I recently got into an arguement with a friend of mine about RPGs, and how certain things aren't playable as characters, and how people can't suspend reality to a certain point. To make this as simple as possible, I'll use the example we used in the arguement, a dog. I believe that it is possible to roleplay a dog, and be an active part of a roleplaying group (not necessarily comic relief), and that people can suspend reality enough to allow a person to play a dog. His arguement is that a person could never hope to roleplay a dog, even for comic relief, and that the human mind couldn't tolerate that level of reality suspension, which results in a total shutdown of the human mind. (Just a thought, if my brain turns off, does that not mean I am dead?) Any comments?

Galfraxas

As somone who has roleplayed a dog before I have to object to his statment in the stongest possible terms:

Woof!

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

Woof!

Grr...

Ok, that said, we need to reall focus in on what your friend is really going on about?

Does he mean 'roleplaying' in the sense that a person so deeply immerses themselves into becoming a dog that they 'actually' achieve a complete 'dog mind' and push their own 'human mind/personality' so completely away that they 'become' a dog?

I would say that yes it is possible, but it's not so much 'roleplaying' as going really too far. (Whether one might call it going 'insane' or not probably depends on whether or not the person can 'get back' to being a 'human' and how easily he ca do it.)

Most roleplaying (particularly in the context of a roleplaying *game*) never really goes that far. Hell, last night I played a little green man from Mars in Universalis. Not to too much 'depth' of course, but I really don't see how one can put limits onto the mere act of roleplaying anything without considering to what *extent* one is taking the 'personal identification/ immersion' into the role.

Really *alien* things can be hard to do - without any frame of reference I can see it being next to impossible to 'deeply identify' with something like a Mi-go for instance.

But a dog?

Scott B.

Hey Tim,

Clearly, your friend is insane. :smile: I played a large mutated dog for nearly a year in an old Gamma World campaign. And he didn't have Heightened Int., or Telepathy or anything that gave him human-level intelligence. In fact, my brother's "Paladin" used my character Greyfurr for a mount.

I had much fun stealing stuff, getting into trouble eating food that he hadn't paid for, whupping some podog ass, and even got captured by Knights of Genetic Purity...

And what about the Wicks' new game, Cat? And I know there's another Cat game by a Forge member, Jared's working on a dinosaur RPG, and I think it's Eloran who has an animal RPG.

I agree with Scott, the only thing you can't play is something you really can't 'imagine' being, like a Mi-go, or an Elder God or something...
Sean

This point has been brought up before, and it kinda baffles me. I mean, sure, when I play a dog, I don't really believe I'm a dog. But when I'm watching Star Trek I don't really believe that there is a starship flying around out there. Do I buy into the story emotionally, tho? Sure. I suspend that natural disbelief so that I can. I'm with Scott. If I ever actually believed anything from an RPG was real, I hope y'all will have the decency to find me a nice mental institution to recover in.

Do some things break my suspension of disbelief more easily than others? Sure, I suppose. But playing a dog isn't even close. Actually, I'm willing to suspend my disbelief for pretty much anything. Magic, Wire-Fu, Soft Sci-Fi, Action Movie action...why would you want to disbelieve?

My motto: be easy to satisfy. That way you won't be disapointed as often.

I find that too often people put barriers on their SOD, and when you ask them why, the answer is invariably pointless.

"I don't like it because if breaks my SOD". Why? "Because it's not realistic."

I'm always baffled to find people who can believe in FTL travel, but not magic. Or vice versa. There are about equal amounts of evidence for the existene of each (i.e. none). Take it as an assumption that, in the universe in which we're playing, these things exist as advertised. Is that really so hard?

Play a dog? Hell, I bought into Scott's little green man last night (not to mention Tom's Ghost Miner with the adamantium mining pan). And Scott wasn't even trying hard (I've seen him try hard).

So, Tim, when your friend says that he can't suspend disbelief for someone playing a dog, is he saying he can't have fun in a game in which something like that is done? If so, the guy has my sympathy. He needs an imagination injection. OTOH, if he's a player, well, I suppose you should take his feelings into account.

