males playing females and the other way around, opinions?

[Barastrondo]

But most games are really like that. Most female fighters aren't going to look that different from male fighters once you get them all dressed up in plate. Given their education and occupation, they'll probably have a similar outlook on life. Though physically somewhat different, a male and female barbarian are going to act more or less the same. Druids, male or female, will still value nature over the personal self and both will likely have similar attitudes towards non-druids.

That sounds a lot like a stylistic choice made on the point of a player, or perhaps on a campaign that decides to spend a lot of time in a dungeon. Sure, the half-orc paladin wears plate whether he's male or female. But at the formal event, only one of them is likely to wear a dress. And even though the "dress up like a civilian would" trope may be the same idea regardless of gender, a dress means different things than pants. An approach to casual sex is likely to be fairly different too, because unless birth control is 100% available and reliable, there are very different consequences for men and women every chance encounter. A male bard might come back to a town years later to find a child that looks kind of like him. A female bard is pregnant wherever she goes. Even in games where it's assumed that the GM won't get your character pregnant without your permission, I find that female characters are frequently more picky about their liaisons simply because the players find it more plausible.

And unless you're going to make NPCs react differently based on the PC's gender, then for all intents and purposes, any value in different genders is only given to them by the player. And noone but the player should attempt to assume why that player chose that race or gender. Putting psychological issues(as mentioned by others earlier), personal tastes, or what have you on them just plays it up to be more than it's worth.

If a GM doesn't acknowledge a PC's gender in some way, then it doesn't matter how much value the player puts on that gender — it's automatically next to zero. That in itself runs the risk of alienating the player. Maybe the player wants to run into prejudice, but maybe not: maybe the player just wants to see a barkeep say "ma'am" instead of "sir," or "milady" instead of "milord," because it gives the impression that the GM is paying attention to them, and trying to visualize the character they describe. If you get the feeling that just about any cipher of a player character could go through the campaign and nothing would change, it can remove any sense of ownership or belonging.

That said, so much of this seems to boil down to a communication issue. It's always easier not to talk about things, or to set up rules like "nobody can play cross-gender" or "everybody can play cross-gender" that can be pointed to instead of talking things out. But I'd always recommend talking with players about every character they make.

 

[Hussar]

Are you suggesting it does not matter if a character has any characteristics at all? I guess I'm not following. Assigning a character a gender has value because then the character has a gender. Or eye color. Or whatever.

But, just because you wrote it on the character sheet, who cares? Does anyone other than you look at your character sheet?

Now, I do agree, the DM's gotta play ball here. If the player actually does bring it up, and the DM does nothing, that's bad DMing. Where I disagree is the DM has to start the ball rolling in the first place. The DM's got four, five, six other players at the table to deal with. That's a lot of balls to juggle and it can be pretty difficult for the DM to get things going to remind the other players that Bob's playing a female character when Bob can't be bothered doing it at all.

I still don't understand why asking players to actually play their characters is considered such bad advice. If you chose to have a particular characteristic, obviously you had some reason for doing so. Bring that reason to the table and I'm a happy camper.

Leave it completely behind and I gotta wonder why bother.

Like I said way upthread, I got totally burned out on people who played elves as humans that can see in the dark. Every other race that gets chosen gets brought to the table in some fashion, but, IME, elf players just never bother.

But, as Bastarondo said, it's totally a communication issue. The DM has to make sure that he or she is on the same wavelength as the player.

 

[Barastrondo]

Like I said way upthread, I got totally burned out on people who played elves as humans that can see in the dark. Every other race that gets chosen gets brought to the table in some fashion, but, IME, elf players just never bother.

True story: In a game I ran several years back, one player swapped out his character and decided to play an elf. Swashbuckler-type, and he decided to play an elf who likes humans — one who saw himself differently, but to avoid that elven arrogance. After a couple of months' play with the rest of the party, he found himself saying things like "Humans! Aaargh!" Which says something about the rest of the party.

More seriously, one of my long-time friends was always fond of playing half-elves. Definitely she got into the mix of human and elf culture, but half-elf was virtually her go-to race. At one point, she was making a new bard, and wrote down "half-elf." So I asked her "Okay, what's her story? What about her half-elfness did you want to emphasize?" She sort of paused, and then decided that the character concept would work better as a human. And it did, over many years of play.

So that's why I ask. I make sure to ask in games where I get race/class combinations like "goliath bard" ("a Librarian who's from the bloodlines of the immense people who work deep in the stacks and move the heaviest books"), but even in innocuous cases like half-elf bard, I always would like to make sure I understand what the player's going for. Admittedly, for many players it may be nothing but a mechanical synergy: but if they're at my table, I have to make sure they have a distinct personality for those non-combat scenes, because there will be a lot of them.

 

[pawsplay]

But most games are really like that.

No, they're really not. And in fact, the first time the GM makes a pronoun error with the PC, the experience is going to be different for the player. Gender is not an inconsequential construct. The idea of gender-neutrality is conceivable only in a world with no genders. It's like the old joke... I don't have an accent, everyone else does.

Most female fighters aren't going to look that different from male fighters once you get them all dressed up in plate. Given their education and occupation, they'll probably have a similar outlook on life. Though physically somewhat different, a male and female barbarian are going to act more or less the same. Druids, male or female, will still value nature over the personal self and both will likely have similar attitudes towards non-druids.

