When is a Man Not a Man?
Most people when they design a character to play in a RPG chose to play the same gender as they are. Every now and then we choose to play one of the opposite sex. The reasons we do this and the consequences of that choice are my theme today.
RPGs not video games
First I feel the need to clarify. I am not talking about video games. There is a long tradition of playing off gender in video games. Some men do this for psychological advantage in MMORPGs, some because they are going to be staring at the character for hours so they pick something more visually appealing. Many times I find myself playing female characters in video games because they have better options for customization than their male counterparts. For example: When I first obtained Jedi Knight III: Jedi Academy I was extremely psyched to play a Twi’lek Jedi. Unfortunately for me the game only allowed female characters to have that race so I was forced to play a girl or choose another race. In RPGs we have no such restrictions. The only reason we have to play a cross-gender character is if we desire to (Barring DM intervention of course: “In this campaign you will all be Amazons!”)
The hindrances
Many players are intimidated or uncomfortable with the notion. Others simply do not wish to put that much effort into their recreational activities. Some groups put pressure on their members to play along gender lines just to make things easier. A new gaming group with people meeting each other for the first time will often do this. Pronouns can also be a problem. Many times I’ve heard a character referred to as “He…she…it, whatever.” It might be funny once but it soon will become a point of contention. The person playing cross-gender will feel they are not taken seriously, and the other players will be distracted.
In the Old Days
In the early days of AD&D 1st Ed. it was common for female gamers to play male characters (if you could say that there was anything common about female gamers back then) simply because the rules were stacked against female characters; there were Strength limitations based on gender. Since there were no matching advantage there was really very little encouraging the play of female characters.
Why bother?
In my creation reflections post I discussed my methods of character creation. Playing a cross-gender character can influence and add flavor to all of the methods I mentioned there. Fro example: there are many good female archetypes I could choose from (Priestess/Earth Mother/Temptress), a female aspect could enhance a design built on a mechanic that has been used before, and there are a plethora of female heroes to choose from in modern media (Anyone from BSG, Serenity, or even Kill Bill.) For me, the choice to play a female character has to be tied into foundation of the character I want to play.
Others have their own reasons. The most common is the desire to try something different. It can be a challenge and a lot of fun. I’ve seen female players play cross-gender in order to fit in smoother with an exclusively male party. I believe that it is a good thing to have a mix of genders in a party so in an exclusively male gaming group it is to everyone’s benefit if someone plays cross-gender. If you play, or have played cross-gender before, please leave a comment and share your reasons.
My current experiment
I am currently playing a female elven druid. I haven’t played a female character for about 15 years. Even back then I would only create characters that were tied into established characters. The sister/girlfriend/daughter of whatever character I was retiring. When I first conceived my new character I originally thought of it as a male. As I developed the character’s history the idea that it was better suited to a female lurked in the back of my mind. Part of the character concept was taken from the book Kushiel’s Dart by Jacqueline Carey. The hero of that story is female, but the characters I was drawing most of my inspiration from were her male counterparts. As I wrote more background, it became apparent that the female option should be explored. I started developing a parallel background for a female aspect. I chose to make the character have a fraternal twin and wrote the back story for each of them, making sure they both ended up at the starting point I’d arranged with the DM. In the end it came down to the week when we were going to start play that I decided to go with the female version.
Tale of Confusion
As an example of how confusing it can get, and of how much fun still can be had, here is a story from a campaign back in the early 90’s. My sister played in 2 campaigns back then. In mine she played the female elven bard named Wren. In our friends campaign she played a male elven thief named Wren. The DM of that campaign also played in my campaign. He had a horrible time keeping things straight. The rest of us playing in his campaign slipped from time to time but for the most part we learned. The DM would constantly use ‘she’ for the male Wren. Our party released Noble Genie and things started to get weird. The next time the DM called Wren ‘she’ we corrected him and he quickly said that he was right and added the Genie’s laughter. From then on whenever the DM used a pronoun to refer to Wren it would always be the correct one, regardless of what he/she was before he said it. It was a constant struggle between the DM’s training to call Wren ‘he’ and his natural inclination to call Wren ‘she’. The best part about this whole thing is that my sister took it all in stride and learned to incorporate it into Wren’s personality and have fun with it.
