litphoria

@Amelia: Ah, I didn't mean it like that. Short, average and tall shall be used for humans of normal height. Only "micro" and "macro" shall be used for fantasy creatures, like dwarfs or giants or for micro/macro play. Normal height is around 5-7ft like you say. If you play a tall guy you shall use "tall". If your char looks like an ogre it is "macro".

I don't split humans from other creatures. A one inch tall human is micro. An 6ft tall elf is average. I split human-size characters from others.

Well, the profile only contains multiple choice traits plus free text. If you set your age you cannot set it to 23. You have to choose "young adult". I think your idea needs another suggestion like: "The profile editor should allow to use numbers."

All traits work relative to one another, not absolutely. You can see an especially obvious example of this with age. 3 would be very young by human standards, but quite old for an insect!

You have the same problem with height, and as keta alluded to, making it absolute erases all of the differences between the various races, genders, etc., and just instills a very human-centric idea of what the heights should be, and basically punishes anyone who isn't a human or near humanoid.

They are? This is an interesting concept, but I have to admit I wasn't aware of this till now. Let me check it out... breast size and hair length are not really relative.

My suggestion doesn't punish everyone who isn't human. If I play a horse anthro with a cock of one foot length now I have to choose genital size "small" since horse cocks usually are larger. I think most horse anthros would vote for me. Relative measures need a firm reference point. Only if the other player has the same idea than me what the average breast size of a succubus is, she knows what I mean with choosing small. This is a disadvantage compared to human chars. What is the average breast size of a feline? The average body height of an extraterestial? Especially hon-humanoid chars would profit from my suggestion.

Breast size is definitely still relative. There's no options which specify human bust size, only relative to what a 3rd party observer would expect in terms of an average profile of this gender, species, etc. If a human has breasts which to the floor touch, those would definitely be considered quite large, but if the same sized breasts were placed on a giant, they would not be.

Hair length is as well. If you imagine how long hair would be human-relative shoulder-length, then imagine transplanting hair of the same exact length to a character who is twice as tall, it is no longer shoulder length!

This is what I mean by relative. If we define the categories based on humans, we lose this ability. Suddenly everything over 6 feet is large no matter what this means relative to them. Maybe it's a race of amazons? Well, 6 feet might actually be short for them! Too bad, you're not a human, so you've lost the ability to use this trait meaningfully.

Yes, that's right, but the important information for me is, if your amazon is tall compared to me, not if she is tall compared to her folk. If I dislike tall women it doesn't help me that your 7 feet tall amazon (which I found by searching for human, female, small ) is called shorty in her tribe. Yes, everything over 6 feet is large for me. If I need a footstool to kiss you, you are large. It's important for me if someone is a dwarf and the only way for me to know this is: "Body height". If someone is big for a dwarf is not so important for me. That's why I made this suggestion, of course other player can have other priorities.

I think that it boils down to the fact that profiles are designed for two things. First, to show a character off to attract other players to engage in play with it. That's why it's such a good feature that each Trait is able to be searched through. Second, once someone is on a profile, the traits should accurately describe the character.

Yes, it's true that making things "relative to humans" is going to discriminate against non-human characters. But, it doesn't discriminate against non-human players. Because there are none. Well, I'm at least 99.999999999999999% sure there aren't any nonhuman users on the site, but who can really say? And as humans, we all have a universal perspective on things. Ants are tiny. Godzilla is really freaking big.

If Body Height is based on the average for the species and it is used correctly, then the Body Height trait doesn't give useful information for those looking for bigger or smaller partners. Someone looking for giant characters would need to search for giant species as well as Body Height. Dragons, titans, amazons, and the like. Someone looking for smaller characters would need to search for pixies and the like. And when they search for both of those things at the same time, there's going to be a lot of missed calls. Worst of all, it's confusing and complicated.

Things like hair length and breast size should indeed be relative to the character. Body Height is an exception because it needs a frame of reference to determine big or small and the character doesn't work in that case.

No, players are not the one being discriminated against. Just that it would make it basically impossible for a dragon to find smaller dragons, or for someone to find particularly large amazonian characters. What if one of the defining descriptions of your character is that they are an otherwise small species that is quite large? Maybe a human-sized goblin? A dragon-sized fish? Too bad, you're screwed out of any way to list that and for anyone to find you by that.

I'm not even entirely convinced this would be helpful for humans themselves. The average height of a human varies significantly between the genders and based on where you live in the world, let alone the outliers. 6' is not particularly impressive for a human male in the USA, but it's quite above average for a female living in the same area, or a male in nigeria. The metric listed on this suggestion as 'average' is actually quite a bit above average for almost any population of women (Wiki even has a chart of this). Keta also touched upon this in his comment.

So, what we gain is the ability for a character to state that they are tall or short relative to an (arbitrarily decided upon) human. What we lose is the ability for that to be meaningful to the character itself, and make the trait system a total toss-up as to how you fill it out. I don't find that cost acceptable.

Well, one important thing is that we can add context to a profile. Another is that we have text descriptions where we can write in anything.

As for finding a human-sized goblin, with the proposed changes, that'd be a goblin species and average body height. Dragon-sized Fish? That'd be a fish species with a macro body height. Both would be easy to search for.

Humans aren't an entirely arbitrary choice. It's easy to understand. A dragon isn't. What's big for a dragon? 20 feet? 200 feet? Two miles long? All completely valid because dragons are mythical creatures that vary wildly in size.

As for finding a human-sized goblin, with the proposed changes, that'd be a goblin species and average body height. Dragon-sized Fish? That'd be a fish species with a macro body height. Both would be easy to search for.

