Before I continue, I want to keep this topic strictly within the bounds of mechanical discussion. "X won't work, or won't correlate with your goal", that sort of thing. Discussion about my goals per se should be directed here.


Ok, so my goals are to include gender and social class as meaningful chargen decisions and ones which can be explored through their implications for your character and play. Neither of these choices should be The Focus of the game, merely two of the many. They should have a continuing effect throughout the character's advancement, but should not be more pervasive than species. For the sort of background I'm working from, you can read this.

I'll deal with gender first, then social class, and the two are independant.


Gender
Through discussions in RPG theory, I have concluded that my current setup does not do enough, and what it does do, it does wrong. So here are my ideas:

Attributes
One point in an attribute will cost 3 GP, and players start with 200 GP (GP = Genesis Points, they are the currency for dhargen and advancement). Attributes cost 3 GP to raise one point, skills cost 1 GP to raise one point.

Both males and females will have a different set of attribute modifiers, such that a modifier of +1 would mean that for every attribute point you bought in that attribute, you would get 1 for free. A modifier of +2 means that every attribute point you buy gives 2 free points to that attribute.

Gender modifiers stack with species modifiers (btw, the numbers in the link I gave above are irrelevant to this point because I will be re-working the numbers). If my gender gives me +1, and my species gives me +2, then when I buy one point in an attribute (costing me 3 GP), I will be increasing that attribute 4 points.

My preliminary breakdown is thus:
Males
Pow =+2
Con =+1
Spd =+1
Agi =0
Cry =+1
Flu =+2
Fla =+1
Bea =0
Inf =+1

Females
Pow =0
Con =+1
Spd =+1
Agi =+2
Cry =+2
Flu =+1
Fla =+1
Bea =+1
Inf =0

What I feel that this setup implies is that it is easier for a female to become more agile than a male, as it is easier for a male to develop greater power. In no way does this prevent either males from developing greater agility, or females from developing greater power.

The assumption of why it is easier to develop certain areas relative to others is not implied to be genetic OR societal, but will be explicitly defined as a combination of both.

I am toying withe the idea of allowing one +2 modifier to be swapped with any +1 modifier, and two +1 modifiers to be swapped with any 0 modifier, and this could conceptually account for "exceptional" or characters or those who "deviate from the norm".


Skills
As mentioned above, skills cost 1 GP to buy 1 point in. All skills are open to all players except a select few which require abilities be taken first.

At the moment, I feel that because attributes affect skills, any gender differences in skills would be redundant or too powerful. However, I may be mistaken, and I am open to suggestions. If I was to add anything, it would probably look something like this:

Females will be able to add their Charm skill to any attempts to haggle with a male shopkeeper or Coerce a male of their own species.

Males will be able to add their power modifer to any use of their Insult skill against other males of any species.


Abilities
Some abilities will cost more depending on gender. This particular aspect is already included, but I will extend it to a few more abilities and some I haven't added yet. In these cases the decision as to which gender pays more is larely in accordance with the sort of stereotypical logic employed in the works of Robert Jordan. For instance male magic users pay less for access to fire and earth realms, whereas female magic users pay less for access to air and water realms, and spirit costs the same for both.


The Rest of the World
Gender will play a role in the character's place within the world, in terms of the organisations, and occupations within them, that are available. Some occupations will be exclusive to males, some to females, and a bunch will be accessible to both. I haven't completed mapping out all the organisations or occupations within them yet as it is a lot of work, so I can't comment any more specific than that. The amount of work is amplified by the need to generate organisations and occupations and progression ladders for not one, but several species. Humans first though.



Social Class
Social class already carries with it significant consequences. However, I will include more to the effect of duplicating nutrition and favourable training, as well as other things, in the form of additional attribute modifiers.

Attributes
Social class modifiers stack with gender and species modifiers. If gender affords +1, and social class affords -1, then your modifier is 0. Your attribute modifier cannot be lower than 0, so even if your species and social class combined give -4 to an attribute which is given +1 by gender, your overall modifier will still be 0.

