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Righteous Doggy
2012-05-08, 12:10 PM
Honest question, I've never had a group with someone who didn't want to roleplay the opposite gender. It always gets to me because its always come off as rather creepy or bad roleplaying in these cases too, or worse its entirely forgotten that they play the opposite gender...

So I'm just curious what other people think about it.

Edit: I should point out that this is about anyone playing either gender. The paragraph above is androgynous for a reason >.>. The title was chosen becuase I couldn't think of something better.

valadil
2012-05-08, 12:15 PM
I honestly think it's one of the harder things to do in roleplaying. I tried once. I'd say I failed miserably but the game fizzled before my failure got that bad.

The difficulty was that I didn't want the character to be a joke. I didn't see the point in acting out an extreme stereotype. But I also couldn't figure out any other way to remind the other characters that my character was female.

OTOH nobody else in the group did anything to express their characters' masculinity. They were males by default. Nobody was interested in RPing romance (myself included), so maybe we were all effectively genderless characters with gendered names.

Shadowknight12
2012-05-08, 12:22 PM
I've done it once or twice, but it's not my cup of tea. I vastly prefer to roleplay males, since I don't see my character as an extension of myself. I see it as something I'm shaping with my own imagination, so it interests me more to shape something male.

Having said that, the two times I roleplayed a female, I made sure I did not come off as misogynistic. One time, I created a character who was an overweight, introverted librarian who brought to bear her network of secrets and knowledge. The other female character I played was an elderly female knight who was big, strong and scarred, and could kick rear like it was her job.

I don't think roleplaying the opposite gender is hard if you see them as actual people and not as objects to be fawned over.

navar100
2012-05-08, 12:28 PM
I had a fun time playing a female Magus of House Merinita in an Ars Magica campaign. I hadn't played that game system before. The DM was impressed how well I played a House Merinita magus. By accident, she (ok myself :smallsmile: ) was notorious for being quite bad at judging characters upon first impression. Those she liked at first would turn out to be not so nice. Those she didn't like would later be friends.

This made for amusing and fun inter-party roleplay. There were two magi of House Ex Miscellanea in the party. One I befriended immediately. However, I soon found him to be a bully, and we would always spar. The player and I were friends, no issues. It was just fun bickering. The other magus I initially felt was pompous. When we divided up rooms in our tower he was insistent on having the largest one because of his Summoning magic. That insistence just rubbed me the wrong way. However, as the campaign progressed I grew to like him. He eventually made a pass, and we fell in love. We had a child. (No, we did not physically roleplay the consummation. :smallbiggrin: ) It was unfortunate real life interfered causing the game to end. It was a blast.

Inglenook
2012-05-08, 12:38 PM
I've only done play-by-post, but I normally play whatever sex is less common among the PCs, trying to "balance it out", I guess. On the site I normally play at, though, female characters seem to be more common, so I almost always end up playing a dude.

I think I've avoided any misogyny, for the most part; my female characters usually end up being as domineering and bad-ass as any of the men. The one I remember with the most fondness was a tormented Christian schoolgirl with schizophrenia who finally snapped and became a serial killer, ridding the world of "unclean" people.

I might feel a little odd about roleplaying a woman in real life, though. :c ?

KnightDisciple
2012-05-08, 12:38 PM
In my current group, we're all guys in meatspace, but 2 of the other players have female characters. It's not really "creepy" per se. We don't really get into romantic scenes, though we have said that some of the characters might have some attractions. But seeing as our characters have been so busy that in about 2 in-game months we've gone from level 1 to level 12....Yeah. (We're playing Pathfinder, the Council of Thieves AP.)

I personally don't really get the appeal. Unlike computer games, there's not an avatar you're forced to stare at all the time, so I don't see that aspect. And personally, I always try to inject a bit of myself into my characters, so of course they end up as guys. Plus I don't think I can pull off girls well at all.

As there's lots of fighting and such, with probably only about 25% RP (at least, real-time spent on it). Well, maybe more, but we've been playing this AP for like 2 RL years (session for 1 afternoon/evening, every other week...).

Anyways, yeah, they don't come across as much different than guy characters, barring one of them liking pretty dresses, and maybe a bit of speech. Some of that might be the medium, dunno.

danzibr
2012-05-08, 12:40 PM
I think it's quite alright if you're doing it on the forums. But irl... that's kinda strange.

DiscipleofBob
2012-05-08, 12:44 PM
I tried it for what ended up being about a three-shot, it was some module that ended up going to the Underdark, and I got mixed results.

The sexual aspect never actually came up, it was mostly the other members of the group going on ego-trips, each one trying to prove they were the strongest and best member of the party (at least IC, no idea how much of that translated into OOC), but it did come in useful when we had to try diplomacy with a small scouting party of drow and the only reason they even listened to us in the first place was because I was girl.

Avilan the Grey
2012-05-08, 12:50 PM
I have never had a problem with it either way. I tend to pick female characters if there are any good ones (pre-made), just like I prefer female characters in most computer games.

Anyway, I am curious... question for the OP: What do you mean with "its entirely forgotten that they play the opposite gender"? This can mean two things, either the person himself, or the GM forgets, which is bad, or the character is played naturally, so the gender thing never gets in the way, which is GOOD.

Edit: Fixed the last sentence.

Lost Demiurge
2012-05-08, 12:52 PM
I think it's perfectly fine. If you can play a character who's an immortal pointy-eared tree-hugger, or a savage, green-skinned tusked barbarian, or a walking mass of sentient crystals, then why not a member of the opposite gender?

When it comes down to it, your character is 99% of the time a person. Women are simply people, just as men are. The only time you're gonna run into problems is if you or your group lack the maturity to work with it.

I've played fun characters of all types, both men and women. No one's ever given me grief about it.

Mind you, I go to great lengths to avoid being creepy about it... :smallbiggrin:

Telonius
2012-05-08, 12:55 PM
I've done that a few times, mainly on internet forums but also in a couple of one-shot campaigns. I would really recommend it. Roleplaying a female character was actually one of the things that gave me the idea for my book. It was a good exercise to help get into the character, and gave me some real insight into how interactions might go.

To me, a female character is just another character. It's not a "guy in drag," it's not a fantasy-fulfillment on my part; it's a full and complete personality. It doesn't matter if she's a bookworm or a harridan or anything in-between. As long as you're honest to who that character is, it's not creepy or weird or wrong.

There is a bit of a double-standard on it, though. Women roleplaying men really isn't considered to be quite as weird or unusual. (I'll let the Women's Studies majors explain why). I think that's really unfortunate, because I've witnessed some really great moments in that regard. In one of my gaming groups, one of the players was the DM's girlfriend (later wife). She played a mix of male and female characters, and it worked really well. She was a terrific roleplayer. When you can play the character well enough that the group sees the character as the gender you're projecting, you're doing something very right.

bokodasu
2012-05-08, 12:58 PM
Honest question, I've never had a group with someone who didn't want to roleplay the opposite gender. It always gets to me because its always come off as rather creepy or bad roleplaying in these cases too, or worse its entirely forgotten that they play the opposite gender...


...I also couldn't figure out any other way to remind the other characters that my character was female.

OTOH nobody else in the group did anything to express their characters' masculinity. They were males by default.

See, there's your problem, right there. It's not like it's harder to play a female human than an orc - or at least it shouldn't be. My day job is programming; I program the same way a male programmer does, it's not like I'm required to put <3's at the end of each line of code instead of ;'s. My friend knits; he does it using the exact same stitches that I do; if he didn't, he'd be a bad knitter, not a "masculine" one.

If you are a fighter, and you like to piroutte around and complain about breaking a nail instead of sticking the pointy end of your sword into the squishy bits of your enemies, that's not a "female fighter", that's a dead ex-fighter.

Our society defaults to male, and we feel the need to mark behavior as non-male, instead of defaulting to "human" (which would cover 90% of everything) and then marking out "male/female". People get disturbed when they try to imagine themselves as the opposite sex, and then can't figure out how they'd do a particular thing differently, instead of looking around and going, oh, everybody does it that way. So you get the people who try to insert "typically girly" behavior into their characters' actions, which comes off as creepy and weird because generally real women don't act like that, or the people who forget that their characters are women (or everyone else forgets), because they're not constantly going "Hey! Hey! I got boobies!" It's pretty rare to find the group where not only the player, but also the other players reacting to him, all get it right, but I have seen it done well... once.

For the record, I play male characters whenever I play with a new group, and probably about half the time people forget that he is a guy. (REALLY annoying when it's the DM and he has some guy come up and hit on said character at the Typical Tavern, I mean, really. Would not be a problem if he did the same thing to the male players, but somehow that never happens.) So clearly I am not the person I saw do it well, but at least I don't think I fall into the creepy camp.

Righteous Doggy
2012-05-08, 01:01 PM
Anyway, I am curious... question for the OP: What do you mean with "its entirely forgotten that they play the opposite gender"? This can mean two things, either the person himself, or the GM forgets, which is bad, or the character is played naturally, so the gender thing never gets in the way, which is bad.

Well, one day someone in our group said "I feel like I should play a woman now" so we had a female elf paladin of the unicorn goddess... Which changed nothing aside from a few vulgar comments when he thought it was a good time to crack a vulgar joke. There wasn't alot of roleplaying in that group becuase the kids were more interested in the ransacking and pillaging than talking with npcs.

NerfTW
2012-05-08, 01:08 PM
Odd how this always comes down to guys playing girls.

You never hear the line "She wants to play a guy, it's so creepy". Or when playing videogames, it's always "It's creepy to play as a female main character" (Resident Evil, Tomb Raider, Beyond Good and Evil) but the same is never said or even considered when women are forced to play as males in almost every game in existence.

Is it just something about women that you find creepy? Or being a man? Do you need to sexualize everything? Do women act in some stereotypical way that makes them automatically identifiable as female in dialogue? Are you expecting limp wristed lisping?

There really shouldn't be any problem, unless the person doing the playing is reinforcing negative stereotypes and being insulting.


(lots of good points)

Ooh, ninjaed, and much more well said.

Kalirren
2012-05-08, 01:21 PM
I'm from that generation which saw social browser-based games first appear on the internet as early teenagers. By default I socialize on the Internet in female persona, because a female persona was the first one that I had ever extensively adopted on the Internet. I didn't trust it with my real self, after all. And those experiences really stuck with me. To this day I still find it more awkward to present as a man on the Internet than to present as a more mature version of that 13-year-old girl.

This extends to Internet roleplaying, PbP especially, in which I almost exclusively play women. When I'm on the Internet, I feel that playing a woman is cis-, and playing a man is trans-, and I play women because I'm more comfortable with cis-gendered roleplaying.

In contrast, iRL, I will play men because I'm more comfortable with cis-gendered roleplaying.

Weird how these things work out, huh?

Thialfi
2012-05-08, 01:23 PM
Happens all the time in our campaign. We have been playing D&D together for 32 years. We don't pretend to get it right as people rarely have a firm grasp on the opposite gender. I don't see a problem with it. I certainly don't understand how an elf would actually think and I wouldn't think twice about playing one of them.

For me it started about 25 years ago. We have one continuous campaign that spans multiple game settings and I wished to play the sons and daughters of my original characters. From there it just developed into seeing what kind of character that you would like to play and what gender would fit that type the best.

Some of my all time favorite characters have been female. I played a monk that had fallen from the service of Loviatar. I played her as harshly disciplined and inclined to all the surface characteristics ascribed to those in Loviatar's service in the Faith & Avatars AD&D supplement, except she had the fatal flaw of developing deep emotional bonds with friends and family.

The church let her go after torturing her and heavily scarring her face. They killed her friends and family to increase her torment and it worked as she blamed herself for her entire life for their deaths.

She went through every single published adventure for the Dark Sun campaign. She met a middle aged fire druid who's actions 20 years before had caused the death of the crew of his merchant vessel. In him she saw a kindrid spirit and they fell madly in love. They married and had a family. She swore that she would show her children the love that she never had as a child.

I'll always have a soft spot for Dolora Addere

Craft (Cheese)
2012-05-08, 01:30 PM
Odd how this always comes down to guys playing girls.

You never hear the line "She wants to play a guy, it's so creepy". Or when playing videogames, it's always "It's creepy to play as a female main character" (Resident Evil, Tomb Raider, Beyond Good and Evil) but the same is never said or even considered when women are forced to play as males in almost every game in existence.

For the record, I don't like playing as a male character, though it's much harder in games where you look at your avatar on the screen the whole time in third person perspective. It's difficult to enter a state of mind where I consider the character's actions as my own, when the screen directly contradicts this. Games that are in first person (or don't have graphics at all) make this easier, however.

Still, I don't get on internet forums and complain about this because "If you can't choose your character's gender, it will be male" is such a universal given in games that you really have no choice but to get used to it.

Also, the reason it's usually considered "creepy" for a male to play a female is because, usually, the only reason it's being done is so the male can use the female avatar basically as a private porn model to do sexy things. Now, lemme get the record straight, this definitely happens in reverse (and I have the Oblivion mod folder to prove it), the internet just pretends it doesn't exist. And when such options for using male characters as virtual sex dolls in a game exist, most people assume it's aimed at gay men. It's almost as if the idea of a girl being a perv is unimaginable to these people...

Anyway, the DM will probably have to roleplay characters of opposite gender all the time. What's the big deal?

If you mean that only PCs count for some reason, then my only direct experience with this is with my SO. He's played two female characters, and both times he took the opportunity to whore it up. To be fair though, he tends to sleep with everything in sight when he plays a male character too...

QuidEst
2012-05-08, 01:35 PM
Thus far, I've only done online stuff. I've got a few female characters. They're not very effeminate (in fairness, I don't have any particularly masculine male characters), so it's rarely a problem. In almost all cases, I came up with a cool idea, thought about it, and it just seemed like the character would be female. They're not going to get involved with anybody, which I think is the main source of any creepy factor. I know I have trouble thinking of them as male characters even if I try, which would probably help.

Righteous Doggy
2012-05-08, 01:50 PM
I don't really care personally about what you do online, I was raised by the internet so I'm used to ambiguity and MMOs were a godsend for socializing do to circumstances. Its when your around the table I kinda question peoples decisions.

I should note I think its incredibly sexist for a character to need to be overly masculine or feminine, in the sense that mages are women, fighters are guys. People can be complex. You can have a fighter who would hate to break a nail, or a super masculine mage of either gender.

And about playing other races, why can't an elf or an orc think like a person? Sentient creatures are very capable of being different personalities. Can't you imagine an orc with a monocle or an elf who's more beastly than snobby? Or have you ever tried making someone a totally new not cliche or stereotype? On the other hand, I have a trouble seeing a gruff voiced guy with a beard being a female character in real life.

@Crafty Actually, I would adore it if more games had the options to make sexy guy and girl avatars :3. Its super hard just to find one that gives long hair options! but.... thats my problem. Ever notice how this forum has alot of guys with girl avatars btw? Your statements... make me wonder:smalltongue:

@Thialfi Thats actually a pretty awesome story. That character's sheet has been alive longer than most people I've played with, I'm jealous!

@Nerf I actually dislike playing opposite genders in video games myself. It does give me creeps. Give me options darn you devs!

@Kali lol, the internets a wierd place though isn't it!

Aeryr
2012-05-08, 01:52 PM
I don't really care roleplaying either genre or either sex. I tend to have a character concept and a male or female character would fit it and I'll go from there. I tend to avoid going into creepy stuff unless it really is in the character concept. Funnily that tends to fit more as a male character than as a female character.

For example, my last character was a human woman, an arcane hierophant, who wanted to acquire as much spell knowledge as possible. She believed that as a spellcaster she would be easily targeted so she disguised her ape companion familiar, so it appeared to be an ogre wizard posing herself (after a reduce person) as a young girl acting as the familiar. Sex was never her thing, and even if sometimes she demanded to be payed in cookies or once kept drawing with crayons in her spell book I don't believe that it was creepy (well at least not in a sexual way, it could be scary as hell if you new what was going on).

My second last male character in D&D was a human daring outlaw born of a noble's fling with a prostitute, he kept believing that as a noble he couldn't work so he started adventuring. I believe that the DM liked him because some plot hooks featured late lovers of him. He was a magnificent bastard and a deadpan snarker but never got really into sex stuff.

In the first example it fit, in my mind, that the character would be a little girl, while in the second I believed that a male character fitted more my concept.

Reluctance
2012-05-08, 01:54 PM
I think it's perfectly fine. If you can play a character who's an immortal pointy-eared tree-hugger, or a savage, green-skinned tusked barbarian, or a walking mass of sentient crystals, then why not a member of the opposite gender?

If I play a half-orc as being too dumb to properly use pronouns, there aren't any real-world orcs to get their panties in a twist. If I play a woman whose only contribution to the party is offering to sleep with anybody who has something she wants, real-life females and anybody who knows real-life females will be rightly icked out. It's not the inherent "dude, he's playing a she!" that's icky. It's the way that it's so often done horribly, adolescently wrong.

Also why it's cool in a group where everybody knows and trusts everybody else, but is something to be very cautious of when around new people. And sometimes people you know well enough.

What intrigues me is that it's almost always cross-gender. It's rarely cross-sexuality. (Exception: There's a reason the archetype is the lesbian elven ninja. Apparently having your chick get it on with a dude carries an unacceptable risk of catching gay.) I don't remember ever seeing a cross-ethnicity topic. Wonder why that is.

tahu88810
2012-05-08, 02:00 PM
I play whichever gender I think will fit the character. If I want to play a shield-maiden, I do. If I want to play a raging barbarian dude, I do.

I've never had a problem with it. My goal is always to depict a realistic character, and in most D&D settings there is no functional cultural difference between dudes and ladies and IRL dudes and ladies are all basically human in the end. When there is a cultural difference (or in the case of races like Drow, a physical/mental/etc. one), I acknowledge it.

That's basically what it boils down to. If you want to roleplay a character of a different gender, play them as people. If you want their gender to be the point of the character, you won't get that unless the setting has clearly defined gender-roles as we do today and in the past.

dehro
2012-05-08, 02:00 PM
when I roleplay it's practically always a fantasy setting. when it isn't, it's a setting that has another theme, but still on the intrigue/adventure side of things.
I'm there to kill dragons and hunt vampires.. I'm all for realism, yes, but I'm totally not interested in playing a gender-focused role or the gender aspects of the role. the only reason I'll ever roleplay seducing the barmaid is because she's got the piece of information/key to the room I need to get on with things.
as for the rest..flavour, fluff and maybe a modicum of gender-induced hilarity..if it comes my way or if I see an opening for a gag..yeah, why not..but it's not what I'm roleplaying for...and usually that's true for the people I play with. as for the characters I play.. when I get to pick one, it's usually male...if there's a female character up for grabs with better stats or another reason that makes her more appealing..why not? I'll have a go. in the end she'll still be charging after dragons.

Shadowknight12
2012-05-08, 02:01 PM
What intrigues me is that it's almost always cross-gender. It's rarely cross-sexuality. (Exception: There's a reason the archetype is the lesbian elven ninja. Apparently having your chick get it on with a dude carries an unacceptable risk of catching gay.) I don't remember ever seeing a cross-ethnicity topic. Wonder why that is.

I think you haven't had the opportunity to play with mature groups, because all of that sounds frankly unfathomable to me. I could just be lucky, but I've yet to play in a group that made a big deal out of any social issues. Cross-gender, Cross-sexuality, Cross-ethnicity, Cross-species, none of that was an issue. You could play a lesbian, dark-skinned, female orc (to give an example) and nobody would bat an eyelash, because what mattered was that the character was a person, first and foremost, and every individual characteristic that might have stood out was subsumed by the whole, the sum of the parts.

Maybe that's just me, but it seems like what's important is that the character is well-rounded, not that they fall within X or Y label.

Tengu_temp
2012-05-08, 02:04 PM
It's very easy for a guy to play a female character if you're at least a semi-decent roleplayer: think of her as a person first, not a girl first, and avoid ridiculous stereotypes. That doesn't mean you can't play a character who's mostly defined by her feminity, or one that likes to sleep around, or a man-hating misandrist: but your character should have a reason why she is like that, and there should be more to her than just that one facet. Make her a believable three-dimensional character, not a paper cutout. And, like with all RP, make sure you don't play something other players would find uncomfortable or offensive.

I play more female characters than male ones - the proportions are, let's say, 60/40. I mostly play on the internet where crossplaying is easier, but the biggest difference in real life is that it might feel more uncomfortable for you to play a character of a different gender, not that the rest of the table might be weirded out.

Arutema
2012-05-08, 02:09 PM
I play female characters occasionally, if only for variety. I do not find it that different from roleplaying female NPCs when I GM (which is often.)

It possibly helps that I play nearly all my characters as asexual. I'm just generally uninterested in romance/sexuality in my gaming.

My female characters thus far have been a sorcerer obsessed with ultimate arcane power (shades of Vaarsuvius there.) And a non-nonsense monk of an all-female order dedicated to spreading worship of Asmodeus. I currently have a hippie nature oracle in the pipeline which will probably end up female, if only because my last few characters have been male

Anarion
2012-05-08, 02:33 PM
Can I just add that, completely independent of male/female cultural issues, if you have an artist in your RP group (as I do in one of my present RL games) the fact that a couple of people are playing female characters makes for some great artwork.

As far as playing a character of the opposite gender, there are some differences that people aren't usually aware of (going in both directions), but since the vast majority of PCs are "skilled and competent [class]" first and foremost, I think that RPing of any differences should not come up all that often.

Absol197
2012-05-08, 03:08 PM
I've never seen anything wrong with it. I usually switch back and forth between playing female and male characters, and my absolute favortie character I've ever played was male.

All the other players in my groups do the same thing; if their character is female and they're male, or their character is male and they're female, that's just the character they've been playing.

Tengu_temp
2012-05-08, 03:08 PM
It possibly helps that I play nearly all my characters as asexual. I'm just generally uninterested in romance/sexuality in my gaming.

I've played characters of all gender and sexuality combinations (straight, gay, bi, asexual), except for a bisexual male. Unless discovering a trap and going "...I'd still hit that" counts.

IC romance is not for every group, or every game. But when it works, it can add a lot of fun to the sessions.

valadil
2012-05-08, 03:17 PM
See, there's your problem, right there. It's not like it's harder to play a female human than an orc - or at least it shouldn't be.

I'm still torn. I definitely went with the just play a person approach. But I wanted to express that the character was female. Basically I thought it would be cool if someone watching the game could figure out there character's gender just from watching the game (and not by guessing based on the name.) Maybe that was a faulty litmus test for the character?

