Comfort withcross gender characters based on your gender

[Hussar]

We're role playing around a kitchen table not performing high theater. If you don't figure out that someone at the table is playing a character that identifies as female until the fifth session they didn't "fail", it just hasn't come up yet.

If someone in a group I was playing in told me I had failed to role play properly because they just now figured out I was playing a different gendered character my reaction would probably rhyme with "huck off".
/snip

So, let me get this straight. We're five sessions in, about 20 hours of play (or thereabouts - the run time of an entire season of a TV show) and your portrayal of your character is so lacking in any indicators that no one at the table has realized that your character is a different gender than you and that's their fault?

Again, and I keep repeating the question because no one seems to want to pony up here. Why are you playing a character that is a different gender from yourself if that choice in no way actually impacts how you play that character? To the point where no one at the table actually had any idea that your character was a different gender from yourself after 15 or 20 hours of play.

Do we apply the same standard to everything else as well? Background is completely unimportant and never referenced? The fact that your character is a criminal, or a soldier or an acolyte has zero impact on how you portray this character? And it would be everyone else's fault for not knowing that your character was a criminal, soldier or an acolyte despite you never once actually bringing that to the table?

Again, just so everyone's on the same page here. It's NOT about being "female" enough. It's about portraying your character at all.

 

[Riley37]

That way, combined with our history and all knowing each other, by the time you say "Yes I want to play in this" you already kind of know what you're getting into.

"All knowing each other" is a major factor. I'm glad it gets you good results, but please don't assume that's everyone else's experience of D&D, or of TRPG. In my 30-ish years of TRPG, only a few of my games (on either side of the screen) have started out with everyone involved already knowing each other AND never added a newcomer.

Common folks using plain common language and good common sense, accessible to and understandable by all, would be my preference. No loopholes, no technicalities, etc.

Imagine if someone built settlements on the ocean floor, formed a new nation, and had E. Gary Gygax write the legal code, from scratch...

 

[Thomas Bowman]

Yikes, Conan as turn-on? No, I've never seen anyone who played their barbarian like a sexy walking stick. Usually, these characters are played as power/competence fantasies by male players.

What I did see were women portraying gay male characters as their wish fulfilment and/or - see @Lanefan s comment - way to explore their sexuality. They were rarely sticks, most of them did have a personality, but I guess they'd carry many toxic stereotypes about gay men that would make them feel uncomfortable. (google Yaoi if you'd like to inquire further.)



There is this third-person narrative kind of play ("She does XYZ") besides the fully immersive first-person play ("I do XYZ") where players play their characters, but not *as* their characters. It is far more common than you'd think.

Also, there is not much of a difference - besides having full "remote control" of the character - between a character in an RPG and a character in a movie or novel. And just think about how many characters are there for fanservice only. How many characters, even in novels, are defined by their looks and availability first and foremost.

If you cannot see the connection, then fine. You'll certainly create no such character in your RPGing carreer then

You probably won't like this example of a female barbarian.

You remember Red Sonya? She is the female counterpart to Conan. I think the movie version is clothed more decently than some of the paintings of her. She is basically a swordswoman in a bikini. The last picture covers her private areas, but not much more than that. I think a lot of fantasy artists are male, and "fantasy" has a double meaning. I don't actually think a swordswoman would dress this way, there are a few historic examples lets take Joan of Arc for instance.

Unlike Red Sonya, this lady actually existed. There are so few actual examples of swordswomen, but Joan is one, more of a symbol and rallying point for the French than anything else, and she was lucky or a brilliant strategist, I think her skill in leading armies was more important than her skill with a sword. But swordswomen are so unusual that their very existence attracts attention.

You ever hear of Boudicca, barbarian queen of Britain? Here is another example of a swords woman who actually existed

 

[Riley37]

We're role playing around a kitchen table not performing high theater. If you don't figure out that someone at the table is playing a character that identifies as female until the fifth session they didn't "fail", it just hasn't come up yet.

So, let me get this straight. We're five sessions in, about 20 hours of play (or thereabouts - the run time of an entire season of a TV show) and your portrayal of your character is so lacking in any indicators that no one at the table has realized that your character is a different gender than you and that's their fault?

Hussar, at this point I'm having a hard time trusting your good faith reading of what people are saying. Patrick McGill explicitly says as of session five, in this scenario, no failure has occurred. You're attributing to him an argument about who's at fault: one player, or the other players. Why are you looking to blame anyone, when according to Patrick (and according to me) *no failure has occurred*?

