I am male and have never played a female character. I am not opposed to the idea but I have never had a reason to. I will play dwarves or elves for their mechanics or for story reasons. Mechanics don't give me a reason to go female and I have never considered a story option that wouldn't work either way so I have stayed male.
When a man plays a woman
I am male and while I typically play male characters, about one in five is female. Roleplaying females is quite normal for me, as I GM a lot and half of the NPCs are female.
From my point of view female characters are similar to characters that differ from me in race, religion, social class etc. It's fun to explore characters that are not me in various ways. I don't see why playing a woman would be seen as strange when we play elves, half-gods and AIs.
From my point of view female characters are similar to characters that differ from me in race, religion, social class etc. It's fun to explore characters that are not me in various ways. I don't see why playing a woman would be seen as strange when we play elves, half-gods and AIs.
You mean the privileges that by-and-large don’t exist in D&D? Ever since 3rd edition at least there have been no stat differences or class restrictions based around gender, and certainly in the more popular campaign settings (Forgotten Realms in particular) women are shown to hold great positions of personal and political power. If you choose to run a historic, real-world scenario where women were second class citizens then that’s certainly an option to explore issues like that, but D&D itself is a poor vehicle as such because the assumption is egalitarianism from the get-go.
To answer the question in the OP, I’m the DM usually, and I typically let my players choose as they wish, since it’s usually a total non-issue anyway. Outside of magical realm BS (which I haven’t had to deal with in a long time, but have zero tolerance for) it’s a totally unimportant. The lich plotting world domination or the red dragon razing the countryside don’t care one whit what the players identify as, because if they have their way it’ll be “dead”.
Haven’t had anyone do the overt seductress/man hater at my table though, so if you’ve had to put up with that you have my condolences.
Hawk Diesel
Adventurer
I disagree. First of all, most D&D settings are human centric, and it can be argued that non-human races can be representative/analogs to non-white, non-western peoples and cultures. Also, while the setting may be built in with examples of females holding power in the produced settings (and even then I would say there are vastly more examples of white males represted), and while it may be a fantasy game, you cannot escape the inherent and implicit biases that color choices, interactions, and reactions by the player or DM. These things will come out, and to deny that they exist is to deny you have any biases of your own.
It's also not even necessarily bad to include those things in the game world, because it provides a vehicle to challenge these very same issues in a safe place that does not carry the same real world consequences. This is why D&D and all other roleplaying games hold so much therapeutic potential. Socially awkward people can learn social skills and cooperation through a structured game. Individuals with trauma can face analogs of their trauma, but in a situation in which they have the power to overcome it. And people can take on roles they might be denied in real life due to their gender, gender identity, lifestyle, sexual orientation, skin color, or whatever.
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Celebrim
Legend
Wait... what? I mean, sure it can be argued that that is true (its possible to argue anything however nonsensical), and I suppose some DM wholly lacking in both creativity and good sense might actually draw clumsy analogies in that fashion, but I would argue that actual analogies of that sort are pretty darn rare and thus that argument is just unbelievably bogus and unreflective.
For example, consider the PC races in my campaign, and the characteristics that mark them:
1) Fey (Pixies, Changelings, Sidhe): Immortal, magical, often spontaneously generated rather than birthed, unaging eternally youth, denizens of two worlds.
2) Goblins (Goblins, Hobgoblins): Product of extensive selective breeding and perhaps magical manipulation that has transformed them from something quite different than their original form, resulting in division of the population into physical castes according to role. Obligate carnivores. Nocturnal.
3) Elves: Age at roughly 1/9th the rate of humanity. Pregnancy lasts 7 years. Infancy two decades. Adulthood is generally perceived as occurring sometime after the first century. Have innate connection to nature, allowing them to commune with animals. Usually vegetarians. Very little or no sexual dimorphism. Xenophobic and isolationist, arguably by necessity. Literally dies, as if starving, if unable to experience beauty.
4) Orine: Avian. Feathered. Two eyelids. Carnal, emotion and sensual race, loving dance and music, and notable for lacking emotional control. Have a tendency to go into a trance when experiencing profound beauty, and to fly into a rage when they feel slighted. Consequently, their own culture is steeped in layers and layers of customs and manners designed to avoid giving offence. Dislike cities for the filth that they produce, and prefer nomadic existence.
5) Dwarves: Male births outnumber female births by more than two to one, resulting in a culture which is both patriarchal and yet women have great effective power at the same time because female lives are actually worth more than male lives. Chivalric warrior ideas and theoretically chaste romantic love dominate the culture. Merchantile and cosmopolitan, they freely mix with other races but cannot breed with them.
6) Idreth: Individuals reincarnate and share in a group mind, resulting in infants being born aware and with memories. Called the 'born old', because even youths appear careworn, stooped, and fragile to members of the other races. Scholarly and monastic in their culture, they are admired for their wisdom and reviled as meddlers and conspirators.
