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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Brown Jenkin" data-source="post: 4525959" data-attributes="member: 2572">Jeff, I am sorry to hear you are stepping out as well. I wasn't trying to be defensive, just trying to engage in conversation. I want to reply to a couple of points as well even if you don't come back. I am sorry to hear that your group has problems differentiating and remembering aspects of each others characters. I guess I am lucky in my group because that has never been a problem. In each of our campaigns there has regularly been one or two cross gender characters. No one to my knowledge has ever referred to the characters by the wrong pronoun. Our group consists of a variety of players from beer and pretzel to heavy roleplayers. For the Beer and pretzel types they don't play cross gender because for them if it doesn't have a modifier it doesn't matter to them and it is one less thing they have to worry about roleplaying. For the heavy roleplayers, they choose to go cross gender at times because it either fits their character better or they want to challenge themselves with something different. Yet no-one ever seems to forget who is a elf or dwarf or male or female, even if they are played fully in character or not. You may be skeptical but I am laying out my data point nonetheless. You can choose to believe it or not.I disagree with your counter argument that that the 5% of incidents inevitably end up being played badly. First off we agree that 95% of time it doesn't matter what gender a character is. So then we can focus on that last 5% as to what could causes disbelief in roleplaying ability cross gender. As has been pointed out both males and females in real life run across a full spectrum of personality types. Some are slutty, some are asexual, some are heterosexual, some are homosexual, some are masculine, some are feminine, some are dominant, some are submissive, some are romantic, some are in it just for the sex and many fall between all these extremes. In real life I have run into all these personality types in both males and females. There is no proper way to play a male or female. The important thing is that a personality type be chosen and then played consistently. I guess I am still confused by what it means to play badly. As I don't see gender fitting into a neat little package that has to be a certain way, I don't see how playing a female as a masculine homosexual slut (A worst case scenario in game so some folks, but a female personality type that I have met in real life) is necessarily wrong  as long as it fits the character background and is played consistently and not played to intentionally cause disruption to the game. I don't see this as worse than having to deal with a lawful stupid Paladin or a magic hating Barbarian, both of which would be acceptable in your games. If in your experience, with your group and your players, it has never been pulled off then there is nothing I can do but say that in my experience, with my group and my players, that it has been pulled off to my personal satisfaction.</blockquote>

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