Comfort withcross gender characters based on your gender

[ccs]

"Tell me more, tell me more, did she put up a fight?"

Discussion of gender sometimes reveals who stands on which side of the gap between "it's all about consent" versus subdual and conquest (whether resistance is real, or whether it's a flimsy pretext for deniability).

Here's where I stand:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9eHdb2bR9g

Well, despite a combo of Enlarge & Reduce Person effects on us, she was still a Storm Giant princess, and I was a 1/2elf Ranger.

 

[Riley37]

Not initially you didn't. You conveniently left out the part about Dexter being covered in scales/being a dragonborn.

*sigh* Here's what I first said about Dexter:

For over a year I played a half-elf bard who was not, anatomically, binary male nor female, going by PHB p. 121. Dexter never objected to people using "he"; Dexter was used to humans using that pronoun for anyone whose chest didn't bulge, and Dexter wasn't gonna argue the pronoun usage of any language other than Elvish.

Half-elf was literally the first descriptor I mentioned, on EN World, for Dexter. Another player also ran a half-elf bard PC, in that party, and I hope that we played them with enough personality that players could describe differences in their motivations and temperaments.

If you're confused, perhaps that's because you're too emotional on this topic, to read what I actually write.

Earlier in the thread, I described another character, Boris, in terms of *behaviors*, as factors which establish personality regardless of physical form. My point was Dumbledore's point: our choices matter more than how we were born. When asked, I answered that any PC could look at Boris and see Boris's *race*. Which does NOT mean seeing the anatomical details within Boris' cloaca. (Boris could have a conversation, with Umbran's wife's PC, about how humans all too often react to meeting a "frelling big lizard".)

At the table, does each player's race and gender matter more to you, than their individual name, behavior, and personality? Would you remember me as "Riley, who plays mission-oriented spellcasters" or as "the white guy"?

Would you insist on full disclosure about the anatomy within my pants? Or would you be content to leave that as my business and not yours? I am not inviting you into my pants, nor Dexter's pants, nor Boris's cloaca. So far as I'm concerned, you don't have Need to Know on any of those three.

 

[Riley37]

@Bagpuss right above you talks about going back to gaming roots and "play them like the Heroquest boardgame, with just tactical aspects, and testing the player not the character. Early dungeons often had tests aimed at the player not the character like riddles and puzzles." There were earlier comments as well.

Fair point. (I don't see Bagpuss's posts, but he's not wrong on this one.) I played "White Plume Mountain" last year, and there's a puzzle about prime numbers vs. odd numbers, and I solved the puzzle without checking whether my character's understanding of math matched my player understanding of math. That's consistent with the intent of the module. If running through a module written for another play style, it might have been more appropriate to let the PCs fail the test, much sometimes the heroes of a movie miss something which is obvious to the audience. (5E doesn't even have a proficiency which, so far as I know, includes number categories.)

I also think that's oversimplification. D&D began as an experiment with players attaching themselves and giving an individual name to a Hero or Super-Hero unit in a miniatures-on-dioramas wargame, in a way most people don't identify with "Platoon of Heavy Pike". See also, Wizard Chess in Harry Potter, or the queen sacrifice in Vonnegut's short story about chess with humans as pieces. There's room for RP even in "White Plume Mountain".

Appologies. I misread. I thought that the point of your bringing up the character was that the character was being played cross gendered. My bad. Sorry.

I appreciate the apology. It would have more value, if you recognized how you went awry, and figured out how to avoid repetition of the error.

For over a year I played a half-elf bard who was not, anatomically, binary male nor female, going by PHB p. 121. Dexter never objected to people using "he"; Dexter was used to humans using that pronoun for anyone whose chest didn't bulge, and Dexter wasn't gonna argue the pronoun usage of any language other than Elvish.

If you can sort out how you got from that text, to "female", then maybe you can figure out how not to repeat the error. (shrug) If you try, then I wish you luck.

As for who tells whom that they've failed as a role-player... well, we've each articulated our positions, and the solution is not to play at each other's tables.

I've been playing almost a year, in a group with a warlock PC whom I *think* is human but she might have half-elf stats; she's from a very far-off part of a home-brew setting, and neither I nor my PC know the role of elves in the setting. I'm OK with that. She did some things which totally didn't make sense to me OR my PC, for many sessions, until a big reveal under a Zone of Truth, about a curse and a taboo in her home culture. I'm more than okay with that. I rather enjoyed how the reveal shifted "why would someone eat that?" to "oh THAT's what was going on!". If you would not enjoy such a storyline, then fortunately, you have your table and I have mine.

 

[Hussar]

/snip

I appreciate the apology. It would have more value, if you recognized how you went awry, and figured out how to avoid repetition of the error.



If you can sort out how you got from that text, to "female", then maybe you can figure out how not to repeat the error. (shrug) If you try, then I wish you luck.
/snip

Well, mostly because it's a long thread and I simply forgot. Again, sorry for that. No nefarious intentions, just simply poor recall.

