Suspension Of Reality And Playing Odd Characters

[gentrification]

On 2001-11-06 00:46, Jared A. Sorensen wrote:
Ultimately, it all boils down to this: WHY is the player playing an opposite-gendered character? A lot of the time, it seems like an arbitrary decision. And if you've pulled a character out of your ass without any concept of why you chose to play that character, then dammit you're not devoting enough time and thought to the game and I just don't wanna play with ya.

Hmm. Now that's an interesting rationalization. Because if picking an opposite-gendered character is an arbitrary decision, then picking a same-gendered character must also be an arbitrary decision, except insofar as you're acknowledging your own inability to portray the opposite gender well. And I'm not sure how, in and of itself, that acknowledgment constitutes putting "enough time and thought into the game."

To put it another way, how is the decision of gender more arbitrary than the decision of skin color, or sexual orientation, or age? If I can choose to play a 50-year-old German-American white male (and, in fact, I have) and justify my decisions as being important and relevant components of the character, why can't I also do the same with gender?

Now, you might be taking the position that I can't choose to play the 50-year-old -- that any significant deviation from "basic me", be it skin color or age or what have you, cosntitutes an "arbitrary" decision that snaps the belief suspenders too much. So I could stick to white hetero males in the 25-30 range, preferably American and middle-class, and that would be fine. But I'm still unclear on why that helps me devote more time and thought to the game -- or rather, why deviating from that prevents me from doing so.

-Michael Gentry

P.S. I want to make it clear that I don't think putting limits on character types for the purposes of a particular style or genre of game is a bad thing. I do it all the time. I just disagree that gender is necessarily an arbitrary decision.

[ This Message was edited by: gentrification on 2001-11-07 11:04 ]

[ This Message was edited by: gentrification on 2001-11-07 11:17 ]

[Ron Edwards]

Vincent,

Actually, the "rant" level of the latest post was not especially helpful to the discussion. It really isn't the issue AT ALL what YOU are good at or "believe" or "feel" is possible. We are not simply whipping out opinions and showing them to one another.

The goal is to arrive at a better, shared understanding of the issue at hand, so that differing conclusions are at least situated relative to one another.

The issue at hand is a powerful one: what kind of character is acceptable to play? It challenges some of the deeply-ingrained, unstated assumptions of role-playing, for instance, the notion that anyone can play any character.

Here are some of my thoughts - again, I'm interested in where others' thoughts are SITUATED relative to them.

THOUGHT ONE
"Appropriateness" is probably a blind alley of discussion. For example, I think that my presumed inability (and I do presume it) to play the gangsta character with any integrity is NOT a matter of "respect" for the gangsta lifestyle, nor is it STRICTLY a function of my being white. It's a matter of my personal contact with and insight into that culture/character/outlook.

For instance (warning: personal crap follows), from age 2 to 10 or so (1966-1974), I was raised in an extremely counter-cultural environment on the west coast of California. I know from feminism, in ways that even many self-identified feminist women do not. I consider myself capable not only of playing such a character, but bringing Author-level judgment to bear on the culture itself.

Similarly, one Forge member I know has spent a fair amount of time on the criminal-edge, especially at that weird interface of drug traffic, underground music, and gangs. I have every confidence that his white ass can play a person in that scene of any ethnicity, and by "can play," I mean to the extent that I would ENJOY and LEARN FROM his role-playing.

THOUGHT TWO
Familiarity is harder than alien-ness. As I brought up earlier, and as Gareth describes extremely well, fantastical characters are usually metaphors or exaggerated forms of familiar human issues. We all understand the difficulty of aggression/violence in our lives, especially since going "la la la" and pretending it's not there doesn't work. Thus playing a Klingon addresses that, whether for self-indulgence or for a chance to comment about it.

I might even venture to say that a FULL reversal of the original claim on this thread might apply - I might go so far as to say that the MORE human, the MORE close to reality, the harder effective (rather than caricatural) role-playing becomes. To push this idea to its limit, the very hardest character to play WITH INTEGRITY is oneself. I am not completely convinced of this idea, but the more I consider it, the more compelling it becomes.

