
The 8th Dwarf |

The 8th Dwarf wrote:I try not to play the same gender, class or species twice in a row.
As for cultural analogs I have not played a Sub Saharan African (or African American in a modern/Sifi game) analog. I am unfamiliar with the cultural aspects, I do not feel that I could do such a character justice.
I am more than happy to play Australian Aboriginal, Papuan, Maori, Pacific Islander, SE Asian, Indian, Middle Eastern, European, and Ancient MesoAmerican analogs because my studies have given me a level of knowledge in those cultures that makes me feel I can portray a character without playing to stereotypes.
Lol, don't want to play a bloodthirsty Assyrian? An archer with fine teamwork with the shieldbearer in the party? Would that be too stereotypical?
Would you instead prefer to play a pacifist archery-hating Assyrian with no teamwork?
That is not what I said....If I want to play Ashurbanipal the Neo-Assyrian charioteer I would make him more than the blood thirsty stereotype. The Assyrians were highly cultured and well read with fantastic craftsmanship and horsemanship. My character would have a lot more depth than just some lazy kludged together character.

Larkos |

Larkos wrote:Also, is it me or have most of the people who have absolutely no problem with playing characters that are not like them GMs?I'm one of the few (only?) posters who stated being uncomfortable playing characters too far removed with cultures that I know. Yet I'm an accomplished DM, and a theatre actor (although I admit doing design and tech work exclusively over the last 10 years).
I don't see playing a PC the same as playing a NPC, or be given a role to play. There are things I allow myself to do when playing NPCs or that are allowed for me when assigned a role, but that I won't allow myself if I have the full freedom and responsibility of playing a PC. Personal engagement isn't the same, at least not in my case.
I should have been more clear. I meant in this thread the one who are more comfortable tend to be GMs. I didn't mean all of the time and everywhere.

Qunnessaa |
1 person marked this as a favorite. |

Hi all,
After reading a few different threads, I'd like to delve deeper into this topic. Do you generally only play characters that are of your same race? Meaning that if you are black/brown/white in real life you tend to always play black/brown/white characters in game?
If you are a male, do you only ever play male characters? And for female players, do you only ever play female characters?
Related to that, if one of the other players create a character that crosses gender or racial boundaries from what they are in real life, does that make you uncomfortable?
Hmm. I tend to take the shortcut in developing my characters of exaggerating one or two particular aspects of my personality in one way or another and seeing where things go from there, with a bit of wish-fulfillment thrown in. I’m not very graceful, pretty, or well-connected in real life, and I think (well, maybe not really) it’s a shame that we can’t actually throw fireballs around, so my characters tend to be rather princess-y magic-using elves. I guess what I’m getting at is that my characters tend to be fantasy versions of not-quite-me, so they also tend to default to being white females.
That said, the campaign setting factors into my choice of race. If I’m playing in a game where there aren’t many white people around because it’s set in Certainly-not-fantasy-Africa, that’s great, so long as I get to play an elf-y sort of character. In Golarion, though, I don’t know enough about the Ekujae and how they differ culturally from the other branches of elves – and so far I haven’t had the time the work it out for my home game – to feel that I would be doing anything other than just be playing an elf of a different hue, and that would feel a bit cheap. I mean, elves tend to be good people, so it wouldn’t be an issue, I hope, to have elves in Kyonin whose family roots are in the Mwangi, and who would largely be shaped by their surrounding culture, for example, but I would think they might like to retain some of their particular ancestral traditions. Since I think elves tend to get along wherever they’re from, I would rather follow the lead of my GM and have an Avistani elf visiting Garund – or hanging out with a bunch of Ekujae friends – while the group works out the range of elf-ness together, so everyone can join in the fun, and hopefully help avoid letting stereotypes creep in. After that, I would be happy to play a character with a different ethno-cultural background than that of what I gather are rather white Avistani elves, from the representations I’ve seen so far.
On the gender side of things, for quite some time, all of my characters have been women. I’ve briefly discussed this elsewhere (in a somewhat related thread), but it’s not so much that I have an intrinsic objection to cross-gender play in role-playing games, as that, personally, as a trans woman, having had to pretend to be a man full-time in real life for twenty years or so has kind of killed the idea for me of doing it for fun. (I am, of course, not speaking for all trans* people here, I’d like to emphasize.)
If other players create characters that don’t match their real-life races and genders, that’s absolutely fine with me, unless they’re using offensive stereotypes.