I'd be interested, tho; where does he draw the line? Can one play and Elf? A memeber of the opposite sex (much harder than elves)? What is allowed? Or can one only play oneself? But that's silly, I'm standing right here, how could I believe that I'm somewhere else? :wink:

Mike

On 2001-11-05 14:31, unodiablo wrote:
I agree with Scott, the only thing you can't play is something you really can't 'imagine' being, like a Mi-go, or an Elder God or something...
Sean

On 2001-11-05 14:50, Mike Holmes wrote:

On 2001-11-05 14:31, unodiablo wrote:
I agree with Scott, the only thing you can't play is something you really can't 'imagine' being, like a Mi-go, or an Elder God or something...
Sean

But as a GM I play these things all the time. Or maybe I simulate them. But it's all the same to me. When I play a character in a game I only simulate them, I don't become them. I can even become Immersed without "becoming" the character (it's more about buying into the setting for me).

I suppose that I cannot describe a mountain well as I could not ever "be" a mountain. Silly. I do pretty good mountains, if I say so myself.

Mike

Identifying with a Mountian is an interesting example, in Primeval the world is very 'animist' and mountian *do* have wills and desires so as an Oracle and a Player that aspect of the world can be played to to a varying extent :smile:

On 2001-11-05 15:30, Mike Holmes wrote:

Identifying with a Mountian is an interesting example, in Primeval the world is very 'animist' and mountian *do* have wills and desires so as an Oracle and a Player that aspect of the world can be played to to a varying extent :smile:

Oh, cool, I can totally see it.

Kargudal Titanfoe begins his ascent of Mount Erebius. The mountain displeased that any mortal should dare to climb it's slopes first throws boulders down at Kargudal who avaoids them be deftly leaping from one to the next. The Great Mount frustrated and infuriated then blows it's top sending a river of lava and clouds of ash at the hero....

Neeeat...

Mike

I think that given the right circumstances, odd characters can be both entertaining and believable. I don't have fun participating in games that contain odd characters, however, when the character's particular kind of oddness seems to be antithetical and destructive to the Premise or the setting. I think I know the point your friend was probably trying to make.

As an example: I was participating in a fairly melodramatic game based on Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles. Someone introduced a wolf "companion" to the game that really didn't act like a real wolf or even a real dog: it acted like a seven year old child with paws. I finally threw a huge fit the day the wolf started having telepathic conversations with one of the vampires, wanting to know what "human sex" was like and if the vampire would fondle its you-can-guess.

Had we been playing some other game, with a different and more sex-starved childlike wolfie telepaths Premise, I could have appreciated that particular odd character. Well... maybe. :smile:

Tim,

As most replies have disagreed with your friend, I'd like to point out that one Forge member has a VERY good argument in his favor. It has to do with the other people at the table.

(Oh Forge member? You don't mind if I paraphrase you, do you? Identify yourself if you want to. We had this conversation with you, me, and Greg Stafford.)

Hypothetical example. So here I am, 37-year-old white guy, and I am playing a 24-year-old black gangsta character from Jersey City. I "do my wrist" funny and speak like stuff I heard from a rap album. I make decisions that seem to me to be consistent with the character's background.

Well, so his argument goes, everyone at the table is simply not going to be able to buy my character. They cannot get away from the fact that I, Ron, am doing an imitation, and a fairly uninformed imitation at that. No matter how much I'm into it, they are not going to be.

He has a point! If we were talking about a story I've written, then maybe my depiction of the gangsta character would not kick off this negative reaction. The medium allows me to rely wholly on the visuals generated by the reader, and as long as I'm not too off-base, that acts as a major piece of the imaginative commitment. But in role-playing, the gross evidence that the character is a construct is too overwhelming.

Same goes, he says, for gender-crossed characters. He simply despises going to the squint-eyed imaginative commitment necessary to believe that pasty Todd's character is really a well-muscled green-eyed anime vixen. He can buy that equally-pasty Janice can "Explore" such a character, but not that Todd can.

It so happens that I do not agree entirely with this Forge member on this subject. However, he has a DAMN good point and I think it deserves consideration, before we all start agreeing that anyone can imagine or depict anything successfully.

