Ever play a PC of the opposite gender?

[Kahuna Burger]

I saw one of my friends playing a female lesbian amazon - you've got the picture - and it was terrible (well it was five years ago and we were young, but there are some things that you cannot forget). Maybe he didn't start in such a terrible way, but soon the jokes of the party made his character (poor Athana) a caricature of a woman, even for a female-lesbian-amazon-in-bikini.

hey, I played a lesbian amazon once! Well, ok I'm female to begin with and she was a hardcore mythic amazon - one breast burned off, hundreds of tiny long braids and a thing for femme elves... I eventually gave her up because she was a skill based characer (ranger/deep woods sniper) in a party with no room for that kind of character. I don't think of her as much of a stereotype though, since a lot of her interactions were based on her warrior outlook and hatred of orcs and goblinoids (in a party with a half orc and hobgoblin) rather than who she might flirt with in her off moments... She did grow attached to the female character of a male player, which lead to some interesting roleplaying.

I've also played male characters, though mostly in one shots. Sometimes an idea comes to me complete with gender, otherwise I play my own.

Kahuna burger

 

[Kae'Yoss]

I stayed true to my gender all the time. But we have a female gamer whose characters are male around 2/3 of the time. Also, there's a guy who has played two female characters now - always in the same campaign in which she played a male character, and in one of them they were waiting for a child. (But the campaign was discontinued - and good riddance to it: it was 2e, the DM couldn't or wouldn't control party infighting - it was an evil party).

 

[Scion of Vyshaan]

My favorite character is female, she is the only female character I have ever played with regularity, but I find her the most interesting. There are a few reasons for this. The fact the character was female allowed me to explore different aspects of the character's background. We played in a pretty mature game (most of the time) and I got to explore some of the themes I enjoy exploring in theatre. It also gave me an opportunity to pick a few key elements of my character's personality that were very different from my own, and run with them.

 

[Angcuru]

I once played a Female Half-Fox Stripper/Assassin in a GURPS game, but that one didn't last too long, all of 1/2 of the first session, actually.

 

[Gez]

hardcore mythic amazon - one breast burned off

Amazons were inspired by the Scyths, a people that had several things that totally freaked out the Greek. First and foremost was the fight that in a Scyth tribe, everyone fought, men and women. Since male warriors are commonplace, Greek didn't told weird tales of them -- boring. But females who carry weapons, and use them, despite being mere mortals -- that's a tale that'll get you free drinks at the tavern!

Another strangeness of the Scyth were their seers. They were always crossdressing male. They were required to crossdress, for religious reasons.

However, the breastless thingie has no basis -- it comes from an poor attempt at etymology. Some people though the A was a privative A (like in asexual, anaerobie, amoral, etc.); but that wasn't the case. It's comparable to these PC persons thinking that history come from "his tory" and thus means "the tory of a male".

 

[blackshirt5]

I once played a Female Half-Fox Stripper/Assassin in a GURPS game, but that one didn't last too long, all of 1/2 of the first session, actually.

The topic is about PCs of a different gender, Angcuru.

 

[Kweezil]

Overall about 30%-40% of my characters have been female. Less-so now due to a general lack of playing (rather than DMing) so I end up playing a male PC when I can play because it's easier to get into for games that usually won't last more than a few weeks.

On that subject, a few weeks back I saw one of the best examples of cross-gender RP in my own group. Playing D&D, a long-term game (been through RttToEE) in the process of wrapping up. 5 players, all male, all straight. 2 female PCs, who are involved (originally the result of a rod of wonder but the players decided to let the relationship continue and develop). The female characters (call 'em J and N for ease) are having relationship difficulties and one of the other PCs decides to move in to catch J on the rebound, another is trying to stir things up to split them further because he doesn't like N, and he can try and move in on J, and the third is trying to patch the two together. All the time, the RPing was excellently done and very appropriate, with no discomfort over the genders of players.

Now I have a question....Would you play a Gay or Lesbian character?

That can be a harder question for many people. I've done it once, properly. As in, he wasn't a flaming stereotype, he just was an elf and he preferred male company.

 

[Sejs]

I had one male player who preferred to play females, except they always came off as men in woman suits -- or near-feral she-wolverines who had sex at really inappropriate times and never wore shoes.

Had issues, that guy.

