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Message: <blockquote data-quote="barsoomcore" data-source="post: 2529604" data-attributes="member: 812">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.</blockquote>

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