Craft (Cheese)
2012-05-08, 03:33 PM
I'm still torn. I definitely went with the just play a person approach. But I wanted to express that the character was female. Basically I thought it would be cool if someone watching the game could figure out there character's gender just from watching the game (and not by guessing based on the name.) Maybe that was a faulty litmus test for the character?

Well, this is a bit redundant, but here's a test for you:

How many people, in this thread, could you figure out was male or female solely through their mannerisms, making all terms gender-neutral and and removing admitted genders.

Thialfi
2012-05-08, 04:00 PM
I've played characters of all gender and sexuality combinations (straight, gay, bi, asexual), except for a bisexual male. Unless discovering a trap and going "...I'd still hit that" counts.

IC romance is not for every group, or every game. But when it works, it can add a lot of fun to the sessions.

That is one quirk I have in my roleplaying. Every character I have ever played has been straight whether they were male or female.

The closest I ever came was a character that was changed from male to female and stayed that way. I used the premise that sexuality is not determined by environment and upbringing and is strongly influenced by genetics, brain chemestry, what have you. The character was a straight male so when the transformation occured I had it stay straight.

It was kind of fun portraying a character that was sort of rakish skirt chaser changed into a female and slowly begin to realize that his/her body was forcing decidedly different urges on him/her.

Almost two decades later this character is still female and has long ago accepted what her body tells her and is married to another player's character and they have six kids.

Solaris
2012-05-08, 04:01 PM
Well, this is a bit redundant, but here's a test for you:

How many people, in this thread, could you figure out was male or female solely through their mannerisms, making all terms gender-neutral and and removing admitted genders.

Bad test. It lacks body language and action. I've observed females are a little more likely to use emoticons (especially middle-aged females as compared to middle-aged and young adult males), but that's really about it. In meatspace, a lot of the times a man and a woman have completely different ways of doing the same thing. Speech is often nearly identical, but body language is not.
That, I think, is one of the problems with cross-gendered roleplaying outside of text environment. Either you don't act like the opposite gender, and the character is essentially genderless, or you do and it bugs your fellow players. The "Male playing female" is much more controversial because... well, I think bokodasu was right. Most behavior defaults to male in perception, so it's not unnatural to see 'male' behavior in a female - whereas 'female' behavior on a male starts wandering towards the Uncanny Valley.

Yora
2012-05-08, 04:10 PM
In meatspace, a lot of the times a man and a woman have completely different ways of doing the same thing. Speech is often nearly identical, but body language is not.
Which is why you will never see any transsexuals passing you in the street. Gender-attributed body language is really easy to emulate, if you know what you are doing. And once the brain attributed a gender to a peson, it will desperately try anything it can to not allow anything to challenge that attribution.
So yeah, if you already have attributed a gender to a person and then see the person emulating traits you associate with a different gender, that can really weird out your brain.

Guran
2012-05-08, 04:37 PM
I remember a time long past. If I remember correctly, I was about 8 or 10 years old when a was in a local store to buy a brand new game for my playstation with my mothers money. (Hey, I was a kid.) The only problem was that I couldn't make up my mind wether I would by Tomb Raider or Doom. Doom was a cool game, but the graphics were lame and I could play it on the computer my grandparents had. Tomb Raider looked awesome but... Yuck, you had to play... A... A... A woman:smalleek:
Eventually I grew over it.

Today, half my party plays female characters. All 6 of us are male irl, meaning that 3 of us (me included) play a female. Although my character considers the lesbian barbarian more as a male. Trust me, we can't blame her.
In the beginning she was a little bitchy and frustrated. (Hey, she was longshotted from another dimension to this weird place she knows nothing about, with more colour then she knew and filled with weird creatures. Meanwhile she knows that her attempt to return home WILL result in her death. So its understandable that she was a little snappy in the beginning. Later she grew slowly on a more softer and caring role, choosing to protecting the people she is putting up travelling with.
It is not creepy at all. I never had to remind my party members that my character is female. I won't say that I can perfectly roleplay the opposite gender. But in the end you can only roleplay as good as you can and have fun doing so as much as you can. Thats what it is all about.

Although, I believe the guy playing the ranger thought it kinda creepy when my character developed a little crush on him.

Thialfi
2012-05-08, 04:47 PM
Another thing I have wondered about on this topic is what effect the Dungeons and Dragons world would have on feminine behavior? We are talking about a fantasy world where there are no physical distinctions between men and women. The average female is not weaker or less athletically gifted than the average male. Would societal conventions have developed on those worlds as they have developed here?

Othesemo
2012-05-08, 04:56 PM
Dislike. I really don't have any good way of getting into 'the female mindset,' so I avoid it out of a desire to roleplay well. Meanwhile, every other guy that I've seen play a girl has, at one point or another, casually offered sexual favors as a bribe.

In short, I consider it something best left untried.

I don't have much experience with girls roleplaying guys, though. In the one case that I've had (I'm DMing it now), the character is pretty much androgynous. The player isn't a particularly intuitive roleplayer, so it doesn't really come up.

Severus
2012-05-08, 04:57 PM
This comes up all the time in forums, and it has never really made any sense to me except as a male hangup about homosexuality. (The idea that the male who is creeped out by it has some kind of sexual thought that might involve another guy.)

I mean really, elves, orcs, dwarves, and whatever are all cool, but the opposite gender isn't?

Craft (Cheese)
2012-05-08, 05:02 PM
Bad test. It lacks body language and action. I've observed females are a little more likely to use emoticons (especially middle-aged females as compared to middle-aged and young adult males), but that's really about it. In meatspace, a lot of the times a man and a woman have completely different ways of doing the same thing. Speech is often nearly identical, but body language is not.

Sortof my point. If you remove the factor of being able to see and hear the character (unless you're talking about larping with costumes and everything, which is a whole nother ball game) gender basically disappears unless you make the character a complete stereotype.

Righteous Doggy
2012-05-08, 05:05 PM
This comes up all the time in forums, and it has never really made any sense to me except as a male hangup about homosexuality. (The idea that the male who is creeped out by it has some kind of sexual thought that might involve another guy.)

I mean really, elves, orcs, dwarves, and whatever are all cool, but the opposite gender isn't?

Erm... you may need to go into more detail. I didn't understand what you just said X3. And I haven't seen it on this forum yet, google search got me nothing, so I figured I'd go ahead and ask the forum.

Are you saying... that people hate it becuase theres something about sexuality related to it? because I disagree. I don't think anyones brought that up even. And someone already pointed out that there aren't any dwarves, nor orcs, nor elves irl, but there certainly are male and female humans!:smalltongue:

Knaight
2012-05-08, 05:05 PM
I really don't get why this is an issue. Sure, if you are trying to play A Woman (TM), instead of a complex character who is, among other things, a woman you're going to have issues, but that should never come up given basic competence. In practice, I've seen this come up as an issue all of once, and that was when a teenage male decided to play a nymphomaniac lesbian, with all the class one would expect given the previous half of this sentence.

Also, for those who find people playing characters of the opposite gender odd: What about the GM? Are all of the NPCs in the game one gender?

Righteous Doggy
2012-05-08, 05:11 PM
Also, for those who find people playing characters of the opposite gender odd: What about the GM? Are all of the NPCs in the game one gender?

I should probably point out that when opposite genders come up its 3rd person suddenly or I leave the room highly disturbed by the lusty barmaid having the single most horrifying voice I've ever heard.

shimmercat
2012-05-08, 05:15 PM
I play male characters about 75% of the time. Quite simply, there are some tropes that just work better with one gender or the other. And then there are some tropes that are completely gender-neutral. I think sometimes men forget that "WOMAN" is not a trope/valid character concept. If your entire character concept is "I'm playing a chick!" then yeah, it could be creepy.

I like to poke my husband to play women sometimes. Right now, he's playing a banker/mafia princess who has a head for numbers and likes making savvy business decisions. She likes nice things, and likes money. The character could have been just fine as a man, but by specifically deciding to make her a woman, my husband gets to play with how she can use traditional gender roles to get her way -- note I said GENDER ROLES, and not SEXUAL FAVORS.

Pick your character's gender consciously, without defaulting to male or female, but instead using it to enhance your character concept.

Averis Vol
2012-05-08, 05:48 PM
absolute funniest time i've had with this situation was when the spellsword and a random NPC barwench had to flirt. they tried so hard to avoid that confrontation, but my brother just kept egging it on, saying "no, this is happening, hans you flirt with your brother" :smallbiggrin: it made me fall to the floor and cry. sadly it was only once i got to see both of them that uncomfortable, the barwench he hit on got axed by the half ogre jack the ripper that night.

EccentricCircle
2012-05-08, 06:07 PM
I tend to play whatever gender feels most appropriate for the character. Roleplaying is about doing things that you can't do in reality, be that wield awesome arcane power (impossible), lie, cheat and steal from everyone around you (illegal) or play a character of a different gender. Playing a copy of yourself in a fantasy setting is never going to be as interesting as playing someone you are not. I like to deliberately challenge myself, for example by playing against alignment. In real life i'm very lawful so playing a chaotic character is an excellent way to explore a different part of the human condition. In the campaign i'm currently playing in I decided to play a cleric, because I have no religious beliefs in real life and wanted to get into the mind of a deeply religious person for a change. I don't see playing a female character any differnet to playing a dwarven character. Its simply another way to create someone who thinks and behaves in a different way to myself. Years of DMing have made me perfectly comfortable playing just about anyone of any race, gender or alignment. I can see that if you don't have the most visual of minds then imagining the bearded man across the table as a blond woman might be tricky, but i'd say no more tricky than imagining him as a cleanshaven knight with a suit of mail instead of a jumper, or a bald orc warrior who is twice as tall as he is in real life with his face crisscrossed with scars.
The only time i've not been that comfortable playing a female character was when the DM announced that the first session of the campaign took place when we were seven. I'm happy playing a woman, as stereotypes not withstanding I actually know quite a lot of women, but I was a bit at a loss as to how to play a little girl without her becoming completely stereotyped and unbelievable. I can remember being a boy, but at the time girls were strange eldritch abominations from the other side of the classroom with whom no one who valued their sanity would consort.

shimmercat
2012-05-08, 06:41 PM
Thumbsup for EccentricCircle, as I agree with all of that.

I came back because I had some more thoughts on this issue:

There is nothing (inherently) wrong with playing a character that you find sexually attractive. This doesn't mean that it's cool to play your porn fantasy, like the aforementioned teenage boy and the nymphomaniac lesbian. But I'm aware that the reason I tend to play men is because I like playing characters I'm attracted to, and I'm a het woman. And I've done commissions for many people who are RPing characters who are mildly sexualized, and I am pretty sure that these characters are designed to be attractive to the player. Sexuality isn't necessarily a bad thing, even in RP. Assuming that the cardinal rule is observed: your character's gender and sexuality is secondary to the character's personality. (It can be influential, even crucial, but it should never be the entire concept.)

And a thought as to why it can be important: Putting yourself in another person's shoes helps you to empathize with them. It can help highlight prejudices you didn't know you had. It can force you out of your comfort zone. It can be HARD to play someone unlike yourself, especially without lapsing into stereotypes. But perhaps BECAUSE it is hard, it's a good thing to do.

Darth Stabber
2012-05-08, 07:10 PM
Since I spend most of my RPG time behind the GM's screen, I have to do both, and I have no issue doing so. That being said I have a firm "no romantic subplot with NPCs" rule, because I really don't want to deal with it. This rule applies even if I am dating one of the players, fair is fair after all. My NPCs are probably disproportinately male, but I don't really care, I pretty much treat gender as a purely asthetic property, and I really can't fake all that many distinct female voices. Of my 5 current players (2female 3male) I have one player crossplaying, one of the male players is playing a female halfling assassin, and I haven't noticed any of the commonly complained about issues, she's just sneaky, stab happy, and sarcastic (of course all of them are stab happy and sarcastic to varying degrees, it's an evil campaign after all).

As far as when I actually used to play, most of the time male, just because even with being a weird non-human I just default to my own gender. I have played female characters a couple times, never the stereotypical hypersexualized elf chicks, once as a samurai (L5R Crab Bushi), and another time as a dread necromancer who was entirely too focused on aquiring power and honoring we jas to have any interest in any other character other than the benefits of traveling with 3 heavily armed individuals.

valadil
2012-05-08, 08:50 PM
Well, this is a bit redundant, but here's a test for you:

How many people, in this thread, could you figure out was male or female solely through their mannerisms, making all terms gender-neutral and and removing admitted genders.

In this thread, none. In a 4+ hour game session it might be different. Over the course of a campaign I'd hope to have a few educated guesses.

Incidentally an early version of the Turing test was based on something like this. IIRC it was called the imitation game. A judge spoke to a computer and a person through a chat room. The person was supposed to assure the judge of their own gender. The computer was supposed to convince the judge the other person was of the opposite gender. The computer won if the judge was convinced.

Shadowknight12
2012-05-08, 08:55 PM
Another thing I have wondered about on this topic is what effect the Dungeons and Dragons world would have on feminine behavior? We are talking about a fantasy world where there are no physical distinctions between men and women. The average female is not weaker or less athletically gifted than the average male. Would societal conventions have developed on those worlds as they have developed here?

Probably the same, because a lot (though admittedly not all) of societal roles are not really about women being weaker, but about women being more valuable. A man is expendable, a woman, being the child-bearing gender, is not. A relation male to female of 1:100 is perfectly fine (biologically speaking), because that means many children, albeit all of them from the same father. An inverse relation bodes very ill for the population, since a woman before the advent of medicine (or magic) was not very likely to survive many consecutive childbirths, especially as she got older, or if her nutrition wasn't adequate (especially since each childbirth drained a woman's calcium, B12, folate and iron reserves, primarily, predisposing her to loosing teeth, breaking bones, and suffering from pancytopaenia, and especially anaemia, which predisposed them to haemorrhages and infections).

This would lead prehistoric societies to keep women away from harm, predisposing gender roles similar to the ones we currently have. The more women there are, the less competition there is between males and the less childbirths each women must endure to sustain the population (which means overall less debilitated women). This favours the view of women as delicate and housebound home-makers, the idea of harems as being socially acceptable, and the view of men as being the ones holding most of the power because they're the ones making the decisions and gathering the resources under their banner while women are kept away from such things.

The only way this could be avoided is by fixing the nutrition problem somehow (meaning women do not get progressively weaker with every childbirth), removing the debilitating effects of pregnancy, and increasing fertility so much (especially birthing several children at once) that losing women to accidents/wars/etc. would not be too detrimental to any given group.


There is nothing (inherently) wrong with playing a character that you find sexually attractive.

I should hope so, or else bisexuals wouldn't be allowed to play at any table... :smallbiggrin:

Katana_Geldar
2012-05-08, 09:18 PM
I've had a guy roleplaying a girl and a girl roleplaying a guy in the same game, and they seriously screwed with the DM's head when they started flirting.

Sturmcrow
2012-05-08, 09:28 PM
I have seen to many older creepy guys playing oversexualized females with little to no clothing, just saying.

I have played a female character a time or two. My first chance at 4E I played a female Warlock in search of her brother, who had gone adventuring never to return. I used a mini that was wizardly looking but had a hood and mask. My character refused to share their tent and mostly spoke in a whisper. I let it slip a few months after the game had died out and people were shocked the character had been a lady. I felt like I had done my job right.

The character being a female was not important, I just decided on a whim that it would be a girl instead of a boy. I tried not to let it make a difference in my roleplay.

Lord_Gareth
2012-05-08, 09:31 PM
I'm male, but I almost exclusively roleplay female characters. I don't really know why; it's pretty much always been true of me, and I feel no particular pull to change genders IRL or otherwise express feminine traits that I'm not already expressing. I've flirted with every end of the spectrum from the teenage fantasy characters (when I was a teenager, predictably) to asexuals to misandrists, but the majority of my characters have always been just...people.

One thing I might advise trying sometime is playing a character that is inherently genderless (like a Warforged) but trying to 'become' a gender or understand it. Much like, say, Gladys the Golem in Discworld, it can be interesting to roleplay an outsider to the gender divide attempting to 'pick a side' and struggling to understand it. For extra challenge, do it as your own gender without making the 'transition' too easily.

Righteous Doggy
2012-05-08, 09:44 PM
I've had a guy roleplaying a girl and a girl roleplaying a guy in the same game, and they seriously screwed with the DM's head when they started flirting.

I can assure you, I've seen far worse. We had someone in the group I've been in longest who adores playing theatrics with mentally deranged characters. He'll flirt with you and infer that the body snatcher is more than willing to make life interesting whether you like it or not. He has a rather disturbing set of voices for females too. In one campaign he played a body snatcher who was preparing my character as his next corpse and he would switch corpses and ask me which one I liked best. Squick eh... I was going to set up burning down that characters house and every corpse with it and his main body locked in the basement, too bad it ended early.

Righteous Doggy
2012-05-08, 09:45 PM
I'm male, but I almost exclusively roleplay female characters. I don't really know why; it's pretty much always been true of me, and I feel no particular pull to change genders IRL or otherwise express feminine traits that I'm not already expressing. I've flirted with every end of the spectrum from the teenage fantasy characters (when I was a teenager, predictably) to asexuals to misandrists, but the majority of my characters have always been just...people.

Well if they're just people, why not change the F to an M on our little sheets? Do you roleplay that you characters have voices or actions that differ from you irl? I would think, I'm curious!

Lord_Gareth
2012-05-08, 09:51 PM
Well if they're just people, why not change the F to an M on our little sheets? Do you roleplay that you characters have voices or actions that differ from you irl? I would think, I'm curious!

Often the gender's not all that important and the character just happens to pop into my head female. Sometimes I do take up different voices or mannerisms and I very, very often take up different ideological stances for my characters than my own, often as a way of trying to explore that stance or method of living.

For other characters, gender becomes slightly more important, especially in Changeling, where a big theme of the game is an attempt to reclaim at least part of your humanity when you have become distinctly inhuman. There's been some characters in other systems where it's been more important than others, either because the character herself was playing to a stereotype (a Shadowrun mage with a cursed breast window that reflected bullets) or another reason. I can provide examples if you'd like some - I could always use the critique anyway.

Snowbluff
2012-05-08, 09:53 PM
IC romance is not for every group, or every game. But when it works, it can add a lot of fun to the sessions.

I'll take your word for it. I did it once and I think I developed several psychological disorders from the resulting relationship. :smallfurious:

I've roleplayed woman before, mostly when someone complains about the lack of woman in the group and wants to fill the gap. I uphold my femininity about as much as I uphold my masculinity with my male characters. Which is too say, hardly at all. I'm rather androgynous IRL, so my gender has really no effect on my playstyle. Romance is a no-go for me now, so my sex never comes up.

I've seen it done poorly, and it's bad. Like, even worse that one druid in my group who did nothing but try and sabotage the teams efforts.

Righteous Doggy
2012-05-08, 10:10 PM
I'll take your word for it. I did it once and I think I developed several psychological disorders from the resulting relationship. :smallfurious:

Huh, thats interesting. I'm sure thats a big long messy story involving lots of craziness(I tried to murder my last in IC romance personally). Anyways, I don't think pride with gender would have anything to do with it. Its all just a game.
I think the closest I've seen it ruin a game is someone overdoing the snob angle for their character. Almost had to kill him over a small disagreement, about how he almost got himself munched and disliked my character saving his her.

@Gareth Then its dependant on how you see the life of others and lets you see deeper into it? Cool way to see it.

Snowbluff
2012-05-08, 10:21 PM
Huh, thats interesting. I'm sure thats a big long messy story involving lots of craziness. Anyways, I don't think pride with gender would have anything to do with it. Its all just a game.
I think the closest I've seen it ruin a game is someone overdoing the snob angle for their character. Almost had to kill him over a small disagreement, about how he almost got himself munched and disliked my character saving his her.

Uh, it was about romance, not gender. It is messy, with let things in game stay in game being something to take away from it while at the same time wouldn't of helped me and her. :smalleek:

As for roleplaying, the last thing you want to do is be too stubborn. Get yourself too dug into a character at the expense of the party is going to piss someone off.

UrsielHauke
2012-05-08, 11:01 PM
It's very easy for a guy to play a female character if you're at least a semi-decent roleplayer: think of her as a person first, not a girl first, and avoid ridiculous stereotypes. That doesn't mean you can't play a character who's mostly defined by her feminity, or one that likes to sleep around, or a man-hating misandrist: but your character should have a reason why she is like that, and there should be more to her than just that one facet. Make her a believable three-dimensional character, not a paper cutout. And, like with all RP, make sure you don't play something other players would find uncomfortable or offensive.


I couldn't agree more. Personally, I play male and female characters about equally, and the two separate groups with whom I play regularly (in which there is some overlap) are both heavily RP-focused, as opposed to rules, combat, et.al. Personally, I think this is a huge advantage, as everypony at the table makes an effort to really get to know each other's characters on a very deep level, and hence, forgetting the gender of a character has never really happened (outside of maybe the first session or two of a campaign, when there hasn't been a whole lot of character interaction yet). Two of the four characters I play regularly with these groups in our different campaigns are female, two male, not really out of any advanced planning on my part, but rather I just thought it better suited the character concept in those cases, and vice versa for my two male characters in these campaigns. Stereotypes aren't really needed in these games, as we all actively try to know each other's characters by name, face, and personality. Once you really start to get into character, at least in my experience, you don't need to worry about stereotyping and gender confusion and can really get into playing the subtler nuances of your character, whatever that may be.

DragonTrainer
2012-05-08, 11:54 PM
The two times I played a character of the opposite gender, I was playing a character of my own gender at the same time. The first time around, I made my two characters childhood friends. One character was a bard/rogue who was all about using disguises and conning people. The other character was a ranger/fighter who wished to become the strongest swordsman in the world and had a lust for battle, but was also way to honest. Here, it was a bit easier to roleplay since it was a forum campaign. Since I had both a male and female character, it didn't feel all that awkard to be playing as someone of the opposite gender. The bard/rogue liked to share embarrasing childhood stories with the rest of the party. The ranger/fighter reprimanded the bard/rogue for stirring up trouble everywhere they went.

