board's not made for ascii pr0n it seems *g*

I'm a female who 95% of the time plays beefcake males.

It was the closest option...I rarely play a female for some reason. When I do, though, they tend to go in a more out of combat role...probably because I use them to take a break from my beefcake male combat monkeys. Gender isn't the main thing I think of. For some reason, whenver I get an idea for a character, ''he'' or ''she'' will pop into my head. A lot of times, ''he'' goes into the slot. I think, because I'm a rather non-physical wimpy lady, I play female characters I can relate to more; and use cleverness or words(like me ) to get themselves out of trouble..and sometimes into trouble, as well. Oftentimes they end up useful to the team in more ways than my beefcake guys do in the long run.

I'm not saying all guys are violent beefcakes, though. Ive played a nice handful that weren't(my later 40s opium addicted ex-scientist, my dwarf hacker, my 54 year old investigator, a troll priest, ork not too combat mage.) My elf males tend to end up combat monkeys; I think it's my way of breaking their mold as being stereotyped as ''skinny little wimpy prettyboys.''

I think my other reason for playing a lot of male combat monkeys, is because I do like playing males...and many times, there WAS no combat monkey, so I sort of filled in the spot. I guess I got used to it.

yeah, me too, i usually play what's needed . . mostof the time that's going to be the combat troll, because nobody else wants to do that . . and even if i do play a face with my alt, that one is still the most combat character in the group x.x

I've created a bunch of Shadowrun characters since I've been playing, and I've found that gender is more or less irrelevant to me. I've had both male and female characters that I've loved to pieces, and I always try to play the character in and of themselves realistically rather than live up to any external gender role expectations.

Case in point, one of my favorite characters is a female androgyne hacker/face (that is, she has the female "plumbing" but is very androgynous/bigendered in appearance, dress, and general personality.) The cool thing about that character was that I didn't have to live up to ANY gender roles since her very being meant that she was bucking them all and being herself. Since she was a face and I was playing up "social stealth" rather than sneaking around, she could switch her SIN for a fake SIN belonging to a male and pass herself off as a guy when she had to.

Another one of my favorite characters is a very butch, aggressive, stoic female elf. She's got the physique and build of an ork football player, and loves getting into brawls. She's stoic, hard-drinking, taciturn, and very resilient. Even though she's got all the social graces of an exploding walrus, I love playing her so much because the character is unique, and she plays a good foil to the "common" female Shadowrun PC by playing with the expectations.

When I do end up making female characters, they're more often than not a reaction AGAINST the "common" female Shadowrun characters that I see. That is, they're not dainty, giggly, perfect in their beauty, and to be worshipped and idolized. I simply cannot get into that sort of character, and I find it rather insulting that both males and females tend to play them. I HAVE met females who fit that sort of bill, but I'd like to think that the vast majority of women are a little more complex than that. Playing insipid female characters of that sort just seems to not do women any justice.

----------------

All that said, I can only play female characters online, via a MUD or IRC. I feel uncomfortable playing them in a PnP setting, and I think that shows one of internet play's biggest strengths -- you can get into character alot more online than you could in PnP. PnP is much more a social event than playing online. But with the anonymity that you get by doing play by posts, IRC games, or any other method, then there's nothing to hold you back from fleshing out a PC of another gender and really getting into their skin.

But as long as you are reacting to specific sterotypes aren't you still being bound and defined by them?

I don't have a problem playing a female character at a tabletop game, but it is the kind of thing that you want to make sure everyone else is all right with, too.




Well hey, if the ork street samurai archetype, with a Charisma of 1, can have "charming good looks" and a "cultured accent"...

Personally, I don't have a problem with it, since surface-level good looks should be pretty easy to come by - most cosmetic surgery in SR is an outpatient procedure, and a lot of times it doesn't even require surgery per se. If they want to play attractive but uncharismatic characters, that's fine. I know plenty of attractive people with boring, or even abrasive personalities.

Dainty? Giggly?

Aren't the average female SR PCs baddass lesbian action girls who dual-wield chainsaw katanas with machine pistols for handles and dress as heavily armored dominatrices?

Yeah, honestly...when I see people making females...the 'typical' ones I see are indeed what Hyz said. Or it seems like it. In my experience, anyway. Could have just been the folks in college.

