"gender bent" characters.

[Mystic Muse]

okay. Given the option I almost always play as a girl in RPGs and video games. When I was younger my cousins accused me of being "Gay" for doing so. I explained I do this to somebody and they replied "I don't wanna know." and recently in my D&D group another player commented on the fact I was playing a girl.


what's wrong with this exactly? before you ask I don't enact "personal fantasies" with my characters. I just change the gender of my characters and play them as I would any character of my own.

I find girls to be superior to guys for some reason. I apologize if this offends you in some way I just do and THAT'S why I play as them.

[Dienekes]

Ehh, one of my friends act as you do. Other than a few lewd comments at the start nothing came of it (meaning, after a joke or two we settled and played as normal)

While I don't doubt there will be someone, somewhere who is living some odd fantasy through a gender reversal, and Freud may have a thing or two to say, I wouldn't give it much thought.

You RP what you feel like, hopefully the people you play with will get used to it or become mature enough to not give a crap.

Edit (poor joke for those who will take me seriously for some odd reason): But seriously now, women superior to men? That's just crazy talk, we're so much bigger and stronger and are brains are like twice their size.

[Flayerman]

I call my friend who does this a tranny, because he never plays a male character, except one time, when he got a belt of gender-changing he used as a disguise.

...in good fun. Because it doesn't matter, and anyone who tells you it does needs to be reminded that OOC/IC has a magical wall that you can't break ever or bad things happen to everyone. >.>

EDIT: And even if he really was, who cares?

[Sstoopidtallkid]

I play whichever gender fits the character. Many are male, because I've had similar issues as you when playing females(and generally I don't care much about the gender), but certain characters need to be female(my young, innocent Malconvoker and my Tibbit Summoner come to mind).

As for why it disturbs people, they're sitting there, trying to put themselves in the place of their character, and then you force them to try to mentally superimpose a female over you instead of just a suit of armor.

Also, whenever most people picture cross-gender roleplaying, their minds go here first.

[KitsuneKionchi]

While I don't find women superior to men or vice-versa per-se', I do play many females myself and am I male gamer. In fact, my last characters are, in order:

Medusa, a pixie merchant (well, the husband is the main character but I really built the pair for the wife), a pair of female Dvati twins, and a female half-Manticore...

The only major problem I encounter is voices. I'm a baritone (ish) and have a very bad female voice. I'm also a bit shy with voices at the table now, as none of my other friends do them anymore...

But nothing is wrong with playing female characters. As for personal fantasies, I enact mental scenes with the characters quite often; usually things that happened prior to the character meeting with the group like past battles or when they learned certain skills.

Oh wait, you mean sexual fantasies...heehee.

But yeah, I get ragged on for it. Just as much as anyone else in the group gets ragged on. Except 'that guy'. Because, you know, were all know he'll take immediate and serious offense.

[Starscream]

I've played a couple of female characters. No big deal. Some backstories just work better with them. Some species probably would, too. Nobody wants to hang around with a male Nymph.

Your friends are being immature. Unless you are LARPing, in which case please leave the chain mail lingerie at home.

But even then I'd say the fact that you are LARPing is a bigger sign of issues than the fact that you are LARPing as a girl.

[ShadowsGrnEyes]

OK, I myself am a girl and I have often considered playing a male character simply cause I have a guy or two in my group who occasionaly try to push the "Your a woman, women in medival settings are second class citizens" schtick. they generally mean it in jest but the joke gets old really fast.

No one in my group plays a gneder other than their own. For this reason I have been hesitant to do so myself. They are all guys.

The way I see it, if a man(or woman) acuses someone of being gay for playing the opposite gender in a game, they themselves are too insecure to do it. If a man can suck it in and announce in a girly voice that he is the Paladin Princess Shaharazad and he/she will slay the villain then he's probably pretty secure in who he is.

If people get uptight at you, simply ask what makes them so uncomfortable about it? Can they not handel it themselves thus feel the need to rag on you for it?

Also Kyuubi I actually had no idea you were a guy! . . . lol I took your icon at face value. just goes to show you can play a pretty convincing girl from an RP perspecitive. (THIS IS A COMPLIMENT)

[KillianHawkeye]

what's wrong with this exactly?

Nothing's wrong with it, and it definitely doesn't mean that you're gay. (Not that there's anything wrong with that, either.)

Some people simply lack the imagination to picture a character properly if it differs wildly from the person playing it. They're unable to consider playing an opposite-gendered character themselves, therefore it seems weird to them when others do so.

