There are complaints about female characters always being attractive...

I dunno, I myself have played four female characters so far, and only one (a Dark Heresy Assassin) is actually stated to be attractive, or rather would be if she was not covered in blood half the time and showing the sign of long term drug use withdrawal. The others are a socially awkward monster hunter who is a patchwork of charred flesh and leather clothing, a goliath barbarian that looks like she was carved directly from stone, and an absolutely average, short, plain looking adept bookworm. Even thinking about the rest of my groups, I can only think of one player who went out of the way to make his character an attractive woman, and that is justified in her being a noble who puts a lot of thought in how she looks.
Female players I know, on the other hand, always either went for downright comic or stunningly beautiful/handsome; however I would chalk it to them being far more "casual" (as in, maybe played 10 session in their whole life) and as such less willing to go for more unconventional looking characters. I also get the feeling that most male players feel kind of ashamed to pretend to be beautiful in front of their pals.
Of course, as soon as the wonders of freeform internet rp are introduced, everyone is a stunning bombshell or amazing beefcake.

As a dude, I've done 3 intentionally just to make a character like that. If you can remind me the inspiration, then arguably 4 happened accidentally with the first character while winging backstory.

Maybe you should play more with girls that actually feel happy about their looks and body.

Plenty of girls will happily play some seriously ugly mofos.

Not sure buddy, of all the female players I have run for, at least two were significantly above average and one was pretty hot (and they knew it pretty well): of the formers, one played only handsome men and beautiful princesses, the other the classic haunted beauty warlock/witches. The hot chick made and hot SoB and an hot noblewoman. I am no one to advocate for the "girls are icky" trend going on lately in teegee, but I am starting to sense a pattern in their choices.

>Maybe you should play more with girls that actually feel happy about their looks and body.
>girls
>being ever happy with their looks or body
What are you on user? I want some too

They exist, they just won't let you know it.

Fine. Happy enough with their looks that they don't need to play a character in an RPG to feel pretty for once.

This is pure delusion.

That's better.

I am sorry that you never met a girl who had no issues about her own look, user. Wish you luck in the future.

>First character was a ugly hobo guy. Stole, but only from dead people so it was ok.
>Second character was an Arcane trickster assassin. GM was a big fan of weeboo shit so I made a A cup girl in a world of jiggly E cups. Bland face and cropped short hair.
>Currently playing a high elf house wife that has a thick I-do-farm-work body type. Alchemist that pulls vials out of her mom bag. Her kids follow her around.
>Going to play a female Kengu swashbuckler in another small group. 5ft and 95 pounds when wet. Can a crow face be attractive?

I usually focus on the personality of my concept. I mean who benefits from me describing in perfect detail the way a character's tits jiggle in their bodice?

Is there anything more cringy than overweight people playing overweight characters (unless they are the comic relief or it fits their character ie, playing a merchant)?

Not going to lie, user, that's my magical realm, right there, especially if multiple goblins were involved. STorytime?

Just the one goblin, unfortunately.

Being from a cave full of his kind, the adventuring life has left him with a crippling fear of loneliness and just wanting someone to hold on to and talk of his troubles.

He was nice enough a guy, I guess, to end up in a mutual friendship with a human rogue - and gradually, as they got to know each other, their standards kepton eroding until they decided to go to bed.

They never got actually romantically involved, it was just a sort of a friends with benefits affair.

Go to tumblr, look at the art specifically made by SJWs.

>who benefits from me describing in perfect detail the way a character's tits jiggle in their bodice?
me i do

I didn't and neither did you. Almost all people have some issue with the look, and all girls have. There may be some woman out there that doesn't but it's improbable that you have met her.

Eh. The way I make my character look is usually the last thing I think of. I usually come up with a concept first. I usually think of how the character looks when asked about it. I guess a lot of them have similar coloring. I usually try to think of how the character looks from their backstory, like I had a Nightmare Spinner in D&D who was based on russian fairy tales about Vassilissa- she had been hostage, servant, and apprentice to a witch who had been killed by our party's paladin right before the game started- she had scraggly hair, dark circles under her eyes, and was underweight and malnourished. But people like to assume characters are pretty, and I can't stop them- a friend of mine drew the party and she ended up looking more heroin chic than haunted.

I think more about how characters dress and what that says about their personality and don't really describe their bodies much unless it's a martial character, because I feel like they'd be very fit, or I've made a single character who was supposed to be a femme fatale and one that was a running gag of being very sexy looking (I made a spider person and spider girls turned out to be a fetish of a friend of mine, and it was too late to change it. Also, being able to shoot webbing is awesome.) and is very sexually naive.

Probably this, though. I tend to assume my "normal" characters are sort of boring looking, but in a lot of settings you end up with characters who are more physically fit than average like martial characters, and if you're physically in good shape there's a good chance someone is going to find you attractive.

