# Comfort withcross gender characters based on your gender



## bubbalin (May 10, 2005)

Okay, I'm trying again...

Inspired by the other thread going on, I was wondering if a persons comfort with cross gender characters is related to their gender...

So, please vote on the one that lists your gender and your comfort level.

edit: tidied it up.


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## WayneLigon (May 10, 2005)

I am male. Other players, be they male or female, are welcome to play whatever gender character they wish: I'm totally comfortable with it as long as they behave.


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## ShadeMoon64 (May 10, 2005)

I have had players work with cross gender characters for years.  It has been my experience that more males play females than the reverse.  This may just bea function of the demographics of my players.


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## Ryltar (May 10, 2005)

As long as they RP well, I don't see a problem.


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## Vanuslux (May 10, 2005)

I'm male and rather indifferent to it for the most part...but it has been my experience that a lot of people who play the opposite gender frequently are often problem players...attention mongers and troublemakers.


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## Teflon Billy (May 10, 2005)

Vanuslux said:
			
		

> I'm male and rather indifferent to it for the most part...but it has been my experience that a lot of people who play the opposite gender frequently are often problem players...attention mongers and troublemakers.




There's my answer as well.


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## Rystil Arden (May 10, 2005)

Teflon Billy said:
			
		

> There's my answer as well.



 How sad 

I wouldn't classify myself as any of those things that Vanuslux and TB have seen.  On average, I seem to make *less* trouble when playing a female character...although I have recently made a male character who worked well that I liked.  Making a female character helps me to make a new person who is fully thought out and actualised, whereas all-too-often my experience in being a male gets in the way when playing male characters...


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## somekindofjerk (May 10, 2005)

Don't care either way really. It's the other player's business and not mine. OTOH, if the crossgender char starts causing a scene in every encounter, strutting about shouting "look how stereotypically X I am!" or is obiviously venting some angst against the other sex through their character, then we've got a problem.


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## TheAuldGrump (May 10, 2005)

Vanuslux said:
			
		

> I'm male and rather indifferent to it for the most part...but it has been my experience that a lot of people who play the opposite gender frequently are often problem players...attention mongers and troublemakers.




Heh, that hasn't been the problem, in my games they have just generally not been very good in cross gender roles. (Either way, for some reason  both male and female players seem to be caricatures more than characters in cross gender roles...with only one or two exceptions)

The Auld Grump


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## MonsterMash (May 10, 2005)

I'm not quite sure I understand the difference between indifferent and comfortable, so I voted indifferent. 

Got to admit I find cross gender can be prone to sterotypical behaviour, but then again I'm comfortable playing characters as archetypes - which can be seen as sterotypical, e.g. the Gruff Dwarf fighter, the effete aristocrat, the agressive dumb barbarian.


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## Gez (May 10, 2005)

What's the difference between "indifference" and "comfort"? If someone is indifferent to playing both male and female characters, then s/he's comfortable with both, isn't s/he?


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## Rystil Arden (May 10, 2005)

TheAuldGrump said:
			
		

> Heh, that hasn't been the problem, in my games they have just generally not been very good in cross gender roles. (Either way, for some reason  both male and female players seem to be caricatures more than characters in cross gender roles...with only one or two exceptions)
> 
> The Auld Grump



 I still don't think that my cross-gender PCs are caricatures...

::sigh::

It seems like I'm in the minority though.


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## diaglo (May 10, 2005)

Vanuslux said:
			
		

> I'm male and rather indifferent to it for the most part...but it has been my experience that a lot of people who play the opposite gender frequently are often problem players...attention mongers and troublemakers.





ditto.


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## orsal (May 10, 2005)

ShadeMoon64 said:
			
		

> I have had players work with cross gender characters for years.  It has been my experience that more males play females than the reverse.  This may just bea function of the demographics of my players.




Is that more proportionally or more numerically? Given that there are significantly more men/boys in the hobby than women/girls, it would be expected that there are numerically more men playing women than vice versa, but is a male player more likely to be playing a female character than vice versa?


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## Kanegrundar (May 10, 2005)

I've played several female characters over the years.  I have no problem with it.  Just because I'm playing a gal doesn't mean a thing.

Kane


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## Umbran (May 10, 2005)

I voted "indifferent".  I'm actually comfortable doing it, but I'm very aware that I don't do it _well_.


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## francisca (May 10, 2005)

Vanuslux said:
			
		

> I'm male and rather indifferent to it for the most part...but it has been my experience that a lot of people who play the opposite gender frequently are often problem players...attention mongers and troublemakers.



Ditto++


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## Ralif Redhammer (May 10, 2005)

Heh. I thought the poll was asking if I was comfortable with cross-dressing and transgender characters!

I suppose the answer for either is "yes."


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## evildmguy (May 10, 2005)

I haven't voted because I am not sure where I am.  

I have no problem with people playing a character that is a different gender from themselves.  

HOWEVER

I have a problem when, in the course of that person playing a character of a different gender, that I don't remember they are playing a different gender.  I think this is because if they are going to play something different, I think it is up to them to remind me that they aren't playing "the norm."  They need to say or do things that fit the character, and therefore will show the gender.  

That's just me, though.  

Have a good one!  Take care!  

edg


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## Inconsequenti-AL (May 10, 2005)

I'm comfortable with it. Unless it's a well roleplayed character I do find it hard to visualise sometimes. Only had one player give me problems with this over the years, he was immature and rather perverted - he'd make a pigs ear out of anything he tried to play.

I have far bigger problems with kender/halfling kender characters - they tend to annoy the heck out of me.

Occasionally play female PCs, but not my usual thing and I'm not great at it. Sometimes it just fits the concept I'm going for - my favorite was an evil star wars journalist - based on a certain blonde haried and right leaning US political pundit.


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## Jeff Wilder (May 10, 2005)

I responded that I'm uncomfortable with cross-gendered characters.  In 24 years of roleplaying, I've never seen a player run a cross-gender PC well ... I've never even seen it done with mediocrity.  In general, in my experience, people who routinely play cross-gender (and especially those who _always_ play cross-gender) are doing so to seek attention.

Two caveats:

One, I've never played with a woman who tried playing a male character, so my experience and opinion is based solely on male-playing-female.  Call me sexist, but I believe women would be better at playing cross-gender, primarily because I believe women in general would do so for different reasons than men.  (And secondarily because I believe women in general are better roleplayers than men.)

Two, I'm also uncomfortable with "bizarre" character concepts -- e.g., the one-horned minotaur cleric of a unicorn goddess -- for pretty much the same reason: the types of people who want to play those types of characters do it very, very badly, and they do it to get attention.  Why is it that the players that can't even roleplay a standard class-race combination well think they need something off-the-wall?


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## MetalBard (May 10, 2005)

I voted in the first category as well, that I'm a male and uncomfortable with cross-gender characters.  Now, I've only seen males playing females, so I don't know about the reverse, but in my 12 years of role-playing I've only seen one male play a female well, and that female was pretty asexual.  The character did develop a crush on one of the male NPCs, but it was the non-sexual kind.  I've never allowed cross-genders in my games since then, because I haven't seen it reasonably played since then.


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## Wisdom Penalty (May 10, 2005)

Jeff Wilder said:
			
		

> I responded that I'm uncomfortable with cross-gendered characters.  In 24 years of roleplaying, I've never seen a player run a cross-gender PC well ... I've never even seen it done with mediocrity.  In general, in my experience, people who routinely play cross-gender (and especially those who _always_ play cross-gender) are doing so to seek attention.




ditto+++

_*snip* Crude stereotyping is not okay. -Darkness_
players get to pick the campaigns they want to be a part of, just as GMs should have some say over the type of campaign they're running.

it's as simple as that.  

perhaps we should schedule a battle royale.  in the left corner: *Destan, Diaglo, Teflon Billy, Wulf Ratbane*.  in the right corner: *S'mon, die_kluge,*and some other pro-cross-gender guys (or gals).  we can mandate wulf and his compatriots play female PCs while die_kluge & company play traditional male melee fighters (assuming die_kluge & co. are males).  eric's grandmother can GM, unless she has a weak stomach, in which case piratecat can do the honors.  ah, the madness!  the world turned on its head!  pandemonium!

this topic has now officially annoyed the hell out me.  _surely_ there must be something more interesting to talk about?  

W.P.


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## Crothian (May 10, 2005)

Teflon Billy said:
			
		

> There's my answer as well.




Me three, even in a PbP game I ran the only person who wanted to play cross gender turned out to be the biggest trouble maker in the group by far.


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## Wombat (May 10, 2005)

Cross-gender, cross-species, cross-dressing, whatever -- I have no problems with the concept, per se.  What I do have a difficult time with is flat characters, characters that are only stats on a page with no attempt to play out a role.  

Okay, I am primarily a GM, but about 1/3 (a bit more, probably) of the characters I have run as a player have been female.  Equally, just shy of half of the NPCs that I run as a GM are female.  I've never had any complaints about these cross-gender characterizations, even from my female players.  

Yes, I've seen badly played female characters out of males, and vice versa.  More importantly, I've seen males playing horrible male characters, and again their counterparts.  I work hard with my players (or GM if I am a player) to develop appropriate characters who feel like they belong in the world -- that means more than simply worrying about feats, skills, or gender.  

**shrug**

I see this whole thing pretty much as a non-issue.


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## Ukyo the undead (May 10, 2005)

I´m male, and confortable in palying female characters.

In fact, half or more of my characters were female.

I play magic users as male characters, and fighters as female characters. The exception are rogues and Paladins( mostly males), and sorcerers( depending heavilly in what I am using for source of inspiration for the character). As a rule, if a character do or is something that I think have nothing to do with my personality or abilities, I play it as a female.


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## Mordane76 (May 10, 2005)

At the risk of sounding sexist or homophobic...

I'm a male.  I selected indifferent because I had no other option.

I am normally comfortable with women playing cross-gender, but I'm a little less comfortable with men doing so.  I've seen it done well and I've seen it done poorly.  As long as the sexuality of the character is not openly obvious or used as a goad, plot point, or manipulative tactic, it works fine for me.  When guys try to use their character's "womanly wiles," it just creeps me out, because it usually comes across as stereotypical stripper/hooker-talk.  

It completely destroys my suspension of reality because it forces me to listen to a usually burly man trying to say things he's heard porn stars say in movies.  It's rare when a man uses his character's wiles in the subtle tenor normal women use them in; we're just not experienced enough with these actions to do something like that correctly...

It's even more disturbing, and usually grounds for immediate censor in my games, when a guy makes a female character so he can explore his lesbian fantasies... they never say it up front, they wait until some inappropriate scene to try and come onto another female character or NPC... bad all around.


This might have something to do with the types of games I generally run though - I tend to leave the sexual themes at home unless discussed ahead of time, and then they are usually only dealt with if absolutely necessary or appropriate for the genre and particular scene involving them.  Otherwise, I prefer that people leave the sexual stuff at the door to the gaming table - it's just easier that way.


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## Darkness (May 10, 2005)

Just a friendly reminder of the EN World rules:



> *Keep it civil:* Don't engage in personal attacks, name-calling, or blanket generalizations in your discussions.



 Please keep it clean, folks. Thanks.


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## Gentlegamer (May 10, 2005)

Human beings don't have gender.  Gender is a grammatical concept.

That said, I play women* all the time . . . as the referee.

*Elf-women, giantesses, etc.


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## the Jester (May 10, 2005)

Not only am I fine with cross-gender characters, I am baffled by those who are uncomfortable with them.  I mean, really, what's the difference?


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## Queen_Dopplepopolis (May 10, 2005)

the Jester said:
			
		

> Not only am I fine with cross-gender characters, I am baffled by those who are uncomfortable with them.  I mean, really, what's the difference?



 In my experience, the one that wants to play the cross-gender character is always the boy/man that cannot do it without being offensive or ridiculously immature. 

If I had experienced it done in a mature way, my opinion may be different, but at current, it makes me uncomfortable.


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## Jeff Wilder (May 10, 2005)

Gentlegamer said:
			
		

> Human beings don't have gender.  Gender is a grammatical concept.



Gender is grammatical.  However, gender is not _solely_ grammatical.  Folks in this thread are mostly using the word correctly.

http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=gender&x=0&y=0


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## IronWolf (May 10, 2005)

Deja Vu... Feels like I was posting a similar thread just a month ago...

I went with male and indifferent.  I would be more concerned is the person that wishes to do it a good roleplayer or a trouble maker.  That is the bigger deciding factor as to how comfortable I am with it.


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## Xath (May 10, 2005)

I'm female and I'm comfortable with it.  I've seen people play cross-gendered characters stupidly, but those people seem to play most of their characters stupidly, so I don't think it has much to do with the gender.

I take issue when someone makes a cross-gender character who is deragatory to the gender they are portraying, but that's never happened in a long term campaign in which I have played.

I actually find that it's more convenient to play a male character in certain situations, especially if you don't want the gender flak for playing an adventuring woman in a game where sexism is an active factor.


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## John Morrow (May 10, 2005)

bubbalin said:
			
		

> So, please vote on the one that lists your gender and your comfort level.




I think "comfort" may be the wrong word here because it's a fairly loaded word.

From a "comfort" perspective, I'm indifferent to cross-sex characters.  From a preference perspective, I prefer that players play their own sex.

I'm not "uncomfortable" with the idea of someone portraying a character that doesn't match their sex (my group has plenty of romances between PCs and NPCs which often involve a cross-sex NPC).  Cross-sex characters just regularly seem to cause problems related to either (A) the other players forgetting the character's sex is different than the players (e.g., pronoun confusion seems to be incredibly common) or (B) the player's portrayal of a cross-sex character (ranging from offensive stereotypes to characters that just feel wrong or off like characters forced to cross-dress in a comedy or cheesy sitcom for laughs).  No, these problems don't seem nearly as common or as severe when a GM is portraying a cross-sex NPC for a variety of reasons that I've explained elsewhere (ranging from the GM providing more verbal markers about which character is talking to NPC portrayals being more brief and focused than PC portrayals), so a cross-sex NPC does not have the same dynamic as a cross-sex PC, in my experience.

The easy way to avoid those potential problems is to just not do it.  And for many groups that don't have players eager to play cross-sex characters, it's not a terribly controversial or distruptive solution, either.  From my own perspective, there are a near infinite number of interesting male PCs that I could play so being told that a female PC is off limits just doesn't feel very limiting to me.  YMMV.

Does that mean that no group should do it?  Does that mean that no player can do it well?  Does that mean that it always causes problems or that the problems are always the player's fault?  Of course not.  And if your GM or group has no problems with it or even if you do have problems but feel that the benefits (and there are benefits) outweigh the problems, then by all means do it.  But, personally, I'd prefer players not do it.  Of course there are plenty of other things I'd prefer players not do, too (e.g., play Evil PCs -- and, yes, I know that some people have a lot of fun doing that, too).


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## Wulf Ratbane (May 10, 2005)

ditto++++


> perhaps we should schedule a battle royale.  in the left corner: *Destan, Diaglo, Teflon Billy, Wulf Ratbane*.  in the right corner: *S'mon, die_kluge,*and some other pro-cross-gender guys (or gals).




Wait a second, how did I get dragged back into this? Not that I'm not down for a rumble. I haven't met or seen diaglo, but I'm willing to bet me, TB, and Destan can take four times our weight in dudes who like to play chicks.



> we can mandate wulf and his compatriots play female PCs while die_kluge & company play traditional male melee fighters (assuming die_kluge & co. are males).




Ok, but I'll be playing Tigglebitty Funbaggs, the whip-cracking halfling whore of Greyhawk.


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## Ottergame (May 10, 2005)

I just don't care what people play, as long as it's not disruptive.  I don't see what the problem some people have with players playing a different gender PC.

I mean, if someone can pretend to be an elf who casts spells at dragons in medieval world, why should it be a problem if it's also a female?


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## Aristotle (May 10, 2005)

the Jester said:
			
		

> Not only am I fine with cross-gender characters, I am baffled by those who are uncomfortable with them.



I'm pretty much in the same boat.


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## Snapdragyn (May 10, 2005)

Male & comfortable.

Of the times I've encountered this, it's not caused any problems in the game. Currently I'm in one campaign where one of the women _always_ plays a male character; we've gotten so used to it that there's never any pronoun confusion. Though our sessions can involve some PG13 activity there hasn't been any hint of her using the male character to act out stereotypes or fantasies instead of responding in ways appropriate to the character.

In my other current campaign, we recently had to restart after a TPK & one male player now has a female character. We are having some pronoun confusion, partly because this is a first for this group, but also I think partly because it's a very hack-and-slash group where _no_ character's sex really comes up often enough to remind us.



> I've never allowed cross-genders in my games since then, because I haven't seen it reasonably played since then.




I do have to wonder at this. I mean, that certainly seems rather self-fulfilling, no?


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## AIM-54 (May 10, 2005)

Male and comfortable.

I've never had a problem with it and have had great fun on those occasions that I've had an opportunity to play female characters.  Part of that may stem from the fact that in those groups where I've done it have been all male so there's been no discomfort really (and nor have there been significant caricatures, though plenty of kidding around   ).

I haven't done it in awhile, 'cause my current group has some issues with it.  It's not a big deal either way for me, although I think it's silly to be too militant about it.


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## sniffles (May 10, 2005)

Female and comfortable.  In fact, I'm comfortable enough that I didn't mind when my fiancee ran a thong-wearing female character for 6 years.   

Judging by the poll responses, player gender doesn't seem to make any difference in comfort level with cross-gender characters.


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## Mystery Man (May 10, 2005)

As a DM I have to play many different races and genders. I don't let my players play other genders because I am a big fat jerk.


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## John Morrow (May 10, 2005)

Ottergame said:
			
		

> I just don't care what people play, as long as it's not disruptive.  I don't see what the problem some people have with players playing a different gender PC.




Because it's often not "not disruptive".  What is or isn't disruptive will vary by group.



			
				Ottergame said:
			
		

> I mean, if someone can pretend to be an elf who casts spells at dragons in medieval world, why should it be a problem if it's also a female?




Because the pronouns used don't change when the person pretends to be an elf but do when they play a character of a different sex?  Because many people have a more developed sense of sex and what's "normal" for a male or female than they do for what an elf should be like?  Yes, I know the very idea that behavior might be "normal" or "abnormal" for a person of a perticular sex is problematic and will simply say that a persons sense of "normal" and "abnormal" play a different (and often amplified) role when people are being asked to suspend their disbelief in a fantasy environment than it does in the real world.  People accept plenty of things in the real world that they wouldn't accept or enjoy in their entertainment including movies, books, television shows, and even role-playing games.


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## jrients (May 10, 2005)

I voted "I am male and am uncomfortable with cross gender characters " but I'm trying to get over it.  I decided to make my Living Greyhawk character a female as part of an effort to get over this hang-up.


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## orsal (May 10, 2005)

Gentlegamer said:
			
		

> Human beings don't have gender.  Gender is a grammatical concept.




It's also a cultural concept -- grammar is one of its less interesting contexts. If you're talking about masculinity and femininity, and all the baggage society(ies) attach to them, including stereotypical characteristics, standard roles, et al, you're talking about gender. Contrast with sex, which is biological. (Although the two words are sometimes used interchangeably.)


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## bubbalin (May 11, 2005)

Gez said:
			
		

> What's the difference between "indifference" and "comfort"? If someone is indifferent to playing both male and female characters, then s/he's comfortable with both, isn't s/he?



 Sorry, bad phrasing on my part... I can't think of a word to capture that in between feeling...

Anyway, there haven't been many females voting, so I think our results are statistically dodgy... Maybe some more will vote and we can get a better idea...


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## bubbalin (May 11, 2005)

jrients said:
			
		

> I voted "I am male and am uncomfortable with cross gender characters " but I'm trying to get over it.  I decided to make my Living Greyhawk character a female as part of an effort to get over this hang-up.



 Haha, welcome over to the dark side!!!

Errr... never mind. 

I find it interesting to play female characters to explore the mindset of women. Also, as many have said, I am more conscious of my characters difference from me and thus try stay in character more.

I saw an interesting comment about guys playing women to explore their lesbian fantasies. I have to admit that my current character (playing the stargate rpg by AEG) is in a same sex relationship, though she's probably more bi. But again, I would have to say I am very much hetero and thus it lets me explore the concept. Not that it hasn't led to some funny moments.


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## Harmon (May 11, 2005)

Can’t believe that this thread is back.


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## bubbalin (May 11, 2005)

what's wrong with this thread?

Is it that there are not many females on this site, or not many females voting?


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## BlackSilver (May 11, 2005)

bubbalin said:
			
		

> what's wrong with this thread?
> 
> Is it that there are not many females on this site, or not many females voting?




I think Harmon is concerned that the prejudice of the last thread will find its way into this thread and it will not be closed soon enough.  Threads like this one bring out the worst in us all, I know it brought out the worst in me at the worst time of my life in recent memory.

Keep it civil.  

Harmon- avoid this thread.


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## Teflon Billy (May 15, 2005)

Wulf Ratbane said:
			
		

> ditto++++
> 
> 
> Wait a second, how did I get dragged back into this? Not that I'm not down for a rumble. I haven't met or seen diaglo, but I'm willing to bet me, TB, and Destan can take four times our weight in dudes who like to play chicks.




LOL 





			
				Wulf said:
			
		

> Ok, but I'll be playing Tigglebitty Funbaggs, the whip-cracking halfling whore of Greyhawk.




..and I'll be playing Menstrua Bonecracker, Drow Lesbian asskicker who "doesn't take crap from men"


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## der_kluge (May 15, 2005)

Wisdom Penalty said:
			
		

> perhaps we should schedule a battle royale.  in the left corner: *Destan, Diaglo, Teflon Billy, Wulf Ratbane*.  in the right corner: *S'mon, die_kluge,*and some other pro-cross-gender guys (or gals).  we can mandate wulf and his compatriots play female PCs while die_kluge & company play traditional male melee fighters (assuming die_kluge & co. are males).  eric's grandmother can GM, unless she has a weak stomach, in which case piratecat can do the honors.  ah, the madness!  the world turned on its head!  pandemonium!




Yea, not sure how I got drug into this... And it's "der_kluge" to you. 

Anyway, yes, I play a lot of female characters. For me, the choice is a matter of how I see a character's personality. I identify certain personality traits as being more female than male. That's all there is to it, really.

If you wanted a "battle royale" one interesting experiment would be to pick women and men on here to play different characters, some cross-gender, some not.  Say, a women playing a man, a woman playing a woman, a man playing a woman, and a man playing a man, and then people could read the PBP posts, and then after a role-playing intensive module, people could vote on whether they thought character A, B, C, D was played by a female or a male. It would be interesting to see the outcome of such an experiment.  Call it the Touring test of role-playing.


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## orsal (May 15, 2005)

Teflon Billy said:
			
		

> ..and I'll be playing Menstrua Bonecracker, Drow Lesbian asskicker who "doesn't take crap from men"




Save that one for Hypersmurf.


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## D-rock (May 15, 2005)

I have never had a problem with it. Unless somebody goes out of their way to make their character's sexuallity an issue in the game it seem like the goals of a female character are pretty much the same as the goals of a male.  Perhaps some people have had issues with some players that will pull their veiw on the subject one way.  I have never had trouble with my players so maybe thats why I have the view I do though.


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## jmucchiello (May 15, 2005)

Vanuslux said:
			
		

> I'm male and rather indifferent to it for the most part...but it has been my experience that a lot of people who play the opposite gender frequently are often problem players...attention mongers and troublemakers.



I don't play with problem players and so I guess this is why I have never had this observation. (And the biggest attention hog I play with has never wanted to play cross-gender in my 10 years of playing with him.)

I'm curious if the people who have this observation would given someone whom they have gamed with for 10+ years and whom they totally respect as a player would allow that person to play cross-gender.


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## toberane (May 15, 2005)

I am male, and I'm not sure I've ever played a cross-gender character.  Having said that, my wife and a few close friend almost always play cross-gender.  I have no problem with anyone who wants to play across the gender lines.

Oddly enough, whenever I set out to write a story (I have a degree in creative writing, but I don't have the discipline to actually FINISH any of the numerous novels I've started) I almost always make the main character female.  Not sure exactly why, other than it seems to fit with the stories I come up with.

I am about to start playing an assassin in another campaign, and until now, I hadn't thought of making it a female, but I just might do that for a change of pace.


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## lonesoldier (May 15, 2005)

Jyrdan Fairblade said:
			
		

> Heh. I thought the poll was asking if I was comfortable with cross-dressing and transgender characters!
> 
> I suppose the answer for either is "yes."




That's what I thought too. WHoops.

I'm comfortable playing a female, I'm secure in my sexuality, really, I swear.


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## Hussar (May 28, 2018)

Wow, came across this in the "threads like this" links on the bottom of another thread.  Fifteen years ago and we were okay with playing cross gendered characters.  Why is does it seem like this is an actual issue now with things like gender bending elves?  If it was groovy back then, then, why are people questioning it now?

Casts THREADOMANCY!!!


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## Umbran (May 28, 2018)

The answer to your question may sit in the changes in cultural context that have happened in the intervening years, especially recently.


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## delericho (May 28, 2018)

Hussar said:


> If it was groovy back then, then, why are people questioning it now?




Every action has a reaction. The zeitgeist has moved (very slightly) towards greater inclusion, which means there is inevitably a pushback.

(Plus, D&D booming means an influx of new players, and new members here. Not surprisingly, that includes a diversity of opinions.)


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## ccs (May 28, 2018)

"I am male and am comfortable with cross gender characters"

This, I guess....  

I mean I've been DMing since I was 11 (IE; for along time).  Playing characters other than male comes with the job.

Personally, most of the characters I've played as a _Player_ have been male.  
Of the last 11 characters (played over the last 6 years/7 campaigns (PF & 5e) there's 7 males, 3 females, & 1 warforged.
So excluding the Warforged a 70%M/30%FM split.
In my younger years the split would probably be about 85%M & spread over a much longer span of time as our campaigns lasted years and we only played 1 night/week at max.  Now days I've got some extra time so I can be in two, sometimes 3, games at a time.  So I can be DMing Thur & playing Sunday.  Or playing x2.

As a DM I don't care if you play something different from your RL you.  That's up to you.
What I don't like is people playing characters that all blur together.  You know the ones.  Those characters where if you didn't know what was written on the character sheet you couldn't tell what was being played other than CLASS & stat mods, sometimes with dark vision.
So whatever you put on your character sheet?  _Play it.  Somehow.  _


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## Sunseeker (May 28, 2018)

I wasn't here to answer the question back in the day, and I suspect anyone on this forum should know where my answer lies.

I would say 75% of my characters are female.  I do not typically enjoy "power fantasy" gaming.  As a writer, self-inserting is one of those dirty things that I make an overt effort to avoid in almost all situations.  Sure, every character has "a little bit of me" in it, that's bound to happen, but my preference for gaming is not "Me, but stronger, faster and in every way better than I am IRL!".  So that tends to skew my decision making into playing female characters.  I'm also almost never human.  

So I don't really care what anyone else plays.  

And as [MENTION=6803664]ccs[/MENTION] mentions, when I DM I get to play everyone.  Gay, straight, aberration, male, female, robot.  

I've only ever run into one player(I don't know his orientation) who wanted to make a BFD about his cross-dressing character.  We don't play with him anymore.

Minor pet peeve: I make an effort, both as DM and as player to at least learn all the other players names and sexes.  It annoys me when other people can't be assed to do the same and it makes role-play jarring.


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## MechaPilot (May 28, 2018)

I'm female and I'm comfortable with cross-gender characters at the table.  I've played male characters, female characters, intersexed/hermaphroditic characters, and asexual characters.  As the one who usually DMs, I'm responsible for all the NPCs regardless of gender anyway, so this isn't really new or out of the ordinary for me.

Now, I will say I've seen it done very poorly.  I've seen players, mostly teenage boys or young-adult men, make female or trans characters that are either just offensive or that exist almost solely to fuel that player's fantasies about lesbians and transgender persons.

I recall playing in a group that was DM'd by my then best friend (who has passed in the many years since then).  His teenage brother-in-law joined the game with a female character who was relatively normal (though bland in the personality department) until at one session the character starting acting like a total jerk to everyone.  That player defended being a jerk to everyone as his character having her period and acting "the way women do" at that time of the month.  When I took offense to that, he accused me of being "on the rag."  What a class act.

I've also seen it done in such a way that people forget about it completely.  Which is not to say that it's done well in these cases.  Rather, the player simply interjects nothing of the opposite gender into the character, except the character's appearance.  These cases are inoffensive, though bland.  What the player is effectively doing is just playing a same-gendered character and then having to remind everyone of the proper pronoun use because everyone forgets that player's character is actually a different gender.

Personally, it's my stance that playing a cross-gendered character well (the gender difference is notable without being offensive or used to disrupt the game) is sort of like playing an evil character well: it takes a great deal of maturity to balance a notable difference against potential disruption, and to do it without being offensive.  This is part of the reason I require my players to clear their characters with me first.  If I think a player isn't mature enough to handle a cross-gendered character (or an evil one, or a cross-racial one) I can have a discussion with them about my concerns.  Sometimes that discussion will change my mind about the player's level of maturity (I've certainly misjudged that before, I'm not perfect), and sometimes it'll just reaffirm the "no" answer I was going to give.


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## MechaPilot (May 28, 2018)

bubbalin said:


> I saw an interesting comment about guys playing women to explore their lesbian fantasies. I have to admit that my current character (playing the stargate rpg by AEG) is in a same sex relationship, though she's probably more bi. But again, I would have to say I am very much hetero and thus it lets me explore the concept. Not that it hasn't led to some funny moments.




There's nothing inherently wrong with a character of any gender being in a relationship with someone of the same gender (or any other gender for that matter).  The problem arises when a character seems to have no real personality, goals, or ambitions outside of a relationship (generally sexual in nature) with another character (PC or NPC) of the same gender.  That's when a character starts to seem and feel like it was made solely for the player to indulge in masturbatory fantasy; especially when the player wants to RP or get descriptions about the inter-character intimacy.

But, to be clear, it's equally an issue when a character has no real personality, goals, or ambitions outside of a generally sexual relationship with a PC or NPC of any gender; and for the same reason.

I run a game where romance and sexuality are considered just part of the everyday world the characters live in (but there's no sex described at the table.  a fade-to-black approach is employed to, hopefully, maintain a tasteful mood at the table). In my game, a character being in a romantic or sexual relationship is quite normal; I consider a character being in a relationship or specifically deciding not to be in one (for whatever reasons) to be part of making a well-rounded character.  The problem comes when a character is basically nothing else, or when the character expects vivid description or interaction.


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## Sunseeker (May 28, 2018)

MechaPilot said:


> I've also seen it done in such a way that people forget about it completely.  Which is not to say that it's done well in these cases.  Rather, the player simply interjects nothing of the opposite gender into the character, except the character's appearance.  These cases are inoffensive, though bland.  What the player is effectively doing is just playing a same-gendered character and then having to remind everyone of the proper pronoun use because everyone forgets that player's character is actually a different gender.




My only objection to this, since I _literally_ just posted this complaint above, is _what_ exactly makes a make-believe fantasy woman, different from a make-believe fantasy man?  Are you suggesting that there must be some IRL socially-defined elements of femininity?  Or are these more _subjective_ personal opinions on what defines a woman?  

Perhaps you could give some suggestions on what elements of the "opposite gender" _should_ be injected in order to make a character come across as female?


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## Hussar (May 29, 2018)

shidaku said:


> My only objection to this, since I _literally_ just posted this complaint above, is _what_ exactly makes a make-believe fantasy woman, different from a make-believe fantasy man?  Are you suggesting that there must be some IRL socially-defined elements of femininity?  Or are these more _subjective_ personal opinions on what defines a woman?
> 
> Perhaps you could give some suggestions on what elements of the "opposite gender" _should_ be injected in order to make a character come across as female?




While I won't give specific examples, because I'm not sure what they are and I'm not caffeinated enough right now, I'd say that your portrayal of the character should be such that no one at the table ever turns to you and says, "Wait, what?  Your character is _female_?  Since when?"

If your character is gender bending, then, make the effort to make sure that that comes across in your portrayal of that character.  Otherwise, why bother?


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## Sunseeker (May 29, 2018)

Hussar said:


> While I won't give specific examples, because I'm not sure what they are and I'm not caffeinated enough right now, I'd say that your portrayal of the character should be such that no one at the table ever turns to you and says, "Wait, what?  Your character is _female_?  Since when?"
> 
> If your character is gender bending, then, make the effort to make sure that that comes across in your portrayal of that character.  Otherwise, why bother?




Because this reeks to me of "Your character doesn't seem _black_ enough." or "Your character isn't obviously _gay_ enough."  Like we need to _prove_ the character is what they say they are.  It's Viewer B holding Actor A to B's _personal subjective standards_ of what makes a woman a woman.  Are we only supposed to portray _positive_ elements of the thing we're portraying?  Because even by her own example, when Mr Class Act decided his character should be a jerk because she was "on the rag" as tasteless as that was, that was Mr Class Act injecting what _he thought_ women were like.  While MechaPilot was holding his portrayal to standards of what _she thought_ women were like.  While being a woman may give MechaPilot insight that Mr Class Act lacks she also needs to take into consideration that her insight, just like Mr Class Act's insight, is subjective to her individual experience.  There may be some unifying elements between her and many other women, just as there are unifying elements between myself and other men, but these elements are not necessarily universal by any means.

It strikes me quite along the same lines as when an author is asked to justify why a certain character is female.  The argument that "If there's nothing that identifies your character as female, they might as well be male." is a ridiculous assumption that has been thoroughly discarded _even on these boards_.  The _assumption_ that a character is default male, or even default the same sex as the author/player *is where the problem lies* not in the author/player's decision not to include any socially-agreed-upon "female elements".


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## Hussar (May 29, 2018)

No. The presumption is that your character is the same gender as you because you are the one portraying the character. If you are playing as another gender and nothing in your portrayal actually indicates that, then why are you doing it?

It’s no different than playing another race. If your elf behaves exactly like your human character then why are you playing an elf?


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## Sunseeker (May 29, 2018)

Hussar said:


> No. The presumption is that your character is the same gender as you because you are the one portraying the character. If you are playing as another gender and nothing in your portrayal actually indicates that, then why are you doing it?
> 
> It’s no different than playing another race. If your elf behaves exactly like your human character then why are you playing an elf?




Again, this is _your_ assumption that my portrayal of *my character* is inaccurate to _your preconceived notions_ of how my character should behave.

The presumption is on YOU to defend the claim that _your views_ on *my character* are more accurate than my own.

The arrogance!


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## Hussar (May 29, 2018)

shidaku said:


> Again, this is _your_ assumption that my portrayal of *my character* is inaccurate to _your preconceived notions_ of how my character should behave.
> 
> The presumption is on YOU to defend the claim that _your views_ on *my character* are more accurate than my own.
> 
> The arrogance!




It's not that it's inaccurate.  It's that it's completely absent.  It's no different than the background of your character.  If your character background is Outlander (for example), then the character that is played at the table should reference that fact.  At least reference it to the point where no one is surprised when you mention, "Hey, my character is an Outlander".  I'm really not sure how it's arrogant to ask you to actually play the character you created instead of some cypher, Man without a Name character that is indistinguishable from the last five characters you played.


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## Sunseeker (May 29, 2018)

Hussar said:


> It's not that it's inaccurate.  It's that it's completely absent.  It's no different than the background of your character.  If your character background is Outlander (for example), then the character that is played at the table should reference that fact.  At least reference it to the point where no one is surprised when you mention, "Hey, my character is an Outlander".  I'm really not sure how it's arrogant to ask you to actually play the character you created instead of some cypher, Man without a Name character that is indistinguishable from the last five characters you played.




So again we come back to my original contention: _what_ exactly makes a character "female"?

If you can't answer, you have no ground to claim that my portrayal should include it.


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## Hussar (May 29, 2018)

shidaku said:


> So again we come back to my original contention: _what_ exactly makes a character "female"?
> 
> If you can't answer, you have no ground to claim that my portray should include it.




Well, let's see.  Styles of dress come to mind.  Appearance obviously.  Depends on the age of the character as well, which should also influence how the character is played.  But, all that is an aside.  It's up to you how you want to get across the fact that your character is female.  Otherwise, what's the point?  What's the point of gender bending your character if you cannot even be bothered bringing that to the table?


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## Sunseeker (May 29, 2018)

Hussar said:


> Well, let's see.  Styles of dress come to mind.  Appearance obviously.  Depends on the age of the character as well, which should also influence how the character is played.  But, all that is an aside.  *It's up to you how you want to get across the fact that your character is female.*  Otherwise, what's the point?  What's the point of gender bending your character if you cannot even be bothered bringing that to the table?




My point is that it is _my character_ and it is _my call_ exactly how they are presented.  IF I choose to present them at all.  I shouldn't have to inform the party that my character is wearing a dress, likes frilly things and wants to get married and have a baby just to _prove_ they don't have a dingus.

How on earth this is all rattling around in your head I'll never know.  By your own logic it would be impossible to portray a tomboy.  

You're a smart fella.  The fact that you're making the argument you're current making _blows my frikken mind._


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## Hussar (May 29, 2018)

shidaku said:


> My point is that it is _my character_ and it is _my call_ exactly how they are presented.  IF I choose to present them at all.  I shouldn't have to inform the party that my character is wearing a dress, likes frilly things and wants to get married and have a baby just to _prove_ they don't have a dingus.
> 
> How on earth this is all rattling around in your head I'll never know.  By your own logic it would be impossible to portray a tomboy.
> 
> You're a smart fella.  The fact that you're making the argument you're current making _blows my frikken mind._




To me, it's all part of role play.  You portray that your character is a wizard.  You portray that your character is from Calimsham, you portray that your character is a Harper.  This is no different.  The fact that apparently the only way you can think of to portray a female character is someone who likes frily things and wants to get married is more on you.


