Guys roleplaying girls?

[Righteous Doggy]

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]

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]

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]

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 ) 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. ) It was unfortunate real life interfered causing the game to end. It was a blast.

[Inglenook]

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]

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]

I think it's quite alright if you're doing it on the forums. But irl... that's kinda strange.

[DiscipleofBob]

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]

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]

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...

[Telonius]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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)]

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]

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]

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

@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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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?