How to Build a Based Girlboss for an RPG Player Character
Role-playing games, both tabletop and computer based, have long abandoned the realities of human sexual dimorphism. In terms of stats and abilities, males and females are completely interchangeable in these games. They reduce the differences between the sexes to the purely cosmetic.
In this article we will investigate what would happen if we re-engineered RPG systems to be based on the reality of gender differences.
The Reality of Human Sexual Dimorphism
RPG designers removed sexual dimorphism to facilitate the fantasy trope of the woman warrior, who somehow fights as well as a man.
The Myth of the Woman Warrior
This trope of the woman warrior who is as good at fighting as a man, is quite old now. It has its roots in the Baby Boomer’s cultural revolution that began in the 1960s. An early example would be the character Emma Peel of The Avengers TV show, who is an expert fencer and martial artist. Although, with a stretch, one could even go back to the Lady Éowyn of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings who fights and beats the Witch King of Angmar with a little help from a hobbit.
This trope stands in stubborn defiance of the reality of human sexual dimorphism. The first and most obvious thing is that women are physically weak compared with men. The very strongest women are only on the same level as the average potato shaped dad bod.
Bell curves are thing too, so the very strongest woman, as a rare outlier, is outnumbered by a million average dad bods who stand at the thickest part of the curve.
Warriors and Fighters in RPGs
Different character classes rely on different primary characteristics. Warriors, above all, rely on strength and endurance. Players of RPGs would never pick women to be fighters, if women characters were limited by strength and toughness.
There is no heroic potential there if we are going to be based in reality.
You might at this point raise the objection that not all styles of fighting rely on strength and endurance, that agility and aim can also be important. Give the girl a ranged weapon and the woman warrior is back in business, no?
This angle is not without merit, depending on the setting. In a fantasy setting, ranged weapons means bows or throwing knives. These weapons, in reality, are still very much strength based weapons, because they are powered by human muscle. The stronger you are, the more kinetic energy you can load into the projectiles for range and damage output.
Sadly female archers will still be significantly inferior to male archers for this reason, even if they can potentially match men for accuracy.
In a sci-fi setting, such as the Fallout universe, ranged weapons are guns and lasers. These weapons are not muscle powered. Although they still have some weight, and may also have recoil that must be managed which requires strength. Even so, guns are a fine enabler of women warriors. Although realistically, women might still lean towards using smaller, lighter weapons.
Then there is the armour issue. Until one levels up to get to powered armour (or its magical fantasy equivalent), armour has weight and that takes strength to move around in it. Even enabled by guns and lasers, women are still physically disadvantaged as pure fighters.
Other Character Classes for Based Women Heroes
If RPGs were just about combat, as with First Person Shooters, then based-in-science woman heroes would be utterly unplayable. Fortunately RPGs allow for a much broader array of talents for characters, and other ways of winning besides hack and slay. These character types can be broadly classed as Rogues, Mages / Technologists and Charmers.
Based Women Rogues
Rogues rely on agility and perception to sneak, spy and to steal. They may also have a modest prowess in combat through leveraging their agility to perform sneak attacks.
It is highly plausible that women are not in any way disadvantaged in terms of agility and perception as primary characteristics. Consider the real world prowess of women gymnasts, ballerinas and pole dancers.
Also being small can help with stealth, with a softer tread and a smaller target profile.
Strength indirectly still matters here though. Rogues will generally have to climb at some point and that takes upper body strength.
Psychologically, I do not see real women leaning towards a life of crime however. Women tend to be more conformist and fearful of risk taking.
Based Women Mages / Technologists
The idea that woman can be powerful through magical devices is a far older fantasy trope than the woman warrior. Legends of witches and sorceresses go back to antiquity. Consider the witch Circe in Homer’s Odyssey.
The mage class relies on intelligence as a primary characteristic. In a sci-fi setting, such as the Fallout universe, technology replaces magic, so mages will be technologists of some kind: weapon modders, explosives experts, computer hackers, medics and chem crafters.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
– Arthur C. Clarke
How based is it though, for women to be mages, or mage equivalents? I think it works best in a fantasy setting. In fantasy, magic is.. well magical and so very malleable for the purposes of elevating women to power. It can be whatever you want it to be. There is also a very old literary tradition of women being capable at magic to lean into.
However when we re-frame magic as technology for a sci-fi setting, then the plausibility takes a hit. We do not see women in the real world being notable for technological prowess, really not at all. Inventors, scientists and engineers are almost always men.
I do not think the reason for this is necessarily that women are on average less intelligent than men, but that female intelligence tends to cluster around average values, whereas the male intelligence bell curve is flatter; having more geniuses, as well as more morons.
This would however nerf the potential for believable female tech wizards because such classes require exceptional, or at least high intelligence. Average intelligence does not cut it.
Based Woman Charmers
In RPGs charmers rely primarily on their ability to manipulate, seduce or persuade others through psychology, music, charisma, language skills and even sheer sex appeal. Charmers include bards, clerics / priests and traders as sub types.
