Male player + female character: a new twist
- Thread starter Desdichado
- Start date
Everybody has different criteria for suspending disbelief. No person's criteria can be "wrong." I think that one of the things that forges strong, long-lasting gaming groups is a set of shared criteria for suspension of disbelief. People I enjoy gaming with have ideas about culture that would make it hard for them to suspend disbelief in the examples you offer above. Maybe you game with people who have different ideas about culture or different ideas about suspension of disbelief; good for you. The fact that you have lower standards for suspending disbelief or just don't care about it doesn't make your play style any better or worse than ours. Just different.Corsair said:
Gender and personality exist in the context of culture and are conditioned by it. For many of us, playing in an RPG lets us mess around, in a fun, non-academic way, in cultures different than ours. If that's not part of what you find fun in gaming, fair enough.
I think this really depends on what kind of male player you're dealing with. I find there are basically two types who want to play female characters:
(a) those who think it would be kind of cool but haven't really thought through how much work it is; and
(b) those to whom it is important because they are using the character to work through out of game issues.
People in group (a) tend make play less fun because they don't really do the work needed to make their character believably female. A lot of the time, in fact, they "forget" they are female unless the character is in a highly charged social or sexual situation and then they do a mediocre, unsophisticated job of being female. When you tell people in group (a) that you have this house rule, they typically shrug and make a male character who is more believable and fun than their first choice. People in group (b) tend to make play less fun because it takes on a sexual and therapeutic character. When they are informed of such a house rule, they are likely to find themselves another game.
So, I find my house rule works very well: it gets better play out of group (a) and keeps group (b) out of my game.
But every one of us has an idea or theory about what kind of people become adventurers and under what conditions. This idea/theory comes from our ideas abotu culture, human nature, history and a host of other things. Direct experience is only one of a large set of possible evidentiary criteria people use for deciding if something is believable.Falkus said:
I'm a little baffled by what you're trying to say in your posts here, Falkus. It seems like you're saying, "you're wrong not to be able to suspend disbelief under X condition." Suspension of disbelief does not work that way. Some people can suspend disbelief when they watch cartoons; some can't. The people who can't become invested in an episode of The Simpsons or Southpark because they can't maintain suspension of disbelief are not "wrong" -- they just have different criteria for suspending disbelief than you do.
barsoomcore
Unattainable Ideal
I'll make a confession: I was once the kind of player TB and fu are talking about. And I TOTALLY understand where they're coming from, the kind of behaviour they're talking about and why it ruins their games.
As a teenager, my friends and I (I see now, looking back) worked out a lot of our internal issues through our gameplay. I think it was healthy for us, and since we were all sort of taking the same approach to the activity, we didn't drive each other bonkers. But I think it would have been spectacularly painful for somebody who wasn't part of our circle. We did play games in more "external" settings (with folks we weren't as close with) and those games were much more straightforward and less issue-driven.
Reveal's example set off alarm bells for me, as well, but for a specific reason -- I would be worried that this is a player who is treating their own character as a figure of fun. That can be appropriate for some games, and this character concept might fit perfectly into them. But most of my games are at least half-way towards trying to tell a good story about real characters, and a player constantly joking about his character's sexual attributes wouldn't necessarily be in place. I mean, if he was playing a MALE character and constantly making reference to the immense bulge in his trousers, I would find that inappropriate, as well.
As a DM, of course I play female characters all the time, and it is certainly true that most of the really interesting NPCs in my campaigns tend to be women, for a simple reason: I'm more interested in women than in men. For whatever reason, I get much more engaged in women's stories and so the characters that attract me and get me thinking about their situations and so on tend to be women. I frankly have to extend effort to create memorable male NPCs. I do it, because a good campaign has to speak to everyone, and it would get a little weird if EVERYONE in the setting was female (Hm, Amazon Barsoom?).
This ultimately was why I played female characters as a player: because I was interested in women. I was also a teenage boy and dealing with all the hideous issues that brings, and so as a kid things sometimes got a little weird, and would have been tedious to anyone who wasn't going through similar things at the same time. Not being a teenager anymore, and having pretty much sorted all that stuff out, I don't have that same need and so I don't play female characters anymore because I don't play with folks who would be comfortable with it, or in campaigns where it would be appropriate.
Fundamentally, here's what I think: any group activity is most rewarding when all the participants are in agreement as to the purpose and character of the activity. Somebody playing no-holds-barred, full-contact football is going to ruin the enjoyment of a bunch of friends who just want to go to the field and throw the ball around. Somebody who wants to spend time talking about a woman's sexual characteristics and behaviour is going to ruin the fun of people who want to tell a serious story, or a bunch of friends who just want to go up to the dungeon and kill a few orcs. It's best for everyone to decide what kind of activity they enjoy, and seek out folks who share their interests. And if you don't share my interests, then it's best for both of us if we don't try to squeeze our non-congruent interests into the same activity.
As a teenager, my friends and I (I see now, looking back) worked out a lot of our internal issues through our gameplay. I think it was healthy for us, and since we were all sort of taking the same approach to the activity, we didn't drive each other bonkers. But I think it would have been spectacularly painful for somebody who wasn't part of our circle. We did play games in more "external" settings (with folks we weren't as close with) and those games were much more straightforward and less issue-driven.
Reveal's example set off alarm bells for me, as well, but for a specific reason -- I would be worried that this is a player who is treating their own character as a figure of fun. That can be appropriate for some games, and this character concept might fit perfectly into them. But most of my games are at least half-way towards trying to tell a good story about real characters, and a player constantly joking about his character's sexual attributes wouldn't necessarily be in place. I mean, if he was playing a MALE character and constantly making reference to the immense bulge in his trousers, I would find that inappropriate, as well.