Best,
Ron

[ This Message was edited by: Ron Edwards on 2001-11-05 19:14 ]

I think there are two issues at stake here, both the difficulty in portraying a character oneself, and the difficulty of suspending one's disbelief for someone else

in CLAWs (my local gaming society) the issue is referred to as the "gnarrlibur" issue; gnarrliburs are cute, blue boxes with three eyes with a Boing skill and no real communicative abilities

the original article addressed the difficulty with "cute" characters (gnomes, halflings, fey), but extended to cover any alien-to-human-type characters; the central claim has been that any non-human portrayal will end up stereotypical (or anti-stereotypical)

I think there is a fine line to be walked, affected by the SoD everyone at the table, whether they be happy-go-lucky Mike's or hardline Anonymous Forge Member Who Got To Speak To Greg Stafford, The Bastard

I think that an overlooked point is asking why you have chosen a potentially Suspender Snapping character... if you're playing D&D and you play a gnome, no problem, other members of the group need to get over themselves with respect to short humanoids, if you're playing a gnarrlibur, there may be a problem

my line is drawn at non-sentience (I appreciate the term is rather fuzzy); if you're non-human-intelligence dog, I've gotta ask, why? how are you contributing to the party/game in a meaningful way?

(not dissing anyone here, I've just not come across an example of this where a player contributed meaningfully to the game except that "gosh, he played a dog"; perhaps I just don't see a dog being a meaningful protagonist)

Anonymous Forge Member WGTSTGSTB brings up a good point with regards to opposite-sex characters, but in the end every character that we play is in some respects unknowable to us, some are just more unknowable than others

(tangent: although I find there's always an aspect of a character that I identify with, and certain characters archetypes that I just can't see myself playing)

my Delta Green investigator, St John, ended up with a SAN of zero, and I kept on playing him, the rationale being that although *I* didn't understand his thinking (and hadn't for a while know), his own skills and abilities allowed him to fool the rest of the party, while he merrily served Nyarlathotep in the background; the other players didn't know anything about it, although things became more and more obvious as the campaign drew to a close (very obvious when Gnarly sacrificed St John to prevent the coming of Azathoth)

finally, I'd suggest that group-based party creation would avoid some of these issues as people get to discuss ideas, identifying their borders of suspension of disbelief (BOSODs?); then again, I think group-based party creation is the cure of most evils

also, I think that following thru in your portrayal of increasingly alien characters assists others in their SoD; showing that your commitment demonstrates that you want to contribute to the game rather than simply be a disruptive gnarrlibur

boing

I officially adopt "gnarliburr" as technical Forge jargon, courtesy of David. I'm not so sure about BOSOD, though - great concept, but a terrifying acronym.

Best,
Ron

Hey David,

Anonymous Forge Member WGTSTGSTB brings up a good point with regards to opposite-sex characters, but in the end every character that we play is in some respects unknowable to us, some are just more unknowable than others.

I think the important aspect of the point WGTSTGSTB made in relation to gender is that character protagonism depends on communication from player, through gameplay, to audience. Pasty Todd may be well into Actor stance with his vixen character. He may roleplay her through jealosy, betrayal and revenge. He may deliver his flirtatious giggle to the arresting officer NPC on the scene. But if the other players can't get past the incongruity, the communication of the vixen's protagonism is lost in the noise of Todd's maleness. Male writers of romance novels use female pseudonyms for a reason.

The issue isn't whether the character is unknowable to its player or not. It's that the other players fail in being audience to the character's protagonism.

Paul

Hey,

Paul hit it directly on the nose. That's exactly what - whoops, almost typed his name - was driving at. Our discussion at the time moved directly into that very issue.

Best,
Ron

Yup, Ron and Paul have pretty much got it. For lo, I am Anonymous Forge Member WGTSTGSTB. Like you couldn't figure that out...sheesh.

- Jared, who also got to order Indian food for Greg Stafford (and whose head almost exploded while listening to him and Ron discuss...things. Weird things)

Oh yeah, a point.

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.

There's some other stuff but I forget what it is and my room's filled with dust from packing boxes.

