Roleplaying the opposite gender?

[CyberThread]

Do you ever find it difficult or hard to roleplay the opposite gender?

[Galvin]

Indeed. That's part of the reason I play males. It just happens when I'm making a character I naturally write down "M" as gender. In fact, as far as I can remember, I have never played a female character that I can remember.

[intothenight]

The trick is wearing the correct underwear. It really helps you get in character.

I don't have much problem roleplaying either gender on the battlefield. I avoid romantic situations like the plague when playing the opposite gender, though.

[HalfQuart]

Not particularly. I figure I end up with opposite-gender characters around 20% of the time. I tend to play personalities that aren't like my own anyway, so I don't really see how the gender much matters difficulty-wise.

[kreenlover]

It gets hard when you want to get romantic. Being DM for a bunch of single, lusty teenage males can get really weird when they expect me to roleplay the barmaid/tavern wench while they flirt with them, and then even AFTER that when they *ahem*...yah. You get the idea. Not fun.

I do find it hard to convincingly roleplay a female PC. It is difficult, if only because you seem to want to make them act differently than your average male PC. Once you get past that bit, it is relatively easy to play a character of the opposite gender. (Until of course the all male party played by those same lusty single teenage males realizes that they are always within arms reach of a female sorcerer with a charisma of 18 or so and a strength penalty)

That is the main problem though, that people seem to think that female and male PCs need to be radically, fundamentally different in their personalities, and struggle to come up with a suitable opposite gender personality.

[nyjastul69]

Playing a different sex is easier for me than a different race. As a human male I have a fair amount of experience with female humans. I've never had any experience with any elves, dwarves, halflings, etc. of either sex. I have an especially hard time wrapping my mind around elves so I never play them.

[BWR]

I treat most of my characters as generic people, with gender and sexuality as secondary characteristics. Sure, most of them are men, but I've played more than a few women as well. Do I play women well? Don't know. For the most part, gender roles don't really come up in the games we play, so gender isn't as big a part of the characters' identities as other aspects.

I do have friends who tend to play women and, according to my girlfriend, play them poorly (I can see why she would think that, seeing some of the things they've done). I've also seen women (and men) played with as little regard to sex and gender as to make them practically neuter.

[Hand_of_Vecna]

Sure romantic storylines can be awkward, but honestly they can have a hundred layers of awkwardness before gender or sexual orientation enter into the equation.

Is playing the opposite gender a challenge, sure, but so is; playing someone that's been a slave, an alien squid, an ageless wizard that was raised in a tree, someone that kills casually, someone that's Good and on the opposite end of the Law/Chaos spectrum from you, beings from asexual races, various mental disorders (mandatory joke about opposite gender being a form of insanity), as well as victims/perpetrators of various crimes, etc. All/most of these should be more different to most people than a different undercarriage and/or taste in undercarriages if for no other reason that we all grew up around the opposite gender and have hopefully had at least a few conversations about how their experiences differ.

[Chronos]

I play as whichever gender seems to fit better for the character concept I have in mind. This is usually male, but occasionally female. My current group (all players male) has an all-male party right now (at least, I think so... Hard to be sure with dwarves), but the previous adventure, half of us (including myself) happened to be playing females.

[kreenlover]

...and have hopefully had at least a few conversations about how their experiences differ.

These are gamers that we are talking about here, so you may want to rethink that last statement.

I know quite a few people who have never ever had a conversation (exchanging pleasantries doesn't count, and I know some who haven't even done that!) with a female.

[Hand_of_Vecna]

These are gamers that we are talking about here, so you may want to rethink that last statement.

I know quite a few people who have never ever had a conversation (exchanging pleasantries doesn't count, and I know some who haven't even done that!) with a female.

I did say hopefully, hell I know people that haven't had conversations with members of their own gender. Tons of men never have a frank discussion of the nature masculinity, both spineless wimps and douche bags. On the flip side I new a girl that needed to get "that talk" from a teacher after like her third period, because her mother either didn't catch on or ignored it.

So in that sense there are men and women that can be said to not know any better than clueless member of the opposite gender what their own gender is like. However, I "hope" this isn't the case for most individuals on this forum, just as I hope most of them aren't "victims/perpetrators of various crimes".

Probably a bit of a heavy response to a lol gamers are sad nerds joke.

[Jeff the Green]

It gets hard when you want to get romantic.

