The Meta X MR Wild Card Gene Syndrome Virus is Female Dominant!

[zornwil]

Re: The Meta X MR Wild Card Gene Syndrome Virus is Female Dominant!

 

I think I have given the wrong impression. I don't have a problem with cross gender play. I do it myself. I just noticed the majority of PCs I have at the moment are female and thought it was mildy interesting.

I think a lot of people are responding, even if only now indirectly, to Publius and a lesser extent WW's posts rather than yours as such.

[OddHat]

Re: The Meta X MR Wild Card Gene Syndrome Virus is Female Dominant!

 

So, who here likes to GM naked?

 

[Moody Loner]

Re: The Meta X MR Wild Card Gene Syndrome Virus is Female Dominant!

 

What's sad is that this thread, an illustration in Gadgets and Gear, and a DC comic I didn't read have combined to give me a character concept...

 

and no, OddHat, my wife and I haven't taken our gaming there.

[bcholmes]

Re: The Meta X MR Wild Card Gene Syndrome Virus is Female Dominant!

 

Yeah' date=' the cliche is some overweight socially retarded fanboy playing a female character as an oversexed bimbo with huge breasts. And there's some truth to that--I've seen it myself.[/quote']

 

I'm pretty much with Rod on the whole, "wow, I *so* don't get that" reaction.

 

But I think one of the worst experiences I've ever had with cross-gender role-playing was at a con. A (male) teen joined a FASA Star Trek game (boy, that probably dates me), and was handed a character sheet for the female chief of security, and the guy got so horribly sexist, I just wanted to smack him. He said at one point: "Female? And chief of Security? There's a recipe for disaster."

 

Must. Control. Fist. Of. Death.

[Dino]

Re: The Meta X MR Wild Card Gene Syndrome Virus is Female Dominant!

 

I have a "friend";) who tend to play female characters too and because of that when this "friend" decides to play a male character the pronouns get all messed up.

G

 

LOL!

 

I had a simular problem: I have such a rep for playing female characters (well) that when doing char gen for a new game one of the girls in my game group said out loud " You're playing a guy? Whoa! "

 

So I checked my character archive and made a list of all the characters I had played in group games with her. It was 5:1 male to female, but all she remembered were the female PC's.

[Supreme Serpent]

Re: The Meta X MR Wild Card Gene Syndrome Virus is Female Dominant!

 

Aw, I thought this was going to be a campaign idea thread - ie world where actual superpowers only go to women due to genetics. Any male "supers" would have to be highly-trained normals or high-tech wonders.

 

As a corrolary - do you find yourself assigning "gender roles" to particular powersets? Like Marvel where apparently 90% of the telepaths are female? Do you make lots of "god" characters from various pantheons, but few "goddesses"? etc.

[Guest bblackmoor]

Re: The Meta X MR Wild Card Gene Syndrome Virus is Female Dominant!

 

Almost all the character in any Champions games I have run (after the first two) have been female. By at least 2 to 1.... Anyone else ran into this?

 

In PBEM games, I don't know or care what the other players' genders are. It isn't relevant.

 

In tabletop games, most of the game groups I have been in during the last two decades have been primarily male: maybe one female to three or four males, on average. Generally speaking, about half of the people I have played with play characters of their own gender almost all of the time, and the other half trade off as the whim takes them. That's not a scientific analysis, simply an off-the-cuff evaluation.

 

Myself, I typically run about 50/50, with the odd sexless robot or alien once in a blue moon, regardless of whether it's tabletop or PBEM.

 

I have not encountered many gamers who have hang-ups concerning whether a female plays a male, a human plays an elf, a Christian plays a Muslim, or whatever. I have encoutered a few, unfortunately, but such persons are easy enough to spot, and they should be avoided whenever possible. Life is too short to game with morons.

[Guest bblackmoor]

Re: The Meta X MR Wild Card Gene Syndrome Virus is Female Dominant!

 

I have rarely seen a problem -- most of the bad players of female characters would have played male characters just as badly -- and have never received a complaint about the ratio of characters available...

 

Just by the luck of the draw, it's inevitable that a group will be formed where the characters are all women, or all men. I think it's reasonable to "nudge" the odds a little (so to speak) on such occasions. Other than that (which is more an aesthetic conern than anything else), I think the whole topic is a non-issue.

 

But there is always an exception. For example, in a recent game session, we were creating new characters for a new supergroup, and it just so happened that the first four PCs created were all female. I suggested that the remaining two players (both male) make up male characters, because having a group of late-30s men sitting around all pretending to be women wearing spandex was just a little too weird, even for me.

[Publius]

I have not encountered many gamers who have hang-ups concerning whether a female plays a male' date=' a human plays an elf, a Christian plays a Muslim, or whatever. I have encoutered a few, unfortunately, but such persons are easy enough to spot, and they should be avoided whenever possible. Life is too short to game with morons.[/quote']Ahem.