_________________
jared a. sorensen / http://www.memento-mori.com
indie game design from beyond the grave

[ This Message was edited by: Jared A. Sorensen on 2001-11-06 00:48 ]

I go away for a while and Boom the discussion explodes :smile:

The issue I took from the original poster was that his friend thought that it was not possible for a person to 'successfully' role-play something not human. His example being a dog. I maintain my original stand on that issue, it most certainly *is* the case to role-play non-human entities, but the difficulty in carrying out such a thing increases exponentially with the 'distance' from human that thing is.

The other issue being addressed is the Suspension of Disbelief on the part of the audience, i.e. the other people participating in the role-playing session and whether or not this is strained to the breaking point by the dissonance between what they see before them - the actual player- and what the player is trying to portray.

I have several comments about this issue.

My first response is that the entire enterprise of role-playing hinges on an original commitment on the part of the people involved to suspend their Disbelief to at least some minimal degree. They have agreed to 'suspend their disbelief' in magic and fairies and a host of other things if they have chosen to play a fantasy game, for example.

The communal imaginative enterprise requires at the very least *pretending* for the sake of the game to accept the 'existence' of things that do not and to all evidence up to this point *cannot* really exist.

In the course of a game, I have to pretend that the Game Master is any number of things and people of all kinds of forms or none, of any sex or none. I see very little argument that a GM aught only portray male human characters, because I will have a hard time visualizing anything he describes since he is hairy and 6'10" tall.

This leads me to my next point, am I not supposed to imagine that my friend across the table from me has whatever traits he portrays his character as having?

He might be short, bald, and ugly. Say he is playing a tall strong and hansom man in plate armor. He is none of those things, yet I can picture him in my imagination as being how he describes his character.

That is one level of dissonance and a level I do not think that very many of us would think was very high.

If he said he was an elf, I'd have *no* issues picturing that.

The dissonance is increasing, but is still 'within reason.’ (for many people - some people may begin to have a problem with Sod [suspension of disbelief] at this point.)

Say he's still human, but makes his character *female*

Now, have we suddenly become more dissonant then an *elf*?

How? I see and interact with females everyday, I've never met an elf. If he's role-playing well and not providing impetus for SoD on that level, why should his gender be such an issue?

I know that it *is* an issue for some people and as such it should most probably be addressed long before play begins between the participants. I don't see this as being an issue that pertains to the situation of a person playing someone of the opposite gender so much as a problem one of the *players* has which may or may not have anything to do with his or her ability to picture or imagine the player as being of another gender, but with their being uncomfortable with their own internal mental and emotional conflicts that give rise to the increased dissonance between player and role.

What if our friend chose to play a homosexual character?

Different people will find different things that disturb their SoD enough to cause them to balk at portrayal of them in a game session. Discovering just what those things are in a group of people is difficult and to actually address them are, to my mind, crucial elements in establishing the social dynamic of the Play Group.

A number of other people have alluded to this, but I'll repeat it. If the people around the table are all on the same page as far as what they will and won't accept as part of their imaginative investment or SoD in the 'role playing environment' they are choosing to participate in, then I feel there is no potential limitation to SoD given the right set of circumstances. If we have agreed to play a game of Talking blue boxes that bounce (don't recall the name right now, sorry :smile:) then if anyone complains about not being able to picture Joe as a blue box creature, that person needs to find another group of people and another game to play. ***There's nothing wrong with that.***

I think that one of the great benefits in the GNS and other models and in observing *real human behaviors* engaged in by real people in the course of actual role-playing sessions is an increased understanding not only of role-players, but of human social behaviors in general.

I happen to think that the overall social behavioral patterns of the ‘Play Group’ as a social entity deserve attention. People are making decisions about play based on *a lot* more factors then even those the GNS model (as I understand it at this time) can encompass. That is perfectly understandable, though as it is not meant to address *all* the social and individual personality factors of a Play Group, just the ones that are pertinent to the task at hand.

A certain deliberate level of social engineering needs to be engaged in by any Play Group for everyone to have fun. If I'm thinking about joining a Play Group then I want to know not only what game they are playing, but I want to know the level of mental/social/physical/material/etc. *commitment* I must bring to the group. What's expected of me? I must also have a clear handle on what *I* expect of the Play Group and be able to articulate those things clearly to them so a real decision can be made.

