1st part true, 2nd part not true at all ... education in general is much better here; in particular critical and creative thinking is introduced at early primary (US elementary) school levels & built upon all through primary & secondary (US junior high & high) schooling ... additionally we don't have the whole school boards/districts thing, so no worries about a voted in governing body with their (usually neo-con) religio-political biases, that's a big part of why you guys end up the way you do, lol ;)

What constitutes "critical thinking" in oz?

My guess is that critical thinking is what he demonstrated in post #522, in necro-ing the thread. Calling Totenglocke a neck-beard and saying he needed to get out of his parents' basement was a dead giveaway. You only get that kind of incisive analysis if you start learning critical thinking skills in elementary school...

I do not like SJW and I do not like non translated games either. Until one of this changes I will not buy it and how bad it is recensed I do not think we will get a german translation.

(I know this is a reply to a 2.5 year old post, but I feel like saying this anyway.)

I can think of one bit of AD&D that endorses sexism (or rather, that is itself sexist).

In 1st Edition AD&D, women have lower strength limits than men. For instance, a human male can have up to 18/00 strength, but a human female is only allowed up to 18/50. I believe a halfling male can have 17 strength, but a halfling female is limited to only 14.

There is no advantage given to female characters to counter-balance this disadvantage.

With that said, it's worth noting that, in 2nd Edition (which the Baldur's Gate system is based on), this sexist mechanic no longer exists; as a result, this is probably not applicable to the Baldur's Gate series. Then again, even if the rule were still present, the developers could have chosen to deliberately not implement it, just like they chose not to implement racial level limits (another commonly ignored 1e/2e rule). (Note that the SSI Gold Box game *do* implement these rules.)

It's also worth noting that 5th Edition explicitly allows non-binary characters. I wonder how that would interact with the 1e gendered strength caps, if one were using both rules in the same game (though I doubt anyone would do so). I note that, in at least one of the Gold Box games, hex editing a character's gender to the third option (which is displayed as "COPPER") will allow the character's Strength to be modified up to 100, which isn't as good as it sounds.

Of course you do.

The world Olympic level for women's snatch dead-lifting is 155kg, held by Tatiana Kashirina who has been sanctioned for doping to achieve her levels. Outside hers, the Olympic records for women remain pretty steady at about 105-110kg. These are the strongest women on Earth.

The highschool I attended had a boy's record of 152kg. It was not a national or even state-level best.

The strongest, fastest and most capable women in the world are usually on par with average athletic male teenagers. Weak men are generally far more capable than most strong women. I realize this is the same bait you spammed when the thread was alive, but acknowledging the VERY apparent discrepancies between physicality in the genders is definitively not sexism.

If considering women have lower strength is sexism, then giving -2 CON Elves or +1 STR to Orcs is racism.

But of course, nobody in their right mind call it racism when certain races have certain advantages. Maybe because they are not real? Because it doesn't touch certain people in the real world?

I am imagining how it happened. Women in the world gathered and said "We are weak enough in the real world. We do not want to be weak in games either".

There is one critical difference here.

The stat changes to races are balanced out by other characteristics of the race. For example, elves get a bonus to dexterity, and they also get a 5% bonus to hit with certain weapons, and a few other characteristics. (In 3e and later, however, they don't get the human's bonus feat and skill points, however.) Orcs get a penalty to charisma, and I don't remember them getting any significant advantages other than high STR. (With that said, I would say that the racial level caps, which make non-humans useless in higher level campaigns (see the game Pools of Darkness for an example; thankfully BG2: Throne of Bhaal doesn't implement that rule), are racist, as they make non-humans non-viable at that point.)

The 1e stat difference in genders is not balanced out at all. They have a lower STR cap, but they don't get anything in return; hence the genders is not balanced. Essentially, this is a rule stating "you can't play the strong Amazonian fighter", and really doesn't have any other function (I note that, for 1e human non-fighter-types, the rule doesn't come into play thanks to the fact that only fighter-types can get exceptional strength (another rule I'm glad 3e abandoned, as it makes things more complicated than they should be).) (Of course, there's another point I could (and have) made; what about non-binary characters?)

