Quote from: Koltar;298743my examply was hoing to be this guy aquaintance/friend that joined in on a few sessions of my ;ast campaign. he didn't fit with the group well.
We later analyzed it and figured out that he had trouble notm being the "alpha male" or assumed Alpha dog of the group. That role was technically one of the women that was playing. She was usually leader of the group.

I know what you mean. A woman in my group normally assumes the "leader" role. This one time, this new chap comes along and tries to take over that role. Not really a problem but he made it clear, that the only reason why he was trying to assume this "responsibility" was because guys traditionally lead and apparently none of the blokes in the group were up to the challenge. A pity really, he was a good roleplayer and seemed to click with everyone but very often he would have this uncontrollable urge to share his wacky ideas about life which normally resulted in derisive smirks and put downs from the rest of the group. I did manage to find him a place with another group.

Regards,
David R

Quote from: David R;298741Well, there's always the attitude of gamers expressed by mrk. (he's probably joking, but, it's an attitude I've come across fairly often)

I am joking--and to some degree- serious as well.. Yes, I actually have a Gay Barbarian character. Not some flamboyant stereotype and is actually pretty god dam tough. He's loosely based on Wez from Mad Max 2.

As to female characters, I have quite a few that I have made and played over the years:  Amazon Sorcerers, Half Elf Druid Princess,  Female Dwarven Pit fighter.  Even an  Albino Hermaphrodite Assassin.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;298744Absolutely! But... why is this a problem with roleplaying a different gender particularly?

Two reasons
(1) Because everyone knows people of both genders, and that scrutiny raises the bar. By analogy, I wouldn't ham up an Australian PC in the presence of actual Australians because my faux-Australian accent is not pleasing to the ears of those who know better.
 
(2) Men and women are very similar and are distinguished by relatively small differences. By analogy you might train an octopus to impersonate Charlie Chaplain but no one would ever guess that an octopus was imitating a squid.
 

QuoteI mean, if you're a crap roleplayer, you're crap whatever you're playing - a dwarf, a moslem, a man, a woman, a squid, a Wookie, or even yourself.

Man: I am masculine so this is easy for me to pull off.
Squid: My best sound effects are those slime and suction so I'd be happy to play a squid and astound my fellow players.
Dwarf: I like acting loudly and angrily. An simple and fun role for me.
Muslim: I've got the warcry down pat. I look the part (according to airport security). I am a devout follower of a simlilar religion that shares some religious texts so I could sprinkle those into my 'profound introspection' scenes.
Woman: I've played women PCs and it's not interesting in most game worlds since with the exception of dating, everything is gender neutral. I look and sound like the opposite of woman, so I don't bring much to the table acting wise.
Me: Yeah, I'd rather play a woman than play myself. I like playing a different character in addition to the adventure stuff. For what it's worth, I'm also against games that take place in the same city that I live in because I can't stand all the arguments about what traffic is like and how to get from this place to that place realisticaly. And that reminds me, if I played myself I'm sure that my fellow players would tell me I'm playing myself wrong. Not interested.
A Mute: I like the talking part of roleplaying, so a mute would not be that interesting for me. Although I did get alot of comedic milage out of people... who... talk... very... slowly.
Wookie: I played a Warren, the Alternity version of a Wookie and enjoyed it but I can't do the Wookie sound effects and there's already a guy at game who does a perfect Wookie impersonation so the bar is set too high for me.
 

QuoteThe guys I've seen who've roleplayed women badly, they roleplayed men badly, too. It was like some radical lesbian separatist's idea of men - all macho posing, senseless violence, more posing... Just because you are that thing doesn't mean you can roleplay it well. Just because you're not doesn't mean you can't.

I knew one guy like that. I think he was playing uber-himself with a different name and the largest weapon of the era in which we were playing. Usualy an axe. Then out of the blue he rolled up a woman and spent the entire game session playing with his breasts. Lucky for me, he got addicted to meth at that point and he stopped coming to game. I say it's lucky because that man pretending to be a woman playing with her boobs is Creepy!

Quote from: Koltar;298743David,

 I think I got a really good answer for that thought of yours - unfortunately I need to get sleep.  
Half-concerned I won't phrase it just right.

I had a long-winded anecdote from my recent campaign to illustrate my point - but dang it I'm just too sleepy at the moment.