Personally, I don't like either the stereotypical ''butch'' female OR the insipid, giggly female; they ARE both stereotypes. I think I enjoy playing a more strong-willed, leader-type, intelligent but still low-key normal female when I do play a girl to break BOTH of those molds; and yeah...again, they've ended up saving the party numerous times. I guess that's the reason I play my elf males more badass and my orks and trolls more on the less-combative side, trying to break the ''frail prettyboy'' and the ''big dumbass'' molds as well.

My first RPG was AD&D 2ed and I played a female elf. I was a blast and we had a lot of fun until she retired at 18th level (DM and others went to other cities). My other PC were all male. When I knew SR2 I played I also played the cyberpunk version of this girl (looked like victoria silverstd) and we also have a blast since the female can do tricks that men cannot Then my other mage elf were male. so you can say 10% female characters

Now I'm DMing a new party of SR4 and everone is picking his PC accordingly to his sex.

I had this one player, a girl, who always played male characters. They were always so damn bishie, too. But she'd mix it up by changing the gender they were attracted to. So sometimes they were gay, sometimes strait, sometimes Bi, sometimes Non. The weirdest it ever got was when the DnD game, which her boyfriend was also in. We had a strait woman playing a gay man dating another gay man played by a bisexual man who was dating the strait woman. Parse that? I need a diagram.

The only female character I've played outside of GMing was Big Bertha, a troll. Raptor legs and skirts, and a specialty in intimidation by way of flirting. She knew her body type was well outside that considered "sexy" by the majority, so she would freak people out by flirting with them, getting them trapped between attraction and repulsion, and thus making them really uncomfortable. Something I learned from a female friend who's quite large and proud of it. But outside of intimidation, I played her more as the "den mother" of the crew. Not your typical elven stripper, for certain.

Man, now I want to play Bertha again.

My first and still favorite character is a female. She's actually the only female I've created and since then I've played several male characters. I hadn't really given any thought to the gender of the character until I got to filling out the character sheet and got to the "Gender: " section. I chose female for largely superficial reasons, not so much having to do with RP and more because I just like to draw female characters more. Any RP character I make I always end up drawing, so I figured I might as well make this one a female, because I like to draw them more.

One of my favourite characters to play was Moloch. Moloch was a tiefling whose curse showed in milky skin and a hairless body that could either be male or female. Shopping was Moloch's favourite past-time. The problem was that you put Moloch in a dress and the slightly wide shoulders and lack of hips made him look like a boy in a dress, while you placed him in workman's tunic and she looked like she was wearing her older brother's clothing.

It was a favourite past time among the players/characters guessing Moloch's gender.

I've played all types of characters. I did find though that if you play your character too personal no-one has fun. Reiella is a character I have who I can use in any fantasy setting (I like writing character histories, but not after the tenth failed game). An individual who has been hurt so badly that she has become a survivor. Power is not sought for the sake that she cannot be hurt by others. She sleeps with a knife in her clenched fist. It gives her a motivation to be a thief and adventure.

I did play a couple once which was fun. I got really bored in the game since the boys would continue to talk about spaceship creation and character tweaking. It was like being invited to game and discovered it to be about the bean counting. Anyways I has Sybill a character who was from the warrior caste of a matriarchal warlike empire. Men were home dads, pampered by rich matriarchs. Most women had the choice in procreation of the traditional insemination table or the more practical in vitro fertilization method. Sybill as a customs officer ran off with her more traditional cookie cutter martial artist significant other.

Then there is an old campaign I was in where we were all feminists, well fem nazis. We were known as BiBLe or Bitches in Boots and Leather. The one male crew member was discovered to have a horrifying a chromosomal issue which was corrected early on. Also memorable comments such as "That's okay you are only a man, men are expected to fail." Mayhem was what we often caused.

I still think one of my more fun characters was an extreme sports elf who with his shaved head 6 foot and 200 pound frame ("if my grandmother was raped by an ogre, why did she go back four more times?") who was working as an adventurer in an Eberron campaign because he wanted to raise capital to get a new wind board.

That's quite clever! Is there an asexuality trait or gene-treatment in Shadowrun? Off to read Augmentation!