DM Under The Bridge |

DM Under The Bridge wrote:That is not what I said....If I want to play Ashurbanipal the Neo-Assyrian charioteer I would make him more than the blood thirsty stereotype. The Assyrians were highly cultured and well read with fantastic craftsmanship and horsemanship. My character would have a lot more depth than just some lazy kludged together character.The 8th Dwarf wrote:I try not to play the same gender, class or species twice in a row.
As for cultural analogs I have not played a Sub Saharan African (or African American in a modern/Sifi game) analog. I am unfamiliar with the cultural aspects, I do not feel that I could do such a character justice.
I am more than happy to play Australian Aboriginal, Papuan, Maori, Pacific Islander, SE Asian, Indian, Middle Eastern, European, and Ancient MesoAmerican analogs because my studies have given me a level of knowledge in those cultures that makes me feel I can portray a character without playing to stereotypes.
Lol, don't want to play a bloodthirsty Assyrian? An archer with fine teamwork with the shieldbearer in the party? Would that be too stereotypical?
Would you instead prefer to play a pacifist archery-hating Assyrian with no teamwork?
Everyone wants to play a character that is unique for them, but it sounds like you want to keep away what the Assyrians are most known for. That ends up sounding like propaganda, when the available records indicate they were far more interested in conquering, subordinating others and taking elites hostage than being well read. Those well read Assyrians you mention wanted all the surrounding under their control, and they were both vicious and desperate to conquer and extract more from those around them. Pure LE tending to sometimes CE given the atrocities.
Now you can say "my Assyrian truly cares about horsemanship and horse-breeding and isn't bloodthirsty", but really are you going to make them not at all like the shady courtiers in their cohort (if they are educated elites) and totally unlike the evil Assyrian soldiers they fight alongside?
Since we are discussing comfort I find the idea or urge to play a char not like the rest of their people a bit baffling. This crops up a lot over time, Dwarves with no-beards, elves not like other elves. Is it uniqueism? Mine is not like the others?

The 8th Dwarf |
1 person marked this as a favorite. |

Believe what you want to believe... I could reduce you to a stereotype, from memory you said you grew up in the Northern Territory and live in Victoria... Let's see.. The stereotypes for people from the NT are stupid alcoholic, racist, rednecks, and the the stereotype for Victorians is they are either black turtleneck wearing wannabe Europeans who talk about art and culture but don't actual know anything about it, or redneck bogans that never shut up about their stupid cross between basketball and soccer.
Back to the Assyrians who are far more fascinating than what you have to say.
They were no less blood thirsty than the Babylonians, Mitanni, Egyptians or the Hittites, they were just better at it.
Yes they depopulated entire regions.....mostly by forced deportation, killing everybody cuts down on your tax income.
The descriptions of them killing everybody and everything in country are on their own stele as their own propaganda, they didn't have to carry out their threats very often.
They were craftsmen, Astronomers, Astrologers, Artists warriors and poets just like the Babylonians, Mitanni, Egyptians or the Hittites.

DM Under The Bridge |

By "they were just better at it" you are of course conceding that they killed and conquered greater numbers? Glad you are willing to acknowledge that historical fact (if we can rely on the sources we have). Not sure why you are so eager to equalise their blood-thirstiness with people that killed less and were inferior conquerors. You can slow down the gymnastics and bending over yourself to try and make a point, you might pull a muscle.
The NT stereotype is quite accurate; more so than the first Victorian stereotype, but the second Vic claim is very commonplace. It is almost like generalisations on a people, when they reflect constantly repeated behaviours and attitudes, are generally true.
The Assyrians are fascinating, and they were truly brutal. Some artists don't wash away what their soldiers did and participated in and what their elites pushed for to their own advantage! Such advantaged being renewed wealth, goods, new dominions, slaves. The Assyrian elites could maintain their love of culture and fine things, you are right there, but it is with the desire to take and extract more and to kill to get it!
To keep that question I had for you at the centre, the one that is making you uncomfortable, why would you balk at anyone playing an Assyrian warrior that was actually bloodthirsty and supremely interested in conquest (and what that could bring them and their people)? Does a char following the Assyrian war-path offend you? Do you imagine that the pacifist poets and Astronomers that never revelled in the worldly victories of their people were more common than those involved in fighting and coordinating the many conquests? What a curious image of them you have, almost purely positive. Where do you get your propaganda? I really must try some.

