I've seen no problems at all with players playing PCs of opposite gender, whether female playing male or male female. I do it fairly often when I play, so do several of my regular players (of both genders). I'm not sure if I'm more freaked out by the GMs who ban cross-gender characters, or by the cross-gender characterisation you describe (Billy & co)! And the only sex-crazed characters I've seen have been in PBEM games, with people playing their own gender.
cross gender fun?
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Teflon Billy
Explorer
S'mon said:
Yeah, the people I described above are not my usual players (Ask me about the
wit we now refer to as "Rape Boy" sometime).And you'd be less freaked out by me and my cross-gender banning ways if you'd lived through the game sessions I'm talking about. I'm a hero to the segment of the gaming community who lived through those games simply for the banning.
And I've played in your PBEM games S'Mon...you and I admittedly have different tolerances for sexual exploration hijinks at the expense of more classic D&D elements.
Not a criticism at all, your game world was fantastic from what I saw, and your DM'ing and prose were top notch.
But page after page, week after week of reading about characters sexually molesting their slaves (but the slaves secretly liking, and indeed, wanting it) without the plot ever advancing wore thin on an old-schooler like myself.
Different strokes for differnt folks is I guess what I'm saying.
Jolly Giant
First Post
As a DM, I've never yet allowed a player to play crossgender charcters. With an inexperienced player, I fear it would only become a distraction from the game and none of the more experienced players have shown the least interest in it.
What was really cool though, was when a party of first-time players (two guys, three girls) found their first cursed item: A belt of sex-revearsal! The female bard claimed it; she had been really polite and modest, letting the other players have every cool thing they found, but now she'd decided it was her turn to get a magic item!
Up until then she had really played the sexual charisma card, she had both the male players and even one of the female ones eating out of her hand, doing anything she wanted them to! Not that she'd had sex with any of them, she'd simply led them on with hints of all the exquisite pleasures she could grant them if they pleased her, and they were all competing to win her favors...
The scream of frustration (IRL) when she tried on her first magic item ever (this was still only her third night of playing!) was almost enough to make me feel sorry for her. She soon recovered however, and made the best of it. As I said, the players were all newbies and they had no idea how to get rid of the curse, so she got stuck playing a woman in a mans body for several sessions. She was starting to think she'd have to be a man forever, when she finally discovered a little spell called 'Remove Curse'.
She roleplayed it brilliantly the hole time and it only added to the game, never distracted from it. Even so, I wouldn't let a player make cross-gender character, nor would I wish to play one myself. I find it more than hard enough to portray female characters when I DM. But that newbie girl almost changed my mind, she delivered the finest roleplaying I've ever seen! Seriously!
What was really cool though, was when a party of first-time players (two guys, three girls) found their first cursed item: A belt of sex-revearsal! The female bard claimed it; she had been really polite and modest, letting the other players have every cool thing they found, but now she'd decided it was her turn to get a magic item!
Up until then she had really played the sexual charisma card, she had both the male players and even one of the female ones eating out of her hand, doing anything she wanted them to! Not that she'd had sex with any of them, she'd simply led them on with hints of all the exquisite pleasures she could grant them if they pleased her, and they were all competing to win her favors...
The scream of frustration (IRL) when she tried on her first magic item ever (this was still only her third night of playing!) was almost enough to make me feel sorry for her. She soon recovered however, and made the best of it. As I said, the players were all newbies and they had no idea how to get rid of the curse, so she got stuck playing a woman in a mans body for several sessions. She was starting to think she'd have to be a man forever, when she finally discovered a little spell called 'Remove Curse'.
She roleplayed it brilliantly the hole time and it only added to the game, never distracted from it. Even so, I wouldn't let a player make cross-gender character, nor would I wish to play one myself. I find it more than hard enough to portray female characters when I DM. But that newbie girl almost changed my mind, she delivered the finest roleplaying I've ever seen! Seriously!
Teflon Billy said:
Yeah, the people I described above are not my usual players (Ask me about the
And you'd be less freaked out by me and my cross-gender banning ways if you'd lived through the game sessions I'm talking about. I'm a hero to the segment of the gaming community who lived through those games simply for the banning.
And I've played in your PBEM games S'Mon...you and I admittedly have different tolerances for sexual exploration hijinks at the expense of more classic D&D elements.
Not a criticism at all, your game world was fantastic from what I saw, and your DM'ing and prose were top notch.
