Greetings!

I had a recent discussion with one of my friends who used to play a lot of D&D and is currently watching a youtube D&D game where all the players are male but all or almost all of their characters are female and we discussed that the game lacked a lot of roleplaying since the players were basically playing dudes with tits, acting no different than if the characters were male or female.

I think a character's outlook, the way he or she sees the world and acts should be informed by his or her upbringing, culture and life experiences. The life experience of a man is not the same as the life experience of a woman, even if they both come from the same background.

In this sense, even though I like the idea of roleplaying a character that is not necessarily similar to who you are, I find the idea of how I would roleplay a woman difficult. I have never done this, as all my characters have been male. And thinking on it, I am not sure if I could really wrap my head around playing as a female character. This is also assuming a true intention to roleplay as a character of the opposite gender and not just using it as an excuse to act a whore or any other weird sexual fantasies, since nobody wants to play in those games anyways.

Personally, the idea doesn't really appeal to me and is not something I see myself ever doing, but I found that is very popular, more so than I would have imagined and not really something recent.

So, what say you? Have you done this? Do you allow this in your games? Let me know what you think about it!

Does the GM only portray characters of one sex?  No?  Then there's your answer.

I don't care. I've played both for different reasons at different times. Not a big deal.

Now if someone wanted to play a different gender just so they could grandstand about it to make sort of political or social point. They're no longer welcome at my table.

I actually only played a lady for the first time recently.  The funny thing is that I chose to do this because the group never gets any female players or characters and I thought having a chick in the party would mix things up a bit. Fast forward a few weeks, the player lineup has changed and I found myself in a party of five male players, four of which were playing women. That was a bit weird. 

If you take it seriously and try to put yourself in the mind of the opposite sex, it's an interesting enough experience. Priorities change and you might end up seeing some different approaches to roleplaying situations. I did tire of it pretty quickly, though. One of the other players in the group was very clearly playing "a dude with tits", which I found mildly annoying. The character was basically lesbian Conan, complete with rescuing buxom princesses and carrying them off. Far be it from me to harsh another player's mellow, but it does kind of defeat the purpose. Also the DM repeatedly used the female characters as an excuse to put the group under threat of enslavement and implied rape, which was an annoyance all on its own.

In my own games I always let players play whatever sex they want. I don't see why people get hung up about it, and as mentioned above, it's sometimes the only way you're going to get any female PCs. Fortunately, I haven't yet had anyone use it as an excuse to play a dumb bimbo or anything like that.

I allow players in my game to play a character of an opposite sex as long as they don't get stupid with it.  If they get stupid (Hasn't happened yet) then I will kill the character and not let them make a character of the opposite sex.

I have played characters of an opposite sex.  Didn't do anything stupid, basically played female characters who basically ignored the male characters for everything except whatever the game is about.

I'm not an elf, a magic-user, a commando or an astronaut, either, but I've played all those in a roleplaying game.

And as GM I've played everything. I don't suddenly acquire brilliant roleplaying abilities simply because I put up a GM screen and consult my notes. I'm just as awful or awesome as I was before when I just played.

I think maturity levels come into it.  When I was running games for fourteen year old boys, I wound up banning female characters for some reason.  On the other hand there was a guy in his late thirties who made one lesbian, stripper, ninja after another.  So there's that.

But yeah, most reasonably mature people can play the opposite gender if they wanna.  Hell nowadays you have to roll a d30 or something.

Yes, and being in UK I don't think this has ever been an issue in in-person games. I guess us Brits are kinda gender fluid.  I've occasionally seen Americans say people shouldn't play opposite sex. And I had a right wing Norwegian player who didn't think female adventurers should be allowed, not sure what he felt about the female players - probably that they should be playing male PCs.

I often see male and female players play Red Sonja types, never had a problem with that. Haven't really seen a male player play a sex crazed bimbo since I & the player were 14/15. In the games I'm running right now:

5e D&D Basic: 4 players 3m 1f, all playing same-sex characters. No romance or sex.

Cyberpunk Red: 7 players 6m 1f. 2 of the men are playing female characters, other 5 PCs are same-sex. One of those two is a lesbian Corporate exec but the player chose a rather unattractive pic for the PC, dresses conservatively, and while she fantasises about seducing some of the female NPCs she's never yet made a move on any of them, so I wouldn't really call her a 'lesbian stripper ninja' PC. The other one is straight but seems uninterested in sex & relationships, grieving the loss of her child a year ago. The player did suggest that one of her NPC female friends had a crush on her, which I went with. The female player's female PC is straight and fancies one or two of the male NPCs, nothing has happened yet. Of the 4 male PCs, one has a gf, one has a harem of ladies, two are unattached.

I mostly GM but maybe 1/3 of my PCs are female. I was playing a female pregen Consuela diSiestro, Estalian Duelist, in a WHFRP campaign recently. Cool character, not a lesbian. She did have sex once, with a city guard she took a liking to after a tough adventure. Stress relief rather than anything serious; I did get a few comments from the other players.  Some female players with female PCs will often do similar (Greeba the Half-Orc in my FR game was slightly notorious) & I don't think that was out of line. And of course my female NPCs run the gamut of personalities. In Cyberpunk Red recently I've been playing NPC Scarlet Harris (Wrecker), a sophomore Poli-Sci/Journalism student Zoner Antifa child of privilege (daughter of a Network 54 Vice President) who was interrogated by the PCs, getting into her head was quite interesting. 

In my Avatar that's a pic the player of Mover, Brazilian Solo, did of Mover with Smoke, a young NPC Fixer, lighting up after a mission. Smoke kinda fancies Mover, and I think vice versa, but neither is looking for a relationship. Definitely not Lesbian, not a Stripper, not a Ninja. 

I voted "Yes, Depends".
I'm sure we've all known the guy playing the female character for cheap titilation. We don't need that at the table.
For the most part, I don't care.

None of the answers are a good fit for me or my group, so you'll get a custom response and no vote in the poll, sorry.

The answer in my case is "No opposit gender characters", but simply because:

• I'm the forever GM of a fairly close knit group that has played together for decades
• I know who I'm playing with and what will happen (i.e: a fucking mess) if I'll allow this

For other groups, the answer is a solid "maybe": if the character concept is good and the character can be solidly and plausibly roleplayed I'll allow it, otherwise no.

Quote from: ForgottenF on April 03, 2024, 11:09:16 PM
The character was basically lesbian Conan, complete with rescuing buxom princesses and carrying them off.

For a certain kind of game, that sounds awesome. 

I mostly see it only in playing over text, which makes it easier to roleplay the character since you can just narrate and describe. It has been fine there. In person it never has come up.

It's rarely a good idea.

And so often, half the table forgets that Tim is playing Baroness Tatiana and Paula is playing Pardok of the Axe...because Tim looks like Tim and Paula has boobies. 

It's always funny to see who does a worse job. Men pretending to be women or women pretending to be men. Both do a FAR better job pretending to be elves and orcs.

As with everything, know your group and make decisions accordingly.

Don't care as long as they are not just using it as an excuse to be an arse at the table. Otherwise fine.