Dwarves don't wear plate....

[Zapp]

@Lynata: Peace

(I posted without noticing your post)

[Loswaith]

There is a fairly huge fundemental diffferences between charts B and C mathematically speaking, but counter to the point at hand.

Though they do show a good reasoning behind why there is the 'realistic' difference between racial speed differences and gender differences. Where chart C shows the variance most people see in the genders chart B is where most see the racial difference in movement speed when it comes to humans and dwarves.

The factor is that because the variance in genders is releativly small it can be abstracted away and not feel 'wrong'. While in the case of Dwarven movement speed, comparativly to humans, it is a rather large variance so abstracting it away makes if feel 'wrong', and thusly unrealistic, resulting in the game adding a difference that isnt lost in the abstraction process.

[Zapp]

No, Hellebore, that's actually not the case.

The reason most rpgs "abstract away" the difference in Strength between genders has nothing to do with this difference being small or easily being abstracted away.

The difference is actually significant in real life. If not positively huge - most men are much stronger than most women. You can't use your experience with rpgs to predict the real world: in this case, rpgs consistently undervalue the raw strength difference between genders. And do not draw conclusions from modern office workers either - the modern male is pretty far from his potential strength that even moderate exercise could provide him (but not her) with.

The comparison to how the Dwarf speed issue is handled by the game is actually plenty relevant - in Dragon Age, Dwarves start out 20% slower than humans (Speed 8 instead of 10). Having a similar rule giving women 20% less strength (In AGE terms, say, a -1 modifier*) would, for purely "realism-related" issues, be perfectly justifiable**.
*) but see my proposed alternative above, giving females a starting "cap" on Strength but no other penalties.
**) Actually, the real difference is more like 30%... some studies suggest that females have only 50% to 60% of men's upper body strength and 70% to 80% the lower body strength of males. Not that this matters much since my point is "don't base your fantasy gaming on realism"...

But most rpgs don't go down that route. Why?

Because they place other values than pure "realism" higher, such as gameplay fun, ability to not repel female gamers, because "Strength" is encoded to mean much more than "raw muscle strength" etc etc or simply because the game is a fantasy. (Few rpgs have rules for dying from not washing your hands or sleeping in wet hay, or randomly getting the plague, or dying from the common cold etc)

Or perhaps because of game design - the "female PC" would simply become an inferior choice, since a PC is a much reduced simplification of real world, and that any combat-heavy game naturally faces difficulty giving the inherent strengths of females their due. That is, for balance issues: there is no "need" for a game choice that simply is worse. A "fantasy female" equal to a man (but with female secondary attributes), as it were.

Any gamer who institutes slow Dwarfs but not weak females (or battle-wound infections etc) need to base their justifications on the same grounds. That is, anything but "because it's realistic".


Zapp

Let me continue writing a disclaimer in every post regarding this sensitive issue that you don't need to read:
I don't advocate rpg rules where females are treated any differently than males. I am certainly not suggesting women are inferior to men. Any game character with a penalty in one attribute (say, Strength) with no compensating factors in a highly combat-focused fantasy game (where Strength is more important than perhaps any other genre) would indeed be inferior, but that says nothing about my views in general.

[shonuff]

The issue I have with your position is that you are creating a false dichotomy. You don't have to be completely married to reality. Otherwise, you couldn't have magic -- because that's not realistic. Likewise, you don't have to throw reality completely out the window.

If you account for every possibility and/or variable, it's difficult to make a PC or NPC, so accounting for multiple differences between races/genders is a complicated mess. But there are differences between them, so some of these have been accounted for in the issue of game balance. Not like them? Houserule them out.

[Hellebore]

You have seen women more muscular than some men, but you haven't seen women more muscular than the most muscular man.

So? It doesn't take much to simply assume that player characters fall in the overlap region of strong women and average men. Equality reached, problem solved, erosion of realism averted.

If this doesn't work for you ... well, it doesn't work for you. I for one have no problem with it.

AND IT IS THE SAME WITH DWARVES, just as the rules make clear. Two bell curves where the upper values of one beat the lower values of the other.

Only once you factor in Dexterity advancements which increase speed as a side effect. Yet the reasoning behind dwarven speed (as I understand it!) is not a lack in dexterity - it's their size/build, and here I am not aware of any overlap between dwarves and humans. Just because it exists in one factor (Dex) doesn't mean the other needs to be neglected.

1) I have never seen a Dwarf, period.
2) I wasn't discussing their size, but their speed, and their effective speed in tense situations to be precise.