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## Sunseeker (May 29, 2018)

Hussar said:


> To me, it's all part of role play.  You portray that your character is a wizard.  You portray that your character is from Calimsham, you portray that your character is a Harper.  This is no different.  The fact that apparently the only way you can think of to portray a female character is someone who likes frily things and wants to get married is more on you.




Don't turn this around on _me_.    You're the one who's demanding that my character _must be obviously feminine_.  Hence why I referenced _obviously feminine_ elements.

You claimed that whatever I present, if it's female, I must present female elements.  You chose clothing as one of those elements.  I took a wild guess that you probably wouldn't qualify jeans and a T-shirt as sufficiently feminine.  Do I need to describe how the otherwise-generic gear hugs my character's chest and rear?  Like, come on.  You're the one who claimed that clothing was a place where a woman could be differentiated from men.

It's not my fault for assuming you consider womens clothing to be obviously different from mens clothing.

This also demonstrates my secondary point:  You're demanding _my_ portrayal satisfy *your* definitions of femininity.  When my portrayal is not what you wanted to hear, you criticize as inaccurate.  

Word of advice: don't tell other people how to play their characters.  It's a pretty great rule that keeps people at the table happy.


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## Hussar (May 29, 2018)

shidaku said:


> Don't turn this around on _me_.    You're the one who's demanding that my character _must be *obviously *feminine_.  Hence why I referenced _obviously feminine_ elements.
> /snip
> 
> Word of advice: don't tell other people how to play their characters.  It's a pretty great rule that keeps people at the table happy.




Bold mine.

Nope.  I'm demanding that you actually play the character you brought to the table.  If you want to play a nothing cypher with no indications of something that is pretty basic to anyone observing the character, that's a poor portrayal of that character.  If you are completely unwilling or unable to actually show the table to the point where the table actually knows that your character is female, then, well, what was the point of making that character female?  It's no different from any other element of the character.

A pretty great rule at the table is actually playing the character you brought to the table.  Blank cyphers that bring nothing to the table are poor role playing.


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## Sunseeker (May 29, 2018)

Hussar said:


> A pretty great rule at the table is actually playing the character you brought to the table.  Blank cyphers that bring nothing to the table are poor role playing.* In my opinion.*




Ohhhhhh look at that.  We've discovered the source of the problem, all of this was really just your opinion on how anyone playing the game in a way you don't like is playing it wrong.

Yep, there's the problem.


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## Hussar (May 29, 2018)

You mean playing blank cypher characters with no actual indication at the table what your character is is considered good roleplaying to you?  Good to know what your standards are.


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## Sunseeker (May 29, 2018)

Hussar said:


> You mean playing blank cypher characters with no actual indication at the table what your character is is considered good roleplaying to you?  Good to know what your standards are.




You can keep harping on that point all you want.  But since apparently that point includes "you need to justify what you are if its not a self-insert" I'm going to disregard it as the garbage it is.

If I tell you my character is an elf, or a woman, or a flying lizard-man, what I should be roleplaying is how _that character behaves_.  What I _shouldn't_ be role-playing is how I may justify that character being something other than a human male to _anyone else_.  

There's a difference between playing a faceless nothing and playing a character who does not have obvious and overt female or elf or whatever traits.  That difference apparently does not exist in your world, which is why this discussion is going nowhere.


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## Hussar (May 29, 2018)

Because, frankly, if at the table, you cannot or will not convey the pertinent facts of your character to the rest of the table in any way, then, why bother?


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## Sunseeker (May 29, 2018)

Hussar said:


> Because, frankly, if at the table, you cannot or will not convey the pertinent facts of your character to the rest of the table in any way, then, why bother?




Ugh.  Conveying the _pertinent_ facts of my character and conveying _nothing_ about my character or _nothing you find personally satisfying_ are not the same thing.  A character can be interesting, creative and female, without also displaying a Hussar-satisfying level of femininity.  Which so far means "Something something clothing."

How many times do I need to repeat that?


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## MechaPilot (May 29, 2018)

shidaku said:


> So again we come back to my original contention: _what_ exactly makes a character "female"?
> 
> If you can't answer, you have no ground to claim that my portrayal should include it.




There is no blanket answer because it's so conditional on cultural norms, both those in real life and those that come from the game.  In my setting I have one culture where a feminine trait is left-handedness, and another where baldness is feminine and the women in that culture shave their heads.

For a real life example, look at Japan, and how the language itself has feminine and masculine forms of speech.  Even in cultures where the language doesn't have separate constructions for male and female speech, female speech has usually had more deferential patterns of word choices.  Also look at real life greetings, where a handshake is typically seen as manly while a hug between same-sex people who aren't family members is often seen as feminine, homosexual, or at least unmanly.

None of these things are hard and fast rules that apply across the board, because every setting has different cultures, because every individual is different, and because people (especially fantasy heroes) tend to break the mold.  So there's no set of standards your character has to measure up to to be "black enough" or "feminine enough" or "masculine enough" for you to be allowed to play it, but there are traits that can be worked into one's character that are tells as to a character's gender, social standing, etc.


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## Hussar (May 29, 2018)

[MENTION=82779]MechaPilot[/MENTION] gets it.  I don't really care HOW you portray your character, just that your character is actually being portrayed.  Particularly since things like race and gender are generally speaking major elements of what makes a character a character.


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## Sunseeker (May 29, 2018)

MechaPilot said:


> There is no blanket answer because it's so conditional on cultural norms, both those in real life and those that come from the game.  In my setting I have one culture where a feminine trait is left-handedness, and another where baldness is feminine and the women in that culture shave their heads.
> 
> For a real life example, look at Japan, and how the language itself has feminine and masculine forms of speech.  Even in cultures where the language doesn't have separate constructions for male and female speech, female speech has usually had more deferential patterns of word choices.  Also look at real life greetings, where a handshake is typically seen as manly while a hug between same-sex people who aren't family members is often seen as feminine, homosexual, or at least unmanly.
> 
> None of these things are hard and fast rules that apply across the board, because every setting has different cultures, because every individual is different, and because people (especially fantasy heroes) tend to break the mold.  So there's no set of standards your character has to measure up to to be "black enough" or "feminine enough" or "masculine enough" for you to be allowed to play it, but there are traits that can be worked into one's character that are tells as to a character's gender, social standing, etc.




Ah, an answer with both context and specificity.


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## Umbran (May 29, 2018)

Hussar said:


> Particularly since things like race and gender are generally speaking major elements of what makes a character a character.




In D&D, race (actually meaning species) has mechanical impact, and so is a major element of what makes a character a character.  Gender has no mechanical impact in the game as written. 

Whether race (in our current cultural sense) or gender matter depends very strongly on whether or not the society in the game, as portrayed by the GM, cares.  And in some games, it has been rendered largely irrelevant - Shadowrun and Deadlands, for example, both make explicit points in their setting materials that what we used to think of as race and gender bias have, for in-game reasons, largely gone away.  You are free to play any sort of character, and the game world basically doesn't care.  

I think he has a point.  Back several exchanges you say, " If you are playing as another gender and nothing in your portrayal actually indicates that, then why are you doing it?"

First: have the words "internal role-play" ever come up around you?  

Second: There is a difference between, "nothing in your portrayal indicates that," and "nothing in your portrayal indicates that _*to me*_".  He can, in fact, be doing his level best to portray a female character, but if he doesn't push *your* preconception-buttons, you won't get that, now will you?  It should not be too much to ask for what those preconception buttons are, if you are going to make a big deal out of wanting them pushed.  You talk about him portraying "pertinent facts" without saying what you think is pertinent?  Is that fair?

Of course, you missed the dirt simple answer to this.  We commonly switch between first and third person in referring to our characters.  When using third person, use a feminine pronoun.  "My character wants information.  _She_ walks up to the guard..."  Boom.  Job of making sure everyone knows the gender is done.


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## Hussar (May 29, 2018)

Umbran said:


> In D&D, race (actually meaning species) has mechanical impact, and so is a major element of what makes a character a character.  Gender has no mechanical impact in the game as written.
> 
> Whether race (in our current cultural sense) or gender matter depends very strongly on whether or not the society in the game, as portrayed by the GM, cares.  And in some games, it has been rendered largely irrelevant - Shadowrun and Deadlands, for example, both make explicit points in their setting materials that what we used to think of as race and gender bias have, for in-game reasons, largely gone away.  You are free to play any sort of character, and the game world basically doesn't care.
> 
> ...




Yup.  Never really had much truck with it to be honest.  If everything about your character only ever happens in your head, then, well, who cares?  It's irrelevant to the table and everyone else participating.   



> Second: There is a difference between, "nothing in your portrayal indicates that," and "nothing in your portrayal indicates that _*to me*_".  He can, in fact, be doing his level best to portray a female character, but if he doesn't push *your* preconception-buttons, you won't get that, now will you?  It should not be too much to ask for what those preconception buttons are, if you are going to make a big deal out of wanting them pushed.  You talk about him portraying "pertinent facts" without saying what you think is pertinent?  Is that fair?




I'm avoiding giving specific answers.  I mentioned an easy one earlier, clothing, and  [MENTION=93444]shidaku[/MENTION] immediately jumped to the assumption of frilly clothes.  Never minding that there are a thousand different ways that dress could be used to denote gender - either by what you wear or what you don't.  But, any example I make will immediately be straw manned into ridiculous examples.



> Of course, you missed the dirt simple answer to this.  We commonly switch between first and third person in referring to our characters.  When using third person, use a feminine pronoun.  "My character wants information.  _She_ walks up to the guard..."  Boom.  Job of making sure everyone knows the gender is done.




And that's perfectly fair.  I'd be pretty happy with that.  It gets the job done.  Is there anything in what I said that would indicate that this wouldn't be satisfactory?  So long as you manage to convey your character's attributes to the table, I don't really give a rat's petoot how you do it.

I never said it was difficult.  I just said that it should be done.


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## Umbran (May 29, 2018)

Hussar said:


> Yup.  Never really had much truck with it to be honest.  If everything about your character only ever happens in your head, then, well, who cares?  It's irrelevant to the table and everyone else participating.




If it is irrelevant to you... then it is irrelevant to you.  Do you realize that you're kind of coming across like you're telling someone to stop doing a thing that would have no impact on you?  




> I mentioned an easy one earlier, clothing




I kind of thought that was a weak example.  Broadly speaking, we are talking about adventurers.  Their most common clothes during most of the time we focus on them in a session is probably armor, or highly utilitarian adventuring clothes (Skirts and dresses? Not action-adventure utilitarian!).  And since we all realize that "boobplate" isn't a thing, the clothes the characters are most commonly in are probably not innately gender specific.  



> I never said it was difficult.  I just said that it should be done.




Yeah, well, consider this - you said that the player should give "pertinent" information.  If the GM and players are not intending to make gender roles an issue in play, then... it isn't pertinent, is it?

I'm running a game for a friend, his 13-year old daughter, a 13-year old friend who is also a girl, and my wife.  Each is playing a character that's the same gender as the player.  But, you can sure bet that 1) I am not going to make gender discrimination against them a thing, and 2) I am not running any romance plots, even if the 13-year-olds wanted them - that'd be creepy.  I could quite easily run this game with the genders of the characters unspecified.  It thus isn't pertinent.

So, from your position of not having actually played in his games, that he *isn't* giving the pertinent information?  If not... why get on about it?


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## Hussar (May 29, 2018)

Umbran said:


> If it is irrelevant to you... then it is irrelevant to you.  Do you realize that you're kind of coming across like you're telling someone to stop doing a thing that would have no impact on you?




It's irrelevant to the table, not just me.  It has no impact on me because it has no impact full stop.  If you want to have all this information about your character in your head and never actually bring it to the table, go write fiction.  It's certainly not helping in a game that's about _shared _fiction.





> I kind of thought that was a weak example.  Broadly speaking, we are talking about adventurers.  Their most common clothes during most of the time we focus on them in a session is probably armor, or highly utilitarian adventuring clothes (Skirts and dresses? Not action-adventure utilitarian!).  And since we all realize that "boobplate" isn't a thing, the clothes the characters are most commonly in are probably not innately gender specific.




Fair enough.  I wasn't really giving much thought to it to be honest.  Like I said, simply refering to your character as "she" is good enough.  

Ok, just so we're absolutely clear on this.

SO LONG AS THE TABLE IS ABLE TO RECOGNIZE PERTINENT FACTS ABOUT YOUR CHARACTER, YOUR JOB OF PORTRAYING THAT CHARACTER IS DONE. 

Like I said, I wasn't going to get into specific examples because everyone want's to start playing silly buggers trap games.  And, since all your characters at your table are not gender bending, WHO CARES?  You look at the player and you know that the player and the character are the same gender.  AGAIN JOB DONE.  

My problem is when the only way I could possibly know the gender, race, species, class, alignment, or whatever other character facts you want to name, is to look over your shoulder and read your character sheet, then you have failed to portray your character very well at the table.


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## billd91 (May 29, 2018)

Hussar said:


> It's irrelevant to the table, not just me.  It has no impact on me because it has no impact full stop.  If you want to have all this information about your character in your head and never actually bring it to the table, go write fiction.  It's certainly not helping in a game that's about _shared _fiction.




That's really not your call, is it? Players may have internal narratives as well as external ones. Maybe they'll come out, maybe they won't. And that's OK, Mr. Badwrongfun.




Hussar said:


> Like I said, I wasn't going to get into specific examples because everyone want's to start playing silly buggers trap games.  And, since all your characters at your table are not gender bending, WHO CARES?  You look at the player and you know that the player and the character are the same gender.  AGAIN JOB DONE.




Well, that's a big assumption now, isn't it?



Hussar said:


> My problem is when the only way I could possibly know the gender, race, species, class, alignment, or whatever other character facts you want to name, is to look over your shoulder and read your character sheet, then you have failed to portray your character very well at the table.




Or... you failed to pay sufficient attention. Or you are making too many assumptions. 
But shidaku's bottom line on all of this, and I agree with him, is *your* posts on this topic read a whole lot like being very judgey about someone else's role playing as well as they way they play. And frankly, you should knock that off.


----------



## Eltab (May 29, 2018)

I'm not comfortable RP'ing another gender myself (no practice IRL), plus I've seen too many cross-characters that are an excuse to act out noxious stereotypes.

But my preferred form of D&D is PG to PG-13 anyway, so there's that.


----------



## Eltab (May 29, 2018)

MechaPilot said:


> Also look at real life greetings, where a handshake is typically seen as manly while a hug between same-sex people who aren't family members is often seen as feminine, homosexual, or at least unmanly.



Arab diplomats greet other diplomats with a hug and a peck-on-both-cheeks.  (I don't know if that applies outside the diplomatic circle.)

Cultures vary.


----------



## Lanefan (May 29, 2018)

My characters overall tend to split about evenly as to gender.  The luck of the dice sees my female characters surviving more often of late.


----------



## D1Tremere (May 29, 2018)

My opinion is that playing as those who are different from yourself is the entire point of role playing.
If you want to play a stereotype, that is fine as well. Most people start off playing stereotypical dwarfs, elves, etc. This usually leads to them playing more nuanced versions that include culture as they become more comfortable playing them.
Gender should not be any more taboo in role playing than any other element.


----------



## Hussar (May 30, 2018)

billd91 said:


> That's really not your call, is it? Players may have internal narratives as well as external ones. Maybe they'll come out, maybe they won't. And that's OK, Mr. Badwrongfun.




Well, since all we're discussing is personal preferences, then, well, it is my call because it's my personal preference.  If you want to play a character where everything about that character only exists in your head, go write fiction.  In a game about shared fiction, SHARING is the important part.





> Well, that's a big assumption now, isn't it?
> 
> 
> 
> ...




So, someone comes to the table with a character, makes zero attempt to actually display that character to the group, never once references anything about that that character, and you just shrug and say, "Good job?"  Really?  I thought the point of these boards was to help people become better players.

Go go Father Generic the cleric who never once mentions faith, never references background or history, never makes any attempt to portray the character at the table.  Yahoo.  Excellent roleplaying there.

Do I sound judgmental?  Yup, I do.  Because, in my judgement, the cypher character, which I've seen very, very often, is nothing but a black hole at the table.  Never offers the DM any hooks for personalizing the campaign, never helps any of the other players portray their characters because, well, all that matters is the next plot point right?  Roll up the plot wagon, spoon feed the players and off we go!


----------



## Umbran (May 30, 2018)

Hussar said:


> So, someone comes to the table with a character, makes zero attempt to actually display that character to the group




No.  Stop.  Strawman alert.

Somehow, we went from (my paraphrase) "do we really need to specifically role play femininity so that others at the table are sure to always remember it" to (emphasis mine) "makes *ZERO* attempt to display the character to the group".  Those are not the same thing.  Please back off on the hyperbole and overstatement, because it is getting in the way of real discussion.  



> Do I sound judgmental?  Yup, I do.  Because, in my judgement, the cypher character, which I've seen very, very often,\




... but that nobody but you is talking about here.

We are not talking about a cypher character.  So put that fear away.  We are talking, specifically, about whether there's an onus to make sure everyone at the table could *never* lose track of a character's gender.  

He maybe playing a character that is clearly grumpy in the mornings, has nigh-royal bearing, a tendency to get into bar fights, and has an unnatural affinity for stinky cheeses.  But the stereotypical cues to signal "WOMAN!" were not present.  There may be lots of roleplay going on, but not roleplay designed and intended for the purpose of making this one aspect imprinted indelibly on people's minds.

Is the difference clear to you now?


----------



## Hussar (May 30, 2018)

But, Umbran, I've been pretty specific all the way along.  I AM talking about someone who makes ZERO attempt to convey the gender of their character.  Like I said, simply using gender specific pronouns is enough to satisfy me.  Other people have turned that into, "Well, how dare you imply that someone's roleplaying isn't perfect?"  Let's recap shall we:

All quotes are from me:



> If your character is gender bending, then, make the effort to make sure that that comes across in your portrayal of that character. Otherwise, why bother?






> It's not that it's inaccurate. It's that it's completely absent... I'm really not sure how it's arrogant to ask you to actually play the character you created instead of some cypher, Man without a Name character that is indistinguishable from the last five characters you played.






> It's up to you how you want to get across the fact that your character is female. Otherwise, what's the point? What's the point of gender bending your character if you cannot even be bothered bringing that to the table?






> If you want to play a nothing cypher with no indications of something that is pretty basic to anyone observing the character, that's a poor portrayal of that character. If you are completely unwilling or unable to actually show the table to the point where the table actually knows that your character is female, then, well, what was the point of making that character female? It's no different from any other element of the character.






> You mean playing blank cypher characters with no actual indication at the table what your character is is considered good roleplaying to you?






> if at the table, you cannot or will not convey the pertinent facts of your character to the rest of the table in any way, then, why bother?






> I don't really care HOW you portray your character, just that your character is actually being portrayed.






> So long as you manage to convey your character's attributes to the table, I don't really give a rat's petoot how you do it.






> SO LONG AS THE TABLE IS ABLE TO RECOGNIZE PERTINENT FACTS ABOUT YOUR CHARACTER, YOUR JOB OF PORTRAYING THAT CHARACTER IS DONE.




So, since I've been pretty much consistent throughout this entire conversation, and despite that, people still insist on trying to argue with a point I'm not making.  

 [MENTION=177]Umbran[/MENTION], in your own example, where you have all these character quirks, fair enough, how is it unreasonable to ask that the player puts in the 1% of effort required to make sure that his portrayal of a female character actually registers in the awareness of the other players?  Again, and I keep asking this question, why bother making a gender bending character if you're not actually going to put any effort whatsoever into that aspect?  What was the point?  

Again, to me, it's no different than any other aspect.  If you play an elf (or whatever race you like) and it's completely absent from anything you actually do at the table and the only way it ever comes up is if someone casts a Sleep spell, then that's poor roleplaying.   Painting the picture of your character into the minds of the other players is what good roleplay is all about.


----------



## pemerton (May 30, 2018)

billd91 said:


> *your* posts on this topic read a whole lot like being very judgey about someone else's role playing as well as they way they play. And frankly, you should knock that off.





Hussar said:


> Well, since all we're discussing is personal preferences, then, well, it is my call because it's my personal preference.  If you want to play a character where everything about that character only exists in your head, go write fiction.  In a game about shared fiction, SHARING is the important part.



I'm not sure I agree 100% with Hussar about what counts as good roleplaying, but I do agree 100% with the idea that we can talk about what we think makes for good and bad roleplaying (politely and respectfully, of course, and perhaps generically rather than with too much pointed reference to individual's posted examples).

We're talking about a creative endeavour - the collective creation of shared fiction - and so _criticism_, both of technique and of product, seems fair to me.


----------



## Riley37 (May 30, 2018)

Hussar said:


> Again, to me, it's no different than any other aspect.  If you play an elf (or whatever race you like) and it's completely absent from anything you actually do at the table and the only way it ever comes up is if someone casts a Sleep spell, then that's poor roleplaying. Painting the picture of your character into the minds of the other players is what good roleplay is all about.




Add me to the list of people with deep disagreement.

If the BBEG makes his big speech, and every other player at the table can guess what my character will say in response, then I have played a consistent *personality*. If, at the same time, each player draws a significantly different *illustration* of my character, though, I am 100% fine with that outcome. "But you never established via role-play that Boris has green eyes!" Yeah, live with it, buddy.

Let's say we've been playing at the same table for a year, and you've noticed these things: My character habitually defends the helpless, cures the sick and heals the injured, and sometimes accepts the hospitality of a commoner whom my character has rescued or healed. Whenever we're at a tavern, someone says "Hey, that's Boris the Green! I know a song about you!", and I say "Yeah, I'll have a drink and sing along". I challenge foes before striking, offer the enemy a chance to surrender, never lie, and only cast Zone of Truth when everyone in the AoE consents (and agrees to answer each other's questions). When I cast Find Steed, I got something which looks more like an animated rough-hewn sawhorse, than like a stallion or mare. I hunt for game when the party's on the road, and I make my own javelins and arrows with woodcrafting tools (though I buy the metal points). You can reasonably infer that I'm playing a Paladin with the Oath of Ancients and the Folk Hero background.

If you consider this a cypher then (shrug) too bad for you; it's good enough for many DMs and many players.

If you have no idea what anatomy is under Boris's chainmail, nor whether Boris would bear children or sire children, then I have played an *adventurer*, not a gender stereotype.

 If you assume that English is the DM's first language, that's on you; no one owes you an obligation to speak with enough of an accent that you can tell what their first language was. Likewise, if you assume that Common is Boris's first language, that's also on you; I don't owe you an obligation to have Boris speak with an accent from Draconic or Elvish or Infernal, and if you're baffled by a non-human whose behavior falls within the range of behavior you expect from humans, then that's yet again your problem, not mine.


----------



## ccs (May 30, 2018)

Riley37 said:


> Add me to the list of people with deep disagreement.
> 
> If the BBEG makes his big speech, and every other player at the table can guess what my character will say in response, then I have played a consistent *personality*. If, at the same time, each player draws a significantly different *illustration* of my character, though, I am 100% fine with that outcome. "But you never established via role-play that Boris has green eyes!" Yeah, live with it, buddy.
> 
> ...




If after a year of play I, the player, have no idea that Boris the Green is an elf or what sex/gender they are then you've failed.  
Unless you were intentionally trying to conceal these facts not just from the characters, but also from the _players_....


----------



## Riley37 (May 30, 2018)

ccs said:


> If after a year of play I, the player, have no idea that Boris the Green is an elf or what sex/gender they are then you've failed.




I have failed at your goals, and at Hussar's goals. I have not failed at my goals.

I'm fine with a player saying "My character looks at Boris. What do I see?" Race should be obvious. Sex, with that race and heavy armor, not so obvious.*

Hussar wants to know (and be reminded as needed) my character's race and gender, without looking, just from my character's words and decisions. That's not what I want. Fortunately, we're not at the same table!

*  The character sheet has blank fields for SKIN EYES HAIR. Considering Boris's race, I answered NO YES NO, respectively; Boris has eyes, but scales are neither hair nor skin.


----------



## Lanefan (May 30, 2018)

Umbran said:


> He maybe playing a character that is clearly grumpy in the mornings, has nigh-royal bearing, a tendency to get into bar fights, and has an unnatural affinity for stinky cheeses.



Character?

Hell, that sounds like some actual people I've gamed with!


----------



## Lanefan (May 30, 2018)

Riley37 said:


> If the BBEG makes his big speech, and every other player at the table can guess what my character will say in response, then I have played a consistent *personality*. If, at the same time, each player draws a significantly different *illustration* of my character, though, I am 100% fine with that outcome. "But you never established via role-play that Boris has green eyes!" Yeah, live with it, buddy.



I sometimes solve this by digging around online and finding a piece of artwork that at least vaguely resembles the look I have in mind for a character, and have it available to show people if asked.



> Let's say we've been playing at the same table for a year, and you've noticed these things: My character habitually defends the helpless, cures the sick and heals the injured, and sometimes accepts the hospitality of a commoner whom my character has rescued or healed. Whenever we're at a tavern, someone says "Hey, that's Boris the Green! I know a song about you!", and I say "Yeah, I'll have a drink and sing along". I challenge foes before striking, offer the enemy a chance to surrender, never lie, and only cast Zone of Truth when everyone in the AoE consents (and agrees to answer each other's questions). When I cast Find Steed, I got something which looks more like an animated rough-hewn sawhorse, than like a stallion or mare. I hunt for game when the party's on the road, and I make my own javelins and arrows with woodcrafting tools (though I buy the metal points). You can reasonably infer that I'm playing a Paladin with the Oath of Ancients and the Folk Hero background.



Funny, I thought from the description that you were playing a Ranger - kind of a poor person's Strider only with some different abilities but with the same general nobility underneath it all.



> If you have no idea what anatomy is under Boris's chainmail, nor whether Boris would bear children or sire children, then I have played an *adventurer*, not a gender stereotype.



However, it's almost impossible that the rest of the table would not know whether Boris was male or female.  Extremely likely either you or the DM would have many times used "he" or "she" to refer to this character.  And so on.

The name 'Boris' strongly implies male.  A drawing of the character would likely give some more clues.



			
				ccs said:
			
		

> If after a year of play I, the player, have no idea that Boris the Green is an elf or what sex/gender they are then you've failed.



Yeah, I kind of have to agree here.



> Unless you were intentionally trying to conceal these facts not just from the characters, but also from the players....



If concealment is part of your play of this character then yes, you also have to conceal it from the other players in order to keep their character and player knowledge in synch.

I don't think I've ever tried hiding a race or gender before, but I have on several occasions tried concealing my character's real class and playing it as something else.

Lanefan


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## Lanefan (May 30, 2018)

Riley37 said:


> I have failed at your goals, and at Hussar's goals. I have not failed at my goals.
> 
> I'm fine with a player saying "My character looks at Boris. What do I see?" Race should be obvious. Sex, with that race and heavy armor, not so obvious.*
> 
> ...



If you're playing a Yuan-Ti I don't care what gender it is; I care more about why I'm expected to run in a party containing something we ought to be trying to exterminate.

I've been assuming up to now we're talking about human-or-close mammalian characters with defineable genders and that actually have skin and hair.  Silly me. 

And does Boris never take its armour off, even to sleep or bathe?

Lan-"technically, that no-yes-no sequence of answers would also apply to warforged"-efan


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## Hussar (May 30, 2018)

Riley37 said:


> Add me to the list of people with deep disagreement.
> 
> If the BBEG makes his big speech, and every other player at the table can guess what my character will say in response, then I have played a consistent *personality*. If, at the same time, each player draws a significantly different *illustration* of my character, though, I am 100% fine with that outcome. "But you never established via role-play that Boris has green eyes!" Yeah, live with it, buddy.
> 
> ...




Well, the fact that the character is named "Boris" is a pretty big sign being held up that the character is male.  Now, if that character is female and no one at any point in time, no NPC, no PC no one has ever mentioned the fact that it's somewhat unusual for a woman to be named Boris because no one at the table, including the DM has the slightest idea that your character is female, then that's on you.

And, just to echo Lanefan, has your character never even take his or her helmet off?


----------



## Riley37 (May 30, 2018)

Lanefan said:


> Funny, I thought from the description that you were playing a Ranger - kind of a poor person's Strider only with some different abilities but with the same general nobility underneath it all.




Zone of Truth and Find Steed are on the paladin list, and not on the ranger list. I'm glad that personality came through. That's my intent: *personality*, as its own thing, not as a property of race or gender.

Yuan-ti and Warforged are not among the PHB list of core races, but one of the core races is scaly.



Lanefan said:


> However, it's almost impossible that the rest of the table would not know whether Boris was male or female.




Hussar seems to think that unless Boris's words and deeds, as roleplayed, signal Boris's gender, then no, the table would not. Perhaps you and he disagree?



Hussar said:


> And, just to echo Lanefan, has your character never even take his or her helmet off?




Hunh. Apparently this Hussar disagrees with previous Hussar.

Why do you ask about the helmet? You're the one demanding that everyone *perform* a character's gender. From what you've posted early, you should be clearly establishing, on the regular, *by narration*, that your character is a manly man; failure to do so, is failure to role-play properly. Either that, or perhaps "you gotta roleplay it so strongly and stereotypically that everyone notices" a rule for female characters, and not a rule for male characters?

Is male the default, core gender, and female a splatbook variant?


----------



## ccs (May 30, 2018)

Hussar said:


> Well, the fact that the character is named "Boris" is a pretty big sign being held up that the character is male.  Now, if that character is female and no one at any point in time, no NPC, no PC no one has ever mentioned the fact that it's somewhat unusual for a woman to be named Boris because no one at the table, including the DM has the slightest idea that your character is female, then that's on you.
> 
> And, just to echo Lanefan, has your character never even take his or her helmet off?




Given the weird names, weird spellings, & weird(er) pronunciations I've witnessed RL humans saddling their children with over the past 20 years I'd not automatically assume Boris was male.

Though this would always be the default image that'd spring to my minds-eye when I heard the characters name:


After that there'd be a quick mental correction of course....


----------



## Hussar (May 30, 2018)

Riley37 said:


> Zone of Truth and Find Steed are on the paladin list, and not on the ranger list. I'm glad that personality came through. That's my intent: *personality*, as its own thing, not as a property of race or gender.
> 
> Yuan-ti and Warforged are not among the PHB list of core races, but one of the core races is scaly.
> 
> ...




Nope.  Jeez, I even REPOSTED my arguments above.  Did you miss the bit where I totally agreed with [MENTION=177]Umbran[/MENTION] that simply using a bloody gender specific PRONOUN was enough to satisfy me?

Look, I get the idea that I've rather touched a nerve in people by even suggesting that their perfectly crafted character could be better portrayed, but, sheesh, do you really have to start inventing things to be annoyed about?

One more time for the slow of reading.  SO LONG AS THE PEOPLE AT YOUR TABLE RECOGNIZE THE SALIENT FEATURES OF YOUR CHARACTER I AM HAPPY.  How you achieve that is totally up to you.   Heck, something as simple as actually using a female miniature at the table would be good enough.  ((Granted I always play on virtual tabletop, so such a thing is pretty bloody easy to achieve))


----------



## Umbran (May 30, 2018)

Hussar said:


> But, Umbran, I've been pretty specific all the way along.  I AM talking about someone who makes ZERO attempt to convey the gender of their character.




You are talking about someone who conveys zero about their character AT ALL.  

I quote: "So, someone comes to the table with a character, makes zero attempt to actually display that character to the group."  Note that gender is absent from that?

Your self-image of being consistent is not supported by the text - in which we started with talking about exactly how much a player must hammer on their gender in the portrayal, to you speaking of "the cypher character" - your words.  I'm sorry, but you elided into a strawman.  You have wandered from not being happy with how much people put into specifically signalling character gender specifically, into effectively accusing them of not displaying anything at all.

That's not fair, and it isn't a way to have a constructive discussion.  So, until you come back around, I think we are done here.


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## fjw70 (May 30, 2018)

I am male and indifferent. To be honest gender rarely comes up during play. If someone is playing cross gender I forgot half the time anyway since it just doesn’t come up that often.


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## Jacob Marley (May 30, 2018)

Lanefan said:


> I sometimes solve this by digging around online and finding a piece of artwork that at least vaguely resembles the look I have in mind for a character, and have it available to show people if asked.




I use a miniature. 

DM: "What's your race?" 
Me: "Look at the mini."
"What's your gender?" 
"Look at the mini."
"Hair color?" 
"Mini."
"Weapon?" 
"Mini!"
"Armor?" 
"MINI!"
"Class, let's see... fighter." 
"Nope, bard."
"But you're wearing full plate?!?"
"I couldn't find a dwarf bard mini."


----------



## Eltab (May 30, 2018)

Jacob Marley said:


> "I couldn't find a dwarf bard mini."



I want a male half-elf wearing chainmail wielding a whip (my _Tiamat_ campaign Ancients Paladin doing 'steer the crowd away from us') who does not look like a priestess of Loviatar.


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## Riley37 (May 30, 2018)

Hussar said:


> One more time for the slow of reading.  SO LONG AS THE PEOPLE AT YOUR TABLE RECOGNIZE THE SALIENT FEATURES OF YOUR CHARACTER I AM HAPPY.  How you achieve that is totally up to you.




Fair enough. Thanks. No further objections.


----------



## ExploderWizard (May 30, 2018)

Jacob Marley said:


> I use a miniature.
> 
> DM: "What's your race?"
> Me: "Look at the mini."
> ...




Here you go! 

https://www.stonehavenmini.com/products/SH0009


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## Lanefan (May 30, 2018)

Eltab said:


> I want a male half-elf wearing chainmail wielding a whip (my _Tiamat_ campaign Ancients Paladin doing 'steer the crowd away from us') who does not look like a priestess of Loviatar.




And with the wonders of modern tech you can have it: there's various places now that'll take your specs, whatever they may be, and based on those they'll 3D-print you a mini.

You're still on your own hook for painting it, however.


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## billd91 (May 30, 2018)

Hussar said:


> One more time for the slow of reading.  SO LONG AS THE PEOPLE AT YOUR TABLE RECOGNIZE THE SALIENT FEATURES OF YOUR CHARACTER I AM HAPPY.  How you achieve that is totally up to you.   Heck, something as simple as actually using a female miniature at the table would be good enough.  ((Granted I always play on virtual tabletop, so such a thing is pretty bloody easy to achieve))




And the salient features of the character are what now? Are we in agreement what they are? Are you in agreement with the rest of your table (of virtual table)? Are they what I, as the player of the player character, choose to make prominent in my portrayal or are they imposed externally by you?


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## ccs (May 30, 2018)

Jacob Marley said:


> I use a miniature.
> 
> DM: "What's your race?"
> Me: "Look at the mini."
> ...




Sounds like you need https://www.heroforge.com/ !
No more excuses!


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## aramis erak (May 30, 2018)

I am male. 
I am slightly uncomfortable with cross gender characters played by others.
I am more uncomfortable with playing them myself. 
Neither enough to rule them out.

As a GM, i don't limit gender provided 
(1) when I'm running a game with a setting with gender roles, and social effects of breaking them, players accept and play accordingly. 
(2) when I say fade to black, it's not pushed by the player past that point.
(3) one isn't making a parody of it.


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## Sunseeker (May 30, 2018)

I'm going to foolishly wade into this thread once more and see if perhaps, I can be more clear.

I come to the table with a character (we have, at this point, reached Hussar's "cypher" point).  Through simple introduction, I explain the character is an elf, and female.

NOW!  I have established that my character is not myself (a male human), from this point forward, the presentation of this elf female is largely in my hands.  If I am playing a fairly culturally-normative elf female, then per @_*MechaPilot*_ this character should uphold certain established cultural norms and values.  I may need some assistance from the GM from time to time since me, the IRL male human, wouldn't know the ins and outs of the elf society I come from, or how women are treated and behave in that society.  

BUT!  It is highly common for adventurers to be _exceptions_ rather than norms.  Perhaps I have a particularly stronk elf, who is a bit of a pyro that likes getting drunk and generally being loud.  Most people, regardless of the particulars of any homebrew elf-culture, would compare that to traditional elf cultures (such as portrayed in Tolkein) and agree that's not normative.  In fact, that's probably not even normative for IRL human female culture (though it's certainly more possible now than it was before).  But more to the point, being strong, enjoying lighting things on fire, getting drunk and being loud are not elements that most people would immediately identify as female.  

So this is where I come back to question [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION]: We know that adventures are a mixed bunch.  How does one properly portray that their character is female, when their player is not, _without_ ascribing traditional gender-binary hetero-normative elements to them?  Or, in the context of the elf described above, is it your assertion that I _shouldn't_ be playing a female character if they have no traditional gender-binary hetero-normative elements?

Or, is it simply enough that I have stated my character is an elf, and female?  Because from before, I thought I asked that, and your response seemed to me(and I may have misunderstood) that this was unsatisfactory?


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## pming (May 30, 2018)

Hiya.

Male here. Indifferent; I really don't care one way or the other. I almost chose "Comfortable", but...well, I seriously just _do not care_ enough one way or the other. I figure if someone can pretend to play a ultra-wise 225 year old dwarven cleric who worships the dwarven god of metalworking as he casts spells and battles creatures of nightmare 12 kilometers under the surface of the land....saying "Oh, I'm a chick" is pretty far down on the list of things that I have to "imagine".

^_^

Paul L. Ming


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## Riley37 (May 30, 2018)

pming said:


> I figure if someone can pretend to play a ultra-wise 225 year old dwarven cleric who worships the dwarven god of metalworking as he casts spells and battles creatures of nightmare 12 kilometers under the surface of the land....saying "Oh, I'm a chick" is pretty far down on the list of things that I have to "imagine".




