Why do female characters live so much longer than males?

[The7DeadlyVenomz]

Actually, there were two totally unstoppable male PCs.

One was the scorpion.

The other was yellow.

[Yokunama]

"Mudsex is the number one killer of Male PCs."

-The "Sunshine" Gypsy



"It was so good, my eyes rolled into the back of my head and I... Thats all I remember."

-Ghost of Amos #842

[Morrolan]

First of all, I would like to see some data charting character survival by player's gender and character's gender.  But even assuming that the assumptions of this thread have merit:

(Puts on anthropology hat, plays devil's advocate)

What if male characters are just as likely to run away from trouble as female ones?  Would we interpret these actions in the same light?

Looking at some of the core beliefs of Western culture (most arm players are Westerners: Americas, Europe, Australia), a man who runs away from danger is low-status, of no account, and unlikely to be remembered.  A woman who does so is not penalized in status unless she leaves helpless people to die.

We're being held accountable for, as well as living out, non-Arm gender assumptions.  These assumptions, according to the documentation, have no place in Arm...but many of us are slaves to them.

IG, we fairly often see women who are gritty combatants, and we sometimes (maybe often) see non-combat males.  But maybe men feel a need to not back down.  This could possibly account for the possible data of women living longer than men, I.G.

Morrolan

[Morrolan]

*double post*

[Cuusardo]

If you think that female PCs don't get randomly assaulted by twinks, think again.  I was present when a linkdead female PC was killed in a tavern by a twink that randomly attacked her.  Myself, I had a female PC that was assaulted several times by random jerks who just walked up to her in a tavern and tried to kill her.  I've witnessed this kind of moronic thing happen to other female PCs (in that same tavern, no less.)

[Hymwen]

I think females (of most species) are better survivors in some situations not because they are stronger or more intelligent, but because they are genetically "programmed" to be more careful since they are needed for childbirth. So are men, but we can only have children once every nine months, while a man can technically impregnate(sp?) women, say, 4-5 times a day if he's in his prime and the circumstances go according to his mind.  :lol:

I once read something about it. It dates back to when we were basically animals and most women would have children as often as possible, so women could potentially provide roughly one child every nine months each, while one lucky man could do his part to the entire tribe's women. So women would have to be cautious and play it safe, since it would directly influence the survival chance of the species if she died, while you could spare a man or two and still have enough sperm to go around as long as you had a few happy fellas in your camp.

So if we live longer than you, guys, it's not on purpose.  :wink:

[Rindan]

I don't know that female PCs live all that much longer.  I have met a lot of really stupid female PCs that have tried to walk from Tuluk to Allanak on foot.  In fact, thinking back on my last long lived 'rinther character, there were no major female PC characters in the area that I played.  I certainly saw some show up from time to time, but they all managed to get themselves killed after a fairly short period of time.  All of the "major" personalities in my little corner of the 'rinther that lasted for any length of time were males.

I have a feeling that females don't live all that much longer then male PCs.  We just tend to remember them better because only 1 in 5 or so is a female.    If one of those rarer female PCs live for a while, they tend to stick out simply because they are one of the few female PCs.  

Perhaps there is a little something to women picking safer roles, but to be honest, I think most of it is just an illusion created by the fact that we tend to remember woman characters simply because they are more rare.  In my experience though, they don't really seem to last all that much longer then any other PC.

[Akaramu]

Are female PCs that much rarer? Wow... I could have sworn the numbers I saw were almost equal. But it could depend on location somewhat, there are many places I never played in.

[JollyGreenGiant]

Not to be entirely anal about things, but anecdotal evidence isn't really very definitive when you're trying to make a generalization such as "female characters are longer lived than male characters." There are a lot of variables that influence the longevity of a character. Let's eliminate all cases of storage that didn't result in death. That is, if you stored to go play another role and your character just faded into the background, that character is not considered. If you got stored because your character was hauled off to the templar's quarter to serve as a lab rat for a year before the magickal experimentation killed you, you count as dead.

