Character model & gender
Mercury
Brend
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Character model & gender
Mercury » Thu Mar 15, 2012 12:21 am
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Mercury - Storyteller
Working on the Jedi Builder, I looked at the Character Model and I am proposing some minor changes to the model:
Gender Pronouns
Finally, there is the issue of the gender pronouns. Gender seems a simple issue - a character is male or female. Except it's not that simple...
For example: Hutt are hermaphrodites. They have both male and female genitalia and traditionally male perceived Hutt (such as Jaba the Hutt) can get pregnant and have children. Fnessian and Rakririan have three genders rather than two. Exargan don't develop gender until they reach puberty. Most Geonosians have no gender but rely on their hive's queen for reproduction.
Those are all relatively normal: X'Ting change gender every three years. Xi'Dec have over 180 different genders. Filordus don't have genders at all and in fact reproduce a-sexually by spawning children a week after death from their corpse.
And that is just from a biological point of view. There may be countless cultural factors in play.
The point is that though it works for many, a large group of characters cannot be qualified as male or female so easily. For this reason there is no field labelled 'gender' in the data model. Instead, I created a field labelled 'preferred gender pronoun', which relates indirectly to biological gender, but which is primarily used to indicate which pronoun the character wishes to have used for them in conversation.
This has the advantage that it ignores biological and cultural complexities and simply defines what pronouns to use when describing someone - it becomes an issue of the English language rather than biology and any discrepancies with the complicated reality can be easily explained by the limits of the language.
This isn't a binary issue: when describing a male character you would use 'he' , and when describing a female character, you would use 'she'. However, other options include singular 'they' (for third gender individuals or as a gender-neutral pronoun), a formal 'one' (preferred by some a-sexual species), an objective it (droids, sometimes gender-neutral or third gender) or even plural for a single individual (for species such as the Paaerduag).
Currently we have a mix of "masculine / feminine" and "male / female" listed for the preferred gender pronoun and a single 'neutral'. I'd like to limit the basic selection to a predefined (but wide) set of options for easy use in the Jedi Builder (while allowing more creative notes to be made by editing the data block.
My question is: what options should we offer?
- Age -> currently also allows place of birth. I'd like to remove this from the data model. If people have interesting details, these belong in the general data of the character, imho.
- Occupation -> Between role (Senator, Leader, Jedi) and titles, I think this may be superfluous.
- Base of Operations -> I'd like to remove this. Characters can move around and I think if someone has an office or a house somewhere this belongs in the general data.
Gender Pronouns
Finally, there is the issue of the gender pronouns. Gender seems a simple issue - a character is male or female. Except it's not that simple...
For example: Hutt are hermaphrodites. They have both male and female genitalia and traditionally male perceived Hutt (such as Jaba the Hutt) can get pregnant and have children. Fnessian and Rakririan have three genders rather than two. Exargan don't develop gender until they reach puberty. Most Geonosians have no gender but rely on their hive's queen for reproduction.
Those are all relatively normal: X'Ting change gender every three years. Xi'Dec have over 180 different genders. Filordus don't have genders at all and in fact reproduce a-sexually by spawning children a week after death from their corpse.
And that is just from a biological point of view. There may be countless cultural factors in play.
The point is that though it works for many, a large group of characters cannot be qualified as male or female so easily. For this reason there is no field labelled 'gender' in the data model. Instead, I created a field labelled 'preferred gender pronoun', which relates indirectly to biological gender, but which is primarily used to indicate which pronoun the character wishes to have used for them in conversation.
This has the advantage that it ignores biological and cultural complexities and simply defines what pronouns to use when describing someone - it becomes an issue of the English language rather than biology and any discrepancies with the complicated reality can be easily explained by the limits of the language.
This isn't a binary issue: when describing a male character you would use 'he' , and when describing a female character, you would use 'she'. However, other options include singular 'they' (for third gender individuals or as a gender-neutral pronoun), a formal 'one' (preferred by some a-sexual species), an objective it (droids, sometimes gender-neutral or third gender) or even plural for a single individual (for species such as the Paaerduag).
