D&D General "Players in my D&D Group Sometimes Play Characters of a Different Gender." (a poll)

[Willie the Duck]

True or False: "Players in my D&D Group Sometimes Play Characters of a Different Gender."

This one is pretty straightforward. Do your players ever play characters of a different gender from themselves? Men playing women. Women playing men. Either playing non-binary or vice versa? Is that cool? Is that a problem?

I have three main groups -- One is pretty evenly split in genders, both in players and in characters, and people generally do mix and match between their own gender and others with their character. Second group is all-male, and one player tries to play about 50:50 men:women, another will not play a woman, and the rest of us are non-dogmatic, and end up playing more men then women mostly through habituation/ease. Third group is also all male -- each of us have played women, to varying degrees of success. The only guy who has done the whole 'super model lesbian female' character is a gay man, and no one's exactly sure if it was meant to be ironic or not. I've been told that my women characters are pretty much the same as my men and ungendered ones.

 

[Lanefan]

With a few exceptions we all play whatever gender of character makes sense for the character we have in mind (in some cases we even roll randomly if indecisive). For some reason, my own male characters of late tend not to last nearly as long as my female ones; meaning that most of my major characters these days are female even though I-as-player am male.

As for when I'm generating NPCs, unless the module's pre-generation of a character (or some other external factor) sets a gender I'll often roll it randomly.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

True or False: "Players in my D&D Group Sometimes Play Characters of a Different Gender."

This one is pretty straightforward. Do your players ever play characters of a different gender from themselves? Men playing women. Women playing men. Either playing non-binary or vice versa? Is that cool? Is that a problem?

Has been true in my group since we started, like one of my first five characters was female, and I've often played female characters, especially after being a DM. Most of the female players we've had in the group have played at least one male character, including my wife's ripped, Mr Clean-looking Paladin! We've also had one trans player (oddly most of my trans friends don't play TT RPGs, they prefer MMORPGs).

Wow, yeah I can actually think of opposite-gender characters for every player in main group, I thought maybe the habitual Rogue player (now into Warlocks admittedly) hadn't, but he actually had a few campaigns back and is playing a non-binary Shifter at the moment.

We've also had a lot of characters who were bi or gay from straight players, and vice-versa to a lesser degree. That didn't happen until we started playing Cyberpunk 2020 in like 1993 and the Lifepath gives you lovers sometimes, and the default was to randomly roll their gender, and we just went with it, and then realized actually this is fine, and made for characters that felt, well, more modern (or futuristic back then, of course 2020 is the past now!).

 

[Shiroiken]

It's rare, but it happens.

 

[Lord Mhoram]

I was in a HERO game where one character was the concept of violence. They put 'Yes' on the Gender line.

The two I mentioned were both HERO characters. Supers.

 

[lingual]

I typically play female characters named after my daughters these days.

 

[Azzy]

Yep. Quite frequently, actually.

 

[tetrasodium]

True. However, for a while I had a couple gamers that always made super model lesbian female characters. Was good to finally get away from that.

I used to see that when we were tweenagers but don't see it as often outside of when I run AL with players in that age range. It's usually not a big deal when someone doesn't match their pc gender though.

 

[Oofta]

In my home game it's kind of an odd coincidence. I moved so had to start a new group. In both, the oldest guy in the group always plays a female. So yes two guys in different states always play female.

As long as the players don't push negative stereotypes I don't care.

 

[overgeeked]

True. Though it’s usually one way. The women at the table playing men. In nearly 40-years of play, I haven’t once seen a man play a woman character.