In your experience, if you allow players to play characters of a different gender is it more common for men to play women, women to play men or its about equal?

I tend to run a fair few historical games, and while I try and keep the historical sexism thing fairly mild, I've still had female players choose to play men quite a bit.

I can only think of one time in games that I've run where a man played a woman, and it was actually done very well (I had misgivings beforehand, but was glad that I let him in the end).

Other, I guess.  I've never required or forbidden it, and I don't think any of my players have ever tried.

I tried playing a woman once and gave up.  Either she came across as Tom Hanks in "Bosom Buddies," or the fact that she was female was totally irrelevant, in which case I'm not sure why I was playing a female character.

It is about equal.

Then again, since most of my games are science fiction, Players get to choose any of the fourteen sexes of a particular alien race to play.

(The only odd thing about this is that I have found that I have had to tell new Players that yes, they could play gay characters if they felt more comfortable doing that - but that sexual orientation tends to not come up during my games.)

I'd say it's about equal (but didn't vote) with one caveat - I've had more male players, so I've seen more men play female characters than vice versa.  But as a percentage, I'd say it's roughly equal.  

Most of my players have generally played their own gender most of the time, with occassional characters of the opposite gender.  In our current campaign, the female player is playing a female character, two males are playing male characters, and one male is playing a female character.

In the last campaign with the same group, the female player played a male character, two males played male characters, and one (different) male played a female character.  

Roughly, 25% of the time we have someone playing a character of opposite gender.

I voted "women to play male characters", but I'm really working from a very small sample set. In the decades I've gamed, across a number of gaming groups, none of the men I've gamed with have played female characters. It's never been a consideration or a desire that's been expressed.

I've gamed with two women over the past 10 years - one of them strictly played female characters; the other played a male character in one of my campaigns - and seemed to enjoy it.

In my experience its more common for men to want to play women.

And about 80% of the time that's normal and fine. About 20% of the time it comes off as weird and creepy.

Practically all games I can remember women were playing women and men are usually but not always playing men. Personally I go about 50/50.

My experience it far more common for men to play women. Although I think more of "cute butt"* thing then anything weird.

*Refers to some players of MMORPGs who say they play female character because if they are going to be staring at an character avatar for umpteen hours they might as well have something good to look at.

For the players I encountered the vast majority seem to be interested in the mind eye's image of the female character kicking butt at whatever they are good at (magic, stealth, fighting, etc). Similar to male fans of tv shows/movies with strong female leads like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, etc.

I was handed a pregen female character in a convention and roleplayed mostly by using stereotypes, although toned down a bit.

As an example, She was a illusion mage from GURPs and relied on Create Warrior and Create Servant for helping out the party. She always made sure that they were dressed stylishly with an illusion by taking a round with simple illusion.

It was a fun challenge but something I am not interested in on a regular basis.

On a related note, sometimes we choose characters (or at least we used to) based on a miniature.  Many of the female figures are more interesting (to me) than male counterparts.

Quote from: deadDMwalking;691502On a related note, sometimes we choose characters (or at least we used to) based on a miniature.  Many of the female figures are more interesting (to me) than male counterparts.

I do the same with artwork. I pretty much changed my current Iron Kingdoms character from this to this at the last minute when the latter was posted because <3, seriously.

What Kickstarter is that for, and is it over?

I have almost always had significant numbers of women in my groups - occasionally more than half - and I have been running games for many, many years. I would say my experience parallels that of DeadGMWalking.

-clash

Except for our GM I've never seen a guy play a female character in a tabletop RPG. I've heard it happens but it must be a rare creature.
A number of women I've played with have had male PCs though.

EDIT: Gah! Actually... I'm full of crap because I myself played a female character in our games of Icons. I can't remember my thought process... how I decided she should be female. I think it came out of her character background, powers and the general aesthetic feel I wanted.

In tabletop I'm happy playing characters of either sex. The first serious game I played the GM handed me a female pre-gen (specifically Wanda from The Oldenhaller Contract in the 1st edition Warhammer FRP book) and I just I just played it without a second thought. It never occurred to me that in certain circles cross-genre roleplaying could be a gaming faux-pas or something that might make other player feel uncomfortable. That is only something I learned much later from forums such as this.

These days I tend to stick play more male characters especially with strangers as I see no point in potentially making people feel ill as ease. It's not a big deal.