So now we're dealing only with characters who have a definite "start time" and "end time". What are the other variables that influence longevity? Here's a short list of factors that contribute, with a sample question to illustrate each:

Starting location - Do rinthers have shorter life spans than Tuluki?
Occupation - Do Winrothol noble guards live longer than Salarri hunters?
Guild/subguild - Do merchants live longer than warriors?
Guild/subguild by occupation - Does a coded merchant playing in the T'zai Byn have a shorter lifespan than a ranger playing a cook to a merchant house?
Race - Do dwarves live longer than elves?
Gender - Is the character male or female?
Player - Is the player male or female?
Gender by player - Is the player of the character the same gender as the character?
Player age - Do people who are older than 25 play longer lived characters than those who are younger than 25?
Player familiarity - Do characters made by people who have been playing the game for 10 years have a better survival rate than those made by complete newbies?
Difficulty in acquiring the role - Do special apped characters live longer than ones applied for normally, particularly if it involves playing something that requires more karma than the player normally has?
Playing time - Are we talking about RL time, number of days accumulated, or some ratio?

The list goes on and on, but the point is, asserting that female characters live longer than male characters is overly simplistic and shortsighted. It suggests that you can extend the longevity of your character simply by picking a different starting gender. Without a lot of data to do a statistical analysis on, my guess is only as good as anyone else's as to what influences character longevity. My guess is that gender of the player or the character has nothing to do with it. I would say that it is much more likely that a player who is over 25 that is familiar with the game playing a clanned character with an occupation that isn't too dissimilar from their guild/subguild choices is going to have the best shot at being long-lived, regardless of other factors.

[Attana]

All of my characters have been female, and for the most part have all lived over the RL 1.5-2 month mark.  Save for my second character, she was my longest and lived for about a RL year.  I would have a agree with some people on the fact that I haven't taken extreme/dumb risks with any of my characters, mainly because it wasn't in their personalities to do so.  Though, this has lead to me not knowing nearly enough about the game, geography-wise, as I'd like to.  I've just recently gotten into that whole go out and explore the game world mentality in the past month or so, and I've been playing for almost two years.

[Vanth]

I hate to deal in gross generalizations, but I will anyway.

The following are my personal observations, and are not representative of the staff's opinion as a whole.

I believe that female characters are more likely to live longer than male characters, on average.  This is mostly because the male characters tend to a) higher risk activities in general, b) take more risks in every activity, compared to female characters and c) suicide more often.

Now, does this reflect the actual players themselves?  Sort of.  My feeling is that the above is true whether the players are male or female.  I believe that we, as a group, tend to act out what we consider to be 'inherent' gender traits.  In fact, I would say that characters played by the opposite gender tend to be, if anything, more exaggerated examples of the above.  Women take more risks when playing male characters, and men play it safer when playing female characters.

Some of it may have to do with our personalities, as they've been shaped by our culture (rather than Zalanthas' culture).  Boredom can be deadly.  Bored male players tend to go out exploring & experimenting.  Bored female players tend to seek out someone to interact with.

I also think a lot of this has to do with the proportion of male to female players & characters in general.  There are just as many long-lived male PCs as there are long-lived female PCs, perhaps even more.  But there are also a lot more short-lived male PCs which skew the overall averages.  I think, in general, if you took a male and a female player who've been playing the same length of time, the male player would have more past characters on his account.

I also don't think it has anything to do with class/occupation.  I think that male merchants/aides/bards tend to greater risks than female merchants/aides/bards.  Male hunters/guards/magickers tend to higher risks than female hunters/guards/magickers.

[/gross generalization]

So is this something that needs to be fixed, and if so, how would we go about fixing it?

Well, we could make a concerted effort to do what is often recommended on these boards, which is to step outside our ingrained ideas of what gender means, and try something different.  We could try playing our own gender differently, and many players have been successful with this (and achieved long-lived characters at the same time).  Or we could try playing the opposite gender the exact same way we'd play our own gender.