Upper-Class
Pow =+1
Con =+1
Spd =0
Agi =0
Cry =+2
Flu =+1
Fla =-3
Bea =+1
Inf =+1

Middle-Class
Pow =0
Con =+1
Spd =0
Agi =0
Cry =+1
Flu =+1
Fla =-1
Bea =0
Inf =0

Lower-Class
Pow =+1
Con =-1
Spd =0
Agi =+1
Cry =-1
Flu =0
Fla =+2
Bea =0
Inf =-2


Skills
Social class has no impact on what skills are available to players. Perhaps I should change this, but I really like the idea that "everything is accessible, but somethings are just harder to get". I don't see how I could make skills "harder to get".


Abiltiies
Social class determines how many ability points character's start with. These are really what defines you character's coolness.


Everything Else
Social Class already has a strong impact on your place in society.



Deneument
The attribute modifiers are, I feel, a very strong deal. I see the potential for munchkining, if my understanding of the term as "playing around with options in order to get maximum efficiency with complete disregard for character concept" is correct. I'm not sure if I mind this so much, so long as it doesn't lead to other players becoming disgruntled. I may have to get a friend of mine to create a program which can analyse all possible permutations of gender, social class, and species, to help me figure out if I am getting the right combinations I want from each, and make sure no-one gets any stupid modifiers (like +5 or something higher, which would create insanely powerful characters).

So, questions:
Does this idea strike anyone as mechanically problematic?
Does what I have presented (or hinted at) cohere to the goals I outlined at the beginning of this post?
Is there any way I could better achieve my goals? (suggestions ranging from "change this and that" to "how about this whole new approach" are most welcome).

Thanks,
-Ben

Ravien wrote:
Males
Pow =+2
Con =+1
Spd =+1
Agi =0
Cry =+1
Flu =+2
Fla =+1
Bea =0
Inf =+1

Females
Pow =0
Con =+1
Spd =+1
Agi =+2
Cry =+2
Flu =+1
Fla =+1
Bea =+1
Inf =0

Ravien wrote:
Upper-Class
Pow =+1
Con =+1
Spd =0
Agi =0
Cry =+2
Flu =+1
Fla =-3
Bea =+1
Inf =+1

Middle-Class
Pow =0
Con =+1
Spd =0
Agi =0
Cry =+1
Flu =+1
Fla =-1
Bea =0
Inf =0

Lower-Class
Pow =+1
Con =-1
Spd =0
Agi =+1
Cry =-1
Flu =0
Fla =+2
Bea =0
Inf =-2

Instead your game rules indicate in the game world that women are more beautiful than men and men are uglier than women.

Currently, your rules for social class indicate to players that social class is fixed and immovable, indicating that your game world is worse than India with it's caste system.

...People who definitely aren't average?

Your game also prevents stories like The Prince and The Pauper; The Prince can easily proclaim: "look at my Crystal (Cry) attribute; it's far higher than the Pauper's Cry!" and by the sizable difference it has in the game world, he can be assured that his claims are more believable than the Pauper's claim to be the prince.

You've got a big loophole here.

Players will reap great effectiveness rewards by choosing combinations of gender, social class, and species in which the modifiers align. The advantage comes because the positive modifers stack up, while the negative modifiers are pegged at zero. Players will have to choose between one of these optimum combinations, or a big effectivness penalty. For each species, there will be a clearly advantageous gender and social class. (It's "gnome illusionists" and "halfling thieves" all over again, except with gender and social class instead of character class.)

- Walt

Players will reap great effectiveness rewards by choosing combinations of gender, social class, and species in which the modifiers align. The advantage comes because the positive modifers stack up, while the negative modifiers are pegged at zero. Players will have to choose between one of these optimum combinations, or a big effectivness penalty. For each species, there will be a clearly advantageous gender and social class. (It's "gnome illusionists" and "halfling thieves" all over again, except with gender and social class instead of character class.)

I believe the point that Walt was trying to make is that relying solely on personal feelings of accomplishment to motivate players to take a non ideal combination is going to result in a fairly limited variety of characters that see actual play.

