The Differences between Male and Female

Let’s start with facts.  Facts are facts, and these are absolutely not politically correct in the modern era.  Men and women are different.  Woman can bear children; men cannot.  Men have more testosterone then women.  This means that men have a tendency to grow bigger and stronger on average than women.  Women on the other hand, at least according to some of the studies out there, may be more durable.  They seem to have hips that are wider and better set for taking a hit than a man’s.  There are also studies that seem to imply that women have a higher pain tolerance then men do.  Not sure if that’s true, but it might be.  Would all of this suggest males should have a higher Strength and females a higher Endurance?

Let’s think about culture as opposed to biology.  In what we see as “Western Culture”, males are encouraged to pursue fact based learning.  Females are encouraged to pursue more emotional learning.  Please don’t miss my point here.  I am not saying that women are from Venus and they can only think about emotions, but women are encouraged to know more about understanding emotions and what others are feeling.

This is probably a foolish analogy, but take it for the little it is worth:  a man would be more likely to know exactly how many grains of a poison was required to kill a 200lb man, but a woman would have a better idea of how to get that poison into him without him knowing.

I was thinking about saying that men knew facts and women knew how to manipulate them (men and facts), but that really is meant tongue in cheek.  Maybe I am “analyzing” an older culture and today’s youths are completely different, but I don’t think all the cultural norms have changed as much as people want to think they have.  So culturally, are males more inclined towards Knowledge while females are more inclined towards Psyche (or cleverness or wit or whatever your game calls it)?

There are differences.  But the big question is:  Do they matter in a fantasy role-playing game?  I’d say, “No”.

We know that all human beings are individuals.  We are made up of our biology mixed with our personal experiences.  Those two factors cause people to be so incredibly different that simply looking at people as members of a group - whether that group is by sex, ethnicity, generation, etc. - is simply asinine.  While an individual has a gender, it cannot define them in totality.  You can disagree with me as to whether people have a gender or not, but that really doesn’t matter, because it cannot define the person as a whole.

So allowing something like gender to grant advantages or disadvantages in a RPG just doesn’t work.  Let’s look at the facts.  Men have more testosterone.  So are all men stronger than all women?  Absolutely not.  Women have different skeletal frames so are all women sturdier than all men.  Absolutely not.  So in designing a character for an RPG, you can have a sly and clever man and a hulking female.  It all depends on their choices.

Is this simply the long, roundabout way of criticizing early FRPGs that actually limited female character stats?  Why, yes, it is.  But it is also a way to suggest that limiting character development is simply a foolish way to introduce anyone to the hobby of RPGs.  Most player characters are “adventurers” - they are the oddball, misfits of society.  If there was ever a place for a character that did not meet the social norms of a culture, this is it!  So there is no reason to artificially help or hurt any character based on their sex.

To quote a phenomenal athlete (Billie Jean King):  “we're never gonna beat them. We don't have the androgen that guys have, we don't have testosterone, (men) have bigger hearts. ... It's a deal. Physically there's no question”.  But the question is - Does it matter in a role-playing game?  Oh, we left off one word there:  fantasy role-playing game.  Again, we think the answer should be no.  But in all honesty - You are the Game Master!  You are going to set the tone for your campaign and game world.  While it is important for you to run the game the way you see fit, running contrary to your players is going to have ramifications.  Never base your decisions solely on what anyone (including us) tells you.

This post was written as part of the recently released The Zondarton Tribes:  The Fiercest Females aka All About Women in Role-Playing, the latest in our Small Bites editions.  Each Small Bites book looks deeply at one subject, a character archetype, a race/monster, a style of questing, or some other role-playing/world building subject.  This one details everything having to do with orcs, but with a mind to making them interesting and far less predictable then they have been in far too many campaign worlds.

We hope we’re getting you interested?  If you want to see the World Walker edition for FREE!! click the link here.  If we’ve hooked you and you want to get the full 48 pages of content in the Game Masters’ edition, click here.