When Bob wants to play a female PC

[Emperor Valerian]

Hmmm... I guess the only problem I've had with it is my own bad habit of assuming the pronoun that belongs to the player is the same as the pronoun belonging to the character. One of the best characters in my group was created by a female who wanted to play a male half-orc cleric of Kord... my only problem was that I kept calling "Grumki the Loud," 'she' on accident for several sessions

 

[Ace]

I'm just curious. Of those GMs who flat out say that won't allow cross-gender role-playing in their game, would they allow guys to play girls in an online game that they ran?

I wouldn't run an online game -- it defeats the reason why I do game -- to spend time with my buds

 

[Al]

Hi, another Brit here and another comment that I, like S'mon, personally can't see the problem. The question is which premise one starts from: many posters have been asking "why do you need to play a female character?". As a DM, I start from the opposite: "is there a good reason why a player shouldn't be allowed to play one?".

The three strongest reasons cited (I'm not a psychologist, so won't get into that aspect) are that males can't adequately portray females (or vice versa), that they tend to play stereotypes (and especially over-sexed ones) or that it can cause offence to other players with this misrepresentation. I propose to refute each one.

The argument that males can't portray females is salient but irrelevant. Specifically, ignoring the specious notion that non-casting PCs cant' play spellcasters, there nevertheless remains the very pertinent fact of the "psychological gulf" between the players and any near-authentic characters. Simply put, there is a far greater gap in the mindset of a modern male and a properly RPed fantasy male than between a modern male and a modern female . I'm not a psychologist and can't empirically substantiate this, but on the wealth of evidence I think we can just take this as given. We are educated into a series of moral and societal norms entirely alien to a medieval/fantasy mindset. To take just one example, let us consider attitudes to democracy. Nearly all modern players consider democracy to be a prima facie good way of decision-making. Most cannot conceive the logical premise behind autocracy, and less still theocracy. Yet to authentic medieval/fantasy characters, democracy would be at best alien and at worst seditious. Deeply ingrained modern concepts about society, equality, justice and religion are far harder to jettison than a simple male/female divide.

The second argument contra cross-gender is potentially stronger, but again cannot bear up to serious scrutiny. The case that cross-gender RPing is a direct cause of poor RPing and should henceforth be banned is false logic. Surely, poor RPing itself is the problem, and should be tackled appropriately. To whit, stereotypical or crass cross-gender characters should be discouraged, but the same should apply to same-gender characters.

Finally, the offence notion, perhaps the strongest of the three, must be dealt with. It is certainly the case that the counter-argument to the rebuttal of the "alien mindset" proposition is that medievals, elves and the like cannot be offended. Nor, presumably, can those of your gender if stereotypical same-gender characters are depicted. However, this suffers from a gap between postulation and empirical proof. Specifically, if offence exists - who is offended? Presumably the offence will be suffered from female players aghast at the misrepresentation of their sex? Then surely it is a simple case of asking them if they would mind if Bob played a female. If not, is this a problem? More broadly, the offence argument should be used with all characters and not just cross-gender ones . If an atheist wished to ham up a cleric and religious players found offence, I would ask him to change the archetype. Again, this is not an a priori reason to ban cross-gender characters, but to tackle the root causes of any rational aversion.

Having said all that (and losing half of the readers ), if you feel uncomfortable, then I can't help extra-rational (irrational is techincally accurate but has perjorative overtones) reluctance to allow cross-gender characters. We can debate the logic, analyse the psychology and dissect the rationale ad infinitum, but in the end it's your game and your call.

 

[Gez]

Hi all,

I have a confession to make. Recently, one of my players and good friends asked to make a female back-up character. The player is male. I asked him to switch the back-up character's gender.

I don't know why it bothers me, and I suppose I'm not really interested in finding out. What I am interested in is whether any of you other cats have run into this so-called problem.

Was I wrong to encourage my player to switch from a female to a male PC?

Maybe it's just me...but I'm hoping that's not the case. If it is, it'd mean I'm the weird one. And that would do irreparable harm to my feelings.

A bit a snipping to get only the point.

If it bothers you to be bothered by this, here's what I advise to you. Let Bob play his elfmaiden. Just once.

From there on, two possible scenarii:

1. Either you discover that, in fact, it was all apprehension and you have, after all, no problems with it.
2. Or you keep feeling (for whatever reason, justified or not) that weird and wacky and discomforting, retire Bob's character, and tell him to roll a new one. (Or just let Bobina the Elfmaiden stumble upon some cursed item like the Belt of Masculinity and she's now Bobin the Elfdude.)

And it is less then 25% that actually do a good job with it, though most play it like number one and you'd have no idea what the gender is.

100% of the gamers I play with are within your 25%. (Though there are some bits of number one within, but I consider that to be an OK job. Whatever their gender, RPG characters are as sexless as the paper sheet they're written on anyway, and with all the hacking, slashing, political intriguing, spying, running away, plotting, and all-around adventuring, there's not much time left for romance.)

 

[S'mon]

More broadly, the offence argument should be used with all characters and not just cross-gender ones . If an atheist wished to ham up a cleric and religious players found offence, I would ask him to change the archetype. Again, this is not an a priori reason to ban cross-gender characters, but to tackle the root causes of any rational aversion.

I agree 100% with this. When I play a female PC I shouldn't be offensive to female fellow players, if they find something offensive and their position is at all reasonable I'd alter or abandon the character (NPCs are another and linked issue, one of my female players seemed to find most of my female NPCs personally offensive, *sigh*). Likewise being from Ulster I might be offended by the portrayal of a stereotypical Evil Ulsterman by a player in a d20 Modern game (I expect white South Africans used to encounter this a lot). There has to be a degree of give & take, a well done Evil Ulsterman might be fun, but if you're from a minority group at the game table, which can include women, Christians, a minority race or nationality (which outside USA might include Americans), I think it's reasonable that the other players don't portray your minority in a gratuitously offensive light.

