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Weiser_Cain
Seeker
87 Posts |
 Posted - 13 Feb 2007 : 07:12:36
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| It's harder to play high Int, Wis, Cha or alignment, than it is to play another sex, believe me. |
I'm always the Wizard! |
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lokilokust
Seeker
USA
61 Posts |
Posted - 14 Feb 2007 : 20:11:08
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| personally, i would leave it entirely up to the players and i wouldn't feel comfortable telling them what gender or sex they can and can't play. |
yrs. in exile,
-s.j. bagley |
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lokilokust
Seeker
USA
61 Posts |
Posted - 14 Feb 2007 : 20:13:28
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(sorry for the doublepost, i hit the button a bit too soon.)
as a player, i would feel pretty uncomfortable in a campaign with such restrictions.
even i simply wanted to play a character with the same gender and/or sex identity as myself, i would feel a bit uncomfortable and constrained knowing i didn't have any other options. |
yrs. in exile,
-s.j. bagley |
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Icelander
Master of Realmslore
1864 Posts |
Posted - 21 Mar 2012 : 02:01:49
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I thought about creating a new scroll, but expected that this had come up a time or two before. This was the newest one on the subject I could find. I recognise that the seeker who posted it may have moved on, but that invalidates neither subject nor future discussion.
My personal experience as regards roleplaying is that all fictional characters, not to mention real people, have motivations and personalities that in some way differ markedly from my own. Whether I play a male or female, elf or dwarf, human or mind flayer, I am going to be playing something so different from myself that my understanding of it will always be incomplete.
To some extent, this is peculiar to my own situation. I have few of the motivations that are considered 'typical', i.e. the struggle for societal status or biological imperatives are relatively unimportant to me. As it turns out, amiable nihilism with a touch of cynical hedonism is not all that common as an active life philosphy, for all that many people agree with it in theory.
Mostly, however, it results from individual variations between people in the most important areas being far greater than variations from factors like nationality, hair colour, 'race', gender or sex.
The odds that one guy is going to think like another guy are only slightly better than the odds he's going to think like some random woman.
And to be perfecly clear on the maths here, for all intents and purposes, no one is ever going to think exactly like someone else.
So all roleplaying, at its core, is about pretending to be someone that you don't even necessarily fully understand.
Which is perfectly fine, in my opinion. As it turns out, understanding is not necessary for emulation. While science cannot answer every question we have about reality, it can usually predict with uncanny accuracy what is going to happen next, even if it can't tell us why. The same principle applies with people. Even when you don't necessarily know why, even when they don't necessarily know why, close observation can still allow you to know what someone who is 'like X' would do in a situation.
We make characters, in fiction of any sort, including roleplaying, by mixing and matching elements of our experience. Granted, most of our experience of being someone is experience of being ourselves, but everyone has plenty of experience of watching others express their identity, emotions and their personality, right?
Everyone who has interacted with people of both genders or sexes ought to be able to portray a person of either. When we portray a character for an outside audience, whether that audience is the whole world who might watch a block-buster movie or a group of friends playing an RPG, what matters the most isn't what we feel, it's what we successfully convey. And in that regard, our experience of watching others being themselves is more useful than our experience of being ourselves.
I'll grant that neither my voice nor my physique are conductive to portraying a female character on stage or film. In a roleplaying game, where one GM must by necessity portray anything from world-shaking dragons to the curious toddlers of simple innkeepers, I don't see why being a large bearded fellow should limit my to playing large bearded characters.
I've portrayed characters who were young females, young males, middle-aged males, elderly females, etc.
The easiest, in many ways, were young females, as these happen to be a group of people with whom I have a lot of contact in my social life. I'll grant that my contact with young males is probably equivalent in terms of time spent or specimens interacted with, but on average, I'm less likely to be paying attention to the method of making choices, various moods, emotions and thoughts of the males I interact with than the females. |
Za uspiekh nashevo beznadiozhnovo diela!
Forgotten Realms fans, please sign a petition to re-release the FR Interactive Atlas
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Kentinal
Great Reader
4693 Posts |
Posted - 21 Mar 2012 : 05:22:57
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| In many ways I can not well play my own gender, based on what they say my gender should be like. They of course being some strange group that generalize about everything. |
"Small beings can have small wisdom," the dragon said. "And small wise beings are better than small fools. Listen: Wisdom is caring for afterwards."
"Caring for afterwards ...? Ker repeated this without understanding.
"After action, afterwards," the dragon said. "Choose the afterwards first, then the action. Fools choose action first."
