great leader of men (and yes, I know freakishly is not a nice way to put it, but I wish to stress the way such a woman will be seen by the general public).

By the way, I am interested where you found that women are better shots. Considering the fact that men have evolved hunting, that seems quite odd. Their time-space analysis seems in general to be slightly better (even if this is a contentious subject). On the practical side, just a quick look at the best shots in Britain gives a vast male dominance. And yes, shooting is obviously a fieldsport that is more practisced by men then by women, with a plethora of cultural and historical reasons to explain it. But those girls that take up the challenge and go for serious shooting (as opposed to the socialites) can indeed be razorsharp and very good at what they do. Still, till now the exalted upper ranks of top shots seem to be mostly filled with men.

What seems to be a fact is that women have far better empathy and skill with words. Again, this is in general. One could balance the strength loss with fellowship and skill gains.

FM

As much as I promised myself I wouldn't ever say this...

http://avp.wikia.com/index.php?title=Drake_(USS_Sulaco)ℑ=M56-smart-gun-aliens-jpg

Your argument is invalid.

I really fail to see how a picture of one strong woman would invalidate the facts that:

- In general, human men are stronger then human women.

- The strongest human men are stronger then the strongest human women.

However much we can argue about whether this should be translated into stats and how this might be translated into stats, these facts are beyond doubt.

And yes, I do know that WH40K takes place in the far future and do know that different planets and lifestyles might result in changes in humanity. But I still do not see one solid argument why these changes would affect women more then men, or men more then women. If they affect both genders equally (which seems to be within the field of logic), there is no reason to presume the differences we do find today will not be present tomorrow. Furthermore, the number of different habitats would give a wide divergence amongst the whole of the human race, which the game nicely uses by introducing modifiers for the origin of players.

FvR

[removed, will post again with proper formating - this forum software needs fixing]

van Riebeeck said:

I would have to challenge that last part of your assessment. A certain amount of muscles can be considered attractive on both men and women, though men may admittedly sport a wider "acceptable" range. An excessive amount of muscles - the STR18/20 type of warrior - however, will just make the character end up looking like a brute, regardless of whether you're looking at a man or a woman.

This is very much a question that has to be addressed individually, though. On some people, muscles look better than on others, based on the shape of their faces as well as the actual muscles. Also, some people actually like such appearances. At the end of the day, it just gets hard to impossible to assign seemingly appropriate modifiers everywhere, as tastes vary so much.

van Riebeeck said:

This seems to be attributed to a generally superior hand/eye coordination, whereaver that comes from - possibly the fact that women evolved taking over the delicate work whilst men were away hunting, which would be ironic. Considering the crude tools that have been used for the hunt it would seem feasible, though, why strength was more important than accuracy. The hunters didn't actually snipe their prey, after all.

http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Women+In+Combat-a01611411618
"Specifically on average women make better marksmen than men, this makes them significantly better snipers. The Russians and Vietnamese found this out to their benefit and heavily utilized women as snipers."

I actually read a statistic that would back up the author's claim there years ago, but for the moment I honestly cannot find it, so you'd have to rely on the history of the Soviet Union and the considerable success of their female snipers in WW2 . The USSR is also a prime example for the ability of female soldiers to fly combat missions in aircraft, for the most successful night bombing unit was an all-female one that sported a remarkable accuracy on its missions, again strengthening the claim regarding coordination.

And speaking of flying, according to the 1997 CMR report, the average female also seems to be able to endure G-stresses better than the average male pilot, apparently because the former are less likely to black out because of shorter blood vessels in the neck.

Here's an assessment of the Indian Air Force talking of how women make better fighter pilots than men, and apparently they make better drivers as well. I would suppose that all of this is at least partially based on the superior hand/eye coordination mentioned earlier.

If the upper ranks of the top shots in your country are filled mostly with men, as you say, this would seem to be primarily because there's quite simply more men being "tested" and/or there's a missing incentive for women to participate. Add gender equality and increase the number of female participants in these roles and you may well end up with a different result.