The 8th Dwarf |
2 people marked this as a favorite. |

By "they were just better at it" you are of course conceding that they killed and conquered greater numbers? Glad you are willing to acknowledge that historical fact (if we can rely on the sources we have). Not sure why you are so eager to equalise their blood-thirstiness with people that killed less and were inferior conquerors. You can slow down the gymnastics and bending over yourself to try and make a point, you might pull a muscle.
The NT stereotype is quite accurate; more so than the first Victorian stereotype, but the second Vic claim is very commonplace. It is almost like generalisations on a people, when they reflect constantly repeated behaviours and attitudes, are generally true.
The Assyrians are fascinating, and they were truly brutal. Some artists don't wash away what their soldiers did and participated in and what their elites pushed for to their own advantage! Such advantaged being renewed wealth, goods, new dominions, slaves. The Assyrian elites could maintain their love of culture and fine things, you are right there, but it is with the desire to take and extract more and to kill to get it!
To keep that question I had for you at the centre, the one that is making you uncomfortable, why would you balk at anyone playing an Assyrian warrior that was actually bloodthirsty and supremely interested in conquest (and what that could bring them and their people)? Does a char following the Assyrian war-path offend you? Do you imagine that the pacifist poets and Astronomers that never revelled in the worldly victories of their people were more common than those involved in fighting and coordinating the many conquests? What a curious image of them you have, almost purely positive. Where do you get your propaganda? I really must try some.
Dude you are trying so hard to get me going ... I am not uncomfortable with playing any type of homicidal thief - that's what adventurers are. Apart form your standard adventurer, I have played Samurai that have tested new swords on condemned criminals, I have played legionaries that have sacked Gallic villages, Cthulhu investigators who lined up an entire town an machine gunned them - because it was the only way to save the world. I played all of them as good guys because that's what they were within their own culture. The Samurai wrote haiku, practiced the tea ceremony made sure there was plenty of food for his villagers and was an evenhanded judge. The Legionary was a former Greek school teacher from Brundiisium who could quote Homer, Thucydides, and Herodotus he did what had to be done. My Cthulhu investigator a WW1veteran and serving police officer didn't take the decision in the town lightly and he ended up killing a lot more people to get to those responsible.
So if I play Ashurbanipal as a well read Assyrian nobleman that shows no mercy on the battle field sure but there will be much more to him than that he may be a scholar searching for new books for the library at Nineveh or a amateur astronomer mapping the sky on his campaigns. He will be friendly generous and nice as well as a brutal warrior that will murder every mutha f@#!er in the room and if required.
I think you are uncomfortable with the fact good people can be merciless killers and you are too lazy to play anything other than your standard fantasy trope.

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I'm a white straight male in person.
Mechanics aside, I play/would only play a straight male, with my witch as an exception (I don't like the idea of playing a male witch, it doesn't make sense to me).
The female witch I play is the reasonably-high-charisma type, not the warts-all-over type, and I try to play her voice with a more "controlled" voice when I roleplay her than I would with my other male characters - probably because she's already quite "different" to myself that I don't feel like I have to change her from "me" much, and I can't do a female voice very well anyway.
I'm not comfortable with sexuality coming into games for the most part, though I accept knowing "who you're into" a sense of identity can be important on your character sheet and to abstract. It's just too weird to roleplay, especially if one of the players is playing a character who is a different gender to themselves as a player.
The only race I shirk away from is gnomes, because I can't get a sense at all of how a gnome fits into a world where you don't belong in a cartoon for kids. World of Warcraft didn't even do it very well from where I stand, and that's the best illustration I have.
Having said that, I GM games and I tend to find myself being able to roleplay any kind of character under the sun, be it male, female, human, gnome/halfling, demon, american, australian, french, scottish.
Accents are tough, and my characters tend towards American simply because it's the easiest for me to replicate and it's different to my Australian accent, so you can tell when I'm in character and when I'm not. Though more difficult, I can do european accents for a short period - it's hard work and tricky to pull off, so this works for GMing but not so much for playing.
When I discovered how ethnicities worked, I looked through the Inner Sea World Guide trying to pick one for each of my characters, but found that none of them really fit my characters the way I'd envisioned them.

