Cross-gender roleplaying

[Zeropoint]

In another thread, the subject of players with characters of the opposite gender came up, mostly in the form of horror stories. I'd like to find what we know about doing it right.

First, in my experience, I can play an acceptable female (despite being male myself) by concentrating on playing the character as a person first and a woman second. It seems to me that gender wouldn't be a factor in most roleplaying decisions, except (of course) when dealing with other character's advances. I can't claim any deep insights into the female mind, but at least I haven't had anyone complain about my portrayal of females. (except in the rare case in which cross-gender roleplaying just creeps them out).

Now, some questions:

Is it really possible to make a viable female character by taking a male character and just flipping the gender bit? It sure seemed to work for Ripley in "Alien". Does it work the other way around, for females with male characters?

Are there any pitfalls to avoid in running a character of the opposite sex? Are there different issues for male/female and female/male combinations?

Likewise, is there anything in particular that would make such a portrayal easier to grasp or play, or make it seem more realistic?

And how do you cope with other players who either can't take your character seriously, or find the whole concept deeply disturbing?

As usual, I provide more questions than answers to this forum, but I hope that you'll enjoy discussing this.

Zeropoint

[Lord Liaden]

I'm not able to offer any profound Mars/Venus type advice for character roleplaying; but I have found the process of "bluebooking" to be very helpful in dealing with more intimate cross-gender character interactions which may be uncomfortable to play openly and aloud. If you're not familiar with the term, bluebooking was described by Aaron Allston in his Strike Force Champions campaign book. It's named for those workbooks (usually blue) handed out en masse to students during college examinations. You can use these to write out what your character wants to say or do toward another character, hand it to the player, and he can write back his character's response, and so on. Much less pressure, and you're left with an ongoing written record to use as a memory refresher down the road.

Nowadays many gamers develop these kinds of interactions "off camera" via e-mail, but there are times when an occasion for it arises during a game session. It's also a useful technique when the GM wants to exchange information with a player, or two players (in character) want to communicate, without the whole group hearing it.

[Snarf]

I need advice on this topic too. I get stuck creating and playing a lot of female NPCs, since I do the GMing for my group's Hero games.

[Bengal]

I like to take Jack Nicholson's advice from As Good As it Gets.

[lemming]

I've played about 50/50 of each gender. With me, it's the character not the gender.

[Dust Raven]

As a player, I've protrayed characters of either gender and just about every orientation. As a GM, I have to.

I like what Zeropoint said about playing the character as a person first and their gender second. I've found that works quite well.

The only advice I can offer to anyone playing the opposite gender (or orientation for that matter), is to ask themselves what a person of that gender/orientation would do, and then ask what this person would do. It won't always be the same answer, but it makes you more aware of where the character fits and doesn't fit within the stereotypes.

[ghost-angel]

I'm curious what Jack's advice in that movie is ... I haven't seen it yet.

I think one of the things that roleplayers, as I've witnessed them, make a mistake with on playing the opposite gender is getting stuck on the sexuality. Don't.

The advice from the first post about playing a Person first and a Gender second is paramount in playing the opposite gender (and really, the same gender too). I tend to run a lot of female characters (ok, mostly female characters), and I'm not female. And most of the time it's not an issue in the least. In basic interaction male/female relationships work like female/female and male/male ones (I'm talking PLATONIC RELATIONSHIPS) for the most part. I'm assuming that the gamers involved have social skills - which can be a big assumption since fully half or more of the gamers I have played with don't.

If sexuality does come up men and women run the whole gambit from not sexual to nymphomania so characters could run both ways as well. Mostly, just react in a similar manner to how you might react, of course that could open a whole can of worms. ("But she would tear off her shirt in the nightclub because he is totally hot...." -kill that player, I do cheap body disposal.)

mostly the horror stories revolve around the player who insists that their female super powers are Cleavage and Sex. The same horror stories would arise should the male super hero powers be Large Package and Sex.... it'd be just as stupid. And normally they both come from the same type of player - the immature asocial unshowered mass who shows up late all the time and lives in a fantasy world even when not gaming.

If the player is mature enough, let them try it out, the best way to figure out if a player can make a believable attempt at the opposite sex is to try it and see what works.

[Snarf]

I'm curious what Jack's advice in that movie is ... I haven't seen it yet.

Annoying Woman Fan: How do you write women so well?

Jack: I think of a man, and take away reason and accountability. [exits]

Annoying Woman Fan: [shock]

I love that movie.