I agree that the characters are similar, but there a thousand something-elses that change the experience. For instance, let's say you defeat a vicious opponent. One of the PCs decides to urinate on the villain's corpse. That presents a substantially different picture if the PC is in question is the female fighter, versus a male fighter, versus another PC in the presence of the PC fighter, and so forth.

Characters have names, and the vast majority of names are gendered. The vast majority of names have associations, as well.

And unless you're going to make NPCs react differently based on the PC's gender, then for all intents and purposes, any value in different genders is only given to them by the player.

Isn't that enough?

And noone but the player should attempt to assume why that player chose that race or gender. Putting psychological issues(as mentioned by others earlier), personal tastes, or what have you on them just plays it up to be more than it's worth.

Mountain out of a mole-hill and all that.

I would be cautious in assuming, but I would not make NO assumptions. Human interaction largely doesn't work like that.

Here's a question for y'all. Imagine a player decides to play a prank on the other players. He's a male player. He conceives of a female barbarian and imagines what she would be like. However, he gives a male name and tells all the other players he is playing a male character. He plays only the psychological aspects of being female. First of all, can anyone tell? Second, is there any aspect of femininity that can be captured by the masculine mind? Third, is his character rendered unbelievable? Fourth, if a character is "more feminine" in behavior, what does that mean if we are talking about a male playing a male character?

 

[InVinoVeritas]

Here's a question for y'all. Imagine a player decides to play a prank on the other players. He's a male player. He conceives of a female barbarian and imagines what she would be like. However, he gives a male name and tells all the other players he is playing a male character. He plays only the psychological aspects of being female. First of all, can anyone tell? Second, is there any aspect of femininity that can be captured by the masculine mind? Third, is his character rendered unbelievable? Fourth, if a character is "more feminine" in behavior, what does that mean if we are talking about a male playing a male character?

This can be possibly done as a transgendered barbarian, then (male body, female persona). Can anyone tell that a barbarian may be transgendered? Can the barbarian be played convincingly as transgendered? Is a transgendered barbarian believable?

I'd say it's definitely possible.

Oh, and Dausuul: Jas is here. What's your opinion of her?

 

[Abraxas]

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?

Yes, and no it would not have changed. Also, as a player it would have annoyed the hell out of me for my PC to have been the target of such antics. Romance pretty much doesn't come up in the games I play in - other than completely off camera fade to black type events described with a sentence at most. It works for us, YMMV and all that...

 

[ProfessorCirno]

I've noticed a few people are weary due to real life cues, such as tripping over calling the male player "She" or "her" or hearing the distinctly male voice (or even worse, a terrible falsetto) for their character.

How would, or how does, your opinion change in an online game?

 

[InVinoVeritas]

Yes, and no it would not have changed. Also, as a player it would have annoyed the hell out of me for my PC to have been the target of such antics. Romance pretty much doesn't come up in the games I play in - other than completely off camera fade to black type events described with a sentence at most. It works for us, YMMV and all that...

Fair enough. I'm glad to have had the experience. For a second I was annoyed, too, about Jas becoming smitten, but, I figured, roll with it and make it mine, and see where it goes.

I mean, I hope you're not saying that you'd be annoyed with Jas making googly eyes at a character that forced those very rolls on her. Besides that, the GM supplied the enemies and deals and all that.

By the way, this makes me think: who has romance in their games? I've had all sorts of different kinds of romance in all sorts of different ways, and I don't really worry about matching character gender to player gender. Certainly, it's usually a stretch to match character gender to GM gender. But otherwise--one night fade-to-black stands, Bond Girls, carefully calculated pregnancies, spouses, courtly love, being called away on family emergencies, crass distractions, crushes, puppy love, I've seen and done it all. Who else does?

And, before you ask, no, there's been no play-by-play of sexual encounters, ever.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I've noticed a few people are weary due to real life cues, such as tripping over calling the male player "She" or "her" or hearing the distinctly male voice (or even worse, a terrible falsetto) for their character.

How would, or how does, your opinion change in an online game?

Like...do you avoid playing Tomb Raider or Metroid because of this?

 

[Barastrondo]

By the way, this makes me think: who has romance in their games? I've had all sorts of different kinds of romance in all sorts of different ways, and I don't really worry about matching character gender to player gender. Certainly, it's usually a stretch to match character gender to GM gender. But otherwise--one night fade-to-black stands, Bond Girls, carefully calculated pregnancies, spouses, courtly love, being called away on family emergencies, crass distractions, crushes, puppy love, I've seen and done it all. Who else does?

(raises hand)

Probably not to that same extent, but many of those things wouldn't qualify as "romance" for the players who are most interested in it. Though I can add "obsessive stalking" to the list.

I find that for some players, a romantic subplot does a lot in terms of letting them feel as though they're really addressing the character's story. Sometimes more than any of the "kill the bad guys" objectives that pop up.

And, before you ask, no, there's been no play-by-play of sexual encounters, ever.

It's kind of unfortunate that this even needs to be a qualifier for purposes of admitting "there is romance in our games." The only other place I can think of where romance equals graphic sexual content is certain breeds of "romance novel" aimed at bored housewives.