DM Under The Bridge |

DM Under The Bridge wrote:Dude you are trying so hard to get me going ... I am not uncomfortable with playing any type of homicidal thief - that's what adventurers are. Apart form your standard adventurer, I have played Samurai that have tested...By "they were just better at it" you are of course conceding that they killed and conquered greater numbers? Glad you are willing to acknowledge that historical fact (if we can rely on the sources we have). Not sure why you are so eager to equalise their blood-thirstiness with people that killed less and were inferior conquerors. You can slow down the gymnastics and bending over yourself to try and make a point, you might pull a muscle.
The NT stereotype is quite accurate; more so than the first Victorian stereotype, but the second Vic claim is very commonplace. It is almost like generalisations on a people, when they reflect constantly repeated behaviours and attitudes, are generally true.
The Assyrians are fascinating, and they were truly brutal. Some artists don't wash away what their soldiers did and participated in and what their elites pushed for to their own advantage! Such advantaged being renewed wealth, goods, new dominions, slaves. The Assyrian elites could maintain their love of culture and fine things, you are right there, but it is with the desire to take and extract more and to kill to get it!
To keep that question I had for you at the centre, the one that is making you uncomfortable, why would you balk at anyone playing an Assyrian warrior that was actually bloodthirsty and supremely interested in conquest (and what that could bring them and their people)? Does a char following the Assyrian war-path offend you? Do you imagine that the pacifist poets and Astronomers that never revelled in the worldly victories of their people were more common than those involved in fighting and coordinating the many conquests? What a curious image of them you have, almost purely positive. Where do you get your propaganda? I really must try some.
Well now we are getting closer and closer to our interests and likes.
"I think you are uncomfortable with the fact good people can be merciless killers"
I am all about that, very interested in that course cropping up in games, and rp stories covering it. Ran some games where it featured. So I won't take it as the insult you intended.
Ashurbanipal sounds good! Glad he is more at home with the renowned Assyrian viciousness and placed with it. He is seeming more fleshed out, and whatever his interests I am glad he is not seeming to be an anti-Assyrian Assyrian on campaign and in battle.

DM Under The Bridge |

I'm a white straight male in person.
Mechanics aside, I play/would only play a straight male, with my witch as an exception (I don't like the idea of playing a male witch, it doesn't make sense to me).
The female witch I play is the reasonably-high-charisma type, not the warts-all-over type, and I try to play her voice with a more "controlled" voice when I roleplay her than I would with my other male characters - probably because she's already quite "different" to myself that I don't feel like I have to change her from "me" much, and I can't do a female voice very well anyway.
I'm not comfortable with sexuality coming into games for the most part, though I accept knowing "who you're into" a sense of identity can be important on your character sheet and to abstract. It's just too weird to roleplay, especially if one of the players is playing a character who is a different gender to themselves as a player.
The only race I shirk away from is gnomes, because I can't get a sense at all of how a gnome fits into a world where you don't belong in a cartoon for kids. World of Warcraft didn't even do it very well from where I stand, and that's the best illustration I have.
Having said that, I GM games and I tend to find myself being able to roleplay any kind of character under the sun, be it male, female, human, gnome/halfling, demon, american, australian, french, scottish.
Accents are tough, and my characters tend towards American simply because it's the easiest for me to replicate and it's different to my Australian accent, so you can tell when I'm in character and when I'm not. Though more difficult, I can do european accents for a short period - it's hard work and tricky to pull off, so this works for GMing but not so much for playing.
When I discovered how ethnicities worked, I looked through the Inner Sea World Guide trying to pick one for each of my characters, but found that none of them really fit my characters the way I'd envisioned them.
Male witches are called warlocks.
Pathfinder didn't do ethnicites that well, not a lot of depth, very broad brush strokes.
I wonder how many Australians are on?

