males playing females and the other way around, opinions?

[Barastrondo]

Not to mention, all relationships are willingly entered into(unless there's money!) which is why player-NPC romances are generally bad ideas. Either a lot of good work goes to waste when they're spurned, or it just gets weird essentially romancing the DM.

I can't help but think "essentially romancing the DM" is entirely a construction in some players' heads. It's never really come across to me; in my groups it's explicitly "my character is romancing this other character," even if some of the lines are delivered in-character. I'm curious if it goes side-by-side with an adversarial relation with the DM: as in, when you try to kill some orcs, are you trying to "defeat the DM"? When you try to get treasure, are you trying to "steal from the DM"? When you threaten an NPC in first-person voice, is it attempting to intimidate the DM into letting you succeed? I know there are groups out there that function like that, and I'm kind of curious if this is an overall rule or if romance & violence are held to different standards of icky & creepy.

 

[Bullgrit]

This concept that cross-gender role playing (in a game) is weird . . . makes no sense to me what-so-ever. I mean, contraversial? *blank stare*

As a white, male, human Player in various RPGs (not as a DM/GM), I've played many characters outside my own race, gender, and species:

Elf
Dwarf
Gnome
Wookie
Female
Vampire
Wight
Romani
Asian
Asgardian
Robot

Of all those not-me characters, the female choice is the one that raises more eyebrows?

Bullgrit

 

[Bullgrit]

As a DM, I've seen lots of cross-gender role playing. The only time it was ever an "issue" of any kind was when the female player playing a male character sort of "role played" urinating.

The character was tired of the in-game negotiations with an NPC, and so as sort of show of frustration, he left the group to go releive himself. The resulting brief and off-hand description (by the female player) cracked up every guy at the table.

Bullgrit

 

[EvilQAGuy]

Elf
Dwarf
Gnome
Wookie
Female
Vampire
Wight
Romani
Asian
Asgardian
Robot

TWMAGCC (That Would Make A Good Character Concept): a vampiric female robot made in Japan that's programmed to think it's a Wookie

Now I just need to find a cyberpunk game with an inattentive GM ...

 

[Sunseeker]

TWMAGCC (That Would Make A Good Character Concept): a vampiric female robot made in Japan that's programmed to think it's a Wookie

Now I just need to find a cyberpunk game with an inattentive GM ...

I'm sure Japan has already produced a variety of content along those lines.

 

[GrimGent]

I'm sure Japan has already produced a variety of content along those lines.

I'm sure that you can randomly roll up a character like that in at least one Japanese tabletop RPG: Maid, in which all the PCs are female by default.

 

[Umbran]

Of all those not-me characters, the female choice is the one that raises more eyebrows?

Well, for some the Romani might be a bit questionable. All the others, I poitout again, aren't real. When you try to play something real, you run up against the player's real-world expectations and hangups. When you play something clearly imginary, you don't have as much of that.

 

[pacdidj]

I gotta ask, for those of you who are creeped out by players playing cross-gendered characters, or find their portrayals unbelievable, are you creeped out when an author portrays a character of opposite sex in their novels? Do you find their characters unbelievable?

Is Harry Potter a creepy/believable character?
What about Usula LeGuin's protagonist Shevek from The Dispossessed?
For those that have read it, what about Amy Shaftoe from Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon?
How about Lois Bujold'scharacter Miles Vorkosigan?
Is Galadriel believable/creepy (in a sexual way)?

I mean seriously, are those of you in this camp asserting that any time a man tries to see/portray things from a woman's perspective or vice versa, they've got some weird sex hang up? Or that they do so uniformly unconvincingly? What gives?

 

[S'mon]

I gotta ask, for those of you who are creeped out by players playing cross-gendered characters, or find their portrayals unbelievable, are you creeped out when an author portrays a character of opposite sex in their novels? Do you find their characters unbelievable?

Is Harry Potter a creepy/believable character?
What about Usula LeGuin's protagonist Shevek from The Dispossessed?
For those that have read it, what about Amy Shaftoe from Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon?
How about Lois Bujold'scharacter Miles Vorkosigan?
Is Galadriel believable/creepy (in a sexual way)?

I'm not your intended target, but of the three I'm familiar with I think Harry Potter is fine in an Enid Blyton/Sparrowhawk sort of way, Galadriel is fine in a pre-Raphaelite sort of way, but in the one book I read of Miles Vorkosigan I found him completely unbelievable, and his universe even worse, a real Mary Sue-verse.

 

[Sunseeker]

Well, for some the Romani might be a bit questionable. All the others, I poitout again, aren't real. When you try to play something real, you run up against the player's real-world expectations and hangups. When you play something clearly imginary, you don't have as much of that.

A female elf is no more real than a male one. The fact that it has one more component that you do not, and a rather irreverent one, is rather meaningless.

This question should really not be "is it okay to play a female character if you're male?" but "why do you think people shouldn't?" Because to be honest nobody has actually given THAT question a real answer. We've got "it's offensive" which is entirely personal opinion, though I'd like to see a little reasoning behind it, and we've got "because I don't do it well." Which is a better answer but still a lacking one, why do you think your skills are the best of the best? And we've got "because I've seen other people do it badly." which like the previous statement, could demonstrate anything from bad players to simple luck of the draw.