"Judgement" copyright 2003 by Elizabeth Moon |
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TBeholder
Great Reader
2477 Posts |
Posted - 21 Mar 2012 : 09:13:46
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On the one eyestalk, the prospect of male players running Lesbian Ninja Catgirls and conversely female players with male characters built upon too much Mercedes Lackey or something like this is... ugh. On the other eyestalk, would those who do this play anything well?
And if good players will be good, bad players will be bad... I don't see what's point to add any such limitations.
Now, beginner roleplayers may be better off playing species and sexes they know, because it diminishes the temptation to slide into simplified loonie routines (let's not forget equally crappy Dumb Dwarven Fighter and Bishie Greenpeace Elf while we're at it). |
People never wonder How the world goes round -Helloween
And even I make no pretense Of having more than common sense -R.W.Wood
It's not good, Eric. It's a gazebo. -Ed Whitchurch |
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Icelander
Master of Realmslore
1864 Posts |
Posted - 21 Mar 2012 : 11:32:24
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To add to what I said above, I just watched an interview with George R.R. Martin, who is among those living authors I most admire and respect for their talent.
He was asked a question, well, or the host led up to a question with a statement that went: "You write women really well."
Martin answered the non-question, starting with: "Well, I've always considered women to be people."
Then he went on to state, essentially, much the same thing I did above.
Every character that isn't just you renamed and transplanted to the setting of the story will have important differences from you; be that defining experiences that you lack, biological features that differ from yours or just a personality that isn't very like yours. But the thing is, most people are a lot more alike than they are different, and the process of creating characters is primarily about empathy. It's about imagining how something would make us feel, if we were in that situation and we were that person.
It sounds a lot more complex than it is, because this is something that is innate to us as social animals capable of self-awareness, imagination and deduction. We do it almost unconsciously.
Obviously, research, whether in the form of reading or talking to people, can enhance your ability to empathise with a character. If we want to know how a certain experience could shape someone, we could do worse than reading about how they've shaped real people or talking to some of these people about their experiences. The thing is, though, when the difference between you and some fictional character boils down to a different set of genitals, you've been doing research for it your whole life. After all, half the people you've met meet that criterion.
To summarise, I was really glad to see that one of my favourite authors had so very similar things to say on the subject as I do. It isn't a matter of writing/portraying/playing women or men well, it's a matter of conveying characters. I think that the worst character portrayals spring from attempts to write 'a [adjective] (wo)man' (or dwarf or elf, etc.) instead of just focusing on creating and bringing to life a character that exists to you as a whole person, not just a representative of sex, gender, race or some other symbol. |
Za uspiekh nashevo beznadiozhnovo diela!
Forgotten Realms fans, please sign a petition to re-release the FR Interactive Atlas
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sleyvas
Skilled Spell Strategist
USA
12024 Posts |
Posted - 21 Mar 2012 : 11:49:02
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I can see where it can be a problem, though its more been a problem with some male players who just want to play a female tramp. It can be funny the first few times for the whole group, but you need to nip it in the bud before "I flash him" becomes the standard method of distracting guards or they decide to "roll some johns". Having the character find themselves pregnant can be an interesting quandary (having morning sickness while creeping through the castle would suck). Having their newfound partner be a monster in disguise is another. Then there are the more disgusting options such as STD's, etc....
However, other than the above, I've never had a problem with people playing the opposite sex. Now, whether they can play the opposite sex well, that's another question. Also, it might get a little creepy if they play the opposite sex TOO well, but again, I've never run into that situation. Truthfully, its been rare that one of my players wanted to play an opposite sex character once we got past college age, and it ends up being myself having to play an opposite sex NPC to them more than anything (though I have occasionally employed a surrogate friendly female to simply roleplay a certain character in a given adventure... only have done this with one of my girlfriends, but I can easily see it doable with a player's wife so long as they agree that they won't reveal what they know). |
Alavairthae, may your skill prevail
Phillip aka Sleyvas |
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Artemas Entreri
Great Reader
USA
3131 Posts |
Posted - 21 Mar 2012 : 13:50:05
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I don't think it's a good idea to force any kind of restriction on a player designing their character. If you want to force a female player to only play a female character then you might as well say they can only be human characters as well. Freedom in character design can go a long way.
*Extreme freedom in character design can make for interesting adventures too. If a PC wants to have a beardless dwarf, a red headed drow, or an anorexic halfling; then let them. Provide a warning that they might be ostracized from their own community and go from there. |
Some people have a way with words, and other people...oh, uh, not have way. -Steve Martin
Amazon "KindleUnlimited" Free Trial: http://amzn.to/2AJ4yD2
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Making a player play his/her gender in the game