I think that guy got reincarnated into my gaming group somehow. Always plays female characters... and plays 'em poorly. As has been stated before - more charactatures than real people. He's getting better.. but it'll take some time.


Me, personally I tend to stick to male PCs just for convienance sake for the same reasons Darth Shoju mentioned - if I'm playing a female character I have to take a moment to think "Am I doing this right?" because the thought process isn't one I'm used to. If I don't take that little bit of time to reflect on how the character should act/react it just usually ends up being androgenous. As for characters themselves... lets see here..


-Have played female characters, successfully I'd like to think, in that they wern't fakey, flakey, or whoreish.

-Have played homosexual male characters, with the easiest note for that being to take a page from Bob the Angry Flower; the Homosexual Robot Cop strip: "But isn't he gay? Yeah, but my whole life doesn't revolve around me being gay, you know." Don't fonce about and be so camp that you'd make Big Gay Al blush, and gay male characters are easy to pull off.

-Have played a straight male character, but one who was a crossdresser. A fighter/bard who was raised as a female by his family due to the local corrupt lord bad-guy's edict that all first born male children had to be killed at birth (he was trying to dodge a curse placed on him). The character was a demure little thing, and for 95% of the campaign the other PCs didn't know that she was actually a he.

-Have played a lesbian amazon, nearly identical to the type Kahuna Burger mentioned, except that mine had the left breast bound down flat to the chest all the time rather than burnt off. Her outlook was basically that men are all well and good, but you didn't couple with one out of love - you did so to have children, which after they were born were his responsability. Other women were your comrades-in-arms, and occasionally your lover. Seemed only natural, you fight alongside this person day in day out, that you two may develop an attraction to one another. Besides, with same-sex relations amongst your warriors you don't run the risk of an accidental pregnancy taking one of the soldiers out of commission for months and months.



Heh, I like the girdle of fem/masc thing that Med Stud mentioned. May have to give that a shot. Would be amusing ^_^

 

[Cloudgatherer]

I played one once. Got some odd questions about it, but my foremost reason for doing so was I was about to start a campaign of my own. All the NPCs wouldn't be male, so I might as well play a female in a quick campaign to get used to playing a female character.

Ironically, she was a female monk who wasn't great in combat, however I tended to lead the party around when it came to sneaking, hiding, and talking to NPCs (only character to have decent diplomacy).

 

[Kemrain]

I've been involved in Gender Studies for a few years now, and I'm rather hyperconscious of gender rolls, both in and out of gaming. The responses I've read here really do run the course, showcasing most of the stereotypes. It’s interesting to see other people’s reactions to it, and I’m very pleased to discover how mature most people are. Great show, folks.

I always enjoy it when a player in my group crosses the line and plays a female character. We’re a rather top-heavy group, being 5 guys, but nearly all of us have played female characters at one point or another. Hell, in the campaign we’re playing in now, for a few months I was the only male in the party. We’re as mature as a group of 20 year olds can be expected to be, but no one is given a hard time about the gender of their character.

I don’t see the character’s gender being as major an influence on their personality as most people. Your personality is not decided by your body, merely influenced by. Upbringing and outlook are much bigger factors than it seems they are given credit for. The people who don’t play characters of the other sex because they don’t think they can pull it off believably need only to be more observant of others behavior to realize the differences are much smaller than you’d think.

Though my current character is male, I have a backup character that transcends gender completely. As a native shapeshifter, with no true form of its own, the character is as androgynous as they come. However, ‘she’ spends most of 'her' time in a feminine form, because most people seem to react more favorably towards a woman than a man, finding them less threatening and such. It is interesting to play such an alien mindset, and it helps to better understand human behavior, being able to so easily step back and observe it with the objectivity of a third party.

When we play female characters, most of us do use a softer voice. However, I feel that this is less because ‘that’s how girls talk’ and more to distinguish between different characters. (The GM especially.) We get into our rolls enough that our PC’s don’t speak with our regular voices, and whether they are male or female doesn’t matter much.

Now, what I find really interesting, is the fact that, not only in this D&D game, but in our last Star Wars game, everyone played human characters. We haven’t had a single elf, dwarf… My shifter is a little odd, but ‘she’ looks human most of the time, and we had a cyborg in the SW game, but it was human. My group freely crosses the Gender Line, but we have yet to build up the courage to step over the Species Line.

Go Figure.

- Kemrain the Androgynous