It boils down to  Some gamers never really matured or grew up even tho their bodies did chronologically.

My example was going to be this guy aquaintance/friend that joined in on a few sessions of my last campaign. He didn't fit with the group well.
We later analyzed it and figured out that he had trouble not being the "alpha male" or assumed Alpha dog of the group. That role was technically one of the women that was playing.

She was usually leader of the group. Also her character was the commander of their starship - a Marava class freighter.....

....I'll come back to this after a few hoyrs of sleep....

....there was more to that story.....

She was usually leader of the group. Also her character was the commander of their starship - a Marava class freighter.....

A couple of sessions after this guy joined the group one of the regular players had agreed to switch off with me and GM 1 to 3 sessions. This was so I could be 'just a player' for 1 or 2 games.
Sounds like a good idea - right?  Normally it would have been - if that new guy wasn't gaming with the group maybe.

 The other player (the only other male besides myself and the new guy) who was now the temporary GM and I had decided I would play one of the two female NPCs that I normally play as the GM. She was a member of the crew and well-like by the other player characters. (Kind of like bumping up Miles O' Brien or Nurse Ogawa to featured character for a week or two on the NEXT GENERATION show)

So we switched off in the middle of a game session - the temp GM's charactrer was knocked out and in the local planet's hospital after a bomb blew up . I had no idea what he planned....I just wanted to play for a couple of sessions.

Unesxpected problem: When I wasn't the GM /authority figure the new player started giving me less respect and his character started hitting on mine in ways that made NO sense. It was weird - all of a sudden, just because I was playing a woman - but NOT as a GM somewhere in his mind he didn't have to give me as much respect. Think part of the problem also may have been the group on those nights was 3 women and 3 guys - usually we were 3 women and 2 men. We normally played the TRAVELLER setting as more advanced and progressive than 'nowadays'. He played his character at times like it was the 1950s or 1960s as far as his attempted banter with female characters and NPCs.

I had to take control of my group back sooner than expected - in 20/20 hindsight I think becuse of the guy that was dabbling with our group. IF it had just been the usual group - I think I could have done a few more sessions as just another player.

Eventually there were other problems with the 'new guy'. He didn't stay with the group long. Half of us knew him from another geek sub-culture.

O heard later that he plays the same way in D&D games. He always wqants to be the leader of the group and he hits on female NPCs the same way he might talk to women in real life.

- Ed C.

Mostly I gm.  But when I do play, the gender is based on the party composition.  If the group is male heavy, I will play a female.  As a gm, I've had to play female npc characters for many, many years.  

Why play a female character?  They provide additional opportunities to achieve the mission goals.  Some npc's will more readily talk to a female character than male. Sometimes it makes it harder and so more of a challenge.

Sometimes it is to support the female player in the group who's character has to deal with all the male characters (and players) by herself.

Sometimes to stretch my dramatic skills since it is cross gender for me.

I've heard all kinds of nonsense that males can't play female characters as if we don't spend at least half of our lives interacting with them on a daily basis.  That we don't have mothers and sisters and wives who are quite willing to give us their opinion and explain their logic.

http://capturingfantasy.com/cross-dressing-playing-a-different-gender

Cross Dressing: Playing a Different Gender
Written by James

May 24, 2008
When creating a character for a role-playing game, don’t feel that you’re limited to the same gender of character that you belong to. Choosing to play a character of either gender, regardless of your own, is perfectly acceptable.

In fact, many players can create characters of the opposite sex and play them extremely well. Some players can play characters of the opposite sex so well that it’s difficult to tell the player’s true gender.

There is one problem with playing a character of a gender not your own: you aren’t intimately familiar with that gender.

Men may struggle with how much feminism to inject in a female character or writing on specific issues women face. Women may have a hard time describing male actions appropriately, because they are unfamiliar with size and breadth of a man’s body.

Research. Find out how much a man can lift. Learn about pregnancy. Become familiar with the process of shaving a beard. Read about the female sense of scent. The more you know about the opposite sex, the better you can believably play a character of that gender.

And if you do see a player giving another gender the old college try, be forgiving.


There is a related post.....
http://capturingfantasy.com/gender-roles
Playing Characters Outside Your Gender
Written by James

March 20, 2009

One of the biggest challenges in role-playing games is to play a character outside your gender. Many love the idea of playing the opposite sex, but very few pull it off well.

