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]

Re: Cross-gender roleplaying

 

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]

Re: Cross-gender roleplaying

 

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]

Re: Cross-gender roleplaying

 

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

[lemming]

Re: Cross-gender roleplaying

 

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

[Dust Raven]

Re: Cross-gender roleplaying

 

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]

Re: Cross-gender roleplaying

 

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]

Re: Cross-gender roleplaying

 

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]

Re: Cross-gender roleplaying

 

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]

Re: Cross-gender roleplaying

 

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]

Re: Cross-gender roleplaying

 

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]

Re: Cross-gender roleplaying

 

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]

Re: Cross-gender roleplaying

 

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]

Re: Cross-gender roleplaying

 

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' date=' thus making sure that all women in the game are not wearing the exact same personality to the party.[/quote']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]

Re: Cross-gender roleplaying

 

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...

[BNakagawa]

Re: Cross-gender roleplaying

 

Oddly enough, I just noticed that my current female PC is the only female in the group.

 

Of course, this isn't quite as significant as she is often the only human in the group, which includes a robot with a human brain in a jar, an alien, a cross dimensional whatsit, a cross dimensional wizard and other stuff even harder to define.

 

It sometimes becomes a challenge, being such a cosmopolitan bunch. Like the time we were confronted by a gang of superpatriot paranormals and she looks around her side in a panic and says "Isn't anyone here an American Citizen!?" (she isn't, either)

[Greatwyrm]

Re: Cross-gender roleplaying

 

I've played about 50/50 of each gender. With me' date=' it's the character not the gender.[/quote']

 

Agreed. I've played Dwarves, drug dealers, and scientists. I don't happen to be any of those in real life. After all, aren't rpgs partly about playing something you're not?

[John T]

Re: Cross-gender roleplaying

 

I've never had much problem with cross-gender RP. Being a GM for many years now has made it fairly easy. Having respect for the opposite sex helps.

 

I've only ever played one female PC, but it was the way I'd conceived the character from the ground up, and I wasn't going to throw out the concept just to play in-gender.

 

As for the games I run, I have no problem with MOST players playing either sex, but when certain types of PLAYERS get into the game, I turn on the "Same-Sex" rule. Judging by the responses on this thread, most here assembled already know the type.

 

J

[AlHazred]

Re: Cross-gender roleplaying

 

If you can do it well, more power to you.

 

I have enough trouble trying to play a realistic human in real life. I know I'm not up to the RP challenge of playing a different gender, myself.

[Trebuchet]

Re: Cross-gender roleplaying

 

If you can do it well, more power to you.

 

I have enough trouble trying to play a realistic human in real life. I know I'm not up to the RP challenge of playing a different gender, myself.

Well, mad Arab, I like to think I play both parts equally poorly.

[JDRook]

Re: Cross-gender roleplaying

 

There's always taking it to the next level as well.

 

I have a female PC who is a relatively normal person with Light Manipulation powers. (She's actually a successful light designer for theatre and film and such.) She wants to become more involved in "crime-fighting" but is so used to being in the background that she's created an illusionary alter-ego that looks like Errol Flynn, down to being black & white and speaking in projected subtitles, all while she hides in Fringless Invisibility using Indirect, Source Invisible powers.

 

So essentially I'm a male player playing a shy female PC playing a raucous male hero.

 

Any other examples of character cross-gender in that regard?

[Dust Raven]

Re: Cross-gender roleplaying

 

My group's kinda atypical for a Champions game. I only have one male player (three woman). One of the women play a male character, with every one else playing their own gender. Thise leaves an even gender mix and some interesting role-playing opportunities.

[ahduval]

Re: Cross-gender roleplaying

 

So essentially I'm a male player playing a shy female PC playing a raucous male hero.

 

Any other examples of character cross-gender in that regard?

 

I believe I played with someone who was inspired by the character Mighty Man (from Savage Dragon).

 

The normal identity of the character was female, but her heroic identity was male.

[Blue]

Re: Cross-gender roleplaying

 

In my original campaign it was a point of derision that I actually had far more female NPCs than male. In fact, about 60% of my on PCs for any game I played were female. I still tend to create more women than men. The first reason is that I actually draw women far better than I do men, and many of my characters come from my drawings. But frankly I just like women a lot. Perhaps too much, if that were possible. I'm sure there's some psychological "control" issues or something associated with it, but I'm not a psych professor, and I've come to realize that you play what you want to play. Sometimes it's male, sometimes it's female. Generally, I just play whatever I come up with that I think is ultimately the coolest idea.

 

Now onto the 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? Yes, I've done this, but truthfully it's never that simple. Really cool characters have layers. I'm not a big "archetypes" guy when it comes to personalities.

 

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? Not that I've ever come across. My old gaming group was a little more juvenile, but then so were we. We were young, so that was fine. My current group treats interaction accordingly. The guys who have the least problem in the group with hitting on female characters are also the few of us who seem to be the best writers. Coincidence? I thin not.

 

Likewise, is there anything in particular that would make such a portrayal easier to grasp or play, or make it seem more realistic? Just playing the environment in which you are most familiar. I mean, we've all been to high school, right? Well, most of us. But we're all familiar with the way teens treat one another. You might want to try a teen champions game because we all know the exaggerated way in which teens tend to interract on a boy-girl level.

 

And how do you cope with other players who either can't take your character seriously, or find the whole concept deeply disturbing? Not sure I've had this. In my current group of characters, I have two females in champions (that each has drawn the attention of a male hero PC or two), a female in Vampire (who is actually "attached" to another PC), and a Druid in D&D who is just one of the guys. Among the males, I have one brutal lothario in Vampire, one braggart dwarf who'll hit on anything in a skirt in D&D, and a whole bunch of characters for whom sexuality is never even a question. Oh, and in the current game my PC has picked up a retainer that is a female that was an NPC last game session; So now I'll be playing both the character and his girlfriend, which for ME is actually weirder than playing one or the other.

[PhilFleischmann]

Re: Cross-gender roleplaying

 

I've never had any problems of the sort mentioned. It seems to me that the horror stories sited are the result of total RPG-dorks who've never had any interaction with a real-live female. The problem can be eliminated by removing teenage kids from the game, but that's a little severe. I can't imagine a man over 20 playing a woman that way.

 

Try asking the offending player, "Can you name any female character from comic books (or fantasy literature, or whatever genre you're playing) who acts that way?" If they really have a hard time portraying a woman realistically, suggest to them that they try to emulate the personality of a female character from the established literature of the genre: Oracle, Wonder Woman, Batgirl, Black Canary, Sue Richards, Jean Grey, Wasp, Medusa, etc.

 

It seems they're forgetting the point of role-playing. They hear the word "woman" and immediately think "a body that can be used for sex." I suppose that's OK, if you're playing "Porn HERO" but not for Champions, FH, etc.

 

Only one time in my entire role-playing experience was someone was taken aback by the idea of playing a character of the opposite sex. He wasn't really a problem, it just seemed the idea had never occurred to him before. As others have mentioned, all GM's must play NPC's of both sexes, unless you live in an all-male world.

 

And the argument that "I'm not a superhero or a wizard but I can still play one, so what's the difference between that and playing a woman?" is not really sound. Male-female differences are very significant, not so much it terms of making tactical desicions to bring down the bad guy, but in terms of personality and interactions with others (of both sexes), in other words, in terms of Role-Playing! i.e., If I were a superhero or a wizard, I'd still be pretty much the same person I am now. But if I were a woman, I'd be so completely different it's hard to imagine what I'd be like.

 

And BTW, the word is "sex." Words have genders, people have sexes.