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Tharos
2010-08-30, 05:13 PM
How do you guys do it?
In my gaming group, there had been 3 attempts at roplaying girls, and all were kinda awkward (One was even from myself, lasted 2 sessions). Our DM sure roleplays female, but it's not the same time as acting as a female 100% of your playtime.

Talon Sky
2010-08-30, 05:16 PM
I tend to not allow it in my games. It's simply awkward and there's no real reason for it unless the player is wanting to play a seductress....which just leads to a lot of "I hope he doesn't show up tonight...." kind of feelings.

Esser-Z
2010-08-30, 05:18 PM
I have no problem with it. Roleplaying is all about being something you aren't, y'know?


(Says a guy who tends towards female PCs)

JadedDM
2010-08-30, 05:18 PM
As the DM (and male), I am required to roleplay quite a few females (unless I want to create a world where everyone but the PCs are male, that is). I do that by just playing them as people.

Zaydos
2010-08-30, 05:18 PM
I've failed horribly at it. Most of my important/recurring NPCs are male because I make a very awkward girl even when DMing. I'm actually trying it right now in a PbP because I'm enough of a role-player to feel I ought to be up to the challenge. So far... nothing to comment.

herrhauptmann
2010-08-30, 05:20 PM
Meh, I'm not good enough at roleplaying to create a believable woman and play her from session to session. Oddly, the women players I've known haven't really roleplayed their female characters any better than I would've.

I did try once, and actually was slightly successful. Female bard (in AD&D ravenloft), played her as naive, innocent.

Think it's really important however, for male players to not make their female characters really ummm, loose and easy. Unless you're in an BoEF game.

Yuki Akuma
2010-08-30, 05:20 PM
I don't play females.

I play characters who happen to be female, biologically speaking.

The trick is to play a person, not a sex.


[B]Think it's really important however, for male players to not make their female characters really ummm, loose and easy.]

Pretty good advice, for the most part.

Unless you're playing a Coure Eladrin and it makes total sense for her to be a total flirt.

<.<

Tyndmyr
2010-08-30, 05:20 PM
As the DM (and male), I am required to roleplay quite a few females (unless I want to create a world where everyone but the PCs are male, that is). I do that by just playing them as people.

This. If your world is remotely close to realistic, it really shouldn't be that much of a stretch.

That said, I have seen the horrible fail kind of cross gender roleplaying. The kind where the player has a portfolio of half naked pictures of his character he wants to show everyone, but that nobody really wants to see. Don't be that guy.

Zanatos777
2010-08-30, 05:23 PM
I don't play females.

I play characters who happen to be female, biologically speaking.

The trick is to play a person, not a sex.

<.<

This basically.

Jack_Simth
2010-08-30, 05:23 PM
How do you guys do it?
In my gaming group, there had been 3 attempts at roplaying girls, and all were kinda awkward (One was even from myself, lasted 2 sessions). Our DM sure roleplays female, but it's not the same time as acting as a female 100% of your playtime.
In and of itself, it's not important.

When it becomes important is when it comes up... but that's more a matter of 'sex in an RPG is creepy' (including related issues, such as body image, bathing privacy issues while traveling, social status, pawing drunks, et cetera) regardless.

Kaun
2010-08-30, 05:23 PM
It's such a regular occurance with our group that i bearly even notice it any more.

Now i think about it never was an issue?

What exactly is making it so awkward?

BobVosh
2010-08-30, 05:26 PM
I have no problem with it, and have a friend who normally does it. However his female characters all tend to be like Fiona from burn notice. Crazy gun bunny types.

The loose M as F characters are just annoying, as /\ has said.

However I don't roleplay men hitting on my friend's female character. That just would get weird, I would imagine at least. Besides we roleplay to get away from romance issues, and get to murdering people to take their stuff, or uniting kingdoms under our benevolent tyrannical rule. So it doesn't come up much or matter.

Orzel
2010-08-30, 05:27 PM
It's not that hard. I have no problem with it. As long as you do get silly or weird, it can be a great experience.

One of my best characters was female... the official "mother" of the party.

Zanatos777
2010-08-30, 05:28 PM
It's such a regular occurance with our group that i bearly even notice it any more.

Now i think about it never was an issue?

What exactly is making it so awkward?

Honestly I only bat an eye at it now when one of my (male) players goes through 10 characters in a campaign and 8 of them are women. That strikes me a odd but in that case I am more concerned with his poor roleplaying and stupidity. Or the case where a player decided to play a japanese schoolgirl in a Cthuluhu game...

I do know some people weirded out by men playing women but otherwise no one bats an eye.

Frosty
2010-08-30, 05:28 PM
Y'know, it boggles me how people can roleplay a creature that eats brains for sustenance (mindflayer) and bends reality with his own mind (Mindflayer Psion) yet have trouble roleplaying a vanilla human of the opposite gender.

El Dorado
2010-08-30, 05:28 PM
I've never had a problem roleplaying females. My favorite character was a female drow fighter-mage that I played for almost three years. The trick is to decide what kind of character you want to play (arrogant, idealistic, condescending, etc) and then go for it---same as you would for a male character. Gender is totally secondary.

Tira-chan
2010-08-30, 05:28 PM
Well, I'm a girl who plays guys sometimes, so I don't really see any problem with it. In fact, I managed to take my group at Gencon quite by surprise when I ended up with a male paladin by chance, and decided to run with it instead of taking the DM up on his offer of changing the character's gender. As has been said, it's about playing a person, not a gender - a 'woman,' not a 'female.' If that makes sense. I know personally, I don't find guys any harder to play than girls, but maybe it's because I write a lot? Plus, I usually use third person instead of first person when roleplaying, so that might help.

Strawberries
2010-08-30, 05:33 PM
Hmm...what about females players rolaplaying as males? (is feeling left out)
EDIT: whops, Tira-chan ninja'd me. I'm not feeling left out anymore.

My first couple of characters were females, and humans, because, well, I'm female (and human), and figured I'd start easy.
Now I go with whatever the character strikes me as. I don't see the issue, really. Why would it be awkward?

Oh, and as a female, I'm curious about what you guys think that "acting female" entails. :smallconfused:

Tasroth
2010-08-30, 05:33 PM
Okay, I've given up quoting people cos by now I'd be quoting most of the thread.

Like so many others have said, it's a matter of playing a person - gender is simply one of their qualities. I've had to do it as a DM often enough.

As it happens though, as a player, two of my four characters have been female. Including the one in our current 4e game, when one of the other male players is playing a female character. Combined with the two female players both playing female characters, the girls in the party outnumber the guys.

And it didn't even get weird when the DM was roleplaying a ship's captain who was hitting on all the female PCs. Well... not too weird anyway.

TheThan
2010-08-30, 05:33 PM
In a real life gameing group, I imagine its always going to be awkward. Unless the player is really effeminate or the whole group is ok and comfortable with it.

The Internet however provides a certain amount of anonymousness that a guy could easily pull it off and nobody would notice.

Satyr
2010-08-30, 05:35 PM
The games I'm in probably put more emphasis on interhuman relations than others, and stuff like romance and relationships sometimes overshadow the main plot; I am also quite used to cross-gender players, and it is almost never an issue. I mean, when Shakespeare wrote Romeo and Juliet, both major parts were played by men, kissing scenes and all. Why should this be a problem now, for a hopefully more enlightened and open-minded modern society?
So, I had rounds where I flirted with other players in character while both our girlfriends where there. It was fun. But it somewhat requires that one doesn't take this stuff too serious.

Tyndmyr
2010-08-30, 05:36 PM
Hmm...what about females players rolaplaying as males? (is feeling left out)
EDIT: whops, Tira-chan ninja'd me. I'm not feeling left out anymore.

My first couple of characters were females, and humans, because, well, I'm female (and human), and figured I'd start easy.
Now I go with whatever the character strikes me as. I don't see the issue, really. Why would it be awkward?

Oh, and as a female, I'm curious about what you guys think that "acting female" entails. :smallconfused:

Complaining about the color of the boots of speed, mostly.

Yukitsu
2010-08-30, 05:37 PM
Most of my characters wind up ambiguously gendered anyway due to odd campaign shenanigans, so I don't think anyone would notice if I was flip-flopping between genders on a session by session basis. Then again, I failed a gender test IRL, so what do I know?

The Glyphstone
2010-08-30, 05:37 PM
I personally don't do it, mainly because I worry (too much) about becoming That Guy Who Plays Girls Badly. No objection to my players doing it, but then I've only ever had one try, and he RPed so thinly that you wouldn't have been able to tell the character was a guy or girl.

Yuki Akuma
2010-08-30, 05:39 PM
Y'know, it boggles me how people can roleplay a creature that eats brains for sustenance (mindflayer) and bends reality with his own mind (Mindflayer Psion) yet have trouble roleplaying a vanilla human of the opposite gender.

Mindflayers don't exist. You can make up whatever you like about them.

Women exist. You can't make up whatever you like about them.

I don't see why this is a difficult concept.

Tyndmyr
2010-08-30, 05:39 PM
Then again, I failed a gender test IRL, so what do I know?

Er, study harder for next time?

Dr.Epic
2010-08-30, 05:41 PM
How do you guys do it?

How I play them? Lat two panels of this comic (http://www.goblinscomic.com/08192005/) and fourth panel of this comic. (http://www.goblinscomic.com/08202005/)

For a serious answer, just play them like any other character.

AslanCross
2010-08-30, 05:42 PM
Since I'm used to playing females as a DM anyway, I was okay with it when I played a girl. I've only been a player twice, each handling two characters. The first was with a male personality Warforged and a female artificer, the second was a female paladin/swordsage and a male wizard.

My groups didn't have problems with me playing them, either. Both of my female characters tended toward the action girl archetype. (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ActionGirl) (Okay, the artificer was more of a Tykebomb (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Tykebomb)/Wrench Wench (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WrenchWench).

Did I roleplay them well? Can't say.
Was my group fine with it? Yes. (Probably because the brunt of the "annoying roleplayer" ire went to the male changeling rogue who was trying to look cute by putting on fox ears.)

Yukitsu
2010-08-30, 05:44 PM
Er, study harder for next time?

I don't think study really can change your gender. >_>

The Big Dice
2010-08-30, 05:45 PM
There's a good little article on the differences (and similarities, but mostsly differences) between guys and girls in gaming here (http://web.archive.org/web/20061024035513/www.tasteslikephoenix.com/articles/women.html).

Most of the people who engage in what I call cross gender roleplaying seem to end up playing either a guy who just happens to have boobs, or someone who may as well be asexual. That's not always the case, though. In an online chat based RPG I take part in I'm fairly cautious about the gender of the other person. That girl you're hitting on might be the guy from the Make Love Not Warcraft episode of South Park...

Strawberries
2010-08-30, 05:45 PM
Mindflayers don't exist. You can make up whatever you like about them.

Women exist. You can't make up whatever you like about them.

I don't see why this is a difficult concept.

Er, yes, but "women" aren't a monolithic entity, same way as "men" aren't. So, in a sense, you can make up whatever you like about them.

Orzel
2010-08-30, 05:46 PM
Actually sometimes I forget my characters are female.

Leader: "So the three of us will jump him in the bathroom."
ME: "But there's four of us."
Leader: "You are a woman. You can't just sneak into the men's bathroom like we can. Everyone will notice."
ME: "Oh yeah. Can I kill the trashy girlfriend in the womans' bathroom?"
Leader OOC: "I doubt our characters care what yours does in the woman's bathroom."

Yuki Akuma
2010-08-30, 05:49 PM
Er, yes, but "women" aren't a monolithic entity, same way as "men" aren't. So, in a sense, you can make up whatever you like about them.

You can make up more about mindflayers. :smallwink: You have experience with how women act. Not so with mindflayers.

Basically, your mind is a pattern-finding machine. And it's lazy. If it can find an applicable prior experience, it won't create a new one out of wholecloth and will use it instead.

{Scrubbed}

Zaydos
2010-08-30, 05:50 PM
Most of the people who engage in what I call cross gender roleplaying seem to end up playing either a guy who just happens to have boobs, or someone who may as well be asexual.

This is my problem, I end up playing a guy with boobs or just someone whose asexual... or at least I assume I do; I've never tested as a PC.

Calmar
2010-08-30, 05:51 PM
I do that only as a DM. Since I don't equate coolness/badassitude with beauty and generally prefer more or less unattractive characters, a female PC wouldn't be hot-looking, anyways, so no need to be female in the first place. :smallbiggrin:

The biggest difficulty of portraying females in a campaign is IMO to figure out, how the role of women would look in a medieval world where they are equal to men, without creating a society that wouldn't be recognizable as 'medieval' anymore.
So far my (hopefuly not too sexist :smallconfused:) sollution is that most female NPCs simply prefer the traditional activities and professions of women, but may pursue any career without handicap, if they so desire (for according to my observation most women simply aren't as interested as men in things like lumbering, warfare, seafaring, mining, and so on).

Tengu_temp
2010-08-30, 05:54 PM
I have no problems playing female characters - I tend to play them slightly more often than male ones, in fact. I even played (or rather, am still playing) one with a crush on another, male party member, and it doesn't feel embarassing at all. Of course, I'm playing online pretty much exclusively and things are easier here.

In order to roleplay a character of the opposite gender well, remember those two things:
1. You're playing a person first and foremost, not a girl/guy. Gender has some impact on the personality and behaviour of most of us, but only for very few people it's the most important factor.
2. Your character isn't you - it's a character in a story you create together with the other players and the DM. You have experience with books or movies where your favorite character had the opposite gender, right?

AtlanteanTroll
2010-08-30, 05:55 PM
I'd be a complete failure. I'm too immature. I'd just walk around without any clothes on.

Fax Celestis
2010-08-30, 05:56 PM
Y'know, it boggles me how people can roleplay a creature that eats brains for sustenance (mindflayer) and bends reality with his own mind (Mindflayer Psion) yet have trouble roleplaying a vanilla human of the opposite gender.

Well, see, in one instance we actually have real examples to compare to.

EDIT: OH WOW THERE'S A WHOLE SECOND PAGE I DIDN'T READ

failfax is fail

KillianHawkeye
2010-08-30, 05:56 PM
Whether or not gender-bending your characters is awkward mostly depends on the maturity of your group. Or if you have people who play "myself but a dwarf" or "myself but a wizard", then there might not be enough seperation between the player and the character to stop things from becoming strange.


Personally, I have no problem with people playing opposite-gender characters and frequently play female characters myself. I am still a little bit shy about roleplaying romance between characters (regardless of the genders of the players involved).

Umael
2010-08-30, 06:03 PM
*wanders into thread*
*looks around*
*takes two pain-killers*
*shakes head*
*leaves*

Raistlin1040
2010-08-30, 06:04 PM
I'm the DM for my group, so I've played female often enough, and I roleplay girls online alongside my male characters. If I ever get to play again (unlikely *sigh*), the character I have planned up is female. I don't see what the issue with it is. There is far more to a character than their sexual characteristics.

AslanCross
2010-08-30, 06:05 PM
I also have a tendency to draw the characters I play, and frankly, women are more fun to draw than men. :P

dsmiles
2010-08-30, 06:06 PM
I have no problems playing female characters - I tend to play them slightly more often than male ones, in fact. I even played (or rather, am still playing) one with a crush on another, male party member, and it doesn't feel embarassing at all. Of course, I'm playing online pretty much exclusively and things are easier here.

In order to roleplay a character of the opposite gender well, remember those two things:
1. You're playing a person first and foremost, not a girl/guy. Gender has some impact on the personality and behaviour of most of us, but only for very few people it's the most important factor.
2. Your character isn't you - it's a character in a story you create together with the other players and the DM. You have experience with books or movies where your favorite character had the opposite gender, right?

This. I, too have played a female character (Elven cleric of a nature deity in 2e) with a crush (read: in love with) on another male character (2e barbarian-type fighter). She died. Apparently, the barbarian returned the feelings, as he got so upset over her death that he went berserk (not raged, no control over what he attacked) and killed the BBEG, and destroyed several rooms worth of furniture, before he calmed down (read: passed out). Good times...good times. :smallsigh:
No awkwardness at all. You just have to be mature about it.

