Sex and Gender in Tides of Shadow

[Previn]

http://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/study ... ith-248757

I imagine that a similar effect, though at a smaller scale as you mention, would be in play.

That's in regards to race, and I'm not sure you can carry it over to games since RPG are an inherently interactive medium while television is not. It's also not real data (no papers in the link), and two of it's three main 'supporters' have an interest in it having that outcome. I also would be entirely unsurprised to find that their study only looked at African-Americans even though Hispanics make up a larger % of the us population.

Again, I'd like to see actual data.

You also have to consider the people who are now not going to touch your game because you did go there.

Fuck 'em.

Except that the lost sales might cancel out any increase, or even decease your income enough that adding any possible LBGT buys it still doesn't make you more money.

[rasmuswagner]

From my comfy seat in the Straight White Dude Club, all this stuff bores me immensely. I'm a staunch ally, though, in the Voltaire sense.

But those asshats making up new lingo on their blog with a readership of 30 people, and bitching at me for not magically being aware of it, they can go fuck themselves right in their orifice of choice.

"Seven items, plus/minus two". Let's see..."straight, gay, bi, likes to crossdress, wrong bits for their gender, both genders or none, non-human". 7 categories. That's about the maximum number of categories I (and thus by extension any sane, intelligent, reasonable person) can be arsed to give a fuck about.

And that's me meeting the rainbow halfways. My actual sorting algorithm goes "Fuckable? Y/N".

[Chamomile]

Concerning the original question, I would definitely recommend you either condense it into one paragraph and stick it in the chargen section or you make it longer and have it be a 2-3 page article on how magic and stuff interacts with human sexuality. Some people are actually hyenas and have hyena sexual politics, and some maybe transsexualism (or whatever you want to call it) is more common amongst people who can give it a shot at will and painlessly revert if they don't like it, or whatever.

[animea90]

Here's my own quick stab at a short and sweet "gender can be M, F or a bunch of other letters blurb" that would go in a chargen section

Name _____

Write a name for your character here. This can be any name you would like - it can be a real world name or a completely new fantasy name never used in the real world. The only requirement is that you can write it down and that players at the table can speak it aloud. It's strongly suggested, but not absolutely required that gaming groups have some common conventions for naming as that helps to set the tone for the overall game. If a couple of players choose period and cultural appropriate names researched from actual history and a couple other players choose names just to be funny, that's a sign that players are expecting different things from the game and should try to work together a bit more to avoid ruining each other's fun.

Gender _____

Pick a gender for your character. This can be any gender you want. It can be Male or Female or it can be something else. Note that in the real world there are many people who identify as something other than simply Male or Female and more than you might think who have physiology which is not clearly in either category. In a fantasy world with cultures of plant-people, sentient rocks, hivemind bee-people, amorphous shapeshifters and body-jumping psychic entities, gender can be a whole lot more varied than the binary gender often erroneously assumed in the contemporary western world of reality. Sometimes thinking in depth about alternate physiologies, fantastic means reproduction and the cultures that could result from such can provide a unique hook to build a character around.

Whatever you choose for your character's gender, it has no mechanical effect on your character's stats or abilities, although it may change what other characters in the setting expect of your character

I would shorten it to "pick your gender". No reason to include all that extra stuff.

The problem with building your character around these crazy physiologies is there is no good guide to doing it. It something that should be left up to the GM and player. You don't want the player pointing to this and saying "I want to play a swarm of bees and the player guide says I can".

[animea90]

From my comfy seat in the Straight White Dude Club, all this stuff bores me immensely. I'm a staunch ally, though, in the Voltaire sense.

But those asshats making up new lingo on their blog with a readership of 30 people, and bitching at me for not magically being aware of it, they can go fuck themselves right in their orifice of choice.

"Seven items, plus/minus two". Let's see..."straight, gay, bi, likes to crossdress, wrong bits for their gender, both genders or none, non-human". 7 categories. That's about the maximum number of categories I (and thus by extension any sane, intelligent, reasonable person) can be arsed to give a fuck about.

And that's me meeting the rainbow halfways. My actual sorting algorithm goes "Fuckable? Y/N".

I think this highlights why gender really doesn't matter. I am not going to have sex with anyone in my RPGs, so gender really doesn't matter.

If someone announced their character is transgender, my only thought would be "I really hope this person doesn't try to turn this into a game about gender issues.".

[Prak]

I think the point spongeknight is trying to make is that you don't need that essay in a RPG book. You can just say: "With the presence of new intelligent species and abundance of body altering magic gender became less important than not being a talking mantis. PCs may identify as whatever they want to be." I could be wrong though.

