Update on Weight/Height Ranges?

[dumbstruck]

I think the height ranges should be standard for humans.
Based on this information here: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/series/sr_03/sr03-046-508.pdf
If you are 74 inches tall, you are taller than 95% of the male population in the USA.
The game allows you to be 78 inches tall, which is already waaaay outside the normal standard.  I do not think we should increase that for humans.


As for weight of characters, I want to be able to make my human character weigh between 130 lbs and 250 lbs (which is between 10% and 85% percentiles for human males in the USA) but I'm unable to.
You can only pick these weight ranges, and nothing inbetween.
90 kg - 198 lbs
80 kg - 176 lbs
70 kg - 154 lbs
60 kg - 132 lbs

And, for comparison, what are the numbers for females, or are we going to get these stats again set where it seems framed by men shit again? I just... RL is enough for that. Sorry. Equal as people does not necessarily mean built the exact same physically.

[cnemus]

I fully support anyone playing the character they want, but I don't think gender is relevant to size discussions on Zalanthas. Zalanthas isn't Earth.

From character creation:

"Gender does not affect your character in any way except for which pronouns are used to refer to your character (he/she/they, etc.). The genders are all equal on Zalanthas. Avoid imposing your own interpretations and norms on the game world."

https://www.armageddon.org/intro/chargen.php

[FantasyWriter]

And, for comparison, what are the numbers for females, or are we going to get these stats again set where it seems framed by men shit again? I just... RL is enough for that. Sorry. Equal as people does not necessarily mean built the exact same physically.

Quite the opposite. It is the same because on Zalanthas, there are no differences between women and men when it comes to different bell-curves of stat bonuses/detriments/capability for one versus the other.  There are both completely capable of the same physical feats and failures as each other. You can have one or the other.  This is not Earth and humans are not homo sapiens.  Physically the same when it comes to size and muscle mass/distribution... or not.  You are projecting Earth differences between the sexes onto Zalanthans.

[dumbstruck]

I think the height ranges should be standard for humans.
Based on this information here: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/series/sr_03/sr03-046-508.pdf
If you are 74 inches tall, you are taller than 95% of the male population in the USA.
The game allows you to be 78 inches tall, which is already waaaay outside the normal standard.  I do not think we should increase that for humans.


As for weight of characters, I want to be able to make my human character weigh between 130 lbs and 250 lbs (which is between 10% and 85% percentiles for human males in the USA) but I'm unable to.
You can only pick these weight ranges, and nothing inbetween.
90 kg - 198 lbs
80 kg - 176 lbs
70 kg - 154 lbs
60 kg - 132 lbs

And, for comparison, what are the numbers for females, or are we going to get these stats again set where it seems framed by men shit again? I just... RL is enough for that. Sorry. Equal as people does not necessarily mean built the exact same physically.

Quite the opposite. It is the same because on Zalanthas, there are no differences between women and men when it comes to different stat bonuses/detriments/capability for one over the other.  There are both completely capable of the same physical feats and failures as each other. You can have one or the other.  This is not Earth and humans are not homo sapiens.  Physically the same when it comes to size and muscle mass/distribution... or not.  You are projecting Earth differences between the sexes onto Zalanthans.

Then why would the rubric of comparison for that be mens stats listed by mansa, and not take into account womens? Are all women on Zalanthas masculinized? Are all men feminized? I'm trying to say here that if you're using a scale for only one RL gender on earth for 'normal' that skews larger than the other gender on earth to begin with, and it's already skewing high, then readjusting down but still using that scale alone and not an aggregate of both is still a disservice to the female half of the PLAYERBASE.

[FantasyWriter]

What is your suggestion to the perceived problem? Two separate tables for males and female?

Then the complaint would be that we are coding in RL stereotypes/bell-curves.

It's a damned if you do and damned if you don't proposition either way.  When I play male/female characters, I tend to write their description based on RL norms because... fantasy universe and playing who I want to play.

