Cross-gender PCs

[Dausuul]

While people don't understand why some people would ban cross gender characters, I don't get why some people would refuse to play in games that do this. For those posters are the only character ideas you have cross gender?

You see wanting to play cross-gender as a possible warning sign of a bad player. I see wanting to ban cross-gender PCs (without a specific reason for why such characters don't fit the campaign) as a possible warning sign of a bad GM. Specifically, one who thinks it's his/her job to be the Bad Roleplaying Police, with Bad Roleplaying typically defined as "You aren't playing your character the way I want you to."

I'm not saying that all people or even most people who want to ban cross-gender PCs are such GMs, and I wouldn't immediately walk out on such a game, but I'd be more cautious about making a serious commitment to it, and I'd be keeping a sharper eye out for GM control-freak tendencies.

Frankly, I'd be a lot more okay with a GM who said, "Sorry, no cross-gender PCs because that just squicks me out." That's a clear, simple, straightforward reason that isn't likely to affect anything else.

 

[mhacdebhandia]

While people don't understand why some people would ban cross gender characters, I don't get why some people would refuse to play in games that do this. For those posters are the only character ideas you have cross gender?

Like I said upthread, I haven't played a cross-gender PC long-term. So my objection is based less on what I want to play, and more on what a rule against cross-gender PCs says about the GM or the group as a whole - which is to say, at the very least, they have very different ideas about what's important in gaming than I do. In other words, I can't even imagine how it could be an issue unless the people involved are people with whom I wouldn't game for plenty of other reasons.

It's also a fact that every single game I have played in for a long time has had a cross-gender PC - specifically, every game has had at least one male player with a female PC - and these have all been great games with great characters:

A justice-obsessed sorceress tracking down her fallen angel father in a Planescape game, a snooty Aes Sedai (but I repeat myself) in a Wheel of Time game, a risk-taking slightly-whacked-out vampire hunter in a GURPS game - and I've heard about a great female knight played by a male friend of mine in a GURPS game of which I wasn't part.

Forget that they're female characters played by men - they're good characters which would have been forbidden by dumbass rules against playing cross-gender PCs. The sorceress wouldn't have been the same character if she'd been a man; the female knight would have had a completely different character trajectory if she'd been a man; the vampire hunter would have represented something very different if she'd been a man; and hell, the Aes Sedai wouldn't even have existed if she'd been a man, since all Aes Sedai are women and none of the women in that game wanted to play one - though we did have a seekrit male channeler, as it turned out.

(In fact, when I think about that Wheel of Time game, it was the female players at the table who played the slutty stereotype, or the hardass bitch, or the character who seemingly existed for the sole purpose of having a sexual encounter with the player's favourite character from the books - and was literally retired the session after she achieved that goal.)

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

It is more disruptive when it insults the other female players at the table. Since I never play with elves and dwarves playing them like s stereotype doesn't offend any one.

But to reiterate, its no more disruptive than a female player playing up the same stereotype.

While people don't understand why some people would ban cross gender characters, I don't get why some people would refuse to play in games that do this. For those posters are the only character ideas you have cross gender?

As some have stated, some might see such a ban as a sign of a micromanaging or tyrannical DM.

Personally, I probably wouldn't refuse to play in a game with such a ban, unless there were other signs that the DM and I wouldn't get along, mainly because I have such a huge stockpile of PCs I'd love to play. I have typed over 140 D&D PCs into my PDA in the last year alone, and I enjoy several different RPGs (I have a huge stockpile of HERO PCs as well).

 

[Crothian]

But to reiterate, its no more disruptive than a female player playing up the same stereotype.

For some people when you are part of a certain group (gender, race, religion, etc) and you say or do something insulting about that group it is less offensive then someone who is not part of that group doing the exact same thing.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

For some people when you are part of a certain group (gender, race, religion, etc) and you say or do something insulting about that group it is less offensive then someone who is not part of that group doing the exact same thing.

Being a black dude, I'm familiar with proponents of the concept.

I don't particularly buy into it, though- "less offensive"≠ "innofensive."

 

[Hella_Tellah]

For some people when you are part of a certain group (gender, race, religion, etc) and you say or do something insulting about that group it is less offensive then someone who is not part of that group doing the exact same thing.

I don't know about that. As a completely un-macho man, I take considerable offense at Arnold-Schwarzenegger-extreme masculinity, and more offense at media that portrays men who fall somewhere beneath John Wayne for machismo as unworthy of their dangly bits. A woman writing a man that way makes me cringe a little; a man writing that way makes me worry that we won't get past those gender stereotypes for a very long time. People from outside my group perpetuating steretypes offend me, but people from within my group perpetuating them make me despair for our future.

 

[avin]

Still see no point in banning x-gender players.

I have some opinions about DMs who do this that I'll keep to myself.

 

[blargney the second]

Being a black dude, I'm familiar with proponents of the concept.

I don't particularly buy into it, though- "less offensive"≠ "innofensive."

What if the guy played a black dude that mugged everybody, and says he's just playing in character? There's some stuff you just don't DO, and that's about the magnitude of what I saw several times at the con.
-blarg

 

[Dausuul]

What if the guy played a black dude that mugged everybody, and says he's just playing in character? There's some stuff you just don't DO, and that's about the magnitude of what I saw several times at the con.
-blarg

Then tell people not to portray their cross-gender characters in an offensive way.

 

[Mallus]

What if the guy played a black dude that mugged everybody, and says he's just playing in character? There's some stuff you just don't DO, and that's about the magnitude of what I saw several times at the con.

That's a persuasive argument against gaming at cons. I'm not sure what it says about playing cross-gender/ethnicity/faith PC's.