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I am white male, straight and married.
I like to come up with a concept first, then find a cool mini and go from there. Although the vast majority of my characters have been white males.
Right now I am thinking about a concept I am calling "The Adultress" a dark fairy like creature/wanna be succubus that will max out on enchantment(a school I usually avoid).

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The only race I shirk away from is gnomes, because I can't get a sense at all of how a gnome fits into a world where you don't belong in a cartoon for kids. World of Warcraft didn't even do it very well from where I stand, and that's the best illustration I have.
World of Warcraft wasn't trying for high literary art, it was role play dressing on a command and conquer wargame. You actually thought that Blizzard was trying to be serious? Did you also think that gnomes were invented in Dragonlance as well? (Dragonlance is THE reason that gnomes suddenly acquired the Mad Tinker hat). That said, perhaps you might want to read "Queen of Thorns" to get a flavor of the Golarion gnome, which is more akin to the classic medieval model of the fey gnome.

MrSin |

I usually stay close to my own species, race, and gender, though sometimes I branch out to be a stranger species, I'm preferential towards augmented humans even then. You won't see me play another gender, ever, and I'm not particularly fond of cross-playing from others myself because I find it awkward. Of course I won't say that at the table, its all about everyone's fun and it certainly doesn't ruin mine.

John Kretzer |

Hi all,
After reading a few different threads, I'd like to delve deeper into this topic. Do you generally only play characters that are of your same race? Meaning that if you are black/brown/white in real life you tend to always play black/brown/white characters in game?
If you are a male, do you only ever play male characters? And for female players, do you only ever play female characters?
Related to that, if one of the other players create a character that crosses gender or racial boundaries from what they are in real life, does that make you uncomfortable?
Generally none of this makes me uncomfortable in myself or others...though how some people play it can be...

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Do you generally only play characters that are of your same race? If you are a male, do you only ever play male characters?
Related to that, if one of the other players create a character that crosses gender or racial boundaries from what they are in real life, does that make you uncomfortable?
I play pretty much all races, with probably the least representation given to the race I am in real life (caucasian), because I find that playing what I already am is quite boring. Although I do do so every once in a while for variety's sake.
The same applies to gender, except even more radically. I practically never play my own gender, because it's just so done. I'm sick and tired of it from real life.
When other people cross-race or cross-gender, I am positively delighted, especially when men do it, because I find that (in my environment at least) there are so heavy cultural norms against men roleplaying women that I celebrate anybody brave enough to give it a try.

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Avatar-1 wrote:The only race I shirk away from is gnomes, because I can't get a sense at all of how a gnome fits into a world where you don't belong in a cartoon for kids. World of Warcraft didn't even do it very well from where I stand, and that's the best illustration I have.World of Warcraft wasn't trying for high literary art, it was role play dressing on a command and conquer wargame. You actually thought that Blizzard was trying to be serious? Did you also think that gnomes were invented in Dragonlance as well? (Dragonlance is THE reason that gnomes suddenly acquired the Mad Tinker hat).
I don't care whether Blizzard was trying to be serious or not - it's just the best illustration I know (the others are worse). I've never heard of Dragonlance, and don't care to read up on more gnomish action.

