Non-binary population percentage?

If you were creating a random PC generator and wanted to include non-binary as a third gender option, what statistical weight would you give it? One in three? (Even odds of being male, female, or non-binary?) Or some reduced amount?

In the US there are about 1.2 million people who identify as non-binary. That's about 0.4%. But I'm not sure how that's relevant to a fantasy culture.
As a default, I would imagine cultures where there was no social stigma about identifying as non-binary. So in a utopia where traditional binary genders peacefully coexist with non-binary genders, what might the breakdown be?

Obviously, this is up to the designer of the fictional world. I'm just wondering how others envision this. (Or maybe there is more gender research out there that I'm unaware of that might provide some guidance.)

It really depends on how much you want non-binary people to pop up randomly. I might start with 10% not because I'm basing that off real data but because it's high enough percentage that I'll see it from time-to-time but low enough to where it feels realistic.

Anybody sufficiently proficient at coding to write a random NPC generator could put those sorts of variables on a slider.

In broad terms, the poll shows that Americans consistently, and vastly, overestimate the size of minority groups. What portion of society is gay and lesbian? Respondents say 30 percent; in truth it's about 3 percent. Bisexuals? People say 29 percent; in reality, it's 4 percent. How about transgender people? Those polled say 21 percent; it's actually more like 0.6 percent.

The closest you could measure this on a chart is using a d100 chart, but as you say mimicking real-life is kind of pointless. It really is up to you entirely.

What do you mean with the term non-binary? People identifying themselves as not male/female or people who biologically are not male or female?
The latter would be rather rare, probably way less than a percent, and the former would depend on the culture you are creating so it is hard to find a generic percentage for a generator.

Edit: Ok, that was already answered in the OP. I should read more carefully.

5% or 1-in-20 chances.

You should look up the BlueRose AGE setting by Green Ronin.

uzirath said:

If you were creating a random PC generator and wanted to include non-binary as a third gender option, what statistical weight would you give it? One in three? (Even odds of being male, female, or non-binary?) Or some reduced amount?

In the US there are about 1.2 million people who identify as non-binary. That's about 0.4%. But I'm not sure how that's relevant to a fantasy culture.
As a default, I would imagine cultures where there was no social stigma about identifying as non-binary. So in a utopia where traditional binary genders peacefully coexist with non-binary genders, what might the breakdown be?

Obviously, this is up to the designer of the fictional world. I'm just wondering how others envision this. (Or maybe there is more gender research out there that I'm unaware of that might provide some guidance.)

Click to expand...

I don't think this is something that would work well as a blind randomization. It greatly depends on culture, where male and female gender norms are going to mean very different things (and by extension non-binary).

How many are going to appear probably ought to depend upon what use you're going to make of that information.

uzirath said:

If you were creating a random PC generator and wanted to include non-binary as a third gender option, what statistical weight would you give it? One in three? (Even odds of being male, female, or non-binary?) Or some reduced amount?

In the US there are about 1.2 million people who identify as non-binary. That's about 0.4%. But I'm not sure how that's relevant to a fantasy culture.
As a default, I would imagine cultures where there was no social stigma about identifying as non-binary. So in a utopia where traditional binary genders peacefully coexist with non-binary genders, what might the breakdown be?

Obviously, this is up to the designer of the fictional world. I'm just wondering how others envision this. (Or maybe there is more gender research out there that I'm unaware of that might provide some guidance.)

Click to expand...

The first part of this talks about creating a PC-generator, while the second talks about demographic qualities of the game world. I'm going to do a tangential shift from the discussion of non-binary gender in particular and discuss my opinion of game design:

I systematically disagree with the notion that a PC generator (be that gender breakdown or game-score generation) ought to be extrapolatable to the general population. The PC-generation system should be PC-facing and set up to best create enjoyable and interesting characters, full stop. Even if the NPCs of the world are built using the same mechanical stuff of the PCs (they too have attributes and derived stats and stuff), the method that each is determined should not be the same, as they serve differing purposes within the game.

Part of this comes from a long memory of the girl that joined our gaming group when we were 9 playing BX/BECMI D&D and left when we switched to AD&D and someone else told her 'it was just realistic' that there should be a gender-based Strength cap. More pertinent to the topic of distribution, however, are things like Traveller or GURPS: Space or the like which create star systems, where it is absolutely reasonable that the average star system is a nondistinctive brown dwarf or small Main sequence G with mostly uninhabitable planets. This makes sense if you are just throwing a dart at the map and saying, 'so, what's there?' However, for something like home planets for the PCs, a different chart needs be consulted. One which includes interesting places that make the characters interesting to play.

I don't really know this means for your character generator gender tab, other than to say, 'don't worry about the demographic distribution of your game world' for said generator, since emulating it isn't said generator's goal.

Thanks for all of your comments. I recognize that it's an absurd question, really.

As a bit of background context, I've been experimenting with creating ancestry data files for GURPS Character Sheet, a free utility that my players and I use to manage our characters. The developer has introduced the ability to create custom data files that can be used to generate random data to prefill the descriptive information about a character: name, height, weight, hair, eyes, skin, handedness, and gender.

Here's an example when I open a new, otherwise blank, character sheet:


In this case, the data was generated from some default files provided with the software. Each of the options with a shuffle symbol beside it was randomly generated. Clicking the shuffle button will re-roll that particular category.

For my own campaign world, I can easily decide the breakdown of things. But I was thinking of creating some additional generic files to support additional baseline fantasy races. When I realized that genders aren't hard-coded, I realized that I could create more. Seemed like for a default it would make sense, in the interest of being most inclusive, of include a non-binary option. So I was just noodling around on how to manage the specifics. Individual GMs can and should, of course, modify the settings to match their game world assumptions.