Possibly, I was too busy having a part of my actual identity equivocated to weird and stupid fetishes.

Concerning the original question, I would definitely recommend you either condense it into one paragraph and stick it in the chargen section or you make it longer and have it be a 2-3 page article on how magic and stuff interacts with human sexuality. Some people are actually hyenas and have hyena sexual politics, and some maybe transsexualism (or whatever you want to call it) is more common amongst people who can give it a shot at will and painlessly revert if they don't like it, or whatever.

Actually, I might do both. The short paragraph at the start in character creation, and the longer essay in a chapter on the Shadow and shadowkin.

I would shorten it to "pick your gender". No reason to include all that extra stuff.

There very fucking much is a reason to include "all that extra stuff." It's inclusion, it gives potential preteen G/SM players the opportunity and permission to make a character which matches their own experience with gender. It's visibility and acceptance for a minority that still has a lot of trouble getting that.

The problem with building your character around these crazy physiologies is there is no good guide to doing it. It something that should be left up to the GM and player. You don't want the player pointing to this and saying "I want to play a swarm of bees and the player guide says I can".

You must be new here. I'm going to be a little nicer than I was to sponge, and just say "swarm of bees" is not a gender identity or sexual orientation (though, dear satan, I kind of wish it was). The best you could do is to call it a form of otherkinism, and I am not going to give otherkins a paragraph, unless it's to talk about shadowkin who grew up thinking they were human.

I think this highlights why gender really doesn't matter. I am not going to have sex with anyone in my RPGs, so gender really doesn't matter.

So... let me make some predictions here- you are white, cisgendered (meaning your gender identity agrees with your biological sex), heterosexual, and probably male and most likely live in America. Right. You just don't get it. And I say that because if my prediction is right, you are literally represented all fucking over the media. I am white, I live in America, and I am biologically male. So I have some representation in media, except that white males in american media are usually boorish idiots who make fun of a minority for about half their jokes and are unreasonably scared that someone's going to turn them gay. While I am physically represented in media, mentally, sexually and psychologically, I am very much not.

[OgreBattle]

"The girdle of gender changing will now come with a d100 chart"

[Voss]

From my comfy seat in the Straight White Dude Club, all this stuff bores me immensely. I'm a staunch ally, though, in the Voltaire sense.

But those asshats making up new lingo on their blog with a readership of 30 people, and bitching at me for not magically being aware of it, they can go fuck themselves right in their orifice of choice.

"Seven items, plus/minus two". Let's see..."straight, gay, bi, likes to crossdress, wrong bits for their gender, both genders or none, non-human". 7 categories. That's about the maximum number of categories I (and thus by extension any sane, intelligent, reasonable person) can be arsed to give a fuck about.

And that's me meeting the rainbow halfways. My actual sorting algorithm goes "Fuckable? Y/N".

I think this highlights why gender really doesn't matter. I am not going to have sex with anyone in my RPGs, so gender really doesn't matter.

If someone announced their character is transgender, my only thought would be "I really hope this person doesn't try to turn this into a game about gender issues.".

And you come off like an asshole. The primary point is to let people be comfortable with the character they are playing, not be stuck with yet another activity where they aren't welcome. Put it this way: are you going to demand that the atheist's character worship a god, or else the party can't have healing magic?

The big thing about other identities, cultures, and etc is that they are in no way about you.

[ishy]

Possibly, I was too busy having a part of my actual identity equivocated to weird and stupid fetishes.

Dammit Prak.
Here is a tip. If you want to be sexual progressive then stop dismissing people who like to have sex in a different way than you do.

[Prak]

I'm pretty sure dismissing fetishes is totally fine. I mean, I think it's a bit weird and dumb to dress up in what amounts to a mascot costume to have sex, but that's really more for practical reasons like "it'd be damned hot in there" and "yet another thing to clean," and with the number of people who've been found dead because they choked themselves while choking the chicken, autoerotic asphyxiation seems like a less than optimal life decision. But people who want to do those things totally can. I really don't give a shit. Hell, I'm into furrydom as a totemic and xenophilic thing, it's the suits I find weird, and a bit of airway constriction is fucking aces, but that doesn't make those fetishes, or even fetishes in general, a bit dumb.

[Previn]

I would shorten it to "pick your gender". No reason to include all that extra stuff.

There very fucking much is a reason to include "all that extra stuff." It's inclusion, it gives potential preteen G/SM players the opportunity and permission to make a character which matches their own experience with gender. It's visibility and acceptance for a minority that still has a lot of trouble getting that.