I keep repeating the question because no one seems to want to pony up here.

I've asked you more questions than you have answered. For example: of all the traits listed on page 121, why do you treat one of them, gender, as defaulting to "the PC matches the player", and not all the others? (Have you ever played a character with a different name or skin color than yours, and if so, why?) When are you gonna pony up?

If you're considering an answer, are you preparing an answer which can survive a hostile onslaught, which pre-emptively evades "gotcha"? If so, then how much personal truth do you expect others to reveal, in a hostile venue?

 

[Riley37]

The truth does not emerge from no-holds-barred debate. If no holds are barred, we *quickly* degrade into techniques that lie among the logical fallacies, attacking the psychology of the opponent, rather than exploring the actual logic. People become victors in such debate based on illogic and falsehood, rather than truth. Formal debate has strict rules against that sort of thing - it gets more to truth than no-holds-barred does.

I'm gonna wildly speculate that your experience as one of the moderators in a forum on the Internet has something to do with the opinion you've formed on this topic.

Formal debate, and plaintiff vs. respondent, so far as I know, tend to involve only one assertion, which gets a confirmation or a denial, and are not a free-for-all of multiple assertions. With a few exceptions such as the three verdicts in Scots law, guilty - not proven - not guilty. A trial on a charge of theft rarely results in a conviction for some other charge resulting from someone jumping in, on day three of the process, with an accusation of glagtery. (I am open to corrections or clarifications from those who know debate better than I do, and are aware of three-cornered [or more] formal debate).

 

[redrick]

So, let me get this straight. We're five sessions in, about 20 hours of play (or thereabouts - the run time of an entire season of a TV show) and your portrayal of your character is so lacking in any indicators that no one at the table has realized that your character is a different gender than you and that's their fault?

Again, and I keep repeating the question because no one seems to want to pony up here. Why are you playing a character that is a different gender from yourself if that choice in no way actually impacts how you play that character? To the point where no one at the table actually had any idea that your character was a different gender from yourself after 15 or 20 hours of play.

Do we apply the same standard to everything else as well? Background is completely unimportant and never referenced? The fact that your character is a criminal, or a soldier or an acolyte has zero impact on how you portray this character? And it would be everyone else's fault for not knowing that your character was a criminal, soldier or an acolyte despite you never once actually bringing that to the table?

Again, just so everyone's on the same page here. It's NOT about being "female" enough. It's about portraying your character at all.

If I were to record a few sessions worth of play, there's a good chance that nobody at the table would do anything to overtly indicate the gender of their character. They might use a pronoun every once in a while, but lots of people generally refer to their characters in the first person. Furthermore, a player might actually be doing subtle things that either reference or derive from the gender of the character, but other players wouldn't necessarily pick up on this. I've seen plenty of players misgender other PCs, despite the fact that the player in question uses pronouns. People don't always pay that much attention, and some people are more attentive to gender and pronouns than others.

Good roleplaying involves playing a character who is coherent and interesting, but it doesn't require constantly expressing ALL aspects of that character, even if they are written on the character sheet.

I wouldn't expect a player to regularly communicate their characters height, hair style or skin color. That doesn't mean they might not have an idea of how their character looks. The game asks us to make choices about our characters and we make them. It doesn't require us to communicate every one of those choices at every turn.

I also certainly don't need to justify any choice I make about my character that doesn't interfere with the enjoyment of other players at a table. "Why'd you choose to play a character who hates adventuring?" -- fair question. "Why did you choose to play a character with blue eyes?" Or named Raphael? Or of a different gender or sexuality? Why not? Why do you choose to play men?

("Why did you choose to play a misogynist stereotype" IS a very fair question, and when we try to step into the shoes of other human beings, we should always do so with care and respect.)

 

[Riley37]

There's a third option: that the player, who in real life might be having internal issues with their own perceived attractiveness or sexiness, is playing a sexy doll as a form of compensation.

Plausible. I have such issues. I can't recall ever writing a cis het male character with that intention. I've played only a few PCs who were conventionally attractive, who might inspire second looks from straight women. Hm, one time I played a martial artist movie star, and the one female PC (played by a man) was too racist to see him "that way", as he was Asian-American and she was an agent of the apartheid-era South African secret police. Another time, in Shadowrun, I played a maxed-charisma elf, but I mix-maxed the CHA mainly for summoning and binding spirits. In both campaigns, there wasn't much room for romantic chemistry - the PCs were mostly "on duty" doing a job, or on the run, or holed up in our hidden lair. I suppose if I'd ever RP'd the PC taking romantic *initiative*, the GM might have spun off a side scene. I don't often take initiative, and I suppose that carries over into my play style, even though the PCs had huge advantages compared to the player.