Even if you would dispute the exact accuracy of the previous arguments (statistics may be flawed or falsified, after all, and professional opinions are still opinions tainted by individual experience or preference), they should be sufficient to warrant their inclusion for the sake of playability balance, as at least it does not seem unrealistic.

van Riebeeck said:

I cannot agree on this thesis either. This skillset is entirely based on culture, education and upbringing, not on biology. Apart from the sexist effect this would have on the RPG (-> pushing female characters into noncom roles while men "do the fighting"), the advantages you named are quite simply a cultural matter that is based on the role enforced on women in modern day society (and how men are taught to react on them), following rules that need not apply in the 41st Millennium anymore. However far the western world has come in the past few decades (women can now vote!!), there's still a vast deal of mysoginy and misconception present in everyday life, however subtle.

The two genders are still far from equal, as certain ideas are still passed on from generation to generation, be it because certain religions still teach them or because there's so much money to be made with, uh, "depictions of the female body". In general, looks are still far more important for a woman than a man, and gender continues to twist our perception of what is socially acceptable or not: When a man sleeps with many women, he is a player and considered successful. If a woman does the same, people call her a ****.

Even history as teached in school fails to accurately portray the role of women throughout the ages. How many people are even aware that there were entire orders of female knights in medieval Europe - until they were suppressed by papal edict? How many people know of the female tribal warriors that were common in Britannia thousands of years ago, until Roman conquest and a law that forbid women to bear arms put an end to that? How many people know that female warriors were described as just as terrible as their male counterparts by said Roman troops? Not many I wager. It's not talked about, and it is not teached in the schools. Instead, the "traditional" image of women either belonging into the kitchen or onto a dancing pole still finds itself almost taken for granted. Small wonder that modern day society holds such a vast bias.

http://www2.timesdispatch.com/news/2011/jun/04/TDOPIN02-5-myths-about-women-in-combat-ar-1084330/

Actually, there's a good chance that there would still (or rather again) be worlds in the Imperium where gender differentiation exists based on local culture, especially on Feudal or Feral worlds. That said, there is no actual rule that these worlds would all have to sport a patriarchal society, for looking at some of the fluff - like the background of the Last Chancers character "Amazone" - would suggest that there actually are matriarchies as well. In the grand scheme of things, I'd say it all balances itself out. And cultural effects should be dealt with in Homeworld and Origin packages anyways.

Hi all, interesting discussion.

(checks ice carefully before venturing forth...)

I think its important to remember that despite the physiological differences between men and women, the stats for 40k RPG are kind of abstract compared to a simulationist goal. Yes it is scientific fact that males have a tendancy toward higher quality and quantity muscle mass than females, coupled with hormonal differences needed to utilise and maintain that. And has been stated the variance of strength between genders has considerable overlap, ie many women are stronger than many men. Genetics and morphology do play a big hand in deciding an individuals likely strengths and weaknesses, sadly we do all have physical flaws , however..

While I agree that men are generally stronger than women, the term "strength" encompasses many different aspects for a character that are all bracketed as a percentile. The same can be said of most of the other stats. The skills a character takes are IMHO a better way of simulating the diffences an individual has, for example Strength 35 and climb +20 could adequately represent a female in good condition who is very capable of translating her power to bodyweight into the the techniques of climbing. The problem I would have with a flat stat modifier to differentiate between the sexes is that it suggests the female would be weaker in all areas, which would be unfair. Strength stat in 40k RPGs appears to cover maximal strength, power, endurance and cardiovascular thresholds to a greater extent. These are areas that I would expect most people to have a variety of capability in, not simply be good at all, or weak at all. I would also have the same issues with giving females a higher agility due to increased flexibility. Both strength and agility (and weapon skill and ballistic skill) are heavily reliant on motor skill fitness for application. Being as motor skills are heavily reliant on practise and training specifics, individuals may well excell over others in the specific areas that they have had alot of training in, again going back to the skills thingy. Hypermobility can actually be a great disadvantage if the body is not sufficiently trained to protect from certain injuries. I remember another post (I think by Peacekeeper B?) about why weapon skill and ballistic skill should have weapon specific skills to go with them, which I thought made alot of sense, after all firing a long las uses the same stat as throwing a feral worlders tribal spear yet they are very different "skills". The difference in blood vessels vs blacking out sounds interesting and viable, learn something new every day eh. On the driver gender differences I'm not sure I'm convinced. While I would certainly agree its a male dominated environment, and there are some amazing female rally/track racers, the sport does seem unlikely to have been dominated so heavily by male drivers if they were at a physiological disadvantage?