Yeah, I only really complain about women's clothes being inappropriately skimpy for her character. Like if a male character would be in full plate and the female character is in a plate mail bikini top, an long skirt, and armor that looks like high boots. Or female characters in comics or action movies wearing high heels when fighting, or female characters who wear their hair long and it never gets messed up.

I'm used to TV, and on american TV at least, there are no average looking people under 35, and when people are supposed to be "ugly" half the time they're actually good looking but in a slightly weird way. It's just how things are.

>but how many female players actually ever make unattractive characters?
None, except the "looks really plain but everyone wants to give her the D" Mary Sue self-insert characters. But let's be honest, the problem isn't in the character itself. The problem is that men can do no right and women can do no wrong. Just like how a woman who dresses like a literal prostitute should be allowed to dress however she wants without being called a slut, but a male character designer drawing a vidya protagonist who constantly runs around in a bikini top (which may be more modest than the aforementioned slut's outfit mind you) is a sexist who reduces women to objects.

My advice: stop listening to women outside of professional contexts. Just drone them out, like the barking of a dog except less cute.

>hey let's just ignore the topic and instead talk about ethics in videogame journalism

Yeah how about you fuck off and kill yourself?

As a few others have said, this is just a description of all fantasy fiction in any visual medium. If a character isn't specifically labeled as ugly for some plot reason, they default to baseline hollywood attractive (which is usually somewhere between a 9 or 10 on normal human scale). In everything from LotR to Conan, we have beautiful people playing protagonists, villains, and extras. The spartacus tv show portrayed a rome with a population that was 95% beautiful twenty-somethings.

Hell, this even happens if they ARE described specifically as being unattractive. Look at the game of thrones tv show. All the "normal" looking people got replaced with faces that are movie-star beautiful, and goddamn Brienne of Dogfaceville is played by a fashion model. They just cut her hair short and threw some dirt at her.

This sort of thing is so commonplace most people don't even notice it anymore. But it's "fantasy" so..

I would, but I actually don't hate myself.

>game of thrones tv show
just look at Tyrion's nose.

Very insightful.

I remember how it bothered me in Dragon Age: Inquisition that the Cassandra had make up like whore and when i made random character without makeup, it looked really ugly in comparison.

>Can a crow face be attractive?
Answer carefully, motherfucker.

vs book?

I had a woman playing a character who was almost literally torn in half from the throat to waist and stitched back together.
still had 18 cha.
still tried seducing shopkeepers for a discount.

sort of decent player besides that though.

Charisma isn't physical appearance.

Is that the bird from Four Lions!?

It's not just Tyrion, although that's certainly an example. Go back and read the physical descriptions of literally any character when they're introduced in the books. It's a medieval setting, gang. In the "realistic" take, these folks aren't lookers.

FPBP.

I've played a couple unattractive characters but that's just because I specifically started thinking about this trend and thought I'd mix it up. And I guess if you count warforged then I can think of one or two. Though I've known quite a few female players who've described their characters as "plain", if not outright ugly. But on the whole, if it takes exactly as much effort to make an attractive character as an unattractive one (and often the former is easier), then most people are gonna pick "attractive".

Nobody likes making unattractive characters unless their entire point is being unattractive as fuck. It's just a fact of like that people like pretty things more than ugly things.

Never really had either problem.
The girl in my group who I thought only wanted to play charming prettyboy characters just rolled up an ugly-ass Minotaur Barbarian with a negative Charisma.

>both genders
triggered

I tend to make characters more like pic related

I guess that's unattractive without it being the sole point

I've noticed that whenever my group plays Strong characters they try and make them like 8 feet tall. It gets dumb when you have like two people trying to be "the huge guy"

All our players eventually seem to play a prostitute at some point as well, regardless of gender (but mostly it's the girls that do it)

Pretty much 100% of the guys I've played is give zero fucks to their character's appearance except when they want to make it a point that they're ugly, while as half the girls I played with won't even play if you won't let them have a 10/10 girl with big knockers.

Not sure if this helps on your stadistic study.

People play characters for different reasons. Some people play it so they can have fun pretending to be an idealized hero, and there's nothing wrong with that. Others do it more as a character exploration, and there's nothing wrong with that either. People have fun in different ways.

Most people like their characters to be attractive, or at least average, regardless of sex/gender. It's just nice to feel slightly more badass because of it.

>whenever my group plays Strong characters they try and make them like 8 feet tall

Well, if you have a character with high strength and constition, it stands to a reason that they'd be on the tall side as well.

I'm guessing all the women you've ever met were at the pub.

I've been told that my scars (shrapnel) increase my charisma in real life. I'm not a terribly handsome dude as you can imagine, but women seem to be really attracted to the fact my face has been torn up a bit.

In short: we may be operating on different standards of hotness.

Fpbp

I'm sorry you've never known a girl well enough to hear the issues she had with her looks.

Fpbp

Tough I guess it's easier in modern and less escapist games: in FIASCO the problem isn't there, characters aren't hot as fuck by default.