The second time around, our party desperately needed a wizard, so I made a second character who was the opposite-gendered fraternal twin of my first character, a monk. The monk I attempted to play as a harshly honest idiot who'd charge in and punch the humongous sand dragon in the face. The wizard, I played as someone who was a bit more on the rational side. I also made one twin overprotective of the other twin, which the other players joked about inappropriately. >_>

Huh... I feel like, instead of playing gender stereotypes, I ended up playing class stereotypes... ah well. ^_^

Avilan the Grey
2012-05-09, 01:00 AM
Well, one day someone in our group said "I feel like I should play a woman now" so we had a female elf paladin of the unicorn goddess... Which changed nothing aside from a few vulgar comments when he thought it was a good time to crack a vulgar joke. There wasn't alot of roleplaying in that group becuase the kids were more interested in the ransacking and pillaging than talking with npcs.

Well first of all, as you see now I changed my text above... the last sentence should be "GOOD" not "bad".

Anyway, some people can handle it, some people are even more comfortable playing a character of the opposite gender, and some just freak out one way or another.
The worst case scenario is when both the GM and the player are too immature to handle a situation.

dehro
2012-05-09, 01:01 AM
there's another reason, I just realized, why I don't intentionally play female characters.
I don't do voices.
ever.
Not even when I was telling bedtime stories to my little brother and sister, back in the day of bedtime stories.
I'm no good at it, don't like doing it and feel silly when I try.
Now that works fine when you occasionally tell someone a short story and don't really have to do it all the time..but playing a female character for hours on end, at least once a week, with my voice.. it would, in the end, just be silly and doesn't quite feel right.
So whenever I'm playing pen and paper versions of the game and voicing my characters, they're male. So far I've never been a DM either..so I haven't needed it.
online is a different kettle of fish. I've been a DM, played characters of both genders and had no issue with it... it's text based anyway. Videogames too, when there's a female character to play..yeah, why not?

Avilan the Grey
2012-05-09, 01:08 AM
Dislike. I really don't have any good way of getting into 'the female mindset,' so I avoid it out of a desire to roleplay well. Meanwhile, every other guy that I've seen play a girl has, at one point or another, casually offered sexual favors as a bribe.

The Female Mindset is overrated. Or rather, we are far more alike than women's magazines wants us to believe.


Another thing I have wondered about on this topic is what effect the Dungeons and Dragons world would have on feminine behavior? We are talking about a fantasy world where there are no physical distinctions between men and women. The average female is not weaker or less athletically gifted than the average male. Would societal conventions have developed on those worlds as they have developed here?

This is something that has bothered me a bit since I started playing AD&D: On one hand this is repeated over and over, but on the other hand almost all females you meet are farmer's wives, house wives or other traditional female roles, with a few women in chainmail bikinis thrown in.

The thing, though, is that it is hard to know; there is truly no signs in the pre-made D&D worlds that the society has developed to be completely gender equal already from the start.

Righteous Doggy
2012-05-09, 01:15 AM
The Female Mindset is overrated. Or rather, we are far more alike than women's magazines wants us to believe.

*points to your gender under avatar* Your statement is confusing...

I don't get the whole sexual favors angle, can guys not do this as well? Its hard to say no to a wizard... No really, he has way to many spells that say otherwise!

Shadowknight12
2012-05-09, 01:19 AM
I don't get the whole sexual favors angle, can guys not do this as well? Its hard to say no to a wizard... No really, he has way to many spells that say otherwise!

I've played my fair share of satyrs. Sexual favours are the way they say hello. I've also played Heartwarders a couple of times. They literally have to kiss people to buff them, so I checked with the players if they had a problem with that, they said no, and even rolled with it, so there was plenty of kissing whenever a battle was coming up.

To be honest, the whole sexual angle has been waaaaaay more common when it comes to males in my personal experience.

Avilan the Grey
2012-05-09, 01:20 AM
*points to your gender under avatar* Your statement is confusing...

I don't get the whole sexual favors angle, can guys not do this as well? Its hard to say no to a wizard... No really, he has way to many spells that say otherwise!

I told you I prefer to play female characters. Urzul, my female orc mage / thief from Skyrim is my present avatar. And yes, I am a guy.

As a side note... Sexual favors by males? I assume you mean to females? Depends on the setting I guess (see my post above).

Ajadea
2012-05-09, 01:24 AM
I kind of let the characters write themselves. My RL group was pretty much incapable of dealing with crossplaying (most of the time forgetting that my character was supposed to be a guy), so I do end up playing more females than males. Most of the time, it's just a mental image thing - if the character is conceptualized as one gender, I cannot suddenly genderswap it.

Ryu_Bonkosi
2012-05-09, 01:30 AM
I have done it, but only to try to broaden my roleplaying skills. It was a serious character, which I think is the only way to do it, and it wasn't that bad. If you try to do voices, and you can't do them well, it just detracts from the character as a whole. If a player wants to play the busty elf who wants to sleep with every NPC they meet, shoot that character down with a 50 caliber machine gun. But if they want a character who actually has a personality that isn't bimbo, and are willing to work at character development, I say it's no problem.

Xzeno
2012-05-09, 01:31 AM
I'm in pretty much the same boat as Lord Gareth. I've pretty much always played female characters. This is more strongly present in video games (where I am almost always female given the choice, and moreover, irked when not given the choice when I feel I should have it), but I also play about half of my table top characters as female. To be honest, I'd probably be female more often, but the groups I play with are already pretty skeptical of my half-and-half style.

Now, unlike Lord Gareth, I know exactly why I prefer female characters. At least I think I do. One day, my brother played Pokemon Crystal. There was only one save, so I never got to really play it, but sometimes I'd start up a game and play through for a while without saving. Now, I was usually with him when he played, and he was usually with me when I played. So I had already indirectly experienced his choices. Therefore, in order to maximize play experience, I tried to diversify my choices when possible. I chose a different starter and played as a girl where he was a boy. Diversity of a shared experience was the rationale that went through my 9 year old mind. And from there it sorta... stuck. It honestly feels weird roleplaying a male character at this point. Not because I don't know how, I'm just mentally conditioned to associate the act of roleplaying with roleplaying a woman. Funny how these little things affect us.

Now, it's been mentioned a few times in this thread, but I feel like it bares mentioning again: the whole female character played by a male is a lesbian thing. Well, first, I'm going to be honest: in video games with romance subplots with a lesbian option, that's the one I invariably choose. If it's not an option, I often opt to remain unromanced. You see, I like lesbians. Like most things human, though, that's not a simple taste or a mere base urge. That's a whole super complex issue that I don't really need to get into here. In D&D, if it ever comes up and isn't important (I try to make it neither), I roll for my character's sexuality. Like a boss. All my that have received a roll came out straight. I have two lesbians, though. One's sexuality was important, as her "tragic flaw" was that she traded ultimate power for true love (because she was selfish and weak), although that would have worked with a male or a female romantic interest. The other one was a raging orc barbarian, who didn't do much beyond angst about pacifism. She was kinda fun.

But despite those characters, I do most of my roleplaying behind the screen. Now, this is the part where I felt like I was vaguely insightful instead of just rambling about my personal life. When I'm DMing, I of course RP characters of all genders. I also see a lot of PCs of all genders. Weird thing is, when I DM, I often feel like gender is a much more central aspect of who the character is. Which is because gender is one of the primary ways my players will identify a character. PCs want to understand the motivations of who they're dealing with in any way they can (short of paying attention, of course). To them, a female is fundamentally different from a male no matter how I play her. They will interact with her as an example of her gender, no matter how she acts, and because of that, she, as a character, needs to react to that. An encounter can go completely differently with basically the same NPC based on the gender.

Not that my PCs are naturally misogynists or shallow. They're just a hell of a lot less invested in the three-dimensionality of NPCs than they are their own characters. Basically, because PCs are the filter through which the campaign is perceived, NPCs are more commonly gendered than fellow PCs.

When I say "gendered" I mean it as an active verb describing something done to someone or something. To gender in this context mean to apply gender-associated attributes to someone or something. That is, a female NPC will follow X course of action because such a course of action is favored by female NPCs.

And this is the tricky part: maybe the PCs are right on this. Subconciously, I may be using stereotypes and mental shorthands to create NPCs on the fly. Maybe I don't mean to, but my NPCs do share key traits that are correlated with race, class, or gender. But I feel like a lot of it is based on the PCs. A female has to deal with a set of "female" issues because that's what the PCs give her. Maybe it's only my PCs, but it seems more likely that I'm forwarding a view that "gender" is formed not by biological sex, but by how others interact with biological sex in a social context.

As for people playing genders insultingly, I've never had that pro- oh wait one of my PCs' female characters always try to seduce any females the player assumes are attractive, constantly attempts to seduce enemies of any gender and dresses provocatively. But that's not him RPing female characters wrong. That's him being a wretched little monster. He does that with any ol' character, regardless of gender. He's actually a really fun guy to play with. He wants to have fun, and he's the type of person who really enjoys helping other people enjoy themselves. He always injects a contextually appropriate, and he's on of the few who really enjoys my style of describing combat (I DM like I'm trying to improv God of War/Saw crossover fanfic).

My post now ends with no sort of conclusion statement. Oh: Gender is a social construct, and this remains true around the table. The social rules that construct it just change a little. And... yeah. That's my ill-informed opinion, anyway.

Avilan the Grey
2012-05-09, 01:47 AM
Wall Of Text

I wouldn't say it's a "lesbian" thing per se; but I am far more picky in CRPGs about male love interests for my female characters; one of the few I like was Alistair from DA:O. Another is Garrus from ME2. If I don't go with those two I always go... that other way. Maybe it's because most writers are male, but I find most male love interests either bore me or irks me.

For me, honestly, part of it is my love for female super heroes (I only subscribe to female heroes comic books), which also carries over well to say sorceresses, female paladins or Fem!Shep.

VeliciaL
2012-05-09, 01:52 AM
Well my experience is a bit different from most playgrounders or roleplayers I think :P For me at least, being able to roleplay a feminine persona online was very integral to me working out my gender identity issues and coming to grips with being trans. It allowed me to discover just how much more natural that came to me, versus just how forced my day-to-day masculine presentation was (and still is, for that matter). I can still RP men of course; as has been pointed out, you're playing a person, not a gender steriotype. But, without that outlet to allow me to explore something I might not have gotten a chance to otherwise, I'd probably still be profoundly unhappy with myself.

I will admit, it's quite a bit different online vs. in voice or at the table. I still have a hard time RPing out loud since I'm so used to doing it through a keyboard.

Aeryr
2012-05-09, 02:08 AM
In this thread, none. In a 4+ hour game session it might be different. Over the course of a campaign I'd hope to have a few educated guesses.

For what is worth, 2cp.

English is really funny in that regard. In English most words don't have a gender. That can be annoying, I have had so many troubles IRL when someone refers to a third person (unknown to me and not present) as friend. But is awesome when playing a character with its gender not deffined, you cannot do that in my language, ever.

Dexam
2012-05-09, 02:41 AM
Personally, I tend to start with a simple two- or three-word character concept and as I develop the personality and background, I go with the gender that "feels" right for that character. So far this has been roughly about 30% female characters.

Speaking strictly from an in real life at the table perspective, I tend to find that the group of people I'm playing with will influence my decision to play a male or female character. Currently I play D&D with two separate groups. In one group, I'm the second eldest player; in the other group I'm the third youngest (the two youngest being the teenage son of one player and the teenage daughter of another).

Strangely (or perhaps not?), the younger group are far more accepting (and even encouraging) of players having characters of the opposing gender - in fact, one of my more memorable characters in that group was female (to this day, just mentioning her name will invoke good-natured cries for vengence and muttered epitaphs cursing her, but that's another story).

The group of older players... I tried once to introduce a female character to the game, and some of them thought it rather odd that I would want to play a woman. The teenage boy and his father flat-out asked me "why would you want to play a girl?". I responded with "What, you think that girls can't just be as awesome as guys? Try telling <X> [boy's mother and wife of the older player] that and see what happens...". What was worse, all of them (the DM and other players) continuously forgot that I was playing a female character. I had to remind them several times per 3-4 hour session that my character was a woman. It was extremely frustrating to the point that when the party was TPK'd, I made the conscious decision then not to play any more female characters with that group.

That said, my current character got killed last session, and one of the replacement character concepts I've got brewing is shaping up as female in my mind... it's been about three years since I first tried, and we've had a change of DM, so maybe it's worth another shot at introducing a female character played by a guy? I might raise the topic with the DM and group at the next game.

Silus
2012-05-09, 05:58 AM
For me, it all depends on the character concept.

I've got me a Varisian Half-Elf Dawnflower Dervish as my current Pathfinder Society character. They're based off of the stereotypical gypsy look and wield a scimitar. Now, which has a better mental picture: A male dancing about the battlefield, or a female?

Honestly, I went with the female as the mental visual is better IMO.

Dwarf anything? Male. Fighters/Barbarians? Male. Paladin? Can go either way depending on the background.

Unless I'm involved with someone in the group (Happened once. She and I ended up playing our characters in a very Honeymooner fashion) I usually play my character in a very non-sexual, uninterested way. Helps avoid the awkward moments.

Jay R
2012-05-09, 06:10 AM
When I was setting up a game of Flashing Blades, one of my (female) players pointed out that the backgrounds (Noble, Gentlemen, Soldier, Rogue) only allowed true freedom of action to men. Of course, that's part of the seventeenth century background, but it still made it difficult for her.

I invented a new class (Actor) out of the only background I knew of at that time that allowed freedom of action to single women.

Avilan the Grey
2012-05-09, 06:18 AM
When I was setting up a game of Flashing Blades, one of my (female) players pointed out that the backgrounds (Noble, Gentlemen, Soldier, Rogue) only allowed true freedom of action to men. Of course, that's part of the seventeenth century background, but it still made it difficult for her.

I invented a new class (Actor) out of the only background I knew of at that time that allowed freedom of action to single women.

Well one would be Pirate, but that is hard to do in Europe, of course. Also women could be craftsmen and owning companies; in fact it was expected that say a blacksmith's wife took over as the new blacksmith if her husband died. Not that it is as "cool" as "rogue" of course :smallbiggrin:

DarkEternal
2012-05-09, 06:33 AM
I don't like it. It feels unnaturals, somewhat creepy and very odd to say at the very least. I know it's roleplaying, and I know that people are playing various creatures that don't even exist, but for some reason that doesn't bug me. Personally, I always play a male character, be it in a computer game or in a p'n'p surrounding. Still, to each his own I guess.

Jack of Spades
2012-05-09, 08:10 AM
I tend to play males, but that's because most tropes seem to click better for me as my own gender-- a bit of externalization that I'm not going to attempt to deny. However, playing cross-gender is on my list of things to do as a roleplayer.

As for those I play with, most of the girls I game with play each gender about 50-50, and most of the guys stick to their gender at least 95% of the time. However, I have one of those groups where all but two or three people tend to play the same archetype over and over again. The two "males" I know who consistently play females are an early stage MtF transexual, and a guy who plays stereotypical preteen girls because he finds it to be a hilarious contrast with his out of character six and a half foot two hundred fifty pound self. It turns out about as well as you'd expect. However, I'd still take the shrieking preteen ditz over the guy who only ever plays mage-in-search-of-ultimate-arcane-power any day. But that's just me.

DigoDragon
2012-05-09, 08:21 AM
the majority of my characters have always been just...people.

I think THAT right there is the proper mindset. :smallsmile:
I've run RPGs for years and I believe that a character's "starting equipment" is just a minor component to the overall character. There's a huge spectrum of personalities, quirks, mannerisms, and idioms that I think more defines the character.

My wife plays exclusively female characters. Her wild western character will often get complimented on her lady-like manners, but then the guys in the group will keep accidently refering to her fantasy warrior as a man. It's all on how my wife plays the personalities.
So, with all that being said, I think it's fine for someone to play the opposite gender. The trick is to play the character as a person.

Krotchrot
2012-05-09, 08:59 AM
Myself have not played a female character in a pen&paper game, certainly in MMO's do I role Female about half the time. For me its how things fit in place. I know most MMO's are guilty of the "chain bikini" gear, I perfer to look for how the Armor actually Fits on the avatar. Does it look realistic on a Male or Female? How about Casting animations, btter Male or Female? Or do I have a concept with my character in my head. I may not be on an RP realm, but that doesn't mean that when I'm soloing I'm not thinking of how my character interacts with his world. It's one of the reasons I am starting to find my love of the Elder Scrolls games. I like the power hungry mage that burns everything in sight.

In my troupes Live Action games I as well don't play females. Mostly because I don't want to shave my glorious beard off. We have plenty of males that play Females, and can pull off the look very well.

Man on Fire
2012-05-09, 09:11 AM
If I play a half-orc as being too dumb to properly use pronouns, there aren't any real-world orcs to get their panties in a twist. If I play a woman whose only contribution to the party is offering to sleep with anybody who has something she wants, real-life females and anybody who knows real-life females will be rightly icked out. It's not the inherent "dude, he's playing a she!" that's icky. It's the way that it's so often done horribly, adolescently wrong.

1) If you invent new races you can apply the stereotypes to, it's still racism
2) If people wouldn't try doing something because other people failed at doing it, we would still be living in caves.

I'll tell you about my experiences with playing girls, but in parts - every time I tried doing it in one post, my computer crashed.

bokodasu
2012-05-09, 10:30 AM
I like to poke my husband to play women sometimes.

Oh, I'd forgotten about that one - there was a game where my husband played a female half-orc holy warrior (she'd been found as an infant and raised in a monastery of some sort) and I was a male tinker gnome who'd been kicked out of his clan for falling in love with and eventually marrying said half-orc. It was a great campaign that died sadly too soon, and I think we both did really well playing them. (I have actually stolen his character and ported it to other systems for one-shots, she's very flavorful. Mine is closer to the typical sort of character I play, so I don't use him much.)


This is something that has bothered me a bit since I started playing AD&D: On one hand this is repeated over and over, but on the other hand almost all females you meet are farmer's wives, house wives or other traditional female roles, with a few women in chainmail bikinis thrown in.

It's like sci-fi where the superadvanced technology means the women only have to push a button to call their husbands at work to ask what he'd like for dinner, and then a second button to fix it. Somehow the idea that technological changes might change current gender relations is totally out of the question.

Or, ugh, like one Dragon article I'm thinking about that actually made me really angry (although I did wind up using some of the actual items from it in my current campaign). There's some powerful wizard, who is also married to another powerful wizard, and yet the stuff he creates for her are things to help her clean the kitchen and flavor his food, or stuff for himself to carry on affairs without getting caught or let him ignore her when she's talking to him. The magic she does is apparently all related to... her cat. So, no, there has never been a lot of thought given to what wizardry (or fightery or druidism or whatever) being equally available to the sexes in D&D world would actually mean.

When I'm running a game, I do try to think about this stuff, and change about half of my male NPCs to female. (No, I'm not immune to defaulting to male just because I'm not one.) It's just another RP thing to think about, and I think it can only add depth to do so. Well, if you're really thinking about it and not just going "hurr, hurr, boobies," in which case it's probably better to just stay with an all-male world.

Lord_Gareth
2012-05-09, 10:37 AM
Or, ugh, like one Dragon article I'm thinking about that actually made me really angry (although I did wind up using some of the actual items from it in my current campaign). There's some powerful wizard, who is also married to another powerful wizard, and yet the stuff he creates for her are things to help her clean the kitchen and flavor his food, or stuff for himself to carry on affairs without getting caught or let him ignore her when she's talking to him. The magic she does is apparently all related to... her cat. So, no, there has never been a lot of thought given to what wizardry (or fightery or druidism or whatever) being equally available to the sexes in D&D world would actually mean.

I see this kind of thing a lot from folks that consider themselves to have a dog in the gender war fight. It irritates the crap out of me too.

Djinn_in_Tonic
2012-05-09, 10:41 AM
I see this kind of thing a lot from folks that consider themselves to have a dog in the gender war fight. It irritates the crap out of me too.

And Gareth...this is why some of the most of the powerful RP characters you and I have come up with over the years are women. :smallbiggrin:

...sorry, everyone else. That meant nothing to any of you, but occasionally I have to pop in and remind my old friend Gareth of things he already remembers. :smalltongue:

Righteous Doggy
2012-05-09, 10:41 AM
Well my experience is a bit different from most playgrounders or roleplayers I think :P For me at least, being able to roleplay a feminine persona online was very integral to me working out my gender identity issues and coming to grips with being trans. It allowed me to discover just how much more natural that came to me, versus just how forced my day-to-day masculine presentation was (and still is, for that matter). I can still RP men of course; as has been pointed out, you're playing a person, not a gender steriotype. But, without that outlet to allow me to explore something I might not have gotten a chance to otherwise, I'd probably still be profoundly unhappy with myself.

But don't you create the actions of your own body and mind? You and your characters both are controlled by your actions. I've never found myself forced to be one gender or another in any situation, just whatever I felt in the mood for. I've never felt like my gender was out of my control, but I've got my own issues i suppose.

@Silus Thats not sexist at all... I hear all girls make better mages too

@DarkEternal See, thats where I'm at. I feel like its a step too far to go out of gender, and that most people just don't do it in a way that doesn't come off as off.

@Krotch MMOs are different than tabletop in alot of ways, personally I prefer when you play your own gender. Its meant to be a representation of you too, your avatar is your face. Then you get on vent on the creepy man voice and EWWW~! Cmon, trollgirls aren't that much better than the men.

@Man on Fire Erm... you missed a few parts of that arguement. Like orcs not being able to complain about someone roleplaying bad orcs, and your second point has little to nothing to do with the threads OP arguement I think... And you don't need to tell us you can't tell us, we're not the complaint department!:smalltongue:

Lord_Gareth
2012-05-09, 10:44 AM
And Gareth...this is why some of the most of the powerful RP characters you and I have come up with over the years are women. :smallbiggrin:

...sorry, everyone else. That meant nothing to any of you, but occasionally I have to pop in and remind my old friend Gareth of things he already remembers. :smalltongue:

And sometimes I have to remind you to ANSWER YOUR PHONE!

But yes, many of my most favorite (and most complex) characters have been women. Out of curiosity, though, which ones were you thinking of specifically?

Man on Fire
2012-05-09, 12:42 PM
Erm... you missed a few parts of that arguement. Like orcs not being able to complain about someone roleplaying bad orcs, and your second point has little to nothing to do with the threads OP arguement I think... And you don't need to tell us you can't tell us, we're not the complaint department!

1) But the reasoning behind "all Goblins are thieves" is exactly the same as behind saying the same about Jews, Russians, Mexicans or whoever you want. Why shouldn't I, as Goblins fan, be offended by player who puts my favorite race down? His character is exactly as made up as if he was playing oversexualized woman or stereotypical black gangsta. Insulting women for their gender and insulting people for what they choose to like are both wrong.

