Roleplaying as the opposite gender

Maybe this counts for less because I'm a foreverGM but I do it all the time. It doesn't make sense that the PCs would end up exclusively interacting with other dudes unless they were actively trying to avoid women for whatever reason.

I've had players that play as the opposite gender every now and then and it's never been an issue.

I play as female often, I mean is it any weirder than playing as a nonhuman character?

I always enjoy this type of discussion because I have a Goofus/Gallant style example from my own gaming history:

One of the first guys I can really recall playing a female hero was the Goofus in the story: He'd come to the sessions and drink, which would be fine, except no one else was. Further, he'd get drunk off of the single six-pack he brought, and at least once ended up vomiting in the host's toilet.

He played a half-succubus, (the whole party were Half-somethings, which the DM rolled randomly) and played it with...excessive vim.

Any time he rolled poorly on Diplomacy or Bluff, his next act was "What if I offer him a blow job?" he would then always laugh drunkenly at his own wit. He'd often describe the way his character would touch himself while talking "to be more sensual."

It was clear the rest of the room wasn't comfortable with it, but he was too drunk to care.

The next player to play a woman was more of the Gallant: his character was a Paladin of the Raven Queen, searching for her lost sister. She was the most serious member of the party, and endured the flirting of the party fop, a bard/illusionist with delusions of grandeur.

Her gender rarely came up, except in situations like renting rooms at an inn, or dressing for formal events.

So, it's a matter of feeling the group you're with, and not treating women like some foreign species.

Well I mean, I have no problem with my appearance or my masculinity. I just like female characters fampai.

Don't harp on it, and it should be fine. Tbh one of the guys in our group played a paladin in full plate, and at the end of our session, she removes her helm and challenges the bone devil to a duel. Had to be one of the better dnd moments I've had.

In short don't roleplay super differently and it should be fine.

I roleplay females but mainly because my brain thinks up random base characters and they're usually female and I just go from there.
It helps that I usually only play online though and if I was physically there I would likely play male.
That said I realized this and am trying to make more male concepts but it's difficult to break decade old habits and force ideas.

ITT men who want to roleplay their waifus.

I do it because I like the contrast. Playing a xenophobic inquisitor is just fun for me.

Magical realm.

That's what they all say, user.

That's what they all say.

...

I don't care as long as they aren't degenerates about it.

When I do it, (and I frequently do) I roleplay them pretty gender neutrally anyways, to the point where they might as well have just been a male character. I only do them for online games though. I feel like it would be kind of weird and immersion breaking to do it in person or even over voice.

GMs need to be able to roleplay both genders.
GMs in general need to be more versatile ropeplayers than players.
Not better, just more versatile, because you need to play more characters, even if you are playing them more shallowly than the players.

Every GM does this all the fucking time. It's not hard, or weird, or some kind of indicator that the person has a fetish. Regardless of which gender you are, half of the fucking planet is going to be the other one. Complete non-issue.

I had a GM who actively hated playing out female NPCs. The only time women ever showed up in the game is if a player essentially forced him to. So if a character had a sister, or a different character was looking for barmaids.

In the case of the latter, any character who forced him to play out a sexual interest almost always wound up dead.

Don't really see the point, unless you're playing a fetish game you don't swing your axe with your dong. Properly roleplaying a female is the same as properly roleplaying a male.

Anyone have the copypasta from a few ago about this

they could just go to /tesg/ for that.

>any character who forced him to play out a sexual interest almost always wound up dead.
Well I fully support a GM saying 'fade to black', or similar if they don't want to bother with this shit, but killing off the character is a passive aggressive asshole move.
And if you hate playing female NPCs, don't GM or make a genderless setting.

Some players who make characters of the opposite gender have them act sluttier than would be reasonable or shoehorn a fetish or two in, but more often than not this isn't the case. Most people are aware that it would come across as creepy and weird their fellow players out so they tend to reign it in.

This

Good meme

>response is almost unanimously "meh, you do you"

This is a refreshing change

>perpetuating the tranny meme
kys

I've had a few GM's, and players that have taken issues. It really depends on a few factors.

1. Can you roleplay a female character without making it creepy fetish wankbait?

2. Is the group you're currently in mature enough to allow you play a character of the opposite sex?

3. Will any of your IRL characteristics conflict with roleplaying a female; destroying the immersion of said game? Such as a deep manly voice, Cheeto laden neck beard. Using softer tone voice usually helps. Don't try using a female voice unless you're already good at said voice; comes off creepy, and annoying. Text based RP's need not apply

Ive only ever done it in video games

if any of the women I GM for wanted to play a man, I'd allow it. If the dudes in my group wanted to play a female, I'd have to discuss it with them first.

I've only had one guy express an interest in playing a character of the opposite gender, and this guy is the most That Guy of anyone in our group by a large margin. The table decided that he isn't allowed to play a woman, as it would be offensive to everyone and would likely destroy the game we're trying to take seriously.

I tend to play pretty protective characters when it comes to their friends and comrades.
As a guy I feel can be more friendly and at times a bit stubborn, whereas with a girl I feel like I can play towards being more tender or directly/openly caring, sympathetic.
Also playing a foul mouth vs ara ara, but let's leave that aside for now.

Almost all of my characters are female, including the one I consider to be my "default" for D&D. I have no idea why, but it's definitely never been a fetish/magical realm thing.

I've tried it many times.

In the long run, I've concluded that the only way to do it is to take advantage of the anonymity of the Internet.

The only time Ive experienced it was when a gay man played an elderly social engineer type. She was basically a granny with class levels in slut/courtesan and it was absolutely insufferable. This was his side character he was able to play through the leadership feat and I never played DnD again after that experience.

This is a change?

Just don't be that guy who:
1) ALWAYS plays a female
2) Is obviously playing his perfect ideal waifu
3) Makes a Mary Sue because his dick is diamonds 24/7 (goes back to point 2)

Personally, I always play males because I just prefer male trope characters, e.g. old grandpa barbarian who don't take no shit from whipper-snappers.

I have never played DnD. I'm a girl. Do girl characters get a strength penalty? Because if so, I suppose RP:ing my own gender would limit my class choices a bit. Not that I would mind, I prefer healsluts in video game RPG's...

I've never had a problem with or doing it, but it's hardly something I would bring to a table of people I haven't really met yet.

In one game, I played a female Paladin in a courtly intrigue kind of setting, using the "lady of the court" angle to be the party face. I suppose what keeps things not weird is that I've always described my character's actions in the third person (this has the side benefit of making it so the other players know my character's name), which keeps everyone an arm's length away from the fact that I'm roleplaying a marriage subplot with a very large man sitting across the table from me.

Incidentally, that subplot ended with smiting and annulment. Just like every one of her relationships - it became something of a running gag.

This. Veeky Forums's hangups don't represent the world.

Unfortunately, I know for a fact that one of my players uses his female characters as fap fuel. The guy who initially thought "crossplay" was weird, at that. Go figure.

I don't think I've actually roleplayed a character of my race or gender since highschool when I first got into D&D. It has always worked out fine because I'm not a weird/creepy fuck about things and I know what is social acceptable at the table and what isn't.

>Another thing I see a lot is man-with-tits.
How different do you expect a woman *adventurer* to be from a male one? Not a lot of time to be vapid and catty on the road.

izzat chimneyspeak?

Nope, gender is pretty much meaningless for the mechanics of it. No different from deciding whether your character has green or brown eyes.

I mean, a warrior is a warrior. But I suppose you could play up sexist stereotypes? She's all emotional and cries a lot, craves chocolate, goes shopping for shoes in towns, demands privacy from male group members when changing/bathing, spends all morning brushing her hair, gets in a really bad mood once a month and drops spaghetti when in the presence of handsome men.

In extremely ancient D&D, women had a Strength penalty but a bonus to Charisma. That, however, was dropped from the game almost immediately. It's certainly not the case in AD&D (2nd Edition), 3rd Edition, 4th Edition, 5th Edition, or Pathfinder.

>demands privacy from male group members when changing/bathing

Not sure that specific thing counts as a sexist stereotype.