Where by "imagine" you mean "suspend disbelief"? This might be the first time I agree with you on EN World, and it might be the last - so, while the moment lasts, thank you!


----------



## Riley37 (May 30, 2018)

shidaku said:


> It is highly common for adventurers to be _exceptions_ rather than norms.




If you keep this up, eventually you'll play a halfling who walks across a wasteland to Mount Doom, or an elf who becomes friends with a dwarf, or a woman who fights Nazgul. Or a cleric who hangs out with bandits in a forest and blesses Robin Hood's wedding with Maid Marian. Or, speaking of Marian, an American woman who runs a bar in Nepal.


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## Lanefan (May 31, 2018)

Sunseeker said:


> ... Perhaps I have a particularly stronk elf ...



Stronk?

That just became my new word for the day!


----------



## Sunseeker (May 31, 2018)

Riley37 said:


> If you keep this up, eventually you'll play a halfling who walks across a wasteland to Mount Doom, or an elf who becomes friends with a dwarf, or a woman who fights Nazgul. Or a cleric who hangs out with bandits in a forest and blesses Robin Hood's wedding with Maid Marian. Or, speaking of Marian, an American woman who runs a bar in Nepal.




They're such an exception they're the norm!



Lanefan said:


> Stronk?
> 
> 
> 
> That just became my new word for the day!




Well I'm glad to have taught you a new word.


----------



## MechaPilot (May 31, 2018)

Sunseeker said:


> I'm going to foolishly wade into this thread once more and see if perhaps, I can be more clear.
> 
> I come to the table with a character (we have, at this point, reached Hussar's "cypher" point).  Through simple introduction, I explain the character is an elf, and female.
> 
> ...




While fantasy heroes and heroines are (in general) notorious for being exceptions from the norm, I think a gentle reminder is needed that very few characters break every norm.  Even the aforementioned loud, drunken, pyro she-elf might wear flowers in her hair (or not, that's just something elf women in my setting are prone to do), show respect for the wilderness and the creatures that live there, have a green thumb, wear clothing with flowers or trees embroidered on them, or might loudly sing an elvish love song while drunkenly trying to woo someone down at the local pub.

And, of course, there's also the matter of what the character does with his/her money.  I recall a mermaid bard I played in 3e who found a black-pearl necklace as part of a treasure hoard.  I decided she might like to keep it instead of selling it (she already had more money on her character sheet than I knew what do with), and she even commissioned  a pair of earrings to compliment the necklace.

It's just a matter of finding little ways to implement your characterization.  Like the dwarf warrior I once played who had the names of his family members engraved on his shield, because he was superstitious and he believed having his family with him in battle like that brought him good luck.


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## Hussar (May 31, 2018)

billd91 said:


> And the salient features of the character are what now? Are we in agreement what they are? Are you in agreement with the rest of your table (of virtual table)? Are they what I, as the player of the player character, choose to make prominent in my portrayal or are they imposed externally by you?




Now, honestly, this is an interesting question.  By salient, I'd generally default to stuff that people would pretty much automatically know about you within 10 minutes of meeting you.  So, yes, gender (although that can depend on the species of the character, it really might not be apparent, or heck, even exist - my Star Frontiers Dralazite (think giant sentient amoebas), is often pretty apparent when you meet someone.  It should certainly be something that the other characters in the group knows (again, there are specific circumstances where this might not be true such as hiding your gender for some reason).

So, yeah, dropping the odd hint once in a while isn't too much to ask is it?  

Or, better yet, see @ MechaPilot's excellent answer to the question as well.


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## Hussar (May 31, 2018)

Let me turn the question around a bit.  Is it reasonable to ask why someone is choosing to play something?  If you are choosing to play a different gender, why?  This is a conscious choice that you are making.  You have deliberately chosen this.  So, again, why?  And the question applies to every single choice you made when creating this character.  If you're a drink loving pyromaniac elf, ok, great.  Why?  What are you trying to do at the table?  

Now, imagine our pyromaniac elf never once sets anything on fire.  Never mentions the pyromania at all and never refers to it at the table.  In the player's head, the character is a pyromaniac, but, by the character's actions at the table, no one else at the table has any idea that this is true.  So, why be a pyromaniac?  For that matter, why elf?  If you're going to play an elf that is nothing like what elves are generally thought to be, then what are you trying to achieve?  Is it simply for the mechanical benefits of being an elf?  

I keep coming back to the same basic question.  What's the point of playing X if you never actually play X at the table?


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## solamon77 (May 31, 2018)

As a GM, I don't mind playing cross gendered NPCs (as a matter of fact, I probably couldn't GM if I wasn't), but I don't allow my players to play cross gendered PCs.


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## Lylandra (May 31, 2018)

Being a GM basically requires you to portray people, monsters and anything inbetween of all varying alignments, backgrounds and cultures. So I'm totally comfortable with playing male characters. 

I also played some as PCs, but never for too long (the campaigns with them simply ended prematurely... in fact the male PC I played the longest was in an online open RPG group... some serene accountant/martial artist/tortoise-enthusiast). 

For my (mostly male) players, they can play whatever they want as long as they don't fall back to toxic stereotypes. Or simply play a sexy walking wish-fulfillment on two legs. Or four. Or a tail. I'd always stick to the credo "if you can't play a female character as a fleshed-out person, then don't"


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## Hussar (May 31, 2018)

solamon77 said:


> As a GM, I don't mind playing cross gendered NPCs (as a matter of fact, I probably couldn't GM if I wasn't), but I don't allow my players to play cross gendered PCs.




If you don't mind, why not?  Hey, I've been a bit critical (maybe more than a bit) of people who play cross gendered characters, but, outright banning it?


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## Schmoe (May 31, 2018)

Frankly, I don't require or expect anything of my players for how they play their characters, other than they are not disruptive or offensive.  Players have their own reasons for playing the characters they choose, and I'm totally ok with that, whether they want to express certain things through that character, or just experience and internalize certain things through that character.  

As DM, I will generally have societies and NPCs treat characters as customary for their identities, but that's as far as it goes.  I would never presume to say that a player is playing their character incorrectly, because by definition that is their decision to make.  The most I would do is, if asked, give advice on how characters of a certain identity might act in that setting.


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## billd91 (May 31, 2018)

Hussar said:


> Now, honestly, this is an interesting question.  By salient, I'd generally default to stuff that people would pretty much automatically know about you within 10 minutes of meeting you.  So, yes, gender (although that can depend on the species of the character, it really might not be apparent, or heck, even exist - my Star Frontiers Dralazite (think giant sentient amoebas), is often pretty apparent when you meet someone.  It should certainly be something that the other characters in the group knows (again, there are specific circumstances where this might not be true such as hiding your gender for some reason).
> 
> So, yeah, dropping the odd hint once in a while isn't too much to ask is it?
> 
> Or, better yet, see @ MechaPilot's excellent answer to the question as well.




I'm going to continue to hit on this issue for a while - but again - salient to whom? And what assumptions are being made at the table?
Based on your response to Umbran back in post #88 - apparently the gender of the character is only salient to you if different from the apparent gender of the player.



			
				Hussar said:
			
		

> Like I said, I wasn't going to get into specific examples because everyone want's to start playing silly buggers trap games. And, since all your characters at your table are not gender bending, WHO CARES? You look at the player and you know that the player and the character are the same gender. AGAIN JOB DONE.




But the job being done, as you said, is based on a few assumptions - 1) That the player isn't playing cross gender and 2) that you can correctly guess the gender identity of the other player. 

In short, you're basically assuming that the job of portraying the gender of the character is completed by simply being a player who is that gender. that seems contrary to the goal of pushing players to role play the salient aspects of their character as it's based on an assumption based on the nature of the player, not  the role they play.


Don't get me too wrong here - you can't really hold the other players at the table accountable for not knowing your PC is deathly afraid of spiders if you've never role played them as deathly afraid of spiders. I get that. But, and getting back to some of the other arguments here, implying that someone isn't playing a character feminine enough or black enough or Japanese enough or dwarven enough or good enough or pious enough is really walking over some potentially sensitive territory that may underscore your own biases more than the player you'd be accusing of failing to role play their salient characteristics.


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## Riley37 (May 31, 2018)

Hussar said:


> Let me turn the question around a bit.  Is it reasonable to ask why someone is choosing to play something?  If you are choosing to play a different gender, why?  This is a conscious choice that you are making.  You have deliberately chosen this.  So, again, why?  And the question applies to every single choice you made when creating this character.  If you're a drink loving pyromaniac elf, ok, great.  Why?  What are you trying to do at the table?




Let me turn the question around even further. If you are choosing to play a character with the same gender you have (in the sense of anatomy, and/or in the sense of social role), why? This is a conscious choice that you are making. You have deliberately chosen this. So, again, why?

If you are choosing to play a character with a different name than you the player, why? This is a conscious choice that you are making. You have deliberately chosen this. So, again, why? 

You say that the question applies to every single choice one makes when creating a character. Are you holding gender to the *same standard of intention* - no more, and no less - as background, alignment, name, height, weight, bonds, flaws, ideals, and color of skin, eyes and hair?

If I choose to play a PC with a class other than mine - say, perhaps, a fighter (I am not, IRL, proficient with all martial weapons) - then this is a conscious choice that I are making. I have deliberately chosen this. Do you hold that choice to the same standard of scrutiny? If, after several sessions of play, someone thinks that I'm playing a Ranger, because we started at level 1 and my PC's personality strikes her as Aragorn-ish, then are either of us doing D&D wrong?


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## Riley37 (Jun 1, 2018)

Hussar said:


> I keep coming back to the same basic question.  What's the point of playing X if you never actually play X at the table?




What's the point of choosing a Bond or Flaw on session 1, which doesn't emerge in play until session 11 or 23?

For over a year I played a half-elf bard who was not, anatomically, binary male nor female, going by PHB p. 121. Dexter never objected to people using "he"; Dexter was used to humans using that pronoun for anyone whose chest didn't bulge, and Dexter wasn't gonna argue the pronoun usage of any language other than Elvish. The topic didn't emerge during play, and neither did the color of Dexter's eyes, which is presumably obvious to everyone in the PC party, but only the player and DM had seen the gender and the eye color listed on the character sheet. The team's mission was stopping the cult of Tiamat, and we played with an emphasis on the team's mission.

Until about a year later, when an NPC druid said something which someone noticed, and one of the players *flipped out*. His character demanded "Dexter, are you a man or a woman?" to which Dexter responded "No, I am a true child of Corellon". That player left the group, a few sessions later.

That same player had mentioned that his PC was married. The wife never appeared in the story; the DM had no name or story for her; I dunno if the player had chosen a name for this wife NPC.

Was it an accident, that someone felt so strongly about gender, rather than about Dexter's eye color? Or are some of the fields on a character sheet more emotional for some people, than for others?


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## Caliban (Jun 1, 2018)

I've had several characters where I picked a gender and it had zero impact on the game because it just didn't come up, one way or the other.   It only mattered to me and my personal conception of the character.

I've had others where it was an integral part of their personality and they actively played up various gender stereotypes (mainly dwarves and barbarians). 

I've had a gay paladin who wrote letters home to his husband between sessions.  

I've had a pansexual sorcerer who would (politely) hit on anything with a pulse. 

I've had a somewhat prim and proper female noble who was very ladylike and the model of decorum.

I haven't created any lesbian or transgendered characters because it's not something I feel I can portray accurately. 

Gender identity just another character attribute that may or may not come up in play.  Doesn't mean it's not there.


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## Sunseeker (Jun 1, 2018)

Caliban said:


> I've had a gay paladin who wrote letters home to his husband between sessions.




Okay, now I'm suuuuuper curious, did you actually write these letters between sessions?


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## Caliban (Jun 1, 2018)

Sunseeker said:


> Okay, now I'm suuuuuper curious, did you actually write these letters between sessions?




I wrote the first one, as part of the background of the character.  I'm not quite dedicated enough to keep it up every session, but the character himself did write home frequently.


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## Hussar (Jun 1, 2018)

billd91 said:


> I'm going to continue to hit on this issue for a while - but again - salient to whom? And what assumptions are being made at the table?
> Based on your response to Umbran back in post #88 - apparently the gender of the character is only salient to you if different from the apparent gender of the player.
> 
> But the job being done, as you said, is based on a few assumptions - 1) That the player isn't playing cross gender and 2) that you can correctly guess the gender identity of the other player.




Well, really?  You've played with people that you actually didn't know what gender they were?  



> In short, you're basically assuming that the job of portraying the gender of the character is completed by simply being a player who is that gender. that seems contrary to the goal of pushing players to role play the salient aspects of their character as it's based on an assumption based on the nature of the player, not  the role they play.
> 
> Don't get me too wrong here - you can't really hold the other players at the table accountable for not knowing your PC is deathly afraid of spiders if you've never role played them as deathly afraid of spiders. I get that. But, and getting back to some of the other arguments here, implying that someone isn't playing a character feminine enough or black enough or Japanese enough or dwarven enough or good enough or pious enough is really walking over some potentially sensitive territory that may underscore your own biases more than the player you'd be accusing of failing to role play their salient characteristics.




It's not a case of "enough".  It's a case of "at all".  If you are playing cross genders, and it never, ever comes up, well, why bother?  Like I said, simply using a bloody gender pronoun once in a while is "enough".  



Riley37 said:


> Let me turn the question around even further. If you are choosing to play a character with the same gender you have (in the sense of anatomy, and/or in the sense of social role), why? This is a conscious choice that you are making. You have deliberately chosen this. So, again, why?
> 
> If you are choosing to play a character with a different name than you the player, why? This is a conscious choice that you are making. You have deliberately chosen this. So, again, why?
> 
> ...




Yes, absolutely.  Every single choice you make when creating a character should be held to the same standard.  Although, to be fair, gross physical characteristics like eye color might be a bit harder to convey.   As far as the example though, well, that's a bit trickier since I'm not a big fan of the idea that classes actually exist in the game world, so, "Are you a fighter or a ranger" isn't really the important question, is it?



Riley37 said:


> What's the point of choosing a Bond or Flaw on session 1, which doesn't emerge in play until session 11 or 23?
> 
> For over a year I played a half-elf bard who was not, anatomically, binary male nor female, going by PHB p. 121. Dexter never objected to people using "he"; Dexter was used to humans using that pronoun for anyone whose chest didn't bulge, and Dexter wasn't gonna argue the pronoun usage of any language other than Elvish. The topic didn't emerge during play, and neither did the color of Dexter's eyes, which is presumably obvious to everyone in the PC party, but only the player and DM had seen the gender and the eye color listed on the character sheet. The team's mission was stopping the cult of Tiamat, and we played with an emphasis on the team's mission.
> 
> ...




Wow, that's brutal.  And, frankly, probably for the best.  

OTOH, the fact that a character is more or less genderless is something that you'd think that 4 or 5 people in close, virtually every day contact with should pick up on.  The fact that no one at the table actually realized this until a year into the campaign means that the player didn't do a very good job of portraying that character to the table.  It's kinda like Varsuvius from OOTS.  It's played as a running gag that the elf's gender is unknown, but, that's the point.  Everyone recognizes that V's gender is unknown because it's been pointed out more than a few times.  The joke would fall rather flat if, after a thousand strips, suddenly Roy turns to V and says, "What do you mean?  Aren't you a man/woman?"


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## Sunseeker (Jun 1, 2018)

Hussar said:


> Well, really?  You've played with people that you actually didn't know what gender they were?




One of the worst players I ever played with was intersex.  Though their sex and their bad playing had little to do with each other (as far as I could tell).  However, the person in question looked ostensibly female (not like SUPER female, but kinda female) but identifies as male now.  They didn't at the time, and their behavior wasn't any particular clue as to them preferring to female pronouns or male ones.  So I stuck to calling them their name "Saber", yes that was their IRL name, not their character name.  

It's 2018.  Gender is a lot more fluid than it used to be.  Sure, there are obvious examples (one guy we played with, Zach, who is the definition of a hyper-masculine alpha-male) but, especially in a hobby that is often comprised of people who are social outcasts, we're more likely to find people who are not gender-binary.  It's probably best not to _assume_ someone's gender, and by extension, apply the same reasoning to characters.


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## ccs (Jun 1, 2018)

Hussar said:


> It's not a case of "enough".  It's a case of "at all".  If you are playing cross genders, and it never, ever comes up, well, why bother?  Like I said, simply using a bloody gender pronoun once in a while is "enough".




Just checking....
You _do_ realize that the people you're arguing against either just don't get that, or don't care what you're saying, (possibly both) right? 

Ok, now back to beating on the poor dead equine.


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## Thomas Bowman (Jun 1, 2018)

If it is based on your gender it is not cross-gender. Cross gender would be if a male plays a female character or a female plays a male character.


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## Lanefan (Jun 1, 2018)

Question for those who are voting "uncomfortable with cross-gender characters": do you mean uncomfortable with playing one yourself or uncomfortable with anyone at the table playing one?

It's a big difference: with the former you're just acting on your own preference and not interfering with what others do while with the latter you're telling other people what they're allowed to play.

One of these is cool.  The other, not so much.


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## Lylandra (Jun 1, 2018)

Lanefan said:


> Question for those who are voting "uncomfortable with cross-gender characters": do you mean uncomfortable with playing one yourself or uncomfortable with anyone at the table playing one?
> 
> It's a big difference: with the former you're just acting on your own preference and not interfering with what others do while with the latter you're telling other people what they're allowed to play.
> 
> One of these is cool.  The other, not so much.




I agree, but I think there could be many burnt kids in this room. Like, players who have seen very bad examples of cross-gender character play and who don't want any of this in their game. 

Thing is that cross-gender play isn't the reason for such obnoxious play, but rather too little communication on what is considered appropriate. Hence my "If you don't wish to portray your cross-gender character like an actual person, then don't play one" statement. Because I'm a woman and I'm really uncomfortable when someone at the table plays my gender as a sexy lamp and as wish-fulfilment only. I can only guess the same applies to queer people and queer characters.  

Note: I'm talking about "serious campaigns". Satire or comic relief play is a wholly different animal as long as everyone is on board.


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## Riley37 (Jun 1, 2018)

Hussar said:


> As far as the example though, well, that's a bit trickier since I'm not a big fan of the idea that classes actually exist in the game world, so, "Are you a fighter or a ranger" isn't really the important question, is it?




This comes back to the question of what is and isn't salient. As I understand the PHB, people in the Forgotten Realms know what classes are, and if you ask the gate guard or an innkeeper "are there any clerics in this city?" they'll understand the question, including the distinction between Acolyte (staff of a temple) and Cleric (can cast Cure Wounds). Any wizard knows that all other wizards, and some warlocks, have spell books. Paladins know that their Oath grants specific abilities, and they know that paladins who swear other Oaths have different abilities. If you want to play in a setting without classes as known categories, then IMO the 5E PHB is a tool poorly suited to that task.



Hussar said:


> OTOH, the fact that a character is more or less genderless is something that you'd think that 4 or 5 people in close, virtually every day contact with should pick up on.  The fact that no one at the table actually realized this until a year into the campaign means that the player didn't do a very good job of portraying that character to the table.




As the person who played that character, I am biased towards disagreeing. I played Dexter as someone who *didn't care about gender*. Dexter cared about magic and music (as a Bard), knowledge (as a Sage and a Lore Bard), and defeating the cult of Tiamat. Dexter didn't have any interest in displaying masculinity; Dexter killed Tiamat's minions, ruthlessly and efficiently, without shouts of "Booyeah!", without post-combat fist-bumps. Dexter interacted with tavern staff by ordering food and drink, and asking about rumors, without any show-off "hey, watch me woo this wench". Dexter likewise didn't have any interest in displaying femininity. Dexter used Healing Word on comrades to get them back into the fight, and Lesser Restoration on sick NPCs out of generic genderless compassion, and didn't otherwise spend time nurturing anyone. The PCs, and their players, learned that Dexter was goal-oriented and mission-focussed; on the rare occasions of relaxation, Dexter was then all about music. I conveyed the character's interests *exactly* as intended.

If an NPC had ever taken a romantic interest in Dexter, then PCs (and thus players) at the table might have noticed Dexter's response; but the DM never played NPCs as having that level of personal agenda. Perhaps that's incomplete DMing. NPCs should notice PCs as "more than ordinary"; if someone asks the innkeeper "Who were your most interesting guests in the past year?", then the innkeeper's answer should include the PCs.  Now and then, that high profile should provoke attraction. Then again, attraction would not necessarily (nor immediately) reveal what anatomy was under Dexter's clothing, not unless we ran a scene well past the point at which most tables would fade out or cut to commercial.

You mention Vaarsuvius from OOTS. V's sex is unknown. (Belkar has tried to settle the question, by examining V's genitals, when V was a lizard; to no avail.) V's *gender*, using the term socially rather than anatomically, is unambiguous. V talks - particularly, interrupts - like a man. V leaves V's children at home with V's spouse, following the default and norm for the father role in societies from Agricultural through Industrial ages. It's theoretically possible that Inkyrius sired the children and V bore the children, but V sure doesn't act like the one who nursed them.


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## Riley37 (Jun 1, 2018)

Lanefan said:


> with the former you're just acting on your own preference and not interfering with what others do while with the latter you're telling other people what they're allowed to play.




If the DM says "You must play characters of your gender", then I'll take it or leave it. If the DM holds a Session Zero and a player says "I'd rather that we each play same-gender PCs" then I'm inclined to acquiesce to that player's request. (If the player instead says "No one pull any feminazi BS" then one of us is at the wrong table.)



Lylandra said:


> Hence my "If you don't wish to portray your cross-gender character like an actual person, then don't play one" statement. Because I'm a woman and I'm really uncomfortable when someone at the table plays my gender as a sexy lamp and as wish-fulfilment only.




In this case, someone at the table has made a request (or a DM directive), AND backed that up with a principle, based on their previous experience. At which point, no way I'm gonna argue.

I've seen a man play a woman not as a sexy lamp, but as annoyingly flamboyant and non-pragmatic, speaking in a bouncy falsetto, and that rubbed me the wrong way. I dunno whether he would eventually have progressed to sexy lamp; that was nominally Session Zero, but the only part of Zero he understood was "this is the session in which we make characters who then meet each other"; he did not understand "this is when we hash out tone, themes, and boundaries". The DM didn't invite him back for Session One.


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## Bagpuss (Jun 1, 2018)

Lylandra said:


> Because I'm a woman and I'm really uncomfortable when someone at the table plays my gender as a sexy lamp and as wish-fulfilment only.






Riley37 said:


> I dunno whether he would eventually have progressed to sexy lamp.




Can you define what you mean by "sexy lamp" in this case? As my understanding of the term means that the female character is just there for decoration, doesn't really add anything to the plot or advance it in a meaningful way.

I would have thought any PC is likely going to add something to the story, and react to what the GM provides.


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## dragoner (Jun 1, 2018)

I voted:

_I am male and am comfortable with cross gender characters _

Usually ~50% of my characters are female.




Lylandra said:


> I agree, but I think there could be many burnt kids in this room.




This is true, and from a different perspective, I played a Cleric, picked what I thought was a cool pic for her, and then the GM started having every NPC comment on her appearance, she wound up at a temple taking care of babies; and another player was a woman, I think both she and I started to question just what the hell was going on.

Tl;dr the game died, and could be filed under "sucky things GM's do", and while it's easy to blame it on gender, and forbid playing the opposite gender as insurance to insulate from that, I have found that bad GM's will find a way to make things un-fun anyways.


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## redrick (Jun 1, 2018)

I'm male. Thinking back to characters played over the last six months, 3 were female, one was nonbinary and one was male. One of my favorite characters, who I only got to play once, was Esme, a retired cat burglar, who loved most in the world fabulous flowing skirts and stealing things for her grandchildren.

If a player couldn't be trusted to not play their PC as a sexist caricature, I would probably stop playing with that person.

When hosting games, I ask all players to indicate PC pronouns on their character tent. This way, nobody ever needs to behave stereotypically just to "remind" us of the character gender. Sometimes the only practical difference in gender for role-play will be the name and pronouns of the character, which is totally appropriate. The last thing I want to do is tell a player that they aren't playing their character "female enough".


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## D1Tremere (Jun 1, 2018)

I'm seeing a lot of people talk about what makes THEM comfortable with regards to how OTHER people choose to play.
I can understand how someone playing a stereotype may make someone uncomfortable. I can understand how someone emphasizing their character's gender too much or too little could as well.
The thing to remember is that everyone plays what they play for a reason, THEIR reason. They may not see the situation in the same light as you, and they are under no compulsion to. GM's are (in my opinion) rules adjudicators and story tellers. The main job of the GM is to help players have fun. So long as a player's choices are allowing them to have fun (and not directly/intentionally infringing on the fun of others), then that is all that matters.
Using the gender issue as (potentially) an excuse to insist on a level of role commitment, acting ability, or originality from a player is fraught with problems.


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## Eltab (Jun 1, 2018)

Another player in my group has a character with the Warlock perma-_Disguise Self_ ability.  The character has looked male or female based on what disguise we thought would help us get further along towards our objective.  ('Boss lich of the dungeon' for max scoundrel-tricks.)  Team Monster finally knocked out the character in a fight.  We've had a female Drow arcane magic-user in our midst the whole time - who knew?
The character's "true" sex / gender were not important, so it didn't come up.  And I'm not upset about any of it.


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## Eltab (Jun 1, 2018)

Caliban said:


> I haven't created any lesbian or transgendered characters because it's not something I feel I can portray accurately.



I'm pretty sure I could play a complete stereotype.  But would anybody else enjoy playing with me (and that cardboard cutout*)?  Very likely, not.

* on purpose, I did not say 'character'


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## Thomas Bowman (Jun 1, 2018)

Lylandra said:


> I agree, but I think there could be many burnt kids in this room. Like, players who have seen very bad examples of cross-gender character play and who don't want any of this in their game.
> 
> Thing is that cross-gender play isn't the reason for such obnoxious play, but rather too little communication on what is considered appropriate. Hence my "If you don't wish to portray your cross-gender character like an actual person, then don't play one" statement. Because I'm a woman and I'm really uncomfortable when someone at the table plays my gender as a sexy lamp and as wish-fulfilment only. I can only guess the same applies to queer people and queer characters.
> 
> Note: I'm talking about "serious campaigns". Satire or comic relief play is a wholly different animal as long as everyone is on board.




I guess you mean imperfect cross gender characters, ones that don't quite make the transition from male to female or the other way around in a convincing way, is that what you are trying to say. In the movie Dragonslayer, there was a character who was a woman posing as a boy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragonslayer_(1981_film)

_"A sixth-century post-Roman kingdom called Urland[3] is being terrorized by a 400 year-old dragon named “Vermithrax Pejorative”.[3] To appease the dragon, King Casiodorus (Peter Eyre) offers it virgin girls selected by lottery twice a year. An expedition led by a young man called Valerian (Clarke) seeks the last sorcerer, Ulrich of Craggenmoor (Richardson), for help.
A brutish soldier from Urland named Tyrian (Hallam), who has followed the expedition, intimidates the wizard. Ulrich invites Tyrian to stab him to prove his magical powers. Tyrian does so and Ulrich dies instantly, to the horror of his young apprentice Galen Bradwarden (MacNicol) and his elderly servant Hodge (Sydney Bromley). Hodge cremates Ulrich's body and places the ashes in a leather pouch, informing Galen that Ulrich wanted his ashes spread over a lake of burning water.
Galen is selected by the wizard's magical amulet as its next owner; encouraged, he takes it upon himself to journey to Urland. On the way, he discovers Valerian is really a young woman, who is disguised to avoid being selected in the lottery. In an effort to discourage the expedition, Tyrian kills Hodge; before dying, he hands Galen the pouch of ashes and dies with the words "Burning water ..." on his lips."_

Now if a character does a cross gender well, no one notices, people just think the person is of the gender he or she is pretending to be. However there is a character in Shrek 2.






Now in the first instance, the character made a convincing "young boy", in the second...


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## Lanefan (Jun 1, 2018)

Riley37 said:


> If the DM says "You must play characters of your gender", then I'll take it or leave it. If the DM holds a Session Zero and a player says "I'd rather that we each play same-gender PCs" then I'm inclined to acquiesce to that player's request. (If the player instead says "No one pull any feminazi BS" then one of us is at the wrong table.)



One game I was in, each player's first character had to be of the opposite gender to the player.  Interesting experiment.

Someone saying "I'd rather just play characters of my own gender" is fine - fill yer boots.  Someone saying "I'd rather we all play characters of our own gender" is going to get an argument if I'm at the table.



> In this case, someone at the table has made a request (or a DM directive), AND backed that up with a principle, based on their previous experience. At which point, no way I'm gonna argue.



You might not argue, but I would, based on the premise that each player has the agency and freedom to - within the limits of the setting/system in use - play the character(s) she/he wants to play.

Those setting/system limits might mean I can't play an Elf because there's no Elves in this setting or because Elves are being reserved for the DM's use as enemies, or I can't play a Monk because this particular game system doesn't have a far-east-flavoured martial arts class in it; but I've never yet seen a setting or system that only allowed one gender to adventure (and if such did exist, one gender of player will be forced to play cross-gender anyway).



> I've seen a man play a woman not as a sexy lamp, but as annoyingly flamboyant and non-pragmatic, speaking in a bouncy falsetto, and that rubbed me the wrong way.



Arguably the best and most memorable character I've ever played was just this.  She was a bouncy cheerful bubble-headed fool in most ways except for her spellcasting, on which she was laser-focused; this my way of trying to play high intelligence and very low wisdom.  And yes, I gave her a somewhat distinctive voice (though not full falsetto, for which my vocal cords thanked me) and a series of catchphrases.

She lasted seven years real time, and had outlived all her original companions by the time she died out.  And during her run she absolutely owned our annual "Most Entertaining Character" award as voted by the participants.



> I dunno whether he would eventually have progressed to sexy lamp; that was nominally Session Zero, but the only part of Zero he understood was "this is the session in which we make characters who then meet each other"; he did not understand "this is when we hash out tone, themes, and boundaries". The DM didn't invite him back for Session One.



Not having been there I can't comment on this specific instance, but in broad terms tone is something that arises out of play and can't really be preordained (at least no more often than random chance would allow), themes are set first by the DM and then modified by the run of play as the campaign goes along, and boundaries are two-fold: there's the at-the-table boundaries (show up on time having showered first, no harrassment, no cheating, generally don't be an asshat) and the in-game boundaries (what you play, how you play it, etc.).

The at-the-table boundaries are just common sense.

It's the in-game boundaries we're discussing here, and on these I lean fairly hard toward the "anything goes" side within the setting/system stipulations as mentioned above.

Lan-"the only true 'sexy lamp' I can remember playing was a character with secondary profession of 'actor' playing that role as a distraction during a spy-intrigue adventure"-efan


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## Ratskinner (Jun 1, 2018)

For the most part, I don't care. I will say that I used to get cross-gender characters that were....not good. Whether that's on the players' RP abilities, generally deficient personalities, or Sexism...who knows. Odd, when you think about it, that a person might be better able to properly portray an alien than a girl, but such is life. I haven't seen very many attempts at cross-gender characters for years now.

OTOH, I don't think its a big deal. If someone did want to do a cross-gender character, so be it.


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## Umbran (Jun 1, 2018)

Lanefan said:


> Someone saying "I'd rather we all play characters of our own gender" is going to get an argument if I'm at the table.
> 
> You might not argue, but I would, based on the premise that each player has the agency and freedom to - within the limits of the setting/system in use - play the character(s) she/he wants to play.




"Agency and freedom" so, you think that merely by asking, they are abridging your rights?  Why are these things always framed in the form of abridgment of rights?  Heavens forbid you should make a little room at the table for someone else's sensibilities!  Is this inconceivable?

You know, each player should *also* have the agency and freedom to speak honestly and like a mature adult about what they do and don't like in a game.  Don't players also have as much right to a game that doesn't make them decidedly uncomfortable?

So, how about you give them a discussion, rather than an argument?  Maybe, rather than push back, you first ask *why*?

Because every game is a collaboration, and in good collaboration, you are going to find that nobody gets everything they want - there will be some compromise involved.  So, before you argue and push back on the grounds of abridgment of freedoms, maybe you want to actually explore the request,  and find out if you would like to choose to accommodate another player?


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## Lylandra (Jun 1, 2018)

Thomas Bowman said:


> I guess you mean imperfect cross gender characters, ones that don't quite make the transition from male to female or the other way around in a convincing way, is that what you are trying to say.




Err, no. I don't have any problem with players who are not good at cross-gender play but who really try to and who love playing as someone else. I'd gladly help them to avoid the most basic mistakes. 

What I do mean is players who *only* play the opposite gender to have an imaginary, sexy doll with no personality at all and who only exists to imaginarily look hot, have sex (optional, depending on the age of the player) and maybe kill some monsters. 

That's what I meant with "sexy lamp". Okay, it is a sexy robot lamp with a sword, but hey, basic principle.


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## Legatus Legionis (Jun 1, 2018)

From my experience, most players when given the option to pick such themselves, the vast majority of the time with RP a character of the same sex.

But, when we decide for a more unique creation process where we only pick the class and race, and everything else is random, it does make for some strange combinations.

Almost like having to role play those pre-generated characters.  It is fun in its own way.


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## Riley37 (Jun 2, 2018)

Umbran said:


> So, how about you give them a discussion, rather than an argument?  Maybe, rather than push back, you first ask *why*?




I've been pondering a question along these lines, for weeks now, following discussions on EN World, in other threads before this one, mainly the epic thread on harassment, with a side of MToF. I see a LOT of EN World participants who default to the "truth emerges from no-holds-barred debate" model, some relative of the adversarial system of plaintiff and defendant, without even considering techniques such as "could you provide an example or two?" or "how are you using that word?" or "why is that important to you"?.

There was a podcaster, Crowder, who set up a table, at a college campus, with a sign saying ""Male Privilege is a myth / Change My Mind". I dunno how many undergrads chose to spend any of the precious moments of their lives trying to change his mind. I've been weighing the relationship between Crowder's approach and with another sign, also seen on college campuses: "NO does not mean Change My Mind."

I have a theory that the culture of "everything is a debate, never ask questions, attribute some preposterous extreme position to the other guy and watch HIM refine it" connects with the culture of treating sex as something that men take, and something that women let men take or resist men taking; and that culture opposes conselt culture, in which people make *offers*, and the recipient of the offer either accepts, declines, makes a counter-proposal, or draws a boundary against further offers.

I have a so-far-unsupported speculation that "Change My Mind" model is more comfortable for aggressively masculine men, the kind who wear a fedora and a katana, than for others, and that the "Change My Mind" model is unattractive to many (though not all) women, and also unattractive to anyone who faces extra risks when things go sideways and get violent. (In any nation where there's been racial lynching in the last generation, this category includes race. Canada has over a century since Louie Sam in 1884, and the killers were mostly from the USA.) Such people have less to gain and more to lose, so many of them just walk away, not wasting their time, and find some other venue where people actively work towards understanding each other, without first establishing machismo and mutual respect via duelling.

I don't have a coherent argument on this yet. It's percolating. (Anyone seen a thesis along these lines, elsewhere?)


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## Riley37 (Jun 2, 2018)

Lanefan said:


> The at-the-table boundaries are just common sense.




If the basics of human decency are so innately universal and obvious...

...then why do so many nations, and states/provinces within nations, have different laws? Why are so many of them STILL revising their legal codes and/or judicial precedents? Why do people drive on the right side of the road in some places, and the left side of the roads in others - isn't it *obvious* which one is correct?

 I lack your confidence in the universality of behavioral norms among players.


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## Umbran (Jun 2, 2018)

Riley37 said:


> . I see a LOT of EN World participants who default to the "truth emerges from no-holds-barred debate" model, some relative of the adversarial system of plaintiff and defendant, without even considering techniques such as "could you provide an example or two?" or "how are you using that word?" or "why is that important to you"?.




The truth does not emerge from no-holds-barred debate.  If no holds are barred, we *quickly* degrade into techniques that lie among the logical fallacies, attacking the psychology of the opponent, rather than exploring the actual logic.  People become victors in such debate based on illogic and falsehood, rather than truth. Formal debate has strict rules against that sort of thing - it gets more to truth than no-holds-barred does.


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## Yaztromo (Jun 2, 2018)

While GMing (for about 35 years...) I have the impression that, the more time passes, the more players are comfortable with roleplaying characters of their opposite gender... and they roleplay them well, independently from their player gender.


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## ccs (Jun 2, 2018)

Yaztromo said:


> While GMing (for about 35 years...) I have the impression that, the more time passes, the more players are comfortable with roleplaying characters of their opposite gender... and they roleplay them well, independently from their player gender.




What?  The older the player gets the more real life XP they have to draw on & this somehow helps them?  Shocking!


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## redrick (Jun 2, 2018)

ccs said:


> What?  The older the player gets the more real life XP they have to draw on & this somehow helps them?  Shocking!




My experience is that millennials feel very comfortable role playing characters whose gender does not match their own, and seem to navigate the "challenge" or lack thereof quite well.


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## ccs (Jun 2, 2018)

Ratskinner said:


> Odd, when you think about it, that a person might be better able to properly portray an alien than a girl, but such is life.




Well, you'll get a lot less crap playing an alien....


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## ccs (Jun 2, 2018)

Lylandra said:


> Err, no. I don't have any problem with players who are not good at cross-gender play but who really try to and who love playing as someone else. I'd gladly help them to avoid the most basic mistakes.
> 
> What I do mean is players who *only* play the opposite gender to have an imaginary, sexy doll with no personality at all and who only exists to imaginarily look hot, have sex (optional, depending on the age of the player) and maybe kill some monsters.
> 
> That's what I meant with "sexy lamp". Okay, it is a sexy robot lamp with a sword, but hey, basic principle.