Or we could just go on as we are, because it doesn't seem to be a huge problem, at least not to me.

[X-D]

Funny, every female player I know has had more chars then I have on my account, (cept one) and manny of them are on 1-2 year accounts and mine is a 5-6 year account.

Matter of fact, isn't one of the players with like a record number of chars in a year a female?

Also, what exactly are we qualifying as long lived?

I saw somebody saying all of their chars made the 1.5-2 month range, I don't personally consider this a long lived char, for me that starts at 6 months minimum.

[Attana]

I've only had about 8 characters in a two year period, with my first character lasting for about 4 RL months, my second character a year, and the others... 1.5-2 months is a long period for me, compaired to the many folks I know who have had multiple characters that have only lasted for about 3-9 hours in game... in a period of 2 days.

[Jherlen]

My girlfriend and I started playing within two weeks of each other, a little over a year ago. I have four characters on my account (one was stored by choice and not by death), and she has five. In terms of RL months I also have the longest lived PC between the two of us (~9 months).

I'm not sure any of that means anything beyond saying you really can't generalize.

[sarahjc]

I agree with Vanth's observations. Though it is a generalization I too believe that female players tend to live longer do to the fact that they are more cautious with their PC's activities and the amount of danger they subject them to.  And this isn't all of them, but a good deal of them are just not big risk takers. And I think that you will find most long lived PCs do so, by not taking the big chances until they are pretty sure they can handle them.

I know I as a player rarely take risks that I am uncertain of.

If I am playing in a new area, I may spend months looking around one room at a time until I am certain that I know every inch of it backwards and forwards and not just mapping, any idiot can map, but actually knowing the way around.  

Though I do like to improve on my PC's skills, I will rarely do it in such a way that causes my PC to be in severe danger.

I am also more prone to having my PC tavern sit and enjoy the social RP aspect of the game as opposed to the exploratory and solo role playing of being out and about around the known world.

My PC's also tend not to be as proud as some male PCs, even if I am playing a male. I have no problems bowing down to authority or begging for my PCs life if I need to.

Anyway, I certainly fit in with the stereo type most of my characters live for at least 6 months or longer.

[mansa]

Delerak had over 400 characters.  I miss him.

I only have 65.

[jhunter]

Oddly, my longest lived pcs took more risks than most. Alot of near death experiences narrowly escaped. I think that's also what made them the most fun to play. They had lived very full lives by the time death had claimed them.

Oh yeah, on topic I think that it is perhaps true but it is because the majority of people playing female pcs tend to carry RL norms over into the gameworld.

[WarriorPoet]

I have 83 or 84 characters in my three, almost four years here.

And what's strangest? The dozen or so that lived longer than a few weeks were the ones that lived a few months, and were the ones that always said "Fuck it! I'LL CHECK!" And then leapt into the skary hole. Some characters are just meant for bigger and better things... Others, like yours jhunter, are meant as fodder for obviously superior characters, like my own.

I've seen female chars who were brutal, heartless bitches, and I've seen male chars of the same mold. Every one has gotten theirs. Maybe a female -player- will take a few more precautions when exploring or dealing with someone threatening, but in the end I think it's all the same.

*Type-O*
Everything diiiiieeeeees.... Everything dies.
I loved my Krathi... But he died...
I LOVED my noble... But she died...
Everything dies.

-WP

[jhunter]

Some characters are just meant for bigger and better things... Others, like yours jhunter, are meant as fodder for obviously superior characters, like my own.

HEY! I resemble that remark!

[Malifaxis]

Edited to strip.

You're right, Hymwen.  I was thinking of ways to offset the amount of long-lived females, and it started with a humorous thought.  I guess that could have been taken extremely wrongly.

[Hymwen]

That's not nice.

[jhunter]

Maybe not but it was funny.

[Hymwen]

I didn't mean it like that, I know it was a joke.  :lol: