I'm trying to make a cross-dressing knight. I mean to say, it's a woman who was raised as a boy due to succession concerns.
How do I avoid anything that seems fetishy without making her characterization pointless? You know, make it clear enough that cross-dressing actually matters without it eating up all of the character, and avoiding the issue of "Why don't you just play a man?"
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Get rid if that "woman raised as a boy" garbage. No one with a brain would ever do that because it doesnt work.
Just play a woman who's ultimately feminine but just likes masculine things. Wearing armor, getting sweaty, short hair.
No one will accuse you of magical realm unless you act like a total creep.
>men like getting sweaty
>implying we don't
Maybe she just likes wearing pants
Succession concerns sounds fucking retarded and no self-respecting courtier or count will take the "she's a girl, but basically a man" nonesense; legally, she is and will always be a woman.
I'm trying to give this one some thought. If the character came from a lower station family, the business that the family is in could have a great deal to do with why the girl is into more masculine interests. The father (or mother!) might be a metal worker or smith that simply passes the trade on, and the character might learn fighting skills involved with the weapons and armor made.
Or another fun one would be that the family owns an actual ranch, either horses, cattle, or both, and the character is used to riding, rounding up stock, and doing hard work with their hands. A LOT of leather and woodworking wuld be seen here.
The issue here though is that the character is a Knight. Are Knights in this setting solely men? If so, her taking on the trade is going to cause her a LOT of problems, and I'm having a hard time seeing exactly why she'd want to do it. Having fighting skills and being forced on a path of revenge is one way. Or, assuming this is a mostly traditional setting with Knights, we have tournaments / grande melees for festivals at different times and regions. The character might have a great need of money (family member jailed until cashed out?) and is doing the one thing they do well, in secret, to raise what's needed.
Or hell. Perhaps the character is a tournament knight in the open as a girl, even if it flies in the face of tradition. The character might enjoy being a champion of the common folk who get a kick out of a girl fighter that competes against the best, more or less giving the middle finger to the establishment for them. If you're serious about trying this out for legitimate reasons, I know that myself as a GM, I'd help work with the themes the character is taking up.
Look up the balkan sworn virgins. This trope technically exists irl
As a few other Anons have said, don't make her womanhood a secret. Have her status as heir to the throne be well-known, potentially scandalous, but completely within her father's rights as King to decide. She's a tomboy and acts like she does not because she has to hide her gender but because she was brought up with all the training expected of an heir to the throne rather than a that of a princess. That's it. That's all you need. If you still want characters unfamiliar with her personage mistake her for a your man that's your business, but basing the character around such a charade is unnecessary.
just play Jericho from Seven Deadly Sins
>hide gender to be taken serious as a squire
>get beat
>power up and realize you shouldn't hide your true self
or just be a girl that values masculine qualities
>How do I avoid anything that seems fetishy
I don't understand... you're doing this because it makes you peepee happy, are you not?
Why else do you like it?
As you said yourself, why don't you just play a man?
Yeah, I'm not sure what people don't get about a noble house ticking a different box on a birth certificate and keeping her under lock and key.
The only way to get fetishized is when she has to get married to a lady and knock her up and her father wants her to get knocked up to preserve the bloodline.
>raised as a boy
You mean simply given the schooling and treatment a boy would have gotten, or go so far as to outright claim she's a boy?
The point is to not let anyone know she's really a woman.
>female anything
>not automatically fetishy to someone
Woman disguised as a man in order to fight is one of the oldest goddamn tricks in the book. Even Normies love Mulan. Phrase it like that, and nobody should give you trouble.
Depends on the game system the user hasn't told us would be used yet. If we're talking old Advanced Dungeons and Dragons with the original Unearthed Arcana being used, I'd make a fem drow 7 days out of the week and twice on sundays. Those extra free daily spells were so cash.
That's... moronic.
She won't live forever, and someone needs to succeed the throne after her. That means getting her married and pregnant.