2) My second point has much to do with who I was quoting. According to that person it's not acceptable to play opposite gender because it was often done wrong. I just show how illogical that argument is and what I think of people who are creeped out by my playing women on the basis that they saw somebody somewhere doing it and failing - just because someone somewhere failed at playing girl doesn't mean I'm gonna fail at it.

3) That's not a complaint (and why should it? It's my computer that crashed), I just wanted to avoid people asking me why I didn't wrote my bits in one post.



I play girls a lot, by PbP, because I don't have many real life games and they're mostly with new people, in which case I preffer to start playing safe, so GM will trust me once I decide playing girl.

My first time at playing a girl was in Sailor Moon freeform game. Everybody were playing girls, sans one guy who was playing guy turning into a girl when he transforms. This girl was called Sailor Phoenix, had fire powers, red uniform with rippoed off sleeves and was strongly inspired by fighting games' characters. Male fighting game characters. She was really some mix of Paul Phoenix and Terry Bogard, only she was a Sailor Senshi, not a fighting game character. She worked quite well- she was a bit nerdy, she was hot blooded and over energetic, she was a little too serious where she should and a little too cheerful when she shouldn't and wanted to fight too much. In general we managed to avoid most of bad stereotypes I didn't even knew existed back then.

Similiar thing was with my character for W.I.T.C.H. game, also freeform. There everybody were playing girls. The only exception was guy who was playing Elyon's twin brother and only because he was in duo with girl playing Elyon herself (there were all of two non-oc Player Characters in this game the other way Hay-Lin*). I was playing an otaku girl who was pretty excentric. Probably my only time I described female-characters outfit in great detail was when I described what she is wearing for first time. Because she was wearing so bizarre combination of items and clothes associated with various subcultures that she looked completely ridiculous and I wanted to put emphasis on that. Which worked as every other PC couldn't take her seriously. This girl wasn't defined by being girl, which I think made her so fun to play. She was defined by being an otaku. Which, considering it was magical girls genre, gave her a lot of advantage by genre savviness and allowed her to guess plot development. Which I used to slip some metagame knowledge from havign watched W.I.T.C.H. tv series.

Those were two of my better girl characters. Sadly, I did not avoided failing when plaing girls in other games....

Lord_Gareth
2012-05-09, 12:44 PM
Dude, break up your paragraphs. Like, seriously. Your posts are honestly hard to read when they're all mashed together like that.

Forums don't have an indentation key, you've gotta do something.

Knaight
2012-05-09, 12:56 PM
1) But the reasoning behind "all Goblins are thieves" is exactly the same as behind saying the same about Jews, Russians, Mexicans or whoever you want. Why shouldn't I, as Goblins fan, be offended by player who puts my favorite race down? His character is exactly as made up as if he was playing oversexualized woman or stereotypical black gangsta. Insulting women for their gender and insulting people for what they choose to like are both wrong.
There is a huge difference between potentially offending a fan of something by criticizing something fictional, and the perpetuation of actual stereotypes about real people. Moreover, sloppy portrayals of fictional entities and "insulting people for what they choose to like" are entirely different anyways, and "insulting people for what they choose to like" isn't even remotely comparable to insulting people due to the circumstances of their birth, which is one of the more minor side affects of perpetuating stereotypes in any case.

Scowling Dragon
2012-05-09, 01:08 PM
Well I have lots of difficulty with this but...I think it works best when you try to play a CHARACTER and then slap on the girl part on the top.

Man on Fire
2012-05-09, 01:13 PM
There is a huge difference between potentially offending a fan of something by criticizing something fictional, and the perpetuation of actual stereotypes about real people. Moreover, sloppy portrayals of fictional entities and "insulting people for what they choose to like" are entirely different anyways, and "insulting people for what they choose to like" isn't even remotely comparable to insulting people due to the circumstances of their birth, which is one of the more minor side affects of perpetuating stereotypes in any case.

you're forgetting that stereotypes are also applied to groups, religions and and fandoms who weren't born with what they like/belive/whatever-they-do-with-it. Stereotypes applied to orcs and goblins are also negative stereotypes applied to their fans (they're bullies, they're amoral, they're crazy, they don't appriciate real values taught by fantasy literature, they treat fantasy as place to let go their power fantasies about killing and raping everybody, they're racist - I seen it all threw at people just for the fact they like Orcs or Goblins) and trying to justify those stereotypes is nothing more but insulting to intelligence of everyone involved - those stereotypes are based on the same mechanisms that create real life stereotypes, it's the same mindset that allows us to drag some group of people into the mud and say why they're worse than us. Nobody forbids you playing character who hates orcs, but at least admit he is just racist, don't come with excuses to give him moral upper ground

Scowling Dragon
2012-05-09, 01:26 PM
Uh. No. Im sorry but I flat out disagree with you.

Lord_Gareth
2012-05-09, 01:35 PM
Well I have lots of difficulty with this but...I think it works best when you try to play a CHARACTER and then slap on the girl part on the top.

Sometimes gender does become important, though. I've got an example below that I'ma put in spoiler.

Colors O'Brien, Stained Glass Knight
Colors (from Changeling: the Lost) is an Elemental of the Spring Court that considers herself a Knight. In Arcadia, her flesh was scraped away from her bones and then painfully replaced with swirling, multicolored stained glass laced and layered with enchantments and glamour. In Arcadia, she was one of her Keeper's guardians, and the Stained Glass Man took great delight in pitting his Lost against one another. She killed for him at first, and then tortured - always men, and always his broken, frail workers.

After she broke out of Arcadia (starting a riot that led a small army into a neighboring Domain), she fell in with a really bad Freehold that led her right back into her old habits, and she had to fight her way back to some semblance of human thought, had to struggle to realize what she was doing. She ran, and never looked back. Now Colors is trying to be a knight in shining armor, to forget that she was ever a cruel and capricious monsters, but she still has personal space issues with men - because she's terrified of hurting them and becoming what she was before. She has nightmares where she tortures men she knows and has a tendency to react violently to males even when they didn't intend insult. She's sexist, but it's because she's hurt, not because she's hateful - but that sexual identity (and the resulting problems caused by it) are an important part of who she is.

Scowling Dragon
2012-05-09, 01:40 PM
Oh definatly. But that was written over time.

When improvising when playing aspects of your gender I constantly find myself (Myself is underlined) kinda awkward.

Knaight
2012-05-09, 01:47 PM
Stereotypes applied to orcs and goblins are also negative stereotypes applied to their fans...
Hardly. A portrayal of fictional characters - up to and including fictional species - says absolutely nothing about their fans. At most, it is criticizing another portrayal, which is an idea. A portrayal of an actual group says something about members of said actual group, which are people. You're conflating people and ideas, and moreover conflating the mild annoyance of criticism based on fandom to the potential perpetuation of violence that actual stereotypes can cause. It's disingenuous at best.

Righteous Doggy
2012-05-09, 01:50 PM
Well I have lots of difficulty with this but...I think it works best when you try to play a CHARACTER and then slap on the girl part on the top.

Lol, why shouldn't it work? Gender identity is mostly a social construct that differs from person to person. In paper its just whether you put an F or M on the paper right?

Lord_Gareth
2012-05-09, 02:07 PM
Oh definatly. But that was written over time.

When improvising when playing aspects of your gender I constantly find myself (Myself is underlined) kinda awkward.

Most of that development (everything after Arcadia) happened in the course of the game I played her in, while I was roleplaying her actively.

Scowling Dragon
2012-05-09, 02:13 PM
Oh. Then your just better then me at roleplaying female characters on the spot......Thats a good thing I think.

Loxagn
2012-05-09, 02:14 PM
Usually, when I create a character, that character's concept leaps into my head, mostly fully-formed. I don't have much 'say' in which concepts present themselves to me.

It stands to reason that I've been inspired to play characters of both genders. Male characters crop up more often because my mind identifies with them more easily, and thus finds them easier to generate, but I've had a share of female characters, and from a roleplaying standpoint I've not seen too much of a difference. Characters act the way their personalities (and occasionally the will of the table) dictate they act, gender be damned.

Although it is on occasion interesting to play an androgynous character and throw the party for a loop, leaving them trying to guess both in-character and out.

Avilan the Grey
2012-05-09, 02:30 PM
Well I have lots of difficulty with this but...I think it works best when you try to play a CHARACTER and then slap on the girl part on the top.

Actually I don't even think that far. I just envision a character, and usually she turns out to me female.

Shadowknight12
2012-05-09, 03:08 PM
Or, ugh, like one Dragon article I'm thinking about that actually made me really angry (although I did wind up using some of the actual items from it in my current campaign). There's some powerful wizard, who is also married to another powerful wizard, and yet the stuff he creates for her are things to help her clean the kitchen and flavor his food, or stuff for himself to carry on affairs without getting caught or let him ignore her when she's talking to him. The magic she does is apparently all related to... her cat. So, no, there has never been a lot of thought given to what wizardry (or fightery or druidism or whatever) being equally available to the sexes in D&D world would actually mean.

This is ridiculous to the point of offensiveness. I keep a half and half divide in every single profession, with women doing exactly the same things men can do, and gender attitudes being more racial than anything else (we all know what drow make of gender, but there are species that make some less drastic differences as well).

But keeping a woman using her magic for household things while her husband goes off to fight and the like? Hell no. Well, maybe there's ONE wizard who does that because she's quirky, but that is by no means the norm. And you bet that I'm going to make another couple where the woman is out spell-slinging for her kingdom while her pacifist husband stays behind to cook and tend the garden and the children.

shimmercat
2012-05-09, 04:19 PM
Re: housewife wizard (as this thread has fractured into several different discussions)

A woman using magic for typical female-gendered tasks, like housekeeping, could be interesting in a society based on a strong patriarchy. If women are seen as weak and must be protected in that society, a woman with magic may choose to follow the social mores of her society. That sort of setting can have its advantages, as a woman who DOES choose to break the gender roles has a lot more obstacles to overcome. (Think of Game of Thrones... the powerful female characters feel so much MORE powerful because of the resistance they've encountered! Brienne, Cersei, Daenerys are much more interesting as they've each chosen different ways to overcome the obstacles against a woman gaining power. And that's not even getting into Sansa versus Arya...)

But yeah, out of context and if not done VERY carefully, housewife wizard is really, really offensive.

dehro
2012-05-09, 05:41 PM
you're forgetting that stereotypes are also applied to groups, religions and and fandoms who weren't born with what they like/belive/whatever-they-do-with-it. Stereotypes applied to orcs and goblins are also negative stereotypes applied to their fans (they're bullies, they're amoral, they're crazy, they don't appriciate real values taught by fantasy literature, they treat fantasy as place to let go their power fantasies about killing and raping everybody, they're racist - I seen it all threw at people just for the fact they like Orcs or Goblins) and trying to justify those stereotypes is nothing more but insulting to intelligence of everyone involved - those stereotypes are based on the same mechanisms that create real life stereotypes, it's the same mindset that allows us to drag some group of people into the mud and say why they're worse than us. Nobody forbids you playing character who hates orcs, but at least admit he is just racist, don't come with excuses to give him moral upper ground
wuh..what?
I've never encountered any of the sort of what I underscored...are you seriously telling me that there are people out there who are going to look down on people and make up absurd stereotypes about them for liking Orc characters in fiction and in gaming..and ascribe to them the virtues and flaws of that species of characters?
what kind of crazy people do you hang out with?
The entire argument doesn't make any sense at all..but neither does your step further of claiming that who does that is enacting some form of racism that holds true in the real world.

newsflash..who cooks up the idea that "you like orcs, orcs are always the bad creatures of evil..you must be evil" are loonies, not racists.

The connection between that and the real world of racism and of bigotted individuals who support old vilifying stereotypes doesn't exist, because what the "orc-fan basher" does, if such a thing exists, is something entirely made up on the fly because there is no historic precedent.. because orcs don't exist. I might as well roam the streets looking for people to hit with a stick for liking to fox-trot. I'd be treated as an idiot..and rightly so. Certainly not as a racist.
What your common racist does is entirely different because racism has been part of our culture and history and has shaped certain events in such a way that there are still people out there who can relate to some of the messages of racism. Racism is perpetrated towards an ethnic, social, religious, political identity.
Sorry but being a fan of orcs or goblin really doesn't qualify you to play in the same ballpark...I'm pretty sure that there isn't a single religious, social or political institution out there that has in its tennants an article that says "orc fans are the devil, they must be purged".
Hell.. as far as I know, even Marilyn Manson fans get a worse deal than orc fans.

Darth Stabber
2012-05-09, 06:37 PM
[off topic] Playing a racist character is a common trope, it makes a very nice character flaw. Players hating on players who like certain races is an entirely new concept for me.

I have played racist characters a couple times, in fact one of my favorite characters was named Behrent Gnollsbane (guess who he hated). It's a trope to play with, and since we really only have to deal with humans (as far as sapient beings go), no one real is going to be offended. Besides you see racist characters in movies, television, and written media all the time, and as long as that particular trait is not portrayed in a positive light it's just fine. As players we are under no obligation to play characters who are shining paragons of virtue free from the vices of the real world, in fact flawed characters are WAY more fun. If you and your group have the maturity go wild: Alcoholic rogues, misogynist clerics, intolerant druids, boorish wizards, greedy rangers, gullible bards, heck barbarian practically has anger management issues as a class feature. These character flaws add depth to characters, far more than what you get for the flaw that netted you a feat. Now when you play out these flaws you must keep in mind that they are negative traits, and not glorify them (though given they are character flaws I probably don't have to remind anyone of that). [/off topic]

NothingButCake
2012-05-09, 07:12 PM
Sometimes gender does become important, though. I've got an example below that I'ma put in spoiler.

Colors O'Brien, Stained Glass Knight
Colors (from Changeling: the Lost) is an Elemental of the Spring Court that considers herself a Knight. In Arcadia, her flesh was scraped away from her bones and then painfully replaced with swirling, multicolored stained glass laced and layered with enchantments and glamour. In Arcadia, she was one of her Keeper's guardians, and the Stained Glass Man took great delight in pitting his Lost against one another. She killed for him at first, and then tortured - always men, and always his broken, frail workers.

After she broke out of Arcadia (starting a riot that led a small army into a neighboring Domain), she fell in with a really bad Freehold that led her right back into her old habits, and she had to fight her way back to some semblance of human thought, had to struggle to realize what she was doing. She ran, and never looked back. Now Colors is trying to be a knight in shining armor, to forget that she was ever a cruel and capricious monsters, but she still has personal space issues with men - because she's terrified of hurting them and becoming what she was before. She has nightmares where she tortures men she knows and has a tendency to react violently to males even when they didn't intend insult. She's sexist, but it's because she's hurt, not because she's hateful - but that sexual identity (and the resulting problems caused by it) are an important part of who she is.I'm not sure what parts of those can only apply to woman characters.

Shadowknight12
2012-05-09, 07:16 PM
I'm not sure what parts of those can only apply to woman characters.

I think that the "only" aspects of something that can be applied to female characters are those that deal with motherhood and childbirth, the only things males cannot do.

If you have magic or technobabble in your setting, though, that goes right out the window.

Lord_Gareth
2012-05-09, 07:16 PM
I'm not sure what parts of those can only apply to woman characters.

Nothing, actually. I didn't say it couldn't either. I said her gender/gender identity was important to her.

Righteous Doggy
2012-05-09, 07:23 PM
I think that the "only" aspects of something that can be applied to female characters are those that deal with motherhood and childbirth, the only things males cannot do.

If you have magic or technobabble in your setting, though, that goes right out the window.

*terrified face* Ewww....

@Gareth ahh, its a social construct though when you put it that way, not that they don't have their place in literature.

Sutremaine
2012-05-09, 07:23 PM
It's a trope to play with, and since we really only have to deal with humans (as far as sapient beings go), no one real is going to be offended.
And even if your character is racist against humans, humans in the real world don't have anything to fear from angry gnolls or trolls or whatever.

That said, talking about your character's preferred target as though they're [Real World Group X] is treading on very thin ice. Elves seem to get this a lot, given how often elves are often made fun of for being effeminate or gay (that is, male-gay).

Knaight
2012-05-09, 07:27 PM
That said, talking about your character's preferred target as though they're [Real World Group X] is treading on very thin ice. Elves seem to get this a lot, given how often elves are often made fun of for being effeminate or gay (that is, male-gay).

However, that has nothing to do with the character's preferred target, and everything to do with actual bigotry in a cheap coat of allegory.

SiuiS
2012-05-09, 07:30 PM
EDIT: Oddly, the one thing I quoted didn't show up. This is in relation to the first post, and pretty much nothing else.

The trouble comes from exaggeration. Boys don't realize girls are people too; the best way to play a girl is to just right "F" on the character sheet and bring it up when it's important.

If your male character doesn't bring up that he's a guy, why would the female bring up that she's a girl. It's natural for her. Though yes, it's creepy when ANY character is all about sex. You should play this up; take notes on the creepy and awkward stuff they do as the opposite gender, and then reenact them as the same. If all the dudes play skimpy, busty lasses who talk about their breasts all the time, be a lad in chaps, who poses and strains against his leathers. Make remarks about ... Oh man I'm giggling at all the bad lines I can think up. Terrible puns like "did you bring your tickets... To the gun show?!" but more medieval.

Oh lawdy, I need to do this. All the awkward, at my command :smallbiggrin:

Lord Raziere
2012-05-09, 07:33 PM
Usually, when I create a character, that character's concept leaps into my head, mostly fully-formed. I don't have much 'say' in which concepts present themselves to me.

It stands to reason that I've been inspired to play characters of both genders. Male characters crop up more often because my mind identifies with them more easily, and thus finds them easier to generate, but I've had a share of female characters, and from a roleplaying standpoint I've not seen too much of a difference. Characters act the way their personalities (and occasionally the will of the table) dictate they act, gender be damned.



This is me, before I decided to post in this thread, good sir. Thank you.

I have roleplayed multiple female characters, and honestly I don't see much difference between doing so and roleplaying a man.

anyone who uses characters of the opposite gender as an excuse to act like some gender stereotype or whatever clearly doesn't have the maturity to be roleplaying such a character in the first place.

and as always on that issue of racism, I agree with Man On Fire- after all, if there is no consequence to an evil act, it is still evil is it not? racism towards orcs and goblins is bad, because honestly it exposes that once one thinks that one has no consequences to their discrimination, they feel free to discriminate all they like, saying much about what kind of person. similarly, if I kill a baby in game, what does that say about me as a person? something very bad, even though no baby was killed, it still showed that I am evil enough to make such a horrible decision, to carry out such a horrible act.

simply put? Ring of Gyges. when you roleplay, you put it on except for anything the GM decides to punish you for. I will not discriminate even against fictional races, as to do so is to say:

"because there are no consequences, it doesn't matter what I do, therefore I can do whatever I want, and be unjust as much as I want, and therefore perpetrate the injustice of racism because I can get away with it."

any and all evil acts taint your soul, especially the ones you think won't harm you at all. racism is evil, and I will not perpetrate it, even if there is no consequences upon the world, or upon myself for doing so, as to be racist in any form, fictional or no, is to stain my soul with racism.

Righteous Doggy
2012-05-09, 07:35 PM
Oh lawdy, I need to do this. All the awkward, at my command :smallbiggrin:

Expert creepers are well prepared. Last time I tried this I was tackled :smalltongue:.

SiuiS
2012-05-09, 07:36 PM
But Raziere, role playing usually doesn't reflect well on the player at all. The character is often a different person than the player, that's the point. Playing an evil marauder doesn't make you evil just as playing a paladin doesn't make you good.

Man on Fire
2012-05-09, 07:37 PM
wuh..what?
I've never encountered any of the sort of what I underscored...are you seriously telling me that there are people out there who are going to look down on people and make up absurd stereotypes about them for liking Orc characters in fiction and in gaming..and ascribe to them the virtues and flaws of that species of characters?
what kind of crazy people do you hang out with?

Ever been on 4chan? Whenever the topic of Orcs or other non-human races comes up, people liking them are bound to be called heretics, traitors, idiots who doesn't understand how fantasy works or even retards (seriously) by people posting pictures of Paladins and demanding them to be purged in the name of Pelor the Burning Hate.

And even on this forum I was accused of being racist because I wanted Orcs and Goblins in fantasy to have culture and society - I was being told that I want to turn them into caricatures of real-life cultures I supposedly hate because my accuser couldn't grasp the idea that I may base them on more than one culture and don't potray them negatively or stereotipcally or even that I may like cultures I want to base them on. This made me realize that this problem does exist - there are people who will defend this sick, disgusting stereotype of "always chaotic evil" to the point of accusing it's critics of various things and making up new stereotypes about them.


As players we are under no obligation to play characters who are shining paragons of virtue free from the vices of the real world,

And this is what my entire problem with races in RPGs and fantasy boils down to - people just dont get it. What I hade about a lot of fantasy is that various races like Orcs or Goblins are subjected to treatment that would be unnaceptable in real life, yet the creators goes on eghts to justify it, using excuses that would also be unnaceptable in real life, just so players/readers may keep the dilusion that the heroes are paragons of morality without a single flaw. I know that some people would accuse me of subjecting modern morality to made-up world where it has no place, but the problem lies not in the fact something wrong from modern perspective is there, but the fact that creators went to lenghts to justify it and tell people it's okay. Creators are subjected to modern world morality and they could have shown that this is not a simple, one-sided conflict, they could have shown that Orcs and oblins are primitives but the fault also lies at human sides for not trying to find peaceful coexistence with them. They choose not to. They choose to cook up an excuse why it's okay for heroes to kill Orcs, excuse based on the same reasoning any group of people uses when they try to justify their crimes against other group. The heroes must be perfect, so the rules of the world must be bend to make sure nothing they do is morally wrong. Evry fictional race really represents some aspect of humanity and way too often looking at humans kiling Orcs I see white people killing black people with author's blessing. That cunning bastard just painted black people green so he can get away with his prejuices without being accused of racism. In too many works of fantasy you could just easily replace Orcs with stereotypical "black savages" from books like "Coral Island" or something. Just because they doesn't exist in real life doesn't mean I don't see the connection between them and real people. If you want to use Orcs or Goblins as your punching bag, at least have enough honor to admit that instead of chanting 'They're not like you and me, which means they must be evil".

Righteous Doggy
2012-05-09, 07:38 PM
any and all evil acts taint your soul, especially the ones you think won't harm you at all. racism is evil, and I will not perpetrate it, even if there is no consequences upon the world, or upon myself for doing so, as to be racist in any form, fictional or no, is to stain my soul with racism.