Can you explain why we need this as opposed to 'you can be whatever gender you want' that doesn't involve what is essentially PC-thuggery?

[Parthenon]

I'm pretty sure dismissing fetishes is totally fine. I mean, I think it's a bit weird and dumb to dress up in what amounts to a mascot costume to have sex, but that's really more for practical reasons like "it'd be damned hot in there" and "yet another thing to clean," and with the number of people who've been found dead because they choked themselves while choking the chicken, autoerotic asphyxiation seems like a less than optimal life decision. But people who want to do those things totally can. I really don't give a shit. Hell, I'm into furrydom as a totemic and xenophilic thing, it's the suits I find weird, and a bit of airway constriction is fucking aces, but that doesn't make those fetishes, or even fetishes in general, a bit dumb.

This whole thread makes you look a bit like a hypocrite who has a focus on gender politics and is trying to shove it in everywhere. Just like shoving your religious beliefs in everywhere.

Dismissing fetishes while insisting that your version of gender politics has to be included is narrow minded and arrogant.

Let's swap out the furry for wanting to be a different gender, shall we?

I'm pretty sure dismissing transgenderism is totally fine. I mean, I think it's a bit weird and dumb to dress as the opposite sex, use prosthetics, or get radical cosmetic surgery to have sex, but that's really more for practical reasons like "it's damned uncomfortable to tie my dick down or hide it under a sheath" and "yet another thing to clean," and with the number of people who've had side effects or damage from radical cosmetic surgery or committed suicide after SRS not having enough effect, it seems like a less than optimal life decision.

This makes you more like the white "cisgendered" christian males who think the bible is right than you want to be.

There are a lot of people who have pointed out that you've gone too far, and you could have a better effect without preaching by just mentioning the way that gender is more fluid, maybe add a couple of low level spells to swap gender for a while and so on. Something subtle which goes through the whole game rather than a preachy couple of paragraphs that people will ignore.

[Prak]

...you'll have to explain PC-thuggery. You mean Politically Correct thuggery? How the fuck is saying "your character can be male, female, intersex, trans, demi, or even just queer (or, with magic, a hermaphrodite)" thuggery?

edit: @Parthenon- transgenderism isn't a fucking fetish. There is no fucking equivalence. Sure, I'm being a teeny tiny bit hypocritical by saying fetishes are dumb. But only very fucking slightly, because I'm, 1, not saying it's fucking wrong to have a fetish, 2, not saying people who have fetishes should be killed, 3, not preventing anyone from enjoying their fetish, 4, not saying people with fetishes should be cured, 5, a person with (colloquial) fetishes who just happens to realize that the entire concept of fetishes is absurd. Oh, and, 6, fetishes are generally fucking cultivated. No one pops out of the womb and says "oh man, I need a chick to step on me with high heels." No one even pops out of the womb and grows up to realize they've always been into that. People with fetishes develop them. If I'm wrong about this, I'm totally open to seeing studies that say there are people who have inborn fetishes (and fucking mate selection shouldn't count). If anyone can point those out, I will read them, and amend my thinking. I'll probably still think fetishes are a bit dumb, but it'll be more along the lines of the fact that I think exterior testes are kind of fucking dumb.

I've already fucking said I'm going to shorten the bit I started this thread with to a simple inclusiveness paragraph and take sex politics talk later into a book where it fits better.

I realize that I'm going into that metamorphosis from "reasonable minority person" to "hateful bag of dicks who justifies their bullshit by being a minority." So I'm going to have another cup of coffee, and maybe a bit more to eat and come back to this when I've gotten that out of my system. I feel that a short inclusiveness paragraph is important, because of my own personal gender politics. I don't know if I'd do one about religion, but I think I'd stop myself from it because my personal religion is... niche. I'm going to do a shorter inclusiveness paragraph, because I think that recognition is important. Nothing else needs to be said at this moment.

[momothefiddler]

I'm fascinated at the number of people in this thread who think they have important input here even though they can't tell the difference between "how I identify" and "who/how I'm interested in fucking".

Due to my complete lack of desire to play out, or even discuss in detail, sexual or even romantic interactions with the other people at the table, my characters have a strong tendency to be (un"officially") asexual and generally aromantic. Yet, somehow, that doesn't prevent me from messing around with different genders/gender dynamics even though all these characters wanna fuck the same group of people (basically no-one).

I'm not quoting anyone because I'm not sure who I think is worth getting involved with, but Prak, quit letting yourself get pulled off-track by the conflation of gender identity and sexual orientation.

