Ambiguously Gendered Revenge of "What is the Hivemind?"

[Rystil Arden]

Heh. I think part of the problem is that many role-players technically don't, well, role-play very much (and/or very well, depending).
Not to say they necessarily should, mind - to each his own, after all.

If too many people you know are dedicated munchkins, rules lawyers, hack-and-slashers, "funny" kenders/malkavians/whatevers, extreme perverts, etc., your bad experiences might make you underestimate someone who's actually good at role-playing.

That's certainly true. However, some of the people on these boards who do seem to be roleplay-focused spoke out against cross-gender roleplay because they thought it couldn't be done effectively.

 

[Darkness]

Yeah. They either don't want to believe or just haven't seen it done well. It happens.

 

[Rystil Arden]

Yeah. They either don't want to believe or just haven't seen it done well. It happens.

I suppose. Its sad though. Most of my best characters have been female. For some reasons, recently, the ones that are male tend to annoy the other characters a lot more. I guess the dashing and intelligent male who points out the truth annoys male characters more than the beautiful and intelligent female. I tend to play as high Int as possible for every character unless I want to play something brutishly stupid for a fun change. It makes it easier on me because I consider myself a pretty good roleplayer, but I'm not very good at playing dumber than myself with making it a caricature. Its hard to get in the mind of slightly dumber people, I think, and just pretend that some of the connections that come to you instincively don't make sense anymore, but others do...

 

[Darkness]

Yeah. I know several (male) players whose male characters are often less interesting and more irritating than female ones. Even objectively so. I like to think it sometimes is due to laziness. Also, just because you're a guy doesn't mean you can play any kind of guy well. At least, not without some effort.

 

[Rystil Arden]

Yeah. I know several (male) players whose male characters are often less interesting and more irritating than female ones. Even objectively so. I like to think it sometimes is due to laziness. Also, just because you're a guy doesn't mean you can play any kind of guy well. At least, not without some effort.

Well, many of my female characters do tend to be kinder and nicer than the males, which helps them be less irritating. The stereotypical response to a kind, pretty girl expressing a difference of opinion seems to be dramatically different from that of a male in the same position; guess the male tends to get competitive hackles up or something.

Also, it could just be that I can't play males without being annoying, but the players themselves generally seemed to be amused, even when their characters become enraged or obstinate, so I don't think its that.

 

[Darkness]

Yeah, from what you told me I think you likely generally play your characters in ways that don't annoy other players.

It's just that not all of my players always do. (Though they generally do; I fortunately got some very good players.) And some people I've known in the past were... far worse.

 

[Rystil Arden]

Yeah, from what you told me I think you likely generally play your characters in ways that don't annoy other players.

It's just that not all of my players always do. (Though they generally do; I fortunately got some very good players.) And some people I've known in the past were... far worse.

I guess it comes from being a DM for all these years. I get to find out what personalities make my players respond well, and which annoy them. Like when I discovered that the all Neutral Good and Chaotic Good party who met with Bahamut looking for a scale, and he was a bit more-righteous-than-thou and asked them to defeat Tiamat first to prove themselves worthy, and then they went after Tiamat, who was amused, offered to help them beat down Bahamut for the scale they wanted, and then gave them all souvenirs and the gold to resurrect their party member that her guardians massacred, they were at that point willing to help her kill Bahamut, despite the fact that she was the Lawful Evil one...

 

[Evilhalfling]

Brief summary:

Huh.
I played on a social MUD - I used it to talk to my girlfriend (now wife) who I met in RL but who lived in a differernt city. This mud had some quests and stuff, but many people came just for the society. There were at least two weddings that came from that game, as well as an affair or two, and a LTR for two guys. (I went to one of the weddings, and some of them came to mine)
It had one guy who pretended to be female, and had faked up a sob story for attention. People became motionally invested in her problems. When he finally came clean he was shunned, then officialy banned when he reacted bitterly to the shunning.

Contrastinly one of the two active adminstrators admitted that he was only pretending to be female, no one cared. He just had very a maternal personality, and he was still the same after he let people know.

 

[Steve Jung]

Knight Otu's LEW character Ashnar is LE. But he doesn't act like it.

Would be kind of risky in a CG-dominant party. But the evil thoughts are there, as well as small attempts at manipulation (with words, not spells). Maybe he'll have some time to torture Jezibel for info before you catch up.

At this point, Charlarn is pretty irritated with her. Not sure how much he'd complain.

 

[Kemrain]

Relatively quiet week in the Hive. Such a shame. I am digging the gender discussion. Great topic. I have an awsome group that has no problem playing believable female characters. Though we started with a group of male characters, we've ended up with a fully female party. Never intended for it to go that way, just sort of happened. The other players don't have a problem portraying characters that are both female, and people at the same time. I'm prety lucky, given some of the responses to these threads in the past.

- Kemrain the Grateful.