Meh, I can seperate myself from my roleplaying personas thank you very much. I've played some of the nicest people you'll meet, sociopaths, people who couldn't kill a fly, and people who'd gladly gut you for 5 dollars. Doesn't mean I would consider being that good or that evil irl.
And just becuase I've played Tomb Raider and Doom doesn't mean I suffer from GID :smalltongue:. I have far worse reasons to! :smallbiggrin:

Lord Raziere
2012-05-09, 07:40 PM
But Raziere, role playing usually doesn't reflect well on the player at all. The character is often a different person than the player, that's the point. Playing an evil marauder doesn't make you evil just as playing a paladin doesn't make you good.

doesn't matter, if I discriminate against orcs IRL, that is still the act of racism staining my soul.

its not the roleplaying, its the people IRL discriminating against orcs and goblins that is bad. and I will not stain my soul.

SiuiS
2012-05-09, 07:42 PM
Fascinating.
A 500 forum error allowed me to post elsewhere it did not clear my multiquote cache. But because I have a full multiquote cache, hitting the quote button doesn't actually quote anything.

-


Expert creepers are well prepared. Last time I tried this I was tackled

Hmm. Well, the only one who would actually do this in my group would be polite enough to just wait until the game was through (or paused) and declare an Irish standoff.

Still, noted. Thanks :smallwink:

Righteous Doggy
2012-05-09, 07:42 PM
doesn't matter, if I discriminate against orcs IRL, that is still the act of racism staining my soul.

its not the roleplaying, its the people IRL discriminating against orcs and goblins that is bad. and I will not stain my soul.

Whol.. exaclty is discriminating against orcs and goblins in real life...

Lord Raziere
2012-05-09, 07:44 PM
by constantly making them into nothing but monsters to justify the heroes being paragons of perfect morality and so on so forth….Man On Fire just said why a post ago, go read him.

SiuiS
2012-05-09, 07:44 PM
doesn't matter, if I discriminate against orcs IRL, that is still the act of racism staining my soul.

its not the roleplaying, its the people IRL discriminating against orcs and goblins that is bad. and I will not stain my soul.

Oh, okay.

Well, as a fey critter myself I don't particularly dislike boggarts or trolls or the like.

Righteous Doggy
2012-05-09, 07:45 PM
by constantly making them into nothing but monsters to justify the heroes being paragons of perfect morality and so on so forth….Man On Fire just said why a post ago, go read him.

Well, say that then! Embellish. No one is hating on orcs and goblins in real life, you just came off as confusing and far too literal!

In other news, this is a thread about gender isn't it?
@V GENDER!
@VV Oh, you say that now. >.<

Shadowknight12
2012-05-09, 07:46 PM
Whol.. exaclty is discriminating against orcs and goblins in real life...

Looking at the picture of an orc and being like "Disgusting subhuman scum, they make me sick" is discriminating, even if you'll never encounter an orc in your life. Discrimination is not about actions, it's about attitude. You don't need to commit a hate crime to be racist or discriminative. After all, just because you don't beat up gay people doesn't mean you aren't discriminating them by laughing at them or making disgusted faces when one of them walks by you.

Lord Raziere
2012-05-09, 07:48 PM
yes they are hating on orcs and goblins, by always boxing them into stupid chaotic evil stereotypes and making them subhuman…and so on

but yes this is a thread about GENDER, I suggest we do not derail it further.

Morithias
2012-05-09, 07:52 PM
This is going to be an interesting post, cause it takes place in an interesting campaign.

The War campaign is ultimately a "take over the world, PC's as the bad guy" campaign. And I've been debating about which gender to place in which area.

Originally it was going to be the princess Patricia, her sister Agatha, and their two boyfriends Rance and...I never gave the gunslinger a male name, out on the battlefield.

But then it swapped. I decided to swap everyone's gender. Patricia became Alex, Agatha became Sabin, Rance became Iseria, and the gunslinger became Yumi.

Either way given this campaign I am playing 5 people. 2 male, 2 female, and 1 who is a harvester devil (Jebel).

So the ultimate question in my opinion is...why shouldn't I make some of them female?

If a girl roleplays a guy, few people say anything, why is me making the badass Black knight, and the cold sniper female instead of making them the Artificer and the Princess raise any eyebrows?

I guess in order to solve this, we have to boil it down to WHY it's such a big deal when guys play girls, but not vice-versa.

Man on Fire
2012-05-09, 07:52 PM
Whol.. exaclty is discriminating against orcs and goblins in real life...

If they would exist in real life, discriminating against them would be wrong. Then why should be okay to discriminate against them in fictional world that is supposed to have at least some resemblance of reality?

Knaight
2012-05-09, 07:55 PM
Looking at the picture of an orc and being like "Disgusting subhuman scum, they make me sick" is discriminating, even if you'll never encounter an orc in your life. Discrimination is not about actions, it's about attitude. You don't need to commit a hate crime to be racist or discriminative. After all, just because you don't beat up gay people doesn't mean you aren't discriminating them by laughing at them or making disgusted faces when one of them walks by you.

However, that's still a hostile act that harms actual people. Actively laughing at someone for a reason like that causes harm if noticed, as does making faces. Moreover, it doesn't particularly matter who notices - if it isn't the people being targeted, it still conveys that that is completely fine, and encourages such acts elsewhere. Now, take an orc - they aren't real, and as such they cannot be harmed. That's not to say that portrayals can't cause harm, and that the concept of "completely evil races" isn't ever problematic, merely to say that equating real, actual, directly harm causing bigotry with playing an orc in a stereotypical manner is disingenuous. It can also be quite fairly argued that it is insensitive and offensive.

Oh, and regarding bigotry "staining the soul". If you oppose bigotry because you think engaging in it metaphysically hurts you, rather than opposing it because of the effect of the people it is actually targeted at, you are being selfish. That doesn't mean you are necessarily selfish, but it certainly diminishes any claim being made for some sort of moral high ground.

Righteous Doggy
2012-05-09, 07:58 PM
If they would exist in real life, discriminating against them would be wrong. Then why should be okay to discriminate against them in fictional world that is supposed to have at least some resemblance of reality?

~Drama~. Why else? Hatred and Vengeance are a nonstop ride in fantasy worlds. You infer discremination is wrong in all realities too... now remember, this is about gender and tabletop...

Shadowknight12
2012-05-09, 08:03 PM
However, that's still a hostile act that harms actual people. Actively laughing at someone for a reason like that causes harm if noticed, as does making faces. Moreover, it doesn't particularly matter who notices - if it isn't the people being targeted, it still conveys that that is completely fine, and encourages such acts elsewhere. Now, take an orc - they aren't real, and as such they cannot be harmed. That's not to say that portrayals can't cause harm, and that the concept of "completely evil races" isn't ever problematic, merely to say that equating real, actual, directly harm causing bigotry with playing an orc in a stereotypical manner is disingenuous. It can also be quite fairly argued that it is insensitive and offensive.

It's actually quite debatable whether some acts harm people or not. Sure, laughing at someone might harm them, but what if you keep everything secret? Is it less discriminatory or racist if you keep your thoughts private? It might be less harmful, sure, but no less discriminatory in principle.

Also, I will get just as disgusted by someone playing up all the negative stereotypes of orcs as I will if someone plays up all the negative stereotypes of women, people of a certain race, sexuality, religion and so on. Discrimination is discrimination.

Tengu_temp
2012-05-09, 08:04 PM
Well I have lots of difficulty with this but...I think it works best when you try to play a CHARACTER and then slap on the girl part on the top.

This is something you can do, but I find it more interesting to play characters whose gender is an important part of themselves - you know, like most people in real life. You can do that without encroaching on the territory of offensive stereotypes.

Lord_Gareth
2012-05-09, 08:24 PM
This link may or may not be relevant, but it certainly is awesome. (http://www.badassoftheweek.com/lamaupin.html)

Shadowknight12
2012-05-09, 08:30 PM
This link may or may not be relevant, but it certainly is awesome. (http://www.badassoftheweek.com/lamaupin.html)

By the frost, that woman is after my own heart. FROM THE GRAVE. Which I'm okay with.

Knaight
2012-05-09, 08:32 PM
It's actually quite debatable whether some acts harm people or not. Sure, laughing at someone might harm them, but what if you keep everything secret? Is it less discriminatory or racist if you keep your thoughts private? It might be less harmful, sure, but no less discriminatory in principle.
That really depends on how private. If no action is ever taken based on those thoughts that causes harm, then there really isn't a problem. Getting bigots to keep their bigotry secret is pretty effective as far as harm reduction goes, provided that the means by which this happens aren't particularly harm inducing.


Also, I will get just as disgusted by someone playing up all the negative stereotypes of orcs as I will if someone plays up all the negative stereotypes of women, people of a certain race, sexuality, religion and so on. Discrimination is discrimination.
Harm is harm. That it causes harm, often in rather large quantities, is what makes discrimination a problem in the first place. Every single example on your list, with the exception of orcs, has the capacity to cause extreme harm, up to the point of contributing to actual violence. The orc case doesn't, and that should be enough for them to be treated differently.

Darth Stabber
2012-05-09, 08:35 PM
Ever been on 4chan?

You are claiming that something that happens on 4chan is indicative of the rest of gamers, or any part of reality?

I'm on 4chan all the time and make fun of people for any dumb reason I can that comes into my head all the time. I make fun of people for thing that I do/am.

Shadowknight12
2012-05-09, 08:39 PM
That really depends on how private. If no action is ever taken based on those thoughts that causes harm, then there really isn't a problem. Getting bigots to keep their bigotry secret is pretty effective as far as harm reduction goes, provided that the means by which this happens aren't particularly harm inducing.

I will respectfully disagree. I do not believe that someone keeping his murderous streak in check because they fear consequences is just like a normal person because neither have killed anyone. The desire to kill is there, just like the desire to harm is there in the racist, sexist or discriminatory person. Just because they have not done any harm for now doesn't mean they deserve to be treated like someone who'd think discrimination is horrible. Someone who wishes X group of people ill for no reason other than them being labelled X is not someone I want to associate with, nor someone I want at my table.


Harm is harm. That it causes harm, often in rather large quantities, is what makes discrimination a problem in the first place. Every single example on your list, with the exception of orcs, has the capacity to cause extreme harm, up to the point of contributing to actual violence. The orc case doesn't, and that should be enough for them to be treated differently.

I disagree, again. People are to be held accountable not only for what they do, but also for what they believe in, for their morals and ethics. "Absence of harm" is pragmatic, yes, and it works for environments such as the legal system or the working place, or any formal structure that needs to identify harm and prevent it or punish the guilty. When it comes to human relations, we are not merely measured by the actions we commit or not. We are also measured by the thoughts we have and the ideals we uphold.

Knaight
2012-05-09, 08:51 PM
I will respectfully disagree. I do not believe that someone keeping his murderous streak in check because they fear consequences is just like a normal person because neither have killed anyone. The desire to kill is there, just like the desire to harm is there in the racist, sexist or discriminatory person. Just because they have not done any harm for now doesn't mean they deserve to be treated like someone who'd think discrimination is horrible. Someone who wishes X group of people ill for no reason other than them being labelled X is not someone I want to associate with, nor someone I want at my table.


However, someone who wishes X group of people ill is still significantly less dangerous than someone who can and does actually harm said group. Moreover, if you are capable of identifying someone as someone who wishes X group of people ill, then they have clearly acted on it in some way and as such distinguished themselves from someone who doesn't.

Shadowknight12
2012-05-09, 08:53 PM
However, someone who wishes X group of people ill is still significantly less dangerous than someone who can and does actually harm said group. Moreover, if you are capable of identifying someone as someone who wishes X group of people ill, then they have clearly acted on it in some way and as such distinguished themselves from someone who doesn't.

Not necessarily. Simply stating something like "I believe X or Y, though I would never act on it" is not causing harm to anyone, yet it plainly identifies the person as wishing a certain group ill. There's also subconscious body language, for those informed in such ventures.

Man on Fire
2012-05-09, 08:55 PM
~Drama~. Why else? Hatred and Vengeance are a nonstop ride in fantasy worlds. You infer discremination is wrong in all realities too... now remember, this is about gender and tabletop...

Eh, okay, don't want this to be closed because of derailment eitht. I wanted to tell you guys how I once played very bad female character* anyway.
it was in X-men freeform PbP game. Complete tabula rasa type of game - no canon characters exist, just bare concept and OCs. And I played beautiful and intelligent blonde girl from rich family who has powers of Super-Skrull, minus hypnosis. Looking from perspective of time it was horrible - she was complete Mary Sue whose only redeeming quality was that pretty much every other PC was either equal Mary Sue o even worse. I wanted her to be strong and independent and yet sexually active, but quite frankly, I was 15 and didn't understood that things I may find cool or sexy may be percived as questionable by most of people. I falled most common pithfalls I now criticise. Her behavior wasn't bad per se - there sure are people who are sorta like her, women who like changing partners or just go to the bed with "bad boy" meet this morning and there is nothing wrong with that - the problem was that I was doing it for wrong motives, which I didn't realized at time. She wasn't acting the way she was because I wanted to roleplay sexually active and independent woman, she was acting like that because I wanted some cheap sex fantasy. Today I would probably play her in completely different way, focusing more on her goals and ambitions, rather than sex appeal. Today I look at the character and just ask myself "what the hell was I thinking?".

Which is probably why today my character may be sexual but that aspect is toned down. I'm playing here, on these forums two women. Drinna, half-orc mystic theurge, is bisexual but she sees sex just as a tool to accomplish her goals and one she won't use if there is any other way, because quite frankly, it disgusts her. Rada, Orc Berserker however, isn't a character for which sexuality comes into play - her gender has some impact on her position right now (she is chief's firstborn daughter in rivarly with her younger brother over who will take father's place) but really serves only as a background for explaining her personality and why she cares so strongly about her responsibilities for the tribe.

One of the worst problems with her was probably her pretty bad romance with another PC, abovementioned bad boy. We both played it too quickly and our characters jumped into bed to early - we thought it makes both of them looks cool but it really maked his character look like mysgonic womanizer and mine like she would jump into anybody's pants with little to no effort on the guy's part.

Romance in the game is probably what creeps people out so much about playing opposite gender, but it can be done well. At the same time I played another X-men PbP freeform game in which other player played a girl who was my character's love interest. That relationship progressed sowly and was very developed, even if it was quite cheesy in many places - I'm more found of it, because it was actually interesting and unpredictable in hinsight.

Speaking of romances, I remember one I saw from yet another X-men freeform PbP - love triangle between two guys and a girl, all of which are tortured and dark souls. It wasn't that bad, it was bit cheesy here and there and everybody's involved answer to all criticism was "what are you expecting from romance written by three dudes"? In the end it was quite enjoyable to watch relationships between these three characters unfold. Players weren't that bad, they could mess up worse, considering how messed up their characters were and GM put it to a good use few times.

* - funny dichotomy on my part - characters I liked playing I call girls, characters I'm ashamed of are "female characters". I wonder what it tells about me.


You are claiming that something that happens on 4chan is indicative of the rest of gamers, or any part of reality?

4channers are normal people like everybody else they just want to be a little bit more rough and mean. And guys on /tg/ sure are one of the more civil from all the boards.


This link may or may not be relevant, but it certainly is awesome. (http://www.badassoftheweek.com/lamaupin.html)

Now I want to play character based on her. Bard/Duelist?

Fri
2012-05-09, 09:09 PM
I'm actually finding it kinda funny how people can easily roleplay as dragons, robots, unicorns, doctors, soldiers, or monks, without second thought, but have a lot of thought before playing opposite gender for better or worse.

Righteous Doggy
2012-05-09, 09:16 PM
I'm actually finding it kinda funny how people can easily roleplay as dragons, robots, unicorns, doctors, soldiers, or monks, without second thought, but have a lot of thought before playing opposite gender for better or worse.

not eveyrone has that issue. Some people hate monster races like me too :smalltongue:.

Tvtyrant
2012-05-09, 09:24 PM
I have played female characters before. I usually play them exactly as I do male characters though, so it hardly matters. If I am playing a young adult green dragon, the gender isn't going to have a lot of influence on roleplaying compared to the dragon part (excepting remembering the effects of a dragon's gender on them if the campaign includes that).

Man on Fire
2012-05-09, 09:24 PM
I wouldn't be able to play a good elf. Or a Drow. I just dislike Elves for being YUMS - Your Usual Mary Sues.

hobbitkniver
2012-05-09, 09:26 PM
Here's a simple way to not have problems: be mature or don't do it (probably the latter).

Knaight
2012-05-09, 09:28 PM
Not necessarily. Simply stating something like "I believe X or Y, though I would never act on it" is not causing harm to anyone, yet it plainly identifies the person as wishing a certain group ill. There's also subconscious body language, for those informed in such ventures.
When X or Y is horribly bigoted, "I believe X or Y, though I would never act on it" is a statement that encourages X or Y and thus harms. Sure, the effect is extremely marginal, but that doesn't mean that there is no harm, merely that it, on its own, does almost nothing. It is potentially a micro aggression of the smallest sort, sure, but it still fits in the case of an action that does some harm, and has the capacity to identify. I'd say the same about subconscious body language, though the amount diminishes yet further.

Righteous Doggy
2012-05-09, 09:29 PM
I have played female characters before. I usually play them exactly as I do male characters though, so it hardly matters. If I am playing a young adult green dragon, the gender isn't going to have a lot of influence on roleplaying compared to the dragon part (excepting remembering the effects of a dragon's gender on them if the campaign includes that).

Huh, i wonder if there are as many lusty dragons in the dndverse as there are elves.:smallwink:

Morithias
2012-05-09, 09:32 PM
Romance in the game is probably what creeps people out so much about playing opposite gender

Does that mean I get a free pass in the War Campaign cause I'm playing all 4 characters and both romances.

I think it might be less "Romance" and more "inter-party" romance. No one ever seems to care that the princess they just romanced is played by the male DM, give the same Princess a character sheet and a Player however...RED LIGHT RED LIGHT.

I mostly play female characters for a simple reason...they're more powerful. If you actually look at all the prestige classes, options, and bonuses you can get if you play a female character, girls are on average more powerful in Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 than males.

Plus its nice that not every adventuring party in continuity is all male.

Shadowknight12
2012-05-09, 09:35 PM
When X or Y is horribly bigoted, "I believe X or Y, though I would never act on it" is a statement that encourages X or Y and thus harms. Sure, the effect is extremely marginal, but that doesn't mean that there is no harm, merely that it, on its own, does almost nothing. It is potentially a micro aggression of the smallest sort, sure, but it still fits in the case of an action that does some harm, and has the capacity to identify. I'd say the same about subconscious body language, though the amount diminishes yet further.

Fair enough, I'll have to concede that one. However, if we permit the exact same format of thinking in regards to orcs or other creatures that do not exist, are we not indirectly condoning the format and therefore very, very, very slightly indirectly condoning all types of thinking with the same format?

Tvtyrant
2012-05-09, 09:39 PM
Huh, i wonder if there are as many lusty dragons in the dndverse as there are elves.:smallwink:

Not my dragon, thanks. It would be far, far too self-involved for romance.

Righteous Doggy
2012-05-09, 09:49 PM
I mostly play female characters for a simple reason...they're more powerful. If you actually look at all the prestige classes, options, and bonuses you can get if you play a female character, girls are on average more powerful in Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 than males.

Plus its nice that not every adventuring party in continuity is all male.

Erm, not really... most of the female only prcs are god awful. and if you play female for powergaming I can't really say I like the idea. And not all gamers are male kthx


Not my dragon, thanks. It would be far, far too self-involved for romance.

lol, not all dragons are I'm sure, but what I said was just for chuckles. Laugh, don't take the defensive, only makes me wonder what your dragons trying to hide!(probably the macguffin)

Morithias
2012-05-09, 10:02 PM
Erm, not really... most of the female only prcs are god awful. and if you play female for powergaming I can't really say I like the idea. And not all gamers are male kthx

The Hathran and Thrall of Malcanthet are pretty solid choices.

Also I forgot to put "male player" instead of just "player", I thought what I was saying was going to be clear enough.

Sorry if I offended you.

Tengu_temp
2012-05-09, 10:08 PM
This link may or may not be relevant, but it certainly is awesome. (http://www.badassoftheweek.com/lamaupin.html)

Hey, La Maupin finally appears in this thread. I know people who squee over her to an embarassing level.

Tvtyrant
2012-05-09, 10:10 PM
lol, not all dragons are I'm sure, but what I said was just for chuckles. Laugh, don't take the defensive, only makes me wonder what your dragons trying to hide!(probably the macguffin)

The fact that it is an evil dragon adventuring with a good party :smallamused:

It loves treasure (it makes the most comfortable beds!), it reasons that evil people tend to have more treasure than good people because of their willingness to rob the poor, and so it figures the best treasure market is in killing evil people and collecting their money. "I steal from the rich and give to myself!"

Terraoblivion
2012-05-09, 11:08 PM
Hey, La Maupin finally appears in this thread. I know people who squee over her to an embarassing level.

Indeed I do. Or I would if I was capable of feeling embarrassed over squeeing over something.

I mean, come on, she's the epitome of that yuri manga concept of the girl prince who manages to be both butch and feminine at the same time in ways specifically meant to both cool and attractive. Her sleeping around like crazy just adds to the appeal. To me at least she's just an epic power fantasy to project onto with the added bonus of actually being real.

Lord_Gareth
2012-05-09, 11:31 PM
Now I want to play character based on her. Bard/Duelist?

She can't have levels in Duelist, she can actually fight duels [/burn].

Probably Bard/Warblade in D&D. In Scion, I'd say she was a daughter of Freya.

Rixx
2012-05-10, 12:30 AM
I do it all the time. Also played in a group with a girl playing as a guy.

Girls are not mysterious and different!

Avilan the Grey
2012-05-10, 01:38 AM
Re: housewife wizard (as this thread has fractured into several different discussions)

A woman using magic for typical female-gendered tasks, like housekeeping, could be interesting in a society based on a strong patriarchy. If women are seen as weak and must be protected in that society, a woman with magic may choose to follow the social mores of her society.


This is ridiculous to the point of offensiveness. I keep a half and half divide in every single profession, with women doing exactly the same things men can do, and gender attitudes being more racial than anything else (we all know what drow make of gender, but there are species that make some less drastic differences as well).

But keeping a woman using her magic for household things while her husband goes off to fight and the like? Hell no. Well, maybe there's ONE wizard who does that because she's quirky, but that is by no means the norm. And you bet that I'm going to make another couple where the woman is out spell-slinging for her kingdom while her pacifist husband stays behind to cook and tend the garden and the children.