Interestingly enough, that runs counter both to the gnarliburr point AND to Jared's argument. In the case of the gnarliburr, I think that as long as the little thingamajig being played CORRESPONDS in some way to a generalized human-interest issue, it's easy. In the case of Jared's argument, I think that playing a human that is NOT oneself, but rather a human that one CAN comment effectively upon and without caricature, is probably the functional solution, rather than using "correspondence to self" as the yardstick. I do agree with Jared that the vast majority of notably-off-self characters are caricatures and represent a form of artistic dishonesty (utterly irrespective of the "appropriateness" of the portrayal; an angelic black character from a 1960s movie is just as racist as a demonic one from a 1920s movie).

THOUGHT THREE
Just in case anyone was interested, or to nip a potential problem with all of this in the bud, I suggest that what we are discussing is a matter of Exploration - the fundamentals of role-playing - and not a matter of any particular GNS focus.

Best,
Ron

[contracycle]

On 2001-11-07 08:22, lumpley wrote:
Playing women is easy.  You think of a person.  You give that person a life, history, attitudes, opinions, feelings, a social context, a slant on the world, a voice.  Sooner or later that person becomes gendered in you head.  Sometimes it's a woman.

Consider a character like Barb Wire.  Is she a depiction of a woman, or a male fantasy of a woman?  I suspect the latter; and I would expect this character to be played accordingly.  In other words, I think the prevalence I have seen of "sluts or nuns" female characters is because those players are not actually going through the process you describe.  They are instead portraying a stereotypical expectation, rather than portraying a thought out Person.

[contracycle]

To put it another way, how is the decision of gender more arbitrary than the decision of skin color, or sexual orientation, or age? If I can choose to play a 50-year-old German-American white male (and, in fact, I have) and justify my decisions as being important and relevant components of the character, why can't I also do the same with gender?

Fair point.  I'd like to modify my initial claim to say that the cross-gender characters I have seen done are usually better, IMO, proportional to the extent that their gender is background rather than foreground.  Where I think the sticky bit occurs is when the character is Dramatically Female, ostentatiously so.  Suddenly players who have never described the clothes their male characters wear go to unusual lengths to describe the "cool" low-cut blouse/swimsuit/body armour their female character is wearing.  This is marked, observable behaviour, again IMO and IME.  I would not actively resist a player making this sort of decision at chargen, but I think it does raise a question about player motives.

[Jared A. Sorensen]

I'm going to throw out some bad statistics and say that most (51% or higher) of the time, playing a female character (by a male player) is a purely aesthetic decision. It's like the guy in the Dead Alewives skit who changes his elf's eye color from blue to grey.

This is a big wall for me. It immediately alters how I play with that person (or worse, GM -- did a con came with a girl-playing-a-guy and I kept slipping up with my pronouns). And worse, the alters the game for no discernible reason.

I've played female characters before. Of course, one was more or less an asexual robot, the other was a "return from the dead" angel of vengeance, MS.45 type in a cyberpunk-themed game.

Okay, maybe I have issues.

Suffice it to say, hair/eye/skin color is pretty much not a consideration, personality-wise (unless you're playing a game where that matters, culturally-speaking...in which case you simply react to the culture, which isn't hard at all). However, insisting that playing a black guy means you have to roleplay differently...well, no. Speaking in ebonics and having a preference for gold chains and rap music might be what you see on MTV, but that's a personal decision, not a result of genetic programming. However, females are different from males. Completely different.

What did Burroughs say about this and sexual dimorphism of some species of butterflies? Of course, he had issues, too.

I just think that playing such a character is simply a "look at me" decision and is rarely one tempered by a willingness to contribute to the game in a positive way.

"No, no...I have silver hair and grey eyes."