EDIT: @AslanCross: Where's the like button on this thing? Women certainly more fun to draw, being a former artist myself.

darkpuppy
2010-08-30, 06:15 PM
Yeah, it's genuinely down to the maturity of the group. I can perfectly understand the female roleplayers here not understanding why gender-bending is so tough, but one always has to keep in mind that not all roleplayers are mature, and many of us still look upon the opposite gender as people we kick on the shins and then run away if we fancy them (I wish I was kidding, but I know somebody who's 21 and still does that sort of thing.)

Mainly, when gender-bending in roleplaying, I always keep in mind that they are, as many people here have noted, just people who happen to have a different set of primary and secondary sexual organs to the kind of people I play. However, I do introduce some subtle differences. For example, I am more likely to pick a female character if I have the concept of "uses wits instead of just hacking problems to bits." (EDIT: This is from experience, as most of the women I've met in my life have been fairly wise... although I have, in real life, met the TS/TB mentioned in that article referenced earlier)

Finally, there's the whole cultural thing that makes it awkward. I live in a rather conservative community, and roleplaying a female character, unless I'm DMing, will always get me odd looks. Like many of you, I really don't see the problem myself, but some people do make it a problem.

Sillycomic
2010-08-30, 06:16 PM
I have never thought about playing a female character in D&D. When I come up with cool character concepts I want to play, it never entered my mind that I want to play it as a girl. It's usually male because I'm male.

Then one day during a RP session a friend of mine said she has never seen a man role play a female character very effectively in D&D before. A lot of the problems like in this thread popped up. She thought it couldn't be done.

Hmm, I took this as a personal challenge.

I came up with Grandma. She was a female dwarf cleric. The concept I came up with is that her son had gone off adventuring and been killed by random monsters along the way. While this was sad, this caused my Grandma character to want to go adventuring to... the only reason being, cause she's a cleric, she has lots of healing and that sort of thing won't happen anymore.

So, I became the grandma of the group. I healed wounds after the battle, took ranks in cooking and knitting, and always had a wooden spoon just in case someone wanted to lie to me (max ranks in sense motive meant that if you ever lied to Grandma, she rapped your knuckles with a wooden spoon! It was pretty funny until the rogue tried to steal from the temple... then it wasn't as funny anymore, lol)

It was the only time I thought the character concept worked better as a female then a male. She would be more nurturing and helpful to the group than a male cleric who had lost his son. I didn't play her as sexy or loose because, well, she was like 150 year old dwarf who had grown up kids of her own, lol.

Oh, and the female friend said, after a few session... that she had now seen only 1 male play a female effectively. Mission accomplished, I suppose.




The only other female concept I have ever thought of playing was a bard. I imagine her being the most stereotypical Valley girl one could ever play, blond hair, blue eyes, "Like, Oh my god! Did you see her shoes? Whateves!" kind of character. She goes through all of the beauty pageants (like Miss America) throughout the major cities in whatever world we're playing in.

Now, if you have ever seen a Miss America Pageant, they always ask the girls what they've have done to help the community. Now, most people say they help out at a charity, or sing for elderly people, or whatever. But, my female bard thought of an entirely different concept. How awesome would it be if she went up there and said she helped defeat an entire clan of orcs trying to pillage and destroy an orphanage? Much better than singing to the elderly.

So, you have typically Valley girl who has never been adventuring a day in her life, thinking she can go out in the woods and sing her way to the Miss America pageant. Then I wanted her to complain about everything. Walking everywhere for so long... having to get up early. She spends an hour a day primping herself before she can go out adventuring. She will not stop at just any tavern to sleep for the night. (what do you mean there's no bathroom in this dungeon... well, where do I go?)

And then one day, fighting orcs or goblins or whatever... she actually breaks one of her cute little pink nails. And that's it. Something fundamental snaps in her head, and she rages and kills everything!

The point was to eventually multi-class her with barbarian because everything about adventuring would just piss her off so much. I thought it was a fun concept to play. And one I've never seen before.

I have yet to play her though. Perhaps some day.

dsmiles
2010-08-30, 06:17 PM
Yeah, it's genuinely down to the maturity of the group. I can perfectly understand the female roleplayers here not understanding why gender-bending is so tough, but one always has to keep in mind that not all roleplayers are mature, and many of us still look upon the opposite gender as people we kick on the shins and then run away if we fancy them (I wish I was kidding, but I know somebody who's 21 and still does that sort of thing.)

And cooties, don't forget the cooties...:smallyuk:

Temotei
2010-08-30, 06:18 PM
I generally play males, but females are definitely not out of my role playing ability.

When I do play them, I tend toward warrior classes, for some reason. Maybe because I like the image of a woman in full plate. :smallamused:

Prime32
2010-08-30, 06:21 PM
I have no problems playing female characters - I tend to play them slightly more often than male ones, in fact. I even played (or rather, am still playing) one with a crush on another, male party member, and it doesn't feel embarassing at all. Of course, I'm playing online pretty much exclusively and things are easier here.Speaking from my experience in BleachITP, my first character was intended to be a Shikamaru type, who wasn't very powerful and relied on tricking his opponents when he was forced into combat.

When that didn't work out I decided to make something as far away from him as possible. Which was a female member of the 11th squad (that's the "kill it to death with swords until it dies" one). Who ended up seeing the Captain of the squad as a father and eventually inheriting his position. (the captain's player informed me that I had simultaneously creeped him out and warmed the depths of his heart :smalltongue:)

It may have been the tighter scripting, or that she was introduced via Samus Is A Girl (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SamusIsAGirl), but I had a lot more fun with the latter. :smalltongue: BleachITP has had a surprising amount of IC relationships between players of the same gender, as a whole...


I agree that it's much easier online - I wouldn't dream of trying to pull off a female character in front of a physical group.

darkpuppy
2010-08-30, 06:24 PM
And cooties, don't forget the cooties...:smallyuk:

As a sidenote, I love american fictional diseases, like cooties and hives. :smallbiggrin:

EDIT: I even made one myself to illustrate the ease of calling in sick... Mongolian Death Flu.

dsmiles
2010-08-30, 06:28 PM
As a sidenote, I love american fictional diseases, like cooties and hives. :smallbiggrin:

EDIT: I even made one myself to illustrate the ease of calling in sick... Mongolian Death Flu.

Like Mongolian death worms, only less wormy and more virusy.

By the way, hives are real. It's a term for puffy welts, usually caused by some sort of topical allergic reaction.

Tengu_temp
2010-08-30, 06:29 PM
BleachITP has had a surprising amount of IC relationships between players of the same gender, as a whole...


Most of the games I'm in have moderate to high amount of shipping fuel among the characters, and guys outnumber girls in them, usually by a wide margin - among players, among characters it depends on the game. I guess I play with people who just think it's more fun that way (they're right).

darkpuppy
2010-08-30, 06:29 PM
Ahhh, okay, so hives is basically what we call "I came into contact with something I'm allergic to." Duly noted.

CakeTown
2010-08-30, 06:30 PM
In my regular game, I play a female rogue. One of the players made fun of me for it at first, but he eventually stopped. The DM and the other players were okay with it, and accepted my character.

Now, I'm not the best at roleplaying, but I try to do my best when I'm playing her. She isn't asexual, but she definitely isn't like the drow that Dr.Epic linked to. I gave her some of my traits, such as a general distrust of others, but others I made up, such as her lying compulsively and being very religious. Basically, I tried to make her a realistic person, rather than a stereotype.

As for other character's relations towards her, I've had my roommate's fighter jokingly make a "Seduction roll" to try and get me and the group's other female to spend the night with him. Wasn't awkward at all, just hilarious.

dsmiles
2010-08-30, 06:31 PM
Ahhh, okay, so hives is basically what we call "I came into contact with something I'm allergic to." Duly noted.

Yeah, because, "I came into contact with something I'm allergic to," is a mouthful, and when your mouth is all swolled, saying "I got hives," is much easier.[/derail]

thompur
2010-08-30, 06:34 PM
About 30% of the characters I've played have been female. I usually decide when I'm writing the backstory. The last female I played was a halfling rogue. I wanted the character to be as small as possible, so I made it female. Her name was Ch'ai-ann("my friends call me Pep. Call me Peppy and you die.")
One of her schticks was running up to a guard or humanoid opponent crying "daddy, daddy", jumping into his arm, kissing him all over his face, then looking at him and saying, "Hey! You're not my daddy, and punching him in the face with all her 14 str. She took leadership, and eventually got engaged to her Warlock cohort, also a halfling. *sigh* It was soooo romantic.:smallwink:

Innis Cabal
2010-08-30, 06:35 PM
Y'know, it boggles me how people can roleplay a creature that eats brains for sustenance (mindflayer) and bends reality with his own mind (Mindflayer Psion) yet have trouble roleplaying a vanilla human of the opposite gender.

The brain eating creature is easier to understand.

Zaydos
2010-08-30, 06:35 PM
As for other character's relations towards her, I've had my roommate's fighter jokingly make a "Seduction roll" to try and get me and the group's other female to spend the night with him. Wasn't awkward at all, just hilarious.

I had a game where this would have happened... and the fighter would have rolled a nat 20.

Okay it never did happen but similar things did happen... and things went down hill from there. It actually had the full gambit of people playing female characters, from the worse possible (that player is not allowed to play female characters again... or try and seduce people), to a serious attempt that still somehow ended up with cat-ears (the game was mostly a joke). It also had girls playing female characters... I have to say I preferred some of the guys.

devinkowalczyk
2010-08-30, 06:40 PM
Most of the time it is just a small mark on the paper ( M=>F) with no real roleplaying involved because most of the people who do do that are slow and not good role players.

Personally, I don't like the idea. I find it needless and pointless and weird

Frosty
2010-08-30, 06:40 PM
Well, see, in one instance we actually have real examples to compare to.

EDIT: OH WOW THERE'S A WHOLE SECOND PAGE I DIDN'T READ

failfax is failTrue but so what? I'm sure you'll homebrew something up on the spot that'll represent a balanced and interesting female. It can't be harder than fixing the Paladin...

Blackfang108
2010-08-30, 06:41 PM
As a sidenote, I love american fictional diseases, like cooties and hives. :smallbiggrin:

EDIT: I even made one myself to illustrate the ease of calling in sick... Mongolian Death Flu.

In all fairness, cooties are another term for head-lice.

FelixG
2010-08-30, 06:44 PM
In my RL group i tend to discourage it, as the one guy who likes to do it is...rather creepy and likes to hit on the other characters to get things he wants.

Most of my games though are Play by Post on a program like maptools, and i really have no problem with it there as you cant see the other people and it is more IC than RL groups tend to be.

crizh
2010-08-30, 06:47 PM
At least half of the characters I've played in 25 years of roleplaying have been female. I always kinda felt that if I was going to be pretending to be someone else I ought to make an effort to do it properly.

Something I've noticed is that it made a lot of younger players uncomfortable but as they've matured as people over time it's become less of an issue.

Our D&D group recently discovered that completely by accident over a period of time and a number of character deaths the entire group of male players had ended up playing female characters. Nobody feels in the least bit uncomfortable because we are telling a great story together.

One thing I have recently experimented with is overcoming my own discomfort and prejudices and playing a gay male character in a PbP game. While this was a bit of a mental juggling exercise it was relatively easy once I got under the characters skin. He was just a person like any other I've played.

Thing is I think most of us tend to avoid getting too involved in the sexual elements of our character's lives. At some point roleplaying morphs into an entirely different sort of 'roleplaying' best reserved for the bedroom and our significant others.

Frozen_Feet
2010-08-30, 06:47 PM
I've never had trouble playing female characters. I play them just like my male ones - I think of things and archetypes they embody, and usually their action flow from those.

I do have a tendency to try to sound more feminine when playing a woman (because I always change my voice in attempt to sound more like my characters). I don't know how other players actually feel about it, though! XD I know I've played a young French duchess infront of completely foreign people, speaking in language that's secondary to me, and no-one called me out for bad portrayal.

137beth
2010-08-30, 06:49 PM
I think that if the player is a skilled actor, than there is no problem. I go to a lot of theater and have seen many, many plays in which males have played females, and vice versa.

Nerd-o-rama
2010-08-30, 06:53 PM
While it is tricky in-person, and awkward with people you don't know well, there's no real reason not to let people give it a try if they want to. And in Play by Post, there should be no problem at all, as you have more time to consider your statements and actions.

As long as it's not just an excuse for lesbian sex fanta....okay, I've done that too.

Curmudgeon
2010-08-30, 06:55 PM
I tend to not allow it in my games. It's simply awkward and there's no real reason for it unless the player is wanting to play a seductress...
There's at least one real reason, and that's because certain race and class combinations dictate being female. A Drow Cleric of Lolth, for instance, pretty much has to be female; the favored classes of Drow are different for the two sexes. This has nothing to do with seduction; it's all about following racial tradition and religious doctrine.

true_shinken
2010-08-30, 06:58 PM
There is a guy playing a female half-elf swashbuckler/rogue/scarlet corsair in my group. People started calling him Scarlett Johanson and stuff and I was kinda worried that the game would be sstrained by this...
...but the player roleplayed his character like a total BITCH. No one wanted to talk to her after a few seconds - she was rude, she was harsh and the worst - she was needed, since she was captain of the flying ship. People just forgot Alicia was in fact woman - because she was so damn annoying!
After a few months of play, Alicia is more comfortable within the party.

Umael
2010-08-30, 06:59 PM
There's at least one real reason, and that's because certain race and class combinations dictate being female. A Drow Cleric of Lolth, for instance, pretty much has to be female; the favored classes of Drow are different for the two sexes. This has nothing to do with seduction; it's all about following racial tradition and religious doctrine.

Another reason - being pregnant and the dangers of miscarriage are unique to females. If this reason is part of your character concept...

...

Okay, I'm leaving this thread. Really. Gone. Not getting roped into it. Nope, nope, nope.

Yuki Akuma
2010-08-30, 07:01 PM
I tend to not allow it in my games. It's simply awkward and there's no real reason for it unless the player is wanting to play a seductress....which just leads to a lot of "I hope he doesn't show up tonight...." kind of feelings.

There's no "real reason" to play any other type of character, either.

InkEyes
2010-08-30, 07:16 PM
Like Mongolian death worms, only less wormy and more virusy.

By the way, hives are real. It's a term for puffy welts, usually caused by some sort of topical allergic reaction.

Cooties are real too, it's an archaic term for lice and fleas.



This is my problem, I end up playing a guy with boobs or just someone whose asexual... or at least I assume I do; I've never tested as a PC.

I'm not really sure what you mean by "guys with boobs." Is it just that you can change the gender of your characters and nothing would change? I can see how that would be bad, but it's also a good baseline to build a more complex character off of. Really, it's not any different than making any other realistic character. Consider the gender roles of the campaign setting and how differently the major events of a character's life would be different depending on their sex. These are what will shape the character's present state of mind.

For what it's worth, a woman pursuing a non-traditional life-path (like adventuring) has a higher likelihood of possessing at least a few masculine traits (independence, assertiveness [aka "bitchyness"], etc.) since those features are what likely drive them in that direction in the first place. D&D settings tend to be more egalitarian than anyplace on Earth before 1900, so there still might not be as much difference between a male and female character other than their sexual organs. Now, if you're playing females that pee standing up, I'm not really sure what to say to you.


I don't have any issues with men playing female characters as long as they don't act like offensive stereotypes. Oddly, only one guy has considered doing it in a game I've run (he ended up not playing that character). I guess my players are worried about offending me.

Ormur
2010-08-30, 07:21 PM
There are four guys in my campaign but the characters are equally split between the genders. One of the players is more prone to playing girls because apparently he likes to play characters that come of as uh... a bit like high school bitches. So in that respect his character isn't just asexual or a guy with boobs but I don't know if that's good or bad in his case. As character flaws among adventurers go it's not so bad after all and he isn't disruptive.

We apparently don't like to role play our characters hitting on each other so it's never been very awkward. As the DM I'm the only one that has had to roleplay anything like that and it wouldn't be any less awkward in respects to the male characters since I'd be playing girls (ah well or homosexual males).

