male playing female PC

[S'mon]

BTW one of the best ever female characters in my current game was played by a male Australian. Generally my (male) Australian players seem more likely to play female PCs than do the players of other nationalities, but I haven't really GM'd for enough non-Australian players of any other single nationality yet to generalise.

 

[Tsyr]

Have I ever seen a woman screw up playing a man in an RPG? No -- never.

I posted this on the previous thread, or words to this effect, but I thought I'd post it again since I never really got an answer to it the first time.

My experience is exactly the opposite. I've *never*, not *once*, seen a woman play a decent male character. I'm not saying it doesn't happen! Far from it! But in my years of roleplaying around assorted tables, *I*, personaly, have never seen it happen. I've seen tons of the "Gay guy who is so much like a woman that if you put him in a dress you would get confused, and if you gave them a belt of gender-changing they would probably be happy." types, and I've seen a few "4 int 4 wis alchoholic who hits on every woman in the world while making a fool of himself left and right in the process"... But I've never seen a good example of a male character from a female. Heck, one female DM around here basicly does every male NPC in her world one of those ways. Believe it or not, we are deeper than that.

On the other hand, I have, several times, seen male players play convincing female characters. Typicly a bit asexual, perhaps, but at least they had depth, weren't always a horrid sterotype, and I've never heard complaints from women about the potrayals. I *have* heard guys complain about some of the women's characters, though. Yes, I'll admit... there have been a handfull of lesbians (not near as many as you might think, though)... but, strangely, none of them have been ultra-butch or man-hating or anything. It's just been one aspect of who they are.

Now, based on my sampling, to those people who say that guys should never be allowed to play female characters, but the reverse is fine:

If I came to this thread and said that, based on my experience, I would never consider letting a woman play a male character, but had no problem with the reverse, would you object? Would you say I was wrong? If I said that every woman who played a male character was trying to "work out issues" or something, would you object?

Personaly, I reject the whole notion that women are, by nature, too "deep" for men to roleplay, but men are so "shallow" that we are easy to roleplay. Utterly. I find it, at best naive. More truthfully, I find it insulting.

That stated, I do think the crone archetype is a much better archetype on which to base a character than the slut and virgin archetypes that other posters have sensibly identified as problematic.

Of course, to paraphrase the punchline of a Dilbert strip, those aren't the only three options!

 

[Bagpuss]

Re: Re: Re: What's wrong with that?

Not creepy, but I hope this played in to established traits of the female character - I can think of only one of my female characters who would have made such an offer (well, to a man, the amazon would have been all over it if the cute elf chick saved her). Perhaps the rogue was trying to fulfill a crush? Otherwise, outside of porn, thats simply not how people are likely to behave.

outside porn, James Bond movies, most actions movies, horror movies, some sci-fi movies, some thrillers, romance novels, some fantasy novels, etc. etc. Outside most of the genre's RPG's represent.

my first response to this would have to be an instinctive "I've sorry about the quality of your male aquaintences..." But since we're being nice now, suffice it to say that the majority of men I know would have a half dozen reasons to turn down such an offer and probably would if they did not have an ongoing interest in the woman and would have to continue to "work with her" in the future.

Kahuna Burger [/B]

Yeah because men and women never screw around in the office. Where do you think a large number of affairs / relationships begin?

 

[S'mon]

Sex for rescue...

Going by tv & movies, where (attractive) female rescuee offers sex to (heroic, unattached) male rescuer, typical response is indeed

"Just doing my job, ma'am."

Yet typically after a decent interval* if the female is a continuing character (a PC, in RPG terms) they do get with the nookie, anyway.

*Usually to show that the male hero is not a schmuck. Apparently.

 

[diaglo]

How do male DMs accomplish this in a way that you believe players are unable to mimic?

They, the DMs, believe only their interpretation of a Females role in the game is the Correct one.

it returns to the whole: the DM is God theory.

 

[S'mon]

They, the DMs, believe only their interpretation of a Females role in the game is the Correct one.

it returns to the whole: the DM is God theory.

The DM *is* God at his ownn table.

Of course, if no one will sit at his table...

 

[Enceladus]

I just started a new campaign and a guy made a female PC. From the start I was very sceptic (sp?) about the whole idea and on top of that the PC is a bard with 18 Charisma.

Will he be capable of pulling that? I have a very hard time to believe that the character's roleplay will be credible... especially when I'll look at him and see his beard!..... and before you ask, no he's not playing a dwarf!

What do you all think Did people in your group pull off something like that and roleplayed the character very well? Did everyone enjoyed themselves or was it just freaky...?

Thanks for your input...hopefully I won't have to send extraplanar creatures to kill her quickly (mwahahahahaha!!)

One of my players asked me a long time ago.

Same gender.

No reason really, but its stuck so thats how we play.

 

[Pielorinho]

I'm wondering now if there's something in Canadian culture that makes it less acceptable - or badly done when it is done, leading to it being seen as less acceptable.

Well, I'm at least assuming that if a player was a lumberjack, it'd be okay.

The more I think about this, the more confused I get. We're starting a D20 game; here's the PCs:
-Me: a Peruvian man, ex-special-forces, who grew up in the diplomatic services.
-Jacob: A Korean woman who works as a translator and who also is a gunslinger.
-Stacey: A nineteen-year-old runaway female who's gotten in over her head with a Satanic cult and is trying to escape their reach.
-Luke: a middle-aged technology professor at MIT.

Of these characters, I anticipate having the hardest time playing the Peruvian man from the diplomatic services. I know very little about the life of the family of a UN diplomat, and even less about what it meant to be a soldier fighting the Shining Path in the mid-nineties in Peru.

OTOH, I know a lot about being a nineteen-year-old punk, and I knew folks that used Satanist stylings, and I can drop occult references at the drop of a golden bough. That's character's gender would be much easier for me to play than my character's nationality will be.

But that's part of the fun of roleplaying: getting inside an unfamiliar head and poking around.

Daniel

 

[Mark]

They, the DMs, believe only their interpretation of a Females role in the game is the Correct one.

it returns to the whole: the DM is God theory.

You misinterpret what I ask. It's my conjecture that a player is just as capable of playing any character that the DM can play. You need to lose your adversarial attittude (i.e. player vs. DM) or you are bound to ruin many games.

 

[hong]

You misinterpret what I ask. It's my conjecture that a player is just as capable of playing any character that the DM can play. You need to lose your adversarial attittude (i.e. player vs. DM) or you are bound to ruin many games.

I think that's what Diaglo was saying....


Hong "explaining teh joek AGAIN; -200,000 pts (repeat offender)" Ooi