What if I make a character of the same gender as mine with those exact traits?


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## Thomas Bowman (Jun 2, 2018)

Lylandra said:


> Err, no. I don't have any problem with players who are not good at cross-gender play but who really try to and who love playing as someone else. I'd gladly help them to avoid the most basic mistakes.
> 
> What I do mean is players who *only* play the opposite gender to have an imaginary, sexy doll with no personality at all and who only exists to imaginarily look hot, have sex (optional, depending on the age of the player) and maybe kill some monsters.
> 
> That's what I meant with "sexy lamp". Okay, it is a sexy robot lamp with a sword, but hey, basic principle.




I would think just the opposite, if I was playing a female character, I think she would mostly be interested in is killing monsters and collecting treasure, maybe building a kingdom, and raising an army at high level. I think that after a while, I would just forget the shape of my character, and seek to make her the most powerful character that I can as a player. As for romance, if I were to do that realistically it would be with a man, as most women would be romantically inclined with men, and if she was a lesbian, well I would just forget that she is a woman and play her as a man, but what would be the point of that? You see I myself am not attracted to other men, but most women are, and it is that part that I would find it hard to get right, either I might overcompensate and make her overly interested in the opposite gender, or I would make her only interested in fighting and in accumulating treasure. Most dungeons a D&D character would go through don't involve having sex or romantic interests. I feel that real women and girls are the most qualified to play female characters, because it is in their nature. Trouble is, most women I know aren't into playing role playing games, so if their are any female characters to play, then male players end up playing them, they are second best to a woman playing them in my opinion.

It is a fantasy role playing game, now lets imagine a realistic reaction to an unrealistic situation. Say for instance I were playing a male fighter, and after drinking the wrong potion, he was knocked unconscious and woke up as a beautiful female character, still a fighter, but about 6 inches shorter, a bit thinner.

The first problem, from a practical standpoint is that my armor no longer fits, it is too big on me, what am I going to do about that? Not only that my undergarments are also a few sizes too big. I look down at my new body and perhaps I scream, and the moment that high pitched voice comes out of my throat, I regret it. I start taking off my armor, and I tighten various fittings on my undergarments, and I cover up various body parts with the loose clothing I have available, take my sack of coins, and exit the dungeon. I put a hood over my head and I shuffle to the nearest town to purchase new clothes and equipment, dragging my ill-fitting armor behind me.

My first encounter is with the town guard who wants to know who I am and what is my business in town. The town guard is male, and I look down at myself and see a fetching 20 something woman, and lets say my character's name was Derek, I try to think of an answer for him. One possible answer is I could say my name is Derek and I was magically transformed into a woman, but I'm not sure I could live that down, and I do not want to draw any unnecessary male attention to myself, So I think of a boring unremarkable female name so I tell him my name is Susan, and that I am looking to buy some clothes, and I make up some story about a fire and how all of my clothes went up in flames, so I need to buy some replacements. The town guard lets me in. I hobble down the street because my male boots are too big and I got blisters on my heels and toes. I remove my boots and start walking around bare foot. unfortunately the streets are not well suited for walking around barefoot on, as their is horse dung in many places, some of the rocks are sharp, and my brand new female feet are a bit soft and uncalloused. I try to avoid looking at any men, and I keep my head down trying to avoid any eye contact, not only to avoid any unwanted attention, but to keep any hormones within me from stirring any feelings, as I don't want this new identity, I did not choose it, and I would be dreadfully fearful of any emotions of sexual attractions that might be stirring within me. therefore I try not to look at anyone, and I shuffle into a shop in my bare feet, I tell the clothier that I need some new clothes, nothing too fancy, just practical.

I put on some clothes, and the female shape of my body is revealed, so I try some baggier clothes, The proprietor says he thinks that outfit is too large for me, and if I want it adjusted. I say yes, and he starts measuring me. I suck in my breath and close my eyes. Hormones, those darn hormones, I slap myself across the face just to distract myself, after about half an hour the proprietor comes back with the adjusted outfit and asks me to try it on. It fits loosely. I pay the man, and I walk out the door, now for some boots...


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## Lylandra (Jun 2, 2018)

ccs said:


> What if I make a character of the same gender as mine with those exact traits?




Good question! To be honest, I've never seen someone playing a male character who was playing a sexy doll that was clearly meant as imaginary turn-on first and foremost. Or who was solely portraying toxic stereotypes. I guess I'd have a harder time spotting these stereotypes as well.

Now I guess I'd find them obnoxious, but slightly less troubling. Because 1) there is a difference whether you are playing a character matching your own characteristic and 2) unless the player is homosexual, the character is most likely not created and played to be an imaginary sexy doll *for the player* but rather as an opportunity to heavily flirt around with NPCs or other PCs. One is more objectifying than the other.


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## Lylandra (Jun 2, 2018)

Thomas Bowman said:


> I would think just the opposite, if I was playing a female character, I think she would mostly be interested in is killing monsters and collecting treasure, maybe building a kingdom, and raising an army at high level. I think that after a while, I would just forget the shape of my character, and seek to make her the most powerful character that I can as a player. As for romance, if I were to do that realistically it would be with a man, as most women would be romantically inclined with men, and if she was a lesbian, well I would just forget that she is a woman and play her as a man, but what would be the point of that? You see I myself am not attracted to other men, but most women are, and it is that part that I would find it hard to get right, either I might overcompensate and make her overly interested in the opposite gender, or I would make her only interested in fighting and in accumulating treasure. Most dungeons a D&D character would go through don't involve having sex or romantic interests. I feel that real women and girls are the most qualified to play female characters, because it is in their nature. Trouble is, most women I know aren't into playing role playing games, so if their are any female characters to play, then male players end up playing them, they are second best to a woman playing them in my opinion.
> 
> It is a fantasy role playing game, now lets imagine a realistic reaction to an unrealistic situation. Say for instance I were playing a male fighter, and after drinking the wrong potion, he was knocked unconscious and woke up as a beautiful female character, still a fighter, but about 6 inches shorter, a bit thinner.
> -snip, long story -




That's fine. There are people with different opinions in this thread, but your idea sounds like a standard adventuring woman who doesn't have much interest in carousing or romance. 

If you don't feel comfortable playing romance with a cross-gendered character, no problem. Especially if you're not used to cross-gendered characters. As a guideline, if you were trying to portray a hetero woman, I'd say think about what kind of guys or what kind of behavior would be attractive to her. That might depend on her personality, but also her culture and background. (currently playing a character who stems from a culture that practices polyandry, so it can get weird)

For your story, now this is something that might happen (hello 2e girdle!), and parts of it aren't too far off. Truth is, a magical sex change doesn't automatically change your sexual orientation. Hormones don't trigger attraction, but they can amplify any message the brain is shooting off when you're looking at someone. And neither would most hetero women feel attraction towards 80-95% of all men out there. 

Your man-turned-woman fighter wouldn't know about this, so having him fear to feel attraction towards someone he's usually not interested in isn't too far off I guess. Also, no one runs around barefoot with blisters  You can just bandage your feet with these masses of excess cloth.

Also... "Sorry sir, I'm actually a guy who drank the wrong potion" sounds like quite an easy way to stop unwanted advances. Mhm...


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## TheSword (Jun 2, 2018)

I play female characters probably 50% of the time. Mainly inspired by classic tropes, I have had a lot of fun playing variants of an Aes Sedai style character, using Druid, Oracle of Flame, and Wizard at various times over the years. All to great success. I’m currently playing an elven swashbuckling fighter/rogue and loving it.

I don’t see that playing a female character means you need to have romance elements to your characters storyline (any more so than a male character) nor do I feel a burning desire to work maternal instinct into the character. I play them for fun and make sure they contribute to the party.


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## Bagpuss (Jun 2, 2018)

Lylandra said:


> Good question! To be honest, I've never seen someone playing a male character who was playing a sexy doll that was clearly meant as imaginary turn-on first and foremost. Or who was solely portraying toxic stereotypes. I guess I'd have a harder time spotting these stereotypes as well.




You've never seen a Conan or Bond like character?



> Now I guess I'd find them obnoxious, but slightly less troubling. Because 1) there is a difference whether you are playing a character matching your own characteristic and 2) unless the player is homosexual, the character is most likely not created and played to be an imaginary sexy doll *for the player* but rather as an opportunity to heavily flirt around with NPCs or other PCs. One is more objectifying than the other.




Not getting this whole "imaginary sexy doll" idea. Since the player doesn't get to have sex with his own character, even imaginary sex. At worst he'll be having sex with imaginary NPCs while imagining himself in the body of a female character. 

I'm trying to understand how playing a female character as a male would ever work as a sexy doll idea?


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## Lanefan (Jun 2, 2018)

Riley37 said:


> I've been pondering a question along these lines, for weeks now, following discussions on EN World, in other threads before this one, mainly the epic thread on harassment, with a side of MToF. I see a LOT of EN World participants who default to the "truth emerges from no-holds-barred debate" model, some relative of the adversarial system of plaintiff and defendant, without even considering techniques such as "could you provide an example or two?" or "how are you using that word?" or "why is that important to you"?.



I'm not sure it's rooted in the plaintiff/defendant adversariality (is that a word?) where there's an aggressor and a defender, but more in the parliamentary adversariality where there's two or more vaguely-equal sides squaring off.



> If the basics of human decency are so innately universal and obvious...
> 
> ...then why do so many nations, and states/provinces within nations, have different laws? Why are so many of them STILL revising their legal codes and/or judicial precedents? Why do people drive on the right side of the road in some places, and the left side of the roads in others - isn't it *obvious* which one is correct?



The basics are covered by the laws of pretty much all nations.  It's the refinements that get argued over; along with how those basic laws are or are not always fairly and evenly applied or seen/perceived to be fairly and evenly applied - see the recent harrassment threads for examples both good and bad.

Which side of the road to drive on is a refinement on top of the the basic (and universal) common sense bit that says all the cars going in the same direction will be on the same side of the road.



> I lack your confidence in the universality of behavioral norms among players.



There's a vague universality, I think, to expected norms of behavior among players.  The variance - and it's a wide one - comes in how rigidly those expectations are accepted/adhered to/enforced.

Lan-"the cynic in me says we'd all be better off if the western world's legal system hadn't been built by - and for the benefit of - lawyers"-efan


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## Lanefan (Jun 2, 2018)

Lylandra said:


> Good question! To be honest, I've never seen someone playing a male character who was playing a sexy doll that was clearly meant as imaginary turn-on first and foremost. Or who was solely portraying toxic stereotypes. I guess I'd have a harder time spotting these stereotypes as well.
> 
> Now I guess I'd find them obnoxious, but slightly less troubling. Because 1) there is a difference whether you are playing a character matching your own characteristic and 2) unless the player is homosexual, the character is most likely not created and played to be an imaginary sexy doll *for the player* but rather as an opportunity to heavily flirt around with NPCs or other PCs. One is more objectifying than the other.



There's a third option: that the player, who in real life might be having internal issues with their own perceived attractiveness or sexiness, is playing a sexy doll as a form of compensation.

Put another way, the sexy doll isn't there for its own player to lust over, it's there for the other players (be it in or out of character) to lust over; and when they do so it gratifies the doll's player by making him/her feel vicariously more attractive.

Lanefan


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## Eltab (Jun 2, 2018)

Riley37 said:


> the culture of "everything is a debate, never ask questions, attribute some preposterous extreme position to the other guy and watch HIM refine it"
> 
> I don't have a coherent argument on this yet. It's percolating.



The section in quotes leads to an _'argument' _rather than a _'debate'_.

I'd be willing at bet that one reason it's so tough to _discuss_ these subjects is that nobody turns to a dictionary to find the word closest to the meaning they have in mind.
And the audience doesn't check a dictionary either, to see if 'what was said' was 'what was meant'.


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## Riley37 (Jun 2, 2018)

Lanefan said:


> The basics are covered by the laws of pretty much all nations.  It's the refinements that get argued over; along with how those basic laws are or are not always fairly and evenly applied or seen/perceived to be fairly and evenly applied




Indeed. Thich Nat Han has a metaphor about water and tea, where water is justice and we all need it, while tea is flavor and each culture flavors justice with different specifics, sometimes including religion.



Lanefan said:


> see the recent harrassment threads for examples both good and bad.




It has been much on my mind. Among the posts from those interested in change, there were a range of disagreements, mostly respectful to each other. There were posts favoring "the status quo is fine" and those generally had a less respectful interaction with those interested in change. (That is, of course, my opinion, and it's not a consensus summary of a long and involved thread.)



Lanefan said:


> There's a vague universality, I think, to expected norms of behavior among players.  The variance - and it's a wide one - comes in how rigidly those expectations are accepted/adhered to/enforced.




Indeed, and that's where I see utility in Session Zero. Have you ever participated in a Session Zero, and was it boring and useless, or otherwise?

I am curious what quote might appear in the middle of your next signature. Who else, other than lawyers, might build a legal system?


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## Lylandra (Jun 2, 2018)

Bagpuss said:


> You've never seen a Conan or Bond like character?




Yikes, Conan as turn-on? No, I've never seen anyone who played their barbarian like a sexy walking stick. Usually, these characters are played as power/competence fantasies by male players. 

What I did see were women portraying gay male characters as their wish fulfilment and/or - see [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] s comment - way to explore their sexuality. They were rarely sticks, most of them did have a personality, but I guess they'd carry many toxic stereotypes about gay men that would make them feel uncomfortable. (google Yaoi if you'd like to inquire further.)



> Not getting this whole "imaginary sexy doll" idea. Since the player doesn't get to have sex with his own character, even imaginary sex. At worst he'll be having sex with imaginary NPCs while imagining himself in the body of a female character.
> 
> I'm trying to understand how playing a female character as a male would ever work as a sexy doll idea?




There is this third-person narrative kind of play ("She does XYZ") besides the fully immersive first-person play ("I do XYZ") where players play their characters, but not *as* their characters. It is far more common than you'd think. 

Also, there is not much of a difference - besides having full "remote control" of the character - between a character in an RPG and a character in a movie or novel. And just think about how many characters are there for fanservice only. How many characters, even in novels, are defined by their looks and availability first and foremost. 

If you cannot see the connection, then fine. You'll certainly create no such character in your RPGing carreer then


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## Riley37 (Jun 2, 2018)

Eltab said:


> I'd be willing at bet that one reason it's so tough to _discuss_ these subjects is that nobody turns to a dictionary to find the word closest to the meaning they have in mind.




If you are proposing more frequent use of dictionaries as a primary method for change in this dynamic, then you and I have radically different views of what's working badly and what would be an improvement. Which is consistent with our track records across many threads.

If you believe that *everyone* here is trying to communicate with intellectual honesty, playing all their cards face up on the table, following debate rules, and that everyone here welcomes everyone else as an equal participant, then you and I have radically different views of what's working badly and what would be an improvement. Which is consistent with our track records across many threads.


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## Umbran (Jun 2, 2018)

Eltab said:


> I'd be willing at bet that one reason it's so tough to _discuss_ these subjects is that nobody turns to a dictionary to find the word closest to the meaning they have in mind.




Hm.  That may be one reason, but I don't expect it to be the dominant one.

There is a basic flaw with the adversarial mode for discussion.  Each participant stakes a position, and then must defend it.  It starts with the position that you already know the truth, and that no exploration actually needs to happen!  And, if it turns out that the position you staked out is incorrect, well, then you were *wrong* and you *lose*.  In terms of human ego, this is a lousy place to be, and few folks ever admit to having taken the wrong position.

This works well enough in a court of law, or even in a formal debate, where a _third party_ decides what is correct based on the information given.  But that's not what we have here - no third party votes on who was more persuasive, and nobody ever has to consider the matter settled.

If, instead, you enter a discussion _without a position_, you have no stakes to lose, and you can explore without the fear of bruised ego.  And yes, if you don't start with a position that you claim is already correct, you have to ask questions and listen far more than you need to make statements and proclaim things.


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## Patrick McGill (Jun 2, 2018)

We're role playing around a kitchen table not performing high theater. If you don't figure out that someone at the table is playing a character that identifies as female until the fifth session they didn't "fail", it just hasn't come up yet.

If someone in a group I was playing in told me I had failed to role play properly because they just now figured out I was playing a different gendered character my reaction would probably rhyme with "huck off".

Maybe I'm misreading but why would there be a sudden impetus to somehow telegraph your character's gender simply because it's different than yours? I don't work to telegraph that my character is male and that is apparently not a problem. Why assume the gender to begin with as my own if you're going to start grading my role play performance if it's different than what you expect?

The gender of the character should matter little beyond window dressing in the grand scheme of the portrayal in my opinion. It reminds me of a quote by George R.R. Martin during an interview. He was asked how he writes such good female characters, and his response was basically, "Well I've always considered women to be people."


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## Hussar (Jun 3, 2018)

TheSword said:


> I play female characters probably 50% of the time. Mainly inspired by classic tropes, I have had a lot of fun playing variants of an Aes Sedai style character, using Druid, Oracle of Flame, and Wizard at various times over the years. All to great success. I’m currently playing an elven swashbuckling fighter/rogue and loving it.
> 
> I don’t see that playing a female character means you need to have romance elements to your characters storyline (any more so than a male character) nor do I feel a burning desire to work maternal instinct into the character. I play them for fun and make sure they contribute to the party.




If I may ask, what about playing female characters makes them fun for you?  What, specifically related to the gender of your character, makes it fun?


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## Lanefan (Jun 3, 2018)

Riley37 said:


> Indeed, and that's where I see utility in Session Zero. Have you ever participated in a Session Zero, and was it boring and useless, or otherwise?



Only as a roll-up-the-characters and rule-change-explanation session (so, pretty boring), which morphed right into Session 1 (much more exciting!) without skipping a beat once everyone had their ducks in a row.

I don't do the tone-set thing at Session 0.  It's done as part of the invitation to be a player in the first place, along the lines of "here's the sort of thing I vaguely have in mind <insert some amount of info here, including game system>; if you're interested in playing you're invited to do so.".  That way, combined with our history and all knowing each other, by the time you say "Yes I want to play in this" you already kind of know what you're getting into.



> I am curious what quote might appear in the middle of your next signature. Who else, other than lawyers, might build a legal system?



Common folks using plain common language and good common sense, accessible to and understandable by all, would be my preference.  No loopholes, no technicalities, etc.

Hey, I can dream, can't I? 

Lanefan


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## Yaztromo (Jun 3, 2018)

ccs said:


> What?  The older the player gets the more real life XP they have to draw on & this somehow helps them?  Shocking!




You are confusing GMs and players. They are not necessarily the same things and sometimes, as the GM ages, the players perhaps not, as you don't GM all your life for the same persons.


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## Hussar (Jun 3, 2018)

Patrick McGill said:


> We're role playing around a kitchen table not performing high theater. If you don't figure out that someone at the table is playing a character that identifies as female until the fifth session they didn't "fail", it just hasn't come up yet.
> 
> If someone in a group I was playing in told me I had failed to role play properly because they just now figured out I was playing a different gendered character my reaction would probably rhyme with "huck off".
> /snip




So, let me get this straight.  We're five sessions in, about 20 hours of play (or thereabouts - the run time of an entire season of a TV show) and your portrayal of your character is so lacking in any indicators that no one at the table has realized that your character is a different gender than you and that's _their fault_? 

Again, and I keep repeating the question because no one seems to want to pony up here.  Why are you playing a character that is a different gender from yourself if that choice in no way actually impacts how you play that character?  To the point where no one at the table actually had any idea that your character was a different gender from yourself after 15 or 20 hours of play.

Do we apply the same standard to everything else as well?  Background is completely unimportant and never referenced?  The fact that your character is a criminal, or a soldier or an acolyte has zero impact on how you portray this character?  And it would be everyone else's fault for not knowing that your character was a criminal, soldier or an acolyte despite you never once actually bringing that to the table?

Again, just so everyone's on the same page here.  It's NOT about being "female" enough.  It's about portraying your character at all.


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## Riley37 (Jun 3, 2018)

Lanefan said:


> That way, combined with our history and all knowing each other, by the time you say "Yes I want to play in this" you already kind of know what you're getting into.




"All knowing each other" is a major factor. I'm glad it gets you good results, but please don't assume that's everyone else's experience of D&D, or of TRPG. In my 30-ish years of TRPG, only a few of my games (on either side of the screen) have started out with everyone involved already knowing each other AND never added a newcomer.



Lanefan said:


> Common folks using plain common language and good common sense, accessible to and understandable by all, would be my preference.  No loopholes, no technicalities, etc.




Imagine if someone built settlements on the ocean floor, formed a new nation, and had E. Gary Gygax write the legal code, from scratch...


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## Thomas Bowman (Jun 3, 2018)

Lylandra said:


> Yikes, Conan as turn-on? No, I've never seen anyone who played their barbarian like a sexy walking stick. Usually, these characters are played as power/competence fantasies by male players.
> 
> What I did see were women portraying gay male characters as their wish fulfilment and/or - see @_*Lanefan*_ s comment - way to explore their sexuality. They were rarely sticks, most of them did have a personality, but I guess they'd carry many toxic stereotypes about gay men that would make them feel uncomfortable. (google Yaoi if you'd like to inquire further.)
> 
> ...



You probably won't like this example of a female barbarian.











You remember Red Sonya? She is the female counterpart to Conan. I think the movie version is clothed more decently than some of the paintings of her. She is basically a swordswoman in a bikini. The last picture covers her private areas, but not much more than that. I think a lot of fantasy artists are male, and "fantasy" has a double meaning. I don't actually think a swordswoman would dress this way, there are a few historic examples lets take Joan of Arc for instance.







Unlike Red Sonya, this lady actually existed. There are so few actual examples of swordswomen, but Joan is one, more of a symbol and rallying point for the French than anything else, and she was lucky or a brilliant strategist, I think her skill in leading armies was more important than her skill with a sword. But swordswomen are so unusual that their very existence attracts attention.







You ever hear of Boudicca, barbarian queen of Britain? Here is another example of a swords woman who actually existed


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## Riley37 (Jun 3, 2018)

Patrick McGill said:


> We're role playing around a kitchen table not performing high theater. If you don't figure out that someone at the table is playing a character that identifies as female until the fifth session they didn't "fail", it just hasn't come up yet.






Hussar said:


> So, let me get this straight.  We're five sessions in, about 20 hours of play (or thereabouts - the run time of an entire season of a TV show) and your portrayal of your character is so lacking in any indicators that no one at the table has realized that your character is a different gender than you and that's _their fault_?




Hussar, at this point I'm having a hard time trusting your good faith reading of what people are saying. Patrick McGill explicitly says as of session five, in this scenario, no failure has occurred. You're attributing to him an argument about who's at fault: one player, or the other players. Why are you looking to blame anyone, when according to Patrick (and according to me) *no failure has occurred*?



Hussar said:


> I keep repeating the question because no one seems to want to pony up here.




I've asked you more questions than you have answered. For example: of all the traits listed on page 121, why do you treat one of them, gender, as defaulting to "the PC matches the player", and not all the others? (Have you ever played a character with a different name or skin color than yours, and if so, why?) When are you gonna pony up?

If you're considering an answer, are you preparing an answer which can survive a hostile onslaught, which pre-emptively evades "gotcha"? If so, then how much personal truth do you expect others to reveal, in a hostile venue?


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## Riley37 (Jun 3, 2018)

Umbran said:


> The truth does not emerge from no-holds-barred debate.  If no holds are barred, we *quickly* degrade into techniques that lie among the logical fallacies, attacking the psychology of the opponent, rather than exploring the actual logic.  People become victors in such debate based on illogic and falsehood, rather than truth. Formal debate has strict rules against that sort of thing - it gets more to truth than no-holds-barred does.




I'm gonna wildly speculate that your experience as one of the moderators in a forum on the Internet has something to do with the opinion you've formed on this topic.

Formal debate, and plaintiff vs. respondent, so far as I know, tend to involve only one assertion, which gets a confirmation or a denial, and are not a free-for-all of multiple assertions. With a few exceptions such as the three verdicts in Scots law, guilty - not proven - not guilty. A trial on a charge of theft rarely results in a conviction for some other charge resulting from someone jumping in, on day three of the process, with an accusation of glagtery. (I am open to corrections or clarifications from those who know debate better than I do, and are aware of three-cornered [or more] formal debate).


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## redrick (Jun 3, 2018)

Hussar said:


> So, let me get this straight.  We're five sessions in, about 20 hours of play (or thereabouts - the run time of an entire season of a TV show) and your portrayal of your character is so lacking in any indicators that no one at the table has realized that your character is a different gender than you and that's _their fault_?
> 
> Again, and I keep repeating the question because no one seems to want to pony up here.  Why are you playing a character that is a different gender from yourself if that choice in no way actually impacts how you play that character?  To the point where no one at the table actually had any idea that your character was a different gender from yourself after 15 or 20 hours of play.
> 
> ...




If I were to record a few sessions worth of play, there's a good chance that nobody at the table would do anything to overtly indicate the gender of their character. They might use a pronoun every once in a while, but lots of people generally refer to their characters in the first person. Furthermore, a player might actually be doing subtle things that either reference or derive from the gender of the character, but other players wouldn't necessarily pick up on this. I've seen plenty of players misgender other PCs, despite the fact that the player in question uses pronouns. People don't always pay that much attention, and some people are more attentive to gender and pronouns than others.

Good roleplaying involves playing a character who is coherent and interesting, but it doesn't require constantly expressing ALL aspects of that character, even if they are written on the character sheet.

I wouldn't expect a player to regularly communicate their characters height, hair style or skin color. That doesn't mean they might not have an idea of how their character looks. The game asks us to make choices about our characters and we make them. It doesn't require us to communicate every one of those choices at every turn.

I also certainly don't need to justify any choice I make about my character that doesn't interfere with the enjoyment of other players at a table. "Why'd you choose to play a character who hates adventuring?" -- fair question. "Why did you choose to play a character with blue eyes?" Or named Raphael? Or of a different gender or sexuality? Why not? Why do you choose to play men?

("Why did you choose to play a misogynist stereotype" IS a very fair question, and when we try to step into the shoes of other human beings, we should always do so with care and respect.)


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## Riley37 (Jun 3, 2018)

Lanefan said:


> There's a third option: that the player, who in real life might be having internal issues with their own perceived attractiveness or sexiness, is playing a sexy doll as a form of compensation.




Plausible. I have such issues. I can't recall ever writing a cis het male character with that intention. I've played only a few PCs who were conventionally attractive, who might inspire second looks from straight women. Hm, one time I played a martial artist movie star, and the one female PC (played by a man) was too racist to see him "that way", as he was Asian-American and she was an agent of the apartheid-era South African secret police. Another time, in Shadowrun, I played a maxed-charisma elf, but I mix-maxed the CHA mainly for summoning and binding spirits. In both campaigns, there wasn't much room for romantic chemistry - the PCs were mostly "on duty" doing a job, or on the run, or holed up in our hidden lair. I suppose if I'd ever RP'd the PC taking romantic *initiative*, the GM might have spun off a side scene. I don't often take initiative, and I suppose that carries over into my play style, even though the PCs had huge advantages compared to the player.

I'm currently playing a folk hero Paladin, but he's dragonborn, and I doubt any humans, dwarves, orcs, etc. are interested in a guy with scales, no matter how muscular and charming.


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## Umbran (Jun 3, 2018)

Riley37 said:


> I'm gonna wildly speculate that your experience as one of the moderators in a forum on the Internet has something to do with the opinion you've formed on this topic.




One can (and, if one is honestly looking, probably *should*, IMHO) get to the same basic conclusion from watching discussions on topics people care about in any online medium.  It isn't like these forums are fundamentally different from anywhere else in how humans talk about stuff.



> Formal debate, and plaintiff vs. respondent, so far as I know, tend to involve only one assertion, which gets a confirmation or a denial, and are not a free-for-all of multiple assertions.




Courts of law have multiple assertions, as you can handle multiple charges in one trial.  You are correct that all the fundamental assertions are given at the start of the process, however - you don't get new charges in the middle of a trial.  There may be minor assertions that arise as testimony comes out, but those are always subservient to the main thrust.  A court does not experience full-on topic splitting and drift like a messageboard can.

But really, the fundamental difference is still that there is a _third party_ (a jury) who decides who had the better points.  And, there are strong rules as to how the debate runs - every, "Objection, Your Honor!" is a note about the rules of the debate.  Courtrooms are in no way "no-holds-barred".


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## Thomas Bowman (Jun 3, 2018)

Lanefan said:


> There's a third option: that the player, who in real life might be having internal issues with their own perceived attractiveness or sexiness, is playing a sexy doll as a form of compensation.
> 
> Put another way, the sexy doll isn't there for its own player to lust over, it's there for the other players (be it in or out of character) to lust over; and when they do so it gratifies the doll's player by making him/her feel vicariously more attractive.
> 
> Lanefan



Can you really imagine a sane GM doing that with his friends at a dinner table? Honestly! 
How would the players react to that? 
"Well we go 'bang bang' get married and have children!"

I honestly don't know what to do with a with a "vamp NPC". I one time GMed a game where two players one who was male and the other was female decided that their two characters should get married, and they later decided to get married in real life! It wasn't any big deal to me.

Now what if a GM plays a "vamp NPC", such as a Succubus for instance. One could simply role dice, players could roll their saving throws to see whether they fall under her spell and get drained or not. We could either go the "game speak" route or we could get explicit in the descriptions of this encounter all while rolling the dice but then describing what actually happens in graphic and descriptive terms. I don't think I could do that as a GM and keep a straight face, could you?

What if its just a pretty girl that throws herself at one of the PCs as a form of hero worship as they did their heroic deeds? What if some PC decides to take the NPC up on her offer? The GM could either describe the encounter or simply describes the consequences of the encounter, such as the girl getting pregnant and having the PC's child, they later is easier to do without much embarrassment, the former is a lot harder to do. Would you do it?


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## Sunseeker (Jun 3, 2018)

Hussar said:


> If I may ask, what about playing female characters makes them fun for you?  What, specifically related to the gender of your character, makes it fun?




You're missing what people are saying so hard its hard to tell if you're being serious in your lines of questioning.

Playing a woman, in many cases, is no different than playing an elf, or a dragonborn, or any other thing.  In some instances, its a matter of "does the character concept I came up with fit better as a male, or a female, or something else?"  Sometimes it's simply an issue of random.  I played a no-nonsense female fighter in a short-lived AL campaign simply because I decided to leave my characters sex up to chance (evens were female, odds were male).  I played a male bounty hunter in a different game because I felt like it fit the concept I had in mind.  I played a female Valerian elf cleric, who came from a culture where traveling members of society wear something akin to a burka but decorated with patterns honoring their family.  The fact that she was female was supposed to be something of a surprise to the table.  

You're throwing these questions out there like you're assuming there's a deep, unspoken motivation behind any choice.  But I think the problem remains your _assumptions_.  You first assume that characters _must_ be the same as their player, and then when they are not, assume there must be some great meaning behind the choice, and then _assume_ that the lack of meaning makes the choice pointless and that the character _ought_ to have been the same sex.

What this all really sounds like to me is that you wrongly assumed something, and instead of simply admitting that you made a mistake, you're trying to flip the script on the player/character you assumed wrongly about as though it were *their fault* for your flawed assumption.  YOU made the assumption buddy.  That's all on you.

Have you ever stopped and considered that maybe, the idea the player came up with just worked better as woman than as a man?  (or some other sex/gender that the player isn't)


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## Ogre Mage (Jun 3, 2018)

There is a lot of cross-gender roleplaying in the 5E groups I play in and I have always been comfortable with it.  Female players often play male PCs and male players often play female PCs.  

The 5E Player's Handbook says on Pg. 121:



> You can play a male or female character ...




The core rules are comfortable with cross-gender roleplaying.


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## Riley37 (Jun 3, 2018)

Thomas Bowman said:


> What if its just a pretty girl that throws herself at one of the PCs as a form of hero worship as they did their heroic deeds? What if some PC decides to take the NPC up on her offer? The GM could either describe the encounter or simply describes the consequences of the encounter, such as the girl getting pregnant and having the PC's child, they later is easier to do without much embarrassment, the former is a lot harder to do. Would you do it?




That pretty girl was a lycanthrope; was there any biting or scratching?
If so, and the PC becomes a wolf under the next full moon, does she track him down, by scent, and how much influence does she have, when they're both in wolf form, over his actions during that full moon?

If the PCs are male and heterosexual, then yes, that NPC's pregnancy is a consequence to consider. In which case there's a now variety of possible follow-up storylines.

Maybe the girl's siblings now consider the PC a brother-in-law. Heck, maybe her sisters now ALL want hero-babies, and maybe the family endorses this idea. Especially if the PC is a Sorceror, his children have a chance of inheriting magical abilities, and the family wants its next generation to rule the tri-state area. Does her family worship Bane, and if so, what happens if the PC accepts the family's invitation to the child's baptism? Or instead of Bane, how about Silvanus; seemlngly innocent, except there's an estranged member of the family, who they didn't invite to the baptism, so she crashes the party, "Sleeping Beauty" style? or with a Golden Apple of Discord?

Maybe the BBEG kidnaps the child, to see the PC considers the child an important hostage. If the PC decides "Do as you will, I don't care what happens to the child", then other PCs might have emotional or alignment-related responses, which might lead to interesting conversations. If the PC responds otherwise, then the BBEG has a lever; if the PCs decide that their next adventure is a rescue mission, you can make that brutally difficult, if the BBEG has resources to thwart the rescue. If the PC followed the "sure, I'll impregnate all her sisters too!" storyline above, then the BBEG can take multiple hostages - or will the PCs guard the children, or use the children as bait for a trap? If this is a long-time-scale story, perhaps the BBEG will raise a few of the PC's chlidren with the BBEG's values and goals.

There was an episode of "Firefly" in which the PCs killed some bandits who'd been troubling a rural village, and the village held a celebration, and a pretty young woman danced with Captain Mal Reynolds; there were interesting complications, later in the episode.

There's an older story, the Aenead, in which a pretty woman throws herself at Aeneas, and he accepts, and that decision has consequences.


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## Patrick McGill (Jun 3, 2018)

Hussar said:


> So, let me get this straight.  We're five sessions in, about 20 hours of play (or thereabouts - the run time of an entire season of a TV show) and your portrayal of your character is so lacking in any indicators that no one at the table has realized that your character is a different gender than you and that's _their fault_?




Where did I say that it was lacking in any indicators other than gender?

There is no fault, because nothing wrong has happened. It's a non issue.



Hussar said:


> Again, and I keep repeating the question because no one seems to want to pony up here.  Why are you playing a character that is a different gender from yourself if that choice in no way actually impacts how you play that character?  To the point where no one at the table actually had any idea that your character was a different gender from yourself after 15 or 20 hours of play.




Because that is not a standard indicated by the rules? Because the rules allow me to play a different gendered character whether or not my role-playing lives up to your standard? Because the details, background, and ephemera I make for my character isn't just made for the benefit of the other folks around the table? Because no one would ask the same question about me playing a same gendered character?

And frankly if I played with anyone that would get mad that I was playing a different gendered character without them being aware before session 5 and would then question my motivations - I would do it constantly. I accept that this is needlessly spiteful.



Hussar said:


> Do we apply the same standard to everything else as well?  Background is completely unimportant and never referenced?  The fact that your character is a criminal, or a soldier or an acolyte has zero impact on how you portray this character?  And it would be everyone else's fault for not knowing that your character was a criminal, soldier or an acolyte despite you never once actually bringing that to the table?






Actually, a character's background and history has a way bigger impact on a character than their gender, and should have a huge impact on how you play them, though to me this doesn't mean you need to telegraph them exactly to the party. My character wakes easily, downs her food quickly, and checks her equipment each morning because she is a soldier.

Gender doesn't, or shouldn't, impart such major attitude or habitual choices however, beyond learned cultural behavior as mentioned earlier.

And frankly if I didn't know the party paladin grew up as a blacksmith until session 5, I still wouldn't give a flying stirge's ass. There is no failure to role play unless one simply isn't role playing. Whether or not you know their gender, or background, or skin color is unimportant and meaningless unless the person portraying decide they are not.



Hussar said:


> Again, just so everyone's on the same page here.  It's NOT about being "female" enough.  It's about portraying your character at all.




As others have said, not telegraphing their character's gender to your liking isn't the same thing as not portraying the character at all. And I somehow doubt you bring the same level skepticism to someone's decision to play a same gendered character. You keep asking why they are choosing to play a character of a different gender if it's not being telegraphed, which tells me that you don't ask people why they're playing the same gendered character without doing the same. Excuse me if I'm wrong, but I can imagine having such an attitude to other people's role playing choices would be very exhausting.


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## Eltab (Jun 3, 2018)

Riley37 said:


> If you are proposing more frequent use of dictionaries as a primary method for change in this dynamic



Necessary but not sufficient.

Are you familiar with the _Alice in Wonderland_ conversation "Words mean what I want them to mean, no more and no less" where Alice concludes 'you cannot have a meaningful conversation unless both participants are trying to communicate _shared_ concepts' with _shared_ words?  Many social change discussions (not just EnWorld) have that problem.


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## Eltab (Jun 3, 2018)

Lanefan said:


> Common folks using plain common language and good common sense, accessible to and understandable by all, would be my preference.  No loopholes, no technicalities, etc.
> 
> Hey, I can dream, can't I?



Churchill's _History of the English-Speaking Peoples_ has several comments about this scattered through the text, especially when some event demonstrating one of the great underlying principles of Common Law is up for discussion.

If you've got about a month to spare (because Churchill's best 'books' are 5 volumes thick) in your reading list...


