Hello. I am writing a paper for my Writing 122 class with a topic of "speculating on a cause." I have decided that I will write on why people sometimes play a character of the opposite gender when they play roleplaying games, and I thought that the best way to gather information on that topic is to simply ask other people why they do it, whether its for the challenge, change of pace, etcetera. Any reply would be helpful.
Thanks!
For me, it was boredom with the norm.
After running sixty male characters in a row I found the roleplaying was getting a little stale. Rolled up a lady just to mix it up and try something new.
I never indulged base instinct and had her join a brothel or do a centaur, but I did keep in mind what I perceived to be her feminine sensibilities and needs when plotting her words and actions.
It was fun and she survived until retirement. Win/win.
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I've never given it a thought before as to why. Why not?
I am not an elf, yet have tried to imagine what it would be like to be a long-living, carefree being of artistic grace.
Neither of my parents are demons, yet have tried to imagine what it would be like to struggle in a society where your body and soul is obviously stamped with Evil and face prejudice from the same people you risk your life to protect.
I am not noble, yet have put myself in the shoes of an honorable paladin dedicated to live a life of truth and justice.
The examples go on. Why do we role-play? Escapism is only part of it. Many of us do it as a way to put ourselves in someone else's lives, to see things from a different perspective. Does it matter if you are trying to portray a different race, gender, or sexual orientation? Being someone different is the whole point of fantasy.
As to what kind of females I've played, there is nothing lewd or perverted with the motives or behaviours of such charectars (at least, not any more so than that of male charectars). Women do approach situations from a different mindset, deal with problems differently (anyone who has been in a serious relationship will attest to that), and are concerned with different issues.
What prompts me to create a charectar as a female, as opposed to a male? Some charectar concepts seem to "feel" better suited as a female when thinking of them (for example, my druid who personified the "Mother Nature" image), some races seem to have a more inspiring image as a female (elves as opposed to dwarves), or sometimes it's because I haven't portrayed a female in a while and feel like something different (the binder I had who was devoted to Kas). In my gaming group, playing charectars as a different gender is quite common, amongst both male and female gamers.
Agh! I wrote up a great post and the board just ate it! Here it is again.
Over the last summer, my friend Andy played a female half-orc barbarian named Shump. In combat, she was a seven foot mountain of death. In social situations, she was ditzy, air-headed and clumsy, but also oddly sweet and innocent. She was almost child-like at times. She wore her hair in pig tails, insisted on skirts with lots of ribbons under her armor and swung a rhinestone studded greataxe. When he spoke in character, he used a high falsetto (remember: seven foot tall female half-orc with a 20 strength), expressed dismay at anything "icky", was afraid of spiders and batted her eyelashes at any charismatic men that crossed her path. During an investigation, he even roleplayed her attempting to finagle a date out of a halfling contact.
Shump made us all laugh uproariously, and I have never seen any of my players get into a character with such gusto and enthusiasm. Part of the humor of the character was in the juxtapositon of the character's physical aspect with Andy's roleplaying (which perfectly fit her concept). Another aspect was the fact that he was playing an archetypal female for our group of 20 year old men. He was acting as our secret perception of women: frivilous, air-headed and destructive on one side, but also genuinely sweet, caring and endearing on the other. In Shump, Andy took something that even those of us in relationships didn't understand and made it something we could laugh at.
That may sound a bit mean-spirited, like a "He-Man Woman Haters" club or something, but I'll point out that without that character's extreme personality, they would have been very flat. Everyone has played the brutishly strong and dumb meat grinder character. By adding that "feminine touch", Shump became three dimensional. Also tethered to the character, in the back of our minds, admittedly, is the real issue of gender identity. How do "masculine" women like bodybuilders, police, etc. fit into our concept of what is beautiful and what is feminine? He made a character that struggled with that concept in a light-hearted fashion for the sake of humor, but in the end, it was a real idea that he was thinking about. In the end, Shump is more memorable than a lot of other characters that we've run together that didn't have that comedic spin; which was tied to her gender.