Is it possible in AD&D to arm your elf with a mace or an axe? Sure. But what proportion of AD&D players in all of history have done so as compared to the overwhelming proportion who will arm them with an bow and long sword.

If that's what you're looking for, then great. But Walt was pointing out that if you make certain combinations innately more effective than other combinations that very very few players will ever select the less effective combinations. Depending on how extreme the relative effectiveness is, this may get to the point where even having the other combinations as an option is pointless, and you could focus your game solely on those effective combinations.

I agree with Valamir and similar posters on the tendency of the modifiers to result in min-maxing characters. One thing I haven't seen mentioned is "ceilings" on levels. That is a woman with training can be stronger than -many- men, but odds are very high that the absolute strongest man is stronger than the absolute strongest woman.

It -might- also be that in terms of beauty that the most attractive woman might be more so than the most handsome man. That is, if you take "ultimate woman" and "ultimate man", both women and men might rate the female character as more "attractive".

Ceilings may crimp some roleplayers style (whadda ya mean I can't get any better?), but an upper limit on some physical characteristics based on gender is realistic. It might also apply to some social/status characteristics as well.

Greg Porter
BTRC

The stacking of modifiers might be useful if the optimum sets become the default character classes. The non-optimum sets can then be used for NPC's, giving them slightly mook-like properties.

Skills
Social class has no impact on what skills are available to players. Perhaps I should change this, but I really like the idea that "everything is accessible, but somethings are just harder to get". I don't see how I could make skills "harder to get".

This is carried over from the Mechanical Gender Differences thread on RPG Theory, and in particular was in response to an excellent post by Russell.

I agree with Russell's post, and I'll add in a bit more specific application: i.e. making something more expensive point-wise does not linearly result in rarity. If you have players who are very concerned with cost-vs-effectiveness, then even a minor increase in cost past the c-vs-e ratio of other options will mean they never take it. Conversely, if you have players who are more experimental or exploratory, they may take options regardless of the cost. In a real game there is no guarantee this will balance out.

I have frequently seen this in action. In some games, the players will all go for the unusual options even with penalties, resulting in a PC group which is a collection of freaks. Conversely, making the unusual cheap doesn't mean that players will take it.

Ravien wrote: Do you suggest that social class, species, and gender should have no effect whatsoever on character effectiveness? Don't all games rely on some sort of effectiveness differential for different choices? Isn't that part of what makes a game fun?

Is it possible in AD&D to arm your elf with a mace or an axe? Sure. But what proportion of AD&D players in all of history have done so as compared to the overwhelming proportion who will arm them with an bow and long sword.

I believe the point that Walt was trying to make is that relying solely on personal feelings of accomplishment to motivate players to take a non ideal combination is going to result in a fairly limited variety of characters that see actual play.

Increasing costs doesn't disallow things. So, for example, in your system I can make an burly female noble warrior -- but she will be more one-sided and less effective overall than other PCs (i.e. her defining trait will be Power, because I don't have the points to buy up other attributes). Do you want this character in your game?

I have frequently seen this in action. In some games, the players will all go for the unusual options even with penalties, resulting in a PC group which is a collection of freaks. Conversely, making the unusual cheap doesn't mean that players will take it.

But for the record, these mechanics are not meant to result in rarity. They are meant to make gender meaningful. I would be perfectly happy if every character challenged the norms, because now they are meaningful for having done so. They are more integrated into the game world for having decided to set themselves apart from it.

Hey Mike. Yes, these rules were specifically designed to work for advancement and chargen. For example, on your character sheet you would have "Attribute[Gender+SocialClass+Species mod] : Actual Score [score modifier]", so that a human male peasant might have "Power[+4] : 22 [+11]". So during the game, as he advanced, everytime he spent one point on power, he would get 4 for free (5 in total). All attributes can be increased during play.

If, OTOH, the player had to pay for their unusual natures with something concrete that was likely to come into play, then the effect of gender would be more felt.

