males playing females and the other way around, opinions?

[InVinoVeritas]

IME, I have yet to see a character concept that requires the character to be male or female. IMO, I honestly don't see how a player could need their charatcer to only be male or female that doesn't include elements that I don't care to have in a game I play for entertainment.

Does Jas's cartoony romance and associated targeting as a weakness for her crush's nemeses count as elements you don't care to have in the game? Would that have changed if I were a woman?

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

But I do have to ask - what exactly would you be gaining by having your characters powers linked to a menstrual cycle as opposed to just a lunar cycle - or any other cycle for that matter, I'm really confused as to what experience your are trying to achieve. And how do you expect your DM to accommodate this aspect of your character - other than just noting the date and what bonuses/penalties you have - which could apply to any conditional power scheme.

A writer once told me it isn't the powers & virtues that most define interesting characters, its their flaws. Look at the original 7 members of Justice League of America: four of them were virtually gods! Superman without his weaknesses to kryptonite and magic, Wonder Woman without her weakness of being bound by a male (germane to this thread, as it happens), Green Lantern without his weakness to the color yellow and The Martian Manhunter without his weakness to fire would be virtually unstoppable. Their stories would be boring tales of how they found the evildoers in ones and in groups and, by themselves, inexorably usher in Utopia. The only ones who could challenge them would be those who were similarly gifted in power.

But their flaws give even Joe-Lex Luthor a chance to make something interesting happen.

So what I'm aiming for depends upon the exact mystic tradition I was modeling.

If I were modeling a PC's powers being linked to her cycle, I'd design her so that her powers waxed and waned accordingly- RPG system & campaign permitting, of course.* Sometimes she'd be extremely powerful, sometimes she would be virtually powerless. How she'd cope would make for interesting scenarios. Foes who know of this flux could plan accordingly and strike when she was at her weakest- a classic storyline.

For characters with the "all or nothing" version of this, a moment of weakness means utter destruction. Succumb to your baser instincts, the sway of alcohol, a love philtre, or an unspeakable crime and you're ejected from your chosen path forever. This can make for a very extreme personalities- a very guarded person, private to the point of seeming unhuman; perhaps one who tempts fate- but regardless, always aware that everything they value could be lost in minutes.

For a regular mage, incarceration may be a temporary inconvenience. For a mage like this, incarceration could lead to powerlessness...and death. Therin lies extreme motivation to avoid capture, almost to the point of desperation.

This was part of what shaped the psyches of characters like Lythande (Thieves' World), Gillian (Bell, Book and Candle), Kahlan (Legend of the Seeker) and many other female mystics in literature and pop culture. There is a dramatic tension inherent within the character itself.


* FWIW, there have been a rare few male characters with their powers fluctuating on the same lunar cycle- werewolves, Moon Knight and a few others- but they're the exception.

 

[Lanefan]

Nor have I, but I just don't even care. I disallow all sorts of character concepts -- and so does every other decent GM out there -- and yet an infinite number of character concepts remain.

Each DM, however, draws the line at a different point. I, for example, would allow:

" ... a psychotic loner who has no real reason to stay with the group ..."

" ... a total pacifist, who literally would not hurt a fly (and hates when others do), in your World's Largest Dungeon campaign ... "

these, and let the players and the game determine if the concepts work out or not. I also recall you saying (here and-or elsewhere) you don't allow players to play Evil characters; where I have no problem with Evil PCs at all.

But I would not allow:

"... an adult red dragon ..."

"... a super-speed character who is very difficult to hit, but dies when he gets hit ..."

these.

By contrast, "I can't play a cross-gender PC?" has almost never been an issue in our local games. I literally cannot remember the last time someone asked to play cross-gender in our local games, much less went into a depressed emo tailspin over it not being allowed.

Wow. Your crew sure ain't the same as what we have up here.

I could run the numbers and figure it out, but at a rough guess I'd say about 15-20% of all the characters our lot have ever played (several hundred in total) have been the opposite gender of their players. It has never been an issue, but from the other direction.