The other player is almost accidentally playing a girl. He almost always plays males but I don't know if he has played girls PBP games. He's playing a very prim and proper cutesy halfling ex-cohort of his ex-character.

FelixG
2010-08-30, 07:25 PM
Cooties are real too, it's an archaic term for lice and fleas.




I'm not really sure what you mean by "guys with boobs." Is it just that you can change the gender of your characters and nothing would change? I can see how that would be bad, but it's also a good baseline to build a more complex character off of. Really, it's not any different than making any other realistic character. Consider the gender roles of the campaign setting and how differently the major events of a character's life would be different depending on their sex. These are what will shape the character's present state of mind.

For what it's worth, a woman pursuing a non-traditional life-path (like adventuring) has a higher likelihood of possessing at least a few masculine traits (independence, assertiveness [aka "bitchyness"], etc.) since those features are what likely drive them in that direction in the first place. D&D settings tend to be more egalitarian than anyplace on Earth before 1900, so there still might not be as much difference between a male and female character other than their sexual organs. Now, if you're playing females that pee standing up, I'm not really sure what to say to you.


I don't have any issues with men playing female characters as long as they don't act like offensive stereotypes. Oddly, only one guy has considered doing it in a game I've run (he ended up not playing that character). I guess my players are worried about offending me.

The bolded section raises an interesting question in my mind. Is adventuring really a "non-traditional" life path for either gender? I could see a woman stepping into the boots of her mother and grandmother who were proud adventurers and made their living that way.

Take Order of the Stick for example, Roy came from a family of adventurers (at least his father was one) Elans father was an adventurer as well. Haily as well from my memory (a Theif in a local city is an adventurer right? I have played whole campaigns without leaving Sharn before)

Couldnt "Adventurer" in a high fantasy setting be considered a Traditional life path for male or female?

Yuki Akuma
2010-08-30, 07:27 PM
I don't think "adventurer" is considered a traditional career choice for anyone.

Esser-Z
2010-08-30, 07:28 PM
It may not even be the career of a so-called adventurer!

GolemsVoice
2010-08-30, 07:30 PM
Most of the games we play focus on social interactions, a tight group, etc, like World of Darkness, Call of Cthulhu and Vampire. But in the end, it boils down to this: Most roleplaying games put characters into extraordinary situations, or even makes the characters extraordinary. When you and your group are running for their life from an eldritch horror, your gender really doesn't matter. When you're down in the sewers, tightly gripping your shotgun and praying that the old woman's advice for fighting spirits really was true, your gender doesn't matter.

Of course we DO ahve a lot of social interactions, since we as a group love this kind of stuff, but we believe that men and women aren't so different that you have to practice hard to perfectly emulate the alien mind of a woman. If I fail to make my character "female" (whatever that may be, as some posters ahve said), well, as long as I make a believable person, who cares?

Zaydos
2010-08-30, 07:31 PM
I'm not really sure what you mean by "guys with boobs." Is it just that you can change the gender of your characters and nothing would change? I can see how that would be bad, but it's also a good baseline to build a more complex character off of. Really, it's not any different than making any other realistic character. Consider the gender roles of the campaign setting and how differently the major events of a character's life would be different depending on their sex. These are what will shape the character's present state of mind.


That and I've been known to slip up and use male pronouns when referencing them before without thinking about it. I've also had players tell me they'd act too male... although thinking back on it they made these comments without having ever seen me play a female NPC or do more than DM a completely unplanned hack-and-slash adventure.

lightningcat
2010-08-30, 07:38 PM
I've never had a problem with guys playing female characters, as long as they don't go overboard on the stereotypes. On the flip side, I've never played a female character, or even had the desire to play one.

In my current group (all male players), half the guys are playing sisters. This has led to several interesting RP scenes that wouldn't of happened if the characters were male.

One of my previous DMs made the rule that all cross gender characters needed a picture to remind players. Strangely, no one ever pulled out a picture of a half naked chick.
:smallconfused: Now that I think about it, most of my current group does the same thing.

realbombchu
2010-08-30, 08:00 PM
I've only played one female character. She was my first character ever; a bard named Isabel.

Maybe it's because of that, but she was a very important character to me. I made her to annoy my DM, who was also my very feminist girlfriend. Somewhere along the way, Isabel stopped being a joke and became a great character.

I got praise from my friends for making her so life-like. It was fun.

Snake-Aes
2010-08-30, 08:14 PM
About 2/3 of the characters I played are female. Some of them are whatever they want to be at the time. The biggest exercise was playing a changeling bard with a flair for intrigue.
The way your character is, on a first glance, is almost not linked to your gender at all.
The gender is in the details: When your party goes through a land owned by amazons, the party face will have a better time if it's a woman. When your characters all for some reason are going to show up in a fancy place, it'll be noticeable in the chosen clothing. When there is a damsel in distress, you know the scene will be wildly different if the knight in shining armor has one less longsword, since it flees from the stereotype. Bonus if it is a bachelor in distress. When the party camps at night, the sexist will sleep with a grumpy face because she's on watch.

There are rather too many ways to play either gender. What happens if her party is sexist? What happens if those sexists are female? What happens if she is the sexist? What happens if you invert the standards for gender differentiation? What happens If there is no taboo between the two? What happens if men and women are actual anathemas to each other and therefore must keep limited contact? What if ...

Basically, pick the stereotypes and choose how you will play them: Straight, Twisted, Deconstructed, Averted, Handwaved...

The Tygre
2010-08-30, 08:21 PM
I'm a DM; I've got to play all genders across the board. But one of my players always plays girl characters, and he does a really good job doing so. His male Halfling rogue is nothing but roll-playing, but he can tell you all about the church where the Fem Tiefling Cleric grew up. And me and my group have all been cool about it. Sorry some of you got saddled with the creepy end of the neckbeard stick.

onthetown
2010-08-30, 08:37 PM
Complaining about the color of the boots of speed, mostly.

Shoes can be almost any color and still add to an effective outfit. It's the patterns that really matter. I'd rather wear bright red shoes with a green outfit than have those shoes be polka-dotted.

This will eventually become relevant in somebody's campaign where the guys are playing girls.

It seems that girls have an easier time playing guys, probably because society puts a lot less restrictions on us. Girls can wear men's t-shirts, sweatpants, and even boxers for PJs if they want, but straight males usually aren't taught by society and the media that they can wear sundresses and lacy panties. They had better not be polka-dotted.

It extends farther than fashion, but if you understood that then you'll get my point.

Ajadea
2010-08-30, 08:45 PM
I'm a girl, and a DM for d&d 3.5. Bowing to the traditional medieval roles of adventurers and such, this means I roleplay a lot of guys. I don't think about that so much as 'who they are', 'why they are here', 'where they are going'. Just like for female NPCs.

Generally, I cut back on the nurture aspect of the character slightly, put more emphasis on friends than family, and more (when RPing their actions, though the emphasis is equal in my mind) on where they are going than who they are becoming.

Esser-Z
2010-08-30, 08:53 PM
Heh, my games--both playing and DMing--rarely seem to pay any attention to historical gender roles.

Sindri
2010-08-30, 08:55 PM
It seems that girls have an easier time playing guys, probably because society puts a lot less restrictions on us. Girls can wear men's t-shirts, sweatpants, and even boxers for PJs if they want, but straight males usually aren't taught by society and the media that they can wear sundresses and lacy panties.


This. In our society, women imitating men (or rather taking on mannerisms traditionally considered masculine) is generally seen as normal, cool, or empowering. Men imitating women are considered creepy or gay.
I've been in several games with very well played female character from male players, to the degree that you forgot the player was male until you look at them across the table. I've played a few female characters myself, though I can't say I did them very well (I tend towards androgynous characters anyway). But I've never told someone about the game or introduced a new player without some very strange looks, and I think that a few potential players have been scared off by the fat guy playing a female Pixie cleric.

Esser-Z
2010-08-30, 08:59 PM
Once upon a time every female role in a play was a man playing a woman!

Snake-Aes
2010-08-30, 09:00 PM
Once upon a time every female role in a play was a man playing a woman!

And Takarazuka theater is all female, with the most popular girls being usually in the male lead character.

Aroka
2010-08-30, 09:34 PM
How do you guys do it?
In my gaming group, there had been 3 attempts at roplaying girls, and all were kinda awkward (One was even from myself, lasted 2 sessions). Our DM sure roleplays female, but it's not the same time as acting as a female 100% of your playtime.

It's easy. "Women are people just like men." Ta-dah. Once you stop thinking in crude and stupid stereotypes (that, to be fair, are the default for thinking in society and crammed down everyone's throat irrespective of age, gender, or society by every media everywhere) and realize that the differences between individuals are always greater than the differences between genders, you're pretty much set.

Umael
2010-08-30, 09:53 PM
All these questions about how males can role-play as females... don't any of these males have friends or family members who are female? They can try imitating them.

If someone doesn't have a female friend or family member, they can try imitating a female actress in a TV series or movie.

Esser-Z
2010-08-30, 09:54 PM
Or, y'know. Character first, gender second. It's might be surprising how little impact gender sometimes has on how a character behaves!

Xyk
2010-08-30, 10:00 PM
I don't play females.

I play characters who happen to be female, biologically speaking.

The trick is to play a person, not a sex.


This is the correct response. I've done it once over Pbp and it wasn't all that different. I just don't usually have a suitable reason to play a female that's worth all of my (male) companions constantly hitting on me. Which my friends definitely would do.

Umael
2010-08-30, 10:02 PM
Or, y'know. Character first, gender second. It's might be surprising how little impact gender sometimes has on how a character behaves!

After three of so pages of this and people saying "character first, gender second", and other people still saying, "I'm not getting it", I am thinking a new tactic might work for them.

Seriously though, people who aren't getting it, act like you are your sister or female boss or Temperence Brennan (from Bones). Notice the mannerisms, speech patterns, habits, hobbies. Build your female character that way.

Aroka
2010-08-30, 10:25 PM
All these questions about how males can role-play as females... don't any of these males have friends or family members who are female? They can try imitating them.

If someone doesn't have a female friend or family member, they can try imitating a female actress in a TV series or movie.


After three of so pages of this and people saying "character first, gender second", and other people still saying, "I'm not getting it", I am thinking a new tactic might work for them.

Seriously though, people who aren't getting it, act like you are your sister or female boss or Temperence Brennan (from Bones). Notice the mannerisms, speech patterns, habits, hobbies. Build your female character that way.

This is very very very true and excellent advice. It'd be excellent advice for people who write comics and TV shows and the like, too. It's amazing how they keep using stereotypes over and over and over, instead of looking at the countless real women who they must encounter in their lives.

Admittedly, if a person is trained to these stereotypes, the stereotypes are what they'll pick up on when looking at real people, too, so the problem continues. (After all, these stereotypes are what society tries to teach people to act like - social, performed gender is all about stereotypes.)

Zhalath
2010-08-30, 10:38 PM
I've had to roleplay as female NPCs in my campaign (I am male) with varying levels of effectiveness. I've found the hardest part of it is either describing the character without injecting too much sexuality into it (It's not that I'm a creep about it, it's that my players are prone to naughty thoughts), or implying a female NPC is attracted to a PC (without coming off as coming on to the player, which wrecks the verisimilitude).

The best I ever played a female NPC was a tough-as-nails warrior lady who commanded a ton of mercenaries. Basically, I played her as a guy, but kept in mind that she was female and had a pretty face to work with.

Ravens_cry
2010-08-30, 11:05 PM
I have cross-gender roleplayed a few times. Not perfect, but nothing like the horror stories I have heard here. And if a cross-gender role player hits on me, I will hit back if I am playing a potentially receptive character to that character. All in all, I think I role play well as both genders, my characters been fairly diverse. Right now I am playing a gruff hard-ass male ranger who despises most peoples dependence on magic and wields a rifle. Before that I played a witch who was largely based on Professor Trelawney from Harry Potter, but with a dark vengeful side mixed with a little sadism she only let loose when angry.

WarKitty
2010-08-30, 11:21 PM
Shoes can be almost any color and still add to an effective outfit. It's the patterns that really matter. I'd rather wear bright red shoes with a green outfit than have those shoes be polka-dotted.

This will eventually become relevant in somebody's campaign where the guys are playing girls.

It seems that girls have an easier time playing guys, probably because society puts a lot less restrictions on us. Girls can wear men's t-shirts, sweatpants, and even boxers for PJs if they want, but straight males usually aren't taught by society and the media that they can wear sundresses and lacy panties. They had better not be polka-dotted.

It extends farther than fashion, but if you understood that then you'll get my point.

As far as extension goes: think about your top 10 sci-fi heroes. Now think of how many are female. As a nerd girl I've been identifying with male heroes for years, roleplaying one isn't any different. For a guy...well how many female leads do you see on nerd shows?

I think a lot of it stems from how the guy sees women in general. I was reading through this thread and thinking of the one guy in our group that most often plays females. He almost always plays the seductress - and yet they seem to always work. I almost get the impression he's using them to explore certain social roles that aren't typically available to guys.

Frosty
2010-08-30, 11:29 PM
Nothing wrong with being seductive and flirty, as long as there's something else to the character as well. Be 3D.

mobdrazhar
2010-08-30, 11:40 PM
Most of the female characters that i have played have been flirtatious as it's a big part of my own personality but atm i am working on a female character that is friendly and kind most of the time but as soon as one of those that she cares about is in danger will just fly into a complete rage and do anything to protect them... almost an amped up mother type figure.

InkEyes
2010-08-30, 11:58 PM
As far as extension goes: think about your top 10 sci-fi heroes. Now think of how many are female. As a nerd girl I've been identifying with male heroes for years, roleplaying one isn't any different. For a guy...well how many female leads do you see on nerd shows?

I think a lot of it stems from how the guy sees women in general. I was reading through this thread and thinking of the one guy in our group that most often plays females. He almost always plays the seductress - and yet they seem to always work. I almost get the impression he's using them to explore certain social roles that aren't typically available to guys.

For anyone having trouble finding good females in things they like here's a list: Sarah Connor, Princess Leia, Uhara, Ellen Ripley, the women of any Joss Whedon show, Xena, the women in Battlestar Galatica, Scully, Rose Tyler, Sarah Jane, Sam Carter, Janeway, and Wonder Woman (from the TV show, alternatively the George Perez or Greg Rucka runs on her comic series).

WarKitty
2010-08-31, 12:17 AM
Nothing wrong with being seductive and flirty, as long as there's something else to the character as well. Be 3D.

What was interesting to me was the obvious difference between a guy playing a seductive and flirty female because he wanted to play someone who was seductive and flirty, and a guy playing a seductive and flirty female because he wants to fantasize about a seductive woman. It really is incredibly obvious in play.

Frosty
2010-08-31, 12:19 AM
What was interesting to me was the obvious difference between a guy playing a seductive and flirty female because he wanted to play someone who was seductive and flirty, and a guy playing a seductive and flirty female because he wants to fantasize about a seductive woman. It really is incredibly obvious in play.
Do you find the difference to be how indiscriminant the character is in the seductions? Properly roleplayed flirty women would still have a rythm and rhyme to why they do things and who they seduce.

Serpentine
2010-08-31, 12:21 AM
I seem to recall being in a game of 5 people all up, 3 of whom were male, and of the characters 3 or so were female. Alas, I can't remember much more detail than that, although I believe one of the girls was playing a male. Anyway, I've never noticed it to be a problem.
One of (possibly the) longest-present characters I've ever been in a game with is a female played by a male. She's pretty adorable. And aside from the whole adorable thing (and an obsession with blue and sparkles, with reflects the player anyway. Well, not so much the sparkles), there's not much explicitly, offensively or stereotypically "female" about her. She's just... Ellywick, gnome Illusionist/Cleric of Garl Glittergold, Seeker of blue, sparkles, gems and/or blue sparkly gems, Doer of Good and Silliness, Crafter of Gizmos.
Although, it probably helps that the player has been playing this character for about 5-odd years now, so he knows her inside-out sorta thing, and roleplaying her's about as effortless and natural as can be.