Others are not very open-minded and are made uncomfortable by it because they aren't secure with their own sexuality or are closet homophobes or something. But that is really more a problem of theirs and has nothing to do with you at all.

And of course, there are those who just aren't that into roleplaying and don't see any point to it.



Personally, about a third of my characters in various RPGs have been female, and I do it mainly just to put myself in a different mindset than normal. For me, it's about doing something different and pushing my boundaries. Switching to a different gender can be a good roleplaying challenge, especially if your goal is to pull it off without your character ending up as an offensively stereotypical caricature. Playing an unusual race that's not just "humans with pointy ears or a beard" is good for this, too. With any character, I try to put myself in their mind and act like they act. In fact, some of my most rewarding characters have been female ones (and not just because they were female).

[ex cathedra]

This doesn't make you 'gay' in that connotation, but after all they are younger children, who for the most part don't require logic to create arguments.

It is, however, odd that you only play characters that aren't your gender, and it does carry certain implications.

Superior? That's... I disagree. I certainly happen to generally prefer women to men, but, superior? That's... painful to hear. I won't expand upon this because I'd rather not degenerate into what could be construed as insults.

I play characters of both genders. In D&D, though, I primary play men because I find them easier to roleplay (being male, and all). In other genres and games I play either based on... vanity, I guess.

[Mystic Muse]

I guess I shouldn't say superior. That's not quite what I mean. let's put it this way. all the girls I know are much more civilized than most of the guys I know therefore I like most of them better.

If I see a good reason to play a male character I will. If I can find a character concept I want to play then I'll play them as male if I feel the archetype fits a male character better.

at shadowGrnseyes. I thank you. I do consider that a compliment.

and at the deadpool chimichanga guy. No I don't LARP and I probably wouldn't RP a girl in a LARP. Maybe a guy with a brain defect that thinks he's a six year old girl just to be funny but otherwise? can't see it happening.

[Superglucose]

All women all the time for this Playgrounder.

Why?

Actually, it started as a lark. See, we used a system with mutable spells, and since the weights for female characters were significantly lower (by twenty to fifty pounds) than that of the male characters, the "fly" spells (which were based on weight) ended up being cheaper. So it was advantageous to play exactly one type of character (a flier) as a female.

So we were laughing at how mechanically the ladies were more powerful... same stats but have less mass and less height, two things that actually worked to their advantage in the system. Suddenly we were finding other uses for the weight decrease (female gnome using a PC half-giant as a mount), and when we were hanging about designing characters someone said "The most important first step in optimization is female. All characters should be female." Somehow this just got adopted as our maxim, and thus...

All of your characters should be female. No exceptions. Designing the massive combat brute? Female. Designing the king? Female. Designing the biological parents of the BBEG? Both female.

That is why I always play female characters

[Mystic Muse]

Designing the biological parents of the BBEG? Both female.

This is kinda disturbing.......

[Sstoopidtallkid]

This is kinda disturbing.......

Then check this.
...
Really, that comic is just too good a representation of the issues with gamers.

[Kallisti]

This is kinda disturbing.......

And yet, with the publication of BoEF, probably doable...

[Sstoopidtallkid]

And yet, with the publication of BoEF, probably doable...

Perfectly reasonable application of Polymorph even before the BoeF. If it allows a Dragon to breed with a fish, it can allow 2 females to have a child. BoEF just makes rules for it so the DM doesn't have to think too hard about the subject.

[Mystic Muse]

okay, backup, throw BoEF out the window and continue with the actual conversation.

let's not go there.Please.

[Coidzor]

That would be part of precisely the problem though.

Personally I find figuring out the psychological basis of a female adventurer in the hodgepodge millieu of DND proper even more difficult than a male adventurer due to the whole question of relative sexisms which I just prefer not to think on the point where I could play one convincingly and authentically. Hell, it's difficult enough in one that's just based off of what I encounter in every day life as it is.

So in terms of coming up with characters I could care about, it's just damned difficult. I have trouble writing female characters I don't care about as it is.

Hell, enough trouble writing characters... bleh.

As far as judging people for it, I don't see the point. I've tried it a few times, both with out and out girls and one kid of undiscernable gender that I eventually settled upon as female.

[Thajocoth]

I do the same in video games and the like, but have played all males (with the exception of a construct) at the tabletop. The reason being that I don't want to make my friends uncomfortable. My next character, when I'm a player again, will break that.