Bruunwald |

Going back to the earliest days of my gaming career (1981), it was common for us to play any race or character based on any mythos/background and either gender with no problem. The fellows I first played-with had a long standing Aztec-based campaign, for instance. Quetzalcoatl and everything. And they occasionally played females, as well.
I also began gaming with at least one girl, as many as three, at the table as early as 1983. By 1988 girls were common at my games. They also played cross-gender a good amount of the time.
For me, the shocker came when I started playing with some old high school buddies around 1995. I knew them from high school but had not gamed with them back then. It surprised me that neither had ever gamed with a female. Neither had ever played a female character. All of their characters had always been white European-style. One of them was okay with new stuff as we worked it into our new games, but the other was a tough nut to crack. He argued for hours about what it meant when I played a female character. Conversations about whether I was a closet homosexual (or whether I might one day become gay) were frequent occurrences (and by "conversations" I mean that he would rant and tease and generally be an a-hole while the rest of us sat there and tolerated it). He remained stubborn even after real females (imagine the horror!!!) began to join our games. But now, years later, he is finally okay with just about anything we throw at him.
Thankfully, I can say that he was an exception in all my gaming years. Most of the time, I have encountered tolerant players with little issue about what anybody played, so long as it fit in somehow and wasn't too silly or ridiculous.

Am I The Only One? |

(Dragonlance is THE reason that gnomes suddenly acquired the Mad Tinker hat).
Not sure they should get all the credit. Tolkien jokingly used the term "Gnome" to refer to his most technologically advanced Elves, and he also used them to help Santa in the "Father Christmas Letters."
One could easily draw a line between the modern image of the soft-capped gnome and the tinkering, handy dwarves of Disney's Snow White.
After all, the concept of the gnome was invented by a self-proclaimed alchemist as a proposed familiar for help in the lab.

Thomas Long 175 |
I don't do opposite Gender.
Religion. Done it. Was fun to make a zealot and then to make a zealot against the zealots. Most are ambivalent.
Skin Color. I could be purple with a spray tan and care less.
Race. Every race but elves. I refuse to play anything with a - in constitution.
Females are just mostly incomprehensible to me. I've honestly spoken to several female friends about motivations for possible characters and no matter who I go to it ends up strange and bizarre sounding to me so I end up saying "If I can't understand it, I can't roleplay it. Not going there"

Bjørn Røyrvik |
I tend towards the same as I - straight white male human. I usually play my own sex and gender, though I've done a fair number of other.
Sexuality is rarely an issue in the games, so it's often left undetermined or straight by default.
Skin color - most of the games I play in are mostly white - at least the cultures I tend to like. In almost all games I've played there have been non-white cultures present, but they've often been distant enough that they aren't really appropriate for the location or I've preferred the white cultures.
Some games like L5R are default east Asian, so there's that.
Race: mostly humans, for the simple reason that there is generally more variety in the human cultures than the non-human cultures. I have done several non-humans, though.

Albatoonoe |
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Females are just mostly incomprehensible to me. I've honestly spoken to several female friends about motivations for possible characters and no matter who I go to it ends up strange and bizarre sounding to me so I end up saying "If I can't understand it, I can't roleplay it. Not going there"
Here's a tip. Play them like you would a male character. Despite what society would have you believe, women really aren't so different. Take the exact same motivations and play a female character and you'll do fine.

Orthos |

Thomas Long 175 wrote:Females are just mostly incomprehensible to me. I've honestly spoken to several female friends about motivations for possible characters and no matter who I go to it ends up strange and bizarre sounding to me so I end up saying "If I can't understand it, I can't roleplay it. Not going there"Here's a tip. Play them like you would a male character. Despite what society would have you believe, women really aren't so different. Take the exact same motivations and play a female character and you'll do fine.
Pretty much this.

Tsoli |
1 person marked this as a favorite. |

I am a cis-male, gay, white/Native American; I play with mainly straight cis-male white players. I've noticed that most of them play Straight, White Men (usually Human, sometimes elven).
I balk at this lack of diversity, and usually try do a randomized gender/skintone. Basically, half of my characters are male, half female. While a setting can vary racial considerations, in most settings, I will choose a Real-world ethnicity and look for interesting google images for a character concept photo. A few of my characters are biracial humans, and in science fiction (Star Trek) campaigns, I have been an Asian Trill, a Latino Vulcan, and an Arabic Bajoran.
These backgrounds never really come into play; they are simply a nod to the fact that there are people who look and are different than me.