For the other direction: I haven't played a male character yet, only female and genderless ones (a warforged and a Varsuvius-style elf). I'm not sure exactly why, but... I think it's something to do with the way the default is male, there's an excessive majority of male characters out there. I'm not yet entirely sure why that makes it such a mental block for me. I think my Spy-Wizard feels male, though... And maybe the awesome idea my players and I came up with last night, for a Wizard whose spells... it's hard to explain, but think the Planet Express Ship, rather than propelling itself, moving the universe around it. So Bull's Strength, rather than making the subject stronger, will make everyone and everything else weaker. Okay, I didn't have to put all that out, but I wanted to remind myself of the idea so I remember :smalltongue: I think that one feels like a male character, though.

WarKitty
2010-08-31, 12:29 AM
Do you find the difference to be how indiscriminant the character is in the seductions? Properly roleplayed flirty women would still have a rythm and rhyme to why they do things and who they seduce.

Yeah pretty much. A properly roleplayed seductress still has a reason why she's flirting with someone, even if that reason is "he's hot and I'm bored." The wet-dream seductresses pretty much try to seduce anything.

Frosty
2010-08-31, 12:33 AM
Yeah pretty much. A properly roleplayed seductress still has a reason why she's flirting with someone, even if that reason is "he's hot and I'm bored." The wet-dream seductresses pretty much try to seduce anything.
Yeah. Always know your character's motications well, and make those motivations realistic, and you're mos tof the way there for rping any character.

Ravens_cry
2010-08-31, 12:46 AM
As far as extension goes: think about your top 10 sci-fi heroes. Now think of how many are female. As a nerd girl I've been identifying with male heroes for years, roleplaying one isn't any different. For a guy...well how many female leads do you see on nerd shows?

Actually, I can think of quite a few female sci-fi heroes I personally enjoy. Ellen Ripley, B'Elanna Torres, Kira Nerys, Ro Laran,as well as Seven of Nine when she is being more the Arch Snark then Miss Fanservice.
As for Nerd shows, the biggest of the shows I watch, which is a mere handful, would definitely be Kari Byron.
I grew up with a family where my biological gender was under represented, so I guess I am more comfortable playing that other gender then some.

Frosty
2010-08-31, 12:53 AM
Lots of star trek names in your lineup. But ST is very good I have to admit. After the original series, women have been treated well.

WarKitty
2010-08-31, 01:03 AM
ST is definitely good. My point was not that there aren't any strong female characters, but that you can get by without noticing them. For example, I know a *lot* of guys who love star wars and identify with the characters - but see leia as primarily the hot chick in the slave outfit and would find it very odd to identify with her. Whereas I've never seen a woman who thought it odd to identify with a male character - maybe not all of them, but chances are there was at least one she could identify with. A male nerd needn't love or identify with female characters to enjoy the nerd culture.

Dairun Cates
2010-08-31, 01:18 AM
Man. You think female is hard? Try playing a female NPC that has 4 alternate versions of herself that represent portions of her personality. It's certainly been weird when I'm doing it.

Anyway, I'm gonna be a broken record and say again, "you're playing a person, not a sex". I've done the whole personality spectrum and I've done most of them both ways (mind out of the gutter, people). There's really no secret other than maybe pitching your voice SLIGHTLY (no falsetto) and changing your mannerisms.

The far more interesting thing is how it changes how the players view the character. Even the least sexist people in the world will view the same character differently as different sexes. It speaks to how we view things as a society and is a powerful effect. Heck. There's even a series of light novels in japan that reversed the genders of the character in Haruhi Suzumiya. It's amazing how much it changes things and how much different it seems.

Strawberries
2010-08-31, 01:22 AM
One problem I can see for male players is if the setting is a "realistic" medieval one, which is, one in which women are confined to some roles and a female adventurer is going to be met with prejudice and mistrust. As women, we are somehow, even in modern society, used to it (and if it's not us directly, it's the tale our mothers and grandmothers tell us), so it may be easier to roleplay for us. In a setting with gender equality, honestly, it comes down to what has been said before: characters are human sentient being first and foremost.

Note: that is not to say that males aren't confined to stereotypical roles, either, in medieval society. But those roles are usually more fitted to the adventuring life.

Dairun Cates
2010-08-31, 01:33 AM
One problem I can see for male players is if the setting is a "realistic" medieval one, which is, one in which women are confined to some roles and a female adventurer is going to be met with prejudice and mistrust. As women, we are somehow, even in modern society, used to it (and if it's not us directly, it's the tale our mothers and grandmothers tell us), so it may be easier to roleplay for us. In a setting with gender equality, honestly, it comes down to what has been said before: characters are human sentient being first and foremost.

Note: that is not to say that males aren't confined to stereotypical roles, either, in medieval society. But those roles are usually more fitted to the adventuring life.

To be perfectly honest, I can't really think of any truly realistic Medieval settings (plenty of ones that tried and failed), and that's one of the biggest reasons why. It's a hindrance to the game to really bring sexism in for anything but villains and well-meaning NPCs. Kinda the same reason you don't get the plague.

That's not to say there aren't going to be challenges, but most of them really shouldn't come up in most games unless the players chooses for it to.

...But honestly, female NPCs aren't hard for me. It's a bit more awkward when I have to do NPCs under 10 than anything else and that's just because it's weird seeing a grown man do a kid voice and throw a temper tantrum.

Serpentine
2010-08-31, 01:46 AM
I'm just not very good at NPCs, full-stop v.v
I keep forgetting that my gay catfolk mage quest-giver is male...

a_humble_lich
2010-08-31, 01:51 AM
I've never had to look at the gender icon below posters avatars as in this thread :smallsmile:

I defiantly been guilty of playing "guys with boobs"/asexual characters, but in general most characters I play are asexual. My male characters don't particularly masculine either. As someone else said, you should play the character, not the gender. Recently I've taken to rolling just my gender randomly.

Project_Mayhem
2010-08-31, 04:16 AM
I haven't done it, other than as a GM, and neither have the guys I play with, but, there wouldn't be a problem if anyone did. When we were playing Vampire the Masquerade, my back up character was a scary Malkavian little girl, but my main never died. To be honest, by 400 odd, vampires tend to lose gender identity anyway.

kamikasei
2010-08-31, 04:17 AM
Most of the time it is just a small mark on the paper ( M=>F) with no real roleplaying involved because most of the people who do do that are slow and not good role players.
That sounds like an unfortunate thing to be true about the people you've played with. You did mean "most" out of the pool of players you've been in games with, right? I'm sure you didn't mean to insult those on this thread who crossplay.

As long as it's not just an excuse for lesbian sex fanta....okay, I've done that too.
Don't be silly. Lesbian sex fantasies need no excuse.

dsmiles
2010-08-31, 04:31 AM
Actually, I can think of quite a few female sci-fi heroes I personally enjoy. Ellen Ripley, B'Elanna Torres, Kira Nerys, Ro Laran,as well as Seven of Nine when she is being more the Arch Snark then Miss Fanservice.
As for Nerd shows, the biggest of the shows I watch, which is a mere handful, would definitely be Kari Byron.
I grew up with a family where my biological gender was under represented, so I guess I am more comfortable playing that other gender then some.

Actually, most of my female characters have been Ellen Ripley-esque. A simple person thrown into extraordinary circumstances, {scrubbed}

Serpentine
2010-08-31, 04:38 AM
{Scrubbed}...
Wording fail?
To get you started: Ripley was hardly ever handicapped by her mere "female exterior".

Kami2awa
2010-08-31, 04:39 AM
I don't play females.

I play characters who happen to be female, biologically speaking.

The trick is to play a person, not a sex.

<.<

Here, here.

I've played several female characters, my favourite being a communist revolutionary named Alexandra Tereshkova (surname from the first woman in space). Yes, other players letched at her IC; she was not amused.

I also know several female gamers who often play male characters.

Yuki Akuma
2010-08-31, 04:40 AM
Actually, most of my female characters have been Ellen Ripley-esque. A simple person thrown into extraordinary circumstances, who finds out she's really a bad@$$ under that female exterior.

...So, what, you think 'female' and 'badass' are contradictory?

Wow. I'm not even a girl and I feel offended.

Project_Mayhem
2010-08-31, 04:42 AM
...
Wording fail?
To get you started: Ripley was hardly ever handicapped by her mere "female exterior".

As evidenced by Vasquez, the most badass marine on the team

Winthur
2010-08-31, 04:46 AM
This topic reminds me of my post on a certain forum where my suggestion that I will attempt to play a woman in a Play-By-Forum game resulted in an outcry of panic from one of the players:

"I want to immerse in the ATMOSPHERE, I don't want Winth to run around the battlefield yelling 'Where are my napkins?!'"

Ever since then, I never made an attempt. :smalltongue:

Serpentine
2010-08-31, 04:50 AM
...Napkins? :smallconfused:

dsmiles
2010-08-31, 04:53 AM
...
Wording fail?
To get you started: Ripley was hardly ever handicapped by her mere "female exterior".

Wording fail. I meant that your average everyday "space salvager" isn't a bad@$$, and the females were initially less so than the captain with the rugged beard.

Serpentine
2010-08-31, 05:04 AM
Wording fail. I meant that your average everyday "space salvager" isn't a bad@$$, and the females were initially less so than the captain with the rugged beard.I'll presume you intend to add "in the gameworld in question" to the end of that. Cuz, to use your own example, there was zero indication that that was the case in Alien, where the women were just as competent as the men from the outset (well... one was really annoying, but so were a couple of the guys, so it's fair).

Quincunx
2010-08-31, 05:08 AM
Cooties are real too, it's an archaic term for lice and fleas.

Izzat why I gotta specify they're boy cooties? Is obvious! Girls don't have cooties!
Interesting to note that when I was playing with certain folk who had English as a second language and a gendered language as their first one, when I finally let slip the "boy cooties" line, went "Oh, that's what you meant"--and then plagued me with "girl cooties" lines. :smalltongue: (Q: How does a gnome resemble a clockwork? A: Wind either one up and it'll run for hours.)


. . .Now, if you're playing females that pee standing up, I'm not really sure what to say to you. . . .

My feet were cold. Memorize Endure Elements tomorrow. Also Create Water. I will require a bath.

Winthur
2010-08-31, 05:10 AM
...Napkins? :smallconfused:

AKA menstrual pads. Went with one translation, which, apparently, has more meanings. Sorry, I need a dictionary for words such as these.

kamikasei
2010-08-31, 05:11 AM
Ever since then, I never made an attempt. :smalltongue:
See, a situation like that would incline me more to find a different forum (or ignore that player) than to change my own behaviour.

Serpentine
2010-08-31, 05:13 AM
I thought that might be the case, but nonetheless... napkins? :confused:

Although you did just make me realise that I have never taken into account the fact that none of my characters ever have periods as an issue... Lets see, one's a dwarf and ones mostly elf, so they could get them a lot rarer; one's a streetrat, so malnutrition could've stopped hers... and I guess I haven't really played the other two long enough for it to be an issue. I'm good :smallcool:
Also it'd probably blend into the background, like other toilet-related things :smalltongue:

Winthur
2010-08-31, 05:15 AM
I thought that might be the case, but nonetheless... napkins? :confused:

I translate things mostly like this: type a word in Polish, go into Wikipedia, see the name for the English article. Sanitary napkin. I shortened it to napkin in my paraphrase, which was apparently a bad idea. :smallredface:

Don't hurt me. :smallfrown:

Serpentine
2010-08-31, 05:26 AM
You totally misunderstand me. I know what you mean, and I am not only baffled that this person might seriously expect someone with a female character to go running across a battlefield searching for her pads, but I find the image quite amusing (though the initial image of someone running around looking for tablewear was extra-funny). Your wording is fine, even if napkin is used less often :smalltongue:

jmbrown
2010-08-31, 05:36 AM
I thought that might be the case, but nonetheless... napkins? :confused:

Although you did just make me realise that I have never taken into account the fact that none of my characters ever have periods as an issue... Lets see, one's a dwarf and ones mostly elf, so they could get them a lot rarer; one's a streetrat, so malnutrition could've stopped hers... and I guess I haven't really played the other two long enough for it to be an issue. I'm good :smallcool:
Also it'd probably blend into the background, like other toilet-related things :smalltongue:

Sanitation is that mystical thing that's never talked about in fantasy. It's assumed that in their down time all heroes shave, dig their own latrines, wash, and perform other sanitary issues. The only time bathroom humor is mentioned in fantasy is when it's really, really funny or awkward.

Yuki Akuma
2010-08-31, 05:46 AM
There are probably cantrips that deal with silly things like "biological functions".

jmbrown
2010-08-31, 05:48 AM
Well, if cantrip can clean something instantly I'm pretty sure it can also make poop smell like roses or sends it to another dimension or something.

Level 384297432 of the abyss is Zone of Poop; here lies all crap spirited away.

kamikasei
2010-08-31, 05:53 AM
Sanitation is that mystical thing that's never talked about in fantasy. It's assumed that in their down time all heroes shave, dig their own latrines, wash, and perform other sanitary issues. The only time bathroom humor is mentioned in fantasy is when it's really, really funny or awkward.
Don't forget bathing under convenient waterfalls.

Arbane
2010-08-31, 06:00 AM
Level 384297432 of the abyss is Zone of Poop; here lies all crap spirited away.

...And this is WHY the demons have sworn to destroy all of existence.

Mordokai
2010-08-31, 06:07 AM
Don't forget bathing under convenient waterfalls.

... thus opens the portal to the Plane of Fanservice :smalltongue:

Aotrs Commander
2010-08-31, 06:12 AM
I suspect that about 50% or so of my overall characters (and maybe 40% of my tabletop RPG characters are female). I play my characters as my characters. Their gender/sex/whatever is usually a non-issue. Likewise with my group. (One of the players in my group decided by rolling a dice when we generated the party last week.) Sex of character is, in our group, a decision with only marginally more impact than, say, hair or eye colour. But that's it.

I haven't played any campaign worlds with a truely "Medieval" division of gender roles1, so there is no issue there, either. It's just not an important issue. Heck, my own choice of character gender is fairly aribtary, generally. My last two 3.5 characters have both been male; but then again, the two characters I ran in our 4E game were both female. Doesn't usually make much of a difference either way.



As far as sci-fi female characters go, I think Asoka Tano is another good example. Since really, if she was male, she'd be little (if any) different. In my opinion, a character should be a character first, biology (and/or orientation if applicable) second...maybe even last.



Mind you, the older I get, the more I realise I'm less interested in the character for themselves than what they are actually doing, anyway. I'd rather read the nearly-absent characteristion of Biggles (aside from the...um...rather dated attitudes...) doing something, as opposed to something with heavy character-focus and not much happening. I mean, if you're Babylon 5, of course, you can do both extremely well (been watching it again recently for the first time in yearts, and as a adult, I find it's even cleverer than I remember. But very, very, VERY few things are as a good as B5 at that sort of thing.)


Although you did just make me realise that I have never taken into account the fact that none of my characters ever have periods as an issue... Lets see, one's a dwarf and ones mostly elf, so they could get them a lot rarer; one's a streetrat, so malnutrition could've stopped hers... and I guess I haven't really played the other two long enough for it to be an issue. I'm good :smallcool:
Also it'd probably blend into the background, like other toilet-related things :smalltongue:

The one time that ever even cropped up in a game was when the party got stuck in bodies of another adventuing party to act out some kind of event (long story), and because of the variances of gender in the two groups (and the fact I matched 'em by class first) it had some guys in female bodies (and the only female character ended up in a male gnome...) It came up as a through-away gag after they'd been in the bodies a couple of weeks, when I mentioned one of the characters was feeling a bit iffy one morning, as a nod to the general sense of gender-swapped toilet humour. (And after that, it was not further mentioned.)



1Some of the cultures in my current game (okay one and two arguable ones based on their culture at a particular time; out of what, twenty-plus cultures) world have gender divisions, though. Basically so that a) they are further differentiated from the others b) most of my worlds prior were so disgustingly nicey-nicey in that way and I wanted a change and c) it's a thing done by the Bad People. The main offender is the pseudo-medieval-France-y culture, which is a land of heroic knights and damsels in distress and chivalry. So, below the surface (and not even very far!) it's a land of repressed and downtroden serfs, biotry, pride arrogance and willful stupidity. (Is it too obvious I hate chivarly as a concept...?) The "main" land is actually psuedo Roman (which is more-or-less gender equal; legally and practically it is, save for the Corrupt Elements of the Senate, who are to be fair, just as anti-non-human or anything else that ien't themselves. Finally, the Orc-Kin (who are basically genetically built by the Dark Lord as martial servitors) use their females as breeding stock only. (Though in general, all the other servants of the Dark Lord have no gender distinctions). And for balance, there's the Grass Elves who are female-dominant and the Halflings, whose females dominate rule from the iron hand of the kitchen2.