I fully agree with the ridiculousness of the article, but I would I would say a logical split would be 60/40 not 50/50 because of the whole child bearing thing. Also, to NOT use your magic for household chores seems dumb (see, for example the Harry Potter movies where you see the dishes washing themselves etc. It is not a question of Either/Or, it is a question of And.

Shadowknight12
2012-05-10, 01:43 AM
I fully agree with the ridiculousness of the article, but I would I would say a logical split would be 60/40 not 50/50 because of the whole child bearing thing. Also, to NOT use your magic for household chores seems dumb (see, for example the Harry Potter movies where you see the dishes washing themselves etc. It is not a question of Either/Or, it is a question of And.

Well, personally, I assume both genders contribute equally to housework, whether by magic, hiring help or actually getting down and doing it. As for the split, I justify it in my campaigns because of adequate nutrition, magical/medical assistance before, after and during childbirth, and an extreme fertility. Combining all that gives me women that are just as strong as men, who aren't adversely affected by pregnancy and childbirth, and who are not under pressure to have children as there tends to be a surplus of them.

Avilan the Grey
2012-05-10, 01:48 AM
Well, personally, I assume both genders contribute equally to housework, whether by magic, hiring help or actually getting down and doing it. As for the split, I justify it in my campaigns because of adequate nutrition, magical/medical assistance before, after and during childbirth, and an extreme fertility. Combining all that gives me women that are just as strong as men, who aren't adversely affected by pregnancy and childbirth, and who are not under pressure to have children as there tends to be a surplus of them.

It depends on the world of course. In a standard fantasy setting where women are not discriminated against, I still would say it would be about 60/40 simply because (just like IRL) women who are heavily pregnant or breastfeeding cannot do absolutely everything they can do when they are not.

As for the chores... yes, my comment was about not using magic to do chores, not about what gender that would use magic to do said chores.

Righteous Doggy
2012-05-10, 01:54 AM
Personally, i would love magic to do my chores. In a magic setting it just seems to come with the gig. Unseen servants are cheap!

Shadowknight12
2012-05-10, 01:57 AM
It depends on the world of course. In a standard fantasy setting where women are not discriminated against, I still would say it would be about 60/40 simply because (just like IRL) women who are heavily pregnant or breastfeeding cannot do absolutely everything they can do when they are not.

As for the chores... yes, my comment was about not using magic to do chores, not about what gender that would use magic to do said chores.

That's fairly reasonable, but it also depends on how much magic or tech is in the setting. A woman with magical spells to protect herself and neutralise the downsides of pregnancy can fight or work well into the very end of her pregnancy, and it's conceivable that someone else could use a spell that creates breast milk to feed the baby while the mother goes right back to fighting or working.

Well yes, that's just common sense. I think the outrage was about the gender bit, not the magic used for chores.

Loreni333
2012-05-10, 02:18 AM
Oddly enough, I'm best (and like to play more) as female characters, despite being male. I suppose having a name popular for girls and having long hair and liking My Little Pony and having more friends that are girls then guys could have something to do with it...

Both me and my fellow players agree, even if I only have role played online- I do females better then males. I suppose this might be because I'm one of the only characters playing a female (a lot of females tend to play males in my common groups, but not too many males often play femaless). whatever the reason, I like playing girls more, nobody has a problem with that, and heck, I've done a single light-hearted romance, although it was short. I decided my character should be the first to die, and frankly I got bored of the character. The mourning partner got some excellent role playing in, though.

The funniest thing is when I'm role playing and realize people think I'm a girl OOC. After a few weeks of playing, and they think I'm female. Usually, they're surprised, and a little embarrassed.

I find it hilarious.

Seriously though, this is role playing, your supposed to be someone your not. don't feel forced to be the other gender or your own, just play characters you like to play. Frankly, if you judge others for playing a character that isn't their own specices, you should find a new RPG.

That is all.

Righteous Doggy
2012-05-10, 02:27 AM
@Loreni Erm... is that all online? and you infer liking mlp makes you female :P. its funny becuase people argue on this forum the other way and get angry at that idea sometimes.

Loreni333
2012-05-10, 02:36 AM
@Loreni Erm... is that all online? and you infer liking mlp makes you female :P. its funny becuase people argue on this forum the other way and get angry at that idea sometimes.

All my role playing in yes, online, so thus it makes sense why some people don't realize my genders.

although some people in real life make that mistake also >.>


On your note of MLP- you know, people take it too seriously in the pony fandom. Sure, it's a good show, we can like it without judgement, but I have to admit its ridiculous for grown men to be calling themselves brownies and waking up early every Saturday to watch the episode 5 times followed by writing a pile of fan-fiction. We still aren't more than a group of men watching ponies. even if some of us are men writing horror stories about ponies.

But ponies are awesome, and I like the show because it's funny- why not poke some fun at ourselves?

Righteous Doggy
2012-05-10, 02:42 AM
@Loreni Probably one of the most sane things I've seen all day, I swear, people here are out to drive ya' a little mad with their obsessive hobbies. Not everyone needs to war their flag as their costume... Anyways...

Yeah, its totally different online I think. I was raised without a chance to see people outside of the internet(mmos in particular). My play by post I've seen some really different styles. Irl, its much much harder to see a guy playing a girl role me thinks. but online, you don't have the voice and body to reinforce the imagery.

On the other hand... I've been switched up irl more than enough. Maybe if I tried I'd be surprised :smalltongue:

Felhammer
2012-05-10, 02:46 AM
I find it odd that no one really faults a male DM for role playing girls but a lot of people have problems with male players role playing girls.

Just one of those weird factoids of life I suppose.

TheOOB
2012-05-10, 02:48 AM
For my 2cp, I don't mind players gender bending(as we affectionately call playing outsider your gender) as long as you do it well.

The trick is that your characters gender is not their major personality trait. If you can't list three important parts of their personality that don't involve their gender, you're not playing a character, you're playing a sterotype.

I generally play male characters(being male myself), in part because I have a couple of friends who are. I do remember one particularly memorable female character I played in 7th Sea.

She was a Voddace(Italian) noblewoman who was escaping an arranged marriage and a life of servitude by masquerading as a male. She played the dashing, determined, and heroic swordsman archtype, and happened to have ever appearance and social boost advantage I could find.

Only the GM knew her true gender(the other players didn't), so most the characters just though she was a homosexual male(she unintentionally had woman throwing themselves at her) who refused to share a room with the other party members.

Loreni333
2012-05-10, 02:52 AM
@RD:
To be fair, I'm fine with the obbsessive people. although I get annoyed when they start ranting on about how ponies are manly when someone pokes a joke, or even simply mistakes their gender. I mean brownies poke fun at a ton of people. Why can't we be poked at? And I don't see how bronies get mad when the post a link to cupcakes or whatever somewhere completely off-topic from ponies, when it's really a shameless plug.

On topic, I can see how online is easier. Personally, I've always identified as being a bit girly, but online I find it easier to use in a sort of way. Also, the fact people see your face and voice and everything hurts, because when the person is in your face, you can see what gender they are.

One day, I need to set up a role playing game, dress and act as ambiguously gendered as possible, and make a female character. When she quickly dies as planned, I make a male one. And so forth.

Do it the V way. (Which sounds way worse then it should.)

Righteous Doggy
2012-05-10, 02:55 AM
lol, the last guy I had do that played a rather horrendous eldritch horror. He stole bodies by seducing one person and trading the next(he had a closet of corpses, not outfits), its actually really awesome when you can do it well. Mind you this campaign was much worse than most others I'd been in.

And eh, we're all human right? Hippocracy isn't the least common flaw.

WitchSlayer
2012-05-10, 04:05 AM
I do most of my roleplaying online, me playing another gender does not bother me in the least. My characters are their own characters, their gender is actually relatively minor when it comes to developing the character. Would you be creeped out if a gay guy played a straight character or vice versa? If a white guy played a black guy or vice versa? It is more or less the same thing with this. You just have to remember not to focus too much on them being "Feminine" and just think of them as people/characters rather than their gender. Hell, my longest running female character was originally going to be a guy and then on a whim I decided to make them a girl instead.

dehro
2012-05-10, 04:39 AM
Ever been on 4chan? Whenever the topic of Orcs or other non-human races comes up, people liking them are bound to be called heretics, traitors, idiots who doesn't understand how fantasy works or even retards (seriously) by people posting pictures of Paladins and demanding them to be purged in the name of Pelor the Burning Hate.


4chan really is not in any way a reflection of the world at large, its percentile population of internet trolls, childish individuals and more generally, morons, being largely disproportionate to the real world.
if you base your perceptions of culture, memes and real world racism on 4chan, I have nothing more to say to you.

a race being called through and through evil and used as a paragon of vice and cruelty and so on is a common literary artifice that makes fantasy "easy". yes, there are a few authors who make paragons with the real world and think of "insert ethnic minority" when they depict orcs or suchlike.. but the vaste majority is simply thinking "yeah..I've got to have a whole bunch of mooks who are going to hunt the hero out of sheer innate malice..how do I do that? oh, wait..I have an evil god..I can have a race or two created by him or corrupted by his wiles"..and when they go and name the race..they often call it orc or goblin or such, because it's easy..the race exists in the cultural background of most of the readers and will make work simpler for the author..
THAT IS NOT RACISM
maybe it's not original either, and it's rather "simple"...but you can't just go and call them racists.
also, there are enough authors who depict elves and fairies as cruel, intrinsecly evil and dangerous..Pratchett, Shakespeare, other classic authors..and there are authors who focus on Orcs or Trolls and make them their heroes.. Terry Brooks has a troll hero if I remember well.. Stan Nicholls..
really..nobody is picketing the bookstores for selling works of evil that propagate the teachings of a vile race when the new Stan Nicholls book comes out.

fantasy-centered racism transponded in the real world just is not a thing, except for a small minority of morons who would fixate on something equally obnoxious if orcs hadn't caught their eye first. those are losers and morons..not racists.
for it to be upgraded to racism it has to involve movements, organisations, more or less official institutions and publishings constructing an articulated theory of why orcs and suchlike are worthy of being racist against...
a few isolated ramblings, flamewars where people grasp at straws to cosntruct a theory for the sake of not losing an argument on 4chan just don't cut it.

WitchSlayer
2012-05-10, 05:17 AM
Ever been on 4chan? Whenever the topic of Orcs or other non-human races comes up, people liking them are bound to be called heretics, traitors, idiots who doesn't understand how fantasy works or even retards (seriously) by people posting pictures of Paladins and demanding them to be purged in the name of Pelor the Burning Hate.

I... Don't know what /tg/ YOU go to. But I don't see that all that often (except when in character). Also Pelor the Burning Hate has always been a little bit dumb.

Tengu_temp
2012-05-10, 07:15 AM
4chan really is not in any way a reflection of the world at large, its percentile population of internet trolls, childish individuals and more generally, morons, being largely disproportionate to the real world.
if you base your perceptions of culture, memes and real world racism on 4chan, I have nothing more to say to you.

Actually, I'd say that 4chan is a very good representation of real world. Give people anonymity, let them shed the shackles of enforced civilized conduct, and they show you their true nature: some still act in productive ways, especially on the nicer boards, but most become the ********s they always were, under the mask.

Scowling Dragon
2012-05-10, 07:22 AM
Its a good representation of Anarchy. Its the Mad Max of the internet.

Yora
2012-05-10, 07:47 AM
No, 4chan is a good representation of people who enjoy such an environment. They are not a representative sample of people in general.

Rift_Wolf
2012-05-10, 07:59 AM
In response to the OP: As a GM I've had to roleplay a few women, due to me not wanting the whole world to be a complete sausage-fest. The main problem I've found with this is the evil women tend to survive more often than the evil men, so they have more opportunity to become recurring characters. I'd say playing a woman is no more difficult than playing a different personality type, I admit it can be a bit 'why?' when guys play girl PCs (This is an alternate version of history where gender equality has always been the norm. You get no special bonuses or penalties. Are you doing it just so you can play a bitch?) but after a few games it becomes more a 'whatever' thing.

One interesting thing I've noticed is whenever the party fight an elf, they instinctively refer to him as a 'she'. Maybe Vaarsuvius isn't such a strange concept after all...

Man on Fire
2012-05-10, 08:22 AM
4chan is...


The main problem I've found with this is the evil women tend to survive more often than the evil men, so they have more opportunity to become recurring characters.

Whatever is was going to say doesn't matter anymore. Tell me more about thins thendency and reasons for it. With examples.

Avilan the Grey
2012-05-10, 08:50 AM
4chan is...



Whatever is was going to say doesn't matter anymore. Tell me more about thins thendency and reasons for it. With examples.

Evil is Sexy in combination with trying to avoid Women in Fridges?

Volthawk
2012-05-10, 09:02 AM
I've had no problems with people playing a different gender. In play-by-posts, I've probably had tons of people doing that - I don't really notice their gender and how it relates to character on this forum, and on the other forum I play on (RPoL) the system they have has you posting as your character (as in, in a game, the username it shows is the character's name).

Outside of that, in a Skype game I'm in one of the players has been playing a female character, and there's been zero problems - the character really isn't one of those hypersexual stereotypes, and really gender isn't the major thing about the character that determines how she acts - it's the stuff that happened in her life that determined it.

Personally, when it's a character for which gender is a relevant and important thing (as in, not some weird monstrous thing where that sorta is the thing noticed, not gender) I do usually play a male character, but that's more because I don't particularly give much thought to gender when making characters.

Loxagn
2012-05-10, 09:49 AM
Or, ugh, like one Dragon article I'm thinking about that actually made me really angry (although I did wind up using some of the actual items from it in my current campaign). There's some powerful wizard, who is also married to another powerful wizard, and yet the stuff he creates for her are things to help her clean the kitchen and flavor his food, or stuff for himself to carry on affairs without getting caught or let him ignore her when she's talking to him. The magic she does is apparently all related to... her cat. So, no, there has never been a lot of thought given to what wizardry (or fightery or druidism or whatever) being equally available to the sexes in D&D world would actually mean.

Don't be silly. I mean, who's heard of a woman being a Wizard? It's against the lore, I tell you.
Not to say that women can't do magic, I mean, that's what the whole Witch business is all about, all domestic and naturalism, things like that that women are good at.
Best to just leave proper Wizardry to the men, lass.

Skyner
2012-05-10, 01:29 PM
For my 2cp, I don't mind players gender bending(as we affectionately call playing outsider your gender) as long as you do it well.

The trick is that your characters gender is not their major personality trait. If you can't list three important parts of their personality that don't involve their gender, you're not playing a character, you're playing a sterotype.

I generally play male characters(being male myself), in part because I have a couple of friends who are. I do remember one particularly memorable female character I played in 7th Sea.

She was a Voddace(Italian) noblewoman who was escaping an arranged marriage and a life of servitude by masquerading as a male. She played the dashing, determined, and heroic swordsman archtype, and happened to have ever appearance and social boost advantage I could find.

Only the GM knew her true gender(the other players didn't), so most the characters just though she was a homosexual male(she unintentionally had woman throwing themselves at her) who refused to share a room with the other party members.

Impressive.

I tired my many tries with female, though, like my many other characters, have a tendency to die before I can get into that characters mindset well.

Verte
2012-05-10, 05:09 PM
I usually play women, but one of my favorite characters was male. I recall that I wanted to play a character whose personality was different from myself, so I went with a sailor bard who lacked common sense and played the accordion. I made him a guy because that just seemed to fit better with my image of the character. I think it worked out fine - I mean, no one seemed bothered by it, and I didn't use him as a vehicle for sexual fantasies or anything obnoxious like that. Romance wasn't really part of the campaign at all, either. However, I had played with that group before - in new groups, I generally play women.

I mean, obviously if I played with a guy whose character was a half-elf, half-succubus sorcerer with no personality beyond sexiness I'd be pretty offended - and I'd be annoyed if I played with a woman who made a similar sort of male character. Luckily, I haven't played in any campaigns with those sort of characters.

GreenZ
2012-05-10, 05:41 PM
Playing a character shouldn't be a question of 'can they be played?' but moreso 'can I play them correctly?' The idea of a male player using a female character is the same.

I don't have much experience in the way of nature related activities and have never had to struggle with being mute but effectively play a mute, nature revering monk. In the same way, a female character is no different than an orc, a mute, or even a career thief.

Yet, in the same way that my male Barbarian Tryndamere uses his own manliness as a guise to cover his weaknesses my female Bard Octavia has used her womanhood status to accomplish tasks.

It isn't what the character is but how it is played that drives how effective the character is. This lapse (along with others) between players and characters can fuel not only in-game action but also can give new experiences to those involved.


As an example, one game I played in had 3 male and 2 female players yet only a single male character. This became humorous as the single male was then grieved by the four female characters as he attempted to prove his manhood and was then promptly shut down during the first boss fight.

deuxhero
2012-05-10, 10:13 PM
The Hathran and Thrall of Malcanthet are pretty solid choices.


Plus anything in mounted combat gets a very big boost in carrying capacity.

Avilan the Grey
2012-05-11, 01:07 AM
Playing a character shouldn't be a question of 'can they be played?' but moreso 'can I play them correctly?'

Of course first you have to define "correctly"...

Marlowe
2012-05-11, 01:38 AM
As a person. Not as a collection of gender stereotypes.

In that sense playing as the opposite gender is indeed, no different from playing as a different race as as somebody with a relatively different set of skills. The major difference is that your group might indeed include people of the gender you are playing and in a position to give informed "criticism" and possibly be offended if they think you're doing it wrong, whereas relatively few have experience being a Half-Orc, a Dwarf miner/warrior, or a demon-blooded wizard.

What I have more problems with is the male player who insists on playing the manliest most manly masculine man. To the extent of insisting that the mini representing his character have facial hair. Even if he has to use a mini of the wrong species to do it. This screams all sorts of issues.

There's probably a distaff counterpart to this, but I haven't met it.

Eldest
2012-05-11, 07:42 AM
I actually tend to alternate the genders of my characters, but all of my male characters tend to die, get deleted, the game fails, or otherwise he falls out of favor. So it ends up with me having a long streak of female characters, with the occasional male. And really, there is almost no difference.

panaikhan
2012-05-11, 07:59 AM
in my many years of RP, I've played 4 of the possible gender types (male, female, both, neither) though I haven't stuck my neck out to explore any others.
In our group, I'm the only female there, yet the party is usually pretty balanced, male/female wise, even if I'm GM. But gender does tend to get brushed under the carpet, so to speak. It's not stuffed in people's faces, and in a gender-equal fantasy world, doesn't make a difference one way or the other. If there were mechanical advantages / disadvantages (I'm looking at you, 2e Drow) then I could see our group changing their attitude.

tl:dr
If people are happy within the group, even with the stereotypical RP's, go for it.
If it causes issues, then either talk it out or reach for the ban-hammer.

Righteous Doggy
2012-05-11, 10:01 AM
There's probably a distaff counterpart to this, but I haven't met it.

I happen to have. A girl who insisted on playing a pop princess in a zombie campaign, and another one who insisted on being the most girly halfling druid you would ever find. The druid was running around planting flowers in a graveyard to make it pretty, and was completely oblivious to most of the campaign. They do in fact exist. I don't know if I'd rather have them or the guy who insist he's the exiled catgirl princess noble ranger of a distant kingdom(who changes alignment on a whim may I add!)...

dehro
2012-05-12, 08:53 AM
Of course first you have to define "correctly"...

whatever works for me, the DM, the game/scenery, and the rest of the gaming group.

in precisely that order

when you interpret a role, one way or another you are playing a stereotype. whether you play it straight or not.
unless you're being intentionally obnoxious about it and obtuse as to why what you're doing is wrong, I don't really think there's much that one can say in the way of criticism as to how one portrays the role. if the game is heavy on the roleplay, the DM may have something to say if the interpretation doesn't feel right or plainly sucks hairballs.. other than that..really to get in a tiff because of some kind of "disrespectful" ingame gender/race/stereotype portrayal.. is kind of obnoxious in it's own right.

you might as well get into an argument with half a dozen burly blokes who turn up at the airport leaving for a stag do dressed as cheap prostitutes.

Righteous Doggy
2012-05-14, 10:31 AM
I should throw out there, I don't think I've ever played a character I think can be defined by gender. I've played barbarian werewolves, royalty, knights in shining armor, cartel leaders, and librarians, but not one of them could be defined by the gender I chose. I could easy rewrite them as male or female. Which just further makes me wonder why people wouldn't just write down their own gender all the time.

In the same thought that it doesn't matter, then why is it so hard to write down your own hmm? It isn't redifining your character in anyway is it? nor yourself? Maybe I just overthink it though.

shimmercat
2012-05-14, 11:14 AM
Doggy, because a lot of "does it even matter?" has to do with the playstyle of the group and of the player.

I like to have a developed character in RP heavy games. My group will sometimes go several sessions without using our battle stats and this is the only group I would ever expect something like loan interest rates to be important (rallying cry of this group: "Oh no, there's inflation at the Ghost Fed!"). XD When I play a character, I want a fully-developed person who could have stepped out of a novel, with hopes and mannerisms and flaws.

For players and games like mine, gender can and often will be important. Romance comes up in our games, and although it's never the major push of the game, it can influence the attitudes of NPCs and occasionally move the plot. (When a former ally goes evil, the party may want to check that his lover isn't passing information to him...) Gender norms in the game world can also come up... I mentioned Brienne from Game of Thrones before, and how her society's vision of her gender shaped the character. (I wish I had a more well-known example, but I'm drawing a blank.)

But the way I play the game is not the only way to play!

If you dungeon-crawl, or even play a game that is more balanced between RP and fighting, then gender is less important. Gender isn't going to matter for EVERY character, even in an RP heavy game. There is nothing wrong with that.

THE REASON TO DO IT ANYWAY: Pushing out of your comfort zone can improve yourself as an RPer, which can increase your enjoyment of the game.

And RPing people different from you can make you more sympathetic to those different from you in real life. It forces you to walk in their shoes, see things differently from the way you usually see things. But in order for this to work, you have to try hard, and you need to recognize that a woman isn't a stereotype.

Righteous Doggy
2012-05-14, 11:29 AM
Eh, well, I don't see, nor care for gender. Thats why I asked why people would play the other. And I don't see women as a stereotype, my post stated that I don't think it matters. I see people as people, not as genders, which is why its wierd people play one they aren't.

I do enough rp heavy games, I even push for them. I like them, and I like tactical battles and using cool abilities to show off and entertain. I can play both genders in them, and I can play any trope with any character, even if it does involve a crazy magic crossdressing side adventure :smalltongue:.