Also, the realism argument is not a good one. If we wanted realism, there would be rules for things like having to constantly eat, drink, go to the bathroom, have sex (for procreation or otherwise), and the encumbrance rules (often ignored in tabletop because of the extra bookkeeping involved) would be mandatory. To me, (most) games are meant to be fun, and when realism woud detract from the fun, gameplay should take precedence over realism. (I already dislike the fact that the BG games don't let you trade equipment between characters who are far away from each other; the game would be better without that restriction.)

No one claimed that erring on the side of realism was the better choice. The point was that choosing realism, particularly on a first attempt some 40 years ago where they were trailblazing a new genre with no template to follow was not sexism. Hysterical politically-minded people today are too quick to ascribe anything and everything to bigotry as though all of history shared their unique worldview and were out to oppress others.

It's really exhausting.

There is no difference. In one case there is alteration in abilities based on race, in other case based on gender. No balancing is required to see the resemblance. Alteration is alteration, no matter positive or negative.

And again, using your logic, giving +1 to Orcs basically means they should be a fighter class. They can't even be magicians. At Least Females could be anything they wanted.

Finally, Let's say that you want to balance females "realistically" for their strength penalty. How would you do it? Would you...
Make them more agile? (Dex)
More endure? (Con)
Smarter? (INT)
Wiser? (Wisdom)
More Charismatic? (Charisma)

As far as I know, women overall, do not excel in any of those stats.

Whether realism is desirable or not is not the concept of my argument. Some may like it, some may not. Some may find fun in it where you can't.

This is precisely why people such as dtgreene continually get down rep'd, because they just can't stop themselves from using the gender card in nearly everything they post. They don't seem to understand that if you bring attention on yourself, if you make yourself a target, then... well, you're a target! To some it's a golden opportunity, to others it's as you say, exhausting.

I would give them more strength, enough to eliminate the strength penalty. There is no good reason to have that rule in the first place, as it basically punishes players who want to go against gender stereotypes by disallowing a certain type of character.

Also, I note that the game this topic is about doesn't even have the rule that we're discussing in the first place. The rule existed only in one edition of AD&D, and wasn't found in any other edition before or since, as far as I can tell.

Actually, there is a critical difference, from a gameplay perspective. There are trade-offs based off race, in that there are both good and bad aspects of such races. The old gender rule has no such trade-offs; the effects of playing a female character, when they apply, are strictly negative.

Let's consider the case of a fighter (so that the strength difference matters), and consider elf as the non-human race to consider (because both ability score modifiers matter here). Let's further assume maximum stat rolls. (If we assume average stats, we end up with a bunch of +0 modifiers, in a rather large range of stats because AD&D.)

For race: If we opt to make our fighter an elf rather than a human, we get +1 DEX but -1 CON. This, in particular, means this fighter is 5% more likely to hit with ranged attacks (handy if you're using a bow, this stacks with the 5% accuracy from their race, making their ranged attacks 10% more likely to hit), but also means they miss out on, eventually, 9 hit points. (The HP loss isn't that big a deal, especially if you're playing with max HP rules, but it is still a drawback of the elf, counterbalanced by the 10% ranged accuracy boost (and 5% melee with certain weapons).) (This is based on the Baldur's Gate implementation of the race.)

For gender: If we make the human fighter female, and we are playing with 1e rules (not 2e, meaning this discussion doesn't actually apply to Baldur's Gate), then we are left with 18/50 rather than 18/00 STR. This means +1/+3 instead of +3/+6, meaning that our attacks are 10% less likely to hit and do 3 fewer points of damage. (In practice, the difference usually won't be that big, but it will still be there on 50% of rolls that allow exceptional strength.) What do we get in return for suffering this peanalty? Nothing! Which, of course, is why it isn't good game design. It is not good game design to have one choice be strictly worse than another, unless the worse choice is clearly meant as a challenge option (I'm thinking along the lines of the Shepherd in Ultima 4; the Ultima 4 Fighter, on the other hand, isn't good game design IMO), and if the female choice is meant to be the challenge option, that is clearly sexism.

If you get rid of the notion of trying to be realistic, than there is no reason left to impose the rule. (Again, there is a reason this rule is only found in one edition and was dropped in 2e.)

Exhausting.