males playing females and the other way around, opinions?

[Khazan]

I see... thanks for the explanation and your honesty!

 

[Umbran]

And stereotypes form from the belief that one thing is not as good as the other

Yes and no. Stereotypes come from us having to classify things in order to wrap our brains around them. And it isn't like sometimes one thing is actually better than another. As a benign example, for most intents and purposes, "refrigerators" really are better than "iceboxes".

It just gets ugly when we do it to people for the wrong reasons, with false generalizations.

Yes, but it is still smaller- thus,IMHO, poorer- than the greater infinity that includes more.

In a mathematical sense, I don't think it is smaller.

 

[nai_cha]

LOL

Yes, I seem to remember someone once saying, about a single-player PC game, "If I'm going to spend 6 hours playing this game, I sure as heck don't want to be staring at some guy's backside the whole time....that's why i made a female elf sorceress."

Works the other way around, too.

Sure, it's great to see strong female characters kicking butt and taking names, but sometimes I just want to enjoy hot dudes running around being BAMFs.

That's not why I play male characters in tabletop RPGs, though.

 

[Barastrondo]

Yeah, I think playing any sexuality in D&D is creepy.

That's an absolute I just couldn't get behind. Example: One of my players is gay, and plays a heterosexual peasant hero-type. He has a wife. If the player says "Opilio goes home to put his kid to bed early and 'celebrate' with his wife," I'm pretty sure there's no titillation going on there for him — his character does that because that's what the character would do. Sexuality is used as a humanizing touch. It's like a character having a favorite drink or a pet turn of phrase.

I dunno, I guess to me sexuality is classified alongside violence. A flirtatious line is no creepier to me than a bloodthirsty threat. Hell, depending on the threat, I might find that a lot creepier than a player trying to get into a fictional barmaid's bodice. Sometimes these guys, they have vivid imaginations.

 

[Dausuul]

That's an absolute I just couldn't get behind. Example: One of my players is gay, and plays a heterosexual peasant hero-type. He has a wife. If the player says "Opilio goes home to put his kid to bed early and 'celebrate' with his wife," I'm pretty sure there's no titillation going on there for him — his character does that because that's what the character would do. Sexuality is used as a humanizing touch. It's like a character having a favorite drink or a pet turn of phrase.

I dunno, I guess to me sexuality is classified alongside violence. A flirtatious line is no creepier to me than a bloodthirsty threat. Hell, depending on the threat, I might find that a lot creepier than a player trying to get into a fictional barmaid's bodice. Sometimes these guys, they have vivid imaginations.

To me it's a question of how detailed we get. I mean, macking on barmaids is a time-honored pastime in D&D, but I don't want to hear the play-by-play, you know?

I'm okay with some flirtation as long as everyone at the table handles it in a mature way (some gamers give off a seriously creepy vibe when anything sexual comes up, at which point I want to shut off the whole topic ASAP). But when the characters enter the bedroom, I'm gonna fade to black unless there's an assassin waiting in there or something.

 

[Lanefan]

I really like that character!

I think some stereotypes are fine and some aren't. Stereotypes based on race, gender or sexual orientation are in poor taste and feel very outdated, at best, offensive, at worst. But I'm down with hippy elves, fireball-happy wizards, light-fingered thieves, grumpy dwarves, plucky kids, absent-minded professors, and all the rest. Partly it's, as Umbran says, that fantasy races aren't real so no one minds.

Absolutely! And sorry, Doug, but I'm told I must spread more XP around before I can give you any more...

As for the rest of this: for me and my crew, playing another gender is no problem at all. I'm more creeped out, in fact, by those who find it *is* a problem.

I'm male, yet some of my best characters have been female in part because sometimes a character concept works quite differently depending on what gender is used. A good example of this is a character I've been playing for a while in our Saturday game. She's the cultural equivalent of a Roman Legionary commander in background and personality, a half-decent wizard by class, and LN to the core in alignment. If I played a guy using that concept and with that personality he'd almost certainly come off as a complete overbearing military-ramrod asshat; but because she's a woman she for a long time just came across as assertive and able to take care of herself, if somewhat bossy. (after two years they're only just now slowly beginning to realize she really *is* something of an asshat, and I suspect she's not much longer for that party; but that's another story)

In one recent party I was running self-named the Gamma Girls, a player-enacted and player-enforced house rule was that every PC had to be female; this came about after a deadly combat that (by sheer coincidence) only the female PCs survived.

Every player was male.

There was one lesbian romance within that party, which played out just like any other romance right down to the dramatics.

The concept fell apart after a couple of adventures, mostly because they got clobbered and lost a bunch of characters and decided to abandon the all-girl idea...ironically enough, by this point there was a female player. But the party is still going.

The one key to help others to remember a PCs gender is to give it a name that obviously goes with the gender; an obviously-gendered mini helps too. The ones I always mix up are the ones with androgynous-sounding names and minis that are all cloak.

As for sexuality in the game: bring it on.

Lan-"and valley-girl Elves rock, too!"-efan

 

[Stormonu]

I don't like to RP female characters as a PC myself simply because as a male I don't feel like I have enough of a grasp on the female mentality to accurately RP one, so I just leave it. I got no problem with others who do it as long as things stay PG-13 territory.

Not to pick on any one particular, but really, how many of us are portraying elves or dwarves "accurately"? I don't think playing the opposite gender is a matter of doing it right or wrong - after all, the game is heavily based on stereotypes in of itself - so long as everyone's having fun.

 

[Dausuul]

In a mathematical sense, I don't think it is smaller.

*puts on childhood math geek hat*

An infinite set with one element removed is the same size as the set including that element. You can't do arithmetic on infinity; what you have to do is set up a function that maps every element in set A to exactly one element in set B and vice versa. If such a function exists, the sets are the same "size" (or the same cardinality, to use the technical term).

However, the answer to "infinity minus one" isn't "infinity"--it's "undefined." Like I said, you can't do arithmetic on infinity.

 

[CrimsonReaver]

Yeah...I'm not a fan. At best, it tends to be silly, distracting, and/or eye-rollingly bad. At worst, it's offensive, creepy, and/or downright disgusting. I'd rather players just didn't do it.

 

[Barastrondo]

To me it's a question of how detailed we get. I mean, macking on barmaids is a time-honored pastime in D&D, but I don't want to hear the play-by-play, you know?

I'm okay with some flirtation as long as everyone at the table handles it in a mature way (some gamers give off a seriously creepy vibe when anything sexual comes up, at which point I want to shut off the whole topic ASAP). But when the characters enter the bedroom, I'm gonna fade to black unless there's an assassin waiting in there or something.

That's pretty much where I sit, with the additional caveat that I really just try to avoid playing with gamers who do give off any creepy vibe when sexual things come up. There's no reason to fill in the graphic blanks, particularly at the table. I think sexuality is a powerful issue that frequently governs a character's ambitions — are they looking to marry well? for love? not at all? Each answer spins off potential subplots. But sexuality and detailed sexual content are completely different beasts.