male playing female PC

[Quickbeam]

I haven't read through this entire thread (although I will at some point), but nonetheless I'll offer my two cents in the hopes the original topic is still relevant .

Until recently I'd never played a female character except as a DM's NPC -- which IMO is not the same thing as spending an entire campaign roleplaying an opposite gender character. Then in January and February I attended the Ohio and Chicago Gamedays, and played three female PC's in four games. I rather enjoyed the different perspective and challenge involved in trying to legitimately roleplay an opposite gender PC. And I've seen many gamers pull this off quite convincingly. For my part, I felt more focused on doing a credible job of understanding my characters and their motivations, and probably did a better job of rolepalying than I might otherwise have done.

If someone is doing this as a lark or to be a goofball, then it's a problem and will likely be disruptive to the game. Otherwise, I've found that players who are willing to push themselves into more challenging or unfamiliar roles, put more effort and thought into their roleplaying and tend to perform well.

 

[Bagpuss]

My point was that no creativity was being stifled in my game, a restriction perhaps, but from a D&D perspective no worse than saying you can’t play celestial or a dragon or a demon. You allow players to play those, fine go ahead; please just don’t ask to play them in mine. Your character can be a brutal/nurturing, positive/negative, etc. as you want your character to be in my game, and you don’t need to have a gender designation to be like that.

Its not really the same as saying you can't play a celestial / dragon or demon. Since a ban on those is a matter of the fact the character concept does is suitable for the campaign either do to setting, party, balance or story reasons etc.

Banning cross-gender, is nothing to do with the character concept, the female character would be fine if played by a woman. So your banning the character just because of the sex of the person wanting to play it.

Thankfully equal opportunities laws don't apply to Roleplaying games, so your welcome to introduce whatever rules you want.

It's a shame because I think folks that ban cross-gender roleplaying are missing out on something.

 

[sensate]

I don't see what the big deal is. Male writers haven't written complex and believable characters. Some female impersonators can fool just about anyone. I think you just need to be good at role-playing to be a character of the opposite sex.

 

[BLACKDIRGE]

I currently play a female rogue with a ton of ranks in Diplomacy, Bluff, Disguise, and the sneaky skills. Its a Forgotten Realms campaign, so I had her backstory include a two-year stint in Skullport where she was a spy and diplomat (she's a Harper Scout), and at the time she was getting it on with her female half-medusa drug dealer (she's a frequent user of kammarth - see Lords of Darkness). She's a cool character that I have a lot of fun playing - basically good (CG), but attracted to the dark side after being so immersed in it in Skullport. Sexuality hasn't come up, but she is straight; the thing with the half-medusa was college-type experimentation.
I play her just as I would a comparable male, except if I have to flirt with a guard to sneak my companions past him while he's distrated, I just tell the DM "I'm gonna flirt with the guard to distract him. My Bluff check is 35. I'm not gonna role-play it because that would be weird."
No problem.

I am this guy's DM, and although he thought he could get away with just saying "I'm gonna flirt with the guard to distract him. My Bluff check is 35. I'm not gonna role-play it because that would be weird." he can't and I proved it this Saturday at our gaming session.

He was trying to get some info out of a Trgolodyte sorcerer by flirting with the humanoid and said "I am just going to roll by diplomacy now", but I said no way you want the info you gotta work it girl. So yes I made him roleplay flirting with a male perverted troglodyte deviant, and you know what he did a fine job and I gave him some extra xp.

So my take on the whole female character thing is if you are gonna play a chick, act like one all the way or forget it.

Dirge

 

[Pielorinho]

Re: a clarification

I think there are concerns, but no greater than the concerns for when I as an atheist roleplay a very religious character - I may go overboard, playing their motivations in response to my (sometimes oppositional) interpretation of such people actions rather than actually getting inside the mindset. (the best cross gender roleplaying I've seen done has always been by those who had many friends of the opposite sex.)

You keep beating me to the punch -- I came back to this thread exactly to raise this point!

Thing is, my thought processes have a lot more in common with a (generic) woman's than with a (generic) priest's, or soldier's, or barbarian's.

But if a DM told me that, because of my pacifist history (for example), I wasn't allowed to play a soldier character, or because I'm an atheist I wasn't allowed to play a religious character, I'd be insulted, and I'd find a different DM.

Same thing with playing a woman. If the DM has so little faith in my imagination that she thinks I can't step away from my plumbing, then she's likely not going to let me run with my imagination in other ways either. And I'll find a different DM.

