males playing females and the other way around, opinions?

[S'mon]

My ignorance of romance novels actually knows no bounds, so I will have to defer to your expertise.

My wife is working on a chapter for a competition, I have to know these things!

 

[S'mon]

There was a somewhat light-hearted thread on RPGnet a while back about designing a Jane Austen RPG, in which the goal was to design mechanics for your character to be utterly passive until the right gentleman falls utterly in love with you and sweeps you away.

Being somewhat entangled with a romantic subplot for a PC like this, I can say it's not totally easy to incorporate that motif, but achievable. Surrendering control without being deprotagonized is basically the kind of compromise that goes into, well, a relationship. It also generally involves some understanding of a meta level: the player sets the boundaries for when she's going to be surrendering control, which usually happen after she's established some similar form of "control" over the NPC (like having him fall hopelessly in love with her.) Tricky stuff, and our version involved as much (if not more) talking about the nature of romantic subplots as actual play as prep, but doable.

Interesting, thanks. I don't think it would work in the kind of action/adventure games I GM/play, but interesting.

 

[GrimGent]

You might find that difficult - a couple days ago my wife was explaining to me the difference between RPGs and formula romance novels. Basically, in an RPG it's very important to be in control, whereas romance novel plots centre around willingly surrendering control. In an RPG, surrendering control normally leads to deprotagonisation, which is undesirable. So you might be able to recreate the romance-novel form in game-book format, but almost certainly not in a regular RPG.

Again, the set-up in Maid covers that at least to some extent: the structure of play is essentially inspired by harem anime. All the PCs, the titular maids, compete for the favour of their employer, one central NPC who's mechanically inferior to them but holds a position of undeniable authority due to some source of power, ranging from musical talent to magical lore to military might. So while all the characters in the group are quite competent in their own right (a battle-oriented starting maid, who might be a death god while off-duty, can beat up shoggoths bare-handed), they typically spend their time using those abilities on behalf of someone else, and scoring points for how pleasing the results turn out to be. On the other hand, since the highest rewards come from saving the master's life, it makes sense for the players to arrange suitably threatening situations, by triggering random events if nothing else...

(I often describe the game as a cross between Teenagers From Outer Space and Paranoia.)

 

[Lanefan]

Casting 'charm person' on another PC seems at least as bad as physically attacking them - it's very bad table etiquette, to say the least, and should probably be forbidden. A player who persists should probably be expelled from the group.

Ye gods, you play a different game than I do!

'Round here, charming other PCs is almost Standard Operating Procedure; it's far more useful than killing them, the other usual way of resolving arguments.

(most extreme example came early in my current campaign: the 10-member party exploded into an all-hands brawl, and four of the ten had charming ability in one way or another...so they all charmed each other! *That* took some sorting out...)

Lan-"charmed, I'm sure"-efan

 

[Barastrondo]

Because there can be, and also can not be, it is upon the player's head to effectively communicate how far they want to take things. The problem that's been presented here is when DMs say "well, you're playing a chick so I'm going to..." There's no choice in this situation, the DM has removed the choice, and nobody likes to lose control.

Yeah, that's a problem. Of course, by my understanding, GMs saying "You can't play a chick, you're a dude," or vice versa is also a problem. The real solution is probably not to give GMs like that one's custom, but anyhow.

Of course you could, but unless you're playing with the Book of Erotic Fantasy, you're probably going to address sex from a social standpoint, whereas a trap would be addressed from a mechanical standpoint.

Which in a way makes it all the more dissonant to me that it's somehow "taking the game too seriously" to address the topic at all. Social consequences and save-or-die mechanics are both things that are only as fair as the GM implementing them; one's no more innately fair when you equalize the human element.

Exactly, the problem is, as I've noted, when you get DMs or players who want to go farther than the group. It is a group game, and even if one guy wants to role play all the sex scenes, and one girl wants to get knocked up every time she has an "encounter". It's opt in, or opt out, but it's also a democracy, the game only goes as far as the group is willing to let it go.

Once you get a certain level of approval(such as the previous statement by someone about their players agreeing female PCs get extra damage 3 days out of the month), you either much object, possibly being the group buzz-kill, or you must leave(which is never fun), or you have to roll with it.

Honestly, it sounds more like an argument for group-specific ruling rather than certain content being better not to bring up at all as a general rule. I completely get behind "We can't have sexual content with these guys, they're juvenile but we like playing with them anyway when we avoid that." Still not seeing "GMs as a general rule should avoid sexual content," save with the qualifier "if you are playing with people you don't know well or don't care for outside of the gaming context."

Again, I'm totally in favor of opting in or out, but because of the group dynamic, the one player who doesn't want to go down this road can often get steam-rolled into something they don't want to do.

Quite understandable. But perhaps you see that just as the advice I use to run my own game among long-time friends doesn't work as well with a group who has less of an away-from-table bond, advice that arises from the specific circumstance of a table with a less comfortable dynamic isn't necessarily universally applicable advice in its own right.

Which, IMO, once you get past romantic entanglements, into the more physical aspects of men and women, then you start to complicate the game in a bad way. Romance? Sure, fine. Love quad-rangles? Confusing, but often fun. Sexual encounters, if your PC desperately wants to have a baby, these things, they make the game complicated. Especially when they are unilateral decisions made by a single obnoxious player, a iron-fist DM, or by simple group dynamic.

I don't think it's the subject matter that complicates the game in a bad way, I think it's the presence of a single obnoxious player, an iron-fist DM, or a group dynamic wherein what some of the group wants to do disturbs others of the group. These are the real complications. It's sort of like the "evil characters" idea, really; it could stand a warning label but there's no way that it's always a joint negative. Sometimes you can simply address the fact that a character's sexually active in-character, and get an interesting encounter or character development out of it, without bypassing anyone's comfort level.

 

[pawsplay]

You know, after getting roped into playtesting Watch Girls Adventures, in which everyone plays a manga-inspired tween witch, I can honestly say I no longer have any conception of what I really, absolutely could not play. If you were playing in the same session, you would also have been playing a young, teenaged magical girl. I like Kiki as much as the next nerd, but it's pretty much the farthest thing from what I'm into in an RPG that I can imagine, stopping short of a hypothetical Jane Austen RPG or Forrest Gump 2: Gumped Again: The Role-Playing Game. But nonetheless, hey, I had a good time playing Aubergine, and if it's not my game of choice, that really doesn't stop me from investing in a character I find entertaining and relatively dimensional.

Really, playing a gang of tween witches with improbable hair colors should be required training for anyone who considers themselves a hardcore RPer.

 

[Nameless1]

Really, playing a gang of tween witches with improbable hair colors should be required training for anyone who considers themselves a hardcore RPer.

This is almost sig worthy.

 

[pawsplay]

This is almost sig worthy.

I have achieved marginal success with my quip.

 

[Nameless1]

I have achieved marginal success with my quip.

This is no mean feat. I have very high standards.

 

[Afrodyte]

For the people who'd disallow cross-gender play, what about transgendered players? Contrary to what people assume, you can't always tell - especially if the person has only started transitioning, is pre- or non-op, and/or has chosen not to disclose this information. Would they get to play characters of the gender they identify with? Would you demand proof of their gender identity (which is just - )? Would they only be allowed to play transgender characters of the same trans status as them (trans men playing trans men, and trans women playing trans women)?