roleplaying across the gender line

[Dinkeldog]

Before this sinks any lower into the gutter...

Drawmack, it's a "moot" point, not a "mute" point.

Not that that's necessary to say, but I have to post something in here.

 

[maddman75]

A few things

- On gender differences. I'm not going to pretend that men and women are the same except for a couple parts, it simply isn't true. But the differences (emotion/reason, etc) are in the large scale, and can be completely irrelevent when dealing with individuals. For example, I had to take a lot of math in college. Trig, calculus, such like that. And its true that there were more men than women, most of the women that were there could do circles around us.

So for an individual PC, at most this could tell you what society might expect you to do or to react. As noted above, the fact that she is a spy/hero is much more relevent than her gender.

I have a female character now, and I play a pretty good woman (judging by comments of our female players). Her sexuality doesn't enter into it, and we've had none of the problems that T-Billy describes. Her face is scarred and her charisma is 8 (mostly from personality).

 

[Desdichado]

It might be heavy-handed, but IMC, I only allow human PC's, and I expect the majority of them to be fighters and/or rogues.

So it's restrictive? I work damn hard on my setting and campaign, and Player Character ignorance of the fantastic enriches the experience. I wouldn't say my game is Cthulu-esque, but there are elements of horror, and my entire storylines are based on mystery.

It's one thing to say the campaign only allows fairly non-magical humans. It's quite another to say that a player can't play an elf or a dwarf unless he really is an elf or a dwarf, because he won't know how to "get it right" otherwise.

In the first case, I'd say that was certainly the DMs perogative in any situation. The second I'd say was overly heavy-handed.

 

[MerakSpielman]

Gender generalizations from my gaming group:

1) Only the women (of whom we have four) seem to want to play characters of the opposite sex.

2) Only the men (of whom we have three) want to DM games - to the point where we now have 3 campaigns going simultaniously.


My broad analysis of my group:
The women come to D&D for two main reasons - to socialize with their friends and to role play. They are not as good at manipulating the rules as the men because they really could care less about the nitty-gritty. They are excellent role-players, adding an amazing depth to the characters they create and play male characters with ease, though most of the time the gender of anybodys character is more or less invisible. Sometimes it comes out (like when my wifes male fighter hits on our friends female cleric, who is too dense to understand).

The men come to D&D to focus on the Game. We are very concerned with the rules, overarching plot, etc... Our character suffer from a general cliche-ness and overall shallowness in the face of being an effective D&D character.

 

[Desdichado]

Gender generalizations from my gaming group:

1) Only the women (of whom we have four) seem to want to play characters of the opposite sex.

2) Only the men (of whom we have three) want to DM games - to the point where we now have 3 campaigns going simultaniously.


My broad analysis of my group:
The women come to D&D for two main reasons - to socialize with their friends and to role play. They are not as good at manipulating the rules as the men because they really could care less about the nitty-gritty. They are excellent role-players, adding an amazing depth to the characters they create and play male characters with ease, though most of the time the gender of anybodys character is more or less invisible. Sometimes it comes out (like when my wifes male fighter hits on our friends female cleric, who is too dense to understand).

The men come to D&D to focus on the Game. We are very concerned with the rules, overarching plot, etc... Our character suffer from a general cliche-ness and overall shallowness in the face of being an effective D&D character.

In our game, we have four husbands and their four wives. In all cases, the husbands are "olde tyme" gamers, and the wives are playing essentially because the husbands are, and we all get along well. The husbands are perhaps a bit more "gamish" in their outlook, but are also generally good roleplayers (and at least three of us like to DM.) Two of the wives are quite "gamish" and one of them also likes to DM. All of us enjoy the social aspect and the roleplaying aspect, but as you can see, the gamish aspect is pretty evenly mixed between women and men in our group.

Usually we play characters of our same actual gender (in our game right now, we're also playing characters with our same actual first names, to avoid confusion since we're a fairly large group -- but we're also playing modern, so it's not an anachronism) but several of us have played cross gender roles without anyone really thinking twice about it. We all kind of like to play different types of characters, except for one of the wives who has developed into the quintessential half-orc fighter in most games we play (another breaking of stereotype, I suppose.)

Anyway, neither here nor there, but as you can see, stereotypes are completely thrown out the window for the most part in our group. But we're all mature with 2-3 kids each folks in our upper twenties through mid-thirties, so maybe we don't fit the demographic of those who have problems with cross-gender roleplaying.

 

[Ancalagon]

Hmm, found out the character's name is natasha, not natalia (oops).

Anyway, just to point out a pet peeve of mine...

A stat of 8 is only slightly below average. Reading my background, you should have realised that the social issues the character have are more than sufficient to explain the 8 charisma. I picture her as somewhat attractive actualy (as long as the scars are hidden).

30-40% of us here have a cha of 8 or lower.

Ancalagon

 

[Snoweel]

Re: Re

Even in real life, males who show weakness make me sick. Males should not cry or show emotion in public unless the situation is extreme. Males should be strong, aggressive, and self-reliant.

Society today says this attitude is wrong, but I can't for the life of me not feel the same way.

Like whenever I feel messed up, I sometimes think I should talk to someone about it, but the minute I do, I feel like I've admitted defeat.

And then I feel worse. I've decided it's better to internalise.

 

[Kilmore]

I'm male, and my male to female character ratio is about 70% male 30% female. There are a couple of others in our all male group that run about the same average, and there's a couple more that just can't deal with playing a female. We don't press them on it.

I would think that the biggest reason that some guys choose to play hyper-sluts or amazon lesbians is that they have trouble dealing with playing a female and have to dash off to their psychological "safe area". Maybe some people can learn to handle it as they gain experience, but there's no real reason why they should have to. If the DM doesn't want to deal with this, there's nothing wrong with that.

Personally, I find playing female PC's to be good DMing practice.

 

[Teflon Billy]

Teflon-

Surely no one needs to play an elf, dwarf, gnome or halfling?
Surely no one needs to play a fighter, wizard, barbarian or rogue?

Sure they do. Those choices provide different mechanical (rules based) advantages to those characters. D&D specifically says there are no mechanical differences between men and women.

The fact is, people play cross-gender because they want to, not because they need to (in most cases). It's unfortunate your view has been distorted by a slightly lopsided representation of cross-gender characters, but you must admit that your experiences are not typical.

I admit no such thing. I have only my experiences to draw from, and I don't pretend to speak for the entire world, unlike some others here

 

[Teflon Billy]

Why does anyone need to play any other type of character either? As a DM, I could just as easily say that everyone will be a male human fighter, and have as much reason for doing so as you have posted.

Well, I'll post this answer again: because playing a race or a class provides different mechanical (rules-based) advantages. D&D specifically says there are no mechanical advantages/penalties to playing either gender.

Again, I'm not knocking your policy -- it sounds like maybe for your group, something like that was needed. But I wouldn't ever play in a group that had the same policy. Nor, do I imagine, would most groups need any such policy in place.

well, again, I don't claim to speak for the whole world (or even "most groups") unlike some folks here.

If you came to my group and wanted to walk because you could play your female elf (instead of playing and having fun with a a bunch of good players and a--if I may say so myself--excellent DM) then I wouldn't bother to stop you.

People who wouldn't give a game a chance becasue they couldn't play as women have a little more wrapped up in their gender concepts than the players at my table.