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## TheSword (Jun 3, 2018)

Hussar said:


> If I may ask, what about playing female characters makes them fun for you?  What, specifically related to the gender of your character, makes it fun?




Because I’m recreating a fictional character I like and getting to play that character... because it’s different and novel... because I like a piece of art and picture that portrait coming to life... because it really doesn’t matter to me where a character or NPC is male or female.

You seem to think it is natural to default to your own gender without a compelling reason. I don’t really think about it, I default to whatever concept seems cool.


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## Lanefan (Jun 3, 2018)

Patrick McGill said:


> As others have said, not telegraphing their character's gender to your liking isn't the same thing as not portraying the character at all. And I somehow doubt you bring the same level skepticism to someone's decision to play a same gendered character. You keep asking why they are choosing to play a character of a different gender if it's not being telegraphed, which tells me that you don't ask people why they're playing the same gendered character without doing the same. Excuse me if I'm wrong, but I can imagine having such an attitude to other people's role playing choices would be very exhausting.



Perhaps - and this is just a guess - it's coming from a baseline assumption that you're by and large playing yourself unless noted otherwise.

Species: I'm a Human but I'm playing an Elf.  Difference obvious on first introduction.
Class: I'm a commoner but I'm playing a Wizard.  Difference obvious during first adventure. (hidden classes notwithstanding)
Stats: Differences not often so obvious, and often - particularly with Int-Wis-Cha - need role-playing to reveal any non-extreme nuances.
Gender: I'm male but I'm playing a female.  Difference sometimes obvious on introduction, other times needs role-playing to reveal.

I'll also guess, having never done it, that there's a difference with online play in that you can't just look at someone's character sheet or see the body language or whatever and thus the spoken/written roleplay would have to be more precise and clear.  I'm used to at-the-table play.

Lanefan


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## redrick (Jun 3, 2018)

Lanefan said:


> Perhaps - and this is just a guess - it's coming from a baseline assumption that you're by and large playing yourself unless noted otherwise.
> 
> Species: I'm a Human but I'm playing an Elf.  Difference obvious on first introduction.
> Class: I'm a commoner but I'm playing a Wizard.  Difference obvious during first adventure. (hidden classes notwithstanding)
> ...




I understand why a player would make this assumption, but it's not supported by the game rules, and one of my goals with groups I play with is to get away from these normative assumptions. RPGs often have "default" assumptions, but I've never for character appearance and gender, and, as far as D&D 5e is concerned, race and class. It's not, "Assume you are a human unless you want to play something else," but, "Choose from one of these races." If I have not learned a PC's gender yet, I should assume _that I do not know that PC's gender._

There's never any harm in asking somebody for their pronouns, and doubly so with a player character.


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## Bagpuss (Jun 3, 2018)

Lylandra said:


> Yikes, Conan as turn-on? No, I've never seen anyone who played their barbarian like a sexy walking stick. Usually, these characters are played as power/competence fantasies by male players.




Lets not get into the whole muscular male is a power fantasy, while attractive female is sexist, debate. There are enough Fabio like romance book covers to show there is a female desire for it.



> There is this third-person narrative kind of play ("She does XYZ") besides the fully immersive first-person play ("I do XYZ") where players play their characters, but not *as* their characters. It is far more common than you'd think.




Ah I get you writing their own mental erotic fanfic as it were. Okay I can see that can be an issue, but I guess the *GM also has a lot of control over things, it takes too to tango as it were*. They can always fade to black or rebuff any advances if appropriate.



> If you cannot see the connection, then fine. You'll certainly create no such character in your RPGing carreer then




The in the majority of games I've played the sexuality of a character rarely comes up, be the character male or female. This is especially true in D&D too busy kicking ass and taking names, crawling round dungeons does not present the greatest opportunities for romantic involvement.You might think the sex of a character doesn't matter in this case but I think when I'm designing a character it often speaks to a particular sex.

 Of course there are so many ways of playing D&D that sure it does come up in some plots. On the occasions it does come up it is handled off camera, character has a love interest but who he/she might spend downtime with, but it isn't roleplayed out most of the time. When it does occur in game, things usually fade to black. 

Except on one memorable occasion where the GM had ninjas storm the inn room while my character and another PC were naked in the act. Looking back I wonder if it was anything to do with it being his IRL girlfriend's character... Nah, couldn't have been. To be fair we'd been playing together for years, and so we were more comfortable handling relationship stuff in game, than I would be with other groups.

____________________________________________________

Most recently where the sex of a character mattered, we are playing Curse of the Crimson Throne, my character is the only female character in the group, a gutter rat rogue, named Little Robin', she's like the minimum age and height for a human, basically looks like almost like a child. The adventure calls for one of the NPCs to basically act as a female romance interest and ally and the GM played them like that. Being overly charming to my character because it is female... (I think he forgot that although my character is female, how young and immature she looked).

As soon as he was out of earshot the group were like, "Wow, he's a bit 'creepy uncle' isn't he? Was he really flirting with you?" look of disgust on my face, "Yeah, he's like what twice my age?" then mocking the NPCs voice "Come to my fencing school we should spar together." laughing "I won't be playing with his sword in a hurry."

What should have been an ally, has just become seen as a potential threat, because of a simple slip of not recalling the characters appearance.

_____________________________________________________

There are games I've played where relationships tend to come up more often. Cyberpunk seemed to come up a lot (I suspect due to the Lifepath mechanic). Monsterhearts it is a key part, but like other games even then it is a case of fade to black or just handled off camera.

Does make me wonder how often the libido of a character comes up in play for most characters/groups?


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## Hussar (Jun 3, 2018)

TheSword said:


> Because I’m recreating a fictional character I like and getting to play that character... because it’s different and novel... because I like a piece of art and picture that portrait coming to life... because it really doesn’t matter to me where a character or NPC is male or female.
> 
> You seem to think it is natural to default to your own gender without a compelling reason. I don’t really think about it, I default to whatever concept seems cool.




Thank you for this.  Ok, now, you are saying that it's "different and novel" to play a cross gender character.  Ok, I'll buy that.  

But, everyone else is saying that gender doesn't matter at all.  That your female or male character (not you specifically, but you generally) should play exactly the same and no one should know or care what gender the character is.  

Would you agree?

Again, a picture is all it takes AFAIC.  Presumably the other players can see that picture.  Fantastic.  Everyone's on the same page.

Now, this rather bizarre argument that "Well, the rules don't SAY that I should role play my character, so, I don't bother" is flat out baffling to me.  So what if the rules don't say that you should portray elements of your character to the point where other people actually know what your character is?  That's just role-play 101. 

If your female character has a male name like Dexter, and the rest of the group is given no other indications and no other information, can we really blame them for assuming that the character is male?  Months of role play and not one NPC or PC has commented on the fact that your female character has a traditionally male name?  

Look, at the end of the day, this is 100% my own opinion, so, take it or leave it.  But, for me, I would consider that a complete failure to role play on my part if, at any time, another player turned to me and said, "You're a ____?  Really?"  You can put it off on the other person all you like.  I don't.  I figure that if my portrayal of this character is so lacking in indicators that revealing something so basic as gender is a surprise to the table, then I've failed to role play.  

That's the standard I hold myself to.


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## Lanefan (Jun 3, 2018)

Bagpuss said:


> Does make me wonder how often the libido of a character comes up in play for most characters/groups?



One way or another it's a near-constant in our crew: the sexuality-preference(s)-libido (or lack of)-etc. is every bit as much a part of a character's character as the rest of the elements that make up its personality.  Sometimes it's in fun, sometimes it's more serious, whatever the mood at the time (and the characters involved) might indicate.

Our characters get into flings, romances, crushes, jealousies, breakups, marriages, and all that stuff just as a simple outcome of the run of play and these characters interacting in a high-stress low-life-expectancy environment.  It just becomes another aspect of the ongoing story, in the end.

Lanefan


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## Bagpuss (Jun 4, 2018)

Hussar said:


> Thank you for this.  Ok, now, you are saying that it's "different and novel" to play a cross gender character.  Ok, I'll buy that.
> 
> But, everyone else is saying that gender doesn't matter at all.  That your female or male character (not you specifically, but you generally) should play exactly the same and no one should know or care what gender the character is.
> 
> Would you agree?




Sometimes it matters, sometimes it doesn't. It's entirely possible to play games where characters gender and sexuality never really come up, and it is possible for them to be very important to the story. You can design a character where you want it to be one way or the other but then the adventure never presents the opportunities for it to matter, or alternatively brings to a head.



> Now, this rather bizarre argument that "Well, the rules don't SAY that I should role play my character, so, I don't bother" is flat out baffling to me.  So what if the rules don't say that you should portray elements of your character to the point where other people actually know what your character is?  That's just role-play 101.




If you break RPGs back to their roots it is entirely possible to play them like the Heroquest boardgame, with just tactical aspects, and testing the player not the character. Early dungeons often had tests aimed at the player not the character like riddles and puzzles. It's bizarre to me too, but I don't see it as an invalid way of playing some RPGs, particularly D&D.



> If your female character has a male name like Dexter, and the rest of the group is given no other indications and no other information, can we really blame them for assuming that the character is male?  Months of role play and not one NPC or PC has commented on the fact that your female character has a traditionally male name?
> 
> Look, at the end of the day, this is 100% my own opinion, so, take it or leave it.  But, for me, I would consider that a complete failure to role play on my part if, at any time, another player turned to me and said, "You're a ____?  Really?"  You can put it off on the other person all you like.  I don't.  I figure that if my portrayal of this character is so lacking in indicators that revealing something so basic as gender is a surprise to the table, then I've failed to role play.
> 
> That's the standard I hold myself to.




Yeah but the thing is gender (by this I'm referring to non-physical signifiers of sex) is a spectrum of behaviours some of which are stereotypically associated with being feminine and others with masculine, but most behaviours are shared to a greater or lesser degree.

The problem is you can't really discuss this with out thinking about the difference between biological sex, and gender signifiers outside those determined by sex. That's political can of worms nowadays, because for the majority of the population gender and sex match up, still for a significant number it doesn't (it might be a small as being a bit of a tomboy when little or full gender dysphoria).

So who's to say Dexter is female sex, has an androgynous look, and displays more masculine behaviours. If your playing that character well, why would they pic up on the sex of Dexter?

People have already mentioned they don't like it when players play stereotypes when they play the opposite-gender, but then without playing to these stereotypes that people recognise, how else are they meant to signify the gender of the character?


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## Riley37 (Jun 4, 2018)

Hussar said:


> But, everyone else is saying that gender doesn't matter at all.  That your female or male character (not you specifically, but you generally) should play exactly the same and no one should know or care what gender the character is.




That's not what I'm saying. Who's "everyone else"?



Hussar said:


> Now, this rather bizarre argument that "Well, the rules don't SAY that I should role play my character, so, I don't bother" is flat out baffling to me.




Who has made that argument? In what words?



Hussar said:


> If your female character has a male name like Dexter



Oh no you DON'T. I described one of my characters, named Dexter, in detail. That character was NOT female, neither by anatomical sex nor by social role. Actively misrepresenting someone else's character, contrary to their explicit statements, is rude. (By my standards of rudeness. By EN World's standards?)



Hussar said:


> I would consider that a complete failure to role play on my part if, at any time, another player turned to me and said, "You're a ____?  Really?"




AFAIK no one here objects when you hold YOURSELF to that standard. If some player turns to you and says "You're a Rashemi? Really?" then YOU have failed at YOUR goal.

If I don't accomplish YOUR goal, and you say that I've failed, and/or you pretend that I'm accusing the asking player of having failed, then that is rude behavior. Heck, if I were running an AL game, and you told another player that she'd failed to roleplay, on the grounds that she didn't meet YOUR standards, I'd give you a warning the first time, and if you persisted then I'd bounce you from the table.

At this point, almost everyone understands the point you're trying to make, and you seem baffled that people can *understand* your perspective without then *sharing* your perspective. Conversely, you're so committed to NOT understanding points such as mine, that you actively misrepresent those points. I've seen that style before...


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## Riley37 (Jun 4, 2018)

Eltab said:


> Necessary but not sufficient.
> 
> Are you familiar with the _Alice in Wonderland_ conversation "Words mean what I want them to mean, no more and no less" where Alice concludes 'you cannot have a meaningful conversation unless both participants are trying to communicate _shared_ concepts' with _shared_ words?  Many social change discussions (not just EnWorld) have that problem.




I am familiar with the Lewis Carroll version, in which Alice says no such thing. In Chapter 6 she says "The question is whether you can make words mean so many different things." Are you familiar with the Plato passage in which Socrates discusses names with Kratylus? Does your dictionary tell you the proper translation of "περὶ ὀνομάτων ὀρθότητος"? Kratylus argues that names arrive from divine origins, making them necessarily correct. I agree more with Hermogenes, who says that names have come about due to custom and convention.

I see the mutual intention of mutual understanding, as far more important than fixity of lexicon. If you are trying to communicate an idea in which gender equals anatomy, and I'm trying my best to understand you, then I will read your points according to your usage, even though I prefer the usage in which sex is anatomical and gender refers instead to role. By the former usage, Willmer "Little Ax" Broadnax was female. By the latter, he was male. As long as I understand which usage you mean, we can communicate effectively. Same with whether 4KB refers to four kilobytes or four kibibytes (usage has varied, for memory and storage devices).

Churchill has my deep respect *within* an English-speaking context, and not so much otherwise. His intercultural skills were... let's say... not his strong suit. This almost got him killed, when he failed to adapt to the USA convention of driving on the right, and walked into traffic.


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## redrick (Jun 4, 2018)

Hussar said:


> Thank you for this.  Ok, now, you are saying that it's "different and novel" to play a cross gender character.  Ok, I'll buy that.
> 
> But, everyone else is saying that gender doesn't matter at all.  That your female or male character ((not you specifically, but you generally) should play exactly the same and no one should know or care what gender the character is.
> 
> ...




I won't speak for anyone else, but what I'm saying is that you might have a hard time inferring the gender from a tableful of well role played characters if you weren't particular attententive to pronouns. Do you hold male characters to the same "demonstrate your gender" standards as the female characters?

I might draw a picture on my character sheet, but I probably don't show it to you very often, and you could see the place where it says "she/her" just as easily. And, honestly, I'm a crap artist, so the she/her will tell you gender better than the picture. I see real human beings misgendered all the time, let alone my crummy stick figure drawings.

Like, here's the deal. Don't come to my table and tell me I'm not role-playing right because you couldn't tell the gender of my character, and I won't yell at you for misgendering my character until the third time in one session. And yes, I've seen another player routinely misgender another players character, despite the fact that pronouns were written on the character tent and the player was doing a damn fine job rping their character, but the player couldn't help but assume the characters gender.


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## Hussar (Jun 4, 2018)

Riley37 said:


> That's not what I'm saying. Who's "everyone else"?
> 
> 
> 
> Who has made that argument? In what words?




 [MENTION=3987]Bagpuss[/MENTION] right above you talks about going back to gaming roots and "play them like the Heroquest boardgame, with just tactical aspects, and testing the player not the character. Early dungeons often had tests aimed at the player not the character like riddles and puzzles."  There were earlier comments as well.



> Oh no you DON'T. I described one of my characters, named Dexter, in detail. That character was NOT female, neither by anatomical sex nor by social role. Actively misrepresenting someone else's character, contrary to their explicit statements, is rude. (By my standards of rudeness. By EN World's standards?)




Appologies.  I misread.  I thought that the point of your bringing up the character was that the character was being played cross gendered.  My bad.  Sorry.




> AFAIK no one here objects when you hold YOURSELF to that standard. If some player turns to you and says "You're a Rashemi? Really?" then YOU have failed at YOUR goal.
> 
> If I don't accomplish YOUR goal, and you say that I've failed, and/or you pretend that I'm accusing the asking player of having failed, then that is rude behavior. Heck, if I were running an AL game, and you told another player that she'd failed to roleplay, on the grounds that she didn't meet YOUR standards, I'd give you a warning the first time, and if you persisted then I'd bounce you from the table.
> 
> At this point, almost everyone understands the point you're trying to make, and you seem baffled that people can *understand* your perspective without then *sharing* your perspective. Conversely, you're so committed to NOT understanding points such as mine, that you actively misrepresent those points. I've seen that style before...




It should never be another player holding you to that standard.  AFAIC, that's the standard that anyone who actually believes in portraying a character should hold themselves.  So, yeah, if another player turns to you and tells you, "You're a ____?  Really?" then, AFAIC, yup, that's a role playing fail.  Whatever you might think is fair enough.  But, on here, on a message board, where the point of these conversations is to make games better?  Yeah, I'll flat out say that that's a roleplaying fail.



> I won't speak for anyone else, but what I'm saying is that you might have a hard time inferring the gender from a tableful of well role played characters if you weren't particular attententive to pronouns. Do you hold male characters to the same "demonstrate your gender" standards as the female characters?




Nope.  I hold cross gendered characters to this standard, because, rightly or wrongly, without any additional information, I'm going to assume that your character is the same gender as you.  Not a terribly bad assumption, by and large.  But, if you're male and your character gives absolutely no indication of its gender, then, yup, I'm going to assume your character is male.  Why?  Because I'm looking across the table at you.

In the same way that without any additional information, I would assume your character is human.  Again, because I'm looking across the table at you and, by and large, you're going to be human.  So, if we're five sessions in and it turns out that you're a dragonborn or an elf, yeah, I'm going to call that pretty poor roleplay.


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## ccs (Jun 4, 2018)

Bagpuss said:


> Does make me wonder how often the libido of a character comes up in play for most characters/groups?




4/11 of my most recent characters.  
2 male:
* (5e) My 1/2elf ranger in SKT - Had a fling with an NPC fm human mage in a town they were defending.  Then, while working the diplomacy angle, charmed (non-magic) one of the Storm Giant princesses & they found new uses for enlarge/reduce person spells.   And then on a gambling boat he & our fm human cleric (fellow PC) had way too much to drink, missed a planned ambush, and the rest of the party found them in a compromising position in bed the next morning....
* (PF game) My Human Wizard/Bard & another PC, a Human FM Barbarian/Cleric, hit it off.  Actually she seduced him.  They married under her clans customs.  At first they was adventuring for the hell of it.  Now they save the world etc for their twin toddlers & an unborn 3rd child.
2 Female:
* (PF game) My Lawful Evil FM Tiefling Wizard has a thing for LG male Paladins....  She's drawn to them like a moth to flame.  Ideally PC paladins, but NPCs will do as well. 
Specifically I made the character to play off of our groups paladin.  The guy plays really awful paladins.  Always has.  He's just no good at it RP wise.  And the DM for that campaign didn't feel up to challenging him on that front.  So the pair of characters I made, I made specifically to push his buttons in various ways & get some improved RP out of him.
And I know the AP we were playing, so I was also trying to get him used to dealing with evil sorts in ways other than just "Paladin Smite!" as there's a key chapter where you need to redeem a succubus & shift her alignment from evil....
He could practice for this by trying to redeem my vaguely evil characters.  Or at least the seeds of this idea could be planted in his head. The tiefling never did manage to actually seduce the PC Paladin (though she did bed a few NPC Paladins throughout the AP), but my efforts to improve the other players RP were successful.
* (5e) Hmm, how to keep this PG13 enough....  My FM 1/2ling barbarian is an adventurer (and a barbarian!) specifically because of poor judgment concerning her curiosity of a satyr party/orgy she snuck into.  She didn't initially _intend_ to participate, just see what all the fuss was about.  But with enough booze, drugs, & pheromones, things spiraled out of control. And so although she had a good time (at least what she can remember) she's now far from home, has had to learn to fight, and is beginning to suspect she might be expecting.... 
_{this character started out as an NPC, in a much more mature rated game, where some of the PCs did attend this party.  Then they set off to rescue her from the satyrs & made things worse via a Cubic Gate....}_


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## TheSword (Jun 4, 2018)

Hussar said:


> But, everyone else is saying that gender doesn't matter at all.  That your female or male character (not you specifically, but you generally) should play exactly the same and no one should know or care what gender the character is.
> 
> Would you agree?




I don’t agree that anybody should be telling anyone what they should or should not be doing with their character. Gender matters as much as the player and the DM want it to matter. I have a player who likes the attachment and drive having a NPC romance creates. Baldurs gate had the option for romantic leads, but it was all optional.

My personal advice about this is, don’t get too hung up on it. It is about as important as having Con 14 instead of 12. If you want to role play that great. What your character does is far far more important than what they are.


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## ccs (Jun 4, 2018)

Riley37 said:


> Oh no you DON'T. I described one of my characters, named Dexter, *in detail*. That character was NOT female, neither by anatomical sex nor by social role. Actively misrepresenting someone else's character, contrary to their explicit statements, is rude.




Not initially you didn't.  You conveniently left out the part about Dexter being covered in scales/being a dragonborn.

Given the discussion about the gender swapping/sex changing elves going on elsewhere I mistook you as playing an elf.
When you later added the fact that you have scales someone guessed Yuan-Ti & you got all coy about that not being a PHB race.
Dexter being a dragonborn is one of those things that would be obvious.  Even if my own character doesn't have the proper name for whatever you are.


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## TheSword (Jun 4, 2018)

Hussar said:


> In the same way that without any additional information, I would assume your character is human.  Again, because I'm looking across the table at you and, by and large, you're going to be human.  So, if we're five sessions in and it turns out that you're a dragonborn or an elf, yeah, I'm going to call that pretty poor roleplay.




I’m confused. Do the players at your tables not introduce their characters at your tables? How is it possible that you could get five sessions in and not know the race, gender and general make up of a fellow players character? Doesn’t your party discuss who’s playing what beforehand? I can understand some groups may not do the latter but surely the former is a bare minimum for party cohesion.

Assuming someone is a male human commoner because that’s what their player looks like, is probably missing out a fairly important stage of party building - in a game where people can play any one of a dozen classes or two dozen races.


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## Hussar (Jun 4, 2018)

TheSword said:


> I’m confused. Do the players at your tables not introduce their characters at your tables? How is it possible that you could get five sessions in and not know the race, gender and general make up of a fellow players character? Doesn’t your party discuss who’s playing what beforehand? I can understand some groups may not do the latter but surely the former is a bare minimum for party cohesion.
> 
> Assuming someone is a male human commoner because that’s what their player looks like, is probably missing out a fairly important stage of party building - in a game where people can play any one of a dozen classes or two dozen races.




You'd think.  But, by the same token, I've heard the comment "You're playing a what?" on more than a few occasions.  Then again, people do forget too.  Sure, you introduced your character five months ago (in real time), but, since then, never once mentioned that your character is _____.  It's not too farfetched that people might not recall that given that you (generic you) have never actually referenced ___ other than at that session 1.


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## TheSword (Jun 4, 2018)

Hussar said:


> You'd think.  But, by the same token, I've heard the comment "You're playing a what?" on more than a few occasions.  Then again, people do forget too.  Sure, you introduced your character five months ago (in real time), but, since then, never once mentioned that your character is _____.  It's not too farfetched that people might not recall that given that you (generic you) have never actually referenced ___ other than at that session 1.




Sure, people may forget. But surely all that’s required is an out of game reminder, if they address them wrong or jump to the wrong conclusion.


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## Hussar (Jun 4, 2018)

TheSword said:


> Sure, people may forget. But surely all that’s required is an out of game reminder, if they address them wrong or jump to the wrong conclusion.




Fair enough, that works too.  Again, I'm not jumping up and down shouting "BAD GAMER" here.  It's a fairly minor thing.  More of a proud nail moment than anything.  The point I've been trying to make here, and fairly unsuccessfully I think, is that it behooves the player to play the character in such a way that these things aren't forgotten in play.  If you choose something for your character, take a moment to think about how this impacts how the character will be played and make at least a bit of an attempt to convey that in play.


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## Eltab (Jun 4, 2018)

Bagpuss said:


> Does make me wonder how often the libido of a character comes up in play for most characters/groups?



As I noted above, I prefer PG to PG-13 D&D.  Playing kissyface and heading to the same room for the night covers everything to get the point across.

I had a DM who tried to use an NPC to seduce his girlfriend's PC.  That went not well.  When we took a pizza break, I went over and asked him "You do realize there are 4 voyeurs listening in to that bedroom scene?"  She turned red and he turned white.  And he did not bring _that_ up again.


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## Thomas Bowman (Jun 4, 2018)

Eltab said:


> As I noted above, I prefer PG to PG-13 D&D.  Playing kissyface and heading to the same room for the night covers everything to get the point across.
> 
> I had a DM who tried to use an NPC to seduce his girlfriend's PC.  That went not well.  When we took a pizza break, I went over and asked him "You do realize there are 4 voyeurs listening in to that bedroom scene?"  She turned red and he turned white.  And he did not bring _that_ up again.




I think most D&D is PG-13, what is the suggested playing age for D&D players? I believe it is 13 years and older. D&D involves lots of combat, that is why it would be at least PG-13. I don't know of any role playing games for a 7 year old, but I imagine it wouldn't involve killing things and taking their treasure. Anything involving Sex would be rated-X, or maybe R. I don't really plan on playing an X-rated D&D game, I would be too embarrassed to try. It would take some kind of extrovert to share in some sexual details with a bunch of players around the table, as opposed with just one other person. But why would you want to role dice and play a game with just that one person? D&D is more fun as a group activity with more than 2 people. Sexual identity does not really come into play unless you are planning to actively describe sex scenes and romantic encounters instead of just shoving those into the background and moving on when they do occur.

It is curious that someone would bring up a topic that rarely ever would occur in most people's table top games, maybe he is just trying to stir up some controversy. People do that a lot here. Sexual relations is not a subject that is dealt with in the rules, most of which have to do with combat, it is mostly just background fluff, a DM that goes into this level of background detail with the setting would tend to run some slow games, like reminding the players that their characters had forgotten to eat lunch and dinner, and that they need to eat something, or that one needs to take off his suit of full plate mail in order to eliminate, and then asking where does he plan to do that. The rules don't really cover these things, and most game play sessions tend to brush them over, and don't go into specific detail over what exactly each character eats for breakfast, lunch and dinner, or what sex acts they perform with imaginary characters.


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## Umbran (Jun 4, 2018)

Hussar said:


> The point I've been trying to make here, and fairly unsuccessfully I think, is that it behooves the player to play the character in such a way that these things aren't forgotten in play.  If you choose something for your character, take a moment to think about how this impacts how the character will be played and make at least a bit of an attempt to convey that in play.




You've been unsuccessful because that isn't much like what you said at the start of this.

Your initial statement was that nobody at the table should ever have to ask what gender your character is.  This is a very far distance from saying that your play should be plausibly in line with the background story of your character.

The former comes across as, "Hey, folks, like I tell you at the beginning of each session, my character wears a dress and has breasts!  Remember I'm playing a WOMAN!"  The latter may be more internally noting that you're playing a woman, and in her culture that makes her subject to certain forms of harassment, and your character will have zero patience for the guys in the tavern who get handsy with the serving maids, leading to a tendency of starting bar fights.

Note that a man could decide he has no patience with people in the tavern who get handsy, too, or just have a tendency to start bar fights.  They may come at the same basic behavior through different paths, so the end behavior doesn't unambiguously tell you the gender of the character, but either is still solid role-playing.

There may be a more basic question behind this - do you feel that everyone at the table should always know the motivations of your character?  Because that, ultimately, is what role playing is - translating the motivations of the character into actions, right?  Does this process need to be obvious to all other players, or should a player be allowed to only present the end results?

I submit that it is the latter.  And, in general, what the player communicates to others at the table (GM and players alike) are the things that the player wants others to engage with.  If the player wants their gender-related motivations to be internal, rather than as a point of engagement with others, then they can de-emphasize the fact they are of a particular gender.  If they want an aspect to be a particular point for you to engage with, then they can put emphasis upon it.

As an example, we'll take the character my wife is playing in my 5e game.  My wife is 5' 2" on a tall day, and while she's strong for her size, her build is slight.  In the game, she's playing a 7' 2" dragonborn paladin with 18 strength, heavy armor, and an axe longer than the party gnome is tall.  The fact of the character's physicality is mentioned repeatedly during play, pretty much every session, because my wife *wants* to make sure we don't think of her personal physicality - she wants to be able to loom over people in the game in ways she could never do in real life.

The fact that the character is also female?  Largely irrelevant - while we refer to the character with the feminine pronoun, the point that she is a *she* doesn't enter into play with others.  The culture around her is so predominantly mammalian that her traditional gender role is unknown to most of the people she meets.  The intent is that they react to "big frelling lizard!" way more than they react to "woman", by my wife's choice.


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## Bagpuss (Jun 4, 2018)

Thomas Bowman said:


> I think most D&D is PG-13, what is the suggested playing age for D&D players? I believe it is 13 years and older. D&D involves lots of combat, that is why it would be at least PG-13. I don't know of any role playing games for a 7 year old, but I imagine it wouldn't involve killing things and taking their treasure.




It's rated 12+ I believe, however it is clearly played by folks that are a lot younger and those that are a lot older.



> Anything involving Sex would be rated-X, or maybe R. I don't really plan on playing an X-rated D&D game, I would be too embarrassed to try.




Your rating are a little different over in the US. We allow brief and discreet, sex and nudity in 12A's in the UK, but tend not to get it because films aim for a PG-13 US release. Something like Superbad which is a R in the US would only get a 15 over here.

Still anything involving sex would be R rated? Even "off camera" and "fade to black" stuff, Bond movies regularly get a PG-13 rating and he tends to get laid every movie.



> It would take some kind of extrovert to share in some sexual details with a bunch of players around the table, as opposed with just one other person. But why would you want to role dice and play a game with just that one person? D&D is more fun as a group activity with more than 2 people.




I'm not sure what level of detail you were expecting. Generally I'm talking the sort of stuff Bond might get up to in a PG-13 movie, not Fifty Shades or Grey or making it sound like reading some erotic fiction aloud.



> Sexual identity does not really come into play unless you are planning to actively describe sex scenes and romantic encounters instead of just shoving those into the background and moving on when they do occur.




Really? Bond's sexual identity doesn't come into play in his PG-13 films? For a fantasy example Aragorn's sexual identity didn't come into play in the Lord of the Rings series?



> It is curious that someone would bring up a topic that rarely ever would occur in most people's table top games, maybe he is just trying to stir up some controversy. People do that a lot here.




I think it probably comes up a lot more than you think, as some people have mentioned earlier.



> Sexual relations is not a subject that is dealt with in the rules,




No, that way leads to F.A.T.A.L. and no one wants to go down that rabbit hole. You don't really need rules for social interaction, although many game have introduced that, D&D included. Although very few go into any detail about applying them in dating, unless it is part of the genre (seduction in spy games). You certainly don't want rules for the physical interactions that occur after the social ones.



> most of which have to do with combat, it is mostly just background fluff, a DM that goes into this level of background detail with the setting would tend to run some slow games, like reminding the players that their characters had forgotten to eat lunch and dinner, and that they need to eat something, or that one needs to take off his suit of full plate mail in order to eliminate, and then asking where does he plan to do that. The rules don't really cover these things, and most game play sessions tend to brush them over, and don't go into specific detail over what exactly each character eats for breakfast, lunch and dinner, or what sex acts they perform with imaginary characters.




No but the loves/motivations of a character (which can be driven by libido, and sexual identity) are often important enough for roleplaying that they come up in play.


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## GrahamWills (Jun 4, 2018)

Bagpuss said:


> The loves/motivations of a character (which can be driven by libido, and sexual identity) are often important enough for roleplaying that they come up in play.




It seems very odd to me that this isn't the case for most game groups; of the last dozen long campaigns I've been in, all of them have had characters who have sex quite often. It's not exactly an odd or unusual activity. There seems to be a feeling that if sex is involved in a game, it requires explicit details of what's going on. Which is odd, because we don't have the same expectations of, say, lockpicking. 

The James Bond style of description is a pretty reasonable model. I have a  character who adventures with his girlfriend, and usually it's just a case of us signing for the nice room in the hotel, or being apart from the group when the midnight ambush arrives (because we're noisy). We also have a Numenéra game which can veer closer to R-rated because weird magic/tech items have a lot of ... unexpected ... uses. But mostly it's a question of one player saying "hey, I think I'll keep that gently vibrating rod which you can set the temperature on" and the rest saying "why do you ... OK, yes, sure, we don't want to know the details; it's yours now"


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## ccs (Jun 4, 2018)

Bagpuss said:


> You certainly don't want rules for the physical interactions that occur after the social ones.




Grappling rules.


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## Riley37 (Jun 4, 2018)

ccs said:


> Grappling rules.




"Tell me more, tell me more, did she put up a fight?"

Discussion of gender sometimes reveals who stands on which side of the gap between "it's all about consent" versus subdual and conquest (whether resistance is real, or whether it's a flimsy pretext for deniability).

Here's where I stand:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9eHdb2bR9g


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## ccs (Jun 4, 2018)

Riley37 said:


> "Tell me more, tell me more, did she put up a fight?"
> 
> Discussion of gender sometimes reveals who stands on which side of the gap between "it's all about consent" versus subdual and conquest (whether resistance is real, or whether it's a flimsy pretext for deniability).
> 
> ...




Well, despite a combo of Enlarge & Reduce Person effects on us, she was _still_ a Storm Giant princess, and I was a 1/2elf Ranger.


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## Riley37 (Jun 4, 2018)

ccs said:


> Not initially you didn't.  You conveniently left out the part about Dexter being covered in scales/being a dragonborn.




*sigh* Here's what I first said about Dexter:



Riley37 said:


> For over a year I played a half-elf bard who was not, anatomically, binary male nor female, going by PHB p. 121. Dexter never objected to people using "he"; Dexter was used to humans using that pronoun for anyone whose chest didn't bulge, and Dexter wasn't gonna argue the pronoun usage of any language other than Elvish.




Half-elf was literally the first descriptor I mentioned, on EN World, for Dexter. Another player also ran a half-elf bard PC, in that party, and I hope that we played them with enough personality that players could describe differences in their motivations and temperaments.

If you're confused, perhaps that's because you're too emotional on this topic, to read what I actually write.

Earlier in the thread, I described another character, Boris, in terms of *behaviors*, as factors which establish personality regardless of physical form. My point was Dumbledore's point: our choices matter more than how we were born. When asked, I answered that any PC could look at Boris and see Boris's *race*. Which does NOT mean seeing the anatomical details within Boris' cloaca. (Boris could have a conversation, with Umbran's wife's PC, about how humans all too often react to meeting a "frelling big lizard".)

At the table, does each player's race and gender matter more to you, than their individual name, behavior, and personality? Would you remember me as "Riley, who plays mission-oriented spellcasters" or as "the white guy"?

Would you insist on full disclosure about the anatomy within my pants? Or would you be content to leave that as my business and not yours? I am not inviting you into my pants, nor Dexter's pants, nor Boris's cloaca. So far as I'm concerned, you don't have Need to Know on any of those three.


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## Riley37 (Jun 4, 2018)

Hussar said:


> @_*Bagpuss*_ right above you talks about going back to gaming roots and "play them like the Heroquest boardgame, with just tactical aspects, and testing the player not the character. Early dungeons often had tests aimed at the player not the character like riddles and puzzles."  There were earlier comments as well.




Fair point. (I don't see Bagpuss's posts, but he's not wrong on this one.) I played "White Plume Mountain" last year, and there's a puzzle about prime numbers vs. odd numbers, and I solved the puzzle without checking whether my character's understanding of math matched my player understanding of math. That's consistent with the intent of the module. If running through a module written for another play style, it might have been more appropriate to let the PCs fail the test, much sometimes the heroes of a movie miss something which is obvious to the audience. (5E doesn't even have a proficiency which, so far as I know, includes number categories.)

I also think that's oversimplification. D&D began as an experiment with players attaching themselves and giving an individual name to a Hero or Super-Hero unit in a miniatures-on-dioramas wargame, in a way most people don't identify with "Platoon of Heavy Pike". See also, Wizard Chess in Harry Potter, or the queen sacrifice in Vonnegut's short story about chess with humans as pieces. There's room for RP even in "White Plume Mountain".



Hussar said:


> Appologies.  I misread.  I thought that the point of your bringing up the character was that the character was being played cross gendered.  My bad.  Sorry.




I appreciate the apology. It would have more value, if you recognized how you went awry, and figured out how to avoid repetition of the error.



Riley37 said:


> For over a year I played a half-elf bard who was not, anatomically, binary male nor female, going by PHB p. 121. Dexter never objected to people using "he"; Dexter was used to humans using that pronoun for anyone whose chest didn't bulge, and Dexter wasn't gonna argue the pronoun usage of any language other than Elvish.




If you can sort out how you got from that text, to "female", then maybe you can figure out how not to repeat the error. (shrug) If you try, then I wish you luck.

As for who tells whom that they've failed as a role-player... well, we've each articulated our positions, and the solution is not to play at each other's tables.

I've been playing almost a year, in a group with a warlock PC whom I *think* is human but she might have half-elf stats; she's from a very far-off part of a home-brew setting, and neither I nor my PC know the role of elves in the setting. I'm OK with that. She did some things which totally didn't make sense to me OR my PC, for many sessions, until a big reveal under a Zone of Truth, about a curse and a taboo in her home culture. I'm more than okay with that. I rather enjoyed how the reveal shifted "why would someone eat that?" to "oh THAT's what was going on!". If you would not enjoy such a storyline, then fortunately, you have your table and I have mine.


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## Hussar (Jun 4, 2018)

Riley37 said:


> /snip
> 
> I appreciate the apology. It would have more value, if you recognized how you went awry, and figured out how to avoid repetition of the error.
> 
> ...




Well, mostly because it's a long thread and I simply forgot.  Again, sorry for that.  No nefarious intentions, just simply poor recall.