Ravien wrote:
One psionic character could be a spy, assassin, advisor, judge, detective etc. Hell, that same character could be a bartender if they wanted. So "class" doesn't really exist.

Also, no-one picked me up on this (shame!) but now that I think about it, the upper-class should not have pow = +2, because the amount of actual physical labour they do is miniscule compared to that of a lower-class person. Instead, their enhanced nutrition would only increase constitution. So I'll be changing that, making lower-class characters have more power and less constitution, whilst the upper-class have less power and more constitution.

I have looke dshortly at the pdf I have seen some deviations from what was shown here.So I will keep my comments to the post here.

From what I have seen I suppose the intend was to create a believeable world for exploration with a special ephasis on society.
Unfortunately some points seem to run awry to this intend.
Please correct if my take on the intend was false.

Attributes.
Having seen different tables I won´t comment details. While I like seeing a ganetic base and the abilty to improve based on your aptitude looks good.
But I wouldn´t include the attribute gender base modificator into mental attributes limits because the difference seems to be in the distribution but not in the limits.

Size is really lacking, even if it wouldn´t be a classical attribute. Size would probably stack, sometimes positively sometimes negatively with other attributes that would have probably to be readjusted.
For example women have in reality a higher CON regarding most subpoints but they lack size when it comes to damage and toxic resistance. Size is also awkward if you want to use stealth or rapid direction changes (acrobatics) and is probably leading to your perception on higher female AGI (Ever thought of dividing hand manipulation and body manipulation)

Personally I would think a diminishing return would be nice when investing in higher attributes.

Beauty is an attribute I can´t see the way you see it. In my eye beauty is strictly a question of culture. This is also shown by the changing ideals over time and culture.

Social class
The social classes look a little bit broad stroked. I would imagine a much broader influence of culture on it, especially with different races.
That the social class should have no influence on skills isn´t understandable too. Social class in a formalize society like most ages on humanity was primary about rights and access to ressources. And this includes the right ojn certain jobs and the funds to do the training.

Another question would be the continuing effect of class after character creation. If someone was trained from youth for a class fitting job this will have an impact on the way he thginks and works. Most probably much more than a change of class that was triggered by an unrelated event.
But why should the noble poet get a bonus to leadership later when he never used the option to train in his youth and probably never left his noble household. (as indicated by his GP split)

Jobs/classes
I miss this construct when everything else gets formalized. This would solve for example the problem whether the upper class has a power bonus. The noble knight probably has one and the noble academicaly trained minster probably not. But the serve bound man-at-arms probably has this bonus when his master had the wisdom to feed and train him for best effort.

Skills
A fancy idea of mine is that skills and skill use should indicate changes of attributes. Have you thought about buying skills only and dedicating these points then to the attributes connected?

So much this time.

I'd be wary of that - some ruling classes have had physical power and prowess as part of their defining characteristics. Think of all the states that have had military requirements for citizenship, ort a ruling class defined by its combat abilities - knights, equites, samurai etc. All of these might legitimately get a power boost. OTOH, cosical class like this merges with profession to some extent, as one usuallyt limits the options of the other.

I have looke dshortly at the pdf I have seen some deviations from what was shown here.So I will keep my comments to the post here.

But I wouldn´t include the attribute gender base modificator into mental attributes limits because the difference seems to be in the distribution but not in the limits.

Size is really lacking, even if it wouldn´t be a classical attribute. Size would probably stack, sometimes positively sometimes negatively with other attributes that would have probably to be readjusted.
For example women have in reality a higher CON regarding most subpoints but they lack size when it comes to damage and toxic resistance. Size is also awkward if you want to use stealth or rapid direction changes (acrobatics) and is probably leading to your perception on higher female AGI (Ever thought of dividing hand manipulation and body manipulation)

Personally I would think a diminishing return would be nice when investing in higher attributes.

Beauty is an attribute I can´t see the way you see it. In my eye beauty is strictly a question of culture. This is also shown by the changing ideals over time and culture.