[Trebuchet]

In my 26 years of RPG gaming I've played 4 female characters as PCs:

1) A female paladin in AD&D. She was married to another of my PCs, also a paladin (but much higher level) and their teenaged son was a novice paladin.

2) A female superheroine, married to a guy who didn't know about her superhero career. She was the mother of three kids. I played her only once because the GM raped her (literally) in her first adventure and I quit his game permanently in disgust.

3) A female ninja, whose Secret ID was as a supermodel and who often used sex both as a weapon to accomplish her mission and as recreation.

4) My current character, Zl'f, who even with a COM of 20 is cute rather than sexy and at age 22 is still a virgin because she's deeply religious and is "saving herself" for marriage. Since she's not dating anyone this could be a problem...

[TheEmerged]

As a perpetual GM, roleplaying female NPC's is a constant matter. I've played numerous female characters over the years. I won't profess any special insight or make claims about tricks -- women are just as varied as men in personality, after all.

Having said that, I have generally benefitted from high quality gamers in the gaming group. There's one noteworthy exception, though; after my first session playing in a new d20 group I was glad I changed my mind about making my wizard a female...

[Rene]

1) Develop her background, past, family, day-to-day life, likes and dislikes, everything that makes her a person, not a pair of breasts.

2) Avoid two dangerous pitfalls: making her unbelieavably "butch" or making her so cloyingly girly that everyone will puke. IMO, those two caricatures are more annoying than the nymphomaniac bimbo.

3) Be ready to deal with two kinds of players (usually young and/or unused to cross-gendered RP): the guy who is completely grossed out by you, and the guy who becomes completely obsessed with having sex with your character. The later is easier to deal with, because you can do it in-game, the former there isn't much to do but wait for the player to get used to it.

4) Of course, forget the above if the game is hack'n'slash, or played for laughs and caricatures are the whole point of it. If your friends are playing no-brained square-jawed goons with guns, there is no reason you can't play a big-breasted nympho bimbo with guns. Not my kind of game though.

[Osprey]

I also play mostly female PCs. (I think that I simply see women as more heroic) .

It's Character that counts above all. Gender comes later.

[ZootSoot]

Women, in general, are better at playing men than men, in general, are at playing women. In the real world, women's understanding of men is more vital to their prosperity than men's understanding of women is to theirs. Now my advice, for what it's worth, for men playing women, don't have any advice for the other side. Know the character. When you are playing a guy you can get away without worrying too much about this, because you can always play him as yourself or quickly generate some generic "guy" traits when it comes up. Playing a woman is always going to be a role-playing intensive effort, you have to know the character. Two, if you are playing the only female inthe group, make sure your character is aware of that fact. She can be concerned about it, amused by it, exploiting it, etc, but she really cannot be oblivious to it; think about all the real life social situations you have been in where there was only one female and a group of guys and you will see what I mean. I prefer to run female characters only when there is at least one other female character in the group. This allows for more realistic social interactions (whether friendly or not with the other female) and gives me something explicit to contrast my female character with, thus making sure that all women in the game are not wearing the exact same personality to the party.

[Trebuchet]

I prefer to run female characters only when there is at least one other female character in the group. This allows for more realistic social interactions (whether friendly or not with the other female) and gives me something explicit to contrast my female character with, thus making sure that all women in the game are not wearing the exact same personality to the party.

My character Zl'f and the team's other female PC Silhouette (also run by a guy, Blackjack on these boards) have become good friends. Since Silhouette is 13 years older than Zl'f, it's more of a big sister-little sister relationship, but it's added a nice dimension to our roleplaying of both characters. They've both bought the skill Teamwork in order to work well together in combat; none of the other characters have it yet.

Both characters also derive considerable amusement from the atypical roles they play: Zl'f, the youngest and least tough character, is the team's most experienced member and the current leader. Silhouette, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist, is the team's brick.

Their personalities are vastly different; Zl'f is (if you'll pardon the expression) a balls-to-the-wall type who never seems to stop moving and whose first instinct is to charge right in. Silhouette is first and foremost an intellectual who overanalyses everything; our own female version of Reed Richards (She's explicitly modelled personality-wise on Major Samantha Carter from Stargate SG-1).

[FenrisUlf]

Personally, I agree with the 'it's character, not gender' argument.

Though I am aware of one guy, a former RPGer out in CA, who got burned out on role-playing when a fellow gamer got obsessed with playing over-sexed females and having them try to bed every (male) character in sight. (And yes, he thought that "all real women are like that!") Of course, this may have had something to do with the fact that the guy was also trying to bed every male /player/ in sight...