This is of course an ideal situation and the world does not provide ideal situations - we have to deal with what we have at hand. That does not mean, however, that we cannot make the situation better then it is. Every step closer to the goal of understanding is a positive one for the hobby and for everyone that loves it.

It means that more people have more fun.

It means that more people have an increase in happiness in their lives.

I like that idea a lot.

Scott B.

Hey Scott B,

"I happen to think that the overall social behavioral patterns of the ‘Play Group’ as a social entity deserve attention. ...
"A certain deliberate level of social engineering needs to be engaged in by any Play Group for everyone to have fun."

100% agreement on my part. A few months ago, Jim Henley coined the term "Dude Mode" to describe this level of thinking about role-playing. It's the main reason that I framed the entire GNS discussion in my essay within a social, real-people context, and why the reasons for failed role-playing INCLUDE the GNS stuff but are not CONFINED to it.

As a topic, this definitely deserves its own thread. I suggest the Actual Play forum so we are forced to use real-people and real-play examples.

******
But back to the real topic of the thread.

All that said, I disagree that a female character for a male player or a fellow human character of another culture require LESS suspension-of-disbelief than playing an elf or a gnarliburr. I think that playing such close-to-home characters demands far, far more "oomph" on the part of the player.

I will clarify. It is easy to play an elf or space-alien or even a cartoon character. It is very hard to play a human character of a gender or distinctive culture different from one's own.

I've occasionally played women characters, the more so lately than previously. That is mainly, in fact only, because I consider myself a competent student of female humans, to the extent that my depiction/performance is going to make sense to those around me. I also have "thematic things to say" regarding women that I like to express through play. I still consider it a stretch, successful about 50% of the time, for my GMing and my character-play alike. I still consider nearly all the women characters played by males (GMs and players alike) to be unbelievable, such that I have to squint a lot during play.

I am not going to be willing to play in a gangsta/street New Jersey scenario, because I do not consider myself a competent author for that material. My characters will be ripoffs and shadows of characters from Clockers or Fresh; no matter how well meant, my depiction (and I don't just mean mannerisms but decisions) will be a pop-culture-derived construct. It will lack the personal judgmental power that I demand from myself in role-playing.

I suppose if the goal is not to generate an original story (by which I mean the most general use of the term, NOT Narrativism), but rather to INVOKE an already-existing story, then that's OK. I'll play the female or gangsta or Malaysian guy or who-knows-who, just how it was portrayed in the source material. I saw "Gallipoli." I can play an Australian conscript in WWI. I'll just remind everyone of Mel Gibson. I saw "Pretty Woman." If I just do Julia Roberts everyone'll know that we MEAN this woman by whatever fumbling portrayal I produce through play. (And if she's supposed to be a "tough woman," I'll do Ripley! All set.)

Well, all THAT said, I come down about midway between you and Jared. I won't say that the play of a non-Me human is impossible or prohibitively difficult. I will say that when we gamers try to play such characters (as opposed to Star Trek women or Fantasy-Greyhawk dwarves), we stumble far more than anyone admits, and usually fall back on the "invocation" trick described above.

Best,
Ron

Hey everyone,

One of the things I was trying to say by describing pasty Todd's maleness as "noise" that interferes with communication of the vixen's protagonism is that more often than not I think Todd's real life relationship history, issues with women, and fantasies come blaring through with such intensity during his roleplay that the vixen's protagonism is drowned out. It's less about how hairy Todd is than it is about how he thinks. To Todd, he's roleplaying a woman with the understanding he's developed of them, and from within his personal suspension of disbelief he's unaware of the extent to which his own psychology is creating distortion visible to the audience. Men who know they don't completely understand women can very clearly see similar failings in another man's understanding.

But the real problem, I think, is that a gamer like Todd is actually less interested in rendering the vixen as a protagonist than he is in being able to ask the audience, "Isn't she great?"

Paul

On 2001-11-06 10:11, Ron Edwards wrote:
Hey Scott B,

"I happen to think that the overall social behavioral patterns of the ‘Play Group’ as a social entity deserve attention. ...
"A certain deliberate level of social engineering needs to be engaged in by any Play Group for everyone to have fun."

