thread: 2005-03-15 : Cross-gender Play
On 2005-03-15, Tom wrote:
I'm pretty sure the only time I've ever played a female was when I was playing Emily's Icebreaker game.
Here's why I pretty much exclusively play men:
1.) I've never really seen a very convincing portrayal of a woman by a guy at any of the gaming tables I've sat down at.
2.) If I play up the feminine aspects of a character, I feel like I run the risk of being offensive or just stupid. If I try and smooth that out, there's no appreciable difference between playing a man or a woman so I may as well play a guy.
That second reason is also why I generally play a white guy (assuming human characters). Wyrd is Bond, with it's emphasis on playing a black gangbanging street wizard made me genuinely uncomfortable. It's easy enough to be an over-the-top gangsta like the rap videos portray, but it really felt like a modern-day minstrel show. Eventually we just made up characters and went to town, but there was a little weirdness at the start.
It's a weird contradiction, but there you go.
