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Message: <blockquote data-quote="orsal" data-source="post: 4612525" data-attributes="member: 16016">I note that most posters in this thread, including the OP, are referring to gender (cultural categories) rather than sex (biological categories). So let's go with that.What gender categories mean -- what attributes or social roles are considered masculine or feminine -- depend on the culture. Another cultural variable, closely related, is how men and women are treated. A lot of gamers like their gameworld to mirror their real-world culture, which in my part of the world is unusually egalitarian. In most societies, past and present, gender is much more determinative of a person's social roles than in contemporary North America. How determinative is it in your campaign?D&D is inspired my a melange of settings, some historic and some fantasy. In all the historic cases, and most of the fantasy cases, PC-type roles are men's work. Which doesn't mean that you don't find women in them, just that women aren't the norm. The treatment of a woman who chooses to don armour and go hunt monsters can vary from the scandalous ("don't let a lady turn out that way!") to remarkable (think of how Joan of Arc's mystique was partly due to the oddity of her femininity).I like campaign world's to mirror this, because it makes gender a more meaningful character attribute, a more substantial part of the character concept. It provides options for character backstories: perhaps she became an adventurer, working on the margins of civilized society, to escape the uninspiring roles that her culture assigned her. It can affect social encounters: what happens if the people the adventurers have to deal with do not accept a woman in that role? Or, to go the opposite way, if she does achieve renown, there's a Joan of Arc dimension to her celebrity.If you go this way, I'm strongly opposed to restricting character gender or sex according to player gender or sex. If a character concept fits your game, then all players should have the same option to play it. Why shouldn't I be allowed to play a character based on Joan of Arc, or my sister one based on Conan? Count we with the "neither encourage nor discourage" camp.I'd say about two-thirds of my characters are male. But that's not because I'm male. It's because I think of male as the default for adventurers. A paladin who is female is a female paladin, while a paladin who is male is simply a paladin, sex/gender unremarkable. I like female PCs to be the exception. But I also like them to exist, and from time to time I want to play one, just because I like to try the full range of options. I've made characters of all races, all classes, all alignments, why not both genders?</blockquote>

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