Daniel

 

[Kichwas]

This thread, however, seems to be about the question of male players playing female characters. Obviously, there's no problem with female players playing male characters.

HOw can you possibly have a problem with one, but not the other?

I'm continually amazed that even into the 21st century the western world still has so many blatant sexists.

 

[Kichwas]

Originally posted by seasong See my post, 2-3 back. I think I'm right when I say that he didn't mean to post it as a True Generalization, just a Useful Generalization... that is to say, you can use it as a rule of thumb, but there are plenty of exceptions.

I don't think it even works as this.

Men who have serious trouble understanding women are the exception and are as rare or common as women who have serious trouble understanding men.

-Perhaps- one could argue that this particular type of male is more prevalent among gamers, if one subscribed to the belief that gamers are largely compossed of -geeky men who have issues socializing, particularly with women-.

I don't subscribe to that view personally, because as fun of a stereotype as it may be... I've found it's always applied to -those other gamers-. No group I've ever been with has had even a noticable minority of this type of male.

 

[fusangite]

HOw can you possibly have a problem with one [men playing women], but not the other [women playing men]?

I'm continually amazed that even into the 21st century the western world still has so many blatant sexists. [/B]

You don't have to accept any of my attempts to explain the fact that it may be generally true that women are better at playing men than the reverse (over-representation of the male POV in media and literature, training of women to focus on social relationships and the motivations of others, the biologically more complex motivations of women, more psychological baggage carried by men actively seeking to play women) which are just sweeping generalizations I've come to because of my experiences.

Ultimately, these generalizations are not the reason I have the house rule I do; they are simply my attempts to frame intellectually a phenomenon I have repeatedly observed -- men who want to play women being either incompetent at it, motivated by psychological issues best not explored through a recreational RPG, or both. I happily acknowledge that my experience is not universal and is at variance with the experiences, eloquently described, by other members of this online community.

Nevertheless, fundamentally, I have my house rule for one reason: I make house rules to prohibit things that have a high probability of making the game less enjoyable. The men who have played women in my games have always made the game less fun. Rightly, or wrongly, I have generalized this experience and sought to explain it; but the explanatory structure I have built around it is just that -- an explanation, not the actual reason I have my rule.

While modern bills of rights protect people against discrimination by the state, they also, through freedom of association and assembly, protect my right to discriminate on whatever basis I choose.

I find it a little silly when people say that every time men are treated differently than women, it is "sexism." Do you have a problem with men being kept out of women's washrooms or women's organizations? Are the legislatures which gender-segregated washrooms guilty of "sexism?" Of course not.

 

[S'mon]

The legislatures gender-segregated washrooms?! :-O

I didn't know that - I thought it was social convention - maybe not in Canada, I guess.

I think what people object to most here is the double standard (ie women have more understanding than men, therefore they can play men, but not vice-versa) which can come across as an illiberal, reverse-sexist, politically correct attitude. I agree strongly though that one's right to be discriminatory & (reverse) sexist in a private setting is or should be protected by the State. I'd apply that to other forms of discrimination also - race, age, etc, but of course a lot of people don't like discrimination and they're also at liberty to publicly disagree with the discriminators, hopefully politely.

Edit: when I used to be a Cleaner at a hospital in Scotland, I was frequently in the women's washrooms (toilets, we call them) cleaning it. I remember one female toilet user objected to this. She didn't allege I was breaking any law though.
Men never seem object to female toilet cleaners doing their work while we're using the facilities, and we don't necessarily have the privacy of cubicles either, so clearly there's a double standard...

 

[fusangite]

Kahuna Burger and Daniel raise a good point about atheists playing religious characters. This has, in my experience, been really problematic. I find that our modern views of religion's function are so different from pre-modern views that people have no idea how to play religious characters.

What is even more problematic is the idea that atheism or agnosticism would be even remotely appropriate in any pre-modern society. I'm afraid in my campaigns, I require everyone, regardless of class, to subscribe to some kind of theological worldview (which I've generally copiously described in the campaign materials I've circulated). While I occasionally allow wizards to have quasi-modern, scientific worldviews, virtually all characters in my campaigns are required to be religious (not necessarily devout -- usually not devout) and are pretty damned ineffective at playing that aspect of their characters.

I probably would develop some kind of house rule to deal with this recurrent problem if I had the slightest idea of what kind of house rule would help. Unfortunately, aside from recruiting church officials/activists to my games (I only have two right now), I don't know what else I can do. Generally, I do find that people get better at religion if they've worked with me for a while but I'm never 100% satisfied with that element of my campaigns.