GM's almost always end up playing as opposite genders (even if it's just short term for the npc's), and like I said, I've played some females myself. But the characters I remember best and enjoyed the best were males. Most were NOT beefcake uber combat monkeys, or were not all of that description. The troll adept was an uber monkey, muscled but not beefcake, unless you like lots of scars on your he-man.

In AD+D 2nd ed, my gnome illusionist was good looking and charismatic, but could never be thought of as a combative type. The only time I ever really played a female as kind of arm candy to a guy pc was when we found these highly illegal herbs in a sewer which only the party thief and my female priestess of the god of thieves knew about. When we went to sell them to the local fence, he did the talking and I was the (spell) armed backup, in a red dress. But her normal attire was per her profession, armor and a mace.

There needs to be a "I play an troll's-butt ugly character to better munchkin out my l33t hacker/combat monstrosity-demigod" option on the poll. But back to the topic at hand, I play a male character simply because I've tried playing a female before and it always felt like I was watching a drag show, a man trying to be a woman with varying degrees of success.

In PnP games I've played both genders, but tend towards male.

In computer games I usually play female characters simply because I figure that if I'm going to be staring at a screen full of pixels I want the pixels to be pleasing.

I don't think that the men in drag shows are trying to be women.

Also, this conversation is a bit strange. You can play everything from shapeshifters to vampires to AIs to free spirits, and what people get hung up on and hang so much of their baggage on is someone playing characters of another sex. I do think this kind of conversation does tend to highlight homophobia and sexism in gamer culture, but it doesn't particularly excite me to see either in action.

The thing to keep in mind is that shapeshifters, vampires, AIs, and free spirits are all made up.
Males and females are real.

Role playing something 100% fake is an abstract exercise with little emotional investment.
Role playing something real has a tendency to hit to close to home.

Cognitive dissonance is a bitch like that

I almost mentioned that to avoid this derail, but I guess I should have said something.

Yes, men and women are real. This is obvious. However, men and women are not alien creatures that are so totally different as frequently comes across in these discussions. Many of the assumptions made about how women should be played, for example, tend to be sexist and extremely essentialist. And while there are men who portray women in really gross ways, that highlights their own sexism, and not how difficult cross-gender roleplay is or should be. There is some accurate skewering of stereotypical and repetitive ways that men portray women in RPGs too, and I don't want to ignore that, either.

The problem I have with all of this is not whether people want to play cross-gender characters (I don't), but rather, the sexist and homophobic comments that the conversation breeds. Like someone in another thread on this forum, who thought it was funny to quote a Jack Nicholson character, saying about how he writes women, "I think of a man, and then I remove reason and accountability." And that was perhaps one of the least problematic statements made about women (and obviously intended to be a joke, but it's not as if jokes should get a free pass from being offensive). Or fairly serious assertions that anyone who would want to play cross-gender must be gay or emotionally disturbed in some way.

What I was trying to get at is called the "uncanny valley".

When something is obviously fake people accept it at face value, no harm no foul.
When something is very close to real, but not quite, people find it unsettling.
The exact reason behind this is the subject of current debate, but is irrelevant to our current discussion.

The point is at a basic instinctive level cross-gender role playing (in person) evokes a negative response because it's almost real but not quite.
I'm not saying it's good, I'm just saying that's how it is.

Now people can consciously reject that gut instinct and move on, and they probably should, but it's still there.

Incidentally, instant messaging programs solve this problem, because there is no appearance/behavior mismatch to trigger cognitive dissonance.

Huh..

I play both genders, but neither for any inherit sex appeal. In fact, my female characters tend to have low Charisma unless they need it (as Faces, Mages, Technomancers...) and are actually played that way.

Which is not to say that physical attractiveness always equals Charisma. It's entirely possible that people think your Charisma 1 Lesbian Stripper Ninja is a vapid skank and/or a very convincing transexual.

Finally, on "why would a runner choose to be beautiful?" Because blending in is entirely subjective.

Walking down the street, you might stand out, depending on the street in question, but in the boardroom? I can almost assure you that the plain Runner stands out to the point of absurdity among bodysclupted corp nobility.

If the run happens to be in Bellevue, walking around without cosