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Message: <blockquote data-quote="takyris" data-source="post: 1548845" data-attributes="member: 5171">As a player, I've played female characters.  It's not often, but sometimes it's the concept that works for me.As a DM, of course, I have to DM everything -- but I wouldn't classify DMing a female character as being equal to playing a female character.  As a player, you're stuck with your character for awhile.  You've got more ramifications to explore.  It's a deeper level of immersion than the average DM-level roleplay experience (although in cases where you're playing a dedicated party henchwoman or something, that could be different; still, the fact that you break out of that to be the male guard, the ogre, and, in some cases, the animated statue means that you're never in that mindset all the time).I've seen it done well and I've seen it done badly, and while I'm happy to allow it, I would disagree with people who say that it's no different from roleplaying a different race or a specific class or something along those lines.  I'd love to get really truly deep and philosophical about it, but I've got nothing to go on but my gut in this.  When I watch Farscape, D'Argo is definitely an alien -- but at the same time, a lot of the time, he and John are just guys.  D'Argo relates to Chrichton better than Aeryn does, most of the time (and yes, Aeryn isn't human, but her biology is a lot closer than anyone else on this ship), because, in the unwritten rules of the show, being an alien may make you different in several interesting ways, but being a different gender almost always makes you different in significant ways.  That's part of the space-cowboy appeal of Farscape, I think -- the fact that the dude with the tentacles, the human, and the guy in the floating pod can all say, "Females! in unison with the same combination of frustration, confusion, and admiration.  I don't think that Farscape is a perfect reflection of reality, but I do believe that it's a decent reflection of many popular beliefs. In my own personal experience, when my buddies have played a dwarf, and elf, a paladin, or a ranger/wizard, they've still, fundamentally, been playing guys.  However, as soon as one of my buddies decides to play a female anything, it gets different.  There's a different dynamic, a different feel, something that makes the character more different than if the character had been male.  (Er, by which I am trying to say: A high-Int, low-Wis, medium-Cha male player seems more like himself when playing a low-Int, high-Wis, high-Cha male elven sorcerer than when playing a high-Int, low-Wis, medium-Cha female rogue -- even though the stats are different and the class is more "out there", the maleness makes the character closer to the player.)Again, I have no great logical rationale for it, and in many groups, I imagine that it's not true.  I completely own that it could be a particular sign of my group's idiosyncracies or shortcomings or roleplaying limitations or whatever.  For us, however, it is true.  That doesn't mean that we don't allow people to play cross-gender -- far from it.  The different-ness is sometimes a really neat thing.  But that's not always where some groups want to go.  There's a good long list of things I don't intend to show in the game -- and some of those things are things that people in other groups might find completely fine, and fun, and enjoyable, and even necessary.  Cross-gender play is not on that list of things I want to avoid in my games, but I don't really think that my list is better than anyone else's. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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