If my person is small, I put them on the small end, if my person is big, I choose a stat on the big end. If average, somewhere in the middle.  I then never again pay attention to their coded weight and size because its a RP game.  And the numbers don't matter.

[Pariah]

As other have said, these aren't the same humans we have here.  The weakest Zalanthan is ten times stronger than the best earth human, they heal at faster rates, they have capabilities of magick and they all have psionics to a base level.

This is a game that has elves and magick, if you try and apply "realism" to it you're going to be disappointed each and ever time.

They also made men and women equal so the tables are balanced, they didn't want to have everyone picking male for larger muscle mass or strength or whatever by design, so that they could play the sex they want.

They even made a gender neutral sex for that reason, what your advocating for here would be rolling the ball in the opposite direction.

[Tailong]

Uhhh no. OP makes no difference in gender in the original post, and speaks solely about the differences in races. Why people want to mention gender as a factor is beyond me.

OP is asking for more range for more diversity in sizes. Which with the overlapping makes sense.

[Filthy_Grey_Rat]

I don't know.

[Halaster]

I really don't see the need to change this.  Why is the biggest Zalanthan human only 6'5" and 200 pounds?  Because they're Zalanthan humans and that's as big as we grow 'em.  If you want size outside the norms, that's a special app.

There is some coded reasons to keep them this way, and that's because of the 'size' stat.  Size is determined by a combination and height and weight, and most gear is by default sized to the average human.  If we add to the extreme ends of height/weight then it can skew that a bit.  We'd then have to potentially resize a lot of gear.  At the end of the day, I don't think it's a change worth the work - i.e. the pro's don't outweigh the con's.

[Pariah]

I don't know.

Uhhh no. OP makes no difference in gender in the original post, and speaks solely about the differences in races. Why people want to mention gender as a factor is beyond me.

OP is asking for more range for more diversity in sizes. Which with the overlapping makes sense.

I saw your frustration post Filthy Rat and that's fine, being frustrated is cool.

I think where the problem comes is if you reread this whole thread you'll see folks arguing different things.

How I interpreted it was one was talking about the different in men and women, another was talking about how the code gives coded benefits based on size, one was talking about the desire to RP being super skinny and unhealthy and others weighed in that the height/weight system is relative, meaning if I'm the tallest human you can have, and you're short, you're just short or very short, I don't get specifics.

So that's the benefit AND the problem of a discussion board right?  You might be arguing for a point on one of those aspects, but someone else will throw out another point of view that your desired outcome affects, for example Elves getting their bonus to bash cause they are bigger traditionally.

Things get brought up above and beyond the exact question that was asked.  Prime example of very recent history, we spoke on how to fix crafting, someone said that Harshlands was better than our system and that spurred Halaster to put in the effort to fix the issue.

Practical reason this would sorta suck to be outside the -norm- size..  Have you seen how much it costs to tailor things super big or super small, it's ridiculous!

[FantasyWriter]

I really don't see the need to change this.  Why is the biggest Zalanthan human only 6'5" and 200 pounds?  Because they're Zalanthan humans and that's as big as we grow 'em.  If you want size outside the norms, that's a special app.

There is some coded reasons to keep them this way, and that's because of the 'size' stat.  Size is determined by a combination and height and weight, and most gear is by default sized to the average human.  If we add to the extreme ends of height/weight then it can skew that a bit.  We'd then have to potentially resize a lot of gear.  At the end of the day, I don't think it's a change worth the work - i.e. the pro's don't outweigh the con's.

Is there any problem with the way I normally handle this?
i.e.- I write an emaciated diseased character or something like that (ICly, they would be much smaller than min). I just roll the smallest weight they can be and just RP that they are smaller, or would something like that need to be special apped for the weight reduction?

[mansa]

I think the height ranges should be standard for humans.
Based on this information here: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/series/sr_03/sr03-046-508.pdf
If you are 74 inches tall, you are taller than 95% of the male population in the USA.
The game allows you to be 78 inches tall, which is already waaaay outside the normal standard.  I do not think we should increase that for humans.


As for weight of characters, I want to be able to make my human character weigh between 130 lbs and 250 lbs (which is between 10% and 85% percentiles for human males in the USA) but I'm unable to.
You can only pick these weight ranges, and nothing inbetween.
90 kg - 198 lbs
80 kg - 176 lbs
70 kg - 154 lbs
60 kg - 132 lbs

And, for comparison, what are the numbers for females, or are we going to get these stats again set where it seems framed by men shit again? I just... RL is enough for that. Sorry. Equal as people does not necessarily mean built the exact same physically.

The dataset I was using to get standard weights and heights of humans stated male.  I wanted to get the maximum range, and then apply that to any gender.  Nothing in my statement said that other genders needed to have different weights or heights.

[Filthy_Grey_Rat]

You might be arguing for a point on one of those aspects, but someone else will throw out another point of view that your desired outcome affects, for example Elves getting their bonus to bash cause they are bigger traditionally.

My desired outcome would not have affected elves getting their bonus. It is further frustrating to have someone claim they see why you're frustrated, then entirely miss the point.

The male standards of human height and sizes on earth were WHY we have the ranges we have. An entire portion of the human population and playerbase was excluded.


If the skin tones for an acceptable human character application ranged from dark black, to light brown, that would exclude other possibilities. Want to play a pale char? That's fine, put in a special app. What if there are bonuses and negatives that would affect the play of someone else if we changed something I'm not asking to change? Irrelevant. Flip the scenario so that the only acceptable skin tones are pale white to dark TAN. Now add into your imagination a sprinkling of people saying, it's fine, humans are all equal on zalanthas, so this shouldn't matter, also, if we changed this, it'd be a lot of work, and we don't need to represent all possible Earth equivalents because this is zalantahs, there is a red sun yo.

There were some responses that wanted TALLER, HEAVIER humans. I Get that. It /would/ affect combat negatively for some.

Halaster's response actually hit on the matter. There is a change in code that would take a lot of work, in regards to sizing clothes. If the change from 60 to 40kg would be a drastic rehaul of code and crafts, well that's certainly a pain in the butt.

If the change from 62inches minimum to 58 inches minimum would be a drastic rehaul of code and crafts, ditto, I guess it's a pain in the butt, and untenable.



Human height/weight is a systemic bias that has been reinforced by years of code and additions to function. It is now too hard to remove this systemic bias. Congrats, men. Please applaud.

[Pariah]

You might be arguing for a point on one of those aspects, but someone else will throw out another point of view that your desired outcome affects, for example Elves getting their bonus to bash cause they are bigger traditionally.

My desired outcome would not have affected elves getting their bonus. It is further frustrating to have someone claim they see why you're frustrated, then entirely miss the point.

The male standards of human height and sizes on earth were WHY we have the ranges we have. An entire portion of the human population and playerbase was excluded.


If the skin tones for an acceptable human character application ranged from dark black, to light brown, that would exclude other possibilities. What to play a pale char? That's fine, put in a special app. What if there are bonuses and negatives that would affect the play of someone else if we changed something I'm not asking to change? Irrelevent.

There were some responses that wanted TALLER, HEAVIER humans. I Get that. It /would/ affect combat negatively for some.

Halaster's response actually hit on the matter. There is a change in code that would take a lot of work, in regards to sizing clothes. If the change from 60 to 40kg would be a drastic rehaul of code and crafts, well that's certainly a pain in the butt.

If the change from 62inches minimum to 58 inches minimum would be a drastic rehaul of code and crafts, ditto, I guess it's a pain in the butt, and untenable.



Human height/weight is a systemic bias that has been reinforced by years of code and additions to function. It is now too hard to remove this systemic bias. Congrats, men. Please applaud.

I'm just trying to understand what is upsetting you about this.  I apologize that I apparently am not getting it.

[Filthy_Grey_Rat]

Okay, I must have really extreme viewpoints or something. I feel that it's not a minority not getting it, it's a majority not getting it.



"Here are male standard human sizes - x, y, z.

This is what you can play, and be considered a human, and not a rare exception."

If this doesn't upset you, maybe it never will, and there might be nothing I can do about that.

[dumbstruck]

Please look at the two sides of the above chart.

Please reference the starting size height and weight ranges of humans in game: Min height is 5'2 and weight is 130. I am being told that men and women in Zalanthas are the same and I should be okay with the fact that the exact size range seems oddly specific:


Race        Max Height   Min Height                                  Max Weight   Min Weight
Human   78" 6'6"      62"5'2"                                        198                  132

I am saying.... look at that chart. It's literally already based on only one side of that chart. And that is upsetting as hell that all the people who seem to keep telling me how it's okay because all Zalanthans are equal (they get to play Zalanthans who look like them) are playing Zalanthans who fall within a range of norms based on their specs. Hell, they even want it bigger, taller.

Then the complaint would be that we are coding in RL stereotypes/bell-curves.

That is the current complaint. The heights and weights range is an almost perfect overlap with every stat on the mens side of the chart there, and look at what the range size difference is for women. And who is expected to eat the difference? The same players who can see drugs on tv who have not been tested ON THEIR ENTIRE GENDER, and be expected to eat the difference. And it's fine, because everything caters to people who look like you, so it's /EQUAL/ that it all skews to ranges that look like you, yeah? It's fantasy, so it doesn't /matter/.

The dataset I was using to get standard weights and heights of humans stated male.  I wanted to get the maximum range, and then apply that to any gender.  Nothing in my statement said that other genders needed to have different weights or heights.

I know you didn't mean it in a way to be insulting, but the problem I had is that the last dataset used is an almost exact rip of mens heights and weights and you're asking for the exact same again, and I'm tired of my entire gender being excluded and being told it's equality because they don't NEED to be ABLE to have different weights or heights outside the norm for someone else.

Uhhh no. OP makes no difference in gender in the original post, and speaks solely about the differences in races. Why people want to mention gender as a factor is beyond me.

Can I speculate you are one of the people who has never had to watch a commercial for a medication mention in casual fasttalk how it's never 'been tested on people assigned female at birth' before but never say it during the commercial itself and had it affect you? Because that's just one of the systemic biases half of the playerbase deals with every day. This is another one. Halaster already said it's not going to change. But I feel like it's fair to at least point out that the exact reason why you have the size range that you have is precisely because it was based on a set of male gender averages at one point in time. I even included a chart. And it shows very clearly where the exclusion happens.

I'll drop it now. I just... really wish that people were not trying to shut me down on the point I was trying to make without understanding it. If the chart doesn't help, it's pointless. And since I know it won't change, it's pointless anyhow, but at least I can hope what I said was at some point understood.

[Brokkr]

The height and weight ranges were set long before the information from the internet folks are using was widely available on the internet.  Further, this whole thing seems to be fueled by "here is RL and here is Zalanthas and look at how they compare!".

Stop comparing, it is a game.  It will not always reflect real life.  As Halaster mentioned, there are coded considerations in how height and weight are used to calculate size.  Further, you do not even have the ability to tell how much someone else weighs or is tall (unless exactly equal to your own) as the game output is relative (ie, more or less than you, not 9 stones).  So this entire thing seems to come down to some cognitive dissonance between real life and Zalanthas.  At which point take a breath and remember this is a game.

[mansa]

The height and weight ranges were set long before the information from the internet folks are using was widely available on the internet.  Further, this whole thing seems to be fueled by "here is RL and here is Zalanthas and look at how they compare!".

