Roleplay Across the Gender Line

[Silverfaun]

I am male and I have played quite a few female characters in my years. Thankfully, for the most part, my gaming group doesn't have any real problem with it which is nice. But there are occasions where I get odd looks from people which I don't entirely understand. None of my characters have ever been exaggerated in any aspect, male or female, I play them like people with motivations, desires, and quirks that transcend the physical.

I feel like the point of role playing is to embody a new role and, for a little while, pretend to be someone or something you're not. I've also played robots, giant bugmen, and a psychic parasitic brain spider inhabiting the body of a person it killed and no one ever thought it was weird. Okay, maybe that last one.

[ruffdove]

I'm actually playing a female character for the first time right now. It never even occurred to me to do it playing tabletop games, but for some reason a female character popped into my head for a game advertised on this site, I went with it, and she got accepted. PbP is more like story writing, and I've written plenty of stories with female characters so it actually just came more naturally. So far so good - not interested in doing the romance thing, but I've never been interested in in-game romances with male characters either.

[TheLioness]

I'm a straight (albeit slightly gender fluid) female in real life. My current character is a gay male, because why not?

[neltymind]

@Lioness: This thread was dead for nearly a year. Let it die. ;-)

[Endrak]

As an avid reader and attempt-to-writer, I like to play with character tropes. Fantasy as a whole has a problem in that most of their character tropes are designed around male characters. The hulking Conan-type, the sleazy Bard who sleeps with anyone willing, the musketeer, the absent-minded wizard, and the sorrowful assassin are almost exclusively male. In fact, most people reading that line will immediately picture men. There are a lot more.

Compared to that, there are only a few that are usually pictured as women. The naive noble with a gift for politics and the sarcastic street thief spring to mind immediately, but I have trouble thinking of others.

So for me, it's not so much that I want to play female or male characters, but that I want to avoid doing the things that have already been done to death. I create a character and I think that the world does not need another Grognar, Tribal Leader of the Frozen North. But it could really use some Leeta van Szant, Unscrupulous Merchant and Bruce Wayne of the Frozen North.

inb4 we get a visit from the Dark Inquisitors sent to investigate rumors of unlawful Thread Necromancy.

[InCORAgible]

I was actually just wondering this myself. I am a female and haven't played a male character before and had assumed the majority of people tended to play their gender but I know when I made my first campaign on here I had 10 people with only one girl in it other than me but over half playing females so it seems it is either a bit easier for men to cross the gender line or perhaps there is just a slightly higher amount of men on the site than females? I am not sure why I haven't played male before, it's not that I don't feel I can but maybe a hesitance to not bring an authenticity into the role and writing? It's also funny to read in here about so much flirting as I haven't seen much of that without cracking an adult joke in character myself.

[Alphaeus]

{Well, I have always enjoyed Necromancy...}

To be fair, although I typically RP as my gender (male), I'm totally comfortable writing as either gender. If fact, IRL I often make use of shifter builds that change between sex (great disguise and bluff potential, ya know?) which makes things even more complex. Overall I think it's enjoyable and helps to balance a game from being too much of one gender. Besides, it allows me to be versatile and experiment with things I can't do if I just play a guy.

[Vaynol]

I'm equally comfortable playing either gender. Typically my character creation process centres around finding the picture first and then building my concept around it. For any specific game, I will look for good character art until I see something that screams out at me "yes that fits the game I'm applying for". I'll then look at the picture and I'll ask myself "what sort of person do I see here? Who are you?".

From that point I can build my concept. Whether that character is male or female is pretty irrelevant to me -- its more the character themselves I'm interested in.

[JackinIrons]

This is an interesting thing. I am a male, who plays both male and female characters, but for me the gender isn't too important. The gender falls in line with the story or theme I want to play with, the trope I want to follow or sometimes break. And then, when creating the character, I try to imagine his/her entire life as if he/she were real.

[the secret fire]

I frequently RP female characters in spite of being, as far as I know, a heterosexual man. In fact, my very first character (in a great and brutal MERPS campaign) was a female elf. The DM had us roll for all the stats, and she rolled a 100 for appearance. This led to some interesting RP scenarios, but I don't recall ever being uncomfortable about it.

I can't judge my own abilities with anything resembling objectivity, but I've generally gotten good feedback from other gamers about how I handle female characters, both as a player and DM. I probably run about an even 50-50 split between male and female characters. Tend not to focus too much on romance, but I will hit the ball back over the net if someone else wants to go there. Never really given too much thought as to why I choose to game this way while many others do not.

[Auron3991]

Does this thread have a phylactery or something? Oh well, might as well add to it.

Personally, while I'm comfortable RPing either gender (at least so long as I'm not trying to pull off a romantic relationship, to which I'm not comfortable period), I tend to end up playing female characters in video games due to character stats, so I try to stick to male characters while in tabletop.

[WitM]

That was an interesting read while doing the laundry. Might as well add my 2 cents worth.

Every single character I played was male until 2005. After that it's been more or less 50/50, but basically every memorable character was female. I've been hit on in WoW and GW2 when just typing, but not when using voice. That was one of the reasons I actually why I started playing female characters, to see what my daughter would end up experiencing, the other was as someone else mentioned the character options and aesthetics.

After that, when I found PbP, it became more about exploring different elements of myself, trying to step into someone else's shoes, and seeing how people react. Now I'm equally comfortable playing male or female. I am however incredibly uncomfortable playing non-humans other than dwarves and half-elves. I never feel like I can do those justice in any meaningful way. I looked at the 5e race options and I just blanked on anything other than human. It's strange. I guess I'll have to challenge myself one of these days.

[Admin Dirk]

Thought I would recheck my current PC's, and I am only playing two females, and four males.

3 females, if you count the paladin's mount as a mare.

That's actually a low percentage of female to male for me, but like many here, i don't aim to have either one, I begin with a PC concept, and then try to feel which gender is more right for it (and the backstory, growth, etc.).

[Eddas]

IRL games, I stick to playing male characters. I'd feel silly trying to RP a female character.

I keep picturing the scene from the first episode of Sword Art Online, when all the players avatars are force changed to look like the players themselves, and suddenly a cute female character is a teenaged guy.


In online PbP games, while I mostly play male characters, I do play female characters from time to time.

In MMOs I tend to play females more often mostly to get people to give me stuff and help me out on quests. I found out a long time ago its easier as a hot female character than it is as a male character. Granted, I dont play MMOs very often anymore.

[Madripper]

Checking all the games MMO, PC, PS4 my characters are 50/50. I've never noticed any different treatment when playing a female character. Maybe all my female characters are ugly hahah.