The social classes look a little bit broad stroked. I would imagine a much broader influence of culture on it, especially with different races.
That the social class should have no influence on skills isn´t understandable too. Social class in a formalize society like most ages on humanity was primary about rights and access to ressources. And this includes the right ojn certain jobs and the funds to do the training.

Another question would be the continuing effect of class after character creation. If someone was trained from youth for a class fitting job this will have an impact on the way he thginks and works. Most probably much more than a change of class that was triggered by an unrelated event.

But why should the noble poet get a bonus to leadership later when he never used the option to train in his youth and probably never left his noble household. (as indicated by his GP split)

I miss this construct when everything else gets formalized. This would solve for example the problem whether the upper class has a power bonus. The noble knight probably has one and the noble academicaly trained minster probably not. But the serve bound man-at-arms probably has this bonus when his master had the wisdom to feed and train him for best effort.

A fancy idea of mine is that skills and skill use should indicate changes of attributes. Have you thought about buying skills only and dedicating these points then to the attributes connected?

So much this time.

Ravien wrote: Hmmm, I'm not sure what you mean by "concrete...likely to come into play", but it sounds intriguing. Would you care to elaborate? I'm a sucker for anything that adds another fun tactical layer to play!

The only thing that pops into my head is to do something standard like Hero System disadvantages, or GURPS disads? Familiar?

On the subject of beauty, do you have some chart for "conversions" of beauty scores? That is, if beauty is somehow genericized, then different cultures will see characters differently given different standards of beauty from culture to culture. Or do all cultures in the game somehow share the same standard of beauty?

A question and a comment:
Question: I saw a mention that attributes top out at 100. One of my personal feelings abut game design is that you shouldn't design beyond your abilities. That is, don't use numbers that are smaller than any reasonable chance of "simulating game reality". If you're using a percentile scale, this implies that your confidence in the "simulation" is accurate to a 1% level. I mean, if your margin of error is 3%, then 1% divisions are effectively meaningless and just add numbers for the sake of adding numbers. I've seen far too many percentile based games with combat modifiers of +13% or some specific skill with a -8% chance in situation X, and I wonder exactly which hat they pulled those numbers out of.

On the other side of the argument, percentiles have a better "feel" in some cases. If I say 65% on d%, most people have a better understanding of the chance than if I say 13 or less on d20. I tend to lean towards the "less numbers are better" side. Just a personal bias.

Comment: If you were looking for a way to handle 'ceilings' in a simple and useful way, apply your racial/social modifiers to the upper bound. So, if you have a +5 in something, then the ceiling for you is 5 points different than it would be for someone with a +0 in the same characteristic. So, if women had a strength penalty, this would lower their ceiling, and thus the strongest man would always be stronger than the strongest woman.

Greg Porter

You know, I don't really mind sexual dimorphism.

But... wow. A man and a woman both put 10 points into Inf (I don't know what Inf is, sorry). The man now has an Inf of 20, and the woman has an Inf of 10. And that's with the smallest possible modifier, a +1.

Am I reading that right? That sort of numerical divergence feels like a MASSIVE difference to me. A man has 200% the capacity of a female for Inf (once again, whatever that is, and I'm picking Inf on purpose because of my total ignorance of what it is). Well, not really capacity per se, since they top out at 100.

Let's take an upperclass man vs. a lowerclass man, and now look at Fla (flavor?). For every 1 point the upperclass man spends on Fla (for he bottoms out at 0), the lowerclass man gets 4 points. So they both spend for 10 points, and UC man gets ten, and LC man gets 40. Once again, that just feels like an absolutely massive difference.

Maybe it works out in play, but my gut feeling is that there's a severe mismatch of proportions here. What you have looks pretty much like a geometric progression, which feels excessive (just gut feeling here, since I haven't seen how this corresponds to the rest of your system). Each +1 is a "+100%", and that just doesn't feel plausible.

Can you allay my concerns on this point?

Ravien wrote: Ahhh. Nah. These are all well and good, but I don't think the "disadvantage" system fits with the "feel" of Eclipse.

1. beauty is an abstract measure of your own internal and external beauty, and not a measure of how other people view you (though it is used to interact with others, it does not itself measure their reactions).