2No really. In Hearthland, the cultural view really is that the female's place is in the kitchen, which is the most important place, and the males should be out doing the unimportant stuff like farming and fighting and such. Bread-winners, nothing, in Hearthland it's all about the breadMAKERS (e.g. the females, because no, the guys don't get to make the bread, just fetch the ingredients...) So, kind of like the views on women in our own early 20th century, but it's the men who are actually getting the discrimination and patronisation...

...

Why are my asides longer than my post?

Esser-Z
2010-08-31, 06:38 AM
Don't forget bathing under convenient waterfalls.

Or just using Prestidigitation!

Serpentine
2010-08-31, 06:49 AM
I still find it interesting that almost every matriarchal society, in any type of fiction, is totally (or at least mostly) evil. I think I'll make the elves in my games generally matriarchal... Not just the drow, all of 'em. Dwarves strike me as being more family-oriented, rather than worrying about individual sex. I think gnomes, of either sex, would be along the lines of "I'd like to see 'em try to oppress me!"

Telonius
2010-08-31, 06:50 AM
A lot of good advice so far. I'll throw in my 2cp. If you're really having trouble getting into character for a cross-gender PC, and the whole "seeing the other-gender parts of yourself" is creeping you out too much to be useful, don't try to imagine the character as yourself. Try to imagine the character as your daughter (if you're a guy) or your son (if you're a girl). It takes some of the weirdness out of it, and still achieves the goal of respecting the character as much as possible.

Curmudgeon
2010-08-31, 06:51 AM
Sanitation is that mystical thing that's never talked about in fantasy. It's assumed that in their down time all heroes shave
Since when does shaving have anything to do with sanitation? If anything it's the other way around, as ingrown hairs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingrown_hair) can get infected. Without antibiotics that can sometimes (though rarely) be fatal.

Plus, I just can't picture male Barbarians or Clerics without their rugged or sagacious (respectively) beards.

Yuki Akuma
2010-08-31, 06:55 AM
Bare chins don't attract as many parasites as full beards. Therefore, shaving can be about sanitation.

Tsumeken
2010-08-31, 07:00 AM
I've played girls plenty of times actually. I don't really treat the character any differently then I would a male character. It might be easier for me since I had to DM/GM and NPCs like princesses and other female things were needed. I think some of the best female characters I've seen actually are ones that are in mainly a male stereotypical role (ie. fighter, barbarian, heck had a female dragon rider.)

Tharos
2010-08-31, 07:01 AM
It has nothing with being able to role-play the character. I fancy myself a pretty good role-player, yet I still find boys playing girls awkward. Maybe it is because I'm playing with friends I've known since 10+ years who are also good role-players. Face it, a female character will have a different tone of voice, choice of words, mania and habits. And some of these always gets awkward if performed regularly by someone you know ( in my experience). I am not talking about post-by-post or about people role-paying using the third person. I am talking about complete immersion of your character.

P.S. Some choice of words might be weird. If so, I blame my frenchiness :smallwink:

Tengu_temp
2010-08-31, 07:25 AM
Although you did just make me realise that I have never taken into account the fact that none of my characters ever have periods as an issue...

I actually remembered about that with my current character, and roleplay her as more irritable one week each in-game month. I keep it subtle though and don't think if anyone else in the group noticed.

Cubey
2010-08-31, 07:28 AM
This topic reminds me of my post on a certain forum where my suggestion that I will attempt to play a woman in a Play-By-Forum game resulted in an outcry of panic from one of the players:

"I want to immerse in the ATMOSPHERE, I don't want Winth to run around the battlefield yelling 'Where are my napkins?!'"

Ever since then, I never made an attempt. :smalltongue:

Was that a Polish forum, per chance? Because our country's real life roleplaying is mostly okay (it varies in quality, just like everywhere else), but internet roleplaying, at least from my experiences... it's bad. Just bad.

But I'm getting offtopic.

I played many characters, and NPCed even more. Male and female, badass or not. There generally are differences between how male and female characters act, but they're social. That is, a universe with sexual stereotyping and sensibilities other than the present day will have wildly different gender roles. Or maybe even no gender roles at all. But I mostly play in games whose worlds are very similar to the present day, or even it IS the present day, so my notes will reflect that. From my experiences:
-It is generally NOT true that male characters seek simple, direct solutions while female opt for indirect, more subtle ones. It's more related to the character's actual abilities rather than sex or gender.
-While it is true that there are female characters who choose to go by their feminine wiles... in other words, seduce the hell out of everyone in order to get what they want, I suggest that inexperienced or immature roleplayers do NOT try that. It's easy to exaggerate this behaviour and make it really, really annoying. I have a character who uses her feminine wiles (and she's a non-combatant, to that), and I try really hard not to annoy or steal the lampshade from the rest of the group. It is tough, and even so I am not 100% sure if I succeed all the time.
-The most basic difference between male and female characters' personality (as I said before, based on present day cultural differences) is that the females tend to be more socially aware. They care about the group they are in, and what the group thinks of them. While for the males, it's more about dominance - I am not saying they all want to be the alpha male, but rather if there is something they're good at or an awesome deed they performed, they want recognition. Feel like a hero, y'know?

But overall, this is just stereotyping. Individual character personality is 10 times more important than their sex.

Tsumeken
2010-08-31, 07:30 AM
It has nothing with being able to role-play the character. I fancy myself a pretty good role-player, yet I still find boys playing girls awkward. Maybe it is because I'm playing with friends I've known since 10+ years who are also good role-players. Face it, a female character will have a different tone of voice, choice of words, mania and habits. And some of these always gets awkward if performed regularly by someone you know ( in my experience). I am not talking about post-by-post or about people role-paying using the third person. I am talking about complete immersion of your character.

P.S. Some choice of words might be weird. If so, I blame my frenchiness :smallwink:

It's probably something a bit more personal then. I've done it in non PBP with my friends. In fact my longest running RIFTS character was a female assassin. The gaming group I had been playing with was all male and at first I'll admit they had trepidation with my switch character, but pretty soon they warmed up to it. Hell I had my best friend of 6 years checking her out once while they were crawling through a ventilation duct. Lately I've even had to use seduction rolls on some of the other characters. As for immersion if you have a favorite female character in like books/movies/ or a videogame you can use them as a template which might help to get into the character more.

@tengu: That's cool. I had a character like that, I'd roll every once in awhile for cramps. They'd usually only happen in dire situations (ie. trying to aim a ranged weapon, climb checks)

dsmiles
2010-08-31, 07:46 AM
Since when does shaving have anything to do with sanitation?

It doesn't it's all about the rugged-ness (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BadassBeard).

Tira-chan
2010-08-31, 09:09 AM
I still find it interesting that almost every matriarchal society, in any type of fiction, is totally (or at least mostly) evil. I think I'll make the elves in my games generally matriarchal... Not just the drow, all of 'em. Dwarves strike me as being more family-oriented, rather than worrying about individual sex. I think gnomes, of either sex, would be along the lines of "I'd like to see 'em try to oppress me!"

Well, I'm pretty sure drow were created solely using suggestions that made someone say, "Yeah, that sounds hot." Personally, I use the halflings as a matriarchal society - elves are fairly gender-neutral, though they tend to favor girls for royal succession.

Aroka
2010-08-31, 09:19 AM
It's assumed that in their down time all heroes shave

Say what?

In the average fantasy setting, all male adult humans have beards by default (styled if wealthy and urban), unless they're blatantly later-period (Renaissance over Dark Ages or Medieval), IMO. Boys have smooth cheeks, men have beards (and women, if you're a dwarf).

dsmiles
2010-08-31, 09:22 AM
Well, I'm pretty sure drow were created solely using suggestions that made someone say, "Yeah, that sounds hot." Personally, I use the halflings as a matriarchal society - elves are fairly gender-neutral, though they tend to favor girls for royal succession.

I can see halflings being matriarchal, as females are stereotypically regarded as having more..."trading sense"...I guess is the word I'm looking for than males, and most halfling societies that I've run/played in (except LotR's hobbits) are mercantile-oriented. (Granted I'm using goblins instead of halflings in my latest 4e campaign setting.)

In my current campaign setting, humans are reduced to petty, squabbling city-states ruled by whomever happens to take control (male or female). My orcs are ruled by tribal councils consisting of the eldest orcs in the tribe (male or female), and my goblins live under whatever rules are provided by the area in which they live, since they have no "goblin-only" cities. Beastmen (Dragonborn, Wolfen, Ferrire, and Minotaur) live in a (hereditary) emperor/empress-and-(voted) senate setup like ancient Rome (pre-Caesar). Elves, I have always portrayed as totally gender neutral magocracies, and Dwarves are a limited theocracy (with the high priest/priestess of Moradin in charge, whether they're actually a cleric or not), in my campaigns.

Strawberries
2010-08-31, 09:29 AM
To be perfectly honest, I can't really think of any truly realistic Medieval settings (plenty of ones that tried and failed), and that's one of the biggest reasons why. It's a hindrance to the game to really bring sexism in for anything but villains and well-meaning NPCs. Kinda the same reason you don't get the plague.

That's not to say there aren't going to be challenges, but most of them really shouldn't come up in most games unless the players chooses for it to.


Oh, it absolutely depends on player's preference. I'd play a female character in a setting where females were discriminated. Of course, I'd then go for one of my favourite archetypes (the chaotic good anarchist), and have a blast. But that's something I'd want my DM to tell me in advance, so I can decide if that's the type of game I want to play in that particular moment.


Say what?
In the average fantasy setting, all male adult humans have beards by default (styled if wealthy and urban), unless they're blatantly later-period (Renaissance over Dark Ages or Medieval), IMO. Boys have smooth cheeks, men have beards (and women, if you're a dwarf).

Hmm... I'd hate to disappoint you, but most women need to shave, too, in case you forgot. :smallbiggrin:

Esser-Z
2010-08-31, 09:30 AM
Only under certain philosophies of beauty!

Aroka
2010-08-31, 09:31 AM
Hmm... I'd hate to disappoint you, but most women need to shave, too, in case you forgot. :smallbiggrin:

No they don't? :smallconfused:

FelixG
2010-08-31, 09:32 AM
Hmm... I'd hate to disappoint you, but most women need to shave, too, in case you forgot. :smallbiggrin:


DM: The Druid you meet is an elven woman with a beard that rivals that of the dwarf in the party, san check please.

Yuki Akuma
2010-08-31, 09:38 AM
No they don't? :smallconfused:

The chin isn't the only place you can shave you know.

Or did you think women don't grow hair on their legs?

Aroka
2010-08-31, 09:42 AM
The chin isn't the only place you can shave you know.

Or did you think women don't grow hair on their legs?

No, I mean they don't need to shave their legs (or their arm pits. It's a modern cultural BS idea (much like men shaving their faces, but patriarchy has less invested in controlling men's appearances as strictly).

Why would women need to shave any location that men don't? And why would women in a Dark Ages fantasy setting shave any part of their body? My whole point was that men in a Dark Ages / Medieval setting wouldn't shave because of different cultural expectations - why would women behave according to 20th/21st century cultural expectations? Gah!

darkpuppy
2010-08-31, 09:47 AM
Thank you oh so much for that mental image. [fetches brain bleach]

EDIT: I don't know how, but my random train of thought went from the aforementioned brain bleach, to how amusing it would be to rescue an Orcish "princess" ("We have come to... GOOD GOD!"), to this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITmnIY_H24o)...

kamikasei
2010-08-31, 09:48 AM
My whole point was that men in a Dark Ages / Medieval setting wouldn't shave because of different cultural expectations - why would women behave according to 20th/21st century cultural expectations? Gah!
Sure, if D&D (or most Dark Ages/medieval settings) gave a hoot about historical accuracy you'd see more bearded men and hairy-legged women. Oddly enough though the characters people make tend to hew to modern standards of personal style and to hell with realism. So the issue of when both men and women shave and otherwise groom does apply. (Which is to say: it's one of those things that games generally gloss over, and there's no reason not to treat female-only hygiene issues the same way.)

Aroka
2010-08-31, 10:04 AM
Thank you oh so much for that mental image. [fetches brain bleach]

Wait, what mental image?

If it's "hairy women", I'm going to have an aneurysm now.

{{scrubbed}}

kamikasei
2010-08-31, 10:09 AM
{{scrubbed}}
Sorry, but would you mind not calling me a crap roleplayer because I don't particularly care about replicating every cosmetic detail of whatever slice of geography and chronology from the real world you consider iconic for fantasy, while playing in my fantasy setting that is not and never was Earth?

(Or if you feel you must do so, please provide a citation for your claims of beardedness - it strikes me as the sort of faux-authenticity that's endemic in these kinds of discussions.)

edit: It occurs to me your objection may be to the idea that some details just don't matter, historical authenticity aside (though the mention of artists seems at odds with that). Same issue, different argument: please don't call me a crap roleplayer because I don't care to track the logistics of personal hygiene. I don't recall the Fellowship either digging latrines or showing up at Rivendell caked in their own filth, but I don't feel this detracted from the story.

dsmiles
2010-08-31, 10:13 AM
Sorry, but would you mind not calling me a crap roleplayer because I don't particularly care about replicating every cosmetic detail of whatever slice of geography and chronology from the real world you consider iconic for fantasy, while playing in my fantasy setting that is not and never was Earth?

(Or if you feel you must do so, please provide a citation for your claims of beardedness - it strikes me as the sort of faux-authenticity that's endemic in these kinds of discussions.)

Key word bolded.

EDIT: And beards are just awesome (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BadassBeard).

Fax Celestis
2010-08-31, 10:18 AM
Dark Ages

This is where you fail. Look at Eberron. Do you really want to call that the "Dark Ages"? Sure, people are running around with crossbows and swords instead of AK-47s, but they ride trains, fly airships, build skyscrapers, run multinational corporations...

Eberron isn't "Dark Ages fantasy" in any stretch of the phrase: it's "modern fantasy". Faerun is modern bridging on futuristic. More than weaponry makes up a cultural fundament.

dsmiles
2010-08-31, 10:21 AM
This is where you fail. Look at Eberron. Do you really want to call that the "Dark Ages"? Sure, people are running around with crossbows and swords instead of AK-47s, but they ride trains, fly airships, build skyscrapers, run multinational corporations...

Eberron isn't "Dark Ages fantasy" in any stretch of the phrase: it's "modern fantasy". More than weaponry makes up a cultural fundament.

In addition: Iron Kingdoms. It's a little more steampunk than Eberron, and it's still fantasy. But far from "Dark Ages" fantasy.

CarpeGuitarrem
2010-08-31, 10:34 AM
This link (http://web.archive.org/web/20061024035513/www.tasteslikephoenix.com/articles/women.html) back from the first page...did anyone take note of it? I really liked the overview it presented.

Satyr
2010-08-31, 10:35 AM
Not every RPG is D&D; assuming that the assumptions and conventions of D&D work for every fantasy setting can sometimes appear a bit presumptuous.

In the worlds of the Satyr, comfort functions is the prime use of magic. This include stuff like self-repairing and self-cleaning clothes, water-resistant boots and the like are highly praised and by far the most common magical items. And it is a great boon having something like that.
And still, visits to bath houses and barbers are favorite priorities of adventurers coming to a town.

darkpuppy
2010-08-31, 10:44 AM
This link (http://web.archive.org/web/20061024035513/www.tasteslikephoenix.com/articles/women.html) back from the first page...did anyone take note of it? I really liked the overview it presented.

Don't worry, Carpe, I read and enjoyed it.

kamikasei
2010-08-31, 10:45 AM
This link (http://web.archive.org/web/20061024035513/www.tasteslikephoenix.com/articles/women.html) back from the first page...did anyone take note of it? I really liked the overview it presented.
Read it some time ago; good advice, especially in the emphasis on different influences and expectations in life, over any sort of shallow biological determinism.

