Comfort withcross gender characters based on your gender

[ccs]

"I am male and am comfortable with cross gender characters"

This, I guess....

I mean I've been DMing since I was 11 (IE; for along time). Playing characters other than male comes with the job.

Personally, most of the characters I've played as a Player have been male.
Of the last 11 characters (played over the last 6 years/7 campaigns (PF & 5e) there's 7 males, 3 females, & 1 warforged.
So excluding the Warforged a 70%M/30%FM split.
In my younger years the split would probably be about 85%M & spread over a much longer span of time as our campaigns lasted years and we only played 1 night/week at max. Now days I've got some extra time so I can be in two, sometimes 3, games at a time. So I can be DMing Thur & playing Sunday. Or playing x2.

As a DM I don't care if you play something different from your RL you. That's up to you.
What I don't like is people playing characters that all blur together. You know the ones. Those characters where if you didn't know what was written on the character sheet you couldn't tell what was being played other than CLASS & stat mods, sometimes with dark vision.
So whatever you put on your character sheet? Play it. Somehow.

 

[Sunseeker]

I wasn't here to answer the question back in the day, and I suspect anyone on this forum should know where my answer lies.

I would say 75% of my characters are female. I do not typically enjoy "power fantasy" gaming. As a writer, self-inserting is one of those dirty things that I make an overt effort to avoid in almost all situations. Sure, every character has "a little bit of me" in it, that's bound to happen, but my preference for gaming is not "Me, but stronger, faster and in every way better than I am IRL!". So that tends to skew my decision making into playing female characters. I'm also almost never human.

So I don't really care what anyone else plays.

And as [MENTION=6803664]ccs[/MENTION] mentions, when I DM I get to play everyone. Gay, straight, aberration, male, female, robot.

I've only ever run into one player(I don't know his orientation) who wanted to make a BFD about his cross-dressing character. We don't play with him anymore.

Minor pet peeve: I make an effort, both as DM and as player to at least learn all the other players names and sexes. It annoys me when other people can't be assed to do the same and it makes role-play jarring.

 

[MechaPilot]

I'm female and I'm comfortable with cross-gender characters at the table. I've played male characters, female characters, intersexed/hermaphroditic characters, and asexual characters. As the one who usually DMs, I'm responsible for all the NPCs regardless of gender anyway, so this isn't really new or out of the ordinary for me.

Now, I will say I've seen it done very poorly. I've seen players, mostly teenage boys or young-adult men, make female or trans characters that are either just offensive or that exist almost solely to fuel that player's fantasies about lesbians and transgender persons.

I recall playing in a group that was DM'd by my then best friend (who has passed in the many years since then). His teenage brother-in-law joined the game with a female character who was relatively normal (though bland in the personality department) until at one session the character starting acting like a total jerk to everyone. That player defended being a jerk to everyone as his character having her period and acting "the way women do" at that time of the month. When I took offense to that, he accused me of being "on the rag." What a class act.

I've also seen it done in such a way that people forget about it completely. Which is not to say that it's done well in these cases. Rather, the player simply interjects nothing of the opposite gender into the character, except the character's appearance. These cases are inoffensive, though bland. What the player is effectively doing is just playing a same-gendered character and then having to remind everyone of the proper pronoun use because everyone forgets that player's character is actually a different gender.

Personally, it's my stance that playing a cross-gendered character well (the gender difference is notable without being offensive or used to disrupt the game) is sort of like playing an evil character well: it takes a great deal of maturity to balance a notable difference against potential disruption, and to do it without being offensive. This is part of the reason I require my players to clear their characters with me first. If I think a player isn't mature enough to handle a cross-gendered character (or an evil one, or a cross-racial one) I can have a discussion with them about my concerns. Sometimes that discussion will change my mind about the player's level of maturity (I've certainly misjudged that before, I'm not perfect), and sometimes it'll just reaffirm the "no" answer I was going to give.

 

[MechaPilot]

I saw an interesting comment about guys playing women to explore their lesbian fantasies. I have to admit that my current character (playing the stargate rpg by AEG) is in a same sex relationship, though she's probably more bi. But again, I would have to say I am very much hetero and thus it lets me explore the concept. Not that it hasn't led to some funny moments.

There's nothing inherently wrong with a character of any gender being in a relationship with someone of the same gender (or any other gender for that matter). The problem arises when a character seems to have no real personality, goals, or ambitions outside of a relationship (generally sexual in nature) with another character (PC or NPC) of the same gender. That's when a character starts to seem and feel like it was made solely for the player to indulge in masturbatory fantasy; especially when the player wants to RP or get descriptions about the inter-character intimacy.

But, to be clear, it's equally an issue when a character has no real personality, goals, or ambitions outside of a generally sexual relationship with a PC or NPC of any gender; and for the same reason.