[333Chronzon]

Actually, the "rant" level of the latest post was not especially helpful to the discussion. It really isn't the issue AT ALL what YOU are good at or "believe" or "feel" is possible. We are not simply whipping out opinions and showing them to one another.

The goal is to arrive at a better, shared understanding of the issue at hand, so that differing conclusions are at least situated relative to one another.

I agree with Ron here.  The goal of this sort of discussion, as I understand it, is to achieve a common understanding and a useful lexicon of concepts that can be applied to increase our understanding of roleplaying as a behavioral and social activity.   The goal of *that* understanding is to facilitate the creation of a social environment for a *positive* and enjoyable roleplaying experience for everyone who roleplays, no matter how their particular source of enjoyment from roleplaying is gained.      

The object is (as I understand it) to identify who likes what (possibly as a side effect try and learn 'why') from the role-playing experience and then, with that knowlege in place create a 'play environment' that best facilitates those desires and expectations.  

This is an issue that includes the GNS model as a tool, but requires a 'Play Group' as social dynamic approach to organising the entire experience.

I am working on a post about just this subject I will get up on the Actual Play forum ( If that's where Ron thinks it's appropriate) in the next couple of days or so as I find the time.

The issue at hand is a powerful one: what kind of character is acceptable to play? It challenges some of the deeply-ingrained, unstated assumptions of role-playing, for instance, the notion that anyone can play any character.

Here are some of my thoughts - again, I'm interested in where others' thoughts are SITUATED relative to them.

THOUGHT ONE
"Appropriateness" is probably a blind alley of discussion. For example, I think that my presumed inability (and I do presume it) to play the gangsta character with any integrity is NOT a matter of "respect" for the gangsta lifestyle, nor is it STRICTLY a function of my being white. It's a matter of my personal contact with and insight into that culture/character/outlook.

For instance (warning: personal crap follows), from age 2 to 10 or so (1966-1974), I was raised in an extremely counter-cultural environment on the west coast of California. I know from feminism, in ways that even many self-identified feminist women do not. I consider myself capable not only of playing such a character, but bringing Author-level judgment to bear on the culture itself.

The 'Appropriateness' of a character I think is a function of the Social Context of the Play Group as a whole.  Who is seated at the table and what are *their* backgrounds and their expectations not only about the Premis but regarding the roles of the actual people they are playing the game with.

Person "x" may think that person "y's" choice to play an obviously 'racist' person is 'inappropriate' *even if* the Premis is in no way affected by that sort of character.  Person "x" may even then feel that person "y's" choice to play such a person is indicative of person "y's" 'real' personality and thus we have the seeds for some real game night disruption.    

As in your (Ron's) discussion above about 'invoking' in the right context it may be perfecly acceptable to be a 'sterotype' of some kind, and for me that is particulary the case if *that* is the obvious goal of the portrayal.    

Once again, depending upon the people around the table the mere act of playing a 'sterotype' may be considered 'inappropriate' or offensive.

Most of the time *no-one* ever sits down before game play to work out amoungst themselves just what they are and are not 'offended' by and such things end up causeing all kinds of consternation when in the course of play a person 'reveals' their disapproval of another player.  This is actually often done 'in character' - disaproval by proxy :smile: as it were - where the dissaprover uses the intercharacter interaction to play out what they are reluctant to actually say 'for real' to the dissaproved of person.  This usually never actually 'works' as most everyone at the table knows what's "really going on" buyt I've still seen this kind of thing last months without being actually resolved before the social tension of the situation broke the group apart.  ( I, and I think several of the other people involved, did not want to confront the people myself as at the time it did not seem to be my business at all.  I now see that this was a mistake, it impacted on the whole group.  The rest of the group should have stood up and demanded a resolution.  It may have had to dissolve anyway but it would have saved *weeks* of anguish on everyone's part if it had. Sorry for the digression. )

 

Similarly, one Forge member I know has spent a fair amount of time on the criminal-edge, especially at that weird interface of drug traffic, underground music, and gangs. I have every confidence that his white ass can play a person in that scene of any ethnicity, and by "can play," I mean to the extent that I would ENJOY and LEARN FROM his role-playing.