Currently we have a mix of "masculine / feminine" and "male / female" listed for the preferred gender pronoun and a single 'neutral'. I'd like to limit the basic selection to a predefined (but wide) set of options for easy use in the Jedi Builder (while allowing more creative notes to be made by editing the data block.
My question is: what options should we offer?
Brend » Thu Mar 15, 2012 8:25 pm
Agreed on the character model changes. The main reason those fields were added is to have some extra information on characters, as people tend to fill in only the minimum of the required fields.
It still happens that only the bare minimum is filled in -- but that seems to be the case only with those players that are only interested in playing the economy part anyway. And those players are free to create only a Senator (with correct stats) and leave other characters out.
I dutifully used the 'masculine/feminine' distinction as the field is called 'Preferred Gender Pronoun' and not 'sex' (as in the type of reproductive organ). However, when I pointed out this subtlety to some other players they basically went: "Stop nitpicking!" and "Meh, what does it matter."
So the vibe I picked up there is that other players don't really care about such details. For me this vibe is amplified by the fact that no one seems to pick up in the naming scheme of the Veolians (which is "[family name] [given name]"), so people seem not to care about the fact that different cultures have different customs and habits for such things as names and gender. (If I'm wrong here, and your character just doesn't give a shit about such cultural things, do correct me on this.)
Based on the lack of interest I have extrapolated from the behaviour of other players I'd go for something like this (examples given in the third person):
This issue will quickly become difficult, as we (with our western conceptualizations) lack the words to describe third-gender. These things are best left to the player emself, as such details tend to integrate with their envisioned culture.
(Again, if you anyone thinks my assessment of their interest in such cultural and biological details is off: tell us so!)
It still happens that only the bare minimum is filled in -- but that seems to be the case only with those players that are only interested in playing the economy part anyway. And those players are free to create only a Senator (with correct stats) and leave other characters out.
Mercury wrote:Currently we have a mix of "masculine / feminine" and "male / female" listed for the preferred gender pronoun and a single 'neutral'. I'd like to limit the basic selection to a predefined (but wide) set of options for easy use in the Jedi Builder (while allowing more creative notes to be made by editing the data block.
My question is: what options should we offer?
I dutifully used the 'masculine/feminine' distinction as the field is called 'Preferred Gender Pronoun' and not 'sex' (as in the type of reproductive organ). However, when I pointed out this subtlety to some other players they basically went: "Stop nitpicking!" and "Meh, what does it matter."
So the vibe I picked up there is that other players don't really care about such details. For me this vibe is amplified by the fact that no one seems to pick up in the naming scheme of the Veolians (which is "[family name] [given name]"), so people seem not to care about the fact that different cultures have different customs and habits for such things as names and gender. (If I'm wrong here, and your character just doesn't give a shit about such cultural things, do correct me on this.)
Based on the lack of interest I have extrapolated from the behaviour of other players I'd go for something like this (examples given in the third person):
- Neutral (e.g it or one)
- Feminine (e.g. she)
- Masculine (e.g. he)
- Plural (e.g. they)
This issue will quickly become difficult, as we (with our western conceptualizations) lack the words to describe third-gender. These things are best left to the player emself, as such details tend to integrate with their envisioned culture.
(Again, if you anyone thinks my assessment of their interest in such cultural and biological details is off: tell us so!)
Mercury » Thu Mar 15, 2012 11:16 pm
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Mercury - Storyteller
I think you raise a fair point regarding current interest on this matter, and perhaps I've been overthinking this ^_^ - I would like to offer characters the chance to have non-standard cultures / biology / etc, but its probably not a good idea to make things too complicated.
I'll use the options you suggested - once the Jedi Builder is done, I think the issue will become mostly moot as anyone who wants to "just make a character" and not be bothered with the details can resolve the issue with a single click, while anyone who wants to do more complicated creatures can subsequently make them with infinite detail using the edit button.
I'll use the options you suggested - once the Jedi Builder is done, I think the issue will become mostly moot as anyone who wants to "just make a character" and not be bothered with the details can resolve the issue with a single click, while anyone who wants to do more complicated creatures can subsequently make them with infinite detail using the edit button.
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