Lanefan

p.s. just ran the numbers on my own characters. I've played 53 characters overall and co-played 2 more; the male-female ratio is 33-21-1 with the '1' being an otherwise-long-forgotten character where all I have listed is its very androgynous name.

EDIT: p.p.s. those numbers do not include NPCs played as DM, of which there have probably been thousands.

 

[S'mon]

So, if gender isn't an issue in the game I run and it makes it somewhat easier if people play same gendered characters - it shouldn't be a problem if that's all I allow. Some of the statements in this thread make it sound like that is a completely unreasonable position and possibly indicative of me having a "problem"

Your banning it shows that it clearly is an issue, at least for you.

 

[S'mon]

And one of those ways, of course, is to play a woman who doesn't emphasize her femininity in any way.

I tend to play female PCs who aren't conventionally very feminine in their behaviour (tough heavily armoured Fighter types, say), but they're still clearly female-brained, and they do behave differently than a man would. I see it with my wife's male PCs too, her male characters are significantly different from her female ones because what goes on in their heads is different.

I guess if you really can't get the 'internal aspect' on a character, eg if you're male and can only play a female PC as a man in a woman's body or vice versa, then maybe you shouldn't play a PC of the opposite sex in a game with any significant in-character roleplay. Personally I've rarely seen this as a problem with male players, and never with female players, though I've certainly read some female novelists who are otherwise good writers but write male characters like they're women in men's bodies (thinking eg C J Cherryh, Vanye in Chronicles of Morgaine).

 

[S'mon]

This was the point at issue. The player had his character dallying with prostitutes and expected the DM to begin describing details of the "encounter" which otherwise had no bearing on anything happening in the game. It had nothing to do with usurpation of roleplaying by dictating PC reaction. It had everything to do with the DM hitting the player upside the head with the cluehammer to declare to him that the situation did not warrant anything but superficial acknowledgement of the expenditure of money and the characters actions/location during the night.

The best thing here for the DM to say, if the player won't, is Fade to Black. There's lots of stuff in a game that should not be described (use of the latrine, say), and for most games sexual intercourse is certainly one of them.

 

[Lanefan]

My guess was too low

I'm statistician and record-keeper for our whole group of various campaigns, and I'm a little bored tonight, so I ran the numbers on how many of our various characters have not shared their player's gender.

Sample size is 668 player characters (which is everything I have records for as of about a month ago), most of which are from 1e games except about 10% are from 3e games (not that this makes any difference except that 3e's Warforged have no gender).

Give or take a very few, about 73% of the characters played have been the same gender as their player. About 25% have been the opposite gender. About 2.5% are not classified for one or more of a number of reasons: they have been both genders and-or self-identified as such, they are not gendered at all (e.g. Warforged), or I just don't know what gender the character was.

Actual numbers:

Same: 487 = 72.9%
Diff.: 165 = 24.7%
Other: 16 = 2.4%

I haven't done any accurate counting, but just glancing at the data here I'd say the ratio of male characters played by women is higher (maybe 40%) than that of female characters played by men (maybe 17%).

Lanefan

 

[Nameless1]

Either do it right, put in a bit of effort, or forget about it. Doing a half-assed at best job just annoys the crap out of me as a DM.

Most instances of "doing it badly" that I have witnessed have been when someone was really trying to make gender apparent as a player. Gender is one of the things that other players and the GM should be highlighting, not the player of the character. How does the orc shieftain treat the female fighter in a conversation? That is an interesting bit to RP. That is how to bring out gender. Bringing gender out through stereotypes as a player is often going to be bad. Bringing it out through NPC reactions is often very good.

When a player puts down a gender on their character sheet, the player is stating that they want to deal with situations in game that have to do with that gender. It is an invitation for the GM to make life difficult/interesting for the character because of their gender. A male player who playes a female fighter is asking for some joan of arc type stories. It is the GM's job to make the decision of gender have meaning, not the player's job. When a player attempts to make it meaningful without the assistance of the GM, the element of gender becomes uncomfortable.