2. no other attribute has that much attention paid to it, despite how other attributes like influence may change according to culture (some might feel that aggression is paramount, whilst others might think that confidence, subtlety, guile, or even reputation would be the most important things for influence).

3. the table would be useless, as it would merely be ascribing an adjective to a static modifier; ie: in one culture being plump might bring you a +1 modifier, whilst in another being grotesquely skinny might bring you a +1 modifier. In both cases though, you are only getting a +1 modifier. Does this make sense (it does in my head...)?

So basically I feel that GM fiat would handle cultural perceptions with far more aplomb than any table would, simply by roleplaying how NPCs react to the PCs based on the player's descriptions of their characters, and perhaps ascribing bonuses/penalties to social rolls based on that.

I keep trying to wrap my head around this idea. It's internal, yet it affects people's reactions. I'm not getting it.

Not getting at all what you're saying here. Who's paying attention in your sentence? People posting here, players, characters?

Again, not seeing what you're saying, no.

This I agree on, in that it's a very complicated thing. That is, what is beautiful to one culture is downright ugly to another (lip rings come to mind). So, given that beauty is so completely subjective from culture to culture, the only thing that I can see a single rating meaning is the beauty that the character has in their own culture.

Ravien wrote:

But why should the noble poet get a bonus to leadership later when he never used the option to train in his youth and probably never left his noble household. (as indicated by his GP split)

Because he is a noble. Other nobles will treat him like a noble (if a bit of a pompous/stupid one), and the lower-classes will treat him as a noble. Just the mere fact of his station is enough to carry weight in Eclipse's society.


-Ben

Take a young noble. In his young years he could have used his position to get a decent education. But instead he was hunting, partying and taking part on martial games (i.e. he didn´t put points into crystal). Now he is grown up and on un urhent mission. He and his troup of retainers are in an old library and they have to learn as much about their abysal enemies as they can. And according to your rules as looks if he would learn more than his lower class clerk retainer.

Ravien wrote:
Then I'd think "what the hell is the point of this table if every culture gives +1 potential bonuses?" The only function it might serve is to suggest to players how their character should look to be considered beautiful in a given culture -a decision they could make without the table.

A few points here: my understanding of nobility in medieval times was that children couldn't just "choose" to hunt party or whatever. Families back then, and especially noble families, were fantastically strict with their children. A noble child would have no choice but to learn exactly what the father wanted them to learn, and do what the father wanted them to do.

I get the beauty idea now. I still think that even "inner beauty" would be culturally subjective in the real world, but if it's universal in your setting, that works just fine.

Mike

I don't know if this has been brought up yet (in any of the many threads), but you've got the the great Chun Li fallacy going on by giving women an agility bonus. Yes, I do blame fighting video games for this perception.

Women, generally, have greater joint flexibility, but it comes at the cost of increased risk of hyper-extension. They also have a lower center of gravity, but the usefulness of that is offset by structurally weaker knees (knobby knees are more common in women) and less efficient thigh muscle leverage because of hip displacement. Plus, the generally lower muscle mass to inert body weight ratio hinders agility (muscles move the body). I'd make the costs the same on Agility for men and women, if not transfer the bonus to men.

I see you've got the traits nicely balanced, and the great Chun Li fallacy may be an expectation you want to cater too, but it's not particularly realistic. Pet peeve of mine, but to each his own.

Ravien wrote:
Alexander, regarding what happens when you put points into a stat... yeah. Hence I doubt any two characters will ever put the same amount of points into the same stat. To put 10 points on one stat to get 20 out necessitates that you will suffer in another stat. The idea being to put more points into those stats that you don't have a potential mod for, and put less points into those with high potential mods. Also bear in mind that species and social class stack. After all, 1 point in an attribute costs 3GP, and you only get 200 (maybe 250, depends on how things turn out when I make a few characters), and that needs to buy skills too.