I play characters of both genders, depending on character concepts, campaign and indeed mood. Why? Well, why not?
Like for Thammuz, gender is one of the options to vary like is race, social status, age etc. And as I am also a bit androgynous in real life (I can switch from girly to burly and back rather easily) playing different genders comes as no biggie.
As bad rap as stereotypes get, I think they are rather useful tools in roleplaying different characters...as long as one remembers that they are indeed stereotypes and breaking them is as fun as using them if not more so. They are still such clear symbols that they are easy to slip in and also for other players to accept and understand.
But indeed, I have played exotic dancer who runs in desert in high heels (not easy!), bull dyke werewolf, Arnold-Conan-type barbarian (those who haven't should, at least once), bisexual dwarf masseur/healer...and many characters which just were women or men (or sometimes neither).
I tried and gave up playing females long ago. For the life of me, I just couldn´t get into that mindset. It perhaps comes down to the female mindset beind more alien than that of fantastic creatures, or some other cliché like that.
To put it in another way: In playing a male, I have common ground in the general mindset. For females, I somehow don´t get it. (And mostly, I don´t play too exotic creatures, as I find that very diffcult to portray believably)
Stefan
I have admitted the magpie-like borrowing of various sources and I use it also for characters. I pick some characteristics of a person I know or a character in fact or fiction and then use that as basis on getting to mindset of character. So it's not like "I play this character as man" but "I play this character as Conan (movie version)". Gender comes along.
Some of the references are obvious (like that Conan), some are from such obscure sources that nobody else in our group have heard of those, some are just so mutated or from such strange sources that few people make the connection if I don't mention it ("my elven archer is based on Miranda from Sex And The City" or "my druid is based on my grandmother").
We have two of the same thread discussions floating around out there.
'Cause I'm the DM?
I just go where inspiration takes me.
We have two of the same thread discussions floating around out there.
I posted this in both the "D&D" and the "Other RPGs" forums so that I could pick up hits from people that only visit either forum. Sorry for the confusion.
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I did it once in the '70's. I read somewhere that Merlin was the outcome of a female wizard and an incubus. Yea, i wanted to have a super child with extra powers and play him when he came of age. I figured; why not? He would have some regenerating abilities as well as some special traits unique only to him. Kids! Yes, i was one of them.
Thoth-Amon
For me, it was boredom with the norm. After running sixty male characters in a row I found the roleplaying was getting a little stale. Rolled up a lady just to mix it up and try something new. I never indulged base instinct and had her join a brothel or do a centaur, but I did keep in mind what I perceived to be her feminine sensibilities and needs when plotting her words and actions. It was fun and she survived until retirement. Win/win.
My reasons were similar to The Jade. After a while, it's fun to try something new. Plus, female NPC artwork and miniatures that I'd saved up for use as a DM were open to me as a player.
It is interesting, though... as a DM, I have to roleplay female NPCs all the time. Nobody ever thinks that's strange. Why there's a big difference with cross-playing as a PC, I'm not sure. Maturity of the playing group maybe. Although it does seem to be far less of an issue when female gamers roll up a male character to play.
Laeknir
Dude Looks Like a Lady (Elf)
Almost every role-playing gamer has met one: a person who plays a transvirtual character; in other words, a character whose sex is not the same as its player’s (Jacobs 8). From massive multiplayer online role-playing games to small pen and paper groups with only two or three people, transvirtual characters are everywhere. There are many people who play transvirtual characters. Some people do it for the role-playing, others do it for mechanical benefits, and some just plain prefer characters of the opposite sex.
About 30% of those who play transvirtual characters do so for the role-playing experience (Roberts 532). Most role-playing games are about escapism: leaving work and troubles behind for three hours and taking up a fake persona to save the universe. In that spirit, many gamers try to be completely different from their real selves. Some do this by playing maniacal axe-wielding minotaurs, others by playing characters who are gender neutral or of the opposite sex (Jacobs 8). We have all been told at one point or another that if everyone were the same that the world would be boring. The same goes for role-playing games.