---

I think I like Josh's idea best so far.

[Previn]

...you'll have to explain PC-thuggery. You mean Politically Correct thuggery? How the fuck is saying "your character can be male, female, intersex, trans, demi, or even just queer (or, with magic, a hermaphrodite)" thuggery?

....

I feel that a short inclusiveness paragraph is important, because of my own personal gender politics. I don't know if I'd do one about religion, but I think I'd stop myself from it because my personal religion is... niche. I'm going to do a shorter inclusiveness paragraph, because I think that recognition is important.

You are literally answering your own question here.

Josh_Kablack has it pretty much dead on how to present it. Again, what is the game gaining from more than his blurb (which I find a little long)?

[animea90]

From my comfy seat in the Straight White Dude Club, all this stuff bores me immensely. I'm a staunch ally, though, in the Voltaire sense.

But those asshats making up new lingo on their blog with a readership of 30 people, and bitching at me for not magically being aware of it, they can go fuck themselves right in their orifice of choice.

"Seven items, plus/minus two". Let's see..."straight, gay, bi, likes to crossdress, wrong bits for their gender, both genders or none, non-human". 7 categories. That's about the maximum number of categories I (and thus by extension any sane, intelligent, reasonable person) can be arsed to give a fuck about.

And that's me meeting the rainbow halfways. My actual sorting algorithm goes "Fuckable? Y/N".

I think this highlights why gender really doesn't matter. I am not going to have sex with anyone in my RPGs, so gender really doesn't matter.

If someone announced their character is transgender, my only thought would be "I really hope this person doesn't try to turn this into a game about gender issues.".

And you come off like an asshole. The primary point is to let people be comfortable with the character they are playing, not be stuck with yet another activity where they aren't welcome. Put it this way: are you going to demand that the atheist's character worship a god, or else the party can't have healing magic?

The big thing about other identities, cultures, and etc is that they are in no way about you.

And I have no issue with the player putting transgender on their character sheet, but it won't come up in play unless someone is already set on bringing up gender issues. Games don't operate like novels. You aren't going to get intelligent discussion between two characters about a heated topic. If for some reason the GM does decide that NPCs are going to care that you are transgender(because none of the PCs should), it will just lead to heavy handed messages or players fighting.

The arguments I am hearing boil down to "Include it to make transgender people feel good", which comes at the detriment of the actual game(by using up page space).

I would prefer game designers focus on whats good for the game and stay out of politics.

[animea90]

I'm fascinated at the number of people in this thread who think they have important input here even though they can't tell the difference between "how I identify" and "who/how I'm interested in fucking".

Due to my complete lack of desire to play out, or even discuss in detail, sexual or even romantic interactions with the other people at the table, my characters have a strong tendency to be (un"officially") asexual and generally aromantic. Yet, somehow, that doesn't prevent me from messing around with different genders/gender dynamics even though all these characters wanna fuck the same group of people (basically no-one).

I'm not quoting anyone because I'm not sure who I think is worth getting involved with, but Prak, quit letting yourself get pulled off-track by the conflation of gender identity and sexual orientation.

---

I think I like Josh's idea best so far.

You are missing the point. I don't care who other people want to fuck, but who I want to fuck(straight cis women). My gender categories come down to people I want to fuck and people I don't. Past that I don't discriminate based on gender.

I(like most players) am not going to play bigoted characters, and few GMs are going to have us interact with bigoted NPCs, so it just doesn't come up.

[rasmuswagner]

I'm fascinated at the number of people in this thread who think they have important input here even though they can't tell the difference between "how I identify" and "who/how I'm interested in fucking".

I'm not quoting anyone because I'm not sure who I think is worth getting involved with, but Prak, quit letting yourself get pulled off-track by the conflation of gender identity and sexual orientation.

I think you're missing the point. I'm dismissive of gender in an accepting way. I truly don't give a fuck whether you want to be called him, her, him when in pants - her when in dresses, or it. It's all fine.

But all of that is your own, personal stuff. You're not entitled to fucks given by other people. As I see it, you're entitled to "not being harassed over your gender" and "having the correct pronoun used", and the last one requires that you allow for honest mistakes. That's it. And even the most normative of cis people don't always get those things.

[Prak]

Ok, so people are just going to keep harping on my first draft until there's something new.

Still long, but better, and doesn't go into hyena cock. Tell me what you think guys.