If we look to the real world, then charmers would be pop musicians, politicians, lawyers and cult leaders. We do see women do very well in these roles, when they are allowed.
However the really elite of the elite manipulators would be the founders of religions and cults: Moses, Jesus Christ, Buddha, Mohammad, Joseph Smith and Ron Hubbard. These characters skew heavily male.
I believe the reason for this skew is that women, psychologically, are rather uncomfortable with leading. They are good at persuasion, because they must make up for their physical weakness by forming partnerships with men who have this power. However it is generally less adaptive for them to go the full distance with their powers of persuasion and really lead a cult following.
S.P.E.C.I.A.L. Implications
There are a variety of systems for representing the abilities of player characters in RPGs. I am most familiar with the S.P.E.C.I.A.L. systems used by the Fallout video game series.
SPECIAL is an acronym standing for Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility and Luck. Each characteristic has numerical value from 1 to 10 to represent the degree of ability in that sphere.
In some systems, primary characteristics are rolled for, but in Fallout the player assigns the values where he, or she, likes from a fixed pool.
What follows is how I would implement the observations above to Fallout’s SPECIAL system. I leave it to the reader to figure out how to adapt the following prescription to other RPG systems.
Strength
To make SPECIAL based in science, we need to cap the values that can be assigned to women characters to 5. This is on the reasoning that the strongest female is only as strong as the average man. This, more or less, blocks women from being pure melee fighters but does not necessarily prevent effective gunfighter builds.
For balance, it may also make sense to put a strength floor for male characters. Say for example, 3 or more.
Perception
Some might like to make an argument that women have inferior spatial awareness compared to men. Even if this is fair, I feel like that is only a very narrow kind of “perception” and that woman generally can notice other things that men do not so much. My wife, in particular, seems hyper aware of almost anything that happens with me.
This being the case I would not subject perception to a gender skew.
Endurance
Endurance would follow after Strength. A cap of 5 for women (Gina Carcano) and a floor of 3 for men (Pee Wee Herman).
Charisma
Despite what I said earlier about women not falling in the elite of the elite of people persuaders, I see no reason to restrict the range for women in this characteristic. The limitation is probably more down to a lack of personal ambition rather than raw ability.
Intelligence
In view of the observation that women produce neither geniuses nor morons in the same volume as men, I think that women player characters should have both a floor and a cap to intelligence. I would not make this too strict, a range of 3-8 is fine.
Agility
I see no reason for restrictions to agility given the marvels displayed by female gymnasts. Realistically, I am not convinced that males have an inferior potential here either but for balance sake we could cap males to 8 or 9 in agility, just on the basis of greater average weight and size.
Luck
Luck is not even a real thing, so no restrictions here.
Total SPECIAL Points by Gender
The criteria above prescribes the ranges of SPECIAL values available to based male and female player characters. However probably the most scandalous thing to the girl power boomer ideology that I will write here, is to suggest that the total pool of allowable values may also be different for men and women.
What if we take the median of each of the allowed ranges for each gender and then add them up?
Men: S 7, P 5.5, E 7, C 5.5, I 5.5, A 5, L 5.5 = 41
Women: S 3, P 5.5, E 3, C 5.5, I 5.5, A 5.5, L 5.5 = 33.5
This implies that the total number of SPECIAL points should also be different for each gender, with males having significantly more points to spend.
This may be realistic but it is probably not viable for a gaming system that does not want to discourage players from making female characters.
Hard Mode vs Easy Mode
Then again, some players with a masochistic streak, or an interest in playing the plucky underdog, may be able to see playing as a woman as an extra challenge. This way, playing as a woman is playing on hard mode, while playing as a man is playing on easy mode.
The plucky underdog that triumphs against all the odds is a perennial story staple. All the great fantasy epics feature it prominently, from Lord of the Rings to Star Wars. In a man’s world, with all of a man’s natural superiority, being a woman is to be the plucky underdog par excellence.
Miss Charisma Powers
In this section we will build a starting character for Fallout using its SPECIAL system who is not just plausible as a female, but faithfully represents the true archetypal female nature.
Miss Charisma Powers has come of age and is hunting for a man.
Strength 3, Perception 7, Endurance 3, Charisma 9, Intelligence 6, Agility 7, Luck 6.
Traits: Small Frame (bonus to agility, more easily crippled from injury) and Good Natured (penalty to combat skills but also a bonus to social and medical skills).
Tag Skills: Speech, Barter, Sneak
Who Cares About Reality in Fantasy Fiction?
Someone reading this far is sure to push back against my thesis, while tacitly acknowledging its truth, by asking “why does realism even matter for fantasy fiction?”.
The best retort to this is, for the sake of immersion. Fantasy fiction for sure plays upon what we wish to be real rather than what is real. However, if fantasy fiction is too fantastical then the intelligent among us can no longer maintain the suspension of disbelief needed to really enjoy it.
Perhaps the more enjoyable and inspiring heroines are the ones that are the most realistic?
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