Zalman |

I love mixing race and ethnicity. I've played a Mongolian-style dwarf, a black Pygmy-style halfling, a Native American-style half-elf, and others. In fact, the typical Caucasian default-style for non-human races is kind of limited and boring I think. I was also the first of my male teenage friends to play a female character (this was back in the 70's), so perhaps I'm a bit more adventurous by nature than some others. Or perhaps being a white male myself I tend towards what I am not. That is, most of the time I'd rather leave my comfort zone than stay in it.
I don't concern myself with sexual preference, as I tend to avoid such matters when gaming anyway. Too much opportunity for uncomfortable strangeness -- especially when one PC starts hitting on another.
I've never before considered the idea of a transgender character -- I'm having a difficult time imagining where it would come into play -- unless the gender change happens in-game of course (cue endless fun with a Girdle of Masculinity/Feminity ).

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LazarX wrote:(Dragonlance is THE reason that gnomes suddenly acquired the Mad Tinker hat).Not sure they should get all the credit. Tolkien jokingly used the term "Gnome" to refer to his most technologically advanced Elves, and he also used them to help Santa in the "Father Christmas Letters."
One could easily draw a line between the modern image of the soft-capped gnome and the tinkering, handy dwarves of Disney's Snow White.
After all, the concept of the gnome was invented by a self-proclaimed alchemist as a proposed familiar for help in the lab.
There were legends of Gnomes that were craftsman and studious workers, but it took Dragonlance to come up with a gnome who was both depressed and ostracised by his own people because his inventions WORKED. Then Spelljammer ran with it and cranked it up to 12 with Gnomes in WildSpace.
Gnomes haven't been the same since then.

Voadam |

As a DM I do male and female; straight, bi, and gay (the latter two particularly in Pathfinder APs); and whatever ethnicities are in the setting I'm using.
As a player I generally stick to my own gender, orientation, and (when playing human) race. Ethnicity within race I vary and match without much consideration.
I've done generic asian in an AD&D Oriental Adventures game and a tiefling I played was anime style asian but thats been pretty much it for playing a human (or close to human) that is not basically white.
That I can remember I've played generic white, fantasy viking, fantasy arab, hispanic, and polish. I'm not hispanic or polish.

WitchyTangles |

I'm comfortable and have played all classes, races, cultures, gender etc.
Some of my gaming mates think that I'm fairly odd because I enjoy playing male as well as female characters. One of my favs all time characters was a male gnoll sell-sword. I get stuck in class comfort zones though. I like playing paladins, witches and wizards the best and just can't get into rogues at all. The closest I can do is swashbuckling fighters. I don't play monks and I hate hobbi, er halflings. But I love wrapping my head around some new combination. I'm looking for an interesting base race for a Tiefling to play in WotR.
I think it's weird when people can only play their own gender and race myself. RPGs are essentially live acting in the round. I play it to role play and have fun being different fantasy individuals. My BF likes playing bi female rangers, female rogues, both genders of barbarians and both genders of paladins.

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While I only play male characters, I almost never base them on any personal visual aspect. If I did they'd all look like Mul's from Dark Sun, which would be hard to explain. Two of my favorite characters that I've played who are far left field of myself are a mongolian-ish Ranger/Rogue and Paladin Adrian Brody.

RDM42 |
For a female character if you are a male ... Create the character like you would normally, make family, motivations, et al ....mother after you have a three dimensional character, tweak it with things that make the character female. If you start with "well, its a girl so ..." THEN you end up with a stereotype. You want the experience of being female to modify the background, not determine it. Same goes for race, etcetera.

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I base my female characters largely on the women I know. It's not hard to find material, my sister Natalie is a former Guardian Angel who recently retired after 28 years in the Passaic County Sheriff's Department. Than there are others in the creative and leadership field areas.
The area where I'm really blind at is playing outside my swarthily pale Italian/Romanian/American hide.

Quark Blast |
Quark Blast wrote:Avatar-1 wrote:I've never heard of Dragonlance,..."You lucky bas***d! You lucky, lucky bas***d!" :DHe is lucky indeed. He can read the original Dragonlance trilogy and experience those awesome books for the first time!
And skip all the 300-400 books that came after them! :D
No "Tinker Gnomes", no Gully Dwarves, only one Kender and just a little crypto-mormon theology. Potentially survivable ;)