100% agreement on my part. A few months ago, Jim Henley coined the term "Dude Mode" to describe this level of thinking about role-playing. It's the main reason that I framed the entire GNS discussion in my essay within a social, real-people context, and why the reasons for failed role-playing INCLUDE the GNS stuff but are not CONFINED to it.

As a topic, this definitely deserves its own thread. I suggest the Actual Play forum so we are forced to use real-people and real-play examples.

******
But back to the real topic of the thread.

All that said, I disagree that a female character for a male player or a fellow human character of another culture require LESS suspension-of-disbelief than playing an elf or a gnarliburr. I think that playing such close-to-home characters demands far, far more "oomph" on the part of the player.

I will clarify. It is easy to play an elf or space-alien or even a cartoon character. It is very hard to play a human character of a gender or distinctive culture different from one's own.

I've occasionally played women characters, the more so lately than previously. That is mainly, in fact only, because I consider myself a competent student of female humans, to the extent that my depiction/performance is going to make sense to those around me. I also have "thematic things to say" regarding women that I like to express through play. I still consider it a stretch, successful about 50% of the time, for my GMing and my character-play alike. I still consider nearly all the women characters played by males (GMs and players alike) to be unbelievable, such that I have to squint a lot during play.

I am not going to be willing to play in a gangsta/street New Jersey scenario, because I do not consider myself a competent author for that material. My characters will be ripoffs and shadows of characters from Clockers or Fresh; no matter how well meant, my depiction (and I don't just mean mannerisms but decisions) will be a pop-culture-derived construct. It will lack the personal judgmental power that I demand from myself in role-playing.

I suppose if the goal is not to generate an original story (by which I mean the most general use of the term, NOT Narrativism), but rather to INVOKE an already-existing story, then that's OK. I'll play the female or gangsta or Malaysian guy or who-knows-who, just how it was portrayed in the source material. I saw "Gallipoli." I can play an Australian conscript in WWI. I'll just remind everyone of Mel Gibson. I saw "Pretty Woman." If I just do Julia Roberts everyone'll know that we MEAN this woman by whatever fumbling portrayal I produce through play. (And if she's supposed to be a "tough woman," I'll do Ripley! All set.)

Well, all THAT said, I come down about midway between you and Jared. I won't say that the play of a non-Me human is impossible or prohibitively difficult. I will say that when we gamers try to play such characters (as opposed to Star Trek women or Fantasy-Greyhawk dwarves), we stumble far more than anyone admits, and usually fall back on the "invocation" trick described above.

On 2001-11-06 11:24, Paul Czege wrote:
Hey everyone,

One of the things I was trying to say by describing pasty Todd's maleness as "noise" that interferes with communication of the vixen's protagonism is that more often than not I think Todd's real life relationship history, issues with women, and fantasies come blaring through with such intensity during his roleplay that the vixen's protagonism is drowned out. It's less about how hairy Todd is than it is about how he thinks. To Todd, he's roleplaying a woman with the understanding he's developed of them, and from within his personal suspension of disbelief he's unaware of the extent to which his own psychology is creating distortion visible to the audience. Men who know they don't completely understand women can very clearly see similar failings in another man's understanding.

But the real problem, I think, is that a gamer like Todd is actually less interested in rendering the vixen as a protagonist than he is in being able to ask the audience, "Isn't she great?"

Paul

For me, suspension of disbelief is a non-issue. We're playing let's pretend, whether you believe it or not isn't a concern because we all "don't believe" it and that doesn't matter.

What matters is what Paul said. Most of the time, the guy playing the space vixen is doing so for reasons that are well outside of the game -- without there being any in-game reason for doing so.

Let's take a dungeon-crawl in D&D.

Everyone rolls up their characters. Chuck decides to play a female elf ranger. Okay, why? We're all in game mode...2 of the players haven't named their characters, content to call themselbes "my guy" and "the dwarf," respectively. Now, elf females receive no special penalties or bonuses in this game. Why is Chuck playing an elf? Because they get cool abilities. Why is Chuck playing a ranger? Ditto. Why a female? I think he has issues, myself...but that's just me.