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## Hussar (Jun 5, 2018)

Umbran said:


> /snip
> 
> As an example, we'll take the character my wife is playing in my 5e game.  My wife is 5' 2" on a tall day, and while she's strong for her size, her build is slight.  In the game, she's playing a 7' 2" dragonborn paladin with 18 strength, heavy armor, and an axe longer than the party gnome is tall.  The fact of the character's physicality is mentioned repeatedly during play, pretty much every session, because my wife *wants* to make sure we don't think of her personal physicality - she wants to be able to loom over people in the game in ways she could never do in real life.
> 
> The fact that the character is also female?  Largely irrelevant - while we refer to the character with the feminine pronoun, the point that she is a *she* doesn't enter into play with others.  The culture around her is so predominantly mammalian that her traditional gender role is unknown to most of the people she meets.  The intent is that they react to "big frelling lizard!" way more than they react to "woman", by my wife's choice.




Yet, funnily enough, you DO know the gender of your wife's character.  So, again, job done.  I've repeatedly, REPEATEDLY stated that that's all it needs.  Has anyone turned to her and said, "What?  I thought your character was male!"  No?  Then why are you arguing with me?  She did precisely what I think is needed.  No problems here.

This whole "not female enough" thing is entirely an invention of other people and not me.  Does the table know the gender of your character?  (Again, presuming it's knowable or even exists - after all non-humans can quite plausibly not have gender at all)  Yes?  Job done.

All this other stuff is on you folks, not me.


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## Riley37 (Jun 5, 2018)

Hussar said:


> (Again, presuming it's knowable or even exists - after all non-humans can quite plausibly not have gender at all)




Cogent point, for TRPG. Today I learned: in canonical Eberron, House Cannith makes "male" and "female" Warforged. (Like a sexy robot lamp with a sword?)

A small percentage of humans IRL don't fit neatly into the anatomical gender binary. People with XY genes and androgen insensitivity, for example. Whether we "round down" as if such people don't exist, or whether we consider the 99% and the 1% equally real, valid and human, is a hot topic in some circles.


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## Hussar (Jun 5, 2018)

Riley37 said:


> Cogent point, for TRPG. Today I learned: in canonical Eberron, House Cannith makes "male" and "female" Warforged. (Like a sexy robot lamp with a sword?)
> 
> A small percentage of humans IRL don't fit neatly into the anatomical gender binary. People with XY genes and androgen insensitivity, for example. Whether we "round down" as if such people don't exist, or whether we consider the 99% and the 1% equally real, valid and human, is a hot topic in some circles.




Oh, and fair enough.  I certainly didn't mean to step on so many toes.  I obviously overstated my point (my wife constantly tells me I do this) which in turn swirled this conversation in directions I really didn't mean.  

Apropos of nothing, the last warforged character we had in a game was named Stove.  His whole goal was to keep people warm.  Actually, I say his, but, to be fair, I don't think the character was gendered at all.  It literally looked like a potbellied stove with legs and arms.    Fun character.  So, yeah, there are going to be cases where gender really isn't part of the character at all.  I get that.  Exceptions always exist.  I guess my basic point was that players, when choosing things, should keep an eye on how these choices are going to play out at the table and probably make some effort to play them out at the table.

((Side note - the same player played a warforged named Chuck that was basically a mobile, sentient artillery piece.    I think I'm seeing a pattern.))


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## billd91 (Jun 5, 2018)

Hussar said:


> ((Side note - the same player played a warforged named Chuck that was basically a mobile, sentient artillery piece.    I think I'm seeing a pattern.))




It’s when he plays one designed for naval warfare named Bob that you know you have to worry. Or perhaps a paint-utility warforged named Art. A beach-stormer named Sandy?


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## Riley37 (Jun 5, 2018)

Hussar said:


> Apropos of nothing, the last warforged character we had in a game was named Stove.  His whole goal was to keep people warm.  Actually, I say his, but, to be fair, I don't think the character was gendered at all.




If I understand correctly, Stove was "he" not in the sense that he might sire children, but more insofar as people treat "he" as default (see also, "The Second Sex"), and Stove accepted male-as-default "he" for lack of a more precise alternative. Perhaps Elvish has equivalents for he, she, it, and also a fourth pronoun which would apply more clearly to  Stove? Dexter also accepted male-as-default "he" for lack of a more precise alternative, because Dexter was all about (a) stopping Tiamat (b) music (c) magic, and gender-specific concerns such as children were way, way on the back burner.

So do you consider Stove a cross-gender character, insofar as Stove is not a precise match for the player with regard to sex and gender?

I have a friend who wants to someday play a character who was once a chair, that a bored wizard had True Polymorphed into a human; and the character's long-term goal, is learning to cast True Polymorph on himself, to reverse the transformation. In the meantime, the character does not sit on chairs.

Anyways, the combination of "think about how you'll express the traits on the character sheet, and what to do with any traits which don't apply" and "there are exceptions" works for me. You might take "allow for exceptions" for granted; but for some people it can be a touchy topic, if our IRL experiences include situations which failed to allow for exceptions.


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## Hussar (Jun 5, 2018)

Well, considering Stove is a construct, it has no gender at all.  I probably default in my head to "he" simply because it's a dude playing the character.  But, again, there was never any question about what the character was.



> It’s when he plays one designed for naval warfare named Bob that you know you have to worry.




Only if he has no arms and no legs.


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## Bagpuss (Jun 5, 2018)

Hussar said:


> So, yeah, there are going to be cases where gender really isn't part of the character at all.  I get that.  Exceptions always exist.  I guess my basic point was that players, when choosing things, should keep an eye on how these choices are going to play out at the table and probably make some effort to play them out at the table.




It seems _*@Riley37*_ has decided to block me. That's his choice I suppose but it's a shame since he seems to have some useful contributions.


*Cogent point, for TRPG. Today I learned: in canonical Eberron, House Cannith makes "male" and "female" Warforged. (Like a sexy robot lamp with a sword?)*

It seems obvious to me that Warforged would be made in male and female models. If you look at the androids being made today, or any robots from fiction, they are more often than not assigned a gender, if they have a humanoid form. Even if they don't look human at all, like "Robbie the Robot". I don't get the sexy robot lamp reference though, assigning a gender to robots for the majority of them isn't about making them sexy (except for sexbots obviously), it's just a matter of convenience. Much of our language is gendered, we tend not to like referring to things at it, people give gender to cars and boats when they don't look remotely human or sexy. It is just a natural thing to do, so it seems an obvious step to assign a gender to a creation like Warforged.


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## Hussar (Jun 5, 2018)

Bagpuss said:


> It seems _*@Riley37*_ has decided to block me. That's his choice I suppose but it's a shame since he seems to have some useful contributions.
> 
> 
> *Cogent point, for TRPG. Today I learned: in canonical Eberron, House Cannith makes "male" and "female" Warforged. (Like a sexy robot lamp with a sword?)*
> ...




And, let's be fair, if we're going to have a player race, giving that race relatable genders is a pretty easy way to go.  It might be a lot more difficult to insist that warforged have no genders and then expect everyone playing one to be groovy with being called "it".


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## aramis erak (Jun 5, 2018)

redrick said:


> My experience is that millennials feel very comfortable role playing characters whose gender does not match their own, and seem to navigate the "challenge" or lack thereof quite well.




Gender roles are not nearly as well defined any more.

Which also makes it easier to cross over.


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## Bagpuss (Jun 5, 2018)

aramis erak said:


> Gender roles are not nearly as well defined any more.
> 
> Which also makes it easier to cross over.




I think playing alien races, century old vampires, sexless droids and the like helps a bit, compared to that playing a gender that you've spent all your life around should be pretty straight forward. 

Also a lot of people GM where you are required to play the opposite gender a lot of the time, so why should it be an issue when you switch to playing a PC?

I do wonder how people uncomfortable with cross gender character handle opposite gender NPCs? If you don't have an issue with them why with a PC?


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## evileeyore (Jun 5, 2018)

Hussar said:


> Why is does it seem like this is an actual issue now with things like gender bending elves?  If it was groovy back then, then, why are people questioning it now?



There was no "Ideological Purity" requirement then being shoved done people's throats.

You'll find people are more comfortable swallowing things at their own pace, rather when they are being force fed it.





Hussar said:


> No. The presumption is that your character is the same gender as you because you are the one portraying the character.



That's a terrible presumption.  I'm not gonna to ask the strawman nonsense questions of "so then everyone at your table is playing a human with poor combat skills then".  I mean I will, but only by presumption.



> If your elf behaves exactly like your human character then why are you playing an elf?



Depends on the system... but at first blush for the inherent racial benes, duh.

Or because I enjoy playing elves like the stuck up egotistical jackholes they are, and no one does egotistical as well as an elf (they really are better at everything [/joke]).





Riley37 said:


> It's theoretically possible that Inkyrius sired the children and V bore the children, but V sure doesn't act like the one who nursed them.



Ehhhh....  knee-jerk pedantry:  Vaarsuvius' and Inkyrius' children are adopted.

Sorry, sorry... I couldn't help myself.





ccs said:


> What if I make a character of the same gender as mine with those exact traits?



No, I've come to understand it based on this thread, even if you are a sexy lamp in real life, you may not play one in game.

Sorry.





Lylandra said:


> Yikes, Conan as turn-on?



Really?  Jason-freaking-Momoa?

You don't understand how Conan can be a sexy, sexy, sexy, sexy, ummm...  I lost my train of thought.



> No, I've never seen anyone who played their barbarian like a sexy walking stick.



You need to sit at the table with me.  I think every Barbarian I've ever played has been a sexy walking stick.






Hussar said:


> If I may ask, what about playing female characters makes them fun for you?  What, specifically related to the gender of your character, makes it fun?



Depends on the setting.  Sometimes it's about upsetting the inherent social power-dynamic.  Sometimes it's because otherwise the party would be a total sausage fest.  And sometimes it's because I know it will specifically make someone uncomfortable.


Currently I'm playing a female Ogre barbarian/wrestler with a bit of a 'Red Sonja' complex (she won't take a mate unless they can best her).  Which is a bit difficult when she is literally the strongest creature so far encountered in the campaign... (she keeps hoping to 'meet a real man', by which she means another mountain ogre, a male, and of course one stronger than as she is so she can finally settle down.  It might be easier if she were to go anywhere such a guy might be found, but she hasn't figured that out yet).

Just previously I played a female troll wizard, because I wanted to play a troll wizard and the GM said "in this world the only trolls that can work magic are female".  So... female it was.





Hussar said:


> Sure, you introduced your character five months ago (in real time), but, since then, never once mentioned that your character is _____.  It's not too farfetched that people might not recall that given that you (generic you) have never actually referenced ___ other than at that session 1.



If _____ has never mattered since session 1 (if it even mattered then*), then why should I go out of my way to reinforce that my character is _____?


* I once played a gay character in a very long campaign.  It never mattered (the Characters almost never had time for anything personal, the mission was always foremost) and her sexuality only came up when towards the end of the campaign another Player had gone back and reread the campaign diary that we were all writing in all along.

In another it was very obvious I was playing a flamboyantly, cringingly, gay character.  But as he was rich, powerful, and had tremendous social capital, he delighted in being as inappropriate as he could be, since being gay in that culture wasn't exactly accepted.  It wasn't illegal, or even socially abhorrent, it was simply something kept 'on the down low' or at least kept 'respectfully quiet'.  So he was loud as possible.  Which also explained why his family was happy whenever he decided to run off and go adventuring.





GrahamWills said:


> It seems very odd to me that this isn't the case for most game groups; of the last dozen long campaigns I've been in, all of them have had characters who have sex quite often.



That's generally not a feature of 'Orc and Pie', of which an _awful_ lot of D&D is.


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## Thomas Bowman (Jun 5, 2018)

of course Red Sonja is portrayed, especially by the male artists drawing her, as a sword swinging gal in a bikini, it is slightly unrealistic than any sort of fighter would eschew the protection of armor just so she could show off her body. Joan of Arc was clad in full plate armor instead, that is a more realistic picture of what a swordswoman would be.


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## Bagpuss (Jun 5, 2018)

Thomas Bowman said:


> of course Red Sonja is portrayed, especially by the male artists drawing her, as a sword swinging gal in a bikini, it is slightly unrealistic than any sort of fighter would eschew the protection of armor just so she could show off her body. Joan of Arc was clad in full plate armor instead, that is a more realistic picture of what a swordswoman would be.




Yeah but Red Sonja is in the same world as Conan who isn't known for wearing very much when illustrated, and he's one of the greatest fighters in the setting. Seem in that universe the less armour you wear the more competent you are.


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## Istbor (Jun 5, 2018)

I am not sure I personally understand the difference in this context between being comfortable and indifferent.  To me it is basically the same thing.  If that is your character, then so be it.  Makes no difference to me so long as you are participating at the same as everyone else.


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## Bagpuss (Jun 5, 2018)

No it isn't really clear. I took uncomfortable to mean you don't like other people doing it; indifferent to mean you don't mind other people doing it, but you don't really do it much yourself (or it is okay except for certain behaviours), and comfortable to mean it is something you do yourself, or you have no objections to others doing.


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## Man in the Funny Hat (Jun 5, 2018)

Yeah, the intended meaning behind "indifferent" and "comfortable" is problematic.  I voted "indifferent" because I don't care if a player plays a character not of their own gender.  Obviously, any DM is going to have significant issues in even playing the game AT ALL if they have issues with running characters not of the DM's own gender.  As a player I have played plenty of characters that are female.  As a DM a huge number of characters I run are female, especially in an egalitarian game world/setting.  So, in a sense that means that I am quite comfortable with the idea, but really I don't care if players play only their own gender or not - I am indifferent and I don't care if the PC's OR NPC's that I play are either gender unless it's for some reason a biological requirement to fit the character.  So then what's the intended difference between "comfortable" and "indifferent"?


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## Riley37 (Jun 5, 2018)

evileeyore said:


> There was no "Ideological Purity" requirement then being shoved done people's throats.




Please, tell me more about the time when no one presented inclusion as a moral, ideological mandate. You must be referring to a time before MLK's speeches; a time before one USA legislator asked another ""have you no sense of decency?" - hey, that was way before Gygax wrote D&D!



evileeyore said:


> You'll find people are more comfortable swallowing things at their own pace, rather when they are being force fed it.




As a literal statement, that is true. On another hand, sometimes I prioritize the comfort of the excluded group, over the comfort of the group which is not ready to include them. Rosa Parks force-fed an uncomfortable conflict to that bus driver and the bus company; was she wrong?



evileeyore said:


> Or because I enjoy playing elves like the stuck up egotistical jackholes they are, and no one does egotistical as well as an elf




Hugo Weaving set a very high bar, for portraying elven arrogance. I am not up to the challenge of playing any other race with deeper arrogance than Weaving's Elrond. Though... can you imagine him playing a Tiefling and going full Lucifer, as in Paradise Lost's Lucifer? He might even exceed his performance as Elrond. But I digress.



evileeyore said:


> Vaarsuvius' and Inkyrius' children are adopted.




Ah, clever, so they could both have the same anatomy, or no relevant anatomy, so far as that goes. Thanks!


----------



## Riley37 (Jun 5, 2018)

Hussar said:


> And, let's be fair, if we're going to have a player race, giving that race relatable genders is a pretty easy way to go.  It might be a lot more difficult to insist that warforged have no genders and then expect everyone playing one to be groovy with being called "it".




That would indeed be difficult.

Third option: "Your creator may have assigned a gender. This affects your voice, and possibly some details of your design, such as torso shape and proportions. If your creator didn't assign a gender, during your construction, consider whether you have subsequently chosen a gender, when living among humanoids (as imitation or perhaps for their comfort), or whether you get by without one. Do you care whether people refer to you as he, she or it?"

Fourth option... I can't think of one off-hand, but I sure didn't stop at the dilemma of "gender mandatory or gender prohibited?", it took me a minute to write out a third option, so perhaps there's also a fourth.


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## Thomas Bowman (Jun 5, 2018)

Bagpuss said:


> No it isn't really clear. I took uncomfortable to mean you don't like other people doing it; indifferent to mean you don't mind other people doing it, but you don't really do it much yourself (or it is okay except for certain behaviours), and comfortable to mean it is something you do yourself, or you have no objections to others doing.




So you need two DM's one to play all the female characters who is female, and another to play all the male characters who is male. Has anyone ever played in a game where there was two DM's?


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## evileeyore (Jun 5, 2018)

Riley37 said:


> Please, tell me more about the time when no one presented inclusion as a moral, ideological mandate. You must be referring to a time before MLK's speeches; a time before one USA legislator asked another ""have you no sense of decency?" - hey, that was way before Gygax wrote D&D!



You know what I'm talking about.  And I said Ideological Purity, not Mandated Inclusivity for reason.

(Though I'm just as against _mandated_ inclusivity)



> As a literal statement, that is true. On another hand, sometimes I prioritize the comfort of the excluded group, over the comfort of the group which is not ready to include them. Rosa Parks force-fed an uncomfortable conflict to that bus driver and the bus company; was she wrong?



No.  Likewise I've played Characters that have made people uncomfortable at the table, but that's more on me being an arse than being an activist.




> Hugo Weaving set a very high bar, for portraying elven arrogance. I am not up to the challenge of playing any other race with deeper arrogance than Weaving's Elrond. Though... can you imagine him playing a Tiefling and going full Lucifer, as in Paradise Lost's Lucifer? He might even exceed his performance as Elrond. But I digress.



Weaving's Elrond is the high bar I strive for with my hoity-toity elves.  but for Lucifer?  I'd have to channel Tim Curry in _Legend_.

No argument can sway me.




> Ah, clever, so they could both have the same anatomy, or no relevant anatomy, so far as that goes. Thanks!



No worries.  it's my favorite character so it's to remember the details.






Thomas Bowman said:


> Has anyone ever played in a game where there was two DM's?
> Yes, but in both instances they were the same sex (both were in Vampire games, one a set of guys (brothers) and the other a pair of women).
> 
> 
> ...


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## Bagpuss (Jun 5, 2018)

Thomas Bowman said:


> So you need two DM's one to play all the female characters who is female, and another to play all the male characters who is male.




Not by my definition. All of my definitions allowed for the GM to do it if you read it carefully, just they didn't like other people doing it.



> Has anyone ever played in a game where there was two DM's?




Yes. Star Trek which I think was a group of about 10 players, one GM would handle the away mission crew, while the other dealt with the ship board stuff.

On a number of occasions I've seen friends that weren't actively a PC be used to play an NPC for the GM. This was when we played at University, the games club took over the whole floor of a building, using all the classrooms, you would get people that were between games popping in to watch (or get roped into being NPCs).


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## Riley37 (Jun 6, 2018)

evileeyore said:


> You know what I'm talking about.  And I said Ideological Purity, not Mandated Inclusivity for reason.




I am serious and literal, in that I am not aware of any year or decade, in the 20th century, in which there was less controversy than now, over who gets included or excluded, and who makes those decisions. The United Nations approved the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. Has anyone written any document, ever since then, which exceeded the preachiness and ideological purism of the Declaration?

The people who ran the final stages of the eradication of smallpox, had no qualms about forcing their agenda down anyone's throat. Everyone's throat; their goal was *every living human*. I'm not saying they were *wrong*, mind you, but today's World Health Organization is a passel of meek, mild-mannered moderates compared the zealotry of Viktor Zhdanov, in the fifteen or twenty years before Gygax wrote D&D.

If I understand correctly, I do know what you're talking about; you're talking about ideology-free "good old days"; and I don't believe that they ever happened, not during the 20th century, not in reality. Sure, you could cue up an old episode of "Happy Days", and *pretend*. That wacky, zany episode about who gets a spot in the bomb shelter, and who doesn't (episode 16, "Be the First on Your Block") was funny in 1974; it would not have been so funny in 1952, if "Happy Days" had been a *contemporary* sit-com, nor in 1962 during the Cuban Missile Crisis.



Thomas Bowman said:


> Has anyone ever played in a game where there was two DM's?




I've co-DMed, at game conventions. Usually a pair. I was once on a three-DM team for a particularly complicated story.


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## Thomas Bowman (Jun 6, 2018)

Bagpuss said:


> Not by my definition. All of my definitions allowed for the GM to do it if you read it carefully, just they didn't like other people doing it.
> 
> 
> 
> ...




I've played more than one character at a time, this allows for larger player groups, this is helpful when playing a game with one or two players, not enough to make a balanced party if there are only two player characters each played by one person. If one person is playing multiple characters, some of those characters are going to be female.  Social situations are basically the interlude between adventures. I prefer personal interactions in the real world, rather than as playing fictional characters


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## Thomas Bowman (Jun 6, 2018)

Riley37 said:


> I am serious and literal, in that I am not aware of any year or decade, in the 20th century, in which there was less controversy than now, over who gets included or excluded, and who makes those decisions. The United Nations approved the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. Has anyone written any document, ever since then, which exceeded the preachiness and ideological purism of the Declaration?
> 
> The people who ran the final stages of the eradication of smallpox, had no qualms about forcing their agenda down anyone's throat. Everyone's throat; their goal was *every living human*. I'm not saying they were *wrong*, mind you, but today's World Health Organization is a passel of meek, mild-mannered moderates compared the zealotry of Viktor Zhdanov, in the fifteen or twenty years before Gygax wrote D&D.
> 
> ...




Generally I play D&D to get away from real world politics, not delve into it. 
It is easier to suspend my disbelieve when dealing with imaginary characters. I don't expect players to put on wizard robes or to wear armor at the gaming table, I prefer to use my imagination that to see things and people in costumes with props. My imagination has better costumes and special effects that whatever a player may bring to the gaming table. I don't much like miniatures on maps either. I like to imagine a bunch of characters moving through a dungeon corridor, that to move pieces on a map.


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## Sunseeker (Jun 6, 2018)

Riley37 said:


> I've co-DMed, at game conventions. Usually a pair. I was once on a three-DM team for a particularly complicated story.




I almost universally appoint an "assistant DM" though usually someone self-selects.  They're responsible for bringing extra materials, helping new people, helping with "crowd control" and also having a firm grasp of the rules.

I'm more of a storyteller DM.  I'm less concerned with what the rules say can or can't happen, and more interested in what would be awesome.  But not everyone is into that in D&D, so I usually pick a rules-lawyery type to help keep me on track.


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## aramis erak (Jun 6, 2018)

Bagpuss said:


> I think playing alien races, century old vampires, sexless droids and the like helps a bit, compared to that playing a gender that you've spent all your life around should be pretty straight forward.
> 
> Also a lot of people GM where you are required to play the opposite gender a lot of the time, so why should it be an issue when you switch to playing a PC?
> 
> I do wonder how people uncomfortable with cross gender character handle opposite gender NPCs? If you don't have an issue with them why with a PC?




I'm uncomfortable doing it as a GM, even. I do it because it's required for verisimilitude, not because I enjoy it. Since I don't enjoy cross-gender and/or homosexual characters, I much prefer to play straight male PC's.

I play elves because I can empathize with the eco-guerrilla and socialist attitudes typically attributed to them, and for the weapon proficiencies.

I'm uncomfortable playing D&D halflings, because I don't grok their cultures as provided in FR, Greyhawk, Council of Worms, or Mystara... but I do kinda grok Kender and the Halflings of Dark Sun. The halflings of WFRP1 I can do comfortably... because they're better written.

And, as [MENTION=1768]evileeyore[/MENTION] notes, the sociopolitical climate is quite different now than when I was a kid.


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## aramis erak (Jun 6, 2018)

Bagpuss said:


> Yeah but Red Sonja is in the same world as Conan who isn't known for wearing very much when illustrated, and he's one of the greatest fighters in the setting. Seem in that universe the less armour you wear the more competent you are.




The illustrations almost never match the text. Conan wasn't shirtless much under Howard's writing. I've not read the later works by others.


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## evileeyore (Jun 6, 2018)

Riley37 said:


> If I understand correctly, I do know what you're talking about; you're talking about ideology-free "good old days"...



No (or maybe yes).  I'm talking about 20, 15, even 10 years ago where no one got upset over who was at cons, who was at someone's table, who was in what movie, etc, as long as they were decent people while they were about it.

Ideological Purity has infected the 'progressive' (extreme) left and now if your politics aren't 'correct', you get uninvited from cons, uncast from movies, etc, it's become untenable.

In other words it isn't enough to be egalitarian or inclusive, now you have be exactly, correctly inclusive, or the ideologues come for you*.


* I mean they kind of always tried, but now there are enough of them, in positions of power in media and other arenas, that it's an untenable thing.





aramis erak said:


> The illustrations almost never match the text. Conan wasn't shirtless much under Howard's writing. I've not read the later works by others.



I blame Marvel comics.


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## pemerton (Jun 6, 2018)

evileeyore said:


> I'm talking about 20, 15, even 10 years ago where no one got upset over who was at cons, who was at someone's table, who was in what movie, etc



You're not talking about a different decade. You're talking about some projected fantasy world.


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## Bagpuss (Jun 6, 2018)

aramis erak said:


> And, as @_*evileeyore*_ notes, the sociopolitical climate is quite different now than when I was a kid.




Does that really put you off playing someone that doesn't share your own gender/ethnic/sexuality identity?

Over the years I've played a lot of human characters (mostly because I mainly played Cyberpunk, CoC and other none fantasy games), while straight-white-male is the majority of those (since it matches myself), I've frequently played characters of the opposite sex, different ethnicity, different sexual identity. I've never worried about being accused of an RPG equivalent of "blackface", and certainly not been accused of it, or would have expected to be. 

I would have said the idea that you couldn't play a character of a different gender or race or get in trouble for it absurd a few years ago, but now with with stuff like "Digital Blackface" (I wish that was a parody), and white writers being warned off writing black characters. I don't know anymore.


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## Riley37 (Jun 6, 2018)

evileeyore said:


> No (or maybe yes).  I'm talking about 20, 15, even 10 years ago where no one got upset over who was at cons, who was at someone's table, who was in what movie, etc, as long as they were decent people while they were about it.




No one whose voice reached your ears. You mistake that for no one at all. Your "no one" includes Samuel Delany. He wrote an essay, twenty years ago, about his experiences at science fiction cons, and who did and didn't share tables with him.

More than ten and more than twenty years ago, MLK took an interest in whether dark-skinned SFF fans might see an occasional face as dark as theirs on the screen. When he heard that Nichelle Nichols was considering ending her role as Lt. Uhura, and pursuing her dreams of a singing career, he persuaded her to stay with Star Trek. Nichols says:

"I was offered a role on Broadway. I was a singer on stage long before I was an actress, and Broadway was always a dream to me. I was ready to leave Star Trek and pursue what I'd always wanted to do... Dr. Martin Luther King, quite some time after I'd first met him, approached me and said something along the lines of "Nichelle, whether you like it or not, you have become an symbol. If you leave, they can replace you with a blonde haired white girl, and it will be like you were never there. What you've accomplished, for all of us, will only be real if you stay." That got me thinking about how it would look for fans of color around the country if they saw me leave. I saw that this was bigger than just me."

Shatner, Nimoy and the rest of the team were decent people, or at least Nichols hasn't said otherwise. If she had quit, Roddenberry would have recruited some equally decent person to succeed her on the cast. Your "as long as they were decent people while they were about it" was NOT enough for her and for MLK.

What progressives (that's me!) call "representation" mattered to a little girl named Whoopi Goldberg. In her words: "Well, when I was nine years old Star Trek came on. I looked at it and I went screaming through the house, 'Come here, mum, everybody, come quick, come quick, there's a black lady on television and she ain't no maid!' I knew right then and there I could be anything I wanted to be."

You think that moment of enthusiasm, isn't the flip side of "upset"? Not "upset" as in throwing a tantrum; "upset" as in resignation and resentment, same way people were "upset" when they couldn't vote, couldn't marry across racial lines, and couldn't drink at the same water fountain as white folks. Same slow burn of resignation and resentment that almost every major character they saw on TV and in movies - even nonwhite characters, such as Othello - was played by white actors. (Orson Welles played Othello in 1951, Laurence Olivier in 1965.) White audiences in the USA wouldn't even watch "Charlie Chan" until a white actor played the title role.

"or the ideologues come for you" - That happens both ways. Yes, reviewers have opinions when a movie rewrites Chushingura to include Keanu Reeves as a white samurai, and individuals such as myself express agreement on social media. (Call me a purist; there were already movies of Chushingura, and AFAIK the Reeves vehicle added nothing useful to the existing body of artistic expression.) Similarly, in 2004 Ursula Le Guin objected furiously when a screen version of Le Guin's "Wizard of Earthsea" rewrote Sparrowhawk as white (he's explicitly dark-skinned in her book.) I raised my voice along with hers... that is, I posted on social media and I skipped the TV show. I guess you could describe a wave of posts on social media as "the ideologues come for you." IMO that's a overly dramatic, threatening description. That is, in contrast to...

If you dare to cast someone who *isn't* a white man, *other* ideologues may come for you, and *those* ideologues sometimes use rougher tactics. Some fans responded to Finn, in "Force Awakens", with cries of "white genocide" and calls for a boycott. Okay, I disagree but those are legitimate, non-criminal expressions of opinion. Milo Yiannopoulos, however, didn't just express opinions on the casting of Leslie Jones in Ghostbusters. He faked Twitter posts to look as if they were from her account (saying horrible things). He encouraged his fan base to troll her, and they did. For example, sending her pictures of her face, but altered to imply sexual humiliation. About a month after Twitter permanently banned Yiannopoulos, someone (I'd bet my thumbs it was an "ideologue" who shared Milo's ideology) hacked her personal website, decorating it with images of her passport and driver’s license, naked photos, and a photo of a dead gorilla. How efficient: a death threat, and the ape slur, neatly combined in one image!

(shrug) I don't expect to change your mind. If you see Samuel Delany as "no one", as in "no one got upset"; if you object to people with MLK's ideology gaining "positions of power in media and other arenas"; if you point your wrath for them, rather than at the people who harassed Jones; then you and I are at different ends of the range of participants of EN World. I'm writing more for anyone in the middle. For anyone who shares my hope that what Delany wrote in 1997 about science fiction, will someday no longer be true about D&D.


----------



## Jester David (Jun 6, 2018)

13 years ago. This thread came, and a solid majority said they had no issue. A good 60 posts were made and discussion died. 
Now. A good 150 posts in a week and the number of uncomfortable people has increased as gender is suddenly a disputed topic. 

How the  did the D&D community move backwards in terms of gender politics?!?


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## Bagpuss (Jun 6, 2018)

Jester David said:


> 13 years ago. This thread came, and a solid majority said they had no issue.




A fairly solid majority still have no issue.


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## billd91 (Jun 6, 2018)

evileeyore said:


> No (or maybe yes).  I'm talking about 20, 15, even 10 years ago where no one got upset over who was at cons, who was at someone's table, who was in what movie, etc, as long as they were decent people while they were about it.




That's not really true. Gamers have always been pretty fractious. John Kovalic may have been writing for comedy when he wrote "Understanding Gamers" as part of his Dork Tower comic series (parodying Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics) but he skewered some aspects of the community when he pointed out that wargamers look down on role players who look down on LARPers, etc - and everyone looks down on Furries. This has probably been there since GenCon went from a war-/boardgaming con to including D&D. The dominant community has *always* grumbled about newcomers in some way shape or form. It may have been the different aesthetics of the Vampire crowd, the LARPing that rose in prominence with Vampire, the ubiquitous Magic players in all of the hallways at the Mecca Center, the kids playing Pokemon, new editions of games, and whatever.

But there's a difference now that I've spotted. In most of those cases, there was grumbling - much lower levels of hostility. But then for many of those adjustments, even most, the difference is in methods of gaming and less about *who* is doing the gaming, *who* is storming the gates to be let in to the community. The backlash against feminism in gaming, in particular, is far more virulent than the backlash against anything else I've seen enter the gaming community. If there's a change that I can put my finger on - it's *that one*, the hostility and I mean really vile hostility that you didn't see at other gamers because they played different sorts of games.


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## Bagpuss (Jun 6, 2018)

Jester David said:


> 13 years ago. This thread came, and a solid majority said they had no issue. A good 60 posts were made and discussion died.




Actually looking back it comes up at lot... (I am sure there are other posts I've missed due to the search parameters)

2016 - When a man plays a woman. 154 posts

2010 - males playing females and the other way around, opinions? 318 posts in a few weeks.

2009 - How do you feel about players making PCs of the other gender? - 110 post but with a Poll! Only 10% were uncomfortable and 40% loved it. (But the poll allowed for multiple responses so not sure it counts the same as the current poll.

2008 - Cross-gender PCs 117 posts

2008 - Beginner's Guide to Cross-gender PCs - forked from above just 20 posts on advice.

2002 - roleplaying across the gender line 290 posts in a couple of weeks.

Then as now the main concerns/objections were a fear of stereotypes or the "sex doll" thing that was mentioned earlier (which I think are pretty fair concerns to have especially if you've had bad past experiences), but it always seems to be a hot topic issue, so I don't think that much has changed to be honest. 

They don't all end well (there are some prize posters in some of the threads), mods posts seem to end a good number of them.

If someone would quote me for Riley37 I think he would appreciate the research, wouldn't want him missing out.


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## Eltab (Jun 6, 2018)

Bagpuss said:


> Actually looking back it comes up at lot... (I am sure there are other posts I've missed due to the search parameters)
> 
> 2016 - When a man plays a woman. 154 posts
> 
> ...




Always glad to help.  Although I'm sure there is an 'unblock' button too.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Jun 6, 2018)

Jester David said:


> 13 years ago. This thread came, and a solid majority said they had no issue. A good 60 posts were made and discussion died.
> Now. A good 150 posts in a week and the number of uncomfortable people has increased as gender is suddenly a disputed topic.
> 
> How the  did the D&D community move backwards in terms of gender politics?!?




The retrenchment is society wide, not just in gaming.

Some of us like to think our community is better than society at large, but we’ve shown time and time again we are not.


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## evileeyore (Jun 6, 2018)

Bagpuss said:


> Does that really put you off playing someone that doesn't share your own gender/ethnic/sexuality identity?



I've seen it.  People who would otherwise be 'indifferent' when someone else is doing something can become 'uncomfortable' when they feel they've been pushed to far and "now it's time to push back!"  And it isn't a "let's just push this back to where I'm personally 'indifferent'" it's "Let's push this back to where I'm personally 'comfortable'".

Extreme example:

Let's look at pizza.  I'm not fond of [-]heresy[/-] pineapple on my pizza, but I don't care what you put on yours.  I'm not eating it, right?

But when the purists come around and demand that everyone's pizza has to be [-]equally diverse[/-] have pineapple?  Nope.  Now I don't want anyone to have pineapple on there pizza, 'cuase if even one pizza has pineapple, they all have to pineapple, right?


And ya, I know you get it Bagpuss, but your's was a good comment to jump off from.





Riley37 said:


> No one whose voice reached your ears.



What part of "I mean they kind of always tried, but now there are enough of them, in positions of power in media and other arenas, that it's an untenable thing." to you didn't mean "Yes, there were always voices, now however..."

Also, your still ignoring what I'm saying.  I'm not saying "there were never progressives pushing for change".  I'm saying "now you tow their extreme line or they come for you _and can actually come for you_".

Example:  CDPR makes a game basically set in late 15th to 16th century Poland (The Witcher).  And the Ideological Purists took them to task because the game is a 'whitey fest'.  As in, there are no blacks.

Which... you know... time period - game setting... there were almost 0 blacks in 15th-16th century Poland.  But that doesn't matter to the Ideological Purists!  Enforced Diversity Quotas Have To Be Met!



> "or the ideologues come for you" - That happens both ways.



Yes it does.  And I dislike it when it's the Evangelical Right as well.  Just because it's the CNTRL Left in power right now, doesn't make me happy though.



> IMO that's a overly dramatic, threatening description.



Only to you, because the censorship board isn't likely to come for you.  Yet.  Just wait until your ideology isn't pure enough.



> if you object to people with MLK's ideology gaining "positions of power in media and other arenas"...



I wish they had MLK's idealogy.  They don't.  They don't want equality.



> I'm writing more for anyone in the middle. For anyone who shares my hope that what Delany wrote in 1997 about science fiction, will someday no longer be true about D&D.



That's not the 'middle'.  That's really left of center.  Which is fine, but don't mistake your position as "one of the middle ground between progressivism and regressivism" or even Left and Right.

I'm very Left of center and your a bit more left of me.





Dannyalcatraz said:


> The retrenchment is society wide, not just in gaming.



Like I say above, you push someone too far and they don't just want to go back to where they started, but a bit further back to make breathing room.



> Some of us like to think our community is better than society at large, but we’ve shown time and time again we are not.



I've never understood why anyone would think one group of humans were intrinsically better behaved than another.


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## Bagpuss (Jun 6, 2018)

Dannyalcatraz said:


> The retrenchment is society wide, not just in gaming.




Erm, my post shows not much has changed over the years, if anything comparing the polls shows a slightly greater acceptance of cross-gender play. 

So I'm not sure what you mean by retrenchment? Most of the people who are against it seem to be against it for pretty valid reasons.


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## Umbran (Jun 6, 2018)

Eltab said:


> Always glad to help.  Although I'm sure there is an 'unblock' button too.





Yes, the user can remove a block if they so choose.

Next time, please do *NOT* act to circumvent a block.  If someone actively chooses to not see content from another user, there's a reason for it - and if you act to specifically get around the block, you are becoming complicit in that interaction.  In the general case, you may be helping one user to harass another, which is not cool.

So, next time, don't do it.  Thanks.


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## Bagpuss (Jun 6, 2018)

evileeyore said:


> And ya, I know you get it Bagpuss, but your's was a good comment to jump off from.




That's fine, I understand what you mean.



> Like I say above, you push someone too far and they don't just want to go back to where they started, but a bit further back to make breathing room.




