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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Pielorinho" data-source="post: 757623" data-attributes="member: 259">Another quick story, to give folks something to think about.I and a few friends once wrote a LARP together (yeah, quitcher grimacing).  The bulk of the work for the one-night game was coming up with sixty different characters, all of whom had a one-page history.  It was a Vampire gameOne of the characters I wrote up was a high-class, nineteenth-century courtesan in Atlanta who had gained power by catering to the city's financial and government elite.  I intended for her player to be very flirtatious and power-hungry, to use her (vampirically enhanced) sexual allure to accomplish her goals in the game.My male co-GM axed the character at our next meeting, however, telling me he was a little horrified that I'd even consider making such a sexist character.  His game design theory was that characters should be gender-neutral, so that anyone could play them; when I pointed out that a couple of the PCs were already male-gendered (the Vietnam combat vet, the lothario with a string of unknown children), he still insisted that a prostitute character was wholly inappropriate.So I called in a couple of female friends who'd be playing in the game, and they both said they'd be fine playing such a character -- saw no problem with it at all.  We compromised by giving the character to one of these women, so that it wouldn't go to someone who'd have a problem with it.It got me thinking, though, about how, although most character concepts can be shoehorned into either gender (the reckless fighter, the antisocial druid, the abandoned-as-a-child-and-seeking-revenge paladin), some concepts are inherently gendered (the Vietnam combat vet, the lothario with a string of unknown children, the Civil-War-era-courtesan).  When I DM, I hope to give folks as much freedom as possible to design a character they find compelling; limiting gender can eliminate some character concepts entirely.Daniel</blockquote>

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