Character sex

**Ghost Archer** · Feb 25th, '03, 02:47 PM

As sort of a follow up to Supreme's Poll on Ethnicity, I am curious how many players choose to play characters of the opposite sex?

**nblade** · Feb 25th, '03, 02:51 PM

For the most part, I really if ever play the opposite sex. Moslty its as GM. As a player, I don't think I ever really do.

**Kara Zor-El** · Feb 25th, '03, 03:11 PM

Originally posted by Ghost Archer
As sort of a follow up to Supreme's Poll on Ethnicity, I am curious how many players choose to play characters of the opposite sex?

I took a male character over for a limited time once while the original player was unable to play. And the only reason I did that was because he was the team leader, and they'd already been through about five. lol

**Monolith** · Feb 25th, '03, 03:19 PM

I have played both female and male characters numerous times. Playing a different sex gives me a wide-range of role-playing possibilities and tends to spice up a game that is too full of characters of one type of sex.

**Zeropoint** · Feb 25th, '03, 04:10 PM

I am male, and I've played some female characters. I didn't really try to do anything different, and they seemed to work as characters.

This leads me to one of two conclusions: Playing a character as a person first and a gender second brings them to life, or: I don't know enough about women to notice when I'm doing something wrong.

I've never gamed with any women (alas) nor have my fellow gamers played women very often. Do any of you have insights as to how the four different gender combinations work out?

You all probably know this already, but as a related final note: in the movie "Alien," the part of Ripley was originally written for a man, and not re-written for Sigourney Weaver.

Zeropoint

**Koshka** · Feb 25th, '03, 05:12 PM

I'm female, and normally play female characters for two reasons: 1) One of the other gamers I know locally is really, really creeped out by cross-gender gaming, and 2) Everyone around the table/in the online chat room is going to use female pronouns about my character anyway, so I might as well make the character female. (Maybe if I got into an online game where everyone involved didn't already know my gender ....)

There have been times when I've played a male, though. The most recent example was in a Golden Age game -- I had an idea for a brick who would be a legitimate 4-F, and, well, the draft was male-only.

**Zeropoint** · Feb 25th, '03, 05:54 PM

I don't really understand why watching someone else roleplay a cross-gender character would bother someone, but I suppose that if it does, accomodating them is the best choice for the sake of the game.

On the other hand, I have played with some rather immature young men running female characters, and found the results to be a bit...well, immature.

Changing subjects a bit, what's "4-F"? What draft?

Zeropoint

**Monolith** · Feb 25th, '03, 06:11 PM

Originally posted by Zeropoint
Changing subjects a bit, what's "4-F"? What draft?

Koshka was discussing a Golden Age Champions event. The draft would be for World War II. 4-F was a designation given to men who, for whatever reason, did not pass their physical exams, and thus were not eligable for the draft (night blindness, poor hearing, flat-footed, etc).

**GradonSilverton** · Feb 25th, '03, 06:17 PM

I cant bring myself to play female characters...unless a necessity as a GM.... one too many overweight GM's trying to play the SEXY female while eating Pizza......

Need I say more!?!?!?

**Zeropoint** · Feb 25th, '03, 06:25 PM

I concede that that could be a problem.

Zeropoint

**TheEmerged** · Feb 25th, '03, 07:33 PM

I have a longstanding rule of "taking turns" between male and female in computer games (including MMORPGs).

In person, however, I'm almost always the GM unless we're playing DnD (one of my players is the usual DM, as he's better at designing fantasy worlds than I). Then, it depends on the rest of the gaming group. There are two of them that, if I played a female character, wouldn't stop being NFBSK about it -- so if they're planning on being in the campaign, I have to play male characters. Which is unfortunate, since in the last campaign I envisioned the wizard/elemental savant character as female before they committed to joining so I had trouble giving him a personality of his own after that...

**lemming** · Feb 25th, '03, 08:51 PM

My current PC is female. Out of 27 PCs, 11 are female, 15 male.
The 27th is an energy being made from two men, one woman.

**keithcurtis** · Feb 25th, '03, 09:35 PM

I most recently played a female character at Dundracon. That's my quote on the home page (February 21, 2003). I got some good comments about characterization. Admittedly, they were more for adhering to genre than portraying a real female.
Other than that, I have played a smattering of female characters over the years: an assassin, a Dark Champions-style archer, and a few one-shots.

Keith "Hello, Bahamas? This is Wonder Woman!" Curtis

**Pol Rua** · Feb 26th, '03, 01:02 AM

I play to the characters. I mostly play males. However, if the concept only works for a female character, fair enough.
I had one character who could've gone either way - kinda like the Ripley story - but I eventually came up with a name, and well, it was a great name, so I went with it.

For the most part, it makes little difference.

_________________________________________________
Pol.
(a boy)

**zornwil** · Feb 26th, '03, 01:24 AM

As a PC never have played a woman, not because of any overt refusal, just not too comfortable with doing so in the past and needed a strong concept to grab me, which finally did recently, but then the game really never got going for which I earmarked a female character. She's an NPC I really liked as GM, I imagine I'll still get a chance to employ the character.