Teflon Billy
Explorer
"ain't No mountain High Enough" here
When a man plays a woman
"ain't No mountain High Enough" here
Yeah thanks. I'm thankful for my current GM(who I know reads these threads and I hope i haven't offended somehow) who's largely respectful of sensitivities even if we have a slightly different idea of where to draw the line sometimes, so don't run the risk of running into that sort of stuff again. A little nervous about prospective new players in the next campaign in a couple of weeks though, and I'm probably going to start going back to gaming cons next year too. I haven't had a bad experience at a con in recent years as such, though i know one person who was GMing(not my GM, but table across from me, friend of a friend) I ended up befriending who was pretty insensitive about mental illness & trans issues. Geeks aren't always the best at this stuff unfortunately, even the very social ones(sometimes especially those ones).
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Teflon Billy
Explorer
The best example I have is for a game of Champions I was running. I explained that the campaign would be about the remnant of Earth's superhero community following an alien war (using Earth as a battleground). The big hitters of the world had been killed, and the PC's were the lowbie/mid rankers who missed the climactic battle for whatever reason. I turned two PC's away from the game and one player. The PC's would be involved in the resistance, and throughout the campaign would hopefully slowly drive back the invaders, and discover a bunch of revelatory things that would help them determine who was *really* on their side.
PC number one was a guy playing a lesbian ninja character who hated men, but used her pheromonal superpower to seduce them, then kill them. This is a catastrophe I've seen before. Nope.
PC number two was a girl whose character was of constantly (and uncontrollably) shifting gender, and she wanted to use it to explore what it meant to be a man or woman if that wasn't something carved in stone. No superpowers listed, claimed that her character would not wear a superhero costume as "She wasn't about that" and no reference to how she would be involved in the described campaign. Nope.
Excluded Player: A guy who wanted to be the "Bad guy on the side of good" and expert in torture, not afraid to kill anyone (man, woman or child) not afraid to "break some eggs to make an omelette" ...told me about a lot of books he had read on virtually every reprehensible subject he kept bringing up. Gave me the creeps. Gone.
Like I say, people get different things out of the games, and when I'm running a game you might not get what you want. You'll only get what I am offering. Which, in the case of the game described above, was costumed superheroic action in a sci-fi environment.
Anyone looking to work out personal issues regarding basically anything outside of silver-age alien smashing needed to look elsewhere. My table is not therapy for you, neither is it an opportunity to live out abhorrent power fantasies.
Though, I guess at it's core D&D is about armed robbery, so I guess my rules aren't exactly ironclad
PC number one was a guy playing a lesbian ninja character who hated men, but used her pheromonal superpower to seduce them, then kill them. This is a catastrophe I've seen before. Nope.
PC number two was a girl whose character was of constantly (and uncontrollably) shifting gender, and she wanted to use it to explore what it meant to be a man or woman if that wasn't something carved in stone. No superpowers listed, claimed that her character would not wear a superhero costume as "She wasn't about that" and no reference to how she would be involved in the described campaign. Nope.
Excluded Player: A guy who wanted to be the "Bad guy on the side of good" and expert in torture, not afraid to kill anyone (man, woman or child) not afraid to "break some eggs to make an omelette" ...told me about a lot of books he had read on virtually every reprehensible subject he kept bringing up. Gave me the creeps. Gone.
Like I say, people get different things out of the games, and when I'm running a game you might not get what you want. You'll only get what I am offering. Which, in the case of the game described above, was costumed superheroic action in a sci-fi environment.
Anyone looking to work out personal issues regarding basically anything outside of silver-age alien smashing needed to look elsewhere. My table is not therapy for you, neither is it an opportunity to live out abhorrent power fantasies.
Though, I guess at it's core D&D is about armed robbery, so I guess my rules aren't exactly ironclad
TheCosmicKid
Hero
This. Just... find another table, folks. Don't need to deal with that stuff in a crazy-fun fantasy adventure.
I think that range of fiction illustrates how the topic can be handled well or... not so well. I hesitate to apply the term "realistic" to anything Mad Max, but Furiosa's character and actions really do make perfect sense in response to the situations she encounters. Whereas independent badass Lisbeth Salander inexplicably jumps in the sack with a transparent author avatar who's twice her age and shares no common interests outside of work. I'm not saying men can't write (or, to bring us back to the point, roleplay) female characters who are sexually active. I'm a man, and I'd certainly like that creative freedom for myself. But sometimes it gets a little, y'know, white-knighty. You gotta be conscious whether your ideas are coming from your forebrain or your hindbrain.
pdzoch
Explorer
Getting back to the specific instance at hand, I would probably handle the situation like I handle all my character backgrounds.