I'm currently playing a folk hero Paladin, but he's dragonborn, and I doubt any humans, dwarves, orcs, etc. are interested in a guy with scales, no matter how muscular and charming.

 

[Umbran]

I'm gonna wildly speculate that your experience as one of the moderators in a forum on the Internet has something to do with the opinion you've formed on this topic.

One can (and, if one is honestly looking, probably *should*, IMHO) get to the same basic conclusion from watching discussions on topics people care about in any online medium. It isn't like these forums are fundamentally different from anywhere else in how humans talk about stuff.

Formal debate, and plaintiff vs. respondent, so far as I know, tend to involve only one assertion, which gets a confirmation or a denial, and are not a free-for-all of multiple assertions.

Courts of law have multiple assertions, as you can handle multiple charges in one trial. You are correct that all the fundamental assertions are given at the start of the process, however - you don't get new charges in the middle of a trial. There may be minor assertions that arise as testimony comes out, but those are always subservient to the main thrust. A court does not experience full-on topic splitting and drift like a messageboard can.

But really, the fundamental difference is still that there is a third party (a jury) who decides who had the better points. And, there are strong rules as to how the debate runs - every, "Objection, Your Honor!" is a note about the rules of the debate. Courtrooms are in no way "no-holds-barred".

 

[Thomas Bowman]

There's a third option: that the player, who in real life might be having internal issues with their own perceived attractiveness or sexiness, is playing a sexy doll as a form of compensation.

Put another way, the sexy doll isn't there for its own player to lust over, it's there for the other players (be it in or out of character) to lust over; and when they do so it gratifies the doll's player by making him/her feel vicariously more attractive.

Lanefan

Can you really imagine a sane GM doing that with his friends at a dinner table? Honestly!
How would the players react to that?
"Well we go 'bang bang' get married and have children!"

I honestly don't know what to do with a with a "vamp NPC". I one time GMed a game where two players one who was male and the other was female decided that their two characters should get married, and they later decided to get married in real life! It wasn't any big deal to me.

Now what if a GM plays a "vamp NPC", such as a Succubus for instance. One could simply role dice, players could roll their saving throws to see whether they fall under her spell and get drained or not. We could either go the "game speak" route or we could get explicit in the descriptions of this encounter all while rolling the dice but then describing what actually happens in graphic and descriptive terms. I don't think I could do that as a GM and keep a straight face, could you?

What if its just a pretty girl that throws herself at one of the PCs as a form of hero worship as they did their heroic deeds? What if some PC decides to take the NPC up on her offer? The GM could either describe the encounter or simply describes the consequences of the encounter, such as the girl getting pregnant and having the PC's child, they later is easier to do without much embarrassment, the former is a lot harder to do. Would you do it?

 

[Sunseeker]

If I may ask, what about playing female characters makes them fun for you? What, specifically related to the gender of your character, makes it fun?

You're missing what people are saying so hard its hard to tell if you're being serious in your lines of questioning.

Playing a woman, in many cases, is no different than playing an elf, or a dragonborn, or any other thing. In some instances, its a matter of "does the character concept I came up with fit better as a male, or a female, or something else?" Sometimes it's simply an issue of random. I played a no-nonsense female fighter in a short-lived AL campaign simply because I decided to leave my characters sex up to chance (evens were female, odds were male). I played a male bounty hunter in a different game because I felt like it fit the concept I had in mind. I played a female Valerian elf cleric, who came from a culture where traveling members of society wear something akin to a burka but decorated with patterns honoring their family. The fact that she was female was supposed to be something of a surprise to the table.

You're throwing these questions out there like you're assuming there's a deep, unspoken motivation behind any choice. But I think the problem remains your assumptions. You first assume that characters must be the same as their player, and then when they are not, assume there must be some great meaning behind the choice, and then assume that the lack of meaning makes the choice pointless and that the character ought to have been the same sex.

What this all really sounds like to me is that you wrongly assumed something, and instead of simply admitting that you made a mistake, you're trying to flip the script on the player/character you assumed wrongly about as though it were their fault for your flawed assumption. YOU made the assumption buddy. That's all on you.

Have you ever stopped and considered that maybe, the idea the player came up with just worked better as woman than as a man? (or some other sex/gender that the player isn't)