Posted on August 4th, 2006 at 12:51 pm. About 'When is a Man Not a Man?'.
The inter-party dynamics of any adventuring party are always better with at least 1 female character in the group. Many more story possibilities. Oh, by the way, the most fun I ever had playing a female character was the time that I played a half-succubus in a 40s style pulp adventure world. Other male characters in the party were seriously frightened by what this chick could do. It was totally over the top, but oh so much fun.
Posted on August 4th, 2006 at 1:03 pm. About 'When is a Man Not a Man?'.
I’ve only played a female character once and it was one of the most fun PCs I’ve ever created.
I was asked to play a cleric because the party didn’t have any healers. I met them halfway in that request (I played a cleric, just not the kind that heals) and in the process, the ‘feel’ of the character demanded that she be female. The same concepts behind a male character would have played out very differently and probably not as well.
I’m much more trusting of my muse since I’ve played Grace ‘Taker.
Posted on August 4th, 2006 at 3:20 pm. About 'When is a Man Not a Man?'.
I’m currently playing a female human rogue, and it’s one of my all time favorite characters. I made the choice because, as I was developing the character’s backstory and stats, I just kept picturing her as a woman. It just made sense. I think I’m having a much easier time with it, though, because the campaign is occuring exclusively online over Fantasygrounds. So the other players aren’t confused by a masculine voice or appearance, all they see is a feminine name and a small avatar of a woman. The other players all know I’m male of course, but it hasn’t been an issue.
Posted on August 4th, 2006 at 4:09 pm. About 'When is a Man Not a Man?'.
I don’t know, MetalJim, I always felt that the inter-party dynamics of any adventuring party are always better with at least 1 female PLAYER in the group! But I’m biased! LOL
I’ll admit that about three-quarters of the time I stick with my own female gender, for a couple reasons.
1) It’s easier to identify with the character. Let’s face it, almost all of us build a lot of ourselves into our characters, so it’s no wonder that our general temperments shine through nearly every character we play.
2) To no one’s surprise, most of my gaming groups have been almost entirely male, and most of the characters in those groups have also been male. There’s a natural tendency to want to balance out some of that testosterone, not to mention that it opens up more game-play possibilities by having both genders available.
On a side note, I did have the opportunity once to play in a RPG campaign with 3 males and 3 females. (Impossible, you say? Well, it happened.) Three of the six players were playing cross-gendered (not me), and needless to say things could sometimes be a little confusing at the table!
When I choose to play cross-gender, it is because I have envisioned a concept for the character during creation, and that concept happens to fit better as a male character. Or, to look a little deeper, that character concept resonates more with my own masculine tendencies rather than my more typical feminine tendencies. It’s that whole yin/yang thing.
And sometimes it’s just fun to stand convention on its head!
Posted on August 4th, 2006 at 4:50 pm. About 'When is a Man Not a Man?'.
As an additional note, there is a female player in my current campaign and she loves the fact that her character has another female to talk to, even though it is being played by a man. Were there more female players in the game, I would probably cross-play less, but there is something to be said for having both sexes in a group.
Posted on August 5th, 2006 at 9:30 am. About 'When is a Man Not a Man?'.
I would have to agree with my shadowy cohort that it’s easier to identify and thus easier to play the gender you are, barring some exceptions that I won’t delve into. I have played some female characters, some less convincing than others. But I think some characters were less convincing (at least in my eyes) because I did not have a grasp of their identity, not so much that they were female.
