Labyrinth Lord, Sexism, and Atribute Rolls

Well, the people have spoken! It looks like I may get to run a campaign this spring. And the people want Labyrnth Lord. I should have guesed, S&W is a DM's playground with house rules galore and near infinite space for rule by fiat. It isn't really all that reassuring for players, after all they are always at the mercy of the DM, even the bossy ones. Stuck in someone else's dream, they can't be blamed for fighting for all the control they can.

"I attack the monster."
"No, your sword is stuck in the scabbard."
...
"I cross the street"
"No, your shoelaces are tied together."
...
"I drink some water."
"No, your canteen is a mimic! Bwahahahahaha!"

So, Labyrinth Lord it is! Fewer house rules and more atribute bonuses. Which brings up another issue. You may have noticed a change in my art. My friend SBG who is putting together the player group from her friends told me I had embarrasingly bad taste in banner art. Indeed, I had a buxom blond female warrior bedecked in a very impractical and not very restrictive chain mail bikini. I said, "Oh OK I'll change it." So I used a brunette warmaiden in a much more effective plate mail bikini with fire effects. She said, "Look dude, you forgot her armor, and since half your visitors are me, do something about it." Instead of being a jerk I made a picture of a fully clothed man and woman adventuring duo.

Which brings up the issue of sexism and gaming. There is plenty of conscious sexism like my afore mentioned art choices which turn off perfectly geeky and intelligent young women from the gaming scene to which they would otherwise be quite well suited. But there is also unconscious sexism and a very deep level of bias in RPGs which are largely made by men. In the Labyrinth Lord Advanced Edition Companion which I'll be running there are gender restrictions for racial atributes. Specificaly female Elves, Dwarves, Gnomes, Halflings, and Half-Elves have lower maximum Strength than their male counterparts. Interestingly, this is not so for Humans and Half-Orcs.

Now you may sound perfectly reasonable when you argue that women have less upperbody strength and this is a reasonable restriction since female weight lifters do not match males. Perfectly reasonable, but for the purposes of the game perfectly sexist as well. It has been shown in military testing that women have better reflexes than men and make good pilots. Famously in Heinlein's Starship Troopers, all the space pilots are women and the mobile infintranty are men. What if I made a rule that the racial maximum for male dexterity was one less than women? Maybe I will and see what hapens... I'll probably get a lot of arguments. Of course in the Human race the maximum male Wisdom score is a lot more than one below women.

How Heavy Is Your Gold Piece?

I have seen a number of articles on the weight of coins in the standard D&D fantasy setting. In general the "10 coins to a pound" standard does seem to me rather weird. I've seen articles defending it for aesthetic and practical reasons. Either they should be BIG coins to let you know this is FANTASY. Or people will say a 45gr coin (about 9 US quarters) is perfectly reasonable. An interesting article in Footprints #1, the magazine from Drangonsfoot.org, even covers size and density. Although Mike S. shows that many changes had occured in the system.

The one thing no one seems to mention is convenience. No DM wants to make odd calculations on the spur of the moment to figure out "how much does it weigh". Really the question for the player is how much can I stuff into my pack and it turns out that 1,000 gp will be hard to move, put 100 lbs (or 45 kg) of dense metal in your pack and it will probably break. It would explain why there is so much treasure sitting around. No one can carry out all that loot, so it's pretty well stationary without a full excavation.

Even weirder is the value ratio: 10 silver pieces is no where near the value of 1 gold piece of the same weight. Currently gold is worth about 50x more than silver by weight. As has been pointed out in many places the whole structure of equipment cost is out of whack. In the S&W rule book Plate Armor costs 100gp, so that's 10 lbs of gold or $250,000 in current US money. People can argue about scarcity, craftsmanship or gold rush pricing, and MAYBE make me believe that, but it makes a 2gp Dagger worth $3000 so that's a stretch.

So I do like easy calculations and maybe a bit of realism even. No one ever minted a 45gr coin for regular use and most gold coins were relatively small. But who feels like multiplying in base 8? I'll present my house rules for coinage in my new campaign...

House Rule
Real gold coins are extremely expensive items that no one is likely to see in daily interaction. Gold is also hugely more valuable than silver, so a 10/1 ratio is impossible for coins of the same weight. At curent cost is about 50/1 ratio. Actual gold coins in the classical and pre-classical age were small, about 4 grams.

In my game basic coins are Brass or Bronze, for durability. The Bronze piece or simply a "Bronze" is 1/10 lb. (~45 grams) as is the Silver piece. A standard Gold piece is an alloy (actually electrum, 50% gold & 50% silver) weighs 1/50 lb. (~10 grams, or 50 to the lb.). A pure gold coin called a "King's piece" is minted at 1/10 lb and is worth 10 standard gold pieces, this system was initiated by the Empire of old and was initially called an Emperor.

For simplicity: 100 Bronze = 10 Silver = 1 Gold

For completeness: 1,000 bp (0.1 lb ea.) = 100 sp (0.1 lb ea.) = 10 gp (0.02 lb ea.) = 1 Kp (0.1 lb ea.)

Here are some comparisons:
Cent - 2.5 grams
Nickel - 5 grams
Dime - 2.27 grams
Quarter - 5.67 grams
Half Dollar - 11.34 grams
Dollar (SBA) - 8.1 grams
1 oz = 30gr
1 lb = 450gr

Initial gold for the new player is limited, (1d6)x10 gp seems a bit harsh but they really need to go on an adventure to get some money.