Ravien wrote:
But if the potential bonuses for advancement and chargen are incongruous with people's perceived realities, can someone else suggest a better way to model the effects of social class and shit? I mean, if I don't model it, then I feel that these options become meaningless and have no place in a game. It is also incongruent with my perceptions of reality to say that two people, born of different gender in different social classes with different access to resources could potentially be the same.

I didn't touch the mental differences before, because I was sort of avoiding it. Anyway, here is a list of neurological differences between men and women, courtesy of The Society for Women's Health Research

The structure of the brain and the way it functions is different in women and men.

• Adolescent brain development appears to be different in males and females. Males age 6-17 years have been shown to display more prominent age-related decreases in gray matter (the part of the brain than allows us to think) and increases in white matter (which transfers information between distant regions) than females. These changes in brain composition appear to be linked to developmental processes in which nerve cell connections are "pruned" in gray matter and made more efficient (myelinated) in white matter. The more dramatic changes seen in males may be related to the different effects of estrogen and testosterone on the brain.

• Women have smaller brains than men, with women having more gray matter and men having more white matter. This finding may help explain why women are typically better than men at verbal tasks, while men are typically better than women at spatial tasks, as well as why the sexes perform equally well on intelligence tests in spite of males having larger brains.

• Although men and women have been shown to process some language tasks similarly, in other aspects of language processing there are significant sex differences.

• Imaging studies of the living brain indicate that in women, neurons on both sides of the brain are activated when they are listening, while in men, neurons on only one side of the brain are activated.

• Men and women appear to process single words similarly, but in the interpretation of whole sentences, women use both sides of the brain while men use one side.

• Boys have a higher incidence than girls of developmental language disorders, such as developmental dyslexia. Despite these differences during childhood, it is not clear whether adult women have better verbal skills than men.

• Men and women process spatial information differently.

• When negotiating a virtual reality maze, both men and women use the right hippocampus to figure out how to exit. However, men also use the left hippocampus for this task, while women do not, and women also use the right prefrontal cortex, while men do not.

• In an imaging study, men were found to activate a distributed system of different brain regions on both sides of the brain while performing a spatial task. Women, however, activated these regions on only the right side of the brain.

• Women appear to rely on landmarks to navigate their environments, whereas men tend to use compass directions.

• Males typically have twice as many neurons as females in the cerebral cortex, the gray matter that covers the majority of the brain's surface. However, females appear to have twice as many connections between neurons as males, leading to an overall equal number of neural processes.

• Boys are more prone to mental retardation and learning disabilities than girls. This may be due to the fact that male fetuses require the maintenance of higher numbers of nerve cells in the cerebral cortex than female fetuses - early damage to the male developing brain could result in higher losses of needed neurons.

• As the brain ages, the amount of tissue mass declines and the amount of fluid increases. This effect is less severe in women than in men, suggesting that women are somewhat less vulnerable to age-related changes in mental abilities abilities. However, women are more prone to dementia than men, perhaps because any disease that leads to loss of neurons is likely to cause more connections per neuron to be lost in women.

• The cerebellum, an area of the brain important for posture and balance, and the pons, a brain structure linked to the cerebellum that helps control consciousness, are larger in men than in women.

• Some functions of memory appear to be different in males and females.

• Higher rates of blood flow in certain portions of the brain are associated with increased memory of verbal tasks in women, but not in men.

• Compared to men, women have been shown to be better at remembering faces.

I think the best way to model "the effects of social class and shit" is a mixture of skill availablity, languages, money, contacts, and knowledge rather than attributes.

If you want nobles to be in charge, dont fuss about with their leadership score. Just make them in charge.

Ok, a few good points here:

Cruciel (1st post): Regarding flexibility, you are correct on average, but not in the extremes of human potential. I direct you to this abstract, and to lines 5 and 6. Basically you're right, that in average and the extremes of potential, when all other factors are accounted for (such as training, diet, and age), males are significantly superior to females in all physical measures except flexibility. And the reason, as you noted, is because we are just built differently. PM me if you want more studies, or you can just search for your own.

Andrew, I'm not sure I understand your concerns. IF players stick to the "stereotypes", then they will definately suffer in other areas. If they don't want to suffer in those areas, then they have to divert from the stereotype.