Fax Celestis
2010-08-31, 10:50 AM
Not every RPG is D&D; assuming that the assumptions and conventions of D&D work for every fantasy setting can sometimes appear a bit presumptuous.

Assuming that a world that contains something as globally life-altering magic is going to follow the exact same technological/societal advancement process as our own is equally presumptuous.

Strawberries
2010-08-31, 10:53 AM
No, I mean they don't need to shave their legs (or their arm pits. It's a modern cultural BS idea

Actually, it may be a pointless idea, but it's not necessarly a modern one. I seem to remember it is linked to cultures, more than historycal age.


Don't worry, Carpe, I read and enjoyed it.

I read it and found it interesting, even if a bit patronizing. Says the woman who enjoyed Doom and Quake when she was a little girl.

WarKitty
2010-08-31, 10:55 AM
This link (http://web.archive.org/web/20061024035513/www.tasteslikephoenix.com/articles/women.html) back from the first page...did anyone take note of it? I really liked the overview it presented.

Definitely enjoyed it, although a bit more acknowledgment of those of us who grew up in geek culture would be nice.

dsmiles
2010-08-31, 10:58 AM
Definitely enjoyed it, although a bit more acknowledgment of those of us who grew up in geek culture would be nice.

You want acknowledgment? I got your acknowledgment. This (http://zaxy.com/) is the best Geek Girl thing ever, IMO. These girls are awesomesauce (I'm not saying girls condescendingly, they're just way younger than me).

Satyr
2010-08-31, 11:01 AM
Yes and no; sure, every setting follows its own conventions and circumstances and as such state their own rules or at least aesthetics.
But on the other hand, reality acts for most settings as the basic assumption. If it is not stated otherwise, the general assumption of every fictional world is the same as the one the player or reader or viewer or whatever knows from his own experiences and these experiences are usually relatively close to reality. This is even necessary for the design of the world, as the suspension of disbelief only goes so far.

As such, realism is on a higher tier than most setting-specific conventions as it is needed to fill out the gaps.

Tengu_temp
2010-08-31, 11:23 AM
This link (http://web.archive.org/web/20061024035513/www.tasteslikephoenix.com/articles/women.html) back from the first page...did anyone take note of it? I really liked the overview it presented.

I've read it years ago. Does that count?


Not every RPG is D&D; assuming that the assumptions and conventions of D&D work for every fantasy setting can sometimes appear a bit presumptuous.

I second this.

Dairun Cates
2010-08-31, 11:56 AM
Hmm... I'd hate to disappoint you, but most women need to shave, too, in case you forgot. :smallbiggrin:

Yeah. And it DESTROYS the razor when you do. My sister got her hands on one of my nice ones a few times when I was younger, and that thing wouldn't shave a bald man's head afterward.

Sorry. Where were we?

Right. Bearded women, articles on inherent sexism in both genders, and D&D not being the only roleplaying game.

Umael
2010-08-31, 12:02 PM
Sorry. Where were we?

Right. Bearded women, articles on inherent sexism in both genders, and D&D not being the only roleplaying game.

Oh, give up on that one.

I've lost count of the number of times people on this forum have tried to castigate me for mentioning the existence of the heretics.

Yora
2010-08-31, 12:05 PM
When i play female characters, which I do about 60% of the time, I just write "female" in the space labeled "gender", and then just start playing that character.
Really no special trick behind it.

darkpuppy
2010-08-31, 12:07 PM
Oh, give on on that one.

I've lost count of the number of times people on this forum have tried to castigate me for mentioning the existence of the heretics.

The Computer fines you one clone for dissing his game, Citizen. BZZAP!

Still, the whole gender play thing is a thorny one, but that's one thing I like about roleplaying... difficult questions. one of the best articles I ever read was by Johnny Nexus, and it was called "Would you let an orc babysit your baby?"

Zaydos
2010-08-31, 12:10 PM
"Would you let an orc babysit your baby?"

Do I know the orc? Personally I wouldn't want to let a strange elf (gnome/halfling/dwarf/hobgoblin/aasimar) babysit for me either.

Caphi
2010-08-31, 12:20 PM
This link (http://web.archive.org/web/20061024035513/www.tasteslikephoenix.com/articles/women.html) back from the first page...did anyone take note of it? I really liked the overview it presented.

Apparently my (mixed) friends and I all play like girls. Here I thought we were just being decent roleplayers... -_-

Strawberries
2010-08-31, 12:27 PM
Apparently my (mixed) friends and I all play like girls. Here I thought we were just being decent roleplayers... -_-

That's why I said I found it patronizing. It tends to fall in its own stereotypes, while trying to prevent the others.

Jergmo
2010-08-31, 12:31 PM
Well, apparently I play female characters very well, from what I've been told anyway. I tend to play a fairly even mix of male and female characters, plus I'm our group's default DM so it comes up a lot. *Shrug* It may just be different for me, though, because I have a pretty healthy balance between my feminine and masculine sides. If it's not something you're comfortable with and you have less experience with the fairer sex, you probably shouldn't play a female character.

Yora
2010-08-31, 12:33 PM
Could it be a cultural thing? Having played PnP and MMOs on german servers for 10 years, and hanging around in RPG-related german online forums, I'd say about 30 to 40% of all RPG players around here are female. And while I've played with a lot of male players playing female characters, I've never seen anyone playing slutty or bitchy.
But of course, this is mostly for a demographic in the age span from 20 to 40, with only a very few kids around. And because we're germans, RPGs are SRIOUS BUISNESS, there's no fooling around! (Sometimes you find steroetypes to be mostly accurate.) If you happen to play in groups or online guilds that are mostly 14 to 17 year olds, things might be completely different.

Caphi
2010-08-31, 12:33 PM
That's why I said I found it patronizing. It tends to fall in its own stereotypes, while trying to prevent the others.

My favorite part was the bit about how girls gravitate towards the noncombat in contrast to guys that specialize in damaging. As a man whose single favorite part of the game is problem-solving above all else, the idea that my preferred field of play was exclusive - sorry, maybe "preferential" would be better - to females sort of irked.

kamikasei
2010-08-31, 12:36 PM
Oh, give up on that one.

I've lost count of the number of times people on this forum have tried to castigate me for mentioning the existence of the heretics.
You might note the lack of castigation for the people before you who "mentioned the existence of the heretics". Prophesying vague doom generally requires the apocalypse not have already come and gone without incident.

Umael
2010-08-31, 12:49 PM
You might note the lack of castigation for the people before you who "mentioned the existence of the heretics". Prophesying vague doom generally requires the apocalypse not have already come and gone without incident.

What are you talking about?

I already lost one of my clones to the Computer!

(P.S. :smallwink:)

Darklord Xavez
2010-08-31, 12:55 PM
Could it be a cultural thing? Having played PnP and MMOs on german servers for 10 years, and hanging around in RPG-related german online forums, I'd say about 30 to 40% of all RPG players around here are female. And while I've played with a lot of male players playing female characters, I've never seen anyone playing slutty or bitchy.
But of course, this is mostly for a demographic in the age span from 20 to 40, with only a very few kids around. And because we're germans, RPGs are SRIOUS BUISNESS, there's no fooling around! (Sometimes you find steroetypes to be mostly accurate.) If you happen to play in groups or online guilds that are mostly 14 to 17 year olds, things might be completely different.

Which brings an interesting point. I am just entering high school, so I am in a group that does not take well to a male player playing a female character. This makes me very irritated, because the group I am in consists of only guys between the ages of 12 and 15 (myself included), and as such every game I have been in has been essentially the same (half of the group is new to roleplaying). I am currently hoping that there is more diversity in people interested in gaming in my high school.
-Xavez

Umael
2010-08-31, 01:08 PM
Which brings an interesting point. I am just entering high school, so I am in a group that does not take well to a male player playing a female character. This makes me very irritated, because the group I am in consists of only guys between the ages of 12 and 15 (myself included), and as such every game I have been in has been essentially the same (half of the group is new to roleplaying). I am currently hoping that there is more diversity in people interested in gaming in my high school.
-Xavez

If you are playing D&D and using the Leadership Feat, you could see about having your cohort be female.

If everyone is okay with it, your PC could have a prominent female NPC in his life - a sister, niece, or girlfriend, maybe.

Thus, you might be playing your (male) PC and a (female) NPC. The idea of one of the players playing a female NPC might get them used to the idea of one of the players playing a female PC.

WarKitty
2010-08-31, 03:40 PM
It would be interesting to look at the gender ratios of the players in groups that have more problems with males playing female characters. I think a lot of the issues relate to how good that particular guy is at relating to females in general - a guy who views women primarily as the other is going to have a *lot* harder time roleplaying a woman than a guy who interacts with women on a regular basis. Which is the same type that tends to gravitate towards all-male groups.

Edit: leadership is a good idea. Just make sure the female character is definitely *not* a viable love interest. A sibling would be good, as would a character with a significant age difference.

Zaydos
2010-08-31, 03:49 PM
It would be interesting to look at the gender ratios of the players in groups that have more problems with males playing female characters. I think a lot of the issues relate to how good that particular guy is at relating to females in general - a guy who views women primarily as the other is going to have a *lot* harder time roleplaying a woman than a guy who interacts with women on a regular basis. Which is the same type that tends to gravitate towards all-male groups.

Edit: leadership is a good idea. Just make sure the female character is definitely *not* a viable love interest. A sibling would be good, as would a character with a significant age difference.

eh, me I have trouble with it and my gaming groups have varied from all male (in highschool) to 1/3 female (but of the players who actually played 1/2 female) to 4/7 female (counting DM) and my next IRL game I'm going to DM all the players will be female. I have more female friends than male ones.

Many of them like disillusioning me on the belief that humans generally think the same regardless of gender. Although that might be because I think in rather odd ways (I came into college applying the Socratic method to everything because I viewed that as natural).

Edit: To clarify I find RPing girls more difficult than RPing guys. I actually want to try the challenge because... it's a challenge.

Yora
2010-08-31, 03:53 PM
Even with so many female players, I've only ever met one female GM, ever!

WarKitty
2010-08-31, 03:58 PM
eh, me I have trouble with it and my gaming groups have varied from all male (in highschool) to 1/3 female (but of the players who actually played 1/2 female) to 4/7 female (counting DM) and my next IRL game I'm going to DM all the players will be female. I have more female friends than male ones.

Many of them like disillusioning me on the belief that humans generally think the same regardless of gender. Although that might be because I think in rather odd ways (I came into college applying the Socratic method to everything because I viewed that as natural).

Edit: To clarify I find RPing girls more difficult than RPing guys. I actually want to try the challenge because... it's a challenge.

Ironically I've been told my female characters don't think like women - when they are almost exactly duplicating my own thought patterns. So I wouldn't worry too much about the thought process.

Optimator
2010-08-31, 04:06 PM
It's really just dependent on one's personality and roleplaying experience IMO. I almost neevr play female PCs but my group has a fairly big mix of gender ratios among PCs (actual group is total sausage fest).

dsmiles
2010-08-31, 04:08 PM
Even with so many female players, I've only ever met one female GM, ever!

You could include my sister, she's the one that got me into gaming *coughcough* years ago. (Also she works for WW, so, BONUS!.)

Remmirath
2010-08-31, 04:28 PM
Even with so many female players, I've only ever met one female GM, ever!

I've met... four, counting myself and my mom (who's been DMing since pretty much the beginning back in the 70s, is one of the best DMs I've ever met, and got me into roleplaying way back when).

I think I know about an equal number of male DMs, counting only people who actually enjoy doing it as opposed to being roped into it occasionally. I've met more than that, though.

As for roleplaying the opposite gender... personally, I don't think it's a very big deal. Just playing the character who happens to be that gender works for me. People think and act in wildly different ways on an individual basis, and although some behaviours and personality quirks are more common (certainly more commonly accepted) in males or females, any person could have pretty much any combination.

Especially when you consider that not only are the PCs adventurers, and thus already atypical, but they also might be elves, dwarves, half-orces, mindflayers, dragons, or what have you.

I think if you just watch the people around you who are the opposite gender you'll usually figure out that they're just people, and they don't all act the same. Most character concepts could be applied equally well to either gender, with some exceptions (drow cleric of Lolth, any of those funky prestige classes with a gender requirement).

I also think that playing characters of the opposite gender is more common among people who like to play characters who are different from themselves, or who try to play a wide variety of characters. That's what I've observed from the people I play with, at least. I tend to have no two characters be very similar, but some people basically play permutations of the same character over and over again. Both work, of course, but I think the people who do the second are often the same ones who are playing characters who are like themselves or as they might want to be - and thus would usually play characters of the same gender as themselves. Probably also has something to do with how much people enjoy the acting and roleplaying side of the game as opposed to the hack'n'slash side (and I'm in no way implying you can't enjoy both - I certainly do). That's all just in my experience, though.

I have also noticed that in some groups people will just assume that your character is the same gender as you are, and it gets kind of annoying to remind them they aren't. I avoid playing male characters in those groups.

Delwugor
2010-08-31, 04:29 PM
Twice I've played female characters and it's not much different than playing an Dwarf, Elf, Gnome or a Varga.

Oracle_Hunter
2010-08-31, 05:02 PM
I have also noticed that in some groups people will just assume that your character is the same gender as you are, and it gets kind of annoying to remind them they aren't. I avoid playing male characters in those groups.
Well, partially that can be because it is easy to mix up gender pronouns when you're looking at one thing and imaging another.

I'm jumping into this thread mainly because, as a DM, I worry I don't portray gender appropriately. I don't agree that gender has nothing to do with your RP; if nothing else, gender roles in society are going to place the character in differing positions. Also, I agree with the previously-linked article to the extent that there are certain broad cognative biases that are gender-correlated.

Anyhoo, I treat gender as much a part of a character as I do race or class (for D&D) - an elf that acts like a human needs to have as much a reason to be that way as a man that acts like a woman (or vice-versa). My most successful cross-gender role is that of Aeriyanna, a female half-elven barbarian in an Eberron 4E game.
She's not an amazon, nor a slut, nor an ice-queen; she is a half-Valenar (i.e. Fantasy Mongol), half-Cyrian who was raised in both societies but, ultimately, kicked out of each. Her mother was forced to sent Aeriyanna to live with her merchant father for political reasons while her father was a neglectful rogue of a merchant who left her raising to some veteran caravan guards before the company was destroyed by The Day of Mourning.

I made her LN to reflect her desire for structure and while she acts like "one of the boys" (e.g. hard drinking) she isn't a "wench" - in fact, I imagine she doesn't go in much for one-night stands (not that the game has made much on this end). She is pretty (Half-Elves are +2 CHA), but for IC reasons she tends to be a private person; she developed a Mark of the Storm around puberty was so freaked out that she hid it from everyone.
I like her, but I worry about why I made her. When thinking up character concepts, Aeriyanna struck me as intrinsically "female" - I couldn't think of her as male. Similarly, I changed another "female" concept (the spell thief) into a "male" character and suddenly he went from catburgler to Indiana Jones. I'm not so sure what that says about me (aside from the fact that I love tropes) but I do worry about whether I am capable of playing female characters as, well, accurately as male ones.

So... ladies, what do you think? Specifically, does Aeriyanna sound "right" or is there something off about her?

Remmirath
2010-08-31, 05:45 PM
My favorite part was the bit about how girls gravitate towards the noncombat in contrast to guys that specialize in damaging. As a man whose single favorite part of the game is problem-solving above all else, the idea that my preferred field of play was exclusive - sorry, maybe "preferential" would be better - to females sort of irked.

Yeah. That kind of generalisation is rather annoying. Of the people I know, I enjoy roleplaying and combat about equally; my brother enjoys roleplaying significantly more than combat (as does my mom); three of the girls in one of my groups and one of the guys enjoy the combat so much they basically don't care about the roleplaying; and one of each enjoy it all pretty much equally.

You really can't just categorise everybody in a group of people like that. It's not gonna work. It might hold true for large numbers of them, but I think in the end it makes more sense to just say 'people like different things' and leave it at that.