 

Sometimes has nothing to do with a hangup but about the ability of certain types of players. I created the general policy I use before I was 18 and I have not seen any reason to change that general policy. I make many exceptions (see below) but that is a separate issue altogether. Maybe it was the generally juvenile mindset of the PCs involved, maybe it was the fact that this was early on in my GMing when the average age of the players was lower, but I have seen some real hack-jobs that were just awful and I have seen what it does to the game's suspension of disbelief when it goes horribly wrong. When something becomes a problem it is generally good to stop doing it, or at least (as I have done here) control it a little better.

 

That being said, there are plenty of exceptions I have made to the policy. This is generally when the player demonstrates the ability to play cross gender or a general level of maturity that makes me comfortable with their choice. For example, if any of the players in my present group wanted to play cross gender I would have no problem whatsoever. The same could be said of my players in the last two groups I have been involved in. The exceptions I have made have been very successful, but when I don't know someone I'm not going to assume they have the maturity to accomplish it (no matter what their chronological age). Some people can do it, others cannot. And if all my present group of players for some reason wanted to play females, I would have no problem with it. Doesn't sound like a hangup to me.

[Rapier]

Re: The Meta X MR Wild Card Gene Syndrome Virus is Female Dominant!

 

Aw' date=' I thought this was going to be a campaign idea thread - ie world where actual superpowers only go to women due to genetics. Any male "supers" would have to be highly-trained normals or high-tech wonders. [/quote']

I once ran a brief story arc during a dimension hopping arc that had a plague that only affected men (got the idea from an old book). The plague took effect sometime after puberty. The story also had that Miri (original ST) feeling when the male players started to develop symptoms. Do they go back and chance spreading the plague? : cue music :

 

It was fun, but it was definately a short term thing. A society where one of the sexes is in the vast minority gets quickly skewed from what we would know and it gets very difficult to design and maintain.

[Guest bblackmoor]

Re: The Meta X MR Wild Card Gene Syndrome Virus is Female Dominant!

 

... I have seen some real hack-jobs that were just awful and I have seen what it does to the game's suspension of disbelief when it goes horribly wrong.

 

The problem would appear to be the quality of players you are (or were) gaming with: their selection of characters is merely a symptom. Specialized settings aside (such as an all-Amazon game, or whatnot), the characters' gender is not up to the GM to decide. Even if it were, penalizing all of the players due to the deficiencies of a few is not a sound policy.

[nexus]

Re: The Meta X MR Wild Card Gene Syndrome Virus is Female Dominant!

 

Aw' date=' I thought this was going to be a campaign idea thread - ie world where actual superpowers only go to women due to genetics. Any male "supers" would have to be highly-trained normals or high-tech wonders. [/quote']

 

I played in a PBEM like this once. All supers were female if they had inborn powers. Male "supers" had tech or training. Males with powers were pyschotic and insane...

 

 

As a corrolary - do you find yourself assigning "gender roles" to particular powersets? Like Marvel where apparently 90% of the telepaths are female? Do you make lots of "god" characters from various pantheons, but few "goddesses"? etc.

 

I try not to, but for some odd reason most of my "Bricks" are female.

[Jhaierr]

Re: The Meta X MR Wild Card Gene Syndrome Virus is Female Dominant!

 

Hmm. I usually always play males in FtF roleplay. I played female maybe 2-3 times in brief campaigns. I just tend to like male characters better.

 

In MU*s... yeah, mostly all male... video games... mostly male...

 

But City of Heroes was different. For some reason the females looked really cool in certain clothes and "fit" powers better. (Just my past comic book experiences, I guess.) So I had several female heroes there.

[Publius]

Re: The Meta X MR Wild Card Gene Syndrome Virus is Female Dominant!

 

Even if it were' date=' penalizing all of the players due to the deficiencies of a few is not a sound policy.[/quote']If other people want to run their games differently, I find that it is generally not my place to comment on the "soundness" of their decisions. I erred in my first post on this subject by not being very clear on the conditions that I set out in ftf, my fault entirely. I would however like to set the record straight by saying that I am not "penalizing" anyone. I just ask that players demonstrate some ability to handle the task before I allow it. In the last few posts I mentioned that every member of my current group would be free to select gender however they like because I'm sure that they can play it without descending into stereotypes or lowbrow social commentary. As I said, this is a very old policy of mine when I was playing with some individuals who did not really meet those standards (usually at pick-up games in a FLGS that supported their gamers with tables for weekend gaming). It has continued simply because it works and in no case has it hampered anyone in the last ten years or so of gaming.

[Guest bblackmoor]

Re: The Meta X MR Wild Card Gene Syndrome Virus is Female Dominant!

 

... every member of my current group would be free to select gender however they like ... this is a very old policy of mine ... It has continued simply because it works ...

 

I am a little puzzled. How is this policy conveyed to your game group? Let's say a new player joins the game, who appears to be a sane, reasonable adult on par with your current players.

 

(This is a serious question. Please answer seriously.)