EDit: Heck, since I'm in London, white English people are usually a minority at my table, too.

 

[apesamongus]

I'd have a problem with GMs who didn't allow cross-racial PCs either (eg white players must play white PCs). Maybe this is unreasonable on my part, but it makes me go *ick*.

Exactly. It's just wierd.

 

[fusangite]

Crothian got it right on page 1:

1) Playing the character no different from any other so asside from the female gender on the character sheet one would never know
2) Go overboard with female only problems/or what to be a rape survivor or something like that that it just takes the game completely out of whack
3) Play a comic steroetype that is just insulting
4) Do an okay job with it

And it is less then 25% that actually do a good job with it, though most play it like number one and you'd have no idea what the gender is.

This has been exactly my experience. Conversely, I have never seen a woman screw up playing a male character. For me, it's a matter of odds. I'm just not willing to gamble on a 1 in 6 or 1 in 20 chance that the player won't screw up his character; frankly, life is too short.

I recently moved to my current city of residence and had to recruit a new gaming group out of non-friends. The game setting started the characters in Europe in 1223; the actual game plot is about the journey of these 13th century Europeans across the sea to the land of Antilla.

A gay male couple joined the game who initially really impressed me; through all the meetings I held with people getting them familiarized with the system and whatnot, both members of the couple were making male characters.

But when gaming night came around, to my discomfort, one member of the couple announced that he had had a change of heart and wanted to play a 19 year old Venetian noblewoman. Now normally I would have vetoed this based on my long-established policy but then I thought, "Oh no. What if people think I'm discriminating against this guy because he's gay or getting freaked out about that. They have no way of knowing my closest gaming buddy is gay or that the group I ran back in Vancouver was 42% (3/7) gay." So I caved and said "Sure."

Every single stereotype came rushing back for the next three hours. It was important that the character be good-looking. It was important that the character be attractive. It was important that the character challenge the medieval social order at every turn with some kind of mincing faux-feminine 'hear me roar.' And, on top of it all, I practically had to force her into the party because the player wanted to run a character who dissented from medieval society, ya know, because of its patriarchy. Now, this player is a highly successful and intelligent professional man; and he's married to a university professor who knows better. Fortunately, the couple decided that my game didn't fit with them (which is a shame in a way because the other guy came up with an excellent character concept and played him brilliantly).

So I'm feeling pretty good about my policy right now. Men are likely to get it wrong when handed a female PC. And I'm not interested in holding out for that 1 in 6 or 1 in 20 guy who will get it right.

Now, to address some of the issues raised here, a number of people keep demanding to know why many of us don't have the same policy for women. A few reasons:
1. Experience dictates that women don't screw up playing male characters.
2. Women are more likely to and more encouraged to play female characters so the issue comes up statistically less both because there are fewer female players and a smaller proportion of them propose cross-gender characters.
3. The "male gaze" -- this is a term from Film Studies about the fact that even in Helen Hunt romantic comedies, most women who watch movies tend to identify with the male character rather than the female character and see the world through his eyes. This is one of the reasons that even in sappy romantic comedies with majority female audiences, the girl is always a better catch than the guy. Due to commercial and sociological factors, women are socialized to identify with men so it should be absolutely no surprise that they are going to play male characters better. On the other hand, men are socialized to see women with an exaggerated degree of "otherness."
4. Women who are operating in our hobby are already used to acting male in their social milieu; RPGs are, after all, gendered male. So, just by showing up, a woman is, in many situations, acting like a guy already.

There are all kinds of house rules GMs have that derive from their personal experience because they have run into a particular problem again and again. I don't let people play monks either. If I can restrict what's in the "class" field on the character sheet, I don't see what's so special about restricting what's in the "gender" field on the sheet.

Finally, as to the pathological question, you guys should be thankful John Morrow and others haven't turned the psychoanalytical guns on you. I've read some pretty eyebrow raising stuff on this thread -- what kind of group of men gets together once a week and pretends three quarters of them are girls, for instance?

EDIT: I'm Canadian so I'm not sure if that makes me totally unqualified or uniquely qualified to speak on the subject of this US-UK difference people are on about. But for all I know, maybe if I GMed in the UK instead of Canada, I might not have had the experiences that convinced me to stop allowing men to play women.

 

[S'mon]

Just a note that I currently have a male Canadian playing a female PC in my group and as far as I'm concerned he's doing fine, though if I had as high standards as fusangite appears to, no doubt I could detect flaws.

>>Finally, as to the pathological question, you guys should be thankful John Morrow and others haven't turned the psychoanalytical guns on you. I've read some pretty eyebrow raising stuff on this thread -- what kind of group of men gets together once a week and pretends three quarters of them are girls, for instance?<<

You tell me. What do you think is wrong with us guys who play female PCs?

 

[S'mon]

>>Every single stereotype came rushing back for the next three hours. It was important that the character be good-looking. It was important that the character be attractive. It was important that the character challenge the medieval social order at every turn with some kind of mincing faux-feminine 'hear me roar.' And, on top of it all, I practically had to force her into the party because the player wanted to run a character who dissented from medieval society, ya know, because of its patriarchy...<<

I genuinely don't see what the problem is here?

Edit: except 'having to force into party' - that is certainly a problem, but hardly a cross-gender one. Players obviously need to create PCs who can operate alongside the other PCs.

 

[Gentlegamer]

I have played characters of the opposite sex and I have DM'd games where someone plays a character of the opposite sex.

Just wanted to point out that the use of the term "sex" here is correct. Humans don't have a gender. Gender is a grammatical concept.