I like a simulationist game, and in my humble opinion it goes well with the gritty feel of 40k, however to make a really accurate simulationist game I think you might end up with way to many complex rules and in the end a game that is no longer fun to play. Dont get me started on the duracell bunny PCs who never get tired because the rules are not explicitly clear about how much one can accomplish before rest is needed... Sometimes its best to accept its a close enough fit to suspend disbelief without bogging the gameplay down?

I like the previously mentioned method of giving stats relative the concept of the character. If you want a character with a massive strength, that should have an effect on the characters size and appearance, likewise a strength 50 female character simply should not look like victoria beckham. Ever. The picture of Vasquez above to me illustrates a female soldier with maybe 35-45 strength, but exceptionally well skilled along the guardsman career path from DH, and above all RP'd as a stone cold proffessional stormtrooper. Ah Well, I'd better stop there before I start rambling embarrassing fantasies of ms vasquez...

I would say that its pretty obvious that by any definition of strength that we could reasonably use, that men have significantly more of it.

So, taking that as a given, how should we take that into account in a game? Most of the games I play involve distributing attribute points as the player desires - in a case like that I don't necessarily see a need for any gender based modifiers. Because most people who want to play a female will put fewer points into strength as they picture their character as weaker, those who do not simply want to play an exceptionally strong women and if that is the case then who prevent them form playing that concept?

Its a little different in FFG 40K games because that standard method of character creation is the random roll, which with any level of realism should result in women having a lower average strength as well as a lower maximum strength. But this creates a number of gamist problems. For one thing, there is no clear advantage that feamles should get over males - despite certain myths to the contrary, men have a higher pain threshold than women. The issue of agility differences are unclear, as men often out perform women in many sports which seem to be mostly based upon agility, though women have some advantages in areas that might be linked to the concept. While there are studies that show that men and women think differently, I don't think that the differences are large enough to justify any sort of skill or intelligence modifier. Willpower, Perception, and Fellowship might be options, but they are still questionable and debatably less important than strength.

In real life, women have many qualities which give them advantages over men, and vis versa. Though role playing games usually have a disproportional amount of combat in it compared to everyday life in most of the world. When it comes to fighting, men are better. So maintaining game balance along with realism can be difficult.

So, assuming we decide on some advantage that women have over men for the purposes of the game. Lets say that we give all male characters +5 Strength and female characters get -5 Strength, +5 Perception, and +5 Fellowship - just as an example. Well, that is going to influence they gender people select for their character. If somebody wants to play the party face, the charismatic character, they would be foolish to play a man when they can get a +5 bonus to Fellowship. Likewise, if you wanted a melee heavy character, you would never play a woman because your would be considerably weaker and would only get bonuses to attributes that aren't even that important to you. I don't know if realism is worth it to me to limit player's option's in such as way.

Because of this, I might want to simply have female NPC's get some sort of strength penalty while not enforcing it on female PC's. This could create the statistical dichotomy that we see among most of the populace while not limiting the character concepts for players. Ultimately, I prefer attribute allocation to rolling for PC's, so if somebody wants their female character to be "more realistic" they can give her a lower strength.

Simplest explanation for why males and females have the same statistical capabilities: Golden Men designed them that way. Do keep in mind that humanity in 40k is not the humanity of now. We all got awesome and turned into Time Lords or something, leaving the Stone Men to their own devices; go forth, be fruitful and multiply, that sort of thing.

