Nope, she wanted to know if there was any mechanical offset, like a bonus to Charisma or Constitution or the like. Which led to us talking about social and non-game mechanic setting treatment between the sexes. We ended up with a discussion on how it might be fun to have ability score or saving throw sexual dimorphism, culturally enforced differences between the sex, and since there's magic, maybe there's interesting things due to magic between the sexes. We had a group vote and decided that witches can only be female, no male warlocks with Pathfinder Witch classes.
I mention that I'm creating a whole new setting for this whole thing, recycling a few things (Gnomes, Halflings, Half-Orc Supremacy Groups, stuff like that) and she mentions that it might be nice to have a few countries or cultures where men and women aren't equal. Remembering what an above poster said about their sorcerer wearing veils, I asked if she thought was interesting. She liked that idea that male sorcerers in some of the kingdoms/cultures dress in veils and head coverings to avoid unwanted attention.
She was really excited that I, as the GM, was asking for player input on the world's general makeup.
So today I'm sitting around, dicking with the ideas and trying to decide what to put up on World Anvil, when she messages me and wants to talk again. Now, I'll admit, I'm halfway waiting for the other shoe to drop, but she said she had been thinking about the history we janked up last night, how the Age of Warlords was only 200 years ago, and she asked me how old the elves get. I'm feeling lazy, so I went.. "Hmm, 750 will be topped out. Any age inducing magic is multiplied by 7.5." which she was then all "Well, what if the Elven nations are still in the process from going from Warlord territories to nations, they're behind because the rulers were the Warlords where everyone else it's a few generations ago, so the Elves are territorial militant and huge bloodline/warband freaks. Think the Clans from Battletech! With half-elves being treated like freebirths!"
The guy seemed more interested in what races/skills/feats/magic/classes I'm allowing. It was funny that my two long-time players made sure to warn him that "Don't get in an arms race with the GM" when he was asking about certain combinations that plugging them into Google got min-max threads on EnWorld and Reddit. He seemed to think it was a little unfair that I'm allowed to break the rules to make interesting or unique NPC's (A male witch is in the history, only one to have showed up, caused a major disruption to the world) and any breaking of the rules to make a PC has to be run by me. The reason of "because I'm the GM" seemed to bother him despite his supposedly playing since 3.0.
Steel is a recent invention (the beginning of the Age of Warlords) and the crossbow is really recent (the end of the Age of Warlords). We talked about doing firearms, but decided they wouldn't be cheap enough to matter, so we're including the gunslinger class since we've decided that guns are out there, invented along side of crossbows, but are very very expensive, gunpowder/smokepowder is expensive, and illegal in some places. (Elves dislike guns, dwarves and gnomes like cannon, halflings like pistols)
We also talked about the effect of magic on the world, since Pathfinder has extensive spell books, and we went with a magical world that different kinds of magic were discovered at different times. (Druidic/Witchcraft to Divine to Arcane) We decided combat magic was the first developed, utilitarian wasn't really used until The Great Flood, and divination really got big during the Age of Warlords. Different schools opened at different times. We also decided to alter the rules when it comes to magic.
First, was memorization/meditation. Spells take 15 minutes per level to memorize, pray for, meditate to gain with an hour of rest/study/prayer/meditation before memorizing. We got rid of per 24 hours.
Second: Max amount of spells in a travelling spellbook as defined by Intelligence.
Third: Each spell takes 1 page of the traveling spellbook per level. For the major spell tome it's 5 pages per spell level (since it includes variants)
We're debating on adding an extra roll into spell casting. Mainly, basically ripping out Concentration and making that be the roll at the initiative. It's popular with the group, but we're worried about bogging down combat.
We went with visual effects on magic too. Light beneath the skin, light around them, auras, all of that good stuff.
We also stole the "magic weapons, items, armor use runes" from PF2. We also decided that you had to take feats to do the runes. So you can get the runes upgrades, or copy the runes from one weapon to another. To keep down proliferation we decided that only certain smiths can do rune creation and swapping and this is part of what happened during the Age of Warlords. We decided that rune-smiths are pretty rare, and any child that shows a knack for runework is immediately taken from their family and trained. Runesmiths are pampered, rare, valuable.
We decided that the Mage Guilds exist, based on the Mage-Knight Warlord warbands. Which means you can buy scrolls, runes, potions, stuff like that. Magic items are rare, mainly because the people who make them usually make them for powerful people.
That led to "The Wilderness" areas. Since the Age of Warlords is over and you've got cities having been established and nation-states being the main thing, we decided that the frontier is bordering on where there were old Empires, Warband fortresses, stuff like that. With the Great Flood the old dungeons ended up full of silt, so most dungeons are only a couple hundred years old.
We had a lot of fun sitting around and brainstorming for the new campaign setting. The new female player was excited as hell to be part of making the world. She, funnily enough, asked if I minded taking the time, as we build the setting, of listing the 'beauty standards by race and culture" and when I asked why she explained and I felt like "Duh!" moment. Finding old paintings you could tell by the beauty standards of the painting when and where the painting was done. Additionally, she was all "elven beauty standards aren't compatible to orcs, so there would be a charisma and charisma based skill penalty between races."
There was even some discussion on sexuality, sexual mores, and stuff like that. Now, I love that stuff, and we were talking about birth rate, infant mortality rates, how many children a women have during her fertility lifetime, average life expectency VS max life. Then we got into how many people can be fed per acre of crop, most common crops, which crops/foods were racial allergies, preferred, and rejected.
Which came up with a funny thing of Elves refuse to eat zucchini, carrots, potatoes, considering it 'dirt food' and only good enough for slaves and beggars. It tastes like dirt to them, and while they can survive off of it, they hate it.
We discussed the Gods, which the problem is we've got the idea of each kingdom/faction, having their own Gods, but that's waaaay too much work for me.