Which non-white race is that? Match them up. Or maybe just accept that they are each in essence humans where I've changed some of the aspects we find universally in humanity, and asked people to consider what a people would be like if they lacked some essential human characteristic so basic we seldom think of it (mortality, families, sexual dimorphism, equal numbers of males and females, short life span, omnivorous, etc. etc. etc.).
It would simply miss the entire point to treat any of these species as a stand in for some human race. The whole point is to have something not human to compare and contrast with humanity, so that we might see ourselves better as if in a mirror. It would likewise even miss the point to treat any of the human races in my fantasy world as direct stand ins for any real world race, although some analogies are inevitable simply because I don't have unlimited imagination. But the whole point of having non-human races is for them to be alien and non-human. I don't need to invent alien non-human things in order to have something analogous to a real world ethnic group. I can just have them stand for themselves.
Besides which, while human racism still occurs, it would be really odd if racism in a fantasy world was as marked and conventional as racism in the real world, given that unlike the real world humanity must also deal with sharing a world with a large number of other sentient and non-human species. Speciesism is therefore far more prevalent and dramatic on my world than racism, but even that isn't meant to be a conventional analogy for real world racism. I really want to explore the idea of how peoples of different species might possibly relate. If I just wanted to explore only racism, I probably wouldn't construct a fantasy world.
Well I would hope you can. Anyone that judged what I was doing by some real world racial or gender biases would be missing the point. I might as well not write or create anything if you are going to always bring the bias that I'm writing about real world races.
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S
Sunseeker
Guest
I usually end up splitting things up pretty 50/50.
I've only played a seductress once, she was born poor and hated the rich so she seduced wealthy men and then killed them, then claimed to be their late wife to take all their wealth and lands.
I played a female elf monk who was abandoned as a child and thus hated other elves. She had no real sexual bent towards men or women and sex didn't come up in that campaign much so it was never an issue.
I am currently playing a female weretiger rogue who left her people to pursue wealth and power (which her tribe didn't value). Sex hasn't come up in this game because we've got some youngins, so I mostly play her up as a female Sher Khan.
I've made a couple stereotypical men before but I find stereotypes pretty boring so I try to avoid them. I usually write fairly long character backstories and the character's sex is developed out of that. Sometimes men fit an idea more than women, sometimes the other way around. Sometimes tropey characters work in a beer & pretzels game, they usually don't at a more serious table. IMO: if your intention is to play a well-rounded character, the sex really doesn't matter.
I've only played a seductress once, she was born poor and hated the rich so she seduced wealthy men and then killed them, then claimed to be their late wife to take all their wealth and lands.
I played a female elf monk who was abandoned as a child and thus hated other elves. She had no real sexual bent towards men or women and sex didn't come up in that campaign much so it was never an issue.
I am currently playing a female weretiger rogue who left her people to pursue wealth and power (which her tribe didn't value). Sex hasn't come up in this game because we've got some youngins, so I mostly play her up as a female Sher Khan.
I've made a couple stereotypical men before but I find stereotypes pretty boring so I try to avoid them. I usually write fairly long character backstories and the character's sex is developed out of that. Sometimes men fit an idea more than women, sometimes the other way around. Sometimes tropey characters work in a beer & pretzels game, they usually don't at a more serious table. IMO: if your intention is to play a well-rounded character, the sex really doesn't matter.
Hawk Diesel
Adventurer
[MENTION=4937]Celebrim[/MENTION] Homebrew is different than standard D&D. Issues of race and sex may be secondary (though I would argue those are hard if not impossible to erase outright). However, when you look at the source material and Tolkien in particular, race is indeed an issue and it is much easier to view the difference between the white (humans, elves, dwarves, hobbits) versus black (orcs, goblins, ect). Even consider half-orcs as a playable race. They are only accepted if half their parentage is of the "white" races and even then are typically portrayed as brutish and low intellect. D&D products also have a tradition of cultural appropriation, as is apparent in products such as Oriental Adventures. As for the representation of females, when you think of iconic D&D, who do you consider? Elminster, Volo, Drizzt, all those wizards that have spells named after them. Especially Drizzt! He is one of the evil dark races and is only a hero after he turns away from his own people!
Are there counter examples? Sure. And of course, how you run games may be different. But that doesn't deny that the foundation set by D&D doesn't contain those elements, and it is then up to the individual players to ignore them or incorporate them.
Are there counter examples? Sure. And of course, how you run games may be different. But that doesn't deny that the foundation set by D&D doesn't contain those elements, and it is then up to the individual players to ignore them or incorporate them.
Celebrim
Legend
I've been playing D&D 30 some odd years. I have no idea what 'standard D&D is'. I've seen dozens of tables. They are all different. What is the "standard Batman"? Which era? Which writer? D&D is even worse. Canon changes. Canon is ignored. Canon changes between published settings.
And in all of that I never recalled anything from TSR/WotC pushing hard any sort of analogy between typical PC races and real world cultures or ethnic groups.
Which source material? We've got at least all of appendix N to review.
