Sorta the same as the half-elf code works now, where you pick your race (in this case gender) codedly, and then your appearance (a. male b. female c. neutral)? I could get down with that, hard.
Not quite what I had in mind. I was thinking that if you set your voice to ambiguous/androgynous, even if you're clearly male or female visually, in the dark or in a sandstorm, your voice wouldn't give it away. Or if you set your physical build to that, then when you're wearing something like a facewrap or a veil, then you're similarly ambiguous with regards to sex. I like the idea of being able to fine tune certain things. Like, for instance, a character who is clearly male from a physical standpoint, but perhaps has a feminine or ambiguous voice? So that they could be 'the tall male in a bright orange facewrap' (or however that shows up), but their voice doesn't give away in the dark.
(There's also the issue of too many options making things too complicated at chargen and frustrating/confusing new players.)
As far as I know, there's nothing about the code that necessitates that your PC's sdesc and coded gender match their biological sex (IC). You could set their gender to female, have 'woman' at the end of their sdesc, and still have them be biologically male, or something less binary, and represent it through RP. I've actually seen something like that in game.
I don't think we need to have coded gender and sex. Just (apparent) gender is enough - male, female, ambiguous. And then the PC can have the appropriate sdesc for their mdesc, and then if biological sex ever becomes relevant, they can RP it out as necessary.
Don't robes show sex too? I find that more logically objectionable to facewraps outting the sex of the wearer since they should actually be obscuring the lines of the wearer.
I think robes with hoods up obscure sex. They just show 'the <something> figure in the <something> cloak/robes'.
If a mdesc allows for it, and there is appropriate attire, I ignore the gender tag. I don't know if we should change it, or not, but I voted no. If the reality of the roleplayed situation is that you're so covered up, no one can tell what gender you are, you hipless, small bosomed, bony urchin, it doesn't really matter to the person who uses the coded fact that information about your gender is given to them.
This. The code's never going to be able to perfectly represent every situation, so we're still going to have to make judgments on if we should be able to know something about a PC even if we can codedly gather the information.