1) You're playing a Dragon Age RPG. In this setting, dwarves and their build are clearly defined, period.
2) Speed is affected by size, at least according to my interpretation of realism.

But they are both significant enough to warrant inclusion even in a simple game. If you subscribe to the "realism" reason, that is.

I think that in this aspect, our interpretations of realism (and fantastic realism, when it comes to dwarves or elves) are simply incompatible. This argument could go on forever without coming to fruition.

As I have nothing more to add (and I don't think you have, either, as we've been dancing in circles for the last few posts), I'll go ahead and simply drop it here. Feel free to add any closing words if you wish, but I shall try and take a step back from the discussion. Peace?

You'll find that dwarves can and indeed do end up with equal or higher speeds than other races, especially when playing rogues. They are only 2pts lower than a human, which means they need 2 more pts of dex to equal their speed. Against a human mage most dwarf rogues will be as fast or faster.



So this idea that dwarves are slow and that the only exceptionality in the game is represented by males and females doesn't work (the game must also contain exceptionally fast dwarves too). If all characters are exceptional then males who are exceptional would have to be stronger than exceptional females. The only way to balance the strengths between the two would be to artificially constrain male character choice exceptionality to equal maximum female exceptionality. Which in the end means no extremely exceptional males are adventurers whilst only extremely exceptional females are.

Moving the Mean to the end of the bell curve doesn't increase the number of strong women relative to men. In fact I believe the high end of the strength bell curve for males is longer than females - that is it drops off faster for women than men. Or to put it another way, the difference between average muscle strength and maximum muscle strength in men is much larger than for women.

I agree with Zapp's premise to a certain extent, but conclude that for the sake of subjective variety dwarves will inevitably be portrayed with shorter strides in general.

Basically dwarves and elves are the only place that 'race' specific attributes can be dolled out without any inference of racial stereotyping - fantastic racism basically. It's alright to say that a dwarf has a small stride, but a bit of a faux pas to have 'Masai' with +2 speed and 'South East Asian' with -2, even if objectively their strides are at least as different if not more so than a dwarf and a human simply mechanically. Or that caucasians suffer more exposure damage in equatorial regions whilst Africans suffer more in higher lattitudes, including vitamin D deficiency that can result in rickets.

We are taught not to 'see' differences between humans that have phenotypic differences and this translates into RPGs where humans are never generally described differently in physical or mental capacity. At most human groups are defined by their starting skills/talents (as can be seen in the backgrounds of DA, as well as most other RPGs). Implying that all humans are the same and only their environmental upbringing differentiates them.

Fantastical races have no real world counterpart so we can freely stereotype and otherwise impose static physical and mental limits on them without feeling as though we are racially profiling someone. Next time you play an elf that gets a bonus to perception tests due to their ears, imagine someone trying to get away with doing that for 'big eyes/noses etc' in human populations...

Hellebore

[shonuff]

Basically dwarves and elves are the only place that 'race' specific attributes can be dolled out without any inference of racial stereotyping - fantastic racism basically. It's alright to say that a dwarf has a small stride, but a bit of a faux pas to have 'Masai' with +2 speed and 'South East Asian' with -2, even if objectively their strides are at least as different if not more so than a dwarf and a human simply mechanically. Or that caucasians suffer more exposure damage in equatorial regions whilst Africans suffer more in higher lattitudes, including vitamin D deficiency that can result in rickets.

We are taught not to 'see' differences between humans that have phenotypic differences and this translates into RPGs where humans are never generally described differently in physical or mental capacity. At most human groups are defined by their starting skills/talents (as can be seen in the backgrounds of DA, as well as most other RPGs). Implying that all humans are the same and only their environmental upbringing differentiates them.

The flaw in this statement is that you are comparing fantastic races to human races. Human races are largely an artificial construct, whereas IMO elves, dwarves, kossith, etc., would be better categorized as different species. While you are correct in stating that you can't really say Africans are faster than Asians, or Caucasians are stronger than Africans, or something along those lines, you can say that cheetahs are faster than lions and tigers are stronger than tabbies.

[Lynata]

Without wanting to drag out the argument, but I think I should clarify something as I feel slightly misunderstood:

You'll find that dwarves can and indeed do end up with equal or higher speeds than other races, especially when playing rogues. They are only 2pts lower than a human, which means they need 2 more pts of dex to equal their speed. Against a human mage most dwarf rogues will be as fast or faster.