I'm not sure that's whats happening, I would think if people have become more wary of roleplaying other people's genders/race/ethnicity then it might be because they could get called out for not being sensitive enough. Can you imagine the reaction of a white man RP'ing a black woman in some circles? Who do you think they will get a bigger backlash from?



> I've never understood why anyone would think one group of humans were intrinsically better behaved than another.




Tribalism? We are the good guys, don't trust those other ones. 

Still you would hope in a hobby that involves empathy to some extent, roleplaying another character, you'd see a bit more understanding.


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## Lylandra (Jun 6, 2018)

Bagpuss said:


> I'm not sure that's whats happening, I would think if people have become more wary of roleplaying other people's genders/race/ethnicity then it might be because they could get called out for not being sensitive enough. Can you imagine the reaction of a white man RP'ing a black woman in some circles? Who do you think they will get a bigger backlash from?




I'm not so sure. Unless he portrayed that black woman in a really off-putting way, I don't think he'd get much backlash. And I agree that RPing is a great way to improve empathy and understanding of other groups.

You cannot really accuse that white guy of whitewashing, for example, because he isn't taking a real black woman's spot. He isn't erasing her possible representation like in a movie or TV show. Instead, he is adding diversity and, in the best case, trying to put himself in some other person's shoes. 

Okay, in terms of fantasy we'd rather not have negative cultural baggage (and, at least in my worlds, there are seldom conflicts of people based on their skin color), but I actually enjoy playing a character from a (fantasy) culture that's much different from my own (european who's been subjected to castles and dungeons and stuff since childhood because they are literally everywhere).


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## Bagpuss (Jun 6, 2018)

Lylandra said:


> I'm not so sure. Unless he portrayed that black woman in a really off-putting way, I don't think he'd get much backlash.




Even 5 years ago I would agree with you. Since then we've had white authors warned off writing black characters, people attacked online for hairstyles and hoop earrings, or trying on a on a kimono in a museum, or wearing a cheongsam to prom, and ridiculous claims of "Digital Blackface". Already you are seeing more articles about cultural appropriation related to published RPGs. I don't think it has negatively affected the hobby as yet, and I'm all for the new art direction and more inclusive style D&D is going with, but you shouldn't be fearful of playing with other cultures.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Jun 6, 2018)

Bagpuss said:


> Erm, my post shows not much has changed over the years, if anything comparing the polls shows a slightly greater acceptance of cross-gender play.
> 
> So I'm not sure what you mean by retrenchment? Most of the people who are against it seem to be against it for pretty valid reasons.



This thread is 13 years old.  The post I responded to pointed out that we’ve had @150 new posts this year, with a fair bit of..._heat._

But unless someone noted the poll totals before those new posts, we have no idea whether or not the results in this thread’s polls have shifted any.  And if they did, in which direction.


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## evileeyore (Jun 7, 2018)

Bagpuss said:


> Can you imagine the reaction of a white man RP'ing a black woman in some circles? Who do you think they will get a bigger backlash from?



While my knee-jerkism is "Well granted!  [Insert Rant About Ideological Ethno-Purists]!" I'm not so sure.

So far everyone piping up in thread defending the 'uncomfortable' angle has been from the "I've seen it only done poorly" camp, not so much the "I _fear_ it'll be done poorly"* or even the "No Cultural† Appropriation!" camp.



* Though I've literally heard that excuse at the table.  "Well... I've never seen it done well and I don't think you can, so no."  And then later it became, "Well, okay, but only because you've proven me wrong about Kender..."

† If sex/gender can be considered a 'culture', which I've heard compelling arguments for.





Lylandra said:


> Okay, in terms of fantasy *we*'d rather not have negative cultural baggage...



"We"?  ',:|

I think you mean "_drag_ real world negative cultural baggage into game"... and then I disagree within some genres.  But yeah, in my _generic fantasy_ games I don't import Real World baggage.  I create it in the game to fit the races and cultures that exist in the setting (and yes in [-]a few[/-] most cases I do cheat a bit, but I file off the serial numbers).


----------



## Riley37 (Jun 7, 2018)

evileeyore said:


> And it isn't a "let's just push this back to where I'm personally 'indifferent'" it's "Let's push this back to where I'm personally 'comfortable'"....
> <snip>
> Now I don't want anyone to have pineapple on there pizza, 'cuase if even one pizza has pineapple, they all have to pineapple, right?




This metaphor isn't reaching me. Okay, so someone - presumably, someone smug in the righteousness of their ideology, I'm familiar with *that* on both right and left - demands pineapple on all pizza. This is annoying, but not actually a problem, because if *you* order the pizza, you remain free to order pizza which doesn't have pineapple on it. If you're not ordering the pizza, then it's not your decision. If the Pineapple Purists use the authority of the government to *compel* pizzerias to always apply pineapple, *then* there's a problem. Do you have a version of the metaphor which includes the distinction between people expressing an opinion, and people actually constraining someone's behavior?

Real-world example: video game The Witcher. There are people who object to its in-game depiction of race. (You say there were no black people in Poland at the time, as if that were a well-established historical fact. There are some historians who disagree, see note below.) You can still buy The Witcher, you can still play it. Is someone harassing people who play The Witcher? One of Larry Correia's fans recently raised the question, on Correia's site, of how to harass Green Ronin at Origins; is anyone doing anything like that to CD Projekt? Is anyone treating them the way Team Milo treated Leslie Jones?



evileeyore said:


> What part of "I mean they kind of always tried, but now there are enough of them, in positions of power in media and other arenas, that it's an untenable thing." to you didn't mean "Yes, there were always voices, now however..."




In answer to your question, as specifically as I can: the part in question, is the part where you also said "no one got upset". If you could establish an internally consistent position, perhaps we could have a more useful exchange of ideas?



evileeyore said:


> Only to you, because the censorship board isn't likely to come for you.  Yet.  Just wait until your ideology isn't pure enough.




If you have any interest in persuading me - or if not me, perhaps others less stubborn than me - then stop mixing metaphor and fact; use both, if you like, but with clean separation between them. I am aware of *censorship*, as such, in the literal sense, in the USA, mainly in the form of legally mandated limitations of who can sell video games to minors, according to mandatory ratings. (Does the same apply in Canada?) I oppose those limits. I have a strong personal *opinion* about games such as Custer's Revenge (in which the goal is to have the white male avatar rape as many Native women as possible), but I don't want the government *censoring* Custer's Revenge. I want to persuade people not to buy Custer's Revenge; I don't want to use force, neither personally nor by a proxy with a badge and a gun. I haven't formed an opinion on The Witcher, but I want at least as much lassez-faire for The Witcher as for Custer's Revenge.



evileeyore said:


> I wish they had MLK's idealogy.  They don't.  They don't want equality.




Wait, are you seriously accusing Samuel Delany, or Gene Roddenberry, or more recently John Scalzi and GRR Martin (major opponents of Sad/Rabid Puppies), or anyone at WotC or Paizo, of black supremacism? 

Footnote: how white Medieval Europe was, and also Britain, across a range of terrain (Iberia to Poland) and centuries (13th != 15th). So on one hand, you've probably grown up with all-white imagery. Well, I grew up mostly seeing depictions of Moses as white, but knowing what I know now, I am skeptical of the imagery which formed my early conceptions, and I apply that skepticism retroactively and broadly. I mean, it's not an *accident* that so many people depict Moses as pale-skinned and sometimes even blue-eyed. (I don't know *for sure* whether his eyes or skin were brown; I'm just saying, I question the biases of those who chose to "fill in the blank" with white Moses, and same for The Witcher. Anyone who says, from their personal experience, "Germans are almost entirely white" - well, that's true, but if their perceptions of whether exceptions are rare, or merely uncommon, then they should perhaps consider the possibility that *the frequency of those exceptions changed in the 1930s and 1940s.* What they've seen personally is not how it's always been.

https://www.npr.org/sections/codesw...ying-glass-to-the-brown-faces-in-medieval-art

https://www.historians.org/publicat...lems-in-studying-the-role-of-blacks-in-europe


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## Hussar (Jun 7, 2018)

Thomas Bowman said:


> Generally I play D&D to get away from real world politics, not delve into it.
> It is easier to suspend my disbelieve when dealing with imaginary characters. I don't expect players to put on wizard robes or to wear armor at the gaming table, I prefer to use my imagination that to see things and people in costumes with props. My imagination has better costumes and special effects that whatever a player may bring to the gaming table. I don't much like miniatures on maps either. I like to imagine a bunch of characters moving through a dungeon corridor, that to move pieces on a map.




But, that's my point.  How can you "imagine a bunch of characters moving through a dungeon corridor" if you actually have no idea what some of those characters actually look like?  Like, for example, Bob's character being female.  I agree that D&D is all about imagination.  But, imagination is all well and good until what you imagine and what I'm imagining don't line up.  It causes break downs in communication.  And, conversely, if your imagining your character one way, but, not actually presenting that at the table, how do you expect me to be able to imagine anything close to what you are imagining?


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## Sunseeker (Jun 7, 2018)

Hussar said:


> But, that's my point.  How can you "imagine a bunch of characters moving through a dungeon corridor" if you actually have no idea what some of those characters actually look like?  Like, for example, Bob's character being female.  I agree that D&D is all about imagination.  But, imagination is all well and good until what you imagine and what I'm imagining don't line up.  It causes break downs in communication.  And, conversely, if your imagining your character one way, but, not actually presenting that at the table, how do you expect me to be able to imagine anything close to what you are imagining?




Because fundamentally their visual appearance is irrelevant to their mathematics.  An elf is an elf not by its pointy ears, but by it's +2 dex, -2 con and low-light vision.

You don't need to know what the Queen in chess _actually_ looks like.  Only how it can move on the board.


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## Hussar (Jun 7, 2018)

Riley37 said:


> /snip
> 
> https://www.npr.org/sections/codesw...ying-glass-to-the-brown-faces-in-medieval-art
> 
> https://www.historians.org/publicat...lems-in-studying-the-role-of-blacks-in-europe




Those are some fascinating links.  Especially the People of Color in European Art.  Interesting stuff.


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## Hussar (Jun 7, 2018)

Sunseeker said:


> Because fundamentally their visual appearance is irrelevant to their mathematics.  An elf is an elf not by its pointy ears, but by it's +2 dex, -2 con and low-light vision.
> 
> You don't need to know what the Queen in chess _actually_ looks like.  Only how it can move on the board.




I think that's what I was obliquely referencing.  It's roll play vs role play.  If the only thing elven about your character is stat bonus and the ability to see in the dark, that's pretty poor role play, IMO.


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## Hussar (Jun 7, 2018)

The Witcher RPG was mentioned as having push back for not having art that is inclusive.  In all honesty, I haven't been following it at all, and I have no opinion on that particular issue.  I simply don't know anything about it.

But, I am running a campaign using Sasquatch Games Primeval Thule setting.  Now, here's a setting set in a "savage lands" type setting, heavily influenced by the pulps.  It includes a major city state which is primarily peopled by black humans.  Ok, fair enough.  There's some inclusivity.  But, I just skimmed through my Primeval Thule Campaign Setting pdf.  273 pages long filled with lots of pretty darn good art.  

Exactly one image that clearly shows a person of color.  Dozens of images of steely thewed white dudes with their shirts off swinging various implements of war and one and only one image showing anyone who isn't white.  And it's not like this was published ages ago.  PT has only been around for about ten years or less.  Granted, there are a number of images of women, and more than a few of warrior women and chainmail bikinis are not really to be seen.  So, kudos for that.  But, in a setting where you are supposed to be filled with tribal cultures in a fantasy version of Greenland, you'd think you'd see a couple of people that weren't blond and blue eyed.  

So, if you think that it's entirely unreasonable that groups are agitating for more inclusivity, I think you really aren't looking very hard at the art that's still coming out in RPG books.  We've come a long way, but, we've still got some ways to go.


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## Sunseeker (Jun 7, 2018)

Hussar said:


> I think that's what I was obliquely referencing.  It's roll play vs role play.  If the only thing elven about your character is stat bonus and the ability to see in the dark, that's pretty poor role play, IMO.




Some people enjoy more strict roll play.


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## evileeyore (Jun 7, 2018)

Riley37 said:


> This is annoying, but not actually a problem, because if *you* order the pizza, you remain free to order pizza which doesn't have pineapple on it.



Unless, as is the case, those 'smug in their righteousness' are trying to make it illegal, or at least socially unacceptable, to make a pizza without pineapple.



> Do you have a version of the metaphor which includes the distinction between people expressing an opinion, and people actually constraining someone's behavior?



The homophobic makers of wedding cakes have been compelled to accept and make cakes for gays.



> (You say there were no black people in Poland at the time, as if that were a well-established historical fact. There are some historians who disagree, see note below.)



You do realize that when you're discussing a population percentage of less than 0.01% it is okay to say 'none'?  As in, statistically speaking, there were no blacks in Poland during the late medieval and early renaissance.

Or, to quote your sources, "There were a _few hundred_ blacks spread across German, Scandinavia, and Russia...".  No mention of Poland, but I accept there may have been a few in Poland.

This means, it's okay to make a game set in fantasy (or even _historic_) Poland with no blacks.  Further, The Witcher is specifically about Polish culture and folklore... so even if the percentage were to be a whopping whole 1%, it would still be okay to exclude them from game.  Further more, the game is based on the books... so...they stayed true to the source.



> One of Larry Correia's fans recently raised the question, on Correia's site, of how to harass Green Ronin at Origins; is anyone doing anything like that to CD Projekt? Is anyone treating them the way Team Milo treated Leslie Jones?



Yes.  CDPR has been the victim of a campaign of hate from the CNTRL Left.

And from the gaming 'news' media (I know redundant, they mostly are part of the CNTRL Left).  Just google "the witcher no blacks".



> Wait, are you seriously accusing Samuel Delany, or Gene Roddenberry, or more recently John Scalzi and GRR Martin (major opponents of Sad/Rabid Puppies), or anyone at WotC or Paizo, of black supremacism?



Heavy sigh...

Wait, Scalzi?  Hmmm.  Maybe.  I haven't had much dealings with his personal politics aside from Sad Puppies...  He might be an _intersectional_ feminist.



> Footnote: how white Medieval Europe was, and also Britain, across a range of terrain (Iberia to Poland) and centuries (13th != 15th).



There is plenty of racism in Poland.  It's just white skinned folk versus white skinned folk.  Because, that's the breakdown of race in Poland, 99.999% white folk.  Which is part of The Witcher series is about (the elves and dwarves stand in for other white races in The Witcher).






Hussar said:


> I think that's what I was obliquely referencing.  It's roll play vs role play.  If the only thing elven about your character is stat bonus and the ability to see in the dark, that's pretty poor role play, IMO.



Yes, let us round up all the badwrongfun roll-players and treat them appropriately.






Hussar said:


> In all honesty, I haven't been following it at all, and I have no opinion on that particular issue.  I simply don't know anything about it.



So why mention it?

Oh wait, I see it's for a sloppy segue...


> But, I am running a campaign using Sasquatch Games Primeval Thule setting.



Ah, yes.  The most northern of the north, which should be the most Scandinavian of settings...  the type of setting an aware person would expect to be overflowing with white people...



> But, I just skimmed through my Primeval Thule Campaign Setting pdf.  273 pages long filled with lots of pretty darn good art.
> 
> Exactly one image that clearly shows a person of color.



Sigh.



> But, in a setting where you are supposed to be filled with tribal cultures in a *fantasy version of Greenland*, you'd think you'd see a couple of people that weren't blond and blue eyed.



Oh okay, I get it.  You want more Inuits!  I agree.

Damn them for hewing true to Howard, Lovecraft, and Smith's vision of Thule...


Imagine if someone made the game _When We Kings_, set in mythic Wakanda and some 'woke' person came along and complained "But where are all the Hispanics!"



> So, if you think that it's entirely unreasonable that groups are agitating for more inclusivity...



To them I say "Be the change you want to see".  Make the game you want to play.  Create the D&D, Rolemaster, Runescape, HERO, GURPS, etc, setting you want to play in.  Get art for it you want to see.  Publish it.*

If there is a market for it, it will do well and become the forward progress you desire.

But don't demand all [-]pizzas[/-] rpgs have to have [-]pineapple[/-] your PoC of choice [-]on[/-] in it.



* I mean if FATAL can become a published† game, I swear by ZOD _anything_ can.

† For various definitions of published.


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## Thomas Bowman (Jun 7, 2018)

Hussar said:


> But, that's my point.  How can you "imagine a bunch of characters moving through a dungeon corridor" if you actually have no idea what some of those characters actually look like?  Like, for example, Bob's character being female.  I agree that D&D is all about imagination.  But, imagination is all well and good until what you imagine and what I'm imagining don't line up.  It causes break downs in communication.  And, conversely, if your imagining your character one way, but, not actually presenting that at the table, how do you expect me to be able to imagine anything close to what you are imagining?




Whether his character is a man or a woman, it slays the monsters just the same. The D&D rules make no distinction between the sexes on their combat statistics, so a female fighter of the same level and combat abilities can slay a dragon just as easily as a male character could of the same race. If a character dons an item that changes his gender, it has absolutely no effect in combat situations according the D&D rules. Now in reality men on average are stronger than women, but the D&D rules don't reflect this fact, in the interest of fairness. Now if I want to imagine that a male player is playing a female fighter instead of a fighter of his own gender, the combat statistics don't reflect this fact, all he has is a sheet of paper.

However if you have an image like this one to represent a character





This could be a great help in getting it across that your character is a woman, even though the player playing her looks nothing like this! I must admit, I have a fondness for this character, I even created a character sheet for her.
I also liked these characters







of course being a male, I love pictures of pretty women, I could probably play them as a DM, while describing their actions in the third person as NPCs. As player characters representing them as myself would be much harder!


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## Hussar (Jun 7, 2018)

Sunseeker said:


> Some people enjoy more strict roll play.




And that's perfectly fair.  No problems.  Heck, I'm more than guilty of that myself.    OTOH, I don't pretend that it's great role play though.



evileeyore said:


> Yes, let us round up all the badwrongfun roll-players and treat them appropriately.




Nope.  But, let's not pretend that it's great role play either and take me to task for saying, "Hey, that's not great role play when you are roll playing".  I mean, good grief, pretty soon I'll be in trouble for saying rain is wet.


> So why mention it?
> 
> Oh wait, I see it's for a sloppy segue...




I didn't think it was that sloppy, but, fair enough...



> Ah, yes.  The most northern of the north, which should be the most Scandinavian of settings...  the type of setting an aware person would expect to be overflowing with white people...




I don't know what your most northern of the north looks like, but, it sure as hell isn't white.



> Sigh.
> 
> 
> Oh okay, I get it.  You want more Inuits!  I agree.
> ...




Well, if you're going to hew true to Howard and Lovecraft, then you should be ready to take some pushback for a lack of inclusivity.  Both are known for some pretty rabid racism.  



> Imagine if someone made the game _When We Kings_, set in mythic Wakanda and some 'woke' person came along and complained "But where are all the Hispanics!"
> 
> 
> To them I say "Be the change you want to see".  Make the game you want to play.  Create the D&D, Rolemaster, Runescape, HERO, GURPS, etc, setting you want to play in.  Get art for it you want to see.  Publish it.*
> ...




Yes, because we shouldn't ever make any criticism ever of anything because _someone _likes it?  Seriously?  We aren't supposed to vote with our wallets at all?  We should simply be silent and never say anything simply because someone else happens to like it?  No thanks.  I'm sorry if you feel put upon when something you happen to like is held up as an example of racism or misogyny but, maybe, just maybe, listening to _why _ it's being held up might help.  After all, in Primeval Thule, a significant percentage of the population of Thule IS BLACK.  An entire NATION of black people live on the Thule continent.  But, apparently, it's bad to actually _show _ that in the art because I'm apparently forcing you to eat pineapple?  

I'm actually rather baffled by why you even argue this after I posted the fact that there IS an entire city state of black individuals in the setting which are not, other than a single image out of hundreds, represented at all in any of the books.


----------



## Hussar (Jun 7, 2018)

Thomas Bowman said:


> Whether his character is a man or a woman, it slays the monsters just the same. The D&D rules make no distinction between the sexes on their combat statistics, so a female fighter of the same level and combat abilities can slay a dragon just as easily as a male character could of the same race. If a character dons an item that changes his gender, it has absolutely no effect in combat situations according the D&D rules. Now in reality men on average are stronger than women, but the D&D rules don't reflect this fact, in the interest of fairness. Now if I want to imagine that a male player is playing a female fighter instead of a fighter of his own gender, the combat statistics don't reflect this fact, all he has is a sheet of paper.
> 
> However if you have an image like this one to represent a character
> 
> ...




Hey, here's another example of someone arguing that since the rules don't make any distinction, then we shouldn't make any distinction in how we play the character.  I was told earlier upthread that no one ever makes this argument.


----------



## Riley37 (Jun 7, 2018)

Sunseeker said:


> You don't need to know what the Queen in chess _actually_ looks like.  Only how it can move on the board.




That depends on what each of us wants from TRPG. You, with your goals, don't have that need. But you have no authority on what Hussar wants and needs, nor on what I want and need.

If Hussar's fullest enjoyment of TRPG includes visualization of the party, and not just treating them as abstract statblocks, then I wish Hussar luck in finding fellow gamers who are willing to play with that level of detail and visualization. If he enjoys D&D better with a hand-drawn illustration of each PC, then that too is his way. If you do not share his way, then leave it to him, but don't tell him what he does or doesn't need from gaming, eh?


----------



## Bagpuss (Jun 7, 2018)

evileeyore said:


> The homophobic makers of wedding cakes have been compelled to accept and make cakes for gays.




That recently got overturned in the Supreme Court.

Supreme Court rules for Colorado baker in same-sex wedding cake case - although the ruling was very narrow and doesn't set a precedent. Gay wedding cake ruling reaffirms that businesses can't discriminate something along the lines of an Artist (which the cake decorator in this case is) cannot be forced to make something they object to.



> And from the gaming 'news' media (I know redundant, they mostly are part of the CNTRL Left).  Just google "the witcher no blacks".




I think what they had from the media was mild compared to Kingdom Come Deliverance.


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## Bagpuss (Jun 7, 2018)

Dannyalcatraz said:


> This thread is 13 years old.  The post I responded to pointed out that we’ve had @150 new posts this year, with a fair bit of..._heat._
> 
> But unless someone noted the poll totals before those new posts, we have no idea whether or not the results in this thread’s polls have shifted any.  And if they did, in which direction.




Doh! Missed this was a case of thread necromancy. Perhaps we should have a fresh poll, although I think we could do with some better worded questions.

Still not sure what you meant by retrenchment in this instance, and what evidence there is for it.


----------



## evileeyore (Jun 7, 2018)

Hussar said:


> I don't know what your most northern of the north looks like, but, it sure as hell isn't white.



I... eh... what?

You don't consider the Nords to be white?  By the time of Lovecraft and Howard, Thule was pretty much considered to be Norway (versus earlier accounts putting it more towards Greenland _or_ Iceland).



> Well, if you're going to hew true to Howard and Lovecraft, then you should be ready to take some pushback for a lack of inclusivity.  Both are known for some pretty rabid racism.



I'll grant you that.



> Yes, because we shouldn't ever make any criticism ever of anything because _someone _likes it?  Seriously?  We aren't supposed to vote with our wallets at all?



That's not what I said at all, but thanks for the strawman.  I said "make what you want, don't _demand_ others change their product to suit you".

And definitely vote with your wallet.  You did, and that means more products that are mostly "images of steely thewed white dudes with their shirts off...".  I mean you bought it right?


And mea culpa:  I missed this line in your previous post "It includes a major city state which is primarily peopled by black humans."

I'm going to guess (hope) that the one black dude was in the same section detailing the black city state?  Were the white dudes all flexing in sections detailing white dude city-states?



> After all, in Primeval Thule, a significant percentage of the population of Thule IS BLACK.



What's the population percentage?  Eight white city-state/nations to one black city-state/nation?  Hundreds?



> ... black individuals in the setting which are not, other than a single image out of hundreds, represented at all in any of the books.



Is it dozens of images or hundreds?  Earlier you claimed 'one out of dozens' across 273 pages.  But if each page ('hungreds') has an image... and I expect Black Nation takes more than one page to discuss...  then yeah, I can see your point.






Bagpuss said:


> That recently got overturned in the Supreme Court.
> 
> Supreme Court rules for Colorado baker in same-sex wedding cake case - although the ruling was very narrow and doesn't set a precedent. Gay wedding cake ruling reaffirms that businesses can't discriminate something along the lines of an Artist (which the cake decorator in this case is) cannot be forced to make something they object to.



Neat.  I've been ignoring politics since the election as hard as I can.



> I think what they had from the media was mild compared to Kingdom Come Deliverance.



Agreed.  I just didn't want to discuss them as that would mean mentioning Daniel Vavra and things could turn ugly fast.


----------



## Lylandra (Jun 7, 2018)

Regarding the games (KC and Witcher): Based on the demographics of medieval europe, they had reasons to both add or omit non-white characters. Adding one or two PoC doesn't change your statistics that much, even if 99.9% of all medieval polish/boehmian people were white. Especially if you could customize your PC... why not give the player the choice to play as a moor? Or, heck, why not give the player the choice to play as a woman? 

Regarding statistics, I had to laugh a lot about the "almost all Germans are white" perception. Err, no. Not in urban areas. True, we don't have as many black people as other countries, but we do have a lot of other people with a darker skin color.
I did look up Poland as well and even they have a fair amount of romanic people, as well as armenians, turks and chinese people.  

Regarding the cultural baggage: By this I mean I don't import the colonial history of black-skinned people into my worlds. There might be colonialism, or aspects thereof, but in a wholly different context. Same thing with prejudices and biases. Some Minotaur tribes might not get along with their Hobgoblin neighbors because they think of them as stupid barbarians. I also free my worlds of any underlying idea of assumed patriarchy as default. This doesn't mean there are no male-dominated or female-dominated cultures out there. But if I add these aspects, then they are deliberate design choices.


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## Bagpuss (Jun 7, 2018)

Hussar said:


> Those are some fascinating links.  Especially the People of Color in European Art.  Interesting stuff.




There evidence that the Roman's had an 500 strong African Legion stationed at Hadrian's Wall. Certainly by the medieval period there were many people of African decent in Europe. Ethiopia had embassies in Spain, France and Italy by the late medieval period, which implies there was probably enough contact to and interests to support them prior to that.

I think there is enough evidence that if you want to include a PoC in any historical RPG set in Europe you can probably come up with an excuse for it.

I recently (Nov last year), had some discussion with Neil Gow the author of Duty and Honour (a great little RPG set during the Napoleonic Wars), he is planning on a 2nd Edition, and was thinking about how to make it more inclusive. His initial post was about having a sort of optional Alternative History mode where you could have female red coats and the like. Now you might think Pineapple on every pizza! But remember it is optional, and besides I pointed out it doesn't need to be alternate history to be inclusive.

While you might think of the Napoleonic British army as all white men, actually Black British soldiers fought at many battles, and women weren't just camp followers, women cross dressed to fight along side men in British Army. There are also historical accounts of people that transitioned from male to female. So if you have a player that wants to play whatever sex or ethnicity they want you just need to use a little imagination. I think basically give the GM suggestions for how to be more inclusive, be it the character being an exception the to general rule (as heroes often are), or going full alternative history is the way to go.

History isn't as straight and white as it tended to be taught or portrayed, I think it is great designers are thinking about being inclusive in this sort of way. While at the same time I'm still concerned that some elements of the RPG community would probably want to remove images like the Dragon covers Thomas Bowman for being too revealing. Can't we have room for both? Pineapple and more traditional toppings?


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## Riley37 (Jun 7, 2018)

evileeyore said:


> Unless, as is the case, those 'smug in their righteousness' are trying to make it illegal, or at least socially unacceptable, to make a pizza without pineapple.




You say that as if I had not already raised the same point, in the same post, a few lines away. Also as if I hadn't referenced the J.S. Mills essay "On Liberty" several times, on EN World, in the last month or two. "illegal" and "socially unacceptable" are both significant and they are NOT the same thing, nor is it merely a difference of degree. 



evileeyore said:


> The homophobic makers of wedding cakes have been compelled to accept and make cakes for gays.




That indeed answers my question of a real-world example. Whether that's a good thing or bad thing is a topic of ongoing debate. There has also been debate about "right to refuse service to anyone" on the axis of race; there was a time when a black person driving from, say, Chicago to San Francisco, might experience difficulty if no one along the way would sell fuel or food to anyone black. IMO answers to such questions on the axis of race are often, but not always, useful precedents for parallel questions on the axis of sexuality. But before we go much further into the details, remember that this is a multi-national discussion, run from Canada, and the rulings of courts in the USA are not everyone's context.



evileeyore said:


> You do realize that when you're discussing a population percentage of less than 0.01% it is okay to say 'none'?  As in, statistically speaking, there were no blacks in Poland during the late medieval and early renaissance.... <snip> This means, it's okay to make a game set in fantasy (or even _historic_) Poland with no blacks.  Further, The Witcher is specifically about Polish culture and folklore... so even if the percentage were to be a whopping whole 1%, it would still be okay to exclude them from game.  Further more, the game is based on the books... so...they stayed true to the source.




Two points, A and B.

(A) The storyline of Witcher series is not, in its own words, set in a Poland or Poland-analogue which is somehow isolated from the rest of humanity. 
Letho: "Nah, had it with these swamps. Need a change of scenery. Zerrikania, maybe?"
Geralt: "I've heard they have striped horses there."

Striped horses, hunh? Gee, where are there animals which one might describe as "striped horses"? Is it a place where Bad Guys come from, such as Azar Javed? That's a Persian name. I guess Zerrikania is "everywhere south or southeast of Poland, and non-Poles are all the same to me." If a Turk or Roma wandered into historical Poland, would they become a Zerrikanian in The Witcher? Is it true that the only good Zerrikanian is a dead Zerrikanian? (shrug) That's an artistic decision, and since I don't want censorship of "Custer's Revenge", I also don't want censorship of The Witcher.

(B) Whether it's ethical for Poles to decide "only Poles count as characters in the story of our nation", is debatable. It echoes the direct parallel of Germany deciding that only Aryan Germans count as characters in the story of their nation, which became German policy in the 1930s. Ethnic cleansing followed from that decision, as inevitably as night follows day. Some Poles supported, and others resisted, German enforcement of that policy in Poland. That is, some Poles told the Reich where to find Turks, Roma, Jews, Ethiopians and other non-Poles, while other Poles helped such people hide. It is currently illegal, in Poland, to publicly name the Poles who actively participated in that process. So, to answer your question exactly as asked: no, I do NOT realize that it's okay to treat 1% or .1% or .01% as zero, in a nation where *actual conversion to zero* is a few generations in the past, a nation which legally prohibits a full discussion of that past. The difference between "there are very few of us" and "there are NONE of us" matters more, to the families involved, than it matters to you. I *still* don't want government censorship of The Witcher. 



evileeyore said:


> Yes.  CDPR has been the victim of a campaign of hate from the CNTRL Left.




I keep raising, and you keep ignoring, the distinction between "people expressing their opinions in editorials, reviews, or social media posts" versus "harassment by methods such as death threats, rape threats, hacking the target's accounts or websites, and/or doxxing the target's personal information." Do you see symmetry between how the harshest people on the Left treat CD Projekt, versus how the harshest people on the Right treat targets such as Leslie Jones, Felicia Day, or more recently, Kelly Marie Tran? 



evileeyore said:


> Imagine if someone made the game _When We Kings_, set in mythic Wakanda and some 'woke' person came along and complained "But where are all the Hispanics!"




Okay, I imagined that. I would respond: the movie "Black Panther" DIRECTLY ADDRESSES THAT AS A MORAL QUESTION. Wakandans turn away any Hispanics who show up on the border, and prevent them from passing through the non-rural parts of Wakanda, such as the capital city. Anyone who asks such a question, isn't literally "woke"; he must have slept through the multiple scenes in which T'Challa explicitly discusses whether this policy is necessary and ethical. Duh. Where in Andrzej Sapkowski's stories does Geralt discuss the existence and status of non-Polish humans, in such direct terms, and as a moral issue?



evileeyore said:


> But don't demand all [-]pizza[/-] has to have [-]pineapple[/-] your PoC of choice [-]on[/-] in it.




Indeed, I make no such *demands*. There's no gorram way a penny's gonna go from my pocket, to the publisher of a game with an ethno-nationalist storyline; "never forget, never again" runs deep in my values; but that's my personal choice.

So when you say that there's "a campaign of hate from the CNTRL Left", to what extent does that campaign include death threats, rape threats, hacking the target's accounts or websites, and/or doxxing anyone's personal information?


----------



## Bagpuss (Jun 7, 2018)

Lylandra said:


> Especially if you could customize your PC... why not give the player the choice to play as a moor?




Because it raises a whole lot of issues, if part of your goal is historical accuracy. A moor would most likely be treated differently by the NPCs than a white man in the same situation, same with a woman.

You need to record a whole load of extra dialogue, and produce a lot more art assets, it's not as simple as just changing the skin tone.



> Or, heck, why not give the player the choice to play as a woman?




I think that is planned as free DLC for Kingdom Come. Because you know how a woman would be treated completely differently by society at that time, thus it needs to be a completely different storyline, it isn't just a case of reskinning the character model, so it takes time and more money.

Now in a fantasy setting where racism and sexism don't exist then year go ahead and just change the skin tone add a few art assets for women, and you are probably good to go. Only that isn't the case because black skin needs lighting differently than white skin, African and Asian facial features aren't the same European facial features, so it isn't as simple as adding a skin tone slider.

Or you know you can really it like FarCry 5, where even when you can play as a woman some of the voice lines continue to use male pronouns for you.

Added a female character or a different race costs money (thankfully for most games not much), but to do it well will cost even more, especially for story and character driven games where who the character is matters, in fantasy MMO's and games that really are just an excuse to get a multiplayer shooter out then not so much since there isn't tons of dialogue to rerecord.

Thankfully in tabletop RPGs we don't need to worry about these budgetary things as it is "theater of the mind".


----------



## Eltab (Jun 7, 2018)

Umbran said:


> So, next time, don't do it.  Thanks.



Your instruction noted.


----------



## Eltab (Jun 7, 2018)

Bagpuss said:


> That recently got overturned in the Supreme Court.



Yah, and the very short version of the decision can be applied widely:

Don't be the monster you claim you are trying to slay.


----------



## Eltab (Jun 7, 2018)

Bagpuss said:


> I think there is enough evidence that if you want to include a PoC in any historical RPG set in Europe you can probably come up with an excuse for it.



Shakespeare wrote Othello as a Moor, and gave him a (brief) backstory.

He also wrote everybody else commenting on the fact that Othello WAS a Moor, to the point that reading it is repetitious.  But if the actor playing the part wasn't Moorish (so no visual cues provided), the reminders make sense.

Were I producing the play today, I'd look for a talented actor who hopefully also looks the part, and remove the comment from all characters except Iago (the villain).  Iago's motivation is already murky, and if my audience decides "Iago's not just a selfish conniving manipulator, he's also an all-around jerk" that's OK by me.


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## Bagpuss (Jun 7, 2018)

Eltab said:


> But if the actor playing the part wasn't Moorish (so no visual cues provided), the reminders make sense.




You really don't think they wouldn't have used blackface back then? They still use it today in parts of Europe to represent Moors.


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## Eltab (Jun 7, 2018)

Bagpuss said:


> You really don't think they wouldn't have used blackface back then? They still use it today in parts of Europe to represent Moors.




I don't know when blackface was first / widely used - before The Bard or after him.  Do you have a date (or era)?


----------



## billd91 (Jun 7, 2018)

Bagpuss said:


> That recently got overturned in the Supreme Court.
> 
> Supreme Court rules for Colorado baker in same-sex wedding cake case - although the ruling was very narrow and doesn't set a precedent. Gay wedding cake ruling reaffirms that businesses can't discriminate something along the lines of an Artist (which the cake decorator in this case is) cannot be forced to make something they object to.




Well, that's a wrong reading. They overturned nothing about the rules governing discrimination against gays looking to buy wedding cakes. The decision affirmed the rights of gays to not be excluded. What the case was decided on, very narrowly, was the prejudicial attitude of the commission toward the baker's religious objections to making a cake for a gay wedding. It wasn't about artistry - it was ultimately about procedure. It's more akin to a convicted criminal having their conviction vacated because the court followed inappropriate procedure - such as a judge issuing blatantly biased instructions to a jury.


----------



## Bagpuss (Jun 7, 2018)

Eltab said:


> I don't know when blackface was first / widely used - before The Bard or after him.  Do you have a date (or era)?




All the references I can find seems to point to Othello being played in blackface by a white actor from it's inception, and that it was common even before then. 

http://black-face.com/blackface-history.htm - No references unfortunately. So could be entirely made up, but this podcast discussing it has images of blackfaced actors from the 18th century.


----------



## Dannyalcatraz (Jun 7, 2018)

> What the case was decided on, very narrowly, was the prejudicial attitude of the commission toward the baker's religious objections to making a cake for a gay wedding.




And by my reading of that case, even that was a supreme (NPI) stretch.  Some of the statements quoted by The Court as exemplars of hostility were actually demonstrably provable statements of fact.

I will also note that legal experts on the left and the right- even those on Fox’s payroll- have basically said it was a dangerous case.  That case could be taught in future ConLaw classes as historically bad.


----------



## Lanefan (Jun 7, 2018)

Riley37 said:


> But before we go much further into the details, remember that this is a multi-national discussion, run from Canada, and the rulings of courts in the USA are not everyone's context.



Nitpick: unless Southampton somehow recently underwent a very significant relocation, this is actually run from the UK.

