Guys playing girls (chime in, ladies)

[Trainz]

HAH !

I currently have 4 male players (Yig from ENw just joined us: welcome aboard !), and they're all playing female characters !

This will be fun !

 

[der_kluge]

Anyone but me amused by the fact that someone named "IdentityCrisis" posted this thread?

There anything else you feel like sharing with us, bub?


On the topic of women and strength - did anyone see that woman that got the gold in weighlifting? Holy crap. I think she dead lifted something like 400 pounds. It was unbelievable.

 

[takyris]

Maybe I'm overly trusting of my group, but I think my advice is to actually not be afraid to be a stereotype. Just don't be a stupid stereotype.

If your gaming group consists of:

- A prissy arrogant freedom-loving stereotypical elf
- A gruff stoic battle-loving stereotypical dwarf
- A loud boisterous honor-loving barbarian
- A fully realized woman with no stereotypical tendencies who always behaves in a manner that is toughtfully appropriate to her gender and doesn't imply any negative aspects of sexuality...

...well, she's gonna stick out like a sore thumb.

It's a game. Have fun. And have her be fun to play. Part of being fun to play is being intelligent and observant enough to play someone who is simply drawn (simply enough to be a fun roleplaying character, at least) without turning it into something offensive. Don't try to play Anna Karenenenenenena or Madame Bovary. Try to play Haley from Order of the Stick.

As a DM, one of my favorite moments was having the party's paladin DMPC (we were low on melee and healling), a virtuous and pure half-elven maiden, have to make a bluff check. She and the party rogue were chained to a wall in their under-armor clothing -- light clingy padded tunic in her case. The rogue needed a distraction to pick the lock, and the paladin decided to compromise her integrity just the one time to distract the guard.

So she tried to seduce him.

It went roughly like this.

Voiced as though reading from a cue card: "Gosh... these chains are tight, and I can't even wipe off this... um... apparently attractive bead of sweat that has gathered on my neck and is now slowly sliding down the front of my tunic. Maybe if I, er, writhe a bit in these chains I'll be able to stop the bead of sweat from tickling me. No, it didn't work. Rats. Maybe if I ask very nicely, the... um... surprisingly attractive guard could help me get it off?"

She knew what some women did in these situations. She'd read the magazines. She just wasn't particularly good at it.

Of course, she had a pretty high charisma, so she did get the guard to move in closer to "help" her. And then she combined Smite Evil with Power Attack and took him out with one unarmed attack while the rogue took out the other two guards with hidden weaponry.

If I had her do that every session, it would get really old really fast. But playing it for laughs every once in awhile.

If you want to see how decently done stereotypes of women act, watch a comedy chick-flick, or a musical with a strong female lead, or even a decent TV show. I stopped watching Ally McBeal when the writing started its death spiral, but when she was allowed to be funny, she was a fun character, sometimes stereotypical, sometimes individual. Thoroughly Modern Millie won me over with a similar character.

Dunno. Rambling. But I just thought it was worth emphasizing that if you're playing your female character right, she should be just as much fun to play as a male character. When I'm playing a male PC, I don't spend all session thinking, "Man, if I do that, are the guys gonna think that I think all guys act like that?" If you have a mature, fun group, it's likely not to be an issue unless you turn it into one.

(And in PbP, you could always just leave your RL gender ambiguous so that nobody knows whether you're playing across gender lines.)

 

[kolikeos]

Most of the men playing as women tend to go to extremes. I have one (male) friend who like playing female characters, and for the most part they are virgin/goddess or slut/b*tch.

i was about to write the very same thing before i saw your post.

 

[Rotogar]

A PbP game is the *best* place to play a female character, because the other players don't have to make the leap of faith from a guy sitting at the table to a female persona.

Got an interesting observation on that (well, I think it's interesting!)

Signed up to play in an online group (Living Web) and created a female ranger/barbarian (I am male). Specifically avoided the "chainmail bikini" and dib my best to make her a fully realized person. Since she was a barbarian, she did look nordic. And then had one of the most interesting experiences I have ever had.

No one knew I was male. And I was treated in ways that made my head turn. Every single male PC (I have no way to know what the real life gender's were) treated my PC like she needed special assistance. They were all abnormally warm to her - even the one PC who's big personality hook was how anti-social he was. They all volunteered to stand watch with her. They took steps to protect her in combat - despite the fact she could more than hold her own. The single female PC (again, I have no way to verify the player's gender) was immediately cold towards my PC. Even though she was a magic user and my PCwas not and there were no overlapping areas of expertise, she constantly competed with my PC for attention.