I would not institute such a house rule and believe, catagorically, it is a bad rule which will not improve your game in any way. I think it would merely create OOC issues and drama while failing to improve, or even harming, the game from a narrativist, gamist and simulatationist perspective.

By failing to improve the game in a simulationist sense I mean that I do not think it is realistic (which is your only reason for instituting such a rule, yes?) for two reasons. One has already been stated; pcs are not average humans, they are the specific subset of quite exceptional humans chosen to aid the rogue trader and I think the women he chooses would not be less fit for their role than the men he chooses.

Secondly, and more importantly, you say women are weaker, that is true but in comparison to what? What makes you say they are 5-10% weaker? What can you be basing that on? Are you saying that the difference between the strength of a man and a woman is the same as the strength difference between the average thin and frail voidborn who has lived a life exposed to low or zero-gee enviroments and the average hulking primeval Catachan warrior? I just don't see it. At all. Have you seen the Catachan models? The entire planet is populated by towering bodybuilders who could tear Rambo apart like a paperbag.

I don't think the difference between men and women is even a 10th of the difference between the aforementioned Voidborn and Deathworlder let alone the same (or even half) so any bonus hould be so neglible as to be not worth giving.

In a gamist and narrativist sense I think such a rule would actually harm the enjoyment of players because it restricts the stories they can tell while still remaining effective. The popular Stormwind Fallacy argues that an optimised character does not automatically result in a poor background or poor roleplaying but your rule would force people who wanted to be effective combatants to be males which restricts their background and the stories they can tell. The person who wants to play a lethal bladewielding murderess from an Amazonian deathworld tribe is punished by their choice not to play a man with weakened strength. I prefer my pcs to be able to play the story they want so that's one of the reasons I wouldn't introduce this rule.

The important thing to note is when comparing the difference between a Feral Worlder and a Hive Worlder vs a Male and a Female characters is that one of those is fictional and in doing so "accurate".

When we say that a Hiver has more social smarts we can accept that as a fact of the setting and the character's life, but this is not so easy to do when one wants to stay accurate when considering the sexes, as we do not even know what exactly IS accurate at this point in time.

We have not yet made a perfect "mind map" of the physical. mental and social difference of males and females in Homo Sapiens and new studies come up all over the place and even refering to the past is also often problematic as women have often not been giving the proper chance to show what they could do.

Yeah, this is really what 40kRP needs, more ways to drive off women gamers. I do not comprehend the obsession some people have with giving female characters in RPGs strength penalties. The sample size of humans is so huge that any gender trends are meaningless when considering an individual. This is not comparing Orks and Eldar here.

I'm not even going to get into this because I can't express the thought without being inflammatory, but seriously you don't come off well when you make these arguments.

For a RPG, revolving around individuals I don't see the need for gender variations in stats. If it was a strategy game or troop recruitment, basicially large statistically average numbers come into play, but from 1 person to the next there will be individual differences. A female arch militant has probably worked just as hard, if not harder (if there are predjudice against female soldiers on here homeplanet) then her male counterpart thus negating much of the averages in gender.

In the general population males might have harder jobs, and naturally produce more hormones that help grow musclemass. But I've yet to see a career with physical requirements be lenient with genders and I've yet too see determined women struggle to meet said requirements.

So yeah, if you were going to play a normal man or woman then variations in gender would make sense, but two guardsmen? The differences will be in the random stats they choose. What the guard demands of them is the same.

Gender should be a RP/fluff related,every melee shouldn't feel the need to roll male or be gimped and vice versa for social or agility based characters.

Actually, there was (semi) recently a change made in our fire department. The strength and speed requirements for women applying were lowered to aid an affirmative action press on hiring. I don't want to get into it because it makes me want to burn something down then yell at the firefighters, but yeah. that BS actually does happen.

