How often do you play a differently-gendered character when gaming?

[Argyle King]

How do you categorize playing races which have different (or even no) sexual dimorphism compared to humans?

 

[Li Shenron]

I play randomly-gendered characters.

 

[Adamant]

I tend to be split about 50/50, but part of that is because I like lore exact names and backstories for my characters. Combine that with being addicted to character building and I ended up with 50+ characters. In the process I started running out of names for some of the races, which influenced some of my gender choices(and I still ran out of human names for sword coast regions). Another thing that affects gender choice is availability of minis for that character concept(I tend to obsess over getting a mini that matches exactly).

 

[Lanefan]

Interesting to see the poll shows relatively few (currently 6 out of 61) who never play off-gender and not that many more who only rarely play something different than themselves; yet there's DMs who've posted on these boards to say they won't allow it at their tables and that players in their games may only play their own gender.

Boggles the mind, don't it?

EDIT: ...and in the very next post we have an example... !

 

[Ulfgeir]

I tend to usually play female characters. But it does depend a lot on the game. For example in Call of Cthulhu, it has been more male characters.

I have once had to retire a female character, which I had played for quite some time in the campaign, as the GM suddenly decided that you could only play your own gender. With the same logic, he should have banned all non-human characters...

 

[Fenris-77]

I can see a situation where a DM might not allow players to play other gendered characters for reasons I might agree with. If you have a player or two who are otherwise fine folks (lets say they're guys), but can't manage to play a woman or anything else non-male without it turning into broad and offensive caricature, I can see myself just saying no. Some guys don't have a female roleplaying setting that doesn't seem like it belongs on pornhub. In many cases though, I suspect that table ruling is less about safe space and more about being uncomfortable themselves.

 

[payn]

Some guys don't have a female roleplaying setting that doesn't seem like it belongs on pornhub. I

lol. For a time I had a gaming group whenever we rolled up characters and I heard, "think I'll play a woman this time" I knew it would be a supermodel lesbian.

 

[iserith]

I play characters with a gender different than my own from time to time. I've had a couple of DMs throughout the years whose table rules prohibited playing a different gender than your own, chiefly due to bad outcomes with certain players in their past.

 

[ccs]

As a DM it's part of the job....

As a Player? I guess the answer would be rarely as I've only played four FM PCs over the past 10 years.

So why FM for those four?
*#1 was in a game where everyone had two characters in the party. In order to make sure my characters were clearly differentiated (a problem others in the game had) I made one male & the other female.
*#2 started out as an NPC & got "promoted" to PC when I needed a character on very short notice. Fortunately I had my NPC folder with me, this character fit perfectly, & I already knew how to play RP her (mechanics & stats I can crank out on a moments notice - but the character part often takes me a day+. I had 15 minutes.).
*The third? Is the sister of #2. She was already well established in a background role from #2s time as an NPC & then later a PC. The games I played her in were simply a good opportunities to tell some of her story as a PC.
*The fourth? The concept requires the PC to be female & links back to several adventures the group has played.

 

[5atbu]

80% my own gender.
20% opposite.
1 non-binary so far.