That's key.  There are a couple of connecting points here about 'appropriateness:'

Is the group the *player* has chosen to be a part of appropriate for him or her?

Is the Premis (or more broadly the entire roleplaying 'environment' of Game and setting and scenerio, etc.) appropriate for the *player*?

Is the *player* appropriate for the Premis (etc. as above)?  

Is the *character* created by the player appropriate to the overall social environmemnt of the gaming group?

Is the *character*  created by the player appropriate to the Premis(etc. as above).

I'm sure there are others, this list is far from exhaustive.

THOUGHT TWO
Familiarity is harder than alien-ness. As I brought up earlier, and as Gareth describes extremely well, fantastical characters are usually metaphors or exaggerated forms of familiar human issues. We all understand the difficulty of aggression/violence in our lives, especially since going "la la la" and pretending it's not there doesn't work. Thus playing a Klingon addresses that, whether for self-indulgence or for a chance to comment about it.

I might even venture to say that a FULL reversal of the original claim on this thread might apply - I might go so far as to say that the MORE human, the MORE close to reality, the harder effective (rather than caricatural) role-playing becomes. To push this idea to its limit, the very hardest character to play WITH INTEGRITY is oneself. I am not completely convinced of this idea, but the more I consider it, the more compelling it becomes.

Interestingly enough, that runs counter both to the gnarliburr point AND to Jared's argument. In the case of the gnarliburr, I think that as long as the little thingamajig being played CORRESPONDS in some way to a generalized human-interest issue, it's easy. In the case of Jared's argument, I think that playing a human that is NOT oneself, but rather a human that one CAN comment effectively upon and without caricature, is probably the functional solution, rather than using "correspondence to self" as the yardstick. I do agree with Jared that the vast majority of notably-off-self characters are caricatures and represent a form of artistic dishonesty (utterly irrespective of the "appropriateness" of the portrayal; an angelic black character from a 1960s movie is just as racist as a demonic one from a 1920s movie).

This is a very good point.  I think that the level of 'remoteness' from oneself and the ability to roleplay are part of an overall matrix of concerns regarding the enterprise of roleplaying in general.

We need to parse out as closely as we can just what the different axi of approach are to the issue.

I tend to immediately think of the issue in the following (perhaps too simplistic :smile:) terms:

1.  How *convincingly* the character is portrayed?

This is, I feel, a function of any combination of the folowing:

a) the people amidst which the portrayal is occuring(their knowlege, their expectations - all the 'baggage' the 'audience' brings with them)

b) the ability of the person doing the roleplaying.

c) the level of dissonance between the player and the character he is attempting to portray.  

2. The *possibility* of a person giving a convincing, 'real' portrayal of something (human or otherwise) that that person 'is not.'    

3. The social 'unacceptability' of certain human persons (e.g. males) protraying other human persons (e.g. females) being so great that that factor *alone* - regardless or the ability of the individual, the willingness of the audience to SoD, and the possibility of the portrayal - is so disruptive that it should be *considered* impossible by the social group or at the very least prevented from occuring by pre game group fiat over what characters are 'acceptable' to the group or 'unacceptable' to the group.  (Let me hasten to add at this point that I find nothing *whatever* wrong in the Play Group making such decisions openly and through common mutual group consent when they establish the parameters of their social and gaming interactions with one another.)          

Just in case anyone was interested, or to nip a potential problem with all of this in the bud, I suggest that what we are discussing is a matter of Exploration - the fundamentals of role-playing - and not a matter of any particular GNS focus.

I agree completely and as I say above I'm trying to get together an discussion 'spark' for this point.

Hopefully I can keep it from being too long winded :smile:

Have a great day,

Scott B.

[lumpley]

Ron,

No, it's true.  I find that usually when I rant, it's not helpful.  I've been trying to cut back, but jeez my knickers get all twisty.