To me, your the one stereotyping them becuase you care for gender more than I do. I haven't stated what genders i play, nor what I am. Just that I can do both. Careful what your saying.

shimmercat
2012-05-14, 12:09 PM
I don't feel like it's stereotyping to say that if you're playing in a world with 17th century mores, gender makes a huge difference in character creation. Heck, even if you're playing in a world with modern-day mores, there are certain expectations for men and others for women, and a lot can be said about a character by how much they follow those expectations.

None of this means that you HAVE to play a character to whom gender is important, even in an RP-heavy game. Just that writing gender off completely for every player is silly.

Sorry if anything I've said has come across as accusatory; it hasn't been meant as such. Some of my comments have been directed at the thread in general, rather than you specifically.

Objection
2012-05-14, 12:40 PM
I see people as people, not as genders, which is why its wierd people play one they aren't.

I see people as people, not as genders, which is why it's weird people only ever play the one they are.

Shadowknight12
2012-05-14, 12:46 PM
I see people as people, not as genders, which is why it's weird people only ever play the one they are.

It could be a matter of personal preference, couldn't it? After all, would you find it weird if someone ordered the same flavour of ice cream or soda or whatever for as long as you've known them? Some people like to stick to what they know and have no desire to go beyond that. And it's okay. Really, it is. This is a hobby, a pastime, not an obligation. We should all do what makes us have fun and doesn't impede anyone else's fun.

Tengu_temp
2012-05-14, 12:53 PM
Why do so many people see character gender as a binary option, where either it completely doesn't matter or you're playing a sexist stereotype, with nothing in between? There are many characters whose gender is a pretty important aspect of their person, but not their most defining one, and who don't fall into the stereotype traps despite being very clearly male or female. This includes the majority of people in real life.

Terraoblivion
2012-05-14, 01:22 PM
I don't feel like it's stereotyping to say that if you're playing in a world with 17th century mores, gender makes a huge difference in character creation. Heck, even if you're playing in a world with modern-day mores, there are certain expectations for men and others for women, and a lot can be said about a character by how much they follow those expectations.

None of this means that you HAVE to play a character to whom gender is important, even in an RP-heavy game. Just that writing gender off completely for every player is silly.

Sorry if anything I've said has come across as accusatory; it hasn't been meant as such. Some of my comments have been directed at the thread in general, rather than you specifically.

Not just this, a lot of characters will appear different to the other players depending on gender. We have a whole lot of gendered archtypes and tropes that will appear differently if you play them with the gender they aren't associated with. It's not as prevalent as it was in, say, the 80s, but its still there. Imagine Conan if all you changed was the gender for example or the gentle, caring, naive healer as a man. It can be done and it might very well be interesting, but it does get perceived differently.

And like Tengu says it really is baffling how many people who seem to think that just treating female characters as men with breasts is any better. While playing up stereotypes is offensive because, well, they're stereotypes, erasing female experiences and aspects isn't all that much better. I too believe that recognizing gender, while lot letting it be a straightjacket is the better solution. It is a powerful force in society and in people constructing their identity, just ignoring it is generally pretty silly. Especially since the perception of the other players will still be influenced by gender regardless of intentions. Besides, it's hard to avoid if you begin touching on the very large narrative space that is romance and sexuality, which is pretty common and reasonable to do in a story given how much it motivates people.

dehro
2012-05-14, 01:33 PM
Besides, it's hard to avoid if you begin touching on the very large narrative space that is romance and sexuality, which is pretty common and reasonable to do in a story given how much it motivates people.

what kind of tabletop/roleplaying games are we talking about here though?

when it's DnD, in my limited experience it's usually all about the hunt for loot, killing/riding the dragon, chasing the evil rogue and twarthing the mage's plot for rising to divinity.

romance really has very little if anything to do with any of those plots..be it within the party or with NPCs

Shadowknight12
2012-05-14, 01:43 PM
what kind of tabletop/roleplaying games are we talking about here though?

when it's DnD, in my limited experience it's usually all about the hunt for loot, killing/riding the dragon, chasing the evil rogue and twarthing the mage's plot for rising to divinity.

romance really has very little if anything to do with any of those plots..be it within the party or with NPCs

This is something a lot of people are missing in this debate. We do not play the same kind of games. I do recognise the points made about gender identity being very important, but depending on the game, things like gender, race, age, sexuality and the like (all of which are also very important part of one's identity) are literally irrelevant because the focus of the game is elsewhere.

If the focus of the game is not on the characters, their identities, goals, personalities, backgrounds and the like, all of that becomes irrelevant, whether you like it or not. A non-character-focused game really does have no use for gender identity (even though it does exist) because it's devoting its time for something else. It's like the old koan, "does a falling tree make a sound if there's nobody around to hear it?". If gender is never relevant or examined or touched upon and is largely ignored by the game, then the attitude "gender doesn't matter" is very much the right attitude for that kind of game.

tensai_oni
2012-05-14, 02:13 PM
Even if you play a game with hack and slash dungeoneering and nothing else, there are still romance elements. At the very basic, there may be a princess to rescue. Or tavern wenches to woo after the adventure is over.

Also, a player character having a love interest can serve as a powerful motivation. Or blackmail material if the bad guys learn about it.

Shadowknight12
2012-05-14, 02:15 PM
Even if you play a game with hack and slash dungeoneering and nothing else, there are still romance elements. At the very basic, there may be a princess to rescue. Or tavern wenches to woo after the adventure is over.

Not necessarily. They are entirely optional. In fact, I've seen my fair share of adventures and campaigns without a single trace of romance. Not my kind of thing, but they exist and they are not rare.

EDIT: Also, we must learn to differentiate fantasy story tropes from fantasy gaming tropes. It was (and is) VERY common for stories to have romantic elements, because that sort of thing sells. That does NOT translate into gaming at all. Players have different expectations and goals, and romance may well be entirely ignored.

Terraoblivion
2012-05-14, 02:45 PM
what kind of tabletop/roleplaying games are we talking about here though?

when it's DnD, in my limited experience it's usually all about the hunt for loot, killing/riding the dragon, chasing the evil rogue and twarthing the mage's plot for rising to divinity.

romance really has very little if anything to do with any of those plots..be it within the party or with NPCs

Hmmm, quite a few. Wuxia played using Legends of the Wulin, heavily plot driven and anime-inspired Mutants and Masterminds games, large scale Legend of the Five Rings, normal scale Legend of the Five Rings, free form Touhou roleplay. I'm sure there is other stuff too, but these are the ones that spring to mind immediately. Except for the Touhou RP there's plenty of fighting, evil things to kill and similar going on, doesn't mean there isn't room for anything else.

kamikasei
2012-05-14, 05:49 PM
There are more differences between individuals of the same gender than there are between the average member of either. A character should have an actual personality, not simply be defined by hir gender. If a player is capable of playing a male character whose entire identity doesn't boil down to "being male", ze's capable of playing a female character without needing to dredge up stereotypes.

At the same time, in most settings, men and women are going to have been subject to different expectations and pressures growing up and will meet with different social reactions to the same actions, so that should be taken in to account as an influence on their personalities (a woman may have exactly the same interests and aptitudes as a man, but behave differently about them because of how people treat her).

So, on the one hand, don't overthink things and worry about making your character Obviously Female in every respect, especially if the best way you can think of to do that produces a personality quite unlike any actual female you know (though of course RPG characters tend to have... unusual personalities in general). Most of a female character's thinking, motivations, etc will be just like a male's in the same weird situations; not getting murdered to death by monsters or cheated by crime lords or sparking a war by being too forthright with that insufferable diplomat are fairly gender-neutral concerns. On the other hand, don't underthink things and simply play a female character exactly as you would a male, without consideration for how her experiences may have differed and how that may have affected her.

I almost only play PbP, so questions of awkwardness or feeling silly seems strange to me, though I don't attempt voices in face-to-face and would be distinctly unimpressed by other players forgetting a detail like my character's gender so awkwardness there also seems fairly strange to me. I'm more prone to lose track of or not know what a player's gender is than a character's. I play a mix of male and female characters, probably more female than male on balance, but PbP being what it is games die a lot and the ones that have lasted the longest have all been female. I'm not entirely sure why I skew towards preferring female characters; I think it's a combination of having a visual imagination (and women having a more accepted range of variation in appearance in our/my culture, or perhaps just being more visually interesting to me as a straight guy) and finding that a single large difference that influences personality but is not a personality trait in itself helps me hold a character enough at arm's length to make getting into her head paradoxically easier.

I find it interesting that in these discussions the notion often comes up of not wanting other players to realize you're crossplaying, or your character's gender. I'm pretty sure I've never "fooled" anyone in that way. I'm not sure why I'd bother to try; it might be an interesting project, but I certainly don't see it as a particularly useful test of how well you're roleplaying.

On romance and sexuality, both I and male and female fellow players have played characters of all (well, not all, sex is freakin' complicated) combinations (male, female, straight, gay, bi, that is) and played out romances for many of them. PbP helps in that regard because it doesn't hog spotlight, of course, and there's room for low-pressure character interaction in downtime. I'm pretty sure no one involved or watching was squicked, or left with the impression that there was anything going on OOC.

Man on Fire
2012-05-14, 05:59 PM
I should throw out there, I don't think I've ever played a character I think can be defined by gender. I've played barbarian werewolves, royalty, knights in shining armor, cartel leaders, and librarians, but not one of them could be defined by the gender I chose. I could easy rewrite them as male or female. Which just further makes me wonder why people wouldn't just write down their own gender all the time.

In the same thought that it doesn't matter, then why is it so hard to write down your own hmm? It isn't redifining your character in anyway is it? nor yourself? Maybe I just overthink it though.

If it doesn't matter, then why should I write my own gender? Nothing stops me from playing woman, nobody gets hurt if I do, then why not?

Righteous Doggy
2012-05-14, 07:41 PM
@Man on Fire What stops you from playing your own? I happen to realize that arguement works both ways. I suppose if I said "Well, you should play what you are" the world would come down on me for being restrictive. Nothing stops either way, but why would you choose the other eh?

@Kami Huh... you never explained why your avi is a catgirl in all that. Anyways, yeah, well, for me I don't understand the lack of variation and appearance between genders. I've played some epic looking characters either way, I like my male appearances better actually. I think I've done a much better job building them really...

I play mostly real life games, so to me its always much more akward when someone brings an alternate gender to the table, but I always tend to play games where no one gets preference. Regardless of age/gender/race no ones getting beat up over it(aside from a few jokes here). I don't like the idea of a player getting flak for gender in a game.

Terraoblivion
2012-05-14, 08:07 PM
@Kami Huh... you never explained why your avi is a catgirl in all that.

She's not a catgirl, she's just wearing a really embarrassing costume as part of a deal with a powerful artifact. It's from one of the stranger offshoots of the Nasuverse.

Righteous Doggy
2012-05-14, 08:08 PM
She's not a catgirl, she's just wearing a really embarrassing costume as part of a deal with a powerful artifact. It's from one of the stranger offshoots of the Nasuverse.

... Embarassing? I like it....

kamikasei
2012-05-14, 10:22 PM
@Kami Huh... you never explained why your avi is a catgirl in all that.
It's unrelated. My avatar isn't meant to be a character I play here. I've gone through a number of them and keep this one around mostly because a friend would be annoyed if it disappeared.

And I'm not saying men's appearances can't be varied. I'm saying that the "acceptable" range is narrower in my culture, and women can vary more without crossing boundaries or starting to look silly rather than interesting. So if I try to "picture a character" as a starting point, my mind is more likely to construct or retrieve an image of an interesting-looking woman than man.

Righteous Doggy
2012-05-14, 10:26 PM
It's unrelated. My avatar isn't meant to be a character I play here. I've gone through a number of them and keep this one around mostly because a friend would be annoyed if it disappeared.

And I'm not saying men's appearances can't be varied. I'm saying that the "acceptable" range is narrower in my culture, and women can vary more without crossing boundaries or starting to look silly rather than interesting. So if I try to "picture a character" as a starting point, my mind is more likely to construct or retrieve an image of an interesting-looking woman than man.

Its unrelated to anything but the friend? wierd people. And maybe it matters, maybe its wierd for me to see that avatar and a male symbol, Maybe people will get you mixed up. Not that thats ever related to anything in a thread about this sort of things....

And eh, hey, thats your own fault isn't it? your the one who forms your own thoughts and the constraints and abilities of the mind... And who's to say a man can't wear cool robes or trenchcoats? Tons of cool features for men and women. {Scrubbed}

Shadowknight12
2012-05-14, 10:29 PM
{Scrub the post, scrub the quote}

What about bisexuals, then? Regardless of the gender they picture, they'll picture something they're attracted to. Are they all perverts by default then? :smallconfused:

Righteous Doggy
2012-05-14, 10:33 PM
What about bisexuals, then? Regardless of the gender they picture, they'll picture something they're attracted to. Are they all perverts by default then? :smallconfused:

Lol, if thats how you take it. Actually makes me laugh to think of it that way. I've had trouble making attractive characters rather than ones who look interesting... I love when a character has uber unique characteristics or a battle outfit.

Shadowknight12
2012-05-14, 10:38 PM
Lol, if thats how you take it. Actually makes me laugh to think of it that way. I've had trouble making attractive characters rather than ones who look interesting... I love when a character has uber unique characteristics or a battle outfit.

I don't consider it a laughing matter myself. It's a stereotype that's still quite prevalent, so I tend to take it quite seriously. But my apologies if I accidentally misinterpreted you.

Righteous Doggy
2012-05-14, 10:40 PM
I don't consider it a laughing matter myself. It's a stereotype that's still quite prevalent, so I tend to take it quite seriously. But my apologies if I accidentally misinterpreted you.

And Stan Lee crushes on Mary Jane... I know better. I've met people who do, but I think when your going to roleplay people tend to be a little more seroius.

Terraoblivion
2012-05-14, 10:47 PM
Its unrelated to anything but the friend? wierd people. And maybe it matters, maybe its wierd for me to see that avatar and a male symbol, Maybe people will get you mixed up. Not that thats ever related to anything in a thread about this sort of things....

And eh, hey, thats your own fault isn't it? your the one who forms your own thoughts and the constraints and abilities of the mind... And who's to say a man can't wear cool robes or trenchcoats? Tons of cool features for men and women. {Scrub the post, scrub the quote}

So because if your sexual orientation is towards women then any appearance you find interesting for a female character will hinge on attractiveness? I guess I find dueling scars and Prussian uniforms sexy then, because I'm playing a character with both.

shimmercat
2012-05-14, 10:54 PM
Umm, what is wrong with a player creating characters that he/she finds attractive? I fail to see how that is at all a negative, assuming that the player has enough self-control to not turn the character into their personal wet dream. :smallconfused:

And just because the characters are attractive doesn't mean that they can't be diverse.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v70/shimmercat/OlavoCharacter.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v70/shimmercat/JakeGunSm.png
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v70/shimmercat/DiederJungleFinishedSm.jpg
Those are all male characters that I've played (am playing, in the case of the guy in armor), and I designed all of them to be attractive to me. I think they are fairly diverse and I would be surprised if any of them would make another player uncomfortable. How is this "perverse?" Or is it only perverse if a guy does it while designing female characters?

I'm wondering why Kami had to explain his female avatar. I also find it strange that Kami was asked about his female avatar but I wasn't asked about my male one. That feels like a bit of a double standard.

Righteous Doggy
2012-05-14, 10:56 PM
I didn't know yours was male? and Kami's was explicitly female(or a really good crossdresser...)

Anyways, nope! not a problem with self control. Just not what I ever personally think of trying for... I clarified I didn't really care that much above didn't I?

Verte
2012-05-14, 11:25 PM
THE REASON TO DO IT ANYWAY: Pushing out of your comfort zone can improve yourself as an RPer, which can increase your enjoyment of the game.
That's pretty much the one of the main reasons I decided to play a guy when I first did. It was the first roleplaying heavy campaign that I had played in, and I wanted a character that was different from myself so I could stretch my RP muscles a bit. I mean, obviously there are a lot fewer differences between myself and a human guy than there are between myself and an elven woman, but that just means I put that much more effort into portraying that subtlety of difference. Not that I'm a great roleplayer or something :smalltongue:.

kamikasei
2012-05-15, 12:18 AM
Doggy: I'm not sure how to put this politely but I don't get the impression you're actually making much effort to read what I'm writing for any sort of comprehension. I'm not sure how to reply to you because your responses to what I've already said seem to be filtering my words through a very idiosyncratic matrix of your own thought without much engagement with what I was actually saying. Normally I'd take that as an indication that I'm not expressing myself clearly, but in this case it doesn't seem like anyone else is having much difficulty understanding me.

Its unrelated to anything but the friend? wierd people.
No, the fact that the picture I use here, which is not in any way intended to be a "this looks like I do" representation, is female is not related to why I play female characters because I'm not playing a character here. That's what's "unrelated". The reason I'm still using it rather than having rotated it out as I have several avatars that filled that spot before it is primarily because it amuses someone who it in turn amuses me to amuse. I find it more than a little rude of you to call my friend weird over that.

And maybe it matters, maybe its wierd for me to see that avatar and a male symbol, Maybe people will get you mixed up. Not that thats ever related to anything in a thread about this sort of things....
Maybe (spoilers: yes) I have the male symbol selected specifically to tell people I'm male despite having a female character in my avatar, to avoid confusion. If someone has difficulty processing the sight of a female character in an avatar and a male gender symbol below it then that's not really something I feel much obligation to help them with.

And eh, hey, thats your own fault isn't it? your the one who forms your own thoughts and the constraints and abilities of the mind...
:smallconfused:
I've seen you make this kind of response before in this thread and it strikes me as very odd.

I don't see that there's any "fault" involved. I'm explaining how I think my thought processes operate. What on earth is the point of saying "ah, but those are your thoughts, so you're to blame for them"? Firstly, blame doesn't enter in to it. Secondly... no. I do not form my thoughts, or the constraints or abilities of my mind. They form me, or at least, it's a feedback loop. If you ask me why I do certain things and I reply by describing the unconscious influences on my thoughts and actions, it's completely backwards to say "why don't you have different thoughts, though?".

And who's to say a man can't wear cool robes or trenchcoats? Tons of cool features for men and women.
No one is, and I didn't, so that works out quite nicely.

{Scrub the post, scrub the quote}
You have misunderstood me, though on this point it may be that I've been unclear.

I'm not saying I only make characters attractive to me (though in fact I do generally make characters I consider attractive, even if I'm not attracted to them - that is, my male characters tend to be at least decent-looking too). I'm saying that, because I am attracted to women and not to men, that may be part of why I find women generally more visually interesting than I do men. Even when I'm not particularly weighing an image for attractiveness, the fact that I do so preferentially for women rather than men may bias my thinking in general so that I find women simply more interesting to look at in all contexts.

That fig leaf of "oh well obviously I don't know anything about you" is very flimsy when stuck on to the end of some thoroughly unwarranted motivation-guessing. If you realize that much before you hit post, then maybe consider stopping, looking back at some of the things you stated though you didn't know, and taking them out or making them questions instead. I'm perfectly happy to try to explain my position and way of thinking, and listen to others explain theirs, so that all might learn something. I'm not happy to be expected to justify myself to you as though you are the norm and every way in which I differ from you is a deviation from that norm, and that's very much the tone I'm getting from you here.

Righteous Doggy
2012-05-15, 12:41 AM
I have alot to read through, I take in as much as I can, I don't respond to everything.

I don't like lieing, in any shape. You said you had trouble imagining characters wearing neat outfits becuase of gender, and you use a different representation of yourself twice.

You control your own mind don't you? You just tried to fight that idea!? Of all the things to nitpick, eh. Thats awful if you think you can't and just accept it.

We all have our own norms, our own culture. Mine is different, which is why I'm so curious... and occasionally ask more. I don't have as much of a dependancy on social constructs such as gender, which is why its odd when people ask to adhere or to forget. I say those things becuase its me apologizing for overstepping, not excusing. I do not know you, nor anyone else here, but what you show me.

Back on topic, I don't think attractiveness is a big factor in my characterization. If the person is attractive, I can go for that. Its never intentional, we don't control how we look in real life entirely, our characters can be wildly different just like real people, not everyones a movie star, but within reason... but I like it that way. I make alot of characters, I go for alot of looks, but I don't ever try for something I want to be attractive... I try for whatever I think the character should look like for who it is... if that makes any sense.

Marlowe
2012-05-15, 12:42 AM
I'm a little confused as to why this thread even exists, to be honest. And why anyone should have to justify their avatar is beyond me.

Righteous Doggy
2012-05-15, 12:44 AM
I'm a little confused as to why this thread even exists, to be honest. And why anyone should have to justify their avatar is beyond me.

Don't, just got curious. It exist becuase i'm curious why people play female characters as male and vice versa, to me its wierd. I ment to aim at face to face tabletop, but people pick to express themselves through other means. Half ready to just say forget it if people intend to make statements about things being out of their control much more. A dozen people just think they can't help themselves. Whats this world coming to.

Lappy9001
2012-05-15, 12:53 AM
Honestly, as long as you're focusing more on the character's personality than their gender, it shouldn't really make any difference. Personally, I tend to stick with male characters because I don't roleplay female characters any differently so there's no real point to it.

The only female character I played was literally a doll, and that revolved more around her sheltered'ness more than her female...ness. Basically, she was revived as the deceased daughter of a noble family, but struggled because she was literally a different person now, despite her efforts to become the daughter the family remembered. I would liked to have gone more into her conflict, but the game only lasted two sessions.

shimmercat
2012-05-15, 12:55 AM
I haven't seen a single person say that they "just can't help themself" and that's why they play opposite gender characters. I haven't even seen a single person say anything even close to that. What I have seen is a thousand good reasons why someone may want to play an opposite gender character, reasons that run the gamut from "why not?" to "I like playing diverse characters" to "it helped me discover who I am and it changed my life." And I see one OP who seems to be either willfully putting words in everyone's mouths or is incapable of understanding what is being said. {Scrubbed}

Well, I'm thoroughly uncomfortable now, so I will take my leave of this thread.

Righteous Doggy
2012-05-15, 01:00 AM
Shimmercat, Kami just did a few post ago. Its beyond terrible when someone says they can't think.

Marlowe
2012-05-15, 01:06 AM
Don't, just got curious. It exist becuase i'm curious why people play female characters as male and vice versa, to me its wierd. I ment to aim at face to face tabletop, but people pick to express themselves through other means. Half ready to just say forget it if people intend to make statements about things being out of their control much more. A dozen people just think they can't help themselves. Whats this world coming to.

