male playing female PC

[S'mon]

Hehe, I just noticed something - all of us (myself, Teflon Billy & fusganite) who dislike the playing of female characters by males reside in Vancouver, Canada. It cannot be from the experience of playing with the same people, though, since I have only just moved to Vancouver and have no experience gaming here yet.

Are any of you two fusganite or Teflon Billy near UBC by any chance? I am looking for a group to join...

Hey, I knew an evil bisexual dominatrix who lives in Vancouver...

That's IRL (well, online) though!

Met her in PBEMs, where she generally plays noble (female) knights, austere professional women, and suchlike PCs. She's probably NE but she plays LG characters pretty well...

Must be something odd about Vancouver, though. That was my point. Yup...

 

[LostSoul]

If it works for your game, go for it; if it doesn't, forget about it.

 

[Roman]

Must be something odd about Vancouver, though. That was my point. Yup...

Unfortunately, even though I currently reside in Vancouver, I am from Slovakia, so my own stereotype fails due to none other than myself.

 

[Mark]

I believe this has already been pointed out in one of fusganite's posts - DMs have time to prepare and plan for the encounter and also the role of NPCs is more limited than that of PCs.

Nonetheless, I am talking only about my personal experience and making recommendations on that basis to the original poster. I do not doubt that there are some excellent roleplayers out there who are able to roleplay cross-gender characters nearly effortlessly. Still, unless you know that somebody is such a great roleplayer it is safer to discourage cross-gender gaming lest it spoil your campaign until you get to know their roleplaying abilities better.

Do you think that great roleplayers are born with the ability to play characters effectively, or that they gain experience with each and every effort and thereby become great roleplayers?

 

[Roman]

Do you think that great roleplayers are born with the ability to play characters effectively, or that they gain experience with each and every effort and thereby become great roleplayers?

I am sure great roleplayers learn through experience, but unless they are able to play characters that are relatively 'simple' for them well; they are unlikely to be able to proceed on to the challenge of cross-gender characters.

 

[Mark CMG]

I am sure great roleplayers learn through experience, but unless they are able to play characters that are relatively 'simple' for them well; they are unlikely to be able to proceed on to the challenge of cross-gender characters.

Don't you agree that there may be cases where someone might be able to play some characters better than others, and that those particular characters might be easier for one person than another? Further, isn't it possible that even if someone doesn't come right out of the box being a great roleplayer with a particular character they might find a moment rather quickly where an epiphony catapults them light years ahead of how they began? How is it possible to judge in advance with any certainty how someone will play a particular character or how quickly they will become good at playing any particular character?

 

[hong]

I definitely sypmathise with fusganite based on my personal experience. So far I have not seen a male player play a female character very well.

This points more to your hangups as to "correct roleplaying" than anything else, I would think.

Personally, I have only attempted the feat once and it was a failure. Although there were no incidents of immaturity (I consider myself to be a pretty mature guy), I simply did not know how to play a female, so I played the character in the same way I would have played a male one.

Nothing wrong with that.

Clearly, there is no point playing a character of a different gender if you are not going to change their behaviour at all.

Ah, ye of the unimposing imagination. 1) Personal identification; 2) confronting a different set of challenges; 3) possible gender-specific roles (eg prestige classes); 4) being inspired by a well-known character from a movie, book or other medium.

 

[Darklone]

I have a girl in some groups right now who wants to play an obedient male drow warrior...

Well. In the last group, that girl suffered from a male player who always "played" female chars with high charisma ("Ok, I sleep with him, what does he tell me?"). He kept telling her she played males wrong

 

[barsoomcore]

Just want to rebut the notion that Vancouver is filled with folks who won't let men play women.

I've played nearly as many female characters as male, and fusangite and I have been down that road before.

I'm of the opinion that you let people try things and if it doesn't work out, you fix it. But everybody's different and I like discovering that someone is a much better role-player than I had imagined they would be. And my experience as a DM has been that if I create an environment in which my players feel encouraged and secure, good things happen.

I did want to take exception with one thing that fusangite said, which was that theories are formed from generalizations. I disagree. Or rather, I agree, but with the caveat that using generalizations is a bad way to create theories. There are better ways. The best way to create a theory is to observe behaviour and offer an explanation that can be disproved, then set about trying to disprove it. Once you've disproved it, you offer another. This is how science works, and it works pretty good, actually. The notion that it involves generalizations is an unfortunate one that leads to sloppy thinking.

Generalizations are just that. They're not theories, no matter how much anecdotal evidence you muster to support them. Theories can be disproven. Good ones, anyway. Generalizations cannot. This is why special relativity is a good theory and communism is a bad theory.

Just me, ENWorld's iconic didactic rhetoritician.

 

[Bagpuss]

I want to know why some folks think its suppossedly impossible or at least harder for a man to play a female (that could have a similar personality to his own), than it is for a man to play a male character with a personality far off his own.

I don't know about the rest of you but in real life but my own personality not the same as some of the characters I play (either as a DM or a player), especially in games like Vampire, or Cyberpunk, where the characters can be almost psychotic or sociopathic in some case.

Roleplaying to me, is not about playing myself in a fantasy setting. Its about playing another person. Your sex is not the only thing that defines you as a person. Sure it plays a major part in social interactions, but both men and women can be caring, rude, loose, fridged, brave, cowardly, thoughtful, thoughtless, etc, etc.

Its not like growing up as a man I've lacked female role models either, 50% of my house hold was female. 51% of the population of the UK is female. There are women of all sorts of different personalities on the TV and in film. From Lara Croft to Dot Cotton, from Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction to Helen Mirren in Prime Suspect, its not like women are under represented in the modern media. Looking to literature you have Patricia Cornwell's books, Agatha Christie’s works, the Brontie sisters, and the list goes on.

Basically if you are saying a man can't play a woman your saying they really can't play any personality other than their own. I don't believe that. Sure I known one player that can't play anything other than a dwarven berserker even if they are playing cyberpunk, but most of the roleplayers I've met can play a range of different characters.