Well, partially that can be because it is easy to mix up gender pronouns when you're looking at one thing and imaging another.

Good point. I'm probably just used to ignoring that. Although these are the same people who'll often call out initiative by player name instead of character name, and other things that seem odd to me.


I'm jumping into this thread mainly because, as a DM, I worry I don't portray gender appropriately. I don't agree that gender has nothing to do with your RP; if nothing else, gender roles in society are going to place the character in differing positions. Also, I agree with the previously-linked article to the extent that there are certain broad cognative biases that are gender-correlated.

It is certainly true that gender has some impact, from society and all that. I just think it doesn't have nearly the impact people seem to believe it does, and that there are always exceptions - and while it certainly stretches the odds to always play characters who are exceptions, it's not a problem to do so every now and then (particularly since most adventurers are assumed to be, well, exceptional). The exceptions are also not as rare as most people seem to think.

The more strict gender roles there are in the in-game society that you're playing in the more difference it will make, certainly. I find that at least in most of the D&D games I've played there basically aren't any, or if there are it's only for a few species/cities and easily avoidable. That, I'm sure, varies a lot on a group-by-group basis, however - and I, at least, do certainly take that into account if they are there.


So... ladies, what do you think? Specifically, does Aeriyanna sound "right" or is there something off about her?

I certainly don't see anything wrong there. She sounds like a reasonable character from what you've written.

Usually, for me at least, if I'm imagining a certain character with a certain gender it's probably because I have some image of the character already in my mind even if subconsciously, and that's how it happens to be.

If you really couldn't manage to roleplay a cat-burglar type who is male or a more Indiana Jones type who is female, that might be a problem (at least if the reason was that you couldn't imagine that could ever happen or something similar to that) - but if you just don't want to that's just what you want to play, and I for one see no problem with it.

WarKitty
2010-08-31, 06:02 PM
It could be worse...I keep thinking I want to play a varsavvius-type character that no one can figure out their gender.

D&D type medieval fantasy tends to be, well, high on the fantasy side. Gender, class, racial, and religious tensions are either loosened or romanticized. It's sort of up to what type of game you're playing how much gender roles come in. If you're playing a down-to-earth realistic gritty game, female adventurers are going to be a rarity, reactions may be hostile, etc. If you're playing a more fantasy game, the differences may be approaching or even less than modern levels.

Yora
2010-08-31, 06:04 PM
As for roleplaying the opposite gender... personally, I don't think it's a very big deal. Just playing the character who happens to be that gender works for me. People think and act in wildly different ways on an individual basis, and although some behaviours and personality quirks are more common (certainly more commonly accepted) in males or females, any person could have pretty much any combination.
[...]
I think if you just watch the people around you who are the opposite gender you'll usually figure out that they're just people, and they don't all act the same. Most character concepts could be applied equally well to either gender, with some exceptions (drow cleric of Lolth, any of those funky prestige classes with a gender requirement).
I think most female characters played by male players that I have seen, are quite similar to what the players usually, but just with the difference that they are women. Many player usually stick to the same theme, but always use it with slight variants and in different contexts. And making the character female actually makes quite a difference. People expect the character to behave in a different way, and react differently when the charactter does not live up to these expectations, just based on our subconscious expectations what men and women are. And I think it's quite exciting to explore these character themse in this way.

In this regard:
http://www.sata-andagi.eu/misc/1888298344_64d98a7168_o.jpg
I'm pretty sure the writers are all male.

Somehow, some character concepts only really work with a female character. My friends said that I often play "team moms": A natural spokeperson for the group, always a calming voice of reason, a bit over-controlling, but never taking **** from anyone! :smallbiggrin: You can play such characters as male, but it's just very different in many ways.
We once had a group of outcast vhaeraunite drow who had fled from the underdark and really liked the idea of retaking the surface world. A calm and no-nonsense sorceress in a red dress surrounded by a nasty looking gang of black-clad warriors, just works completely different than a male character would in the same position. And I'm not just talking about the dress. :smalltongue:
With a female character that role just comes naturally, but with a male character you'd rather imagine a frightened tiny man surrounding himself with strong thugs, or a slimy sorcerer. You just can't evoke that maternal appearance with a male character.

Frosty
2010-08-31, 06:13 PM
It could be worse...I keep thinking I want to play a varsavvius-type character that no one can figure out their gender.

D&D type medieval fantasy tends to be, well, high on the fantasy side. Gender, class, racial, and religious tensions are either loosened or romanticized. It's sort of up to what type of game you're playing how much gender roles come in. If you're playing a down-to-earth realistic gritty game, female adventurers are going to be a rarity, reactions may be hostile, etc. If you're playing a more fantasy game, the differences may be approaching or even less than modern levels.
Y'know, rules may apply to 1 HD commoner women with no special skills. But, you are not such a commoner. You are a badass whose sword, shield, and armor alone costs more than the total wealth of the next town over. You've survived having a boulder thrown on you by a Giant (and then you threw it right back), and you can kill orc raiders in your sleep. Some society norms and rules just don't apply to you. Or they might apply briefly, before you apply your boot to the offending party's face.

Fax Celestis
2010-08-31, 06:18 PM
Y'know, rules may apply to 1 HD commoner women with no special skills. But, you are not such a commoner. You are a badass whose sword, shield, and armor alone costs more than the total wealth of the next town over. You've survived having a boulder thrown on you by a Giant (and then you threw it right back), and you can kill orc raiders in your sleep. Some society norms and rules just don't apply to you. Or they might apply briefly, before you apply your boot to the offending party's face.

cf: Joan of Arc, Cleopatra, Queen Elizabeth, Mulan

WarKitty
2010-08-31, 06:19 PM
Story blatantly ripped off from book I forget the name of:

Female Adventurer walks into a weapon shop and asks for a sword.

Adventurer: "I'm here to buy a sword, what do you have."
Shopkeeper: "Well I have just the thing for a fine lady as yourself."

Shopkeeper brings out a fine, lavishly decorated blade. Adventurer takes a brief look, and then swings the blade against the dirt floor. It bends hopelessly out of shape.

Shopkeeper: "You broke my sword you bitch! I hope you know you're paying for that!"
Adventurer: "Next time don't try to sell me such cheap crap. Now get me a real sword, or I shall tell the order what you tried to pass off on one of their premier members!"


That's more what I was thinking. A female adventurer is sure an exception, but NPC's are going to react to her differently. Which may work in her favor as often as against her.

Frosty
2010-08-31, 06:23 PM
cf: Joan of Arc, Cleopatra, Queen Elizabeth, Mulan
what does "cf" stand for?

Curmudgeon
2010-08-31, 06:27 PM
what does "cf" stand for?
It's used as an abbreviation for the Latin word confer, meaning "compare" or "consult".

TheOOB
2010-08-31, 06:29 PM
There are players in my group who we would let play female characters, and players whom we wouldn't. I find the trick is to remember that being female isn't a character concept, it's one element therein.

I played a female character in a (regrettably) short-lived campaign that was a female pretending to be male in order to get out of an arranged marriage. The other players didn't know though, they thought he(she) was just feminine...and gay. They didn't find out until a year after the campaign ended when they caught onto which pronoun I was using, and then everything made sense.

BobSutan
2010-08-31, 07:50 PM
I'm playing my Dread Necro chick as a kind of hippy animal loving PETA nutjob flake...who has a butt fetish (long story). Reason she's so into undead is they make the best minions (in her opinion) because nobody is being harmed. She can't stand mages that summon other creatures against their will because they suffer and don't have any choice. Since undead aren't really alive they don't have feelings and can't feel pain like fluffy bunnies and kitty cats do.

Get the idea how she's portrayed?


Now the sticky widget is that I found out some of the PCs in our party used traits and drawbacks for feat juggling and one of them took a few that makes them super chivelrous and defers to females. Not sure how that's going to play out when we get into combat and in general when trying to interact with NPCs. Will he drop everything and invoke a bunch of AoOs if my PC gets hit? We shall see.

Ormur
2010-08-31, 08:14 PM
Since you mentioned that flaw I just recall that two of my players' characters have it and I used to always forget letting them fight females.

Since I'm the DM I sometimes play female characters and I have to keep reminding myself to include some that don't fall into stereotypes. I just realized that even the ones in powerful positions might possibly come of as weak and ineffectual because of the plot.

Knaight
2010-08-31, 08:32 PM
Don't worry, Carpe, I read and enjoyed it.

That is where we disagree. It was one of the most hilariously offensive things I have ever seen, and I would have liked it had I not had the sinking feeling throughout that the author actually believed what they were saying. Between implications that men don't ever talk to eachother, implications that anyone into role playing games is a total shut in, and the wondrous implication that FATAL is the best game for the RPG target audience they fit in page after page of wide spread intelligence insults towards anyone with the audacity to posses a Y chromosome and play a role playing game. That hypothetical situation at the end where a group of guys are trying to get into the pants of the one female player and all act like complete ---holes is just the icing on the cake.

Frosty
2010-08-31, 08:33 PM
The article highlighted some really BAD people and situations. Doesn't mean that the author believed that there aren't many good people.

Dusk Eclipse
2010-08-31, 08:41 PM
My one attempt at roleplaying a female character ended badly, I was al ready and somewhat excited to try to rp a female and halfway through the game I forgot that the character was a she:smallredface:

Either way since many of the groups I have played in are mixed it is rare to see someone cross-role playing since IME the desire to play a female comes from not wanting to play an all male party.

Personally I think it is unnecesarym but hey if that floats your boat so be it, as long as you don't make other players uncomfortable (see anecdote below)

I also have a somewhat biased view on the subject due the ankwardness that arose from a male player roleplaying his female genasi developing a crush on my male dragonborn. It was ankward at the table and I felt really uncomfortable, so much that I had to retire that particular character to avoid that kind of stuff.

*I don't know the equivalent of the school grade, the literal translation would be secondary school

Frosty
2010-08-31, 08:45 PM
If your group is not at the required maturity level, then make sure any romances that happen are between PCs and NPCs.

Usually if someone is secure in their sexuality then it's alright.

Dusk Eclipse
2010-08-31, 09:01 PM
If your group is not at the required maturity level, then make sure any romances that happen are between PCs and NPCs.

Usually if someone is secure in their sexuality then it's alright.

If you are implying that I am insecure about my sexuality, I asure I am straigh, either way that happened a long time ago, when I was younger so that particular incident bothered me quite a bit.

While I agree with you to keep romance only between NPC and PC; but that only is feasible if the DM lays that kind of rules from the start, PCxPC romance usually happens without the DM having a word on it or maybe even concent.
Having said that I am sure I could have handled that situation more maturely but at that time I wasn't mature enough to try to find a better solution

Disclaimer: Trying not to be agressive but that sort of comments just rub me wrong for some reason

WarKitty
2010-08-31, 09:06 PM
IMO it works better where everyone is both secure in their sexuality and comfortable with people that aren't. Then again I don't get why guys get so awkward if another guy likes them.

Fax Celestis
2010-08-31, 09:09 PM
If you are implying that I am insecure about my sexuality, I assure I am straight

Insecurity != homosexuality
Insecurity == uncomfortable with sexuality regardless of its form

Dusk Eclipse
2010-08-31, 09:11 PM
Insecurity != homosexuality
Insecurity == uncomfortable with sexuality regardless of its form

:smallsigh: and thats why I should stay away from this kind of threads, I as I said those kind of things rub me wrong.

Thanks for the clarification though

Knaight
2010-08-31, 09:20 PM
The article highlighted some really BAD people and situations. Doesn't mean that the author believed that there aren't many good people.

The last section was written as advice towards men on how to act if there are women in the group, which alone implies the author thinking that this is the normal situation, language throughout highlights the individual points I was making.

Concerning the main topic, I mostly GM, and probably have about as many male characters as female characters (neither group approaching anywhere near 50%). It is never a big deal, and has never been a big deal when I played, but I consider gender largely irrelevant in real life, up to and including my own, and many characters reflect that, though there are some for whom their gender and/or sex is a major part of their identity. And even then, it usually ends up somewhat lower than the really major stuff, such as general outlook on life.

Sharkman1231
2010-08-31, 11:54 PM
I'm male and I play females probably 50-75% of the time (I go through a lot of characters (campains restarting often)). I've never had problems playing female characters. My current shadowrun shaman is a female elf w/ high charisma and is dating one of the other characters. I'm pretty much the only player who plays females well (at least I think I do) (the others go on and on about lesbian relationships and stuff). I dunno, I just make a concept then add name and gender, then go from there.

Okay, on the first page of this thread the was the link to that comic where the female drow said she wasn't shivering for "certain reasons". I would never do that but, if another player said that, I would have started saying how
it was plausible because of some genetic differences between the sexes (high percentage of body fat, etc). What I'm asking is if that's okay or I'm being a prick and trying to use science to cover my ass.

*Linking sites and quoting other replies is a pain on my phone*

Serpentine
2010-09-01, 01:26 AM
My most successful cross-gender role is that of Aeriyanna, a female half-elven barbarian in an Eberron 4E game.
She's not an amazon, nor a slut, nor an ice-queen; she is a half-Valenar (i.e. Fantasy Mongol), half-Cyrian who was raised in both societies but, ultimately, kicked out of each. Her mother was forced to sent Aeriyanna to live with her merchant father for political reasons while her father was a neglectful rogue of a merchant who left her raising to some veteran caravan guards before the company was destroyed by The Day of Mourning.

I made her LN to reflect her desire for structure and while she acts like "one of the boys" (e.g. hard drinking) she isn't a "wench" - in fact, I imagine she doesn't go in much for one-night stands (not that the game has made much on this end). She is pretty (Half-Elves are +2 CHA), but for IC reasons she tends to be a private person; she developed a Mark of the Storm around puberty was so freaked out that she hid it from everyone.What you have there is a well-developed character with an interesting backstory that has noticable impacts on her present personality. Well done.

I like her, but I worry about why I made her. When thinking up character concepts, Aeriyanna struck me as intrinsically "female" - I couldn't think of her as male. Similarly, I changed another "female" concept (the spell thief) into a "male" character and suddenly he went from catburgler to Indiana Jones. I'm not so sure what that says about me (aside from the fact that I love tropes) but I do worry about whether I am capable of playing female characters as, well, accurately as male ones.I don't think there's anything wrong with that. Or at least, if there is, we're both in trouble
I mentioned before two character concepts I have (both for Wizards, coincidentally...), that "feel" male to me. I don't know why, I just find it easier to imagine them and what they'd be like as males. Even my genderless characters have leanings - my warfarged sort of feels a touch male but is still definitely an "it"; and my androgynous elf archer I think is probably at least physically female, mostly because I think I'm pretty much basing them on Albis from these forums. The others I have... I could pretty easily make them male, but they just wouldn't be the same character. I don't know how I would play them, but they would be different. My dwarf Knight, at least, would be a smidgeon more stereotypical, I guess. I think he'd be a bit gruffer, too. Possibly wouldn't've cried in the last session.* My succubus tiefling elf would be completely different, and I don't think I particularly want to play that character...
You get what I mean, anyway? I don't think there's anything wrong with coming up with a character concept, and then having it "feel" like one sex or the other.


*She was elf'd a while ago, which would basically mean she could never go home to her very xenophobic people. Having an opportunity to ask a "boon" of a trickster god, she requested to be turned into a dwarf again. She was turned into a human-brand dwarf (i.e. a midget). She was... unimpressed.

EdroGrimshell
2010-09-01, 01:39 AM
Okay, i play an even 50-50 split on female and male characters, all of them having different backgrounds, personalities, and abilities. And once i get into the swing of things i can actually "be" that charcter.

Here's a simple trick i use for designing a character; Act like the character is someone you've known for a long time, a close friend perhaps, and have to describe to someone that has never met them.

To give an example of this, my current female character is a tribal shaman in an incarnum campaign, she's self-sufficient, but not perfect. Her primary flaws are that she's socially awkward and claustraphobic, despite being the "amazon beauty" she has little experience with people outside her tribe. This is reflected by a relatively low Cha score of 10 (the lowest score she has). Outside of the wild, she doesn't know what to do, and is actually afraid of the enclosed spaces in cities, having lived her whole life on the plains. In her element, she's confident and capable, just like any normal person today would be.

