# Physical Differences LLMS index: [llms.txt](/dvw/en/llms.txt) --- Elves are taller than dwarfs, but not at tall as humans. Dwarfs are stronger than elves, but elves are more dexterous. Elves and dwarfs can see in the dark, but humans can’t. There are physical differences between character races, which are reflected in their default attribute settings. Okay, so what about character gender? Ah. In virtual worlds, the differences are usually purely cosmetic. Male and female characters look different, but apart from that gender X is every bit as good as gender Y and vice versa. There are three main reasons for this: - If characters of one gender were more able than characters of another gender, it would greatly annoy real-life representatives of that gender because it would seem to be saying things about them. - On the whole, ability differences between genders really are negligible. In day-to-day situations (as opposed to extreme ones), tasks are usually gender-independent. - Virtual world designers are a liberal lot who don’t want real-life prejudices either seeping into their virtual world or being reinforced by it. It may surprise many students of gender studies to learn that the third of these is perhaps the strongest. It certainly applied to MUD1 [^36], which made no tangible distinction between character genders except in three instances that I’ll discuss shortly. Such gender-blindness is all very noble, of course, and it promotes attitudes that can only be good if carried out to the real world. Unfortunately, there are some real-life physical differences between men and women that really can’t be dismissed in virtual worlds. In real life, genetic females can have babies, but genetic males can’t. Few real-life women can grow a beard, most real-life men can. Any virtual world that suggested that either of these statements were untrue would have a hard time maintaining immersion. What about differences in height? That’s a little fuzzier. The average adult male is taller than the average adult female, but some women are taller than some men. I’m taller than my wife, but her brother is shorter than his wife (who is also taller than me). Nevertheless, I’m noticeably taller than most of the women I know. In a virtual world, would I have to be the same height so as not to disadvantage female characters? Well, perhaps not, because in a virtual world height can easily be regarded as cosmetic. Humans won’t bang their heads in dwarf houses, and dwarfs can reach things from the top shelf of a bookcase. Graphical worlds might have a more practical problem in that super-tall races simply won’t fit in small places, but if they do it’s a problem of their own making [^37]. Nevertheless, in general female characters can be made to look smaller than male ones while having collision-detection boxes the same size. However, what about strength? Men have significantly greater upper body strength than women. I may be shorter than my sister-in-law, but I can easily beat her at arm-wrestling. Should male characters have a higher base strength than female characters? If so, should female characters be compensated with a higher dexterity and/or stamina? This is precisely what MUD1 did: Initial attributes for characters were set using a random-number generator, then female characters had 10 subtracted from their strength and 5 added to each of their dexterity and stamina. It was possible to get strong female characters, but strong males were more likely. In reality, though, the differences between male and female dexterity and stamina are marginal compared to the male advantage in strength (dexterity may be more related to size than gender). I was balancing genders in MUD1, but not in a realistic fashion. How far should virtual worlds reflect reality as it is, as opposed to reality as people wish it were? There were two other ways that MUD1 made a distinction between male and female characters. One of these was to have a matched pair of puzzles that you had to be a certain gender to complete, namely kissing a sleeping beauty (for males) and kissing a frog prince (for females). I was never happy with these, though, because they were unfair on gay players: Both the sleeping beauty and the frog prince were heterosexual, and didn’t take kindly to advances from members of their own sex [^38]. I did not migrate either of these puzzles to MUD2. The other tangible way that MUD1 used gender was that it had magic to flip it: Male characters could become female, and female characters could become male. This was non-consensual—other characters could cast the necessary spell on you whether or not you wanted them to. It wasn’t something that people did very often: It had a high chance of failure, the penalty for which was the caster’s falling asleep; besides, most people didn’t actually care if it happened to them [^39]. Having their character’s gender changed commonly angered only two groups of players: - Newbies and recently ex-newbies, who hadn’t yet grasped the fact that virtual worlds can have a different culture to the real one. - Players deliberately playing characters of the opposite gender who viewed it as an interruption of their experiment. It’s possible to have tangible but neutral differences between genders that (in theory at least) hurt neither. For example, plate armor breastplates could reasonably be restricted so only characters of the gender they were made for could use them. This might lead to economic imbalances, though: If supply and demand differed by much, one gender could end up paying more for their breastplates than another. Should a designer strive to eliminate such unfairness, or accept it as an inevitable consequence of increasing the virtual world’s depth? To conclude: There are significant physical differences between men and women in the real world. For the short-term periods that characters exist in virtual worlds, these can be embraced fully, embraced cosmetically, or conveniently ignored. Unless they’re making a deliberate point about gender, most virtual worlds will stop short of adding tangible gender differences between characters. There are too many real-world consequences otherwise. Yet character gender isn’t really all that different to character race. Why is it fine to suggest that one race might be stronger or smarter or more pain-resistant than another, but it isn’t fine to say the same thing about gender? These may be made-up “races,” but it’s easy to see how such casual references to “racial differences” can perpetuate false notions of racial differences in the real world. Chapter 8 considers this issue in greater detail. [^36]: In fact it more than applied: Roy was so proactive that he wrote the documentation using female personal pronouns rather than male (which was the default in those days) or gender-neutral (which is what I used). [^37]: Horizons has a dragon race that suffers in this respect. The designers’ preferred solution is to give dragons an ability to shape-shift into humanoid form (rather than simply an ability to shrink), so they can interact with other PCs. Sadly, the ability to shape-shift back into dragon form while inside someone’s shack is unlikely to be available. [^38]: Interestingly, gay players liked the “he’s a prince, not a queen” line that accompanied an attempt by a male to kiss the frog prince. The complaints I did receive were from non-gay players who took it on themselves to speak out on behalf of the gay community. [^39]: Players of high-level personae would frequently lose track of their character’s gender; they’d know which gender they were “supposed” to be and would act according to that, but wouldn’t necessarily know what gender they were physically presenting at the time.