I think I played female characters before just to do something different, to switch things up. A good example was the contrast between my completely over the top Street Sam/Gang Lord, Snake, and my Cat Shaman adept, Mist. Snake was at the forefront alot in the Shadowrun campaign because he had a ton of contacts and alot of influence in the local area. He was also a brutal physical combatant so he central in combat scenarios as well as the info gathering and such. The only thing he did not do was deck. After a few years of Snake, as much as I love(d) the character I wanted to change things up.
So I created a more subtle character. I decided to go the way of making an upper class dilettante that was bored with aristrocracy. I created a stealth based character with a taste for the finer things in life that was also a Cat Shaman Adept. The features of a CSA and just the general idea of a feline centric character made it that much easier for a female character to emerge from the concept.
Looking back upon her and an ensuing character, Elena, I think deciding gender later, after developing a good concept of the character and their background(much like Random did) is a good way to go. My opinion is to decide upon what to play first by developing character traits, a background of some sorts, functionality and role. A gender may emerge from that and then finer details can be brought out. Mist is a character I wish I had the opportunity to play more of, because I really enjoyed the concept. Elena a derivative of Mist but her dynamic changed drastically after I rolled her stats… Afterwards I decided to model her after Lara Croft of Tomb Raider fame (I had just seen the first movie as well), a bit self-assured, and absurdly capable and creative in handling situations. My current character, Lucien, a straight sorceror of elven heritage, was less thought out. I had decided to fill a niche for the party and did not mind as I had not played a wizard type in D&D for so long.
It has taken some time to get a feel for him but I am happy with him. I did not give much thought to his gender but in the end he is a case that neither gender would be ‘wrong’ for the character. Though due to his high charisma I envision him a bit of a ladies man, it’d be hard to envision a character that enjoys many men, but maybe that is because of current societal standards regarding the same issue.
Posted on August 5th, 2006 at 2:37 pm. About 'When is a Man Not a Man?'.
I am a female player who plays male characters about half the time. (Ask MetalJim; he knows me.)
I don’t have a problem identifying with the male characters. I never have. The main reason is that my characters, male and female, are characters, not just a list of statistics, attributes, and skills. Each has a past, a family, desires, hopes–not all of which are relevant to the game, but make the character easier to understand and role play.
When I play in the Theatrix system, some of this development is required because of the nature of the game. But I do it with my D&D characters too. My most recent D&D character, Sullah, took up as a ranger because his father was one. He has a foreign mother and is sensitive about his half-breed status and the flack that his mother takes. He hates his mother’s family, because of their treatment of her before her marriage. He is adventuring to prove and support himself, and to make himself stand out among his large extended family.
Are all these facts about Sullah relevant to the game? Not all of it. Sometimes people react to him badly because he is a half-breed and, at others, his well-known and highly extended paternal family supplies or acts as contacts. But giving Sullah a racial background, a history, and a family takes him out of the realms of a list of statistics and makes him easier to role play. I know not to play him as a loner; he’s used to the society of a large family. I know to play him as a little protective of his friends, because he’s had to protect his mother and younger siblings.
In general, I find that when players cross genders, they tend to play what Random calls “archetypes,” but quickly these archetypes descend into caricatures and stereotypes, not characters with depth and range, with traits and history. MetalJim’s succubus character is an example: the femme fatale, helpless in the face of her own desire. There’s nothing wrong with starting with an archetype–the woman warrior, the femme fatale–but if there’s nothing else to the character but the archetype, the character degenerates fast into nothing but extremes.
I found it strange that MetalJim mentioned Amy the Succubus and not the more successful female characters he’s played: Harmony, a descendant of hippies but not totally hippie herself, somewhat bookish, independent. Or Jayna, a recent NPC, neither prude nor slut, both victim and fighter, not helpless but needing assistance, proud, determined, longing for freedom.
And how did MetalJim develop her so richly? By giving her a past and personality traits along with her Strength, Wisdom, Intelligence, etc. and list of skills.
It really is that easy.