Fuck you talking about? I'm a female player and I've played plenty of conventionally unattractive female characters.

Awkward teenage girls.

Multiple old ladies.

Frumply middle aged housewives.

Female Char clone with a disfigured face who never takes off her helmet.

It depends on the tone of the setting.

I would like to expand that even when players make ugly characters it is often a sort of respectable ugly. You don't have the hunchback of notre dame as your character you have a wrinkled old man who gives off a vibe of experience or an ugly, broken nosed, covered in scars badass who even if not pretty looks tough.

Very rarely will someone play a character who is just ugly like a skinnyfat lanklet or a short, fat hispanic goblin looking woman.

Keep projecting user. It's just the way this society is, that they appear secure doesn't mean they are actually ok with their body.

I played a fat "goblinoid" grandma for a super natural investigations campaign. It was fun. Well mostly the bits of being over-protective of the players, doing stuff for them that they didn't ask for, being a passive aggressive asshole, conveniently always having hard candy on hand, etc.

Gonna steal this concept

i don't think the concept of "stereotypes about old ladies" can be stolen.

>this generalization of a big a mount of people isn't true because it doesn't apply to me

Well, it depends. My Dark Heresy game I'm DM'ing players have beastman (house rules, adds great RP value though) character, a 6 fingered regular guy that is simply snarky but not exactly good looking, and a psychotic Soraritas with a disfigured nose.

As for myself, my 5e character is a chubby, eh looking antisocial savant Eldritch Knight. I did take some inspiration from Terry Prachett's witches but the backstory is unique.

However, most of these players, perhaps including me are experienced. Come to think of it, My original character was a dual wielding, outgoing alcoholic fighter which did reflect me minus dextery as I was (or I am? I think I am better now but you can't be objective) very clumsy. Perhaps as you get more experience with RP'ing, you tend to try different things? Then again, point is to escape reality and be what you want, so perhaps we are trying too hard.

I'm a chick and I don't think I line up with these trends... though pretty much all of the dudes I played with fall in either of the 5 trends.
It is actually very acurate.
I believe I kinda try to play something I find interesting or cool or at least fun.
I literally played a girl in a wheelchair in Shadowrun because I thought it was interesting and cool. The "Wheelchair", of course, being a mechanical spider thingy she could control with her mind.
I loved the idea of riggers and made something with that idea that I found cool. Wouldn't call her "small" or "cute" either, really.
Not even close to my ideal lover either and I sure as fuck don't want to sit in a wheelchair.
I also tend to play alot of female bards and pirates in general because I like music and pirates.
So, thats that.

>4. Some horrible ravening monstrous creature that you eventually realize is, for the girl in question, actually a variant of type 2
Sometimes the horrible ravening monstrous creatures are hive mothers and it's a variant of type 1. This is most Nid players.

What's happening in the second part of the gif?

I'm male, and I've played trends 1 and 2 from your list, but they make up exactly two of the characters I've played. The rest are just characters I thought were cool and maybe took some influence from videogames or other media.

I don't think my table has ever described their characters in terms of attractiveness.

Though honestly, i tend to describe my characters as though they were ugly. I am an artist and it's just more fun to draw a weird looking character like Quasi-modo than someone pretty like Legolas.

Admittedly, I would love to show up to a game and just draw a Monster on a piece of paper, have the party fight that monster, and subdue it and that be my character.

So maybe I am an atypical player lol.

People who are good at RPing and actually care about it will often play less attractive characters because their interest is in world building and interactions not power fantasy. That is like 15% of pen and paper players most of whom slovenly nerds with little self awareness. It's also like 90% male.

The fact that virtually every women in every fantasy setting is a thin armed giant boobed beauty clearly designed as masturbation material for nerds really doesn't help with recruiting females into the hobby and most of the women you see at the table are ALSO living out power fantasies if they aren't just putting up with the activity in order to have social interaction with a group that has accepted them.

It's hard for women to dedicate themselves to RPing when the rest of the table wants to pretend fuck them and/or in real life is just weirdly creepy towards them.

I don't generally make unattractive characters, but I also don't make attractive ones. I like my characters just looking average. Not unconventionally attractive, not scarred but secretly gorgeous, just bog standard.

I had to correct one DM because he'd always describe my characters as beautiful, even in systems where there was ah "attractive" perk they specifically didn't take. He tried to fight me on it once or twice, because apparently not playing a beautiful character was a foreign concept to him.

>TFW your current character is 1,3,4, and 5

he got a flat tire from the wood breaking

Most things are far more cringy than that.

I'm not really a 'fitness is next to godliness' guy, so I don't really care how fat or thin or fit or unfit someone is. If you like yourself and you like your body you're way more likely to get laid than if you hate yourself and you hate your body.

Speaking of attractiveness, has anyone ever made a character with a butterface? Like, they've got a large chest and slender/hourglass figure, but they're just... Gross?