So but yeah, I agree with you on all three thoughts, especially Thought Two, especially the bit about playing people you can comment on without caricature being the solution.

On the other hand, if the game is about shallow or horribly stereotyped characters, I can deal.  I'll play a gangsta in an action flick game, for instance.  I guess that's related to gnarliburrs.

Contracycle,

About Barb Wire, yep, I think so too.  

Jared,

I wonder how you feel about women as NPCs?  Is it the same issue?

Oh, and I don't know: what did Burroughs say about this and sexual dimorphism of some species of butterflies?

-lumpley Vincent

[Jason L Blair]

However, females are different from males. Completely different.

I won't even get into the arguments against this. I will just say they exist and move on.

The most important thing here is not the hair color/eye color/skin color/type of danglies and no-no's the character has but the motivation behind choosing those attributes for the character.

When a person decides to play a character of the opposite sex just to fulfill some Freudian need then that person's motivation (IMHO) is questionable. But it's the same as when a person chooses to play a big bad sword-swinging barbarian. It's far too common amongst role-players (and is something often used to argue against some designers' takes on game design) to not concentrate on character or story, foregoing such things to simply "escape" and live a life that person cannot. It's ass to me but in the long run that doesn't mean jack.

The fact you kept screwing up the pronouns, Jared, is no reason to disallow such things or to look down on those who choose to do such things. In fact, there are few valid reason to disallow such choices (there are some, mostly story-driven, but not many) and even arguing something like this seems petty to me and not-just-a-little narrow-minded.

Ron hit on something I actually agree with in that the limitation on what the person can portray should be what the player is comfortable with and what they can do convincingly and out-of-reach of stereotypes. I may be a six-and-a-half foot tall, overweight male with dyed-red, shoulder-lengthed hair and green eyes and, yes, physically, that's all I can believably portray, but I will not limit myself based on that. Because my contribution to a game is through my character and how my character can contribute to the story.

I believe in a line between player and character (not to say such a line necessarily exists between player and story or that I don't tend toward immersive rp'ing) and as long as I can pull off my character when it comes to attitude, personality, and they pull their respective weight when it comes to the story, then all is good in Mudville.

[Jared A. Sorensen]

Female NPC's are often necessary. When you have only one person as the GM, they're almost going to have to play a character of a different sex. That's okay for me, I can deal. But really,  I'm not a big fan of NPC's in the first place -- I'd much rather interact with other players.

And Jason -- what you look like doesn't matter. It's who you are that matters. And while I can accept that you can play a 5'4" elf wizard with blonde hair, I can't deal with you playing a female character, even if she has your physical characteristics (hey, this is gaming...I am positive that there are six-and-a-half foot tall, overweight females with dyed-red, shoulder-lengthed hair and green eyes).

[Laurel]

Oh wow.  Ron brought up something very important: medium, and how that influences the issue. (Table top, online chat, LARP, etc)

In a Live-Action game, I usually can't suspend my disbelief towards gender-bending or huge cultural variance (like Ron's gangster example) very well either.  *Except* that I have a friend named Paul, who's a big guy who can also pull off playing female divas in wigs and pearls better than I do!  Without being effeminate in his every day life, he's able to tap into the "feminine mystique" of a '20s era moll far better and more believably than I can, because he's an extraordinary actor and has a gift.  Within a few hours, we accepted his cross-dressing within the game as "normal" and soon stopped thinking of it as odd.  This, however, is an exception.  Most cross-gender roleplay in LARP fails, for reasons Jared and others have mentioned.

In my opinion, LARP requires a lot more physical presentation: I would agree that its a very hard medium for successfully playing "odd" characters.  

Then on the other spectrum there's online chat RP.  Suddenly, the tables are turned.  Personal gender or appearance becomes extremely irrelevant and has no significant bearing on the game.  Many men and women can role-play "odd" characters online without making anyone uncomfortable and its probably the perfect format for it, if you like online gaming.  There's also the phenomenon of online players lying about their real gender or body image, so you build up certain assumptions about them that later turn out to be false.   In a way, these folks are role-playing not only their character, but a persona above and beyond the "game" which highly complicates everything but that's a different topic.