Werekat
2010-09-01, 02:16 AM
Another for the usually 50-50 crowd. I play male or female depending on the kind of story I want my character to be involved in and the setting we are currently in. To take the most extreme example, if I wanted to play a drow in an all-drow game, I would probably choose whether I want to go male or female depending on the social status I'd want at the time. And if the setting gives no special attention to gender, I just choose what I want at the time.

I also run games with cross-gender from both sides. I run an entirely cross-gender Mage game, which has four male players and one female player - meaning that the game has four female characters and one male. The characters run the gamut from a girl named Sarah, who watched too many Terminator movies until she met a HitMark face to face one sunny morning, to a 13 year old teenage runaway with a knack for mind and fate magic. Only one guy has any problems at all playing a convincing girl, and he's learning. The rest are doing fine and dandy.

We also take turns running a D&D game where the party leader character, a favored soul, is female while the player is male, and the party wizard is male, played by a female. The other two players and characters are male and female, respectively, with no cross gender. The best thing about this gender situation is that the romantic subplots run hetero in the game world, and nobody says a thing or is freaked out in the real world.

LARPing is a bit different - it's a lot easier to mis-play a character when you actually have to worry about how they walk, dress, and so on beyond the description - but it can be done, and done well both ways.

In short - a fun addition to the game.

Frosty
2010-09-01, 02:26 AM
The characters run the gamut from a girl named Sarah, who watched too many Terminator movies until she met a HitMark face to face one sunny morningI wish to know more about this character :smallredface:

One Step Two
2010-09-01, 04:38 AM
Oddly, some of my most dynamic escapades have been playing as women in some games. At times, with some characters, I play them as very self-aware, playing their feminimity against other players and NPC's, acting demure or flirty to pull people offguard, at others, I play hardbitten hellcats who are far more capable than any man.

Part of this for me, is that it's much easier for me to divorce myself from my character, and play the role, as with male characters, I end up just being me with "Moar Powa!"

Fallbot
2010-09-01, 04:41 AM
At the moment our group (3 males and 1 female) are all playing across gender. I'm the girl, and I cant really say how well I'm playing a man, although oddly it feels much easier for me to roleplay him than it's been to play a woman in previous games. With female characters, I tend to just play myself, and I find it hard to think of the character as a separate person. Playing a man has made me take a step back and think more about what the character would do, and I've had to put far, far more thought into developing his personality. It seems odd, and I think it's a weakness in my own roleplaying, and something I'm going to have to work on.

As for the other players; one of them you wouldn't even know his character is female, so not much to comment on there. One is an artist running two characters, neither of which has a backstory, and I get the feeling they both started so he had an excuse to draw their boobs (I've seen the pictures...). Since then one of them has remained undeveloped, while the other...is also undeveloped but now has a crush on my character. The third player also has two characters - one is very well developed (no not that way), and has had a lot of thought put into her personality and motivations. The other is the traditional lesbian slut :smallsigh: After a bit of coaxing though, he wrote a backstory and decided she acted the way she did because of (justified) abandonment issues. I'm still slightly creeped out by it (especially since she started using my character as a pillow), but it's a definite improvement.

Knaight
2010-09-01, 06:33 AM
I don't think there's anything wrong with that. Or at least, if there is, we're both in trouble
I mentioned before two character concepts I have (both for Wizards, coincidentally...), that "feel" male to me. I don't know why, I just find it easier to imagine them and what they'd be like as males. Even my genderless characters have leanings.
Same here, on all accounts, some characters feel female, some characters feel male, and this applies to theoretically genderless characters. For that matter, several genderless characters end up looking male or female as well*. This is without any notable tendencies towards characters for whom gender and/or sex is particularly important, with the obvious exception of families when GMing.

*The case in point being an undead spirit who could possess corpses, and had enough magical talent and power to pull off transforming them. With the boredom inherent in the bound spirit profession, and a natural predisposition towards art the spirit would naturally screw around with the bodies until it met some aesthetic standard. If that meant a change in secondary sexual characteristics, so be it.

Yora
2010-09-01, 08:45 AM
Even R2-D2 is obviously male. :smallbiggrin:

aberratio ictus
2010-09-01, 09:56 AM
While I don't play females nearly as often als males, there have been a fair share of female characters in my personal gaming history.
My female characters are generally well-liked among the female players around the table/in pbp, often those female players have even explicitly pointed out that I was doing a good job portraying an interesting female character. Usually they end up being good friends with those player's characters ingame. I take that, too, as a sign that I'm doing not too bad.

Once, however, a female player in a pbp game with whom I had never played before complained about my roleplaying to the DM, dropping the infamous quote: "A woman would never act like that!"

Frankly speaking, that's one of the most sexist things I have ever heard up until now.

WarKitty
2010-09-01, 10:17 AM
Once, however, a female player in a pbp game with whom I had never played before complained about my roleplaying to the DM, dropping the infamous quote: "A woman would never act like that!"

Frankly speaking, that's one of the most sexist things I have ever heard up until now.

What's more amusing is when I hear that. :smallbiggrin:

Edit: I just remembered my player that played a doppelganger-type character. Now *that* was fun. The character woke up with a random personality (out of 4) each morning - two of each gender.

Frosty
2010-09-01, 11:22 AM
What's more amusing is when I hear that. :smallbiggrin:

Edit: I just remembered my player that played a doppelganger-type character. Now *that* was fun. The character woke up with a random personality (out of 4) each morning - two of each gender.
But did it take levels in Chameleon or Factotum? :smalltongue:

WarKitty
2010-09-01, 11:34 AM
But did it take levels in Chameleon or Factotum? :smalltongue:

Technically it was a human rogue with a hat of disguise and some custom abilities. So, no.

Umael
2010-09-01, 11:49 AM
Just a note - I'm remembered of one of the older forum members (whom I have not seen in a LONG time) saying that cross-gender playing was forbidden in that person's gaming group.

Reasoning?

If you were male: "Anything you can do as a woman, you can do as a man. So just play a man."

If you were female: "Anything you can do as a man, you can do as a woman. So just play a woman."

Did. Not. Get it.

Oracle_Hunter
2010-09-01, 11:52 AM
Just a note - I'm remembered of one of the older forum members (whom I have not seen in a LONG time) saying that cross-gender playing was forbidden in that person's gaming group.

Reasoning?

If you were male: "Anything you can do as a woman, you can do as a man. So just play a man."

If you were female: "Anything you can do as a man, you can do as a woman. So just play a woman."

Did. Not. Get it.
Or perhaps his world had some rather freaky modifications regarding the sexes :smalleek:

Quincunx
2010-09-01, 11:52 AM
Just a note - I'm remembered of one of the older forum members (whom I have not seen in a LONG time) saying that cross-gender playing was forbidden in that person's gaming group.

Reasoning?

If you were male: "Anything you can do as a woman, you can do as a man. So just play a man."

If you were female: "Anything you can do as a man, you can do as a woman. So just play a woman."

Did. Not. Get it.

I get it and I like it. The worldwide assumption you're not making, or un-assumption which you are, whichever, is "the only difference between woman and man is babymaking capability". This is followed by "babymaking is not and never will be a plot hook" and "whatever reason you have for wanting to go cross-gender will not be babymaking, and therefore unnecessary".

@V: Of course, although the standard My Little Pony mockery applies to anyone who wants a ~*dreamy*~ unicorn as an animal companion.

Zaydos
2010-09-01, 11:53 AM
Just a note - I'm remembered of one of the older forum members (whom I have not seen in a LONG time) saying that cross-gender playing was forbidden in that person's gaming group.

Reasoning?

If you were male: "Anything you can do as a woman, you can do as a man. So just play a man."

If you were female: "Anything you can do as a man, you can do as a woman. So just play a woman."

Did. Not. Get it.

So I can be a male knight with a unicorn cohort? :smallbiggrin:

Toliudar
2010-09-01, 11:59 AM
I get it and I like it. The worldwide assumption you're not making, or un-assumption which you are, whichever, is "the only difference between woman and man is babymaking capability". This is followed by "babymaking is not and never will be a plot hook" and "whatever reason you have for wanting to go cross-gender will not be babymaking, and therefore unnecessary".

Which REALLY makes me want to play a pregnant male barbarian. Rage=Mood Swings!

Oracle_Hunter
2010-09-01, 12:00 PM
The worldwide assumption you're not making, or un-assumption which you are, whichever, is "the only difference between woman and man is babymaking capability". This is followed by "babymaking is not and never will be a plot hook" and "whatever reason you have for wanting to go cross-gender will not be babymaking, and therefore unnecessary".

@V: Of course, although the standard My Little Pony mockery applies to anyone who wants a ~*dreamy*~ unicorn as an animal companion.
I... suppose.

Though it gets a bit awkward if your backstory is, say, you're trying to find your child who was stolen away by the Evil Father. You could just flip the genders, I suppose, but (IMHO) that story plays out differently when it is the mother, not the father, who is hunting down the child.

In any case, that sounds like an unnecessary restraint on character autonomy - and one that raises Unfortunate Implications regarding the DM's feelings regarding gender roles.

WarKitty
2010-09-01, 12:01 PM
I get it and I like it. The worldwide assumption you're not making, or un-assumption which you are, whichever, is "the only difference between woman and man is babymaking capability". This is followed by "babymaking is not and never will be a plot hook" and "whatever reason you have for wanting to go cross-gender will not be babymaking, and therefore unnecessary".

@V: Of course, although the standard My Little Pony mockery applies to anyone who wants a ~*dreamy*~ unicorn as an animal companion.

Awwww we've had a pretty good campaign with baby-making involved. The baby is now a 17 year old tiefling alchemist PC. And yes the player for the mother was male.

Zaydos
2010-09-01, 12:02 PM
Unicorns are not dreamy. They are vicious and known for killing elephants with their horns, though. Pliny the Elder told me so.

Oracle_Hunter
2010-09-01, 12:04 PM
Unicorns are not dreamy. They are vicious and known for killing elephants with their horns, though. Pliny the Elder told me so.
Tangental Comic Link (http://harkavagrant.com/index.php?id=30) :smallbiggrin:

dsmiles
2010-09-01, 12:05 PM
Unicorns are not dreamy. They are vicious and known for killing elephants with their horns, though. Pliny the Elder told me so.

God bless Pliny. I love his notions, crazy though some of them may seem to modern humans.

Prime32
2010-09-01, 12:08 PM
So I can be a male knight with a unicorn cohort? :smallbiggrin:By the rules, only human and elf women can have unicorn companions.

...this doesn't apply to healers for some reason.

dsmiles
2010-09-01, 12:10 PM
By the rules, only human and elf women can have unicorn companions.

...this doesn't apply to healers for some reason.

Specifically, they have to be "pure". In 1e this meant "virgin paladin," but as that notion has become outdated, I personally use "pure of heart," judged by character role-play.

Zaydos
2010-09-01, 12:10 PM
By the rules, only human and elf women can have unicorn companions.

...this doesn't apply to healers for some reason.

Exactly why I picked unicorn to respond to the notion that "anything a woman can do in the game a guy can do"

And I love Pliny's dragons (giant tree snakes that drop down to crush elephants, oh and their breath is poisonous to nearby plant-life).

Umael
2010-09-01, 12:40 PM
I get it and I like it. The worldwide assumption you're not making, or un-assumption which you are, whichever, is "the only difference between woman and man is babymaking capability". This is followed by "babymaking is not and never will be a plot hook" and "whatever reason you have for wanting to go cross-gender will not be babymaking, and therefore unnecessary".

((Oh, crud. Quincunx is replying. *takes two aspirin*))

"The only difference between woman and man is babymaking capability." False. One counterpoint - attraction and the possiblity of attraction can complicate the interaction between two characters. Heterosexuality is more common than homosexuality or bisexuality ((NOT THAT THERE IS ANYTHING WRONG WITH EITHER!!!!)). Hence, denying a player the opportunity to play the opposite gender limits the choices.

A male player by this ruling must play a male character. Unless the player is willing to play a homo- or bi-sexual character, his character will not have the opportunity to explore the complications of his character falling in love with an important NPC because the NPC is also male. If the guards are predominantly male, the male player is denied the possibility of playing a female rogue who can use seduction as a tool to slip past their defenses - unless the guards and the PC are both gay and/or bi.

There is also the possibility of a plot-related device that targets men (genetic disease, game culture (like the drow), serial killer who happens to be misandrist) or one that targets women (leaving the male PC uninvolved).


"Babymaking is not and never will be a plot hook"

Okay. So the game will not involve heirs and succession and so forth. Does that mean the player can't use these factors in their backstory?


"whatever reason you have for wanting to go cross-gender will not be babymaking, and therefore unnecessary"

Flat out unfair.

Our male player in this example can play a fantasy race that doesn't exist, a fantasy class that couldn't exist, but he can't play a woman. He can play a black human despite the fact that he is white - but that's just as unnecessary. He could play someone who acts far more or far less intelligent than he is. He could play someone with a bad accent, a potentially offensive stereotype, someone with a strange personal habit - all unnecessary.

Whenever the GM creates an NPC, he or she decides the gender of the character at creation. Under this rule, the player is not allowed this option.

If this is so unnecessary, why does it matter?

kamikasei
2010-09-01, 12:41 PM
I get it and I like it.
If Umael's referring to the poster and discussion I think he is, there was more to it than that, and I suspect you might not have agreed with the reasoning as you do with Umael's summary; but I'm not sure we could actually discuss it in depth without "bringing in baggage from other threads" (even if Umael were to quote it for fairer discussion, it would seem weird to me to critique the views of someone not present from a long-dead thread, though that's up to him I suppose).

Umael
2010-09-01, 12:53 PM
If Umael's referring to the poster and discussion I think he is, there was more to it than that, and I suspect you might not have agreed with the reasoning as you do with Umael's summary; but I'm not sure we could actually discuss it in depth without "bringing in baggage from other threads" (even if Umael were to quote it for fairer discussion, it would seem weird to me to critique the views of someone not present from a long-dead thread, though that's up to him I suppose).

Given that I do like that poster (although I disagreed with that poster's opinion in this matter) and I don't want to risk speaking ill of that poster's rationale when that poster is not available for verbal self-defense, I'm inclined to demur on this issue.

Double given that the discussion might bring up issues of sexuality in roleplaying. Hello, minefield!

Telonius
2010-09-01, 01:12 PM
Is Lolth accepting male Clerics now?

I do take the point, though. Generally, there's very little mechanical difference between the genders, in-game. A few random Prestige classes, isolated things like Drow, and the height and weight differences given in the racial stat blocks, and not much else.

The only differences would come with the game setting. Can women inherit noble titles? What are the marriage customs? Are all peasants equally oppressed, or do women get the worst of it? It's possible to set it up so that there really aren't any gender differences. Then again, it's possible to play in a world where gender really does matter socially, with the men (or the women!) in charge. It all depends on the fluff.

Zaydos
2010-09-01, 01:13 PM
Are there any PrCs that are only open to male characters?

Frosty
2010-09-01, 01:16 PM
Are there any PrCs that are only open to male characters?
Away from book, but perhaps Harem Guard PrC from BoEF?

Tharck
2010-09-01, 01:16 PM
I find playing a different gender character, or a character without a gender, or Male who was cursed to be a female but disguises themselves as a man... the simple trick in my mind is just to pretend you're playing a Ninja.

Kinda like picturing an audience with underwear on.

Akisa
2010-09-01, 01:17 PM
Are there any PrCs that are only open to male characters?

No but there are prc open female characters (one of which has nothing to do with Lolth).

Trobby
2010-09-01, 01:21 PM
There are certain, subtle differences between male and female characters, usually just enough to make playing one or the other different, but more often than not, all that is involved in playing one or the other gender is deciding how you will react, describing how you behave, and how you relate to the opposite or same sex.

The reality is that there are some differences, and that agonizing about them and trying to emphasize them usually leads to one overplaying their part, and coming off as either being very creepy or else totally out of character for their gender.

Having played female and male characters now for ten years, I can say that I'm pretty comfortable with either gender, and that the choosing of said gender is typically just an aesthetic choice, more than it is a deciding factor of how my character will behave.