Gender
As Tides of Shadow is meant to primarily reflect the world outside your window, your character may be any gender, including male, female, transgendered, agendered or intersex.
This spectrum of gender is no less prevalent in the people who come to our world through the Shadow, and indeed, seems more common. Many shadowkin have implied that their worlds' cultures tend toward more progressive gender politics where it is safer and easier for a person to express their gender.

It is very common among shadowkin to even use magic to alter their bodies to fit their identities. Chief among these spells is polymorph any object, which makes this trivially easy, though somewhat expensive. The change of sex is such a minor change to a creature's form that the spell is permanent when used this way.
A cheaper, but very limited, option is the spell alter self. Almost every shadowkin from a social culture knows someone who has used potions of alter self to change sex for short outings.

Clerics of Panesa* have even been known to provide shadowkin with potions of persistent alter self to transgendered shadowkin who are not ready to commit to the permanent change of polymorph any object, and will often provide their spellcasting services to transgendered shadowkin free of charge if the shadowkin cannot afford to pay for the spellcasting.

*Panesa is intended to be basically the goddess of socialized health care.

[momothefiddler]

@animea90: I can't for the life of me figure out why you're only interested in fucking straight women, and I can't imagine an answer that won't make me angry. And I can't imagine that you think it's actually a useful conveyance of information about your character to go "I wanna fuck my character". I mean, your parenthetical indicates that you seem to think more about it than that, if only to convey to people which of your characters you wanna fuck.

Honestly, if you think that gender is only meaningful as a fuckability tag, I don't see how you interact with the idea that other people can tell you their gender rather than vice versa, or how gender could be a trait of a person, not an ordered pair, or how you can even tell the difference between a cis woman and a trans man who hasn't had hormones/surgery.

...But if you really do see it that way, I can see how you'd not see a need for a gender blurb, or even a space on the charsheet. What would you even put there? "Does animea90 want to fuck this character? Y/N"

---

@rasmuswagner: Seven categories: iron, leather, studded, green, torn, sleeveless, not manufactured in sunlight.
What? No! I'm not completely ignorant of armor. I'm just trying to say you can wear whatever you want and I won't judge you, as evidenced by the fact that I think these categories are even remotely related to each other, much less a disjoint cover.

[momothefiddler]

[quote="Prak_Anima]"Clerics of Panesa* have even been known to provide shadowkin with potions of persistent alter self to transgendered shadowkin who are not ready to commit to the permanent change of polymorph any object, and will often provide their spellcasting services to transgendered shadowkin free of charge if the shadowkin cannot afford to pay for the spellcasting.[/quote]

This is probably more specific than you wanted, but I can't help but notice that a persistent alter self lasts 24 hours and is the same level as a polymorph any object, making it the same cost before the potion modifier (I'm assuming there's a way to make it a potion?). This, combined with the fact that a PAO can be easily undone as long as you go back to the same doctor (automatic Dispel success for the original caster) means that trial periods are probably still just PAO... right?

---

That said, my only objection to the new version is that your examples aren't all examples of the same thing. "Male" and "female" might be either about identity or biology, "agendered" is about identity, not biology, "intersex" is about biology, not identity, and "transgendered" is about the interaction between the two. Three of those at best are genders.

[Prak]

Momo, don't bother replying to Animea90. A quick check of their posts (there's only 28 so far) seems to indicate they have absolutely nothing useful to say.

also, on the specific critiques (thank you), I'm going to go in reverse order-

yeah, it's kind of tricky to get the precise wording right on a list of genders. So, clearly, I still need work on that.

Persistent alter self v. PAO: Divine Persist Spell. If the maker has Divine Persist and a cha of 16 or higher, they can cast a 24 hour Alter Self as a 2nd level spell.

This of course assumes a D&D spell list, which is probably not going to be true of ToS, but works for now.

[momothefiddler]

I've never looked at divine metamagic, so I guess I didn't think about how it might be used here. 24hrs with a 2nd level spell makes that a perfectly reasonable way to do it. Dang.

[Prak]

Costs six turn attempts (or seven? I think it's seven, so Cha 18 or a extra turning), but yeah.

[Josh_Kablack]

The arguments I am hearing boil down to "Include it to make transgender people feel good", which comes at the detriment of the actual game(by using up page space).

Well the whole point of an RPG is to make players feel good, so arguing that blatant inclusionism is wasted space seems kind of silly, especially when we consider the typical word count of a modern RPG. With several hundred thousand words, you can use a thousand or three to pander without notably impacting the product.

It is doubly especially silly when we consider the low bar for many of those words. It would probably be a net gain to replace the all of the text about D&D's 9 alignment system with random screeds about gender identity politics. At least that way all the arguments would have real world application.