For good old fashioned table-top, the nice middle ground, I'll hold with my previous comments.  :smile:

[Jared A. Sorensen]

Without being effeminate in his every day life, he's able to tap into the "feminine mystique" of a '20s era moll far better and more believably than I can, because he's an extraordinary actor and has a gift.  

In my opinion, LARP requires a lot more physical presentation: I would agree that its a very hard medium for successfully playing "odd" characters.  

Just out of curiosity, was he playing a transvestite?

As far as physicality of LARP, yes. :smile: I really wanted to play an old character in a Vampire LARP (what would a vampire be like if he was embraced when he was in his late seventies or eighties?). Because of my appearance, I opted for a Nosferatu character. Not only did it make sense (the Nosferatu embracing an old man) but I was able to use subtantial makeup and costuming to change into that character.

Which reminds me...one problem I have with female characters is the whole voice issue. I tend to use alternate voices and accents, mannerisms when playing. It's quite a disconnect to have a female character speak in basso voce.

postscript: burroughs was talking about a species of butterfly whose females were so different-looking than the males that biologists thought that they were two separate species.

[contracycle]

Which reminds me...one problem I have with female characters is the whole voice issue. I tend to use alternate voices and accents, mannerisms when playing. It's quite a disconnect to have a female character speak in basso voce.

It just occurred to me that perhaps this is less of a problem with NPC's because GM's will often add a third person narration of what the NPC does - thus using the female specific pronoun - whereas players often stick to just the first person.  Perhaps this reinforcement of the female identity, regardless of the voice, helps in maintaining the illusion.

[Mike Holmes]

Wow, leave for a day or two...

Ron says that this is not a GNS issue, but I think it is to an extent. At the very least it deals with certain style issues. My own POV in playing a character (whether as a GM or as a player) is to create an interesting three-dimensional character that can be related to in a reasonable fashion and helps to flesh out the game world. I'm not looking for any emotional conection with my character, personally. The character is just for entertainment value. Can I make a fun portrayal of the character and its actions? Is the result interesting?

Do I portray women well. Heck no, I say proudly. I'm so male that nobody would ever use me for a female, not even in a play at The Globe. Does that deter me? Heck no. I am not a trained actor, and can only do even white male's aged 33 so well. If I let my inability to perform as well as Denzel Washington (or even Drew Carey) stop me from portraying things, I'd have to give up RPGs.

I am (I hope this is not entirely a conceit) occasionally entertaining. And this is the standard that I set. If I can be occasionally entertaining with a character, then I'm comfortable portraying it in a game. Will the other players always be delighted with my portrayals? Probably not. But neither am I with theirs all the time. Its improv and we're all imperfect; putting up with a few problems seems not to be too much to ask.

But, hey, if you really can't take me as a woman or dog, then, well, maybe I just shouldn't play in your game. Sometimes I want to play a woman or a dog. As long as the character belongs in the game, I might just go for it.

Sure some people might have Issues that would make them play a woman or something else particularly. And in most cases that's probably bad. But the same players are often problematic playing men in such cases, having trouble relating to women or whatever. The problem in this case is bringing the Issue to the table at all, not choice of character.

Ever consider, Jared, that living in the Bay Area might lead to a proclivity in this sort of gaming behavior? :wink: Seriously, though, I have not noticed the same sort of thing with men playing women for the reasons you cite. Oh, occasionally, but the vast majority of players that I have come across who play across gender do a reasonable job of it, IMHO.

You always ask for a motivation for this, Jared. It has to be suspect, you say. Well, in Ron's essay he points out how RPGs are based on exploration. Well, I think that's the answer. Do we really expect to feel what a woman feels by playing a woman? No more than I expect to feel what it is like to play an elf (even if there is no gamist purpose to it).