Which does raise an interesting question: it'd be interesting to see a breakdown of what countries ENWorlders are from.  It's pretty obvious the large majority are from the US, but after that...?

 [MENTION=52905]darjr[/MENTION] , got any stats on this?

And it's relevant not just for quasi-political discussions like this. In quite a few gaming discussions recently I've been noticing* significant trends by area or region, one example being that tables in the UK seem to use minis/grids much less than tables in North America.

* - though this may simply be a badly-failed perception and-or interpretation check on my part... 

Lanefan


----------



## Sunseeker (Jun 7, 2018)

Riley37 said:


> That depends on what each of us wants from TRPG. You, with your goals, don't have that need. But you have no authority on what Hussar wants and needs, nor on what I want and need.
> 
> If Hussar's fullest enjoyment of TRPG includes visualization of the party, and not just treating them as abstract statblocks, then I wish Hussar luck in finding fellow gamers who are willing to play with that level of detail and visualization. If he enjoys D&D better with a hand-drawn illustration of each PC, then that too is his way. If you do not share his way, then leave it to him, but don't tell him what he does or doesn't need from gaming, eh?




I wasn't suggesting that Hussar didn't need to know it.  I was suggesting that non-rule-based visuals are an optional extra.


----------



## darjr (Jun 7, 2018)

Here are the top 10 geo for an unspecified time frame.


----------



## aramis erak (Jun 8, 2018)

Bagpuss said:


> Does that really put you off playing someone that doesn't share your own gender/ethnic/sexuality identity?




Gender/SI? ABSOLUTELY DOES. 

getting it "wrong"  often results in accusations of parody or even hate. Far far more often than mild ethnic does. And at least as often as not, by persons _not of that identity_. 

People see and understand ethnic stereotypes of the milder versions as simplifications of truths, rather than parodies. 

And, let's be honest, pretty much ANY ethnic identity is built around adhering to certain stereotypes/archetypes.


----------



## aramis erak (Jun 8, 2018)

Lylandra said:


> Regarding the cultural baggage: By this I mean I don't import the colonial history of black-skinned people into my worlds. There might be colonialism, or aspects thereof, but in a wholly different context. Same thing with prejudices and biases. Some Minotaur tribes might not get along with their Hobgoblin neighbors because they think of them as stupid barbarians.




Depending upon the ruleset, those hobgoblins may, as physiology, be statistically significantly less intelligent than the minotaurs and/or humans. After all, some game worlds do assign penalties to Goblinoid intellect... and bonuses to minotaurs.

All the justifications used erroneously (due to conflation of education with intelligence in the 16th to 20th centuries) for colonization and/or enslavement may be factually supported by the game mechanics preventing intellect from the same range of values.

In a way, I kind of miss the days when only Elves were Int 19, and only dwarves hit con 20... but I sure don't miss the clunky mechanics not Gygaxian spew.


----------



## evileeyore (Jun 8, 2018)

Riley37 said:


> Also as if I hadn't referenced the J.S. Mills essay "On Liberty" several times, on EN World, in the last month or two.



Why would I know this?  I've interacted with you in two threads now.

Also, half of what I say isn't directed at a singular poster, but often to a larger audience.  You know, everyone else here.



> "illegal" and "socially unacceptable" are both significant and they are NOT the same thing...



This is true.



> ...nor is it merely a difference of degree.



This is false.

While there is a difference between "censored by the government" and "censored by society", either way the end is the same, your voice is not heard.



> But before we go much further into the details, remember that this is a multi-national discussion, *run from Canada*, and the rulings of courts in the USA are not everyone's context.



Canada has nothing to do with this board aside from the statistically insignificant number* of posters.

Morrus lives in the UK and the board is hosted in Coral Gables, Florida USA.


And that last bit is important.  If the board were run in the UK I wouldn't be in here talking about anything.


* For comedies sake, 1 in 12 is insignificant.  



> (A) The storyline of Witcher series is not, in its own words, set in a Poland or Poland-analogue...



Yes, actually it is.  The entirety of the story takes place in 'mythic Poland analogue *'.


*AFAIKT.  There may be dlc or sidequests or stories or what not.  But as far as I've uncovered in my quick research, it's all set in the "Northern Kingdoms", aka mythic Poland analogue.



> ...which is somehow isolated from the rest of humanity.



No one had ever made that claim.

Regardless of the existence of the middle-eastern looking Zerrikanians, they have no place in the story*, which is centered around Geralt and his travels and travails.


* Aside from one Zerrikanian sorcerer in the first game (so far).



> I guess Zerrikania is "everywhere south or southeast of Poland



That would probably actually be Nilfgaard.



> ...and non-Poles are all the same to me."  If a Turk or Roma wandered into historical Poland, would they become a Zerrikanian in The Witcher? Is it true that the only good Zerrikanian is a dead Zerrikanian? (shrug)



That's a lot of reaching.  An awful lot.



> (B) Whether it's ethical for Poles to decide "only Poles count as characters in the story of our nation", is debatable.



How very monolithic of you.  As though a few Poles making a decision on a how they want to write a story is the entirety of all Poles.

Also, it is completely ethical for a few individuals to write that way.



> It echoes the direct parallel of Germany deciding that only Aryan Germans count as characters in the story of their nation...



Not even close.



> It is currently illegal, in Poland, to publicly name the Poles who actively participated in that process.



That's actually false.  It's illegal to call Poland, the Polish people as a whole, and the Polish state "complicit in the holocaust".

It is perfectly legal tp accuse individual Poles of complicity with the Nazis, and the body that created the law and the PM who signed the law, have stated it's purpose quite loudly.



> So, to answer your question exactly as asked: no, I do NOT realize that it's okay to treat 1% or .1% or .01% as zero, in a nation where *actual conversion to zero* is a few generations in the past...



Well, I've now informed you that it's okay.



> I keep raising, and you keep ignoring, the distinction between "people expressing their opinions in editorials, reviews, or social media posts" versus "harassment by methods such as death threats, rape threats, hacking the target's accounts or websites, and/or doxxing the target's personal information."



Because all of that happebed to the developers at CDPR (and Warhorse Studios).



> Do you see symmetry between how the harshest people on the Left treat CD Projekt...



You mean the the death threats, doxxing, etc....



> ...versus how the harshest people on the Right[1] treat targets such as Leslie Jones, Felicia Day, or more recently, Kelly Marie Tran[2]?



1 - Eh.  Not everyone throwing hate at Tran (and the others) is Right.  I'm sure there are plenty of lefties throwing as much hate at her (and the others) for no good reason (because that's how people operate).  It's not her fault the character stank and is one of the worst things in the movie.  She did a good job.

2 - Did CDPR (or Warhorse Studios) receive the vast outpouring of love from the journos after they were hounded, lied about, received death threats, doxxs, harassment, etc?

Of source not, since half the hounding and lies were by those very same journos.




> Okay, I imagined that. I would respond: the movie "Black Panther" DIRECTLY ADDRESSES THAT AS A MORAL QUESTION. Wakandans turn away any Hispanics who show up on the border, and prevent them from passing through the non-rural parts of Wakanda, such as the capital city.



Way to miss the point.

The point is (taking Black Panther as our example), that the movie is about the trials and tribulations of a black hero, in a completely* black ethno-state, and what he deals with mostly in that state.

That there are no Hispanics is perfectly okay and anyone crying about it is 'asleep'.

Exactly the point I'm making for the Witcher (and KCD).  People crying about the lack of their favored skin tone are missing the point of the setting and the story.


* Yes, I'm ignoring the single white guy who lives there and the other white guy brought in by the black hero.  Less than 0.01% is beyond statistically insignificant.  Beyond that, there were no Hispanics, so "Where's the Latinos at?" guy is still on point.



> Where in Andrzej Sapkowski's stories does Geralt discuss the existence and status of non-Polish humans, in such direct terms, and as a moral issue?



Don't know, never read them.  Don't care either as it isn't something I find to be a worrying absence.



> There's no gorram way a penny's gonna go from my pocket, to the publisher of a game with an ethno-nationalist storyline; "never forget, never again" runs deep in my values; but that's my personal choice.



But you watched Black Panther (an ethno-nationalist storyline) didn't you?  Do you not see the hypocrisy?



> So when you say that there's "a campaign of hate from the CNTRL Left", to what extent does that campaign include death threats, rape threats, hacking the target's accounts or websites, and/or doxxing anyone's personal information?



All of it.






Lanefan said:


> Nitpick: unless Southampton somehow recently underwent a very significant relocation, this is actually run from the UK.



By way of Coral Gables.  


And I'll echo a "Thanks darjr!"  Nice work there.


----------



## Lanefan (Jun 8, 2018)

evileeyore said:


> Canada has nothing to do with this board aside from the statistically insignificant number* of posters.



I am not insignificant, nor do I have any intention of becoming so, thank you very much. 



> Morrus lives in the UK and the board is hosted in Coral Gables, Florida USA.
> 
> And that last bit is important.  If the board were run in the UK I wouldn't be in here talking about anything.



Which leads me to ask, what difference does it make whether the board's servers are in the US, the UK, Canada, or <insert some other random country here>.  The board's owner is in the UK, which AFAIC makes this a UK-based board.



> 1 - Eh.  Not everyone throwing hate at Tran (and the others) is Right.  I'm sure there are plenty of lefties throwing as much hate at her (and the others) for no good reason (because that's how people operate).  It's not her fault the character stank and is one of the worst things in the movie.  She did a good job.



This is something I absolutely do not understand, why she's getting such abuse.  Both she and her character were, in my view, excellent in the movie.



> But you watched Black Panther (an ethno-nationalist storyline) didn't you?  Do you not see the hypocrisy?



I watched Black Panther and though it was a fine bit of entertainment.  In so doing I also cast aside any real-world politics and-or other considerations in favour of placing the story in the Marvel-world.



> And I'll echo a "Thanks darjr!"  Nice work there.



Ditto from here! 

Lanefan


----------



## Lylandra (Jun 8, 2018)

aramis erak said:


> Depending upon the ruleset, those hobgoblins may, as physiology, be statistically significantly less intelligent than the minotaurs and/or humans. After all, some game worlds do assign penalties to Goblinoid intellect... and bonuses to minotaurs.
> 
> All the justifications used erroneously (due to conflation of education with intelligence in the 16th to 20th centuries) for colonization and/or enslavement may be factually supported by the game mechanics preventing intellect from the same range of values.
> 
> In a way, I kind of miss the days when only Elves were Int 19, and only dwarves hit con 20... but I sure don't miss the clunky mechanics not Gygaxian spew.




Err... I'm really not sure whether we'd want to go down that pit. Really.


----------



## Hussar (Jun 8, 2018)

EvilEyore said:
			
		

> The point is (taking Black Panther as our example), that the movie is about the trials and tribulations of a black hero, in a completely* black ethno-state, and what he deals with mostly in that state.
> 
> That there are no Hispanics is perfectly okay and anyone crying about it is 'asleep'.
> 
> Exactly the point I'm making for the Witcher (and KCD). People crying about the lack of their favored skin tone are missing the point of the setting and the story.




Wow.  Seriously?  "This one movie with an all black cast doesn't have other ethnicities in it, so, why should any other work attempt to bring in other ethnicities"?  That's the argument you want to make?  Talk about missing the point.  If I want to find a fantasy work with an all white cast, I can find thousands, literally thousands.  The existence of a tiny, tiny number of works that feature a single minority cast does not somehow excuse that.

IOW, there's a reasonable historical argument that you can make to add in various ethnicities into a work.  And there's a pretty darn strong moral one as well.  Playing the, "Well, if they don't do it, then I don't have to" card is incredibly tone deaf.


----------



## pemerton (Jun 8, 2018)

Black Panther doesn't have an all-Black cast. It has a pretty well-known white British actor in a pretty major role. Whether that's a good or bad thing is probably something on which opinions differ.

I'm also pretty surprised to find defence of the Polish "anti-defamation" law in this thread. I don't think that current trends in Polish politics and government are very helpful in thinking about how to handle issues of sex and gender in RPGing.


----------



## evileeyore (Jun 8, 2018)

Lanefan said:


> Which leads me to ask, what difference does it make whether the board's servers are in the US, the UK, Canada, or <insert some other random country here>.  The board's owner is in the UK, which AFAIC makes this a UK-based board.



Note:  I'm not conversant with how cross-jurisdictional laws work... but anyway, my take:

If the boards were locate in the UK, the UK laws _might_ take precedent on posts posted here... in which case I wouldn't feel safe posting here.  The UK has taken a dark turn _away_ from freedom of speech.



> This is something I absolutely do not understand, why she's getting such abuse.



I agree.  Or rather... I understand why she's getting harassed, but I think it's terrible and the harassers are stupid and wrong.



> Both she and her character were, in my view, excellent in the movie.



Aaaand here we disagree.  She did a great job acting the role... but Rose is just a terrible character.



> I watched Black Panther and though it was a fine bit of entertainment.  In so doing I also cast aside any real-world politics and-or other considerations in favour of placing the story in the Marvel-world.



Mmmm...  agreed.  I was still informed by Real WorldTM politics and thus how they chose to portray real world concerns, but thought they did a great job of it.






Hussar said:


> Wow.  Seriously?  "This one movie with an all black cast doesn't have other ethnicities in it, so, why should any other work attempt to bring in other ethnicities"?



That's not what I said at all, but you shine on you crazy diamond.



> The existence of a tiny, tiny number of works that feature a single minority cast does not somehow excuse that.



Tiny number?  Okay now, I was taken to task over my "less 0.01% is equal to zero", so I'm fine taking you to task here.

I suppose you think that Africa doesn't make movies?  That the only movies that exist are made by the US?  _Are you kidding me?_



> IOW, there's a reasonable historical argument that you can make to add in various ethnicities into a work.



Sure... but if it doesn't add anything of significance while costing resources, then I do not agree that it is 'necessary'.

Especially int he case where you'd literally be adding one or two into crowds of hundreds.



> And there's a pretty darn strong moral one as well.



No there isn't.

Or rather, there is no moral argument to adding blacks to either The Witcher or KCD.  To Primeval Thule on the other hand...


----------



## Sadras (Jun 8, 2018)

When was the last time we saw some Blacks, Hispanic and Asian Nazi's in a WW2 PC game?   ....crickets....

EDIT: As magnificent as Idris Elba is, he does not have to be included in every period-styled/influenced game or movie.


----------



## Bagpuss (Jun 8, 2018)

darjr said:


> Here are the top 10 geo for an unspecified time frame.
> View attachment 98212




I compared these with actual population of the countries. 

USA 0.043%
Canada 0.054%
UK 0.028%
Australia 0.04%
New Zealand 0.038%

The percentages are small and significantly smaller for non English speaking ones, as you would expect.

For example Brazil is 0.003%

Wonder why the UK is so much smaller? From my personal accadotal experience, the UK doesn't seem to be as focused on D&D as the USA appears to be. Many RPG Cons I've seen in the UK have no D&D run at all for example, is that the same in the US?


----------



## Lylandra (Jun 8, 2018)

Sadras said:


> When was the last time we saw some Blacks, Hispanic and Asian Nazi's in a WW2 PC game?   ....crickets....



You do realize that there are lots and lots of reasons for that? Also, there are enough games, movies etc. out there that deal with all the major axis powers (including the Japanese), even if they tend to exclude brief members (Romania, Iraq...)

On a second thought, we did get Nazi aliens in Star Trek... twice!


----------



## Bagpuss (Jun 8, 2018)

Lanefan said:


> Which leads me to ask, what difference does it make whether the board's servers are in the US, the UK, Canada, or <insert some other random country here>.  The board's owner is in the UK, which AFAIC makes this a UK-based board.




The speech laws in the UK suck. 



> I watched Black Panther and though it was a fine bit of entertainment.  In so doing I also cast aside any real-world politics and-or other considerations in favour of placing the story in the Marvel-world.




Weird, as Black Panther and to greater extent Marvel comics (and some of it's other films) are comments on real-world politics.


----------



## Bagpuss (Jun 8, 2018)

Sadras said:


> When was the last time we saw some Blacks, Hispanic and Asian Nazi's in a WW2 PC game?   ....crickets....




Call of Duty World War 2, is famously so progressive it has black Nazis, so about seven months ago.


----------



## Riley37 (Jun 8, 2018)

evileeyore said:


> Why would I know this?  I've interacted with you in two threads now.




When I make a point, and then make an aside, and you respond vehemently to the aside, then we can tell you're dodging the point. You might be fooling yourself, but not anyone else.



evileeyore said:


> While there is a difference between "censored by the government" and "censored by society", either way the end is the same, your voice is not heard.




Go on, tell Boris Pasternak and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn that being imprisoned is the same outcome as being disinvited as a convention's Guest of Honor. Tell Derek Black that widespread social disapproval of Stormfront has the same outcome as a government-enforced shut-down of Stormfront. You've demonstrated your ratio of ideology to objective reality; from here on, the rest is trivial.



evileeyore said:


> Because all of that happebed to the developers at CDPR




Strong claims require strong evidence. Where's your evidence of anyone sending death threats, rape threats, or doxxing personal information? I'm aware of one attempt to squeeze money out of CDPR, via a threat of publishing their game content. That's not the same as what happened to Felicia Day or Leslie Jones, neither in kind nor in volume.



evileeyore said:


> Not everyone throwing hate at Tran (and the others) is Right.  I'm sure there are plenty of lefties throwing as much hate at her (and the others) for no good reason (because that's how people operate).




Strong claims require strong evidence. "I'm sure" and "that's how people operate" are not strong evidence. 

I followed that link you provided, about the "Amended Act on the Institute of National Remembrance". The details provided in that link don't match your summary. On one hand, the Polish Minister of Justice said "There will be no punishment for witnesses of history, scholars or journalists who quote painful facts from our history." Such a reassuring declaration! On another hand, if you watch whether the walk matches the talk - it doesn't. There's already a case in progress, against an Argentine newspaper, Pagina 12, for an article about the Jedwabne pogrom, a 1941 massacre of more than 300 Jews by their Polish neighbors during the Nazi occupation.

In the Polish Nationalist version of the Official Story, anything bad was done entirely by either the occupying Reich, or by the subsequent Soviet occupation, and there's not a drop of blood on Poland's collective hands. The ruling Polish nationalist party isn't tolerating divergence from the Official Story. Oh, those pesky historical facts, they so often conflict with Official Stories...



evileeyore said:


> Don't care either as it isn't something I find to be a worrying absence.




Wow. So you don't see any importance, in whether Geralt considers the life of a non-Polish human as equal in value to the life of a Polish human. Well then. Some Polish people, in Warsaw under the Reich, shared your opinion, and did not find the disappearance of Turks, Roma, Jews, etc. to be a worrying absence. I guess those particular Poles grew up on stories like The Witcher. Meanwhile, other Polish individuals, such as the Jan and Antonina Żabiński, acted on... shall we say... different values than yours. They saw non-Polish humans as people whose lives mattered, whose absence would be worrying. See also, "Black Panther", in which T'challa compromises the NO OUTSIDERS rule, in order to save a white man's life.

If you can't see the difference between a story which portrays ethno-nationalism as a flawed ideology, with tragic outcomes, an ideology which the hero questions and defies;

versus a story which wallows in ethno-nationalism;

if you accuse me of hypocrisy, for supporting the former, and not the latter;

then I have nothing further to say, because you already can't listen.


----------



## Sadras (Jun 8, 2018)

Lylandra said:


> You do realize that there are lots and lots of reasons for that?




Of course as there are lots and lots of reasons for Witcher having an all-white cast. 



> Also, there are enough games, movies etc. out there that deal with all the major axis powers (including the Japanese), even if they tend to exclude brief members (Romania, Iraq...)




Is your position being that we do not have enough fantasy games? Or is it fair to pick on the 1 Polish-influenced game?



> On a second thought, we did get Nazi aliens in Star Trek... twice!




Ok, not sure how that relates.


----------



## Sadras (Jun 8, 2018)

Bagpuss said:


> Call of Duty World War 2, is famously so progressive it has black Nazis, so about seven months ago.




I read on the wiki that players are only allowed to play Wehrmacht (military), rather than Waffen-SS (Nazi's) in an effort to avoid 'glorifying' Nazi extremists. So are you saying the game has black Waffen-SS in the campaign mode? That is funny and so wrong.


----------



## Dannyalcatraz (Jun 8, 2018)

Sadras said:


> I read on the wiki that players are only allowed to play Wehrmacht (military), rather than Waffen-SS (Nazi's) in an effort to avoid 'glorifying' Nazi extremists. So are you saying the game has black Waffen-SS in the campaign mode? That is funny and so wrong.




It reminds me of Mel Brooks’ _The Producers_.  When it is staged, they often have a lot of fun with the musical number, “Springtime for Hitler”.  When it was last performed here in D/FW, there was a black cast-member in the front row of dancing, high-kicking SS officers.  Effing hilarious!


----------



## Bagpuss (Jun 8, 2018)

Sadras said:


> I read on the wiki that players are only allowed to play Wehrmacht (military), rather than Waffen-SS (Nazi's) in an effort to avoid 'glorifying' Nazi extremists. So are you saying the game has black Waffen-SS in the campaign mode? That is funny and so wrong.




Nah, they aren't that crazy. It is just in the multiplayer mode, and you might be right it being just the Wehrmacht. It's because they let you customise the character.

I don't know why they didn't just do what I think one publisher did, you always see your side and the "good guys" and the other side as the terrorist/nazis. I guess because of all the customisation of the guns and stuff.


----------



## Lylandra (Jun 8, 2018)

Sadras said:


> Of course as there are lots and lots of reasons for Witcher having an all-white cast.
> 
> 
> 
> ...




These reasons are very, very, very different and I don't wish to write an essay about the hows and whys and also would love to not Godwin the thread about freakin' cross-gender play any further. 

FYI, I'm German and we tend to have very strong opinions on Nazis and how to represent them in the media. I'm also very astonished every time I see how people from other (most often non-european) countries almost fetishize this dark aspect of the 20th century to the extend that we see Nazis and Nazi references everywhere.


----------



## Sadras (Jun 8, 2018)

Lylandra said:


> These reasons are very, very, very different and I don't wish to write an essay about the hows and whys and also would love to not Godwin the thread about freakin' cross-gender play any further.




No worries. I was merely defending Witcher. I feel to pick (not you) on 1 Polish-influenced game was rather unfair. 



> FYI, I'm German and we tend to have very strong opinions on Nazis and how to represent them in the media. I'm also very astonished every time I see how people from other (most often non-european) countries almost fetishize this dark aspect of the 20th century to the extend that we see Nazis and Nazi references everywhere.




Understood and agree. For the record I'm European I happen to be living in South Africa - plenty Germans down here, including 1 at my table


----------



## Riley37 (Jun 8, 2018)

Lanefan said:


> I watched Black Panther and though it was a fine bit of entertainment.  In so doing I also cast aside any real-world politics and-or other considerations in favour of placing the story in the Marvel-world.




Well, on one hand, do what works for you. On another hand, in casting aside those considerations, you cast aside some of the most well-executed layers of the story. Eric's request, to be buried at sea, because he cast his lot with those who died in the Middle Passage - neither in Africa, nor in the Americas, betwixt and between - carries additional emotional weight, in the context of such considerations.


----------



## Riley37 (Jun 8, 2018)

Lylandra said:


> FYI, I'm German and we tend to have very strong opinions on Nazis and how to represent them in the media. I'm also very astonished every time I see how people from other (most often non-european) countries almost fetishize this dark aspect of the 20th century to the extend that we see Nazis and Nazi references everywhere.




I'm aware that for a German, the rise and fall of the Third Reich is merely one decade, out of centuries of German history; but for some of us, it was a very... influential... decade. Some survivors were so emotionally traumatized, that it affected how they raised their children, which in turn had effects on grandchildren. Some families put "never forget, never again" at the center of their tradition of values. Not my family, directly, but I have friends in such families, and the emotional intensity has not faded away, not yet.

Mike Godwin, author of Godwin's Law, says this: "The best way to prevent future holocausts, I believe, is not to forbear from Holocaust comparisons; instead, it’s to make sure that those comparisons are meaningful and substantive." More recently, after the death of Heather Hafer at Unite the Right, he announced an update: "By all means, compare these s***heads to the Nazis."

Your nation has renounced National Socialism. Mine has not. In 2016, someone "decorated" my workplace with a swastika carving. If you haven't had that experience, then of course you and I have different understandings of what's history and what's contemporary.


----------



## Lylandra (Jun 8, 2018)

Riley37 said:


> I'm aware that for a German, the rise and fall of the Third Reich is merely one decade, out of centuries of German history; but for some of us, it was a very... influential... decade. Some survivors were so emotionally traumatized, that it affected how they raised their children, which in turn had effects on grandchildren. Some families put "never forget, never again" at the center of their tradition of values. Not my family, directly, but I have friends in such families, and the emotional intensity has not faded away, not yet.
> 
> Mike Godwin, author of Godwin's Law, says this: "The best way to prevent future holocausts, I believe, is not to forbear from Holocaust comparisons; instead, it’s to make sure that those comparisons are meaningful and substantive." More recently, after the death of Heather Hafer at Unite the Right, he announced an update: "By all means, compare these s***heads to the Nazis."
> 
> Your nation has renounced National Socialism. Mine has not. In 2016, someone "decorated" my workplace with a swastika carving. If you haven't had that experience, then of course you and I have different understandings of what's history and what's contemporary.




Nah, it isn't "merely one decade". If you take a deeper look into the country's legal system, constitution and political clime, then this decade was a period that changed everything. Only the very far right are trying to reduce it to "merely a decade".

"Never forget, never again" is basically a mantra that is taught through various means in school and trying to understand what made some of our grandparents or grand-grandparents commit such horrible crimes or openly celebrate the burning of books or the declaration of war is tough at least. Which is why many people over here see it as "our" duty to prevent the rise of another fascist regime at all cost. Which is why we usually don't want to make Nazi comparisons without true reason, lest we'd trivialise what happened in the Reich. 

Sorry to hear that you had to endure such experiences. It is not like there are no idiots over here who leave swastika markings, but 1) doing so is considered a crime and 2) there are many more who'd turn the swastika into yet another graffiti in no time (even if this is a - minor - criminal offense, too, but most people don't mind).


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## Thomas Bowman (Jun 8, 2018)

Lylandra said:


> These reasons are very, very, very different and I don't wish to write an essay about the hows and whys and also would love to not Godwin the thread about freakin' cross-gender play any further.
> 
> FYI, I'm German and we tend to have very strong opinions on Nazis and how to represent them in the media. I'm also very astonished every time I see how people from other (most often non-european) countries almost fetishize this dark aspect of the 20th century to the extend that we see Nazis and Nazi references everywhere.




I don't really think there is much to say about cross gender play. In a world which the DM is trying to portray, it is necessary to have both male and female characters, and that often means the DM ends up portraying female characters, when I'm a DM I often do it third person, as I feel more comfortable playing a narrator and describing the female characters actions, and saying "she says," every time she has something to say to the PCs. I am not going to try and speak in a falsetto high female voice, or bat an eyelash or anything like that.

It is interesting how some people keep on trying to make this thread political, when it really is not.


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## Riley37 (Jun 8, 2018)

Lylandra said:


> "Never forget, never again" is basically a mantra that is taught through various means in school and trying to understand what made some of our grandparents or grand-grandparents commit such horrible crimes or openly celebrate the burning of books or the declaration of war is tough at least. Which is why many people over here see it as "our" duty to prevent the rise of another fascist regime at all cost. Which is why we usually don't want to make Nazi comparisons without true reason, lest we'd trivialise what happened in the Reich.




That is a good principle. I wish that more people in my nation learned how to question the decisions of our grandparents and great-grandparents, how to recognize when they made mistakes or made evil decisions, and how to recognize the same choice when it happens again. How to make a different decision, next time.

One of my distant relatives was an officer in the German army, in the 1940s. He eventually tried to assassinate the Reichsfuehrer. It is easier to think about that decision, and the consequences (his execution as a traitor, the children taken away from his wife)... it is harder to think about all the orders that he obeyed, before he reached the limit of his willingness to obey.


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## aramis erak (Jun 8, 2018)

Lylandra said:


> FYI, I'm German and we tend to have very strong opinions on Nazis and how to represent them in the media. I'm also very astonished every time I see how people from other (most often non-european) countries almost fetishize this dark aspect of the 20th century to the extend that we see Nazis and Nazi references everywhere.




A significant number of Americans love to lampoon the Nazis, to turn them into tragic comedy figures, or to use them as safe villains. 

A very small proportion idealize them — about the same proportions as in Germany, so I have read — but here, they make the news. Regularly. And are very vocal in their political movements. 

Reich Star, for example, is a decent game, and a "What if the Nazis had won WWII and then discovered a hyperdrive in the 21st C." It paints them as "still evil"... and predicates fighting them in the flavor text. My players, including a Jew and a Romany, plus me being ethnically and religiously Ukrainian, chose to play resistance hiding inside the SS Totenkopfverbande. Yes, the most evil, vile, despicable portion... for the cathartic pleasure of being able to take down the 3rd reich from the top. (It also is the game that made me decide some things are, in fact, best left to a fade to black and make a roll.)

Unlike gender issues, few people I've met mind lampooning the Nazis. Make them out to be untermenschen, and all's right.

But that, too, is changing in tolerance levels in places I'm gaming.


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## Thomas Bowman (Jun 9, 2018)

Riley37 said:


> That is a good principle. I wish that more people in my nation learned how to question the decisions of our grandparents and great-grandparents, how to recognize when they made mistakes or made evil decisions, and how to recognize the same choice when it happens again. How to make a different decision, next time.
> 
> One of my distant relatives was an officer in the German army, in the 1940s. He eventually tried to assassinate the Reichsfuehrer. It is easier to think about that decision, and the consequences (his execution as a traitor, the children taken away from his wife)... it is harder to think about all the orders that he obeyed, before he reached the limit of his willingness to obey.




The people obeying Hitler's orders and fighting his war for him, weren't doing Germany any favors. Germany would be better off if there was no Hitler. Germany lost land because of that war, and the Soviet Union and now Russia are bigger, at the expense of the rest of Europe, because of that war. The Germans who actively fought Hitler in whatever capacity should be memorialized.


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## evileeyore (Jun 9, 2018)

Riley37 said:


> I'm aware that for a German, the rise and fall of the Third Reich is merely one decade, out of centuries of German history; but for some of us, it was a very... influential... decade. Some survivors were so emotionally traumatized, that it affected how they raised their children, which in turn had effects on grandchildren. Some families put "never forget, never again" at the center of their tradition of values. Not my family, directly, but I have friends in such families, and the emotional intensity has not faded away, not yet.
> 
> Mike Godwin, author of Godwin's Law, says this: "The best way to prevent future holocausts, I believe, is not to forbear from Holocaust comparisons; instead, it’s to make sure that those comparisons are meaningful and substantive." More recently, after the death of Heather Hafer at Unite the Right, he announced an update: "By all means, compare these s***heads to the Nazis."
> 
> Your nation has renounced National Socialism. Mine has not. In 2016, someone "decorated" my workplace with a swastika carving. If you haven't had that experience, then of course you and I have different understandings of what's history and what's contemporary.



Mmmmm....

I'm just going to sit and revel in the smug righteousness of this post while I think about my responses to the other ones.


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## Riley37 (Jun 9, 2018)

evileeyore said:


> Mmmmm....
> 
> I'm just going to sit and revel in the smug righteousness of this post while I think about my responses to the other ones.




You mean, you're gonna enjoy telling yourself, "that guy over there is smugly righteous, and I'm so much better than him, because *I'm* not afflicted with such smug righteousness"?

Which of the following do you consider smugly righteous, looking back on how they expressed their positions: Chamberlain, Churchill, Orwell?

IMO one of the major choice forks, in how you respond, is whether you prioritize hard evidence, on the factual matters at hand (such as *exactly* who has done *exactly* what to CD Projekt, with what motives or goals), and how you find that evidence, and whether the search for evidence ever changes your estimation of the situation.


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## Thomas Bowman (Jun 9, 2018)

We have gone far afield from discussing playing the opposite gender. There is really not much to discuss here that is on topic. I've outlined an in game mechanism for changing a character's gender, called True Polymorph, solves the problem quite neatly in fact, but I guess people don't want neatness, they'd rather talk about politics. Good fodder for getting someone banned I think.


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## evileeyore (Jun 10, 2018)

Riley37 said:


> You mean, you're gonna enjoy telling yourself, "that guy over there is smugly righteous, and I'm so much better than him, because *I'm* not afflicted with such smug righteousness"?



Hah.  No, I'm going to enjoy the smug rolling off you as you virtusplain to a German, someone who lives in country where you can't walk a few blocks without literally tripping over a reminder of how terrible the Nazis were, how "some families put "never forget, never again" at the center of their tradition of values."  As though this isn't spoken by every President they've had in the last 70 years, as though it isn't a daily part of German life.

You encounter a bit of rude, hateful graffiti and now you feel virtuous enough to explain to a German, one who literally had just said "[I'm] very astonished every time I see how people from other (most often non-european) countries almost fetishize [the Nazis]" how it is 'contemporary politics' for you.


Do you even think about what you write sometimes or do you just let the arrogant virtue signalling flow unconstrained?


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## Thomas Bowman (Jun 10, 2018)

aramis erak said:


> A significant number of Americans love to lampoon the Nazis, to turn them into tragic comedy figures, or to use them as safe villains.
> 
> A very small proportion idealize them — about the same proportions as in Germany, so I have read — but here, they make the news. Regularly. And are very vocal in their political movements.
> 
> ...




I think chances are fairly good that Hitler's evil would not be carried too many generations past his natural lifetime, you might at some point get a Fuhrer that is not interested in starting a war or killing people, but merely in preserving his power, or perhaps maintaining the Reich as it is. Just as it is, if you start out with a good King, you won't always have a good king inheriting the throne, so too would it work with Fuhrers, Hitler was undoubtable evil, but for whomever follows him or the one that comes after the next one, that might not necessarily be the case. If the Nazi regime conquered the World, there would be no one after that left to conquer, so no more wars. There are also only so many Jews to kill, and its likely that a couple generations after Hitler's natural lifespan, a future Fuhrer might not be so fanatical in killing them, some might just be interested in further developing the Empire. 

There was nothing about the way the Third Reich was structured which would require his Hitler's successors to carry out Hitler's Final Solution ad infinitum. I think it is safe to say that by the 21st century, Hitler himself would likely be dead, Himmler would likely be dead as well as any historical character that we would be familiar with. I think a future Reich, would not be all that different from a Future Roman Empire that also managed to survive lone enough to travel in space. Old empires tend to get conservative, it would not be governed by a risk take like Hitler was, it would instead be someone who is interested in preserving the Empire rather than taking huge risks to greatly expand it. And expanding an empire in space would likely involve settling uninhabited rocks in the Solar System, requiring settlers not soldiers waging wars of conquest.

A Reich in an alternate Traveler Universe would involve the Reich contending with the First Imperium, the result might be similar to the Rule of Man. By the time a time traveler got to the equivalent of 1100 Imperial, the main thing that would be noticed would be everyone speaking German instead of English. An inhabitant of that timeline, might not look kindly on someone trying to change the timeline back to what it was, they might acknowledge the evil that went on in their Empire's founding, but would insist that it has nothing to do with their current generation. 

3000 years later, there would not be much left of the original Third Reich, there might be an empire, but that empire would likely have little in common with the Third Reich at the time it was founded. Not to whitewash history, The Holocaust and World War II were terrible, and I certainly would not want them to win, but three thousand years later, the policies that survived would be those policies which would maintain the empire and its power structures, this won't necessarily be exceptionally evil or good. Even the Star Wars' Galactic Empire, which was based in some aspects on the Third Reich model, didn't last this long! 

The Third Reich was unstable, it had no unifying culture, it probably would not have lasted even a century, even if Hitler was successful in everything he set out to do.


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## Bagpuss (Jun 10, 2018)

[Self-censorship]


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## Thomas Bowman (Jun 10, 2018)

Bagpuss said:


> [Self-censorship]




Yes, a lot of Germans learned to do that during the days of the Third Reich, especially when they did not agree with the Fuhrer, they kept their opinions about him and what he was doing to themselves, if they wanted to go on breathing. I have not developed that reflex, especially since I did not grow up in a police state. Since you folks insist on talking about the Germans and World War II, I thought I'd just add in my two cents, that's all. 

We could create another thread about what the World would be like if the Germans won World War II, if you want. If history is any guide, most empires have had limited impact on history. The classic Empire that comes closest to what the Third Reich would have been like if the Germans won World War II would be the Empire of Alexander. Unlike the Roman Empire, the Alexandrian Empire was not built upon firm foundations, it was built by one man, and after that man died, it quickly fell apart, that is probably what would have happened to the Third Reich after Hitler's death.

If Hitler's empire were to last a long time, it would have had to change it's institutions and philosophy to create a more stable regime. Hitler's empire wasn't not stable, it was a giant personality cult, and when the person that cult was based on died, there would be a succession crises, with various leaders fighting over who would be the next Fuhrer. the Historical Third Reich had just two, the second one lasted just long enough to surrender what remained of the Third Reich to the Allies.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Dönitz


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## Riley37 (Jun 10, 2018)

evileeyore said:


> where you can't walk a few blocks without literally tripping over a reminder of how terrible the Nazis were




I have walked a few blocks, in Munich, without literally tripping over any such reminders.

"Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two makes four. If that is granted, all else follows." - George Orwell, greatest virtue signaller of his generation. You would *hate* his insistence on factual accuracy, if he were an EN World participant. Do let us know, if you ever come up with any objective, verifiable reality related to your assertions in previous posts.


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## Umbran (Jun 11, 2018)

We are not into Germans and Nazis and not a whole lot about gaming.

Thread closed.


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