Which is what I have said all along with "height isn't everything, but it is one factor that can be taken into account".

The only way to balance the strengths between the two would be to artificially constrain male character choice exceptionality to equal maximum female exceptionality. Which in the end means no extremely exceptional males are adventurers whilst only extremely exceptional females are.

Not at all. As touched upon on one of the previous pages, if we were to introduce gender modifiers, female adventurers could otherwise come with their own advantages - so in equalizing the genders, male adventurers get to be exceptional in areas where they'd otherwise be disadvantaged. Like Dexterity.

To be exceptional doesn't mean above-average strength alone, after all. Though even if gender differences in areas other than raw strength would be non-existent, which is not the case, equality would still not be a stretch. Player characters would be exceptional either way, simply because they are characters outfitted with equipment and skills unavailable to the majority of Thedas' common people - as said majority is a bunch of farmers who don't get to pick their favorite class and background. And let's be honest: would you let any of your players die during a Joining?
All of this is special treatment as it wasn't determined randomly like it'd happen to the normal population. Slapping stat equation on top of it is just a bonus.

Fantastical races have no real world counterpart so we can freely stereotype and otherwise impose static physical and mental limits on them without feeling as though we are racially profiling someone.

Hmm, I always thought it'd be more because differences in fantasy races are "drilled into our heads" much more clearly, more consistently, and more pronounced.

Fun fact, the German "The Dark Eye" RPG which I have mentioned in another thread on the amount of backgrounds and specializations does come with modifiers (stats, skills, weight, height) for its various human racial phenotypes as well as cultures, and I'm not aware anyone ever had issues with it. It's also worth mentioning that these modifiers are still lower than those assigned to a completely different fantasy race, however, which is in line with my belief that differences between genders and cultures would be much less pronounced than those setting a completely different species apart (if it follows a certain cliché such as dwarves or elves) ... and thus much more redundant.

Of course, the lack of outrage might be explained by the simple fact that even though those phenotypes are clearly related to real life counterparts such as Vikings and Arabs, it's still a fantasy setting and that it may be different were someone to create a P&P set in the real modern world. As it is, however, humans in fantasy worlds don't seem to differ in portrayal from other races in the same setting. In fact, it's the same in the DARPG; just look at the Avvar and how their bonuses differ.

In closing, and as previously mentioned in passing, I do believe the differences between the various races in DARPG should stand out more ... a single +1 made obsolete with the very first levelup isn't going to cut it, and it does make Speed stand out to be the largest difference simply because it can range from 2-4 points in difference. It's not honestly bothering me, but I generally welcome the differences between fantasy or sci-fi races instead of trying to avoid them as (for me) they are part of the package, and part of what makes such characters unique and sets them apart from others.

[shonuff]

In closing, and as previously mentioned in passing, I do believe the differences between the various races in DARPG should stand out more ... a single +1 made obsolete with the very first levelup isn't going to cut it, and it does make Speed stand out to be the largest difference simply because it can range from 2-4 points in difference. It's not honestly bothering me, but I generally welcome the differences between fantasy or sci-fi races instead of trying to avoid them as (for me) they are part of the package, and part of what makes such characters unique and sets them apart from others.

And that's the rub. Dwarves get low speed, but they also get a magic resist. Elves get speed, but they're second-class citizens.

[Hellebore]

The flaw in this statement is that you are comparing fantastic races to human races. Human races are largely an artificial construct, whereas IMO elves, dwarves, kossith, etc., would be better categorized as different species. While you are correct in stating that you can't really say Africans are faster than Asians, or Caucasians are stronger than Africans, or something along those lines, you can say that cheetahs are faster than lions and tigers are stronger than tabbies.

Except even in Dragon Age successful interbreeding occurs between them. Half something something is a fairly standard fantasy trope. They aren't depicted as separate species at all. The Kossith perhaps, if you can't get half qunari...

Hellebore

[Elfie]

Except even in Dragon Age successful interbreeding occurs between them. Half something something is a fairly standard fantasy trope. They aren't depicted as separate species at all. The Kossith perhaps, if you can't get half qunari...

I know I'm going to regret joining this conversation in any way But from what we've seen in Dragon Age, only humans and elves can cross-breed and when they do, the children are human as far as anyone can tell.

There's lots more cross-breeding in other fantasy settings, but for Dragon Age, there aren't really half-anythings.

[Hellebore]

there are also human dwarf as well - there was an inference than Sandal could be one iirc. And you can't produce a child from a human and an elf and somehow get 100% of the human's chromosomes, they don't produce 100% in their gametes.