As part of escapism, some games are set in historical Europe or in a world with similar social settings. During those times, women did not have many of the rights they have today. They were treated as if they were inferior at best. A man may enjoy playing a woman in that era to get a feel for how bad it really was, and a woman may play a man to avoid the situation entirely (Bridges 229-230).
I have a friend named Ken who used to play Diablo 2 religiously, almost always as a sorceress. Why did he play a female character? There was no male equivalent of the sorceress in Diablo 2. In some games, people play transvirtual characters because certain options are only available to the opposite sex. Perhaps there are prestige classes or skills accessible only to certain genders, or maybe the option for a same sex character is simply not there (Jacobs 8). In Diablo 2, for example, all necromancers are male and all amazons are female, simple as that. A game may also be set in a world with species that have only one playable sex because the other is non-intelligent, such as the insect-like khepri (Baur 44-45). Besides, in a third-person video game where there are no statistical differences between the sexes, wouldn’t a male gamer prefer to look at a female character’s backside all day (Olivas)?
Just as people like to eat different things, gamers prefer to play different kinds of characters. Every slot machine in Las Vegas shows us that even a small infrequent pay-off can cause a repeated behavior (Coon 176-177). If a person’s same sex characters die quickly and tragically several times in a row, and then his transvirtual characters survive a series of difficult adventures, it is likely a person will prefer playing ‘luckier’ transvirtual characters (Jacobs 8).
Instead of relying on past experience, some people prefer to create characters based on a concept. They go out, see a movie or read a book they really enjoy, and decide that their character will be the next Awesome McCoolperson. Maybe they see a painting and think, “Wow! That looks awesome! I want my character to look like that!” Depending on the player, they may copy the sex of the character as well as the look, creating opposite sexed characters (Decker 12).
Keeping on the concept idea, someone may try to create a concept from a type of person, not just an individual seen in a movie or painting. Be it the sly seductress, the thick-skulled barbarian, or the intelligent prince, they will create their character with that goal in mind, and it’s difficult to play a male seductress (Decker 12).
In looking at this situation, some people may say that those who prefer transvirtual characters are expressing homosexuality or using their character as a form of cross-dressing. In fact, though, only about five percent of gamers who play transvirtuals actually took their sexual preferences into account when creating their characters (Roberts 532).
With its presence acknowledged and often played upon in advertising (Fantasy), few can deny the existence of transvirtual characters in the broad universe of gaming. What would drive a person to create such a character? The answers are simple. Some like the role-playing and mechanical advantages, others prefer transvirtuals for a myriad of personal reasons. The one answer that supersedes them all, however, is that they enjoy it.Works Cited
Baur, Wolfgang. “People of Bas-Lag.” Dragon. February 2007: 42-49.
Bridges, Bill, et al. Dark Ages: Mage. Stone Mountain: White Wolf Publishing, Inc., 2002.
Coon, Dennis. Introduction to Psychology: Exploration and Application. 2nd ed. Los Angeles: West Publishing Company, 1980.
Decker, Jesse, et al. Dungeon Master’s Guide II. Renton: Wizards of the Coast, 2005.
Diablo 2. Computer Game. Vers. 1.03. Blizzard Entertainment, 2000.
Fantasy Grounds 2. Advertisement. Dungeon. March 2007: 99.
Jacobs, James. “Girls are Luckier.” Dungeon. March 2007: 8.
Roberts, Lynne, and Malcolm Parks. “The Social Geography of Gender-Switching in Virtual Environments on the Internet.” Information, Communication & Society 2:4 (1999): 521-540.
Well, here's the paper. It got a 90%. Thanks for the Ideas.
thanks for the update post, I award 5 exps for attentiveness and not leaving us hanging; very responsible of you.