Huh? You were arguing against having to search for both species and body height not too long ago:

If Body Height is based on the average for the species and it is used correctly, then the Body Height trait doesn't give useful information for those looking for bigger or smaller partners. Someone looking for giant characters would need to search for giant species as well as Body Height. Dragons, titans, amazons, and the like. Someone looking for smaller characters would need to search for pixies and the like. And when they search for both of those things at the same time, there's going to be a lot of missed calls. Worst of all, it's confusing and complicated.

(not that I even agree with this sentiment. find tall humans makes as much sense to find profiles that are tall for humans as find tall dragons does to find profiles that are tall for dragons.)

Humans aren't an entirely arbitrary choice. It's easy to understand. A dragon isn't. What's big for a dragon? 20 feet? 200 feet? Two miles long? All completely valid because dragons are mythical creatures that vary wildly in size.

What's big for a human? 6'? 5'? 7'? Depends on your gender and where you live. This suggestion would flatten all human variance based on the lens of what is average for a western male of about moderate age. That's not exactly representative of all humans everywhere. And if it doesn't, and uses the range that it was originally suggest with (e.g 5-6 feet for average) then we just lose a different kind of representativeness.

What I meant was, if someone is looking for characters that are really big, they would need to search for the macro trait, and then run a separate search for big species. The first search would turn up human-sized cats, dogs, squirrels, and the like. The second search would turn up human sized dragons and the like.

The variance for what's considered "tall" for a human is a few feet. Generally from 6' to 8' feet. Could double that to 5' to 9' feet if we're being super generous. That's several orders of magnitude more precise than it is for dragons.

And traits are there for searching and profile description. When it comes to profile description though, the writer is going to talk about and clarify those things that are most important to them. Visual references on the page are also going to be used. Someone could put their body height as "Macro", then add a context saying that "He's the size rhode island, but he's actually quite small compared to his brother."

I think the profile framework is more than flexible to handle these things, so the focus should be on making it easy for users searching.

No, players are not the one being discriminated against. Just that it would make it basically impossible for a dragon to find smaller dragons, or for someone to find particularly large amazonian characters. What if one of the defining descriptions of your character is that they are an otherwise small species that is quite large? Maybe a human-sized goblin? A dragon-sized fish? Too bad, you're screwed out of any way to list that and for anyone to find you by that.

For finding a large Amazonian I would use human and tall. For a human sized goblin, goblinoid and average. For a dragon-sized fish, fish and macro. On the other hand, how it is now, one cannot find large amazonian chars or human-sized goblins and dragon-sized fishes. Since human+large and fish+macro and goblin+macro don't give information about the actual size of the human, the goblin and the fish.

What's big for a human? 6'? 5'? 7'? Depends on your gender and where you live. This suggestion would flatten all human variance based on the lens of what is average for a western male of about moderate age. That's not exactly representative of all humans everywhere.

Does that mean, age and race and country are to take into account if I set the body height? A 5 years old which is three feet tall is "tall"? A Masai who is 7 feet tall is "average" but if he lives in the US he is "tall"?

Someone looking for giant characters would need to search for giant species as well as Body Height. Dragons, titans, amazons, and the like. Someone looking for smaller characters would need to search for pixies and the like. And when they search for both of those things at the same time, there's going to be a lot of missed calls. Worst of all, it's confusing and complicated.

What I meant was, if someone is looking for characters that are really big, they would need to search for the macro trait, and then run a separate search for big species. The first search would turn up human-sized cats, dogs, squirrels, and the like. The second search would turn up human sized dragons and the like.

I think the profile framework is more than flexible to handle these things, so the focus should be on making it easy for users searching.

You cannot search for pixies since there is no such species. It's vice versa, to find a pixie you need body height, since a pixie is demihuman just like a titan. There is no "dragons and the like". Dragon is the only large species we have. So to search for large species you need "macro".

Because the change I suggest is from relative to absolute not from precise to approximate. The idea is good but it's a different point. A giant of the body height "toy" is still maybe three yards tall. This is important since it also counts for the other traits.

I have never seen a giant. What exactly don't you understand about my argument?

An action figure of a giant may have that size. An action figure of an intelligent ant species may be very small.

All traits are relative. If a character has the body size "small" it means small for his species. A three yards tall giant is "small". I want a three yards tall giant to be "large". Thats the main point of my suggestion. Relative is not the opposite of precise, a size cannot be fairly relative. It is absolute small or relative small. It is absolutely as small a toy, around 10-20cm or relatively as small as a toy, which means maybe, 10 times smaller than the character. So if the character is 30 yards tall the toy is 3 yards tall.

actual numbers for measurements height weight other (litphoria.com) has renewed discussion in redefining Body Height to use objective sizes, especially relative to humans.

In summary: many fantasy races don't have a set average (so we can't define height relative to their average), such as trolls and dragons and elves which have greatly varying sizes depending on fiction, and many characters have their body height set relative to the human scale regardless of their species' average.

Fiora Velkhan left this suggestion (noncomittal, since she just made it up to demonstrate how it could be arranged):

Give it simple feet measurements - tiny (up to one feet), very small (up to two feet), small (up to three feet), very short (up to 4 feet), short (up to 5 feet), average (up to 6 feet), tall (up to 7 feet), very tall (up to 8 feet), large (up to 10 feet), huge (larger than 10 feet) or something.

With Sans suggesting we use "medium" instead of "average".

The community managers are considering this version, which conflates some options from Fiora's suggestion:

tiny (0-1 feet), small (1-3), short (3-5), medium (5-6), tall (6-7), very tall (7-10), huge (10+), giant (no exact measure, the option for things that are just enormous.)

Names can change here. "Giant" also had colossal, enormous, or gargantuan considered for names.

Sounds good.