Human genes can however be dominant, expressing in favour of elven ones.

Hellebore

[Loswaith]

No, Hellebore, that's actually not the case.

The reason most rpgs "abstract away" the difference in Strength between genders has nothing to do with this difference being small or easily being abstracted away.
...

I'm not Hellebore.

Actually if you take the time to think on it dwarves would be slower than they are depicted as well. Take someone that is a good 1.5-2 feet shorter than yourself and the same weight (assuming a similar skill in running), how much slower do you think they are?
Weigh that up with the typical difference between genders, which is a much smaller aspect (outside of extreems).

Given the smaller aspects of gender differences is it even realy worth having provisors for that in a game. Putting aside any political correctness.

At the end of the day its not about what is realistic for our world, its about what is realistic for the game world, and trying to force our realities on the game world will never work, no matter how much they are similar. You cant simply throw out the context of the discussion being about a fantasy world, not our own.

[Ghostdanser]

Concerning half-breeds, here's what I found in the Bioware forums:

http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic ... x/575146/2

David Gaider Wrote:
Without getting into the "why" behind the elves-and-humans-produce-humans thing (which I've talked about before), I will talk about why we didn't deal with it in the game. Primarily it's because we didn't have room. There's a lot of things that exist in the Thedas world that we weren't able to get into in Origins -- part of it is due to limited resources, but part of it is also because to properly address it we'd need to do it justice. We were already introducing the races and their situations, and adding on the complexity of explaining something that does need explanation would... get us what, exactly? You can't play one of the "elf-blooded" (this is what humans with mixed parentage are generally referred to, though I imagine "half-elf" could also be used in a slanderous fashion), and trying to explain the presence of a small number of humans in the alienage (as a for-instance) would have diluted the story we were already going for. Trying to fit everything that exists into the world in one story, after all, isn't really feasible.

I'd like to get into it. I think it's a possibility that has the potential for good drama, and even allowing the player to be elf-blooded might be cool in the future. But like I said, I'd want to do it justice. If your view on it is that you wanted half-elves to be there, and their omission is a fault -- then so be it. I can't really argue with that except to say that we don't think they're required. As some people have mentioned, it's not a widespread thing. Many elves resist having human children for cultural reasons, and many elf-blooded children will live amongst humans as full humans simply because they can get away with it and hiding their heritage means not having to suffer for it -- from humans as well as elves. Some few might be public about their identity, and unwilling to leave their parents behind, but like I said that belongs in another story.

Incidentally, for half-dwarves the situation is a bit different. Dwarves aren't a very fertile race to begin with, and far less so when it comes to mating with humans and elves. In fact, it would be considered rare... rare enough that it's considered more of an oddity than a group of its own. The result is also less stigmatized... primarily because it's also less noticeable. You end up with what would appear to be a tall dwarf or a short human. That calls for a new model -- which we weren't going to get, even if we wanted to address such a rare case. Again, it's certainly something we could do in the future, though such a character would still be considered unusual.

I imagine for those who really like their half-elves that's not a very satisfactory answer, but I hope it offers some light on the why's and wherefore's.


Hope it helps...

[shonuff]

The flaw in this statement is that you are comparing fantastic races to human races. Human races are largely an artificial construct, whereas IMO elves, dwarves, kossith, etc., would be better categorized as different species. While you are correct in stating that you can't really say Africans are faster than Asians, or Caucasians are stronger than Africans, or something along those lines, you can say that cheetahs are faster than lions and tigers are stronger than tabbies.

Except even in Dragon Age successful interbreeding occurs between them. Half something something is a fairly standard fantasy trope. They aren't depicted as separate species at all. The Kossith perhaps, if you can't get half qunari...

Hellebore

True. Perhaps species is too strong of a term. In any case, the difference between the fantastic races is much starker than the differences between what passes as human races, much more like breeds of dogs. For example, grey hounds are faster than dachsunds, and shiba inus are the bestest dogs around (shout-out to shibas!). The flaw in my example, of course, is that when dogs mix breeds, they produce a mix (much like most other fantasy games), where in DA, the human takes over.

there are also human dwarf as well - there was an inference than Sandal could be one iirc. Hellebore

Interesting. I haven't seent that speculation. I've always had the impression that he was either a failed reincarnation (unlike the successful one from DA:2) or a dwarf mage, although if he were part human that could explain the reborn dwarf mage part.