Stop comparing, it is a game.  It will not always reflect real life.  As Halaster mentioned, there are coded considerations in how height and weight are used to calculate size.  Further, you do not even have the ability to tell how much someone else weighs or is tall (unless exactly equal to your own) as the game output is relative (ie, more or less than you, not 9 stones).  So this entire thing seems to come down to some cognitive dissonance between real life and Zalanthas.  At which point take a breath and remember this is a game.

It is a game, however, the human race is the representation of us, the players of the game.  If we were talking about Thryzn or Elf or Halfling, I would concede to your point, but we aren't.  We are talking about the player's direct representation of themselves within the gameplay space.  "Humans."  I think within the game, the size and weight should be within one or two standard deviations from the bell curve of a standard human size, whatever that size may be.

[LauraMars]

I agree that the weight/height ranges for humans in this game were designed by dudes two decades ago and it shows.

Not sure I would make the comparison to real world medical misogyny but I understand the sentiment, dumbstruck.

The girlies just wanna feel like they can be their own size in their fantasy escapism, as a treat. And I think that's pretty normal ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Brokkr]

My guess is that they created ranges based somewhat on these averages, given a the consistency with some of the other races to this source*, tweaking to get the code to work how they wanted:

"An average human male stands between 6 and 6 1/2 feet tall, and weighs 180 to 200 pounds. A human female is somewhat smaller, averaging between 5 1/2 and 6 feet in height and weighing between 100 and 140 pounds."

*the source should be obvious

[Pariah]

My guess is that they created ranges based somewhat on these averages, given a the consistency with some of the other races to this source*, tweaking to get the code to work how they wanted:

"An average human male stands between 6 and 6 1/2 feet tall, and weighs 180 to 200 pounds. A human female is somewhat smaller, averaging between 5 1/2 and 6 feet in height and weighing between 100 and 140 pounds."

*the source should be obvious

If no code changes go in besides allowing females to be smaller for instance, will that just be like a setting you can do, if female display X - Y choice, if Male display X - Y choice and I guess genderless between Female X and Male Y?

But might need to add a disclaimer saying that certain skills take into effect height.  So folks don't get mad when their Bash is neutered.

[mansa]

If no code changes go in besides allowing females to be smaller for instance, will that just be like a setting you can do, if female display X - Y choice, if Male display X - Y choice and I guess genderless between Female X and Male Y?

That will never happen because it is antithetical to the theme of the game.

But might need to add a disclaimer saying that certain skills take into effect height.  So folks don't get mad when their Bash is neutered.

The game already says different skills take "size" into account.

[Pariah]

If no code changes go in besides allowing females to be smaller for instance, will that just be like a setting you can do, if female display X - Y choice, if Male display X - Y choice and I guess genderless between Female X and Male Y?

That will never happen because it is antithetical to the theme of the game.

One could argue that having gender neutral sexed characters was at one time antithetical to the theme.

Yet here we are. They added that feature and nothing exploded.

I don't see how having the height outside of the skill variance with bash and shit really matters or goes against the theme.

[mansa]

Having different sexes be able to have different sizes is what I was refering to -

If no code changes go in besides allowing females to be smaller for instance, will that just be like a setting you can do, if female display X - Y choice, if Male display X - Y choice and I guess genderless between Female X and Male Y?

That will never happen.

[Pariah]

Having different sexes be able to have different sizes is what I was refering to -

If no code changes go in besides allowing females to be smaller for instance, will that just be like a setting you can do, if female display X - Y choice, if Male display X - Y choice and I guess genderless between Female X and Male Y?

That will never happen.

I was sorta asking why you feel that way, not just for a confirmation of the fact you feel that way.

I never really thought about size or weight before this thread, but seeing as people actually -care- about it and it doesn't really matter as spoken by the staff themselves, outside of that little bash thing, why does it seem so outlandish to you it will never happen?  Seems like simply a quality of life improvement if anything to make people feel better about their characters, no harm no foul.