You raise her as a boy, but you never pretend she is one. It's just that being heir to the throne she obviously has been given manly virtue in sufficient amount despite her female body.
And if this tension between expecting greatness of her and considering women to be little but breeding stock happens to cause her significant mental issues, uhm... oops?
>I'm trying to make a cross-dressing knight. I mean to say, it's a woman who was raised as a boy due to succession concerns.
Play pic related: a knight who was a man who dressed like a woman who dressed like a man who dressed like a woman who dressed like a man who dressed like a woman who dressed like a man who dressed like a woman et cetera et cetera.
It took until his death for his real gender to be made public. Until then nobody even knew it for sure.
>I'm the authority on succession law in your fictional world
Women becoming legally men for succession reasons happens in multiple real-world cultures, both historical and modern. There were several female pharaohs, for instance, whose regalia included a false beard. There's also the "sworn virgins" custom in the Balkans, where a family that lacks a male head-of-household will just have one of the women go "ok, I'm a man now, bring me some pants" and be treated as male by society for the rest of their lives.
And even if this stuff didn't happen in real life, we're playing pretend. If your group's cool with it, you can play whatever the fuck you want.
It was a comon occurence in history.
Stop prejecting your fetishes.
>She won't live forever, and someone needs to succeed the throne after her.
True.
>That means getting her married and pregnant.
Not necessarily.
Assume that there are a number of people close enough to the family that are in on the secret, support her as heir for whatever reason, and agree that the best way to do that is for you to have a son, as far as the world knows. Then from that group you assign a daughter to be the wife of your "prince." Have her knocked up by some man in secret and claim it's her husband's. Takes the work of a little cabal setting it up and you have to deal with your family's rule being continued only in name and not by blood, but it's better than having her killed by a revolt from those who won't accept a woman as your heir.
DOTS you boylover
>Just play a tomboy who secretly has really girly interests and likes pink things
You, I like you
>Legally she is and always will be a man
Holy shit I didn't know you could get a JD in fantasy settings. What University did you go to?
>That's... moronic.
>Secures succession rights without anyone going "But sire she's a woman," because, as far as they know, it's a man.
>Ensures the kingdom doesn't go to some chucklefuck just because you never managed to have a male heir.
>Problem is entirely off your plate and becomes her issue to solve later on, which she can solve easily through a marriage and falsified heir.
It literally works out fine. You're just a fucking moron.
>or go so far as to outright claim she's a boy
This one, duh.
That's the complete opposite of what he said, retard. He never mentioned liking girly things. He said liking manly things.
I swear to Christ none of you can read basic sentences anymore.
Use your best judgment.
There, done, play your fucking character.
One game I'm in, my character is a young boy with a somewhat toned body from practicing archery from an early age. The dojo that taught him the way of the bow mandates that practitioners are to be bare-chested (this was purely to keep women out but the laws of the land prevented a total ban on women) in order to "display the trained body of the children of Sagittarius".
You've probably guessed, he is actually a she, and nobody suspects a thing because she has no chest to speak of and the subliminal idea that no self-respecting female would go around topless further reinforces it. She's very dedicated to the teachings to where it's her flaw. If she uses the bow while not in the proper attire, it greatly inhibits her on a psychological level.
Trying to hide her gender until she's got a heir of age to take over will be tricky to say the least, and if the truth ever gets out, it won't be the friction of making people accept a female ruler, but a powder keg going off right in your face.
Just slit your own throat and be done with it if that's the way you want to go.
Now if the kingdom at large is so dead set against a female ruler, then our ruling family is unlikely to be much different. And since we're giving up on having the crown pass to a direct blood descendant anyway, there's a much simpler way of doing things, without the near-guarantee of the whole thing blowing up in your face.
You pick a suitable guy, and have the king adopt him.
As for OP, he can pick the less retarded variant, where a woman is accepted since by having ended up as the heir the gods and fate and all those must have made sure she's up to it. Then if he wants to have her outright pretending to be a boy, then she's probably doing so to hide who she is entirely. Given that she's out adventuring instead of doing royalty stuff something's probably gone very wrong anyway.