Play a muscle healslut who shouts people into health.

WarLORDs!

>gender is pretty much meaningless for the mechanics of it.
Unless you're playing AD&D 1e, and even then it's just a slightly lower chargen maximum.

An adventurer group is more or less like the military. In most of history that means dudes being naked in front of each other semi-regularly. In countrys where women are allowed service quite a few don't make exceptions based on sex. Insisting on that "mark of civilization" to me seems like a bit of a classically feminine thing.

I've both played grills as a man and seen men and women play their opposites. I've even seen a few creative genderless robotic killing-abominations

Thankfully and luckily so far, I've never had a magical realm issue that wasn't at most lighthearted fun in my decade of RPG shittery. I'd probably recommend giving even the most fapbaity character a single session at least to try to shine before rockfalling at this point

WarLADY?

>In extremely ancient D&D, women had a Strength penalty but a bonus to Charisma.
Source? It's not in OD&D, Holmes Basic, B/X, or 1e.

>Didn't think I would ever meet someone that had a legit problem with this outside of a Veeky Forums /pol/ recluse.
>Playing through Hoard of the Dragon Queen when 5th first came out.
>Getting near the end of Rise of Tiamat
>Start planning for the next game
>Decide that I want to play a female character
>DM starts acting really weird around me
>Starts becoming more hostile towards me
>If I make ANY sort of innuendo, on purpose or accident, towards another player, DM gets really quiet and then a little more pissy with me in general.
>One day, this rage boils over and we get into a huge argument about the character over one feature that literally didn't even matter
>It got so heated and aggressive that I wound up having to leave the group

Now I just DM for groups of my choosing. I'll play all the girls I want and flirt with ALL of the boys.

DM was closet tranny or homo.

Or worse; a feminist.

...

"GET UP PUSSY"

Where's the one with the dick down the side that has the layer with shit like 'peach is a colour'?

>I'll play all the girls I want and flirt with ALL of the boys.
This makes me think your GM was in the right.

Just last night I played my first female character.
A gunslinging woman in the Wild West.
(A system where being a woman actually is a drawback) so I was pretty prepared for what I might have to play/experience and it went pretty much as expected, some idiots and dumb asses hitting on her and being creepy (mostly just one NPC that was supposed to be creepy, and then some in the group but they were (mostly) just playing their characters.

All in all, great success.

That'sthejoke.mcbanesucks

He's probably thinking of the old 18.5 vs 18.0 limit thing, when there were gender- and race- based ability score maximums.

For that matter, in a number of times and places throughout history it was perfectly normal for men and women to share public bathing. Gender-segregation in that particular context is actually a fairly recent development.

I play female characters every now and then (perhaps ~40% of the time, if I had to guess), and it's never been an issue. It's no more of a disconnect than playing a non-human character, or one who's living in a drastically different world or period than you're own. I suppose it also helps that we play online, so there's no visible discrepancy between the player's voice or appearance and the character's.

The only time one of those character's gender ever really came up in the fist place was when the group kept jokingly shipping her and another party member. But that was all in good fun and kept mostly OOC, so it was just pretty hilarious. Besides, we ended up making that pairing a real thing in the setting background for a sequel campaign, so that actually turned out to be pretty cool.

I usually play female characters, but not always. They're technically all lesbians, but it never really comes up, and when it has it's good for a chuckle and that's basically all.

Nobody in my group likes to act all sleazy at the table, and i think that's what it's really all about.
We've occasionally had situations where it made sense for someone's character to seduce an NPC and fade-to-black or something like that, but we just don't get all creepy about it like you silly fuckers.

The first female I played was a former nanny who became a witch. Sort of an evil Mary Popins.

Played her as a well meaning busybody and became group leader.

>opposite gender

...

gender is a continuum. it is not binary.

Tumblr please go and stay go

You're either a man, a woman or a faggot.

I've found that most issues in cross-gender roleplay come from not having a fleshed out character. When confronted with a new situations people tend to fall back on broad generalizations. So make sure you have an actual character to play, not just a concept, it'll help.