As a DM, of course I play female characters all the time, and it is certainly true that most of the really interesting NPCs in my campaigns tend to be women, for a simple reason: I'm more interested in women than in men. For whatever reason, I get much more engaged in women's stories and so the characters that attract me and get me thinking about their situations and so on tend to be women. I frankly have to extend effort to create memorable male NPCs. I do it, because a good campaign has to speak to everyone, and it would get a little weird if EVERYONE in the setting was female (Hm, Amazon Barsoom?).
This ultimately was why I played female characters as a player: because I was interested in women. I was also a teenage boy and dealing with all the hideous issues that brings, and so as a kid things sometimes got a little weird, and would have been tedious to anyone who wasn't going through similar things at the same time. Not being a teenager anymore, and having pretty much sorted all that stuff out, I don't have that same need and so I don't play female characters anymore because I don't play with folks who would be comfortable with it, or in campaigns where it would be appropriate.
Fundamentally, here's what I think: any group activity is most rewarding when all the participants are in agreement as to the purpose and character of the activity. Somebody playing no-holds-barred, full-contact football is going to ruin the enjoyment of a bunch of friends who just want to go to the field and throw the ball around. Somebody who wants to spend time talking about a woman's sexual characteristics and behaviour is going to ruin the fun of people who want to tell a serious story, or a bunch of friends who just want to go up to the dungeon and kill a few orcs. It's best for everyone to decide what kind of activity they enjoy, and seek out folks who share their interests. And if you don't share my interests, then it's best for both of us if we don't try to squeeze our non-congruent interests into the same activity.
barsoomcore
Unattainable Ideal
My posts are 100% Open Gaming Content unless otherwise noted. As long as you include the OGL with every post of yours, no problem.
Luthien Greyspear
First Post
Reverse twist
In an earlier arc of my campaign, my wife played a young noble swashbuckler, recently married, who was questing to free his young bride from an enchanted sleep. The sleep was the result of a skewed curse that had been placed on her as a child, of the 'she-will-die-if-she-is-not-wed-by-her-eighteenth-birthday' variety. The curse also made her a pathologically incurable man-hater, thereby (supposedly) guaranteeing that she would not marry, and would henceforth die.
The catch? The young noble (Valerian) was actually raised a woman, raised as a boy when his dad went nuts after the mother died in childbirth. Valerian was forced into a gender-identity (which was all settled before play started, so no maudlin psychodrama) and was very much in love with his wife; (s)he just couldn't ...you know. So while the marriage (which occurred right on the bride's eighteenth birthday) was official, it was never consummated, forcing the curse to make the bride as 'dead' as it could manage.
So what the character was REALLY questing for was a girdle of femininity/masculinity. Valerian did everything as masculinely as possible, including flirt with barmaids, get into drinking contests, and belch rudely for emphasis. He just begged off of any sexual contact, because of his marriage vows. The characters never discovered the truth in play (although the players knew by the second session), and it was great fun. My wife loved the chance to mock and mimic male behaviors.
In an earlier arc of my campaign, my wife played a young noble swashbuckler, recently married, who was questing to free his young bride from an enchanted sleep. The sleep was the result of a skewed curse that had been placed on her as a child, of the 'she-will-die-if-she-is-not-wed-by-her-eighteenth-birthday' variety. The curse also made her a pathologically incurable man-hater, thereby (supposedly) guaranteeing that she would not marry, and would henceforth die.
The catch? The young noble (Valerian) was actually raised a woman, raised as a boy when his dad went nuts after the mother died in childbirth. Valerian was forced into a gender-identity (which was all settled before play started, so no maudlin psychodrama) and was very much in love with his wife; (s)he just couldn't ...you know. So while the marriage (which occurred right on the bride's eighteenth birthday) was official, it was never consummated, forcing the curse to make the bride as 'dead' as it could manage.
So what the character was REALLY questing for was a girdle of femininity/masculinity. Valerian did everything as masculinely as possible, including flirt with barmaids, get into drinking contests, and belch rudely for emphasis. He just begged off of any sexual contact, because of his marriage vows. The characters never discovered the truth in play (although the players knew by the second session), and it was great fun. My wife loved the chance to mock and mimic male behaviors.
Raconteur Bard
First Post
I've had an interesting experiance in a long running campaign of ours (which recently came to an end). My sorcerer got killed in a spectacular grapple with a beholder (don't ask 
) and was "reincarnated" by the party druid (our continuous lack of a cleric has caused us many interesting situations). He went from human to half-elf (not bad) by way of a very nervous dice roll. But, he then went from male to female by way of another nervous dice role.
This situation has caused it share of interesting role playing oppurtunities as the party knew he was a he but now is a she and had a hard time deciding how to deal with things. I had to be adamant that my character's change of gender didnt exactly constitute a change of interest. She didnt suddenly become interested in guys.
) and was "reincarnated" by the party druid (our continuous lack of a cleric has caused us many interesting situations). He went from human to half-elf (not bad) by way of a very nervous dice roll. But, he then went from male to female by way of another nervous dice role.This situation has caused it share of interesting role playing oppurtunities as the party knew he was a he but now is a she and had a hard time deciding how to deal with things. I had to be adamant that my character's change of gender didnt exactly constitute a change of interest. She didnt suddenly become interested in guys.