See, this is why I always build in a reason for my characters to be uninterested in romance and/or sex. (Right now I have a cloistered cleric who actually is cloistered, a warforged, and a narcissistic Necropolitan.) I really don't want to roleplay a romance with my DMs, and I find characters uninterested in romance to be unrealistic unless they have a good reason.

Oddly, I don't have a similar compunction against it from the other side of the screen, or when I'm writing both characters. In the former case I don't identify with the NPCs the same way I do the PCs (especially since I'm running a Ravenloft campaign and there's a significant chance of every NPC dying a horrible death) and in the latter it's more masturbatory than anything, and I don't have a problem with that so long as my metaphorical palms don't grow hairy. (For example, one character I played in a couple abortive campaigns was a necromancer paladin [long story] who had a dryad cohort/consort. As I roleayed both sides of the relationship and elided the more explicit stuff it was considerably less embarrassing for all involved.)

[Irk]

I always try to play the opposite gender, as I think it adds to the role playing, provides more of a challenge.

[JusticeZero]

it's not all that hard, and the research is rewarding.

The research is just to try to see various situations through the different lens, which leads to realizing that some things that are fun when you are bound by ruleset and expectations A is merely annoying when bound by ruleset and expectations B, and having some minor awareness of the differences between A and B. If the situations and consequences were reversed, men would do mostly feminine things and vice versa just because a lot of those behaviors are pragmatic in nature.

The technique for selling the difference is simple enough; do not respond to things which are stereotypically associated with the gender that you are trying to avoid being, and interact with the things associated with the target gender. Just voice an action or statement when they come up, even if that action seems counter to the stereotype. The fact that you have any position related to the stereotype associates your character to what the stereotype is connected to, insofar as your performance goes.

By "interact", I do not mean "do this" per se. If you do all the stereotypical things, then you will often come off as a caricature. A lot of people instinctively understand the principle that "If something is trying very, very hard to convince you it is female , it is very, very likely that it isn't."

This, by the way, should not be taken as some profound statement of gender relations; it is a pragmatic technique for building a character in the eyes of an audience, in this case the other players at the table.

[Darth Stabber]

I have played female characters before without much issue, but since I pretty much only GM I have to play everything, so i've gotten pretty good at female characters, since they make up half the population it's a bit of a necessity.

[Crasical]

This should probably be in the general section instead of the 3.5 section.

And no, not really. One of the two groups I game with is pretty open-minded, and we've played things like Maid RPG in the past, so obviously cross-play doesn't really bother them at all.

[ericp65]

Most of my characters' gender roles are the same as the character's sex (there's a difference, you know). I was hesitant to play my first female character, because I had some foolish thought that it might compromise me in some way (as a hetero male) *L* The idea of challenging myself as a role-player encouraged me to push the boundaries. I based my first female character's personality on one of my sisters, and it worked fantastically well (pun intended)! I've never felt uncomfortable, or unsure of how to rp, a female character, regardless of her sex, sexual orientation, or gender role.

What gets a bit awkward/uncomfortable is players who act out certain things while in character.

[ericp65]

It gets hard when you want to get romantic.

Dude...do you realize what you wrote there? ;)

[ericp65]

I have played female characters before without much issue, but since I pretty much only GM I have to play everything, so i've gotten pretty good at female characters, since they make up half the population it's a bit of a necessity.

If you're talking the population of our world, the ratio is about 1.1 males to every female.

[Alefiend]

The women in my group play as women. The men in my group also play as women most of the time. I pretty much have to play male to stick up for the Y chromosome.

[Axinian]

Oddly, I pretty much always play chicks, despite being a guy. I think I started doing that because there aren't usually any women in my playgroups, so I just wanted to diversify a bit. One of my playgroups now, though, has multiple women playing women characters, along with my own female character, leading to the incredibly rare (in my experience) situation where the majority of the party is female. I don't actually find it all that hard to play the opposite sex. There doesn't need to be be any real difference in behavior anyway.

[Zanos]

Not a can of worms I open, personally. Couldn't sell it with my voice anyway.

Besides, grumpy old wizard works better for males, I find.

[Manly Man]

I, personally, have very little issues with playing a character of a different gender, sex, or orientation than my own; part of that is my own self-security, and so even if what I make may come across as 'gay' or 'girly' or, on the opposite end of things, 'too macho', or if we want to get into gender-neutral territory, even 'retarded' or 'jerkish', I don't let it bother me. What someone else says of the character I make is of little consequence to me, since it's my idea.