I think you're on the right track with making your character abstinent. It'll help limit any unpleasant interactions, but I also worry if that will be limiting to you. The best cross gender player I've ever seen was a guy who played an older lady (40ish or somthing?) who was already married. It served the same purpose as what you're doing but didn't limit parts of the character.

Whenever I make a new character, female or male, I think up a few key points, then use some random backstory generators and kind of sew the two together like a frankenstein monster. I think it works well to have a character with a couple of contradictions and flaws baked in.

Personally, my best cross-gender character was a female Thaumaturge using FATE. Her motivation was that she wanted to use magic in civic projects to make the commoners lives better. I boosted the contacts and rapport skills and had her playing a dangerous game of flirtation and courtship with one of city's nobles, a jealous but honorable Enchanter named Lord Timothy. So while my character's sexuality was present in the game, it was tied up and directed at one person so it didn't get weird. And it wasn't like, "dur, sex the nobel now" either. The only time that remotely happened was when I had to burn a fate point to reroll a check. It played out as a lingering kiss that convinced him to give us the resources that we needed.

I'm not opposed to playing a female character, but it might break immersion when everybody else is sitting across the table from me and having to stare at a 30-something man with pattern baldness narrating a female character's dialogs.

It probably makes more sense for people to stick with characters who represent their own gender or gender identity.

As for computer RPGs, that's another story. I mix and match characters of different genders all the time since I'm not actually having to role-play them.

>Not that I would mind, I prefer healsluts in video game RPG's...
pls be in london

so is that a heretic monster or do you actually burn little lolis to death?

One of my players played a Female Human Sorcerer and roleplayed her as this gimmicky, shoddy psychic. Put on a hilarious voice and always had her smoking it was a great character.

6 of one, a half dozen of the other.

you messed up freak. I'll take you to court.

I am the court.

>I always play the same gender but YOURE NOT ALLOWED
the that guy is (you)

Requires more effort than any other character, just because you need to constantly talk in voice and remember of the proper grammar gender when aggitated. And that's regardless if you are a guy role-playing a chick or chick role-playing a guy.
Still, never had any issues about it whatsoever.

And I know one thing for sure - if it's done in PBF or similar stuff, then it works absolute wonders, because there is nothing distracting you, just the pure description. At table it at times might be hard just to cope with the dissonance between the player and the character, but that applies to all characters, not just when doing opposite gender.

...

if you think witches don't have their own justicars you are sorely mistaken.

user, please don't turn this into yet another faggy roleplaying thread.

this is more like out of character table banter.

>excuses excuses
Fuck off and die.

Look around you, we're all faggots here regardless of gender.

roleplay one's waifu? never. That would totally devalue her.

>Well I fully support a GM saying 'fade to black'
I always prefered playing some kind of chicken with my players. Totally react nonchalantly to their advances and never stop roleplaying. Whoever asks for a fade to black first IS WEAK AND SHALL BE BURNED AT THE STAKE FOR BREAKING ROLEPLAY AND CHARACTER

>Some players who make characters of the opposite gender have them act sluttier than would be reasonable
the other way round is even more often the case and much more boring. Playing once again a female paladin / monk who tries to prevent the whole sexuality / gender theme from coming up to not be considered lewd is sooooo boring

Honestly I never understood why people would do this and always assumed it was a fetish thing until I tried it. It was really fun and challenging. I've only done it the once (actually that current game is ongoing) but I can definitely see myself doing it every now and again in the future. As long as you don't make it overly complicated, or weird, I really see no reason ot can't be done.

the most extreme part I ever played was a fluent changeling. only showed sexuality and gender of whichever form he had at that time. the "true" self was completely genderless which was really hard to aim at without going full robot

Do y'all never play anything high-fantasy-ish? I mean, after you've roleplayed as something like a bipedal amphibian from a caste-based bronze-age society, it seems like simply playing as a human of the female persuasion would be comparatively straightforward.

>I prefer healsluts
Oh I'm sure you do, you dirty supportwhore. No deplete your mana healing the main PC and say thank you!

Stockholm, sorry.

kek