males playing females and the other way around, opinions?

[Ed_Laprade]

You were like her gay best friend.

LOL, I wish! (Um, wait...) I think she started dating the GM around that time. They made a wicked team when playing together, but he didn't cut her any slack when behind the screen. Not that he needed to!

 

[Hussar]

For those who don't think male players do a good job accurately portraying female characters: How, specifically, do you distinguish a well-portrayed female character from a poorly-portrayed one?

I mean, I think we can agree that the lesbian stripper ninja is probably not a well-portrayed female character. But I get the sense that's not what you folks are talking about.

Swimming back upthread a ways to take a kick at this cat.

My bar for "good" vs "bad" on any role playing based on being something you are not (whether that be gender, species, race (in the real world sense), background) is whether or not anyone at the table ever turns to that player and says, "You're a _____? Really? Since when?"

Replace the blank with "woman", "elf" or "South African Physicist" and it's all the same to me. If you're going to play a character with defining characteristics, it's entirely up to the player to make absolutely sure that those characteristics are visible and known at the table.

Which means, if you're playing an emancipated slave in a Wild West setting, you better bring up the fact that, A. You are a former slave, B. You are now free, and C. You are not white.

Otherwise, why is it on your character sheet?

 

[DrunkonDuty]

Woo. Just read all 8 pages. Slow day at work.

I play 90% of my characters as male. My female characters are not all that different from the male ones truth be told.

My current DnD character is female. She's party leader by dint of me (not the PC, the player) being a bit of a pushy loud mouthed SOB. I play her as tough, decisive and (in combat) no nonsense. Outside of combat she's pretty laid back. She's the only character to have had a sexual encounter (well, 3 sexual encounters) in the campaign. All such encounters were with males, happened after a fade to black and were level appropriate. She also does the cooking.

So I'm crossing a couple of lines here: the cross-gender character and in-game sex. And neither of these things bothers any of the other players (3 guys, 2 girls.) But then I don't play up stereotypes or indulge in weird fantasies at the gaming table.

A game which I run had 2 of the (male) players discover their (male) Dwarves were in fact having a homosexual relationship. I say discover because neither player thought of it at character creation, it just came up in play. bad-dum-tsh And everyone (3 other males, 1 female) thought it was awesome.

The real issue is not the character but the player. Some players play offensive chracters because they are offensive people.

cheers.

 

[Nameless1]

I find it strange that this is even a question. Who cares what I play? RAWR, I'M A MONSTER!!!!

We are all just making this stuff up.

 

[Clarabell]

There was one point where a new player in our group said it was really weird that another person, a guy, was playing a girl. I pointed out, "Your playing a giant cow that stands up right." (minotaur).

And while it doesn't apply to D&D, in video games, he usually plays females as well because "If I'm going to be sitting here staring at a screen for hours, I want to look at something pretty."

But yeah, gender doesn't mean much really. If your out there throwing balls of fire, summoning demons of the abyss, fighting darkmantles, walking corpses, and dragons, why are you concerned if someone is playing a gender that isn't their own? Its all pretend ^^

 

[Mr. Wilson]

I have no problem with guys playing girls or girls playing guys, with the standard caveat.

The last female I played was a Starlock who I modeled after one of the characters from the Harry Potter movies. I never read the books, but my wife absolutely loved them so I go see them just like she suffers through Star Wars for me.

Anyways, I saw the blonde wizardess (sorry, I don't remember the character's name) who saved HP's life on the train in the last movie and instantly thought, "What an amazing Malkavian." My wife looked at me funny, but I knew I wanted to play a riff on that character the next chance I got, which just happened to be the Starlock.

 

[S'mon]

I find people who object to it (cross-gender roleplaying) somewhat freaky/disturbing, but I try to tolerate them. I have a player in an online game who objects to it, and his views do bug me, but generally I can ignore it.

I haven't encountered a player in a tabletop game who seriously objected to it, but I remember one male player who kept calling my female PC 'he'. I've never seen a female player or GM who objected to it.

Which isn't to say it can't be done badly, but I've seen it done badly precisely once, 23 years ago. I, and the player, were 14 years old.

 

[JustKim]

But when the characters enter the bedroom, I'm gonna fade to black unless there's an assassin waiting in there or something.

I agree, a threesome with an assassin is worth detailing.

I don't really play male characters unless I need to as the DM. There are all kinds of reasons why. Most of the women I've played with create male characters at least once, and often for their first character. I have no problem with folks playing a different gender, except that it makes it more difficult to weave in a romantic subplot.

Someone said before that a better question is whether people often play against sexual preference. I think that's a completely different question, and the answer for me is yes, about half the time. I think this unusually high percentage is because playing against preference means playing a more socially normal character.

 

[pawsplay]

This makes me think that it would be really fun to DM a game where there just are no women NPCs. They just don't exist. The characters are whatever gender the players are. I have both men and women in the group, and they usually play their own gender. So I wonder how long it would take for them to notice something is wrong....


"I call out for the barmaid and ask her for a drink!"

"Well, there are no barmaids, but there are men carting around drinks."

This could be the basis of some epic mystery... where are all the women? Why don't the populace seem to notice that there aren't any?

It would be like one of those Star Trek: TNG episodes, where they purposefully annoy you by not explaining anything right before they go to the first commercial.

 

[S'mon]

I have no problem with folks playing a different gender, except that it makes it more difficult to weave in a romantic subplot.

Why's that?