I have a lot of reasons though. For video games, it seems that more work is put into making the models for female characters. The guys always look blocky and retarded. Then again, IRL, the feminine shape is like art while the masculine one looks to me like it was thrown together last minute for a deadline with the intent of patching it later... So maybe the games are doing a good job of it. I personally have trouble understanding how women can find us attractive.

The personality of a female character is more flexible than that of a male. Women can do/be/wear anything and act however. Men are expected to be more rigid and have less emotion. Though, my IRL personality isn't really categorized in any direction... But some of my character ideas work better with a female character while I can't think of a single character concept that works better as a male character than a female. Well, maybe a womanizer type of character might... But that's really it.

I have more _______ for women than I do for men in general, but not in any specific cases. That is, people I know personally don't have their gender effecting my judgment of them in any way. I'm not sure what the word is that belongs in the blank. It's similar to the word "respect", I think, but that's certainly not it.

[Eldariel]

I've played ~50% male, 50% female characters and intend on keeping doing so. I had a streak of female characters at a point and my friends were actually surprised when I announced I'm going to play a male for a change (this was for the Low-Magic World game I'm writing a diary on right now). That said, many of my male friends only play male characters, and the girls I've gamed with almost invariably have played female characters.


Really, it's just one variable, and I don't really see why people find it weird to change; there're bound to be more differences between Elf males and Human males than there are between Human males and Human females and yet one seems to be something nobody minds changing while the other one is somehow difficult.

Is it because different sexes actually do exist and people are afraid they cannot properly roleplay the other one, while Elves don't exist and thus they're more open to your vision/nobody gets offended by clichés you pull off/whatever? I can't say, but there seems to be more friction to play a different sex than there is to playing a different race or a different "class". Maybe it's just 'cause the two other parts are more clearly fantasy?

[Vangor]

We always mock my friend for this, primarily because whenever he creates a female character with a digital representation the character is as 'girlish' as possible in spite of being an adventurer. My character tends to be whichever gender I feel fits the character, and this means my arrogant Elven wizard or my brutish Orcish barbarian are male, whereas every Half-Elf I create is female and the bards, assassins, and sorcerers (sorceresses) are as well.

For a while, we had toyed with the idea of males and females possessing a distinct advantage of disadvantage when discussing with certain folk, depending on the personalities, such as an alpha male mercenary will respond well to a female but not a male, but the male mercenary company leader may not particularly be trusting in the abilities of a female, and a female advisor to a King may feel more trusting of a female in the group, whereas any female using her charms to coerce the party may be simply hostile towards other females. This became more complicated than worth, since the person needed to know the personality to select who might socialize, with the hopes two characters had good social skills, and we could merely substitute all of this for enjoying alcohol, being arrogant, etc., to where a bit of roleplaying accomplishes the same and feels less forced.

Plenty of people prefer playing characters as distinct from themselves as possible, or trying to create an obvious persona, and this includes gender. No one should care.

I tend to play females in video games, too, merely because the females generally appear far more serious as characters if a tad sexualized.

[Starscream]

A question for the OP: Do the other players in your group ever taunt the DM when he (or she) plays a character of the opposite sex?

Because unless everyone in your campaign worlds are the same gender, it's pretty much inevitable that you're going to deal with this eventually. What about the other posters who say they always play the same gender? Do you ever DM?

[Zaydos]

I've had (male) friends who played female characters (one time a full blown nekomimi), and while we all made jokes about it even at the table I told them honestly I respect you for this and wish I could seriously role-play a NPCs because I fail at RPing girls. That said we made fun of someone else for playing a blaster sorceress who blew every up, another person for playing a character with 8 intelligence, and another for being the nymphomaniac fox girl. Strangely enough our friend (male) who looked up pictures of cat girls and played a girl never once got picked on for it, he got picked on because he stated he was playing a sex mage (BoEF) and then took all fire, blasting spells. In short we found something to pick on for every character, and we quickly stopped picking on him for playing a girl (instead we were saying "why is your character useless?" but that's a different story). We just took whatever was easiest and everyone knew it was just hanging out (yes me and my friends are mutually abusive).

That said my next character might be a female dwarf... I don't know yet and it won't be for months anyway (I'm a perennial DM) and I might not even decide till some point in game (s/he always wears intelligent battle-plate with a restful crystal and a ring of sustenance) maybe letting myself learn by RPing Vindalf. I hope I won't chicken out and just play a male, but I see the character as too aggressive, ax happy, and bull-like to be a girl.