When I play female characters it is because I want to explore the world through the lens of women. I want the opportunity to explore the differences between men and women. Almost always, these differences are in how the world treats them, not in what the character does. There are not many areas as fertile for "role"-playing as exploring gender roles. These gender roles have much less to do with the inherent natures of the sexes as they have to do with societal expectations and interpersonal interactions. That is the heart of RP, and that is why I play games. In games where a character is just a pawn, gender has no meaning except as scenery. In my games, gender is a very interesting and fulfilling aspect of character/culture to explore.

 

[S'mon]

When a player puts down a gender on their character sheet, the player is stating that they want to deal with situations in game that have to do with that gender. It is an invitation for the GM to make life difficult/interesting for the character because of their gender. A male player who playes a female fighter is asking for some joan of arc type stories.

Um, no. At least, definitely not necessarily. When I play a female Fighter PC that doesn't mean I'm asking for life to be made difficult for my PC, far less to end up burned at the stake!

If I want life made difficult for my PC (of either sex), I'll tell the GM. If the GM intends to make life difficult for my PC, s/he really ought to tell me in advance so I can reconsider my choice.

This goes for same-gendered PCs too; if the GM's world is going to significantly discriminate against female PCs in-play, s/he should make that clear to female players too, and they can decide if they'd rather play a male PC.

Or a really crappy GM could both discriminate against female PCs and ban cross-gender PCs. Lots of fun for the female players there.

 

[karolusb]

My default table rule is no. And for a long time that has gone through without a hitch. Why?

1: The 6 foot tall redhead who played in 4 separate games/campaigns the 6 foot tall ultra butch redheaded megalesbian. If that was the only guy who ever triggered that I would let it go, but he wasn't just the most over the top.

2: It is easier to tell everyone no, and make 1 exception, than to tell everyone yes and make 1 exception. Not everyone who makes a hideous caricature of a female character is a bona fide creep (the guy above was though), and singling out Tony as the guy who can't play a chick seems needlessly rude.

3: Lastly there is a simplicity argument. In a move a mini on the map and roll dice game it doesn't matter, and so simplicity is a better argument than “cause I wanna”. Though neither is overwhelming compelling (and simplicity goes out the window if you speak Finnish it appears ;-).

So while I have the default rule it isn't absolute. It's more of a a requirement to tell me why, and if "I want to track my menstrual flow volumes as part of my magical tradition" is the reason, as much as I love mixing anthropology into my game design, I am gonna lean towards no. A serious answer and a legitimate attempt will be honored, even if it isn't high Shakespeare.

If a female player preferred it to avoid getting hit on I would call it ok, as it is my current group is 50% women, no girls (we're old), and that's not currently an issue.

That said, in a more introspective game I certainly recommend occasionally stepping out of the comfort zone.

I played a female elf years ago. Certainly the last time I played a female, maybe the last time I played an elf. And everyone in that game, myself included, remembers that character fondly. She was a warrior, and on the battlefield likely couldn't be distinguished from a male of her race (no chainmail bikini here). In an extended town adventure though she had the time to relax and to soften a bit, to wear nice dresses and get escorted to the opera. I won't be trying to recreate that character anytime soon. But I am glad I played it.

In these games though you are both looking to see the world through different eyes, and hoping to do justice to an idea. If your goal in playing a different gender doesn't include both of those I am inclined to agree with the folks who say you don't need to.

As to the gender is just a box on a form so why is it different than race argument? In many ways it isn’t. I played an African for a couple years (former Rwandan child soldier actually). I hope I did it justice. I would hate to think it came across as blackface, if I played in multiple games where the white guys pretending to be black guys came off that way, I would institute the same rule. Playing a caricature of a police officer is inherently less offensive, because no police officers ever got killed for trying to vote.

What about when the race doesn’t exist? Hopefully being a dwarf is more than second wind as a minor action, but unlike ethnicity and gender, if it is nothing more, at least there is a solid reason to choose it.