I run a game where romance and sexuality are considered just part of the everyday world the characters live in (but there's no sex described at the table. a fade-to-black approach is employed to, hopefully, maintain a tasteful mood at the table). In my game, a character being in a romantic or sexual relationship is quite normal; I consider a character being in a relationship or specifically deciding not to be in one (for whatever reasons) to be part of making a well-rounded character. The problem comes when a character is basically nothing else, or when the character expects vivid description or interaction.

 

[Sunseeker]

I've also seen it done in such a way that people forget about it completely. Which is not to say that it's done well in these cases. Rather, the player simply interjects nothing of the opposite gender into the character, except the character's appearance. These cases are inoffensive, though bland. What the player is effectively doing is just playing a same-gendered character and then having to remind everyone of the proper pronoun use because everyone forgets that player's character is actually a different gender.

My only objection to this, since I literally just posted this complaint above, is what exactly makes a make-believe fantasy woman, different from a make-believe fantasy man? Are you suggesting that there must be some IRL socially-defined elements of femininity? Or are these more subjective personal opinions on what defines a woman?

Perhaps you could give some suggestions on what elements of the "opposite gender" should be injected in order to make a character come across as female?

 

[Hussar]

My only objection to this, since I literally just posted this complaint above, is what exactly makes a make-believe fantasy woman, different from a make-believe fantasy man? Are you suggesting that there must be some IRL socially-defined elements of femininity? Or are these more subjective personal opinions on what defines a woman?

Perhaps you could give some suggestions on what elements of the "opposite gender" should be injected in order to make a character come across as female?

While I won't give specific examples, because I'm not sure what they are and I'm not caffeinated enough right now, I'd say that your portrayal of the character should be such that no one at the table ever turns to you and says, "Wait, what? Your character is female? Since when?"

If your character is gender bending, then, make the effort to make sure that that comes across in your portrayal of that character. Otherwise, why bother?

 

[Sunseeker]

While I won't give specific examples, because I'm not sure what they are and I'm not caffeinated enough right now, I'd say that your portrayal of the character should be such that no one at the table ever turns to you and says, "Wait, what? Your character is female? Since when?"

If your character is gender bending, then, make the effort to make sure that that comes across in your portrayal of that character. Otherwise, why bother?

Because this reeks to me of "Your character doesn't seem black enough." or "Your character isn't obviously gay enough." Like we need to prove the character is what they say they are. It's Viewer B holding Actor A to B's personal subjective standards of what makes a woman a woman. Are we only supposed to portray positive elements of the thing we're portraying? Because even by her own example, when Mr Class Act decided his character should be a jerk because she was "on the rag" as tasteless as that was, that was Mr Class Act injecting what he thought women were like. While MechaPilot was holding his portrayal to standards of what she thought women were like. While being a woman may give MechaPilot insight that Mr Class Act lacks she also needs to take into consideration that her insight, just like Mr Class Act's insight, is subjective to her individual experience. There may be some unifying elements between her and many other women, just as there are unifying elements between myself and other men, but these elements are not necessarily universal by any means.

It strikes me quite along the same lines as when an author is asked to justify why a certain character is female. The argument that "If there's nothing that identifies your character as female, they might as well be male." is a ridiculous assumption that has been thoroughly discarded even on these boards. The assumption that a character is default male, or even default the same sex as the author/player is where the problem lies not in the author/player's decision not to include any socially-agreed-upon "female elements".

 

[Hussar]

No. The presumption is that your character is the same gender as you because you are the one portraying the character. If you are playing as another gender and nothing in your portrayal actually indicates that, then why are you doing it?

It’s no different than playing another race. If your elf behaves exactly like your human character then why are you playing an elf?

 

[Sunseeker]

No. The presumption is that your character is the same gender as you because you are the one portraying the character. If you are playing as another gender and nothing in your portrayal actually indicates that, then why are you doing it?

It’s no different than playing another race. If your elf behaves exactly like your human character then why are you playing an elf?

Again, this is your assumption that my portrayal of my character is inaccurate to your preconceived notions of how my character should behave.

The presumption is on YOU to defend the claim that your views on my character are more accurate than my own.

The arrogance!

 

[Hussar]

Again, this is your assumption that my portrayal of my character is inaccurate to your preconceived notions of how my character should behave.

The presumption is on YOU to defend the claim that your views on my character are more accurate than my own.

The arrogance!

It's not that it's inaccurate. It's that it's completely absent. It's no different than the background of your character. If your character background is Outlander (for example), then the character that is played at the table should reference that fact. At least reference it to the point where no one is surprised when you mention, "Hey, my character is an Outlander". I'm really not sure how it's arrogant to ask you to actually play the character you created instead of some cypher, Man without a Name character that is indistinguishable from the last five characters you played.