[GallóglachMaxim]

I play female characters quite regularly in computer RPGs, but have avoided it so far in person because I didn't have any characters to override the slightly increased level of awkward.

A question for the OP: Do the other players in your group ever taunt the DM when he (or she) plays a character of the opposite sex?

The players in the group I DM became convinced that the one recurring female NPC in my last game (there were other female NPCs, including one of the villains, but they didn't get as much 'screen time') was a lesbian, which they say had something to do with the way I played her, but couldn't explain what in particular. No taunting as such, but some in and out of character confusion.

[Fishy]

Honestly, "This character concept only works as a girl," feels a little bit sexist to me. Why can't the gentle, soft-spoken, doves-and-bunnies-and-kittens healer druid be a guy?

Anyway. When you create a character, you give them traits that make them interesting to you- you're creating someone you 'care about' in some way or another. Some people make characters who are just like them, some people make who they'd like to be, some people make who they admire, or who they're attracted to, and some people make their complete opposite. Your cousins are assuming you're doing one when you're doing another- and they're being rather immature about it.

[axraelshelm]

It's a great disguise when i dress up in character, but hmmm played female characters before and sometimes it's great to step on the other side. But unless i'm playing in a setting that is the source of the inspiration to the characters generation. Joan of Arc/Mulan that sort of thingI generaly don't play women these days. But aren't we all living a fantasy in game? i mean I can't think of the last time I transformed into a Golem.

[axraelshelm]

I've had (male) friends who played female characters (one time a full blown nekomimi), and while we all made jokes about it even at the table I told them honestly I respect you for this and wish I could seriously role-play a NPCs because I fail at RPing girls. That said we made fun of someone else for playing a blaster sorceress who blew every up, another person for playing a character with 8 intelligence, and another for being the nymphomaniac fox girl. Strangely enough our friend (male) who looked up pictures of cat girls and played a girl never once got picked on for it, he got picked on because he stated he was playing a sex mage (BoEF) and then took all fire, blasting spells. In short we found something to pick on for every character, and we quickly stopped picking on him for playing a girl (instead we were saying "why is your character useless?" but that's a different story). We just took whatever was easiest and everyone knew it was just hanging out (yes me and my friends are mutually abusive).

That said my next character might be a female dwarf... I don't know yet and it won't be for months anyway (I'm a perennial DM) and I might not even decide till some point in game (s/he always wears intelligent battle-plate with a restful crystal and a ring of sustenance) maybe letting myself learn by RPing Vindalf. I hope I won't chicken out and just play a male, but I see the character as too aggressive, ax happy, and bull-like to be a girl.

I don't know dude, I've seen and met some pretty aggressive women before and they had rocked my world more than once. ;-)

[Yora]

I think a lot of character concepts I like to play work best with a female character, so I play them like that. If I want to play something I think would work best as a male, I often do that too.

[DragoonWraith]

My signature contains all the characters I've actually played in a game (since I've only ever played PbP). Veyr, Chance, Paul Lukische, Cuile Rahonda, Aghihoti, and Faernacha are male, Melina, Maria, Caran Eru, and Talya are female. So, almost 50/50; I mostly just go with what seems fitting for the character. Hell, my next character will be an ooze.

[warmachine]

I play with someone who played and still plays almost exclusively female characters and this was noted. Since I've known her, she changed her real life gender from male to female. Apparently, she's been dressing in women's clothes and wanting to be a woman since childhood. I kid you not. I merely thought she was bi-sexual when she was male.

I wish I could see your face after that implied accusation. I'm certainly not going to suggest you should become transsexual. Always remember that gender is a continuous spectrum, not a binary divide. It is possible that you're clearly on the male end of such a spectrum but not on the extreme end.

Myself, I only occasionally play female characters. My current Pathfinder character is a mother-clucking hen. That has to be female as I doubt I could play it as a male without bullying.

[Talya]

Perfectly reasonable application of Polymorph even before the BoeF. If it allows a Dragon to breed with a fish, it can allow 2 females to have a child. BoEF just makes rules for it so the DM doesn't have to think too hard about the subject.

As a side note, this is biologically possible in the real world, in a lab. (The same cannot be said for two males.) Also note, the offspring of two females will always be female, as there is no Y chromosome to pass on to their progeny.