Oh good grief no. Just no. That's ridiculous. That's your bias, not his. The textual history of orcs is far more complex than that, and they are certainly not intended as neat analogies between real world races. If you read Tolkien that way, you are just missing the point.
Oh good grief, let's not get that started again. "Cultural appropriation" isn't a thing.
Tasha? The Simbul? The Seven Sisters. You can find whatever you want. When I think of iconic D&D, I think of Dragonlance... that is Margaret Weis, and the husband and wife team of Tracy and Laura Hickman.
Well, first, yes I deny it, and secondly we can tell what choice you've made.
Hawk Diesel
Adventurer
[MENTION=4937]Celebrim[/MENTION] When I say standard D&D, I mean D&D based on the official products released. I'm not even discussing canon versus non-canon, but what has been released in the various books. I also don't think one can argue that D&D didn't start out with cultural or sex biases, as the first few editions outlined very specific mechanical penalties for playing a female.
As for the examples I pointed out, I'm sure there are more complicated issues and context, and it is almost certainly an oversimplification on my part given that I don't want to be writing an entire thesis on this board, but one can find many themes or racial injustice and even academic writings that have explored this issue within both Tolkien and D&D.
As for cultural appropriation, it most certainly is a thing. This is something I won't even try to argue. If you deny it, then there just isn't enough common ground between us to even have a discussion. I can accept that you may disagree that Oriental Adventures isn't an example of cultural appropriation, or that it is difficult to say that D&D qualifies due to the fantasy landscape, but to deny the idea of cultural appropriation even exists is, from my perspective, akin to saying the world is flat.
As for my own biases, I do my best to recognize them and challenge them. And yes, I see these themes in D&D, as I'm sure many others do. Nothing is created in a vacuum. We always bring our world view into our creations and stories. And this can be a good thing, because if we can be upfront about it, we can recognize them, challenge them, and grow as individuals.
You can deny these things if you want. It doesn't mean they aren't present.
As for the examples I pointed out, I'm sure there are more complicated issues and context, and it is almost certainly an oversimplification on my part given that I don't want to be writing an entire thesis on this board, but one can find many themes or racial injustice and even academic writings that have explored this issue within both Tolkien and D&D.
As for cultural appropriation, it most certainly is a thing. This is something I won't even try to argue. If you deny it, then there just isn't enough common ground between us to even have a discussion. I can accept that you may disagree that Oriental Adventures isn't an example of cultural appropriation, or that it is difficult to say that D&D qualifies due to the fantasy landscape, but to deny the idea of cultural appropriation even exists is, from my perspective, akin to saying the world is flat.
As for my own biases, I do my best to recognize them and challenge them. And yes, I see these themes in D&D, as I'm sure many others do. Nothing is created in a vacuum. We always bring our world view into our creations and stories. And this can be a good thing, because if we can be upfront about it, we can recognize them, challenge them, and grow as individuals.
You can deny these things if you want. It doesn't mean they aren't present.
Celebrim
Legend
Seriously? I thought we were arguing whether or not in general non-human races are standins for specific 'non-white' racial cultural groups. Whether or not D&D did or did not start out with cultural or sexual biases is irrelevant to answering that question. It could be that it did have cultural or sexual biases, but those biases weren't expressed by (for example) making Gnolls analogy for Laotian peoples or making Elves a stand in for Berbers or whatever you think. Whatever we want to make of specific mechanical differences between genders in 1e AD&D, it has no bearing on whether kobolds, gnomes, and norkers are actually stand ins for real world ethnic groups. It would seem that your mode of argumentation is to eschew logic, and bring up every single controversial political position you can drag into the thread whether it has a bearing on the subject at hand or not.
Yes, and if I wanted to insult my eyes, I could go out and find lots of Neo-Nazi writings on various topics as well. The existence of someone out there with a theory in no way validates that theory. There are tons of people who are wrong about things. Citing "expertise" or "authority" in vague ways isn't an argument.
Once again, I've no intention of arguing this either. Take it up here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGgj9S8XO7k
There probably isn't. My idea of evidence supporting your argument is you show examples of how hobgoblins were explicitly meant to have a Slavic culture or to be a stand in for Aztecs or something. Then you show that there is a one for one and onto relationship between the culture and cultural tropes associated with hobgoblins and the intended real world culture they represent. And if you can do that, I might find it convincing. What I don't find convincing is this unrelated word salad of political speech.
I feel much the same way about people that claim cultural appropriation exists, and your axiomatic assertions aren't completely convincing. But, if you are curious I was involved in a much longer (and largely) respectful discussion of whether it exists or not about a year ago on EnWorld. Go read that thread if you like. I have no intention of repeating myself at that length.
Including the belief that cultural appropriation exists?
However, most of all it is irrelevant. I wasn't challenging the whole of your carefully constructed political world view, and frankly I don't find you outlining your politics in a conventional manner particularly convincing. I was challenging a very specific statement.
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