Makes me think of Heidi Krieger.
>Trying to hide her gender until she's got a heir of age to take over will be tricky to say the least, and if the truth ever gets out, it won't be the friction of making people accept a female ruler, but a powder keg going off right in your face.
Don't get caught.
>Now if the kingdom at large is so dead set against a female ruler
You mean like a classic kingdom would be? Where-in it's not so much 'dead-set against' as it is 'completely unheard of. Women can't be rulers that's dumb'.
>And since we're giving up on having the crown pass to a direct blood descendant anyway
She is*.
The King is not. She is the heir by virtue of being his descendant.
>You pick a suitable guy, and have the king adopt him.
>Adopt some fag to be my heir when I have a perfectly suitable daughter-son that I raised from birth, is perfect as heir, and is my blood.
You are terrible at this.
Why DOES the cross-dressing actually matter? Why DON'T you just play a man? You need to tell us this stuff if you want the best answer.
Pending that, I like this one.
OP back. Had to get lunch.
The setting is pretty stereotypical England fantasy. Only males have succession rights and only males can be knighted. We're playing a low-scale knights doing knight things adventure. The template backstory I have so far is that she's the only child to small nobility with a martial tradition, but nothing really beyond that.
My intention was to play less of a tomboy, more of a professional.
Ever notice how reality is much more interesting than "realism"?
Rose of Versailles did it great. Raised to be a man, but she's still a woman. She's just a woman who knows how to carry herself as a gentleman and a soldier.
>Why DOES the cross-dressing actually matter?
Because it can be fun and adds another element on to your character.
>Why DON'T you just play a man?
Not as fun.
You basically just said "What? You're playing a Fighter that pretends to be a Paladin? Why not just play a Paladin so you can actually cast Lay on Hands?"
Not OP, btw.
Except Heidi was a steroid abuser and clearly a woman with more testosterone than was normal (until a sex change).
>nobody suspects a thing because she has no chest to speak of
I've seen this anime.
So whats more common, tomboys who like girly things or ladies who like masculine things?
I certainly hope you do. More than one of my "scenarios" banks on it.
I'm not criticizing OP's decision. I just wanna know what (s)he wants it to add to the game.
Women that like masculine things.
Tomboys aren't real.
Cross-dressing doesn't have a purpose in character yet, it's just that the other 4 party members are going to play men so I wanted to play a woman to add colour. I thought it'd be an interesting gimmick to match up with the knight who's eternally searching for his family's sworn quarry that doesn't actually exist and the knight who secretly wants to be a bard.
Basically, I have an OOC plan I'm intent on but I don't know how to execute it IC.
If they're not real, then why are they real?
They're real in fantasy and 2D because "Women that are as attractive as women but have taste," is a nice fantasy.
"This is a great excuse for me to play a little girl that runs around topless! Now nobody will suspect that I want to fuck children!"
OHH okay, if this is for a light-hearted game then this is much easier to pull off. I was just worried it was all grim and such like every rookie DM wants their game to be.
Maybe it could be that in the setting, titles of nobility are super-binding so that once someone has one, it's stuck to them like glue. So your character just needs to stall detection (at least by the king or whoever authenticates that stuff) until she officially inherits her father's title, then she's home-free. With the DM's permission, of course, since it'd require a tweak in the setting.
It might also be that she had a brother who died, and they disguised her as the brother and claimed it was the sister who'd died.
>My intention was to play less of a tomboy, more of a professional.
Expand on that.
So it hinges on the culture having Abrahamic standards of modesty and morality, and your character also not having any visibly feminine features, like hips, whatsoever.
There are ways to hide hips, but not when you're topless.
They're real in 3D too
>Tomboys
>Real
Nice try.
If she's young enough to not have breasts, she probably doesn't have much in the way of hips yet either.