As for my actual ratio of characters' genders, sexes, and orientations, I have developed a tendency to play as a female character, one who does not give a damn about what she identifies as inside, and usually shows just about as much interest in being attracted to another person of any kind as most folks would in staring at a piece of wet toilet paper. This is because, back when I was playing more often at a table in real life, I was one of the few who ever tried to keep it from being a sausage fest. This habit kind of stuck when I started doing online games, and somehow I end up in parties that consist almost entirely of women, which kind of makes things awkward, albeit sometimes hilarious, when facing things like a succubus.

On the other hand, many of my favorite characters happen to be male, and have a lot of hard work and detail poured into them. My favorite example of this is a gestalt Crusader//Knight named Baltazar Rosso. He wields a morning star usually, although he has an intelligent bardiche named Corbin (sue me, it was funny when I thought of it), and the two of them have a tendency to argue an awful lot, even though their alignments are the same. On top of that, he's a bit of an alcoholic, and has a distinct liking for Cement Mixers, while an allergy to drupes. He usually wears...

Well, you get the point. I don't mind what the character is, so much as who they are. Things like gender are just superficial to me, and apart from whether getting kicked in the stones makes you sing three octaves higher or not, they don't contribute very much to the character in question.

[chainer1216]

I've seen this type of thread a few time, in a few places, but I've always wondered, why would there be any difference between playing a male and female? people are people, whether we have wiggly bits or is strictly superficial.

unless the setting has some weird gender politics going on, male or female shouldn't really effect anything. we all have hopes and fears, motivations and hurdles we need to overcome, its not like you'll need to make a will save Vs. buying shoes...

[Eldest]

Most of my characters' gender roles are the same as the character's sex (there's a difference, you know).

While pedantic, this made me smile that somebody pointed it out.

Personally, I don't find it hard at all. It's a character. If you're playing a female character, shouldn't differ from how you play a male character, really. Somebody above (too late for me to bother pulling the quote out) pointed out that the difference in races or experience is far more likely to have an influence on personality than your gender, and nobody asks if roleplaying a halfling is difficult.

[JusticeZero]

the difference in races or experience is far more likely to have an influence on personality than your gender, and nobody asks if roleplaying a halfling is difficult.

But they really should. Race is often reduced to a set of bonuses. "Wait, he's a gnome? I never noticed?"

[Adanedhel]

Online (pbp) I play all kinds of genders. Male, female, thoroughly confused (I guess being a shapeshifter, with a loathing of it's original body, will do that to you).

Face to face however, I usually keep me restricted to male chars, because I'm a bass, singing in a choir made me very aware of the differences in voice to the extent I don't feel comfortable playing a woman when I have to vocalise her actions, rather then write them down.

[PraxisVetli]

Nope. I've found female characters to be some of my favorite; they definately tend to be some of the most memorable. Even in Erotic situations, its not hard to deal with. I usually just politely remind them that They hit on ME.
usually gets the point across. I don't care if you're a horny dwarf fighter and I'm a teenage elven monk, you looked into my eyes, not hers.
Then they be all like and I be all

[Silvanoshei]

Online (pbp) I play all kinds of genders. Male, female, thoroughly confused (I guess being a shapeshifter, with a loathing of it's original body, will do that to you).

Face to face however, I usually keep me restricted to male chars, because I'm a bass, singing in a choir made me very aware of the differences in voice to the extent I don't feel comfortable playing a woman when I have to vocalise her actions, rather then write them down.

I've always wondered, if a male Dragon shapeshifts into a human female and gets pregnant in that form..... would turning back into a male dragon with child cause some serious issues? lol

[Jeff the Green]

I've always wondered, if a male Dragon shapeshifts into a human female and gets pregnant in that form..... would turning back into a male dragon with child cause some serious issues? lol

Neither anatomy nor herpetology are my particular field, but from what I recall, reptiles' reproductive tracts are fairly similar between the sexes (besides the occasional terrifying penis), so presumably whatever happens if a female dragon shapeshifts into a human female, gets pregnant, and switches back.

I'd say there are two options; which happens depends on whether the embryo/fetus counts as a creature. (Let's please not debate whether it is.) If it does, then it doesn't transform with the dragon and swiftly passes through its mother's/father's cloaca, dying if preterm. If it doesn't and instead counts as an organ in the mother/father, it transforms into an egg and is swiftly laid. Then you have a Helen/Clytemnestra or Castor/Polydeuces thing and a half-dragon human is born from an egg.