In terms of an argument for gender differentiation, I have but 4 letters: WNBA. That said, I would not penalize a player character no matter how unrealistic it may be, because this is a universe where praying to the machine spirits is a legitimate method of fixing things, and women all wearing coned bust-plates is a wise decision. More reasonable would be to apply a slight template onto NPCs and mooks, since they are the humdrum average folk, and a -5 strength won't bother them nearly as much as it would a female player trying to get involved in a new activity only to be persecuted rather frivolously.

Disclaimer: the women of the WNBA are spectacular athletes and work harder then I've ever thought of doing, and earn their claim to fame with tooth and nail. They have my utmost respect. However, a league-wide inability to dunk removes the only awesome thing about basketball from the equation.

First of all, you need to ask yourself two questions:

1) Are women generally weaker because gender roles have promoted them to less physically active lives throughout most of history, or have women lead less physically active lives throughout history because they are genetically weaker?

2) Would gender modifiers make the game more fun? Even for someone wanting to play a physically strong woman?

It's interesting to see that discussion pretty much never crops up with games with non-randomized characteristics. Perhaps the easiest solution is to give to a player generating a female character the choice of knocking a few points off strength and redistribute them elsewhere. That way you can have your cake and eat it as well. Women become weaker in general (but not necessarily so) and get some added flexibility that hardly makes them the less attractive choice.

As for NPCs, well, the GM will set their stats arbitrarily anyway...

Of course, I'd let my players fudge any stat a bit to coincide with their vision, but I have very nice players.

If it's that significant of an issue that you feel you need to modify the rules to incorporate it, then find something that women are biologically better inclined towards than men, drop their strength by 5%, and then boost that stat by 5%. For simplicity's sake, you can just stick into Toughness.

I do find the notion that bigger heart == tougher to be suspect. Bigger body == needs bigger heart to get the same thing done as a smaller body. Is that backed up by anything in particular?

As a general rule, I like gender differentiation in characters, as signifiers of the general baseline of humanity. After all, we are individuals, but we express that individuality by being compound creations of a mass of different generalizations, or by directly defying those general baselines in one way or another.

Personal houserule:
Females Lose -1 Strength, -1 Toughness; Gain +1 Ballistic Skill, +1 Agility, +1 Willpower.
Men Lose -1 Agility, -1 Fellowship; Gain +1 Weapon Skill, +1 Strength, +1 Intelligence.

Looks about right and feels fair.

Edit: I hate this forum software so much. So very, very much.

Fgdsfg said:

My only point there would be that if you're making those 1% modifiers, why bother? It's not very likely to make a significant difference unless someone's sitting at the step between a 5 or 10 and a 4 or a 9, and at that point, it's turned into power gaming cheese more than a real benefit to the story IMHO.

Fgdsfg said:

I like the simple fact that both genders get modifications, making neither the baseline. While a minor thing in itself, it does bother me when female characters get modifiers, making males the norm. I guess the opposite would bother me as well if I saw it. Ever.

Something to bear in mind about the argument stating that while many men are tougher then many women and vice versa is the group being compared. The average man is indisputably physically stronger then the average woman, and naturally tends towards greater strength and fitness (average body mass index and fax content combined with lung capacity). Furthermore, while it is true that women can become better then most men at many things, you're comparing the elite women to the average men as opposed to the elite men. In almost every major competition world wide they divide physical contests into gender categories because if a man and a woman both train the same amount and put in an equal amount of work, the man will be stronger and faster at the end of it.

I don't mean to disparage the opposite sex by any means, and I absolutely see the validity of social development affecting perceptions of women's capabilities, however when it comes down to it we are talking about the Elite Few when we discuss characters. That means baseline stats shouldn't be too changed to reflect this, but maximums should reflect the natural aptitude. Somebody who is just naturally taller and stronger will, given equal training, be stronger and taller. I was a nationally competitive Rower for years, though we never made it past the semi finals at Henley our women's heavyweight team took gold 4 years running. Despite their obvious excellence and our relative mediocrity (relative to the level of competition), we were dramatically faster both on the water, on the machines, lifted more weight, did more reps in excercises such as push ups, chin ups, sit ups, etc, and ran further and faster.