There are flat adult women.
Daddy wanted a son.
Was that hard?
>Tomboys
>Real
Pick two
Your sister liking soccer doesn't make her a tomboy, user.
Put points in bluff, diguise, and make her highly charismatic.
Or just go with and make her a tomboy. The world is always made a better place with tomboys.
The character is specifically called out as being "a young boy".
And most flat women are flat because they're skinny, and would have a much easier time hiding their hips anyway.
>Just go with the post that was proven wrong.
I'd consider a 12-16 year old boy young, and an 18-22 year old woman could pass for that in some cases. There was a girl I had class with in my senior year of high school who I thought was a young looking freshman boy when I first saw her.
A somewhat toned young boy. That suggests she's old enough that they'd expect male puberty to happen, which is several years after female puberty. And hips are bone; they show up even if you're skinny.
It's theoretically possible, just really testing my suspension of disbelief in a way that dragons and flying castles do not.
How are you defining "tomboy," exactly?
If that's actually the case, feel free to read the second sentence of my post.
>Expand on that.
Basically, just the gender inverse of the classic paladin-knight. She doesn't act like a boy because she likes it, but she doesn't hate it either. It's just a matter of obligation and duty that she's serious about because she was told to be serious about it.
Least that's the idea, I'm up to playing it a different way since the only core concept I'm committing to is "She's a girl that pretends to be a boy who happens to be a knight."
>That suggests she's old enough that they'd expect male puberty to happen
How so? Children can be toned, it's just that few children tend to exercise enough to get toned. A child going through a rigorous martial-arts archery training program would certainly be able to manage "somewhat toned".
> And hips are bone; they show up even if you're skinny.
Note that I said "easier to hide", not "nonexistent". Skinny women tend to have less pronounced hips. Yes, the hip bones are part of a woman's hips, but the flesh also does a lot to fill that out. Less flesh, less hips.
Something like this?
Saying tomboys aren't real doesn't make them not-exist, user.
You said that she doesn't dislike pretending to be a man, but doesn't like it either. She's a professional and she's fulfilling her duty to her father. You'll need to put some thought into who she is and who she wants to be when she's "off the clock" and doesn't have to pretend.
You could make her appear female but people take her word when she claims to be a man and assume she's a trap.
Not deciding that could be an interesting storyline, actually. She's spent most of her life just following orders, fulfilling her duty, maybe she doesn't really even know who she is "off the clock"? That could be fun, actually, as she follows each fellow party member around during downtime, trying to learn about their hobbies, see if she likes what they like, figuring herself out as she goes along.
Got it. Then the next question: even knights have downtime. What does she do with hers? Is it stereotypically feminine, stereotypically masculine, or neither?
>Her downtime consists of preparing for uptime.
Well never mind then.
I like that. Giving her a personal conflict that's neither dependent on her "gimmick" nor intrusive on the game itself.
Also, maybe she knows how to mend clothes or some other not-quite-giveaway skill.
I actually have very little for the character, I'm completely undecided on things outside of the core concept. I don't know what she does, what she likes or what she looks like yet.
Was hoping Veeky Forums could give me ideas on how to play this. I handle myself well enough in game but I'm pretty incompetent at making characters.
My first instinct would be "she likes to read". That seems like something a noble might do and it's sometimes seen as effeminate but not too much so. Or maybe gardening?
Do you know her ability scores? I'm assuming this is for D&D.
25-point buy Pathfinder ALL FIGHTERS. Starting at 3.
Basically two players decided in planning go Fighter, and then we started joking about everyone being a Fighter, and now everyone is a Fighter and for one reason or another we decided to theme as knights.
Mechanical stuff probably isn't a big deal. We're a really casual home group and we're not going into any high scale on this.
It matters in terms of Int, Wis, and Cha and figuring out her personality.
As a few others have said, you could make her duty-driven to such a high degree that she doesn't quite know who she is while not on-duty.
Exactly. What are her strengths and weaknesses?