 

[Hussar]

/snip

As an example, we'll take the character my wife is playing in my 5e game. My wife is 5' 2" on a tall day, and while she's strong for her size, her build is slight. In the game, she's playing a 7' 2" dragonborn paladin with 18 strength, heavy armor, and an axe longer than the party gnome is tall. The fact of the character's physicality is mentioned repeatedly during play, pretty much every session, because my wife *wants* to make sure we don't think of her personal physicality - she wants to be able to loom over people in the game in ways she could never do in real life.

The fact that the character is also female? Largely irrelevant - while we refer to the character with the feminine pronoun, the point that she is a *she* doesn't enter into play with others. The culture around her is so predominantly mammalian that her traditional gender role is unknown to most of the people she meets. The intent is that they react to "big frelling lizard!" way more than they react to "woman", by my wife's choice.

Yet, funnily enough, you DO know the gender of your wife's character. So, again, job done. I've repeatedly, REPEATEDLY stated that that's all it needs. Has anyone turned to her and said, "What? I thought your character was male!" No? Then why are you arguing with me? She did precisely what I think is needed. No problems here.

This whole "not female enough" thing is entirely an invention of other people and not me. Does the table know the gender of your character? (Again, presuming it's knowable or even exists - after all non-humans can quite plausibly not have gender at all) Yes? Job done.

All this other stuff is on you folks, not me.

 

[Riley37]

(Again, presuming it's knowable or even exists - after all non-humans can quite plausibly not have gender at all)

Cogent point, for TRPG. Today I learned: in canonical Eberron, House Cannith makes "male" and "female" Warforged. (Like a sexy robot lamp with a sword?)

A small percentage of humans IRL don't fit neatly into the anatomical gender binary. People with XY genes and androgen insensitivity, for example. Whether we "round down" as if such people don't exist, or whether we consider the 99% and the 1% equally real, valid and human, is a hot topic in some circles.

 

[Hussar]

Cogent point, for TRPG. Today I learned: in canonical Eberron, House Cannith makes "male" and "female" Warforged. (Like a sexy robot lamp with a sword?)

A small percentage of humans IRL don't fit neatly into the anatomical gender binary. People with XY genes and androgen insensitivity, for example. Whether we "round down" as if such people don't exist, or whether we consider the 99% and the 1% equally real, valid and human, is a hot topic in some circles.

Oh, and fair enough. I certainly didn't mean to step on so many toes. I obviously overstated my point (my wife constantly tells me I do this) which in turn swirled this conversation in directions I really didn't mean.

Apropos of nothing, the last warforged character we had in a game was named Stove. His whole goal was to keep people warm. Actually, I say his, but, to be fair, I don't think the character was gendered at all. It literally looked like a potbellied stove with legs and arms. Fun character. So, yeah, there are going to be cases where gender really isn't part of the character at all. I get that. Exceptions always exist. I guess my basic point was that players, when choosing things, should keep an eye on how these choices are going to play out at the table and probably make some effort to play them out at the table.

((Side note - the same player played a warforged named Chuck that was basically a mobile, sentient artillery piece. I think I'm seeing a pattern.))

 

[billd91]

((Side note - the same player played a warforged named Chuck that was basically a mobile, sentient artillery piece. I think I'm seeing a pattern.))

It’s when he plays one designed for naval warfare named Bob that you know you have to worry. Or perhaps a paint-utility warforged named Art. A beach-stormer named Sandy?

 

[Riley37]

Apropos of nothing, the last warforged character we had in a game was named Stove. His whole goal was to keep people warm. Actually, I say his, but, to be fair, I don't think the character was gendered at all.

If I understand correctly, Stove was "he" not in the sense that he might sire children, but more insofar as people treat "he" as default (see also, "The Second Sex"), and Stove accepted male-as-default "he" for lack of a more precise alternative. Perhaps Elvish has equivalents for he, she, it, and also a fourth pronoun which would apply more clearly to Stove? Dexter also accepted male-as-default "he" for lack of a more precise alternative, because Dexter was all about (a) stopping Tiamat (b) music (c) magic, and gender-specific concerns such as children were way, way on the back burner.

So do you consider Stove a cross-gender character, insofar as Stove is not a precise match for the player with regard to sex and gender?

I have a friend who wants to someday play a character who was once a chair, that a bored wizard had True Polymorphed into a human; and the character's long-term goal, is learning to cast True Polymorph on himself, to reverse the transformation. In the meantime, the character does not sit on chairs.

Anyways, the combination of "think about how you'll express the traits on the character sheet, and what to do with any traits which don't apply" and "there are exceptions" works for me. You might take "allow for exceptions" for granted; but for some people it can be a touchy topic, if our IRL experiences include situations which failed to allow for exceptions.

 

[Hussar]

Well, considering Stove is a construct, it has no gender at all. I probably default in my head to "he" simply because it's a dude playing the character. But, again, there was never any question about what the character was.

It’s when he plays one designed for naval warfare named Bob that you know you have to worry.

Only if he has no arms and no legs.