In the end, I couldn't really figure it out. I wasn't sure if I had done something to send an impression I really wasn't aiming for? Or was this a poor group response following along traditional gender roles? I played a few stories with different groups and found this to be the norm rather than the extreme. I got busy with other things and wasn't able to play much, so I dropped out but it still intrigues me.

 

[kolikeos]

We recently had a new player join our group and he still refers to her as a him from time to time, but slowly catching his mistakes.

same thing happens to me.

 

[der_kluge]

Got an interesting observation on that (well, I think it's interesting!)

Signed up to play in an online group (Living Web) and created a female ranger/barbarian (I am male). Specifically avoided the "chainmail bikini" and dib my best to make her a fully realized person. Since she was a barbarian, she did look nordic. And then had one of the most interesting experiences I have ever had.

It could simply be that they thought you were female in RL?

There are guys who specifically play female characters in Everquest to attempt to get free things from other guys who *might* think they are women in real life.

I kid you not.

 

[mhacdebhandia]

My immediate thought upon reading this was, "So what the heck would appropriate 'gender traits' be?" The venerable mhacdebhandia makes the complaint that "There are no clues that one could pick up from the character's personality that indicate she's a woman" - to which I ask what personality clues from real people - once biological factors are removed (a forum like this being a good example) - cause you to assume a person's gender? . . . So I would ask Mr. mhacdebhandia to provide samples of "female" gender traits.

The character in question doesn't act like real women I know. *shrug* That's all I can say.

I haven't read the novels, but the available evidence does not indicate to me that Jordan's cultures are tremendously different from the standard pseudo-historical European model of fantasy, in which men and women are much like their modern counterparts save for existing in an unenlightened society where it takes something like near-exclusive access to magical power to establish women as powerful individuals in their own right. Therefore, I would not readily believe that the player in question is perfectly reproducing the women of the novels, especially in light of the many discussions about how the female protagonists and supporting cast all share very strange traits which both real-life women and the PC in question lack - like the whole cross-your-arms-underneath-your-bust-and-sniff response of disapproval.

But that's an aside. Out of all the many women I know - and my social circle is about evenly gender-balanced, unusual for a social group based around a gaming society - the PC in question resembles none of them. I cannot put a name to the traits I see that are lacking, but let me assure you that I'm not fool enough to think that, for example, women are more emotional and men more logical, or women more caring and men more defensive, or whatever.

Rather, I am convinced that the only reason the PC in question is female is because the player wanted to play a spellcaster without having to deal with the opprobrium faced by male spellcasters in the setting, and that either he is incapable of expressing a feminine personality (which is frankly most likely, since he's kind of a strange and unempathetic person anyway) or, to give him the benefit of the doubt, he's consciously or unconsciously restraining the impulse to have his character behave like any of the many real women he knows for fear of being thought a caricature.

As I say, the character doesn't act like a man, either. It's not as simple as the PC's being either a man in a funny suit or a one-dimensional sex-driven cartoon like some other people I know (and refuse to play with) often portray.

While I agree that 90% of any given character's personality will be independent of their gender, there is definitely a gender-based (culturally-driven or no) component of personality in real life, and it's something that I think careful observation of real men or women and imaginative extrapolation can help any roleplayer express.

 

[Shemeska]

Heck, the most oversexed PC in my campaign is a male half-fey who is RP'd by a female. The street goes both ways and I'm perfectly fine with it. While she's done that I've been playing a female NPC with the group for nearly two years now, and who eventually married one of the other PCs, played by another guy.

Oddly enough, while I've never claimed to be female offline, I usually RP a female character on messageboards. This has gotten me no fewer than two marraige proposals from folks clueless of this fact, and has gotten me a debate thread over what my offline gender was. I guess I can feel impressed in some way, and creeped out at the same time.

I try to avoid stereotypes of the two genders, unless of course the character in question is in a position to act that way and enjoys the heck out of it. I've had female characters that are cold and business-like, same as some of the male characters, and I've had oversexed powertripping characters of both sexes. Complex characters are fun.

 

[mhacdebhandia]

Note that you could turn that round and ask whether there's any clues that indicate she's a man. And either way, does it really matter?

It matters mostly because it's jarring to have any genderless personality in the game.

As I said at length above, and in my original post, there are no clues to indicate the character's male, either. In some ways that would be less disturbing, because a) The vast majority of people in the culture I live in display gender-based behaviour (though I do believe that this is an artifact of cultural reinforcement rather than a consequence of biology) and b) It would be easier to dismiss as bad roleplaying than the current situation, which could be bad roleplaying or it could be a quirk of the player's own odd personality.

In other words, for the PC to act like a man would be strange but more believable than the current situation.