males playing females and the other way around, opinions?

[Dannyalcatraz]

What is your opinions on males having female PCs, and the other way around?

I do it at least 25% of the time, so I'm all for it.

 

[Jeff Wilder]

If it's got no creepy factor attached to it, then I'm okay with it. Sadly, my experience is that males playing females often has the creepy factor going on. That doesn't seem to be true of females playing males, though (again, purely anecdotal and in my experience.)

Yeah. I don't allow it when I GM, in either direction, but that's mostly because of the "guy playing chick" creep-factor. I've literally never seen it done where I didn't find it creepy or offensive. (Yes, that's subjective. But if I'm GMing, I'm not going to do it when I'm creeped out or offended.)

When you add in the "he -- no, she -- wait, are you a guy or a girl?" stuff at the table, and the infinite character concepts available within one's own gender, it's just simpler and better for me to disallow it.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

...the infinite character concepts available within one's own gender, it's just simpler and better for me to disallow it.

While I don't dispute your right to run your campaign as you see fit, there are certain concepts that simply don't fit one gender or another, so by ruling thusly, you may wind up effectively barring some nifty PCs from showing up at your table.

For example, many mystic traditions teach that your magical abilities are affected by your sexual activity. Typically in such traditions, men lose their powers temporarily after engaging in sex...but women lose whatever mystic powers they had completely when they lose their virginity and never regain them. Certain other, similar traditions teach that a woman's power changes (instead of being lost) at that point, sometimes completely.

Either way, a spellcaster from such a tradition would act very differently and would feel different pressures depending upon their gender.

 

[Jeff Wilder]

While I don't dispute your right to run your campaign as you see fit, there are certain concepts that simply don't fit one gender or another, so by ruling thusly, you may wind up effectively barring some nifty PCs from showing up at your table.

The good thing about "infinite" is that when you subtract 1 ... you still have "infinite."

 

[knightofround]

I played a female barbarian once, she was a really cool character but I found that her gender didn't add very much to the play experience. She probably would've been just as interesting if I played her as a male character.

When it became clear that I didn't making the character for laughs as a "super slut", some players got uncomfortable. Its ironic, but most of the gaming groups I play with are hardcore evangelical christians. I'm not one myself, but I have a wide variety of friends, and it just so happened that they were the ones who got me seriously interested in D&D...and ever since then the D&D groups I end up joining are heavy-faith groups, even though that's not something I seek out.

I find it very bizzare that some people are uncomfortable with gender-swapping in D&D. Especially my group, because they've seen me DM female PCs all the time, and never a peep...pretty much all of them would include at least 1 or 2 female NPCs of mine in their top 5 favorite NPCs. I don't think the religion thing is too big of an issue because most of them are very laid back, and didn't bat an eyelash when I ran campaign worlds with multiple dieties, gratuitous sex/violence, offensive cultural beliefs, etc.

However, me PCing a female character did make them (both males and females) uncomfortable, so I haven't done it again since then. I went to college for a degree in economics, and I became a research assistant in gender economics, but gender issues in D&D still puzzle me. The same players do not have any problems with me playing a female toon in MMOs, because of the "avatar booty" factor.

 

[Silvercat Moonpaw]

A someone who's played different-gender, ambiguous, androgenous, cross-dressing, neuter, shapeshifters, gay, straight, bi, and not interested, I have no problem with it. I've seen characters played more annoyingly as a straight same-gender than I ever have any other way.

The players should play what they are comfortable with, and just occasionally they may be comfortable in a different sort of skin.

 

[Almacov]

About half of the character's I play are female, and almost every guy in my group has played a female character at one point or another.

As long as they're playing a character and not an unsightly charicature produced by they're warped perspective on "gender roles", I'm cool with it.

It's also best if the rest of the players at the table aren't dungspitting donkeyhorses.

I did, however, play under a DM who ran a game with a DMPC central to the plot that was literally a lesbian stripper ninja. Mercifully, the game only lasted a session. Ugh.

But yes, some of my most memorable and long-running PCs have been female.

 

[1Mac]

Yeah, this. I mean, as long as you're playing in a setting where the genders are treated equally, which covers the majority of fantasy settings, there's little point, since no character concept requires a particular sex.

But, e.g. in D&D? Better to stick with what you know how to roleplay best.

These points contradict each other. If a male and female version of a concept are indistinguishable, there is no sense in which playing an opposite-gender character is failing to "stick with what you know."

I also disagree with the first premise. Even in a world of sexual egalitarianism, men and women are different, dammit! Buffy and Van Helsing are different characters, and their respective sex constitutes a big part of that difference.

I've seen badly done cross-gender characters, but I've also seen it well done. The basic rule is "ban jerkiness," not "ban everything jerks do."

 

[the Jester]

I know of one case where this is untrue. There is a prestige class in a third party campaign setting where the character has to be female.

HA! I'll see your female only prestige class and raise you the EUNUCH WARLOCK!! You can't be fully male OR female!

 

[Theo R Cwithin]

Doesn't bother me. As a DM, I have to play both men and women-- not to mention all the other bizarre things in D&D that are way weirder than (almost) any woman I've ever known. If I can do it, why not the players?

There are lines, but they're pretty obvious, and I've never had to deal with such among any of my players. Unfortunately, I have seen problems as a player in another DM's game, so I've learned not go there in my games.