And thankfully, nobody's brought up the "well I wanna feel what it's like to be a woman...this is ROLE playing you big jerk!" argument. To which I respond, playing a female character is going to give you as much insight into the female mind (?) as playing a police officer is going to let you experience what it's like to be a cop. It's a bogus argument.

Oh, and you want disconnect? I ran a LARP where one of the female players insisted on playing a guy. In a LARP. Again, she had some issues there...

- J

On 2001-11-06 12:04, Jared A. Sorensen wrote:
For me, suspension of disbelief is a non-issue. We're playing let's pretend, whether you believe it or not isn't a concern because we all "don't believe" it and that doesn't matter.

What matters is what Paul said. Most of the time, the guy playing the space vixen is doing so for reasons that are well outside of the game -- without there being any in-game reason for doing so.

Well, the problem I've always had with male player playing female characters is that usually they just don't play a female very well. IME then tend to either be total sluts or total prudes, as if that's the complete and sum total of emale behavior or something.

Personally, I don't see why it should be such a problem. It is if you make it one, I guess. Sorta like the Dwarven women and beards arguement.

And of course they have issues. We all have issues. Even the sane ones are victemized by their sanity. It ain't easy not being crazy, you know. It's so lonely being normal.

Personally, that's where I am on the issue. I've some a guy who could play a female fairly well and it was no big deal. I've know a guy who tried to play a heroic character and failed miserably at it. The guy just didn't know how to act heroic. Sadistic, yes, but not heroic.

It's sort of like character actors. find out what you play well and play it. Harrison Ford couldn't play a wussy little nerd if he wanted to. Not at this stage, anyway.

The conversation has taken a really interesting turn. To me, Iis all about atmosphere, not necessarily about the IC roleplay or even necessarily the metagame. If you ~look~ at
Ralph, this big beefy 6'2 dude gulping a beer and scratching his beard, if you ~listen~ to his deep voice, then maybe its difficult to imagine him being a 4'2 elfin ranger babe and having your character react accordingly.

But I'm still surprised to hear that it requires a greater suspension of disbelief for some people than if he's playing a green skinned half orc, or a 4'2 Asian assassin. Ralph is Ralph. His character could be a hundred different things, including a dog, or a female ranger, and I would have the same satisfaction level, provided the character fits the context of the game. Granted, he might be better at portraying a post-modern 20 something computer geek that a geisha in 16th century Japan.

But its not going to disrupt my fun, if he makes a geisha, as long as his geisha is appropriate to the overall story and his character acts in ways that affirm the concept. I'm
not going to say its "impossible" or "bad" for a guy
to successfully role-play a women, or a dog, or even a purple Venusian wombat... as long as the character concept embraces the game's Premise, and is role-played with honest intention towards promoting that concept in both show and tell.

I'm not going to say its "impossible" or "bad" for a guy
to successfully role-play a women, or a dog, or even a purple Venusian wombat... as long as the character concept embraces the game's Premise, and is role-played with honest intention towards promoting that concept in both show and tell.

Hey,

A couple of points here ... I'm pretty sure that no one is talking about "impossible" or "bad." Nor are we talking about the degree of imagination necessary to visualize a character who simply LOOKS different from the player.

The key point of disagreement seems to be that Laurel (for instance) is satisfied if, say, the geisha character WORKS in the context of the story; whereas Jared is satisfied if he, as a human, sees a genuine emotional commitment on the part of other humans in role-playing that, he says, is only reliable if the character has some direct "honest source" in the player. These are both paraphrases, and I hope I'm not damaging either person's point.

I see both sides on this one. I just do. My point above about playing a gangsta, a soldier at Gallipoli, or a woman still applies. I pretty much agree with Jared in SUBSTANCE, but perceive a broader RANGE for a given player's "acceptable characters," such that Laurel's example of the geisha could well apply.

[Might I add that Laurel is a veteran of on-line role-playing? Or that Jared has spent a lot of time in Narrativist or semi-Narrativist LARPs (a rare phenomenon but it does exist)? The medium might be playing a big role. It might help to specify.]