First, does the background make sense in your campaign world? This is a pretty gritty background, and despite the prevalence of evil in my game, child sex slaves are not a characteristic of my campaign. So, I would not be open to this background, but it may be appropriate depending on the game and campaign world you are running.
Second, how does the player want this background to inform the game? I generally try to tie elements of every characters background into the campaign so that they characters become relevant to the world and the world becomes relevant to the players. Long lost fathers show up, old friends call in favors, patrons have tasks to be completed, etc. How would the child sex slave situation come up in the game play that would make for a rewarding game experience for everyone? Perhaps a lead on the ringleader of the trader comes into play which begins an adventure? Would everyone else like such a game? Again, this is too gritty for my game. Ultimately, if this is just an excuse to act a certain way (character is a man-hater), there are other backstories or palatable reasons to frames a characters reason to act a certain way. Perhaps a compromise could be reached between player and gamemaster.
Third, my game emphasizes that the characters are heroes. How does this background inform the heroics of the character? If the background is only going to get in the way of the heroic story telling, then this character may not be suited for the game. A similar example are the rogue classes in my game, especially the assassins. These characters are playing redeemed villains, now using their once immoral skills for good. The same goes for those Drow characters.
And lastly, this is a game for the entire group. How do you feel about letting this character in the game? Do you trust the ability for the player to role play the character tastefully? How do the other players feel about the character? This is a group decision.
In the end, I have one reservation about the background. What is the character's goal or measure of happiness? Given the "man-hatin'" mantra, how does the character come to peace? Does the player intend for this destructive emotion and attitude to exist all her life? There is always something rewarding when past histories, conflicts, emptiness in the characters background becomes resolved as part of the campaign game. [Something I try to do as I build the campaign world with the characters in mind, and thus make the world relevant to the character and vice versa]. How does the former child sex slave resolve her past in the game? That is a beastly problem I would rather not have to wrestle with.
Teflon Billy
Explorer
Yeah, that's been my point through the whole thread: not every game is for every PC.
...or the "needs" of every player.
tbh I forget whether or not I've told the GM or players whether or not I want my next character to be trans. It's sort of a reverse of this problem, where it's an experience that's so intensely mine that others might not know how to react to it. There's a long history of "Gender bending" in D&D so even if there aren't really any properly "trans" characters outside of maybe a couple of Gods(Corellon comes to mind) that I don't think it would stand out much. I think I decided back with the Mizhena controversy that my next character would be trans, because there was no reason not have a trans character, and the fact I've never . What exactly that will mean though I'm not sure. I only had one trans character in my character's backstory(she worked for an evil wizard in calimshan helping with alchemy, then made a run for it with his alchemy stuff, figuring out how to create hormone-manipulating potions and ultimately making birth control for courtesans & my character's doctor, which i thought was a cool way to throw everything together).
(Real reason: my character is going to be a spy-ish sort and I want to be able to drop my voice for disguises, lol).
That adds another dimension to this though. How would I feel if someone else played a trans character? If it's a character that's non-binary example - it's kind of normal for Fey/Elves to have nonspecific genders for example - it probably wouldn't be a big deal. But a character that had been through a specific analogue of transition might be difficult(my next character will probably have ties an alchemist, lol).
Has anyone had this around a table? The 5E PHB encourages it, technically.
(Real reason: my character is going to be a spy-ish sort and I want to be able to drop my voice for disguises, lol).
That adds another dimension to this though. How would I feel if someone else played a trans character? If it's a character that's non-binary example - it's kind of normal for Fey/Elves to have nonspecific genders for example - it probably wouldn't be a big deal. But a character that had been through a specific analogue of transition might be difficult(my next character will probably have ties an alchemist, lol).
Has anyone had this around a table? The 5E PHB encourages it, technically.
aramis erak
Legend
I've seen males play females done poorly far more often than well.
The ones who do so poorly seldom get a second chance.
The ones who do so poorly seldom get a second chance.
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