But it sure is fun.

Mike

[Jack Spencer Jr]

OK, if the issue here is more suspension of disbelief than anything else, here are some half-baked thoughts on SoD I've been tinkering with.

I've noticed that people will lose the SoD for different reasons when presented with the same material.  Especially people who are very, very similar.

It is impossible what someone would overlook or take in stride and what that same person will let ruin their enjoyment.

e.g.  My brother and I are not all that similar, but we do seem to have similar taste in movies.  But I loved Silence of the Lambs, he couldn't get past Jodie Foster almost crying in the movie.  "FBI agents aren't like that," he says. I should point out that neither of us have had any real experience with the FBI or law enforcement in general aside from speeding tickets.  He just couldn't believe her performance even after I pointed out she was only a trainee in Silence and Lecter was probing areas she's had closed off for years.  He just didn't buy it.


Many who experience a drop in SoD seem to take it personal.  SOmetimes it may be.  When a show or film does something just plain wrong and it gets pointed out to them, a common response is "who'll notice that?" as if the audience isn't sharp enough to pick up on the error.

(BTW, any filmmaker who still says this must be stupid, stupid, stupid.  If the internet has taught us anything, it's taught us that people DO pick up on these mistakes)

But this isn't always the case.  Sometimes a SoD failure isn't really intended.  Maybe the filmmakers missed something.  Maybe they needed to do something else, as in the above example.  More people would've commented on a lack of emotion that any have sided with my brother.

In the end, it's not a personal afront to you, so don't get so upset about it.  And not everyone else in the world notices or cares.

How to apply this to games will vary widely depending upon what the problem is.  But the first question is, what are you letting ruin all of the fun? And then, why?

[Meguey]

 Most, if not all, of the women gamers I know were introduced to RPGs by either male significant others or older male relatives. When my older brother got the D&D box set in 1978, there was no mention of female PCs anywhere. AC & Level & race advantages & char class were what counted, with things like age, sex, and name as insignificant afterthoughts. Thus, I was introduced into a world where I as a woman did not fit. Of course I played males. They were the only presented options. As I grew and continued gaming, female PCs began to exist. A point Contracycle made, about "the game world being basically a man's world, full of battlefields and plunder and might of arms" began to shift in the industry with the rise of games like Vampire, Ars Magica, Over the Edge, and others. I think this was a Very Good Thing. Now, I am able to play pretty much anything I like, given the space to find an 'in' to the character. I have played gnarliburrs. For the record, I've had sessions where the NPC / Group PCd Dog got the best scenes, most laughs, and did the most to forward the plot / char. development.

 There definitly is the player who, in playing cross-gender, creates 'noise' based on the player's personal Hx and whether the player is playing to or against the steryotypes. Unfortunatly, there are also GMs that can't get over their issues around female PCs (or players ?). I left a Chill all-nighter half-way through because the GM consistantly blocked any attempt to use IC skills and, during any action, would dismiss me as "You scream in fear and cling to [nearest male PC]" He was having a great time playing my character as a B-movie queen, so I figured he could just do it himself. It's the only game I've ever left.

 My point is, there is a basic struggle for female gamers to not only be 'let in' but to be allowed to play the chars we create. If my early GMs were on Jared's line, and forbade me to play a man, I would have quit long ago. One of the reasons (IMO) that we game is to experiment with power and situations we are not or cannot be in, to varying degrees. As a woman, playing males is (a pretense at) access to power. I see Ron's points in Thought Two, but also challenge that if more men tried playing real women (as opposed to "sluts & nuns" and "asexual robots"), they may be able to comment on that experience. This is a whole 'nother thread, BUT if what you want is female PCs played by women, you must stay open to women gamers.

Lastly, this is about the enjoyment of the game. I can overlook a big clumsy bearded guy playing a lithe elven thief, a woman playing a man (or verse visa), or anyone playing a cardboard box so long as it's fun.

-Meguey