You and Your Characters: Gender and Sexuality

[S'mon]

Of the groups I GM and play in (London D&D Meetup, it's about 75-80% male 20-25% female):

GM:
Punjar Saga - 6 players, 4m 2f. Currently everyone is playing a PC of their own sex. We've had a couple male players play female PCs previously.
Loudwater - 7 players, 5m 2f. Both female players' PCs are female, one of the male players' PCs is female. That's been a pretty standard ratio since the start of the campaign in 2011, except we've sometimes had more female players, up to 3f 2m.

Play:
Karameikos - 4 players, 3m 1f. My PC is the only cross-sex PC.

As far as I know, every PC who has expressed a sexual preference has been heterosexual.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

When I play a female character, I often develop the personality from the standpoint of why the character has to be female...I ask myself why the PC couldn't work as a male. For instance, I played a Ley Line Walker in RIFTS some years ago who believed her powers were linked to her menstrual cycle & virginity- something I gathered from a book on the shamanistic beliefs of certain cultures.

It would have worked better in HERO, which would have changed the way her powers worked as compared to other LLWs, but it still worked well as a groundwork for why she behaved the way she did, when she did.

And it would clearly not have worked for a male PC.

Or a female paladin from a misogynistic culture: her weapons were oversized versions of those used in the trades she had learned, so that she could still carry them where & when most women of her culture would be unarmed. Again, it was a concept that worked better for a female than male PC (not many misandronistic cultures out there; human males tend to dominate the warrior caste of pre-gunpowder cultures due to physical size and strength).

 

[Murph Murphy]

I prefer to play males, because I am male and generally I don't want to explore gender roles or romantic entanglements in my games. I'd rather keep the focus on orc fighting and world saving. Usually I don't call out my gender at the table and leave it at that.

Granted, if I'm playing something like Monster Hearts or the like, its unavoidable, but then I signed up for it.

 

[DrunkonDuty]

I'm male and I play about 75% male characters, 25% female. As far as I can recall all of my characters have been heterosexual. My girl friend has recently taken up the hobby (I'm a bad influence ) and so far she's only played male characters. 1 of them was homosexual, all the rest hetero.

 

[JediSoth]

I have played female characters (usually at conventions), but I usually play males. I have not played a character of a different sexual orientation, and I don't plan to. I RP to escape and have fun, not challenge myself or my own views on gender roles. That's just not the sort of thing I'm interested in doing during playtime.

 

[DragonLancer]

I'm a guy and I would say that most of my characters are female not that it makes much difference. I play a character not a gender. Male or female in RPGs is more for how I imagine the look of the character over any sense of how I would roleplay them. Though in a few online game sessions I have surprised other players because they thought I was female by the way I played the character.

 

[am181d]

One of my current groups is two guys and two girls and they're all playing female characters at the moment. (A first!)

 

[Vyvyan Basterd]

I play whatever gender feels right for the character concept I've developed. It never occurs to me to differentiate as I'm called upon to roleplay female NPCs on a regulare basis as our group's main DM.

My group leaves sexuality mostly out of the game. It's a background feature, not in the spotlight of the adventures, except when it is. Just like you wouldn't normally spotlight the bathroom habits of your characters, we don't include sexuality while the characters are on the job.

Most of my players play strictly male characters. And while my wife played, she played solely female characters.

 

[Kingreaper]

On the sexuality issue: Even when it comes up, most of my characters are asexual (apart from the succubus). Which isn't actually that far from me a lot of the time, although I am bi.

Of course being asexual means it doesn't come up often, because we generally leave it to the player to bring up them having interest in another character.