Falling into Stereotypes

It’s hardly surprising that it should be so difficult to make a believable opposite-sex character. After all, it’s not as though you can rely on experience. The trap most people fall into is thinking of the opposite sex as a stereotype and crafting a character around that stereotype.

So a woman playing a male character might decide her character is a crude, violent, sex-driven bastard – because that’s a handy stereotype.

The same goes for the man playing a female character. He might choose the femme fatale, ready to seduce any man, solving all of her problems by flashing a bit of thigh to get what she wants.

Stereotypes aren’t believable characters. Worse, they aren’t interesting characters at all. If either of those stereotypical characters were to show up in a B-movie, how likely is it that either of them survives for longer than ten minutes of screen time?

That’s right. The slutty woman and the jerk guy are both going to be disposed of pretty fast. You don’t want other people to dismiss your character that easily.

So how do you get rid of the stereotypes and create a realistic opposite-sex character?

Instilling Humanity

Often, we’re so paralyzed by the differences between men and women that we practically consider them a different species. We’re bewildered by the opposite sex. Where did those guys come from?

If you have no idea how the other sex acts – or worse, you think you know exactly how the other sex acts – you’re forgetting something very basic. We’re all human.

Think of your character’s profession. Your character might be a car mechanic; he or she might also be a high-powered executive with a secret night life of crime-fighting. Or the exact same character could go from being a high-powered executive to being a mechanic. Would he completely change if that happened?

What about if he started out as a man and then magically became a woman? Same personality, different body? Would he start to behave completely counter to his original character?

Not a chance. Gender doesn’t make us behave like a different species any more than a job does.

If you’re so blinded by the immensity that your character is a woman – or a man – you’ll let that one fact be the driving force behind every one of your character’s actions. That will make you fall back on stereotypes to figure out how a man or a woman would act.

Perception Through Gender

So we’ve established that being a man or a woman is not the only thing that makes your character into a person. What else contributes to who he or she might be? Family life, social status, the place the character grew up, the friends and influences he or she has had, any big life-changing experiences…

And just when you thought we’d dismissed it entirely: gender.

Certain events are more likely to happen to men than women, and vice versa. Don’t use this as an excuse for stereotyping, though. Certain events are also more likely to happen to rich people vs. poor people, city folks vs. country folks, orphans than those with siblings.

If you gave your character from the streets of the Bronx a wicked badminton game, that would seem a little strange. It would also be a little strange if your female character was really into monster trucks as a teenager. Could either of those events happen? Absolutely. But you have to be aware you’re working against statistical likelihood.

For example, men are statistically more likely to have played a sport in high school. Does that mean your male character HAS to have played sports or that your female character CAN’T have played sports?

No way. It just means you need to be aware that the experience of a male character who doesn’t play sports would have been different than that of a woman who didn’t play sports. A female character probably wouldn’t think it worth mentioning at all. A male character might have felt isolated or left out from his peers because of it.

Don’t forget to bring all the other factors into play, too. If your male character grew up in Los Angeles and spent his after-school hours learning to be an actor along with half of his male peers, it’s unlikely he was teased for not playing football. Don’t make the likelihood of a gender influence completely override the rest of your character’s history.

Remember that gender is just one element in how your character experiences their life; it’s not the only element. There are far more similarities between men and women than we usually think there are.

Have you ever attempted to play a gender other than your own? Was it successful? What was difficult about it?

I object to the notion that stereotypes aren't interesting or worth roleplaying. Okay, so it ain't Shakespeare but I'd sooner run a game for players roleplaying stereotypes than a game people aren't even trying to roleplay at all, or trying so hard they are stressing themselves and everyone else out.

Long live streotypes and cliches of all varieties, I say!

Quote from: Soylent Green;300205I object to the notion that stereotypes aren't interesting or worth roleplaying. Okay, so it ain't Shakespeare but -!

I agree. As Advanced Fighting Fantasy's Dungeoneer puts it,

   "Don't let yourself get too worried about all this talk about role-playing. While it can be great fun to escape into a new character, he or she will still have an awful lot of you in them. As you must know by now, for we've said it often enough, the ultimate object of all this is for everyone to have fun, not to recreate some form of high dramatic art."