Best,
Ron

I'm always baffled to find people who can believe in FTL travel, but not magic. Or vice versa. There are about equal amounts of evidence for the existene of each (i.e. none).

in CLAWs (my local gaming society) the issue is referred to

I am often unhappy with male players taking female roles, to the extent that I am not sure I can say I have ever seen such a character well played, IME and IMO. I think there is an important distinction between playing a dog or Bug Eyed Monster and playing another, specific, human. And this is the lattitude the Audience has for suspending disbelief as against their library of facts.

If a BEM character does something which might, for arguments sake, be SOD-challenging, it may well be written off to their *in game* BEM-ness. Because we have so few cues as to how a BEM would behave, forgiveness for minor slipups is easy. By contrast, a player running a cross-gender character is faced with huge huge quantitites of data, expectations, possessed by the rest of the group. Nothing they do or say exists without a reference point, while the BEM has very few reference points at all. I think the "burden of proof", to bend a concept slightly, is higher the more familiar the audience is with the subject.

A player using a Dog character has a much easier time, I would think. They don't necessarily need to think like a dog to pull this off; they merely need not to contravene the audiences expectations of appropriate Dog behaviour. Dogs licking there own testicles - Fine. Dogs telepathically asking vampires to fondle their testicles - Not Fine. The real problem with playing a dog is the lack of verbal communication; even with all the portrayal in the world, the *player* will become frustrated at this major constriction of their ability to communicate. And I suspect that the whole exercise in rationalising the telepathy in the above example is to get around that restriction.

There have been a couple of Sim computer games featuring critters - Wolf and Lion, IIRC. Never played them myself, but I can get the idea, and think it might work well. So as a thought experiment: would a dog work as a single player game? I think it probably would.

So heres an interesting one: Dolphin, the RPG. I and others could make a pretty good case for the intelligence of dolphins; could we author a playable dolphin RPG? I sincerely doubt it, because its i not merely a mentality which is different in some abstract sense, it is different by virtue of being adapted to a wholly different environment, which requires (probably) wholly different thought processes. I would love to be able to do this, but I am not convinced it is doable.

But: at the Free Willy level, do we care? Nah - but then the dolphins are really just props or metaphors. Any game which features aliens in the way that Star Trek does is not REALLY playing aliens - just as we can see that they are humans with superficial modifications, so the ideas, beliefs and motivations of these beings will be human with superficial modifications. In which case the "accuracy" is rather a moot point, becuase the point of playing a Klingon is to be legitimised in being violent and using "target" as the collective noun for everything. Its not really about "being" Klingon.

I often feel that much the same process occurs in men playing women, but here I am displaying my feminist credentials. I don't think those players were interested in playing women so much as, in their opinion anyway, this acted as the legitimiser of certain behaviours. I fear exactly the same issue with the gangsta, and I agree that there is a strong, powerful tendency for this sort of play to produce behaviours which either reinforce or diametrically oppose the prevailing stereotypes.

Interestingly, I have experienced much less difficulty with women playing male characters. I think this is for several practical reasons: the game world is usually a mans world, full of battlefields and plunder and might of arms. Sometimes the exercise of rationalising a female character, for players of either gender, in such a world is not worth the effort. Secondly, I think becuase the real world is also largely a mans world, the psychological distance for women to cross is smaller than that for men; many women already adopt and exhiboty "pseudo-masculine" behaviours in the real world, to do so with the reinforcement of a male physique in the game world is arguably easier. And lastly, because patricarchal/sexist behaviour primarily operates by imposing behavioural expectations on women by men, mens expectations of women are heavily dominated by these socially validated behaviours, while the female experience of masculinity is much more dominated by their practical experience of men. Id onlt want to get carried away with this one, however; the line is pretty fine. But I think, fropm my experience to date, that women carry fewer stereotypes about men then men carry about women, and thet their roleplay is more accurate accordingly.

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.

It helps, of course, to know lots of women and men and to watch them all the time as they interact and go about their business. It helps to be as conscious as possible of your own stupid stereotypes and blind-sides. It helps to be skeptical of gender to begin with.

But all this talk of how Women Are Not Understandable To Us is absurd. Talk to one. You'll find that you have lots in common.

-lumpley Vincent

Boy, I'm just in a ranting mood, aren't I?

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.

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

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.

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?

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."

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.

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.

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

However, females are different from males. Completely different.

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).

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:

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.

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.

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

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?

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