Ranma & gender issues

[Turanil]

Hello-

One of our GMs has a tendency to alter a character's gender.

He seems to think it is normal. I am curious as to how often it happens in other campaigns and what you do when it happens.

For me, the idea of putting on a belt you just found in a treasure trove, then having yourself turned into the other gender is what makes me want to run out of D&D and try some more serious game.

It's not the fact that your character could have his/her gender turned to the opposite. In fact that could make for a relatively (I insist on the term "relatively") interesting plot. But this had to be worked out into the story of the campaign: something that would make sense! However, if it happens just at random, just because you pick up a magical belt (that just happened to have been designed solely for the purpose of changing a passing by adventurer's gender -by a wizard who had nothing better to do than waste XP in it), it's, IMO, plainly LAME. One of those silly things which have earned D&D it's infantile reputation in some places I would guess.

BTW: I never used that for all the years I did DM. If your DM uses that so often, I would say he either has some problem or not a very deep imagination.

 

[Ankh-Morpork Guard]

Its been threatened many times...and I might throw some kind of (temporary) curse in one of the games eventually. The hard part really is taking it seriously, though.

 

[FungiMuncher]

Perhaps I'm evil, but my current campaign has a body-swap situation going on now. It seemed to have made sense at the time...

The situation - One character, a female, runs into some fairies. She offends one of them, so he successfully wipes her memory and implants the idea that they are husband and wife. He gets access to the party's new stronghold. After a session or so, the rest of the party finally chases off the fairy, and attempt to restore the memory of the character. The cleric, a male, can't cast the required spell, so they commision a scroll from the nearby town. He reads the scroll, but fails the caster level check. He then fails the mishap check, as well. So, after some consideration, I decide that the memories are restored, but to the wrong person. The memories (and personalities, mental stats, etc.) of the two characters are swapped.

That happened about four months ago. The players seemed to have taken it in stride, and have roleplayed it well. The originally female character has since died (her player expressed a desire to retire the character just before this happened - I was trying to set up situations to do just that). However, the male character is still going. He's been kind of annoyed by the whole situation, but I have been dropping hints on how he can get his body restored. Needless to say, he's not willing to read any more too-high-level scrolls.

The last time I did anything like this was when I was in high school, over 20 years ago, with one of those belts. Never considered plopping one of those things in my campaigns since those days.

 

[lukelightning]

The only gender changing incident I can remember in my games is when my illusionist found that infamous girdle. He figured out what it was before putting it on, and kept it as a "secret weapon." Finally, he got the chance to use it; our party was on a mission acting as bodyguards and escorting a princess to another kingdom for a political marriage. So my sneaky illusionist tricked her into using the girdle; the princess became a prince, the marriage was, of course, called off, and the two kingdoms nearly went to war. Ah, the joys of being Chaotic.

Of course I am not including any temporary gender changing, such as through polymorph or alter self or just plain disguise.

 

[WayneLigon]

I've never seen a GM do it. The original belt is a curse; a pretty effective one in the old system since it was probably made exclusively to be used on high-strength fighters. Never seen anyone ever bother with it.

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

It happened once that I recall with the infamous girdle. We had one body-swap adventure where one of the male PCs ended up in a female body - he was fascinated by it. And then there is the female player who has a male dwarf PC whom we always mistakenly refer to as "she". The PC gets quite upset about it and we usually chalk it up to it being difficult to tell male and female dwarves apart.

 

[Ibram]

I have never seen an actual gender/sex change occur in game, though I have heard jokes about belts of gender change. the players in my Orential campaign were also dead set against going to this traning ground I told them about.....

 

[thundershot]

There's a relic I'm going to introduce soon that randomly curses the user every time it's used. Powerful enough that they'd want to use it, but the curses are more cosmetic and not destructive. Yes, gender change is one of them. I feel it helps build character. The character is still the same, but something has challenged them, and gives them something to thrive for (I want my body back!) and creates wonderful roleplaying experiences. I mean, what would YOU do?



Chris

 

[Chronosome]

Once, long ago, I put a "gender bender" in a game. As a curse. Brave warrior finds a magic amazonian blade that was enchanted so it could "only be wielded by a woman". First time he swings it, he becomes one. Later sessions had them sailing to the amazons' isle to get rid of the thing.

My players looked at me oddly for a while after putting that in. I thought it was a fine plot. Ah, well.

 

[Nikodemos]

Life to you, Blacksilver. And everlasting glory.

I have been playing for 15 years and some change, and as I recollect, I think I have been involved in about 3 games in which a girdle changed the sex of one of the characters. And a similar amount of games where the characters changed race/species.


Yours Niko