But page after page, week after week of reading about characters sexually molesting their slaves (but the slaves secretly liking, and indeed, wanting it) without the plot ever advancing wore thin on an old-schooler like myself.
Different strokes for differnt folks is I guess what I'm saying.
I dropped that PBEM, that stuff gets real old after a while. In hindsight it was a mistake to cater for those who want porn in their email over those who don't. I don't allow any of that stuff in my tabletop game! The PBEM is still going on though with a pro-porn GM, I just don't read the posts anymore...Nothing to do with cross-gender play though, the advocates of cyber-sex in their RP I've known were mostly female players playing female characters.
The cross-gender characters I've seen tend to be more the asexual types - like the female monk PCs played by male players, or I played a chaste female healer cleric one time (found it a bit boring - I like killing things). My wife plays male characters partly so she can enjoy killing things and not worry about getting killed (when she plays female characters they tend to be the "Go into that dungeon?! You're craxy!" types).
Tonguez
A suffusion of yellow
Trevalon Moonleirion said:
EEK NO - RP'ed
I absolutely do NOT allow PC involvement in 'rape scenarios' its just unecessary and not something I want to 'play' with. As a DM I have however implied such activities in association with villains/bad guys (A priest molesting the neophytes and a Marquis De Sade-type cult leader)
AND
I'm not really a sicko!
The Orc Transvestite was played out as a cultural type not a fetish (in some SouthEast Asian cultures shaman are Transvestites, and in Polynesia (eg Faafafine in Samoa) Transvestites (males with female social norms) are a common cultural phenomena)
The Hermaphrodite was a mistake however
However I have made all my gnomes asexual (actually more dimorphic I think) with specific gender traits developing for enviromental reasons rather than mere biology (a single female per clan mating with 1 - 4 males) based this on the Smurfs (Papa Smurfs, 101 Juvenile smurfs and only one female Smurfette!)
The Forsaken One
Explorer
Actually I ALWAYS play cross gender.
Tonguez said:
Last week in my tabletop game a (now) evil (male) Monk outlaw PC raped a captured female NPC before they catapulted her over the wall of the castle they were besieging, in revenge for the execution of another of their party by the NPC's cousin, the baron of the castle. I don't disallow any PC behaviour, but obviously it has alignment consequences. And I don't want it detailed either (definitely not in tabletop game - I'm pretty sick of it in PBEMs too now!), I just say "okay" and move on.
galaga88
Explorer
Right now my newest character is a female swordfighter monk, in the style of Yu Shu Lien (Michelle Yeoh) from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. I personally find that film to be an excellent example of female heroines who can kick ass, without being sex objects. Now if I can only get to *play* her sometime soon..
Plus, this miniature was simply too cool to not make a character around.
Plus, this miniature was simply too cool to not make a character around.
Tsyr
Explorer
A question to you Billy:
If you had a player who you knew was, in fact, a decent RPer, but not insane (Some people scare even me), would you allow it?
I ask because, while I won't say it's common, of all of my gaming groups (3), there is only one person I know of who has _never_ played a character of the opposite gender (Ironicly enough it's a female, yet I get the feeling from posts here that females are bit more likely to play cross gender characters). And while, yes, we have had a few lesbians, we have never had anything that I would say is a "sterotype" per say, nor have we had anything offensive, except for one character in a tounge-in-cheek game where everything was messed up.
I can understand your position given the people you seem to have gamed with, and as a DM it is of course your right to ban anything I suppose, but I think if someone actualy wanted to do it, and you felt they were a good roleplayer, banning it just because of a few nut cases is a little extreme.
*shrug*
If you had a player who you knew was, in fact, a decent RPer, but not insane (Some people scare even me), would you allow it?
I ask because, while I won't say it's common, of all of my gaming groups (3), there is only one person I know of who has _never_ played a character of the opposite gender (Ironicly enough it's a female, yet I get the feeling from posts here that females are bit more likely to play cross gender characters). And while, yes, we have had a few lesbians, we have never had anything that I would say is a "sterotype" per say, nor have we had anything offensive, except for one character in a tounge-in-cheek game where everything was messed up.
I can understand your position given the people you seem to have gamed with, and as a DM it is of course your right to ban anything I suppose, but I think if someone actualy wanted to do it, and you felt they were a good roleplayer, banning it just because of a few nut cases is a little extreme.
*shrug*
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