You're not ready to forget it. You've spawned an eight page thread out of a non-issue. we are talking about a roleplaying game where people roleplay. As different people. Sometimes that includes someone of the opposite gender. Why is it any weirder to roleplay as a man or a woman than an elf or an orc?

And yes, you're starting to creep me out a little.

Lord_Gareth
2012-05-15, 01:12 AM
You're not ready to forget it. You've spawned an eight page thread out of a non-issue. we are talking about a roleplaying game where people roleplay. As different people. Sometimes that includes someone of the opposite gender. Why is it any weirder to roleplay as a man or a woman than an elf or an orc?

And yes, you're starting to creep me out a little.

I'm not getting the 'creep' factor, but that's probably because he's busy implying that I don't think because of my previous statement, "Most of my characters come out female for reasons I cannot discern."

Shadowknight12
2012-05-15, 01:15 AM
Half ready to just say forget it if people intend to make statements about things being out of their control much more. A dozen people just think they can't help themselves. Whats this world coming to.

Wow. Just wow. I am... just... astounded. Please, I really, really beg of you to take some time out and re-read this post I'm quoting, then think REALLY hard on how it comes off to other people. I can't help but feel you can't see how offensive this sounds. Particularly that last bit. I don't want to make wild assumptions, but it sounds like you disapprove of players playing characters of a gender they're not, and that makes you go "Oh no what's this world coming to??!" which is an incredibly offensive attitude to take.

Just... please, take some time to think about all this. Reflect on what people are telling you.

Knaight
2012-05-15, 01:43 AM
Shimmercat, Kami just did a few post ago. Its beyond terrible when someone says they can't think.

How you got "can't think" out of "exists in a cultural space that does [whatever] and as such has [whatever] implications" is a mystery. What it actually comes down to is much closer to "there are more possibilities within wider constraints", which is not a difficult concept to grasp.

Also, regarding your previous comments on this whole attractiveness tangent, these assumptions are absolutely key to your position expressed so far.
1) People are attracted to every single member of genders they are attracted to.
2) Characters are either attractive or interesting. Never both.
3) Playing a character one is attracted to is inherently bad.
4) The only reason one would do something inherently bad is that they "can't control themselves".

Would you care to defend any of these? Because that has the potential to be completely hilarious, given that these are nonsense at best.

Avilan the Grey
2012-05-15, 02:20 AM
So because if your sexual orientation is towards women then any appearance you find interesting for a female character will hinge on attractiveness? I guess I find dueling scars and Prussian uniforms sexy then, because I'm playing a character with both.

For me... I don't know. I would love to say I agree with you but somehow all my female characters are either really good looking or at least on the attractive end of realistic. I can spend hours trying to make a face the exact way I want it in CRPGs (and Sims), for example. Case in point: My avatar right here to the left. :smalltongue:

Edit: The "You are playing a female character so you must be gay" thing keeps popping up still... Mostly among teenagers, of course. Latest installment right now is Diablo 3.
(And somebody has already asked the Armor Piercing Question: "Who is more "gay", the man who spends his gaming session looking at a third person view of a scantly-clad female wizard, or the one who spends the same amount of time staring at the huge sweaty bare muscles of a guy?" And before anyone answers... My personal answer is "neither" or "doesn't matter" but idiots are idiots everywhere).

Morithias
2012-05-15, 02:40 AM
For me... I don't know. I would love to say I agree with you but somehow all my female characters are either really good looking or at least on the attractive end of realistic. I can spend hours trying to make a face the exact way I want it in CRPGs (and Sims), for example.

I on the other hand roll my "Appearance" score. Of course going to the trouble of perfecting your character's look is something that I respect, not trying to say that my way is better.

If it's just that matter of being attractive and sexual that bothers people, remind them that characters aren't necessarily beautiful right away. Have either their charisma be their measure, or have them roll an appearance score.

Hell my most famous female character the "Red Lotus" was a female with an appearance score of 10. Her grandmother was a nymph, and know what her mother was? Not just a succubus, the literal embodiment of lust.

This resulted in a chaotic evil psycho assassin who was obsessed with her beauty. Even after she gained the ghost template and the power to shift her appearance, she was never satisfied. Wanting to kill the most beautiful creatures in existence so she could be on top (She was teased for her looks at her sorcerer academy). She sought out and murdered the bloody Succubus Queen herself, and continues to this day to kill succubi, pleasure devils, and nymphs, seeking out the beautiful so she can kill it. This quest has lead her to being the only evil member of an organization that is fighting against an elder evil known only as "the first" aka the original evil and lord of darkness.

And at the end of the campaign when she has found the first and kept it sealed? She is tied to the area as a ghost and is constantly researching epic spells to protect the area, slowly being corrupted further and becoming a darklord, obsessed with stopping the first. Not out of fear of conquest, but out of fear it might create another lust (She believes the Succubus Queen was the lust embodiment, in reality it was her own mother and isn't dead).

Hell Red Lotus's charisma was in the low 70's by the end of the campaign, but her appearance score? Stuck in the 10's, her true form being nothing but a mundane ordinary girl. If she had just gotten over her looks she could've had almost any mate she wanted with her great charisma.

It is probably one of the most tragic stories I ever wrote, and you know what, it wouldn't have worked half as well if Red Lotus was male. Mainly cause when it comes to D&D, most of the "Sexual" monsters are female. Nymphs, succubi, pleasure devils, etc.

And I think that is why the guys roleplaying girls thing tends to bring up more issues than girls playing guys, cause in fantasy in general girls tend to be more sexual. It's not right, it's not fair, but in the end all we can do to counter it is to show that male players CAN play female characters that aren't just "tits lol". By setting good examples, we can make this debate meaningless in the future, when people are free to play whatever they want, so long as the play it WELL.

erikun
2012-05-15, 02:48 AM
Don't, just got curious. It exist becuase i'm curious why people play female characters as male and vice versa, to me its wierd.
My reasons are curiosity, or because I have a character concept that includes a character's gender. I don't see a reason I shouldn't be able to roleplay a specific gender any more than I shouldn't be able to roleplay a specific class, fantasy race, character mindset or intelligence value.

Shadowknight12
2012-05-15, 02:48 AM
It is probably one of the most tragic stories I ever wrote, and you know what, it wouldn't have worked half as well if Red Lotus was male. Mainly cause when it comes to D&D, most of the "Sexual" monsters are female. Nymphs, succubi, pleasure devils, etc.

*shrug* I make sure there's gender equality in all my settings. Female "monsters" get to be strong and brutish too, and male "monsters" get to be beautiful and sexual too, to name an example. So as I see it, I could've made it work with a male too, just as easily.

After all, the reason so many sexual monsters are female in games is because they were lifted from myths, stories and folklore, and in male-dominated societies (as have been the majority of societies in our history), the role of "sexual monster" naturally gets filled by a female.

So clearly, in a game where gender equality is a given, we must make some corrections to adjust for this.


And I think that is why the guys roleplaying girls thing tends to bring up more issues than girls playing guys, cause in fantasy in general girls tend to be more sexual. It's not right, it's not fair, but in the end all we can do to counter it is to show that male players CAN play female characters that aren't just "tits lol". By setting good examples, we can make this debate meaningless in the future, when people are free to play whatever they want, so long as the play it WELL.

Again, male-dominated society portrays women as sexualised (but not as sexual per se, because liberated women are often seen as threatening) because that's what they want to see. We have to realise what we're doing and correct it. So yes, you're right, we must set better examples, but we must also realise that the root of the issue is gender inequality and double standard. If we correct that, this sort of thing becomes way easier to fix.

Avilan the Grey
2012-05-15, 02:50 AM
Speaking of this I was a bit disappointed when they gave Fem!Shep special (and rather horrid) animations in ME3. A VERY large part of her appeal is that she is the ultimate Ladette, something many of us find very... interesting. :smallbiggrin:. Also, apart from that, the fact that she is a soldier, walks like a soldier, talks like a soldier and punches reporters like a soldier (hey wait a minute... :smallwink:) is one reason why Shep is such a popular character among females who play computer or video games.


Again, male-dominated society portrays women as sexualised (but not as sexual per se, because liberated women are often seen as threatening) because that's what they want to see.

I don't know; the other part is the opposite: I just can't understand how many men (and boys) that gets shocked if they ever find out what women talk to each other about, etc. Women has as filthy minds and mouths as men, and to me that is a positive thing. I am just sad that gender roles still makes people look down on women that express their sexuality and / or are very sexually active, but that is getting close to the topics we should stay away from.

dehro
2012-05-15, 04:08 AM
Whats this world coming to.

this right here is the kind of phrase that... other people use..people with leaflets, disapproving stares and who make comments about other people's haircut/makeup/length of their skirts/musical taste...

usually when they say these things, they refer to weird people like roleplayers ..who "tempt the demon" or something like that for playing with fictitious supernatural entities following patterns clearly aimed at ritual evocation of satan or somesuch other crackpot theory.

seriously, I did not expect such a turn of phrase from someone who is clearly involved in roleplaying, and then related to the roleplaying itself.

talking about sexuality, real or fictitious as may be, in this forum in particular was always going to open a door to confrontation. I don't think it's a secret that right here there are solid representations of just about any colour of the rainbow of sexuality... trying to draw a parallel between fictitious characters played in a fantasy world and "the world and what it's coming to"... well.. let's just say that if you eve were awarded a cookie for being smart..now is the time to puke it up.
I myself am straight and tend to not play romance/sexuality/gender-relevant characters, because I like to focus more on political intrigue/crimesolving and hack'n slash...and my characters are uncomplicatedly male because I have no interest in pushing boats out in terms of interpretation of characters other than what's functional to getting to the next hack'n slash situation.
that's however a personal choice... why it should be, in your eyes, more worthy than someone creating a pretty and well rounded character that happens to be something different than their own sexual orientation, and then give it a proper ..let's say, theatrical rendition...rrreally baffles me.
as for the real life..I suppose I have it easy in what is still a largely "straight oriented" world.. despite my sometimes less than traditional endeavours..so I sometimes struggle to understand judgemenental attitudes coming from the more militant members of this forum..
That said, you kinda stepped in a giant turd with this one statement.

KatoriaTheRed
2012-05-15, 04:35 AM
I see no problem with it as long as you're in a comfortable group and able to. The sexual aspect, probably not so much but a guy or girl playing opposite gender characters? Not a problem for me. Heck, recently I had to run two characters at once due to a lack of players and we needed the extra man/woman power for the campaign we were on. I ended up running a brother and sister team, Samauri and Cleric, respectively, named Jack and Jill. :P They ended up hitting seventh level before bad rolls killed the cleric first, then the samauri. @_@.

Man on Fire
2012-05-15, 05:17 AM
What stops you from playing your own? I happen to realize that arguement works both ways. I suppose if I said "Well, you should play what you are" the world would come down on me for being restrictive. Nothing stops either way, but why would you choose the other eh?

Because I can.

Avilan the Grey
2012-05-15, 05:36 AM
Because I can.

Heh, best argument so far, really :smallbiggrin:

kamikasei
2012-05-15, 05:39 AM
Shimmercat, Kami just did a few post ago. Its beyond terrible when someone says they can't think.
Oh hey, this is fun! I get to find out what I think and say without, you know, actually having to write any of it down - it seems you can supply my part of the conversation for me, with no need for me to exert myself! This is much easier than actually putting effort in to expressing myself. I wonder what I'll turn out to have said next?

*gets popcorn, sits down*

Proceed.

---

You seem to have a very basic confusion between "I do not consciously choose my every thought and feeling, and in fact my choices are often determined by involuntary emotional responses and subconscious trains of thought and association, because my identity and actions are a product of my mind not vice versa" and "I have absolutely no impulse control or restraint". An explanation of what drives a person's choices necessarily boils down to influences they don't choose or control. You also seem to be assuming that anything you find unusual is somehow aberrant and in need of being restrained. This is a bigoted and ignorant attitude.

The notion that I'm lying because... actually I can't quite make out what you're trying to say here. I "use a different representation of myself twice" - wait, so on the one hand my avatar is a female character, on the other hand my gender status is "male" - is this supposed to be deceitful, somehow? Would it have been less so if I'd just had the avatar? That's the reason I set the gender status in the first place, to head off some potential confusion. You simply sound like you're annoyed I made you think instead of just being neatly filed away at first glance. I haven't seen gender policing this absurd since high school, and frankly I'm pretty creeped out by how much it's reminding me of apologetics for transphobic violence.

I'm morbidly curious to see how you'll twist this reply around, but at this point I doubt trying to make sense of your thinking will be more entertaining than it is aggravating, so don't be surprised if I don't reply. Absurdity is fun, but not as a steady diet.

Marlowe
2012-05-15, 05:53 AM
I hereby proclaim that this is now the Catgirl Avatar Appreciation thread.

I couldn't get a catgirl, but Zafila had no screentime to be in.:smallwink:

dsmiles
2012-05-15, 06:12 AM
Having skipped a large portion of the thread...

I'm not seeing what the big deal is. If, in writing the story of my character, I write 'she,' because it fits the vibe of the story better, the character is female. If I write 'he,' the character is male. Half the time, I base the gender on the mini that fits the concept the best. Sometimes it's male, sometimes it's female. Even with my extensive collection of minis, not every concept has both a male and female mini that fits.

Also, like I've said about always playing females in 3rd-person-view video games (on another forum), "If I'm going to stare at someone for hours on end, it had *darn* well better be someone I enjoy staring at."

Elfinor
2012-05-15, 08:41 AM
In DM-mode, I do it because having an all-male world is slightly more uncomfortable to me than having to do the occasional female voice. I'll admit I haven't actually asked my players, but I think they'd feel the same. I do a hilariously poor job at most of the voices, though, so I keep it to a minimum (20-33% of NPCs?). The only female voice I'm comfortable doing (without a bit of practice beforehand) is the 'Noblewoman's drawl': this may be because it fits my real personality the best, so far as these things go. Still, it works out well enough, most of the time my players don't bat an eyelid when I switch voices. Everyone has had a crack at me at one time or another for failing in the vocal department - there's usually at least one recurring NPC with a weird voice in every campaign. On a related note, Bards are conspicuously absent in my campaigns:smalltongue:

In Player-mode, I've done it a few times: twice as a Sorceress-y character (with the drawl) and once as a Warriorbladething(?) who acted very stereotypically macho, enough so that people mistook her for a man with her Helmet on. Both were loads of fun, if a bit stereotypical. I usually play as a male, but I went for female characters those times because... that was the concept I came up with? File it away under 'because I can', I suppose. None of my group/s have expressed discomfort at cross-gender roleplaying. The level of childish amusement has varied:smallwink:, but it is usually small and never session-destroyingly intolerable - the characters are never solely treated as a walking set of genitalia.

Regarding your 'entirely forgotten that they play the opposite gender' comment: TBH, gender rarely comes up in-character, 'go totally crazy, forget I'm a lady' moments... don't happen. I mean, honestly, how many times can you say, 'but a woman would never think of such a thing!' in a game? So long as it's physically (or magically) possible, gender has no effect. The only bad gender-forgetting case I've seen was when one girl forgot which character she was playing (yes) which is really an absent-minded issue, not a gender one.

@KamiKasei: Your avatar amuses me greatly as well:smallbiggrin:

Tengu_temp
2012-05-15, 10:56 AM
For me... I don't know. I would love to say I agree with you but somehow all my female characters are either really good looking or at least on the attractive end of realistic. I can spend hours trying to make a face the exact way I want it in CRPGs (and Sims), for example. Case in point: My avatar right here to the left. :smalltongue:

Most of my female characters tend to have at least above-average looks... But then, so do most of my male characters. I guess I'm just vain.

Toliudar
2012-05-15, 11:17 AM
These are fantasy games, and so there's always going to be a wish-fulfillment aspect to the characters we choose to play. Most of the characters I play are more attractive than me, but then most of the characters are also stronger, more agile and (to the extent that I can manage this) smarter than me.

I play a lot of female characters in PBP. If nothing else, it increases an apparent diversity of perspective. I also think that there's a different energy in IRL social gatherings if a variety of gender roles are represented, and some of that carries over into forum games as well.

My tabletop game has had both female and male players play opposite sex. The only time it was a problem was when a resolutely Male player had his warmage reincarnated as a woman. The player just kind of shut down and had the character literally run away, naked, never to be seen again. We live and learn.

Most of the games I've played haven't dealt with romance. I've played two flirtatious or overtly sexual female characters, and one who was in a dedicated relationship with another PC. Talking about it with the DM (and the other player in the relationship, of course) before hand added a bit of fun, and the relationship evolved into a fairly significant plot point in the one game. I'd definitely do it again, but only if everyone else in the game was on board with that style of play.

Morithias
2012-05-15, 11:32 AM
Speaking of this I was a bit disappointed when they gave Fem!Shep special (and rather horrid) animations in ME3. A VERY large part of her appeal is that she is the ultimate Ladette, something many of us find very... interesting. :smallbiggrin:. Also, apart from that, the fact that she is a soldier, walks like a soldier, talks like a soldier and punches reporters like a soldier (hey wait a minute... :smallwink:) is one reason why Shep is such a popular character among females who play computer or video games.

I don't know; the other part is the opposite: I just can't understand how many men (and boys) that gets shocked if they ever find out what women talk to each other about, etc. Women has as filthy minds and mouths as men, and to me that is a positive thing. I am just sad that gender roles still makes people look down on women that express their sexuality and / or are very sexually active, but that is getting close to the topics we should stay away from.

I personally find it hypocritical that us men are called out for liking sexual things. Old spice man much? There are TONS of ads and television shows where men are used as sexual objects and nothing more, and are just sexiest in general (too incompetent to operate a blanket for example).

In fact I'm starting to think this whole thing is nothing more than a big double standard....towards men. The thought that a man can never play a deep well-thought out female is a sexist thought at best.

As for the ladette thing..I never found that made sense. It's like you're saying the only way for a girl to be a positive role model is for her to reject being feminine, which sends the message that "unless you basically pretend to be a guy, and reject your biological sex you're nobody".

Terraoblivion
2012-05-15, 11:35 AM
For me... I don't know. I would love to say I agree with you but somehow all my female characters are either really good looking or at least on the attractive end of realistic. I can spend hours trying to make a face the exact way I want it in CRPGs (and Sims), for example. Case in point: My avatar right here to the left. :smalltongue:

Oh, don't get me wrong, I tend to play characters I find attractive. Ranging from cute tomboy/nice looking butch to something close to being the most attractive person on the planet in one case. I'm just vain and like playing good looking characters for the wish fulfillment aspect of wishing I was as good looking.

The character with the dueling scar and the military uniform is someone I do picture as being quite attractive, despite the scar, in both appearance and personality. I just meant I didn't choose those aspects because I find them attractive. They're there because she's a Prussian officer, alternate universe with more gender equality in case you ask, and dueling scars are tradition for those and uniforms come with the job. I do think they make her badass though.

And you're right on FemShep. It's nice to see a positive, heroic portrayal of a masculine woman, it's damn rare and when it happens they tend to go for a sort of over the top masculinity for the joke. Here they just went for someone fairly masculine, completely badass and kept it at that. It's a big part of why I actually like Shepard as a character, even with the inconsistency bred by the player choosing a lot of her lines. It's also part of why I think that FemShep is genuinely the better choice, male Shepard is just kind of a generic action hero in appearance and movement. The other part is that the female version has better voice acting and delivery, most of the time.

Tengu_temp
2012-05-15, 11:58 AM
I picked male Shepard for adorable Quarians. Was worth it.

dehro
2012-05-15, 12:28 PM
Most of my female characters tend to have at least above-average looks... But then, so do most of my male characters. I guess I'm just vain.

don't worry...I've played online textual rpgs for a decade and have yet to see more than 3-4 people who didn't describe their characters as fantasy and race-appropriate versions of the Brangelinas

JonRG
2012-05-15, 01:33 PM
@Kami: I appreciate your avatar! :smallbiggrin:

As to the question, I roll up male characters because it feels true to the character. It's the same reason I imagine my character tall instead of short, or strong instead of agile, or blond instead of brunet. These aspects don't necessarily define the character, but each of them adds up to the image I have in my mind that makes me go, "Yes, that is [character name]."

P.S. Under that robe, my avatar is a zombie. A male zombie. :smallwink:

Shadowknight12
2012-05-15, 01:38 PM
I personally find it hypocritical that us men are called out for liking sexual things. Old spice man much? There are TONS of ads and television shows where men are used as sexual objects and nothing more, and are just sexiest in general (too incompetent to operate a blanket for example).

In fact I'm starting to think this whole thing is nothing more than a big double standard....towards men. The thought that a man can never play a deep well-thought out female is a sexist thought at best.

It's not a double standard when women are portrayed the exact same way and far worse. I don't want to minimise your concerns, but I personally wouldn't start complaining about the portrayal of men in the media until the portrayal of women in the media has been addressed. As I see it, they've had it worse and they've had to endure it for far longer than us.


As for the ladette thing..I never found that made sense. It's like you're saying the only way for a girl to be a positive role model is for her to reject being feminine, which sends the message that "unless you basically pretend to be a guy, and reject your biological sex you're nobody".

I can't speak for anyone else, but I like the ladette because I like her refusal to fall into conventional gender roles, following her own goals. She wants to be less feminine and doesn't care about society's pressure on her. Having said that, I think all kinds of women can make for a positive rolemodel, regardless of how they are. The ultra-feminine woman, the ladette, the old lady, the little girl, the businesswoman, the scientist and so on, all those archetypes can be fleshed out and given positive qualities to elevate them to the rank of rolemodel. It's not about femineity or masculinity, it's about how the person is inside and the qualities they display.

Personally, I like the ladette. But I like her for different reasons that I like the feminite woman or the old lady archetypes.

JennTora
2012-05-15, 02:14 PM
Well, a lot of my characters are chicks. I have a half elf chaotic neutral sorcerer whose ultimate goal is to surpass even the gods(nobody said I had to play a character with sane goals). She's mostly asexual. A half-elf druid who is pretty slutty because she considers sexual restrictions unnatural and for a couple of other reasons. a human barbarian who doesn't wear clothes unless she has to which is mostly for comfort reasons, she's more likely to stab you then sleep with you if you're giving her trouble. A bisexual elf magus who wouldn't consider a relationship with anyone who wasn't some sort of arcane caster due to considering mages superior to non-mages, either due to genetics or intelligence.