Question. Does something have to be modeled to have a place in the game? I tend to disagree.

I hope you don't take that as off-topic. It's just that you asked for other suggestions of how you might handle this type of thing, and I think moving it from System to Setting is a reasonable option, one that a lot of games have used.

Women have smaller brains than men, with women having more gray matter and men having more white matter. This finding may help explain why women are typically better than men at verbal tasks, while men are typically better than women at spatial tasks, as well as why the sexes perform equally well on intelligence tests in spite of males having larger brains.

So, given the data you can make up your own mind, though I think if you wanted to accurately reflect the cognitive differences between men and women, Spatial and Verbal should be your primary mental divisions. Probably not a real "fun" division for a roleplaying game though.

Well, you seem to know where you're going, I just wanted to touch briefly on your reply.

As for the Agility thing, given that we both agree on the flexibility issue, the question becomes: How important is flexibility compared to strength/structural stability in regards to the tasks of dodging, jumping, climbing, gymnastics, and acrobatics? (I love the layout, BTW). I would definitely say it is important, but of significantly less importance than other things. From my perspective, flexibility does not equal to Agility as you have it defined.

Ben wrote: ...but white matter/grey matter means absolutely nothing when it comes to verbal and spatial tasks. This "finding" means didly squat except that information is processed faster in a male brain than in a female brain, and that more complicated processing can occur in a female brain than in a male brain. The reason females perform better at verbal tasks has nothing to do with white matter/grey matter, it has everything to do with the left hemisphere bias and overall lower degree of lateralization in a female brain. The reason men perform better in spatial tasks has everything to do with the strong right hemisphere dominance and strong lateralization of the brain.

Gur RC, Turetsky BI, Matsui M, et al. Sex differences in brain gray and white matter in healthy young adults: correlations with cognitive performance. J Neurosci. 1999;19(10):4065-4072.

Sex-related differences in behavior are extensive, but their neuroanatomic substrate is unclear. Indirect perfusion data have suggested a higher percentage of gray matter (GM) in left hemisphere cortex and in women, but differences in volumes of the major cranial compartments have not been examined for the entire brain in association with cognitive performance. We used volumetric segmentation of dual echo (proton density and T2-weighted) magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans in healthy volunteers (40 men, 40 women) age 18-45. Supertentorial volume was segmented into GM, white matter (WM), and CSF. We confirmed that women have a higher percentage of GM, whereas men have a higher percentage of WM and of CSF. These differences sustained a correction for total intracranial volume. In men the slope of the relation between cranial volume and GM paralleled that for WM, whereas in women the increase in WM as a function of cranial volume was at a lower rate. In men the percentage of GM was higher in the left hemisphere, the percentage of WM was symmetric, and the percentage of CSF was higher in the right. Women showed no asymmetries. Both GM and WM volumes correlated moderately with global, verbal, and spatial performance across groups. However, the regression of cognitive performance and WM volume was significantly steeper in women. Because GM consists of the somatodendritic tissue of neurons whereas WM comprises myelinated connecting axons, the higher percentage of GM makes more tissue available for computation relative to transfer across distant regions. This could compensate for smaller intracranial space in women. Sex difference in the percentage and asymmetry of the principal cranial tissue volumes may contribute to differences in cognitive functioning.

[snip, until page 6]

For the verbal task, in which the overall correlation between parenchymal volume and performance is low, the higher percentage of GM in women and the steeper slope of improved performance with increased WM combine to confer on women a performance advantage. However, as seen from the association between WM volume and performance on the spatial tasks, men may perform better on tasks in which a high level of performance requires large volumes of WM. This suggests that verbal tasks require less intrahemispheric transfer than spatial tasks and that sex differences in performance would depend on the relative requirements for GM and WM. However, these correlations could be spurious and should be interpreted with extreme caution. Testing this hypothesis would require a wider range of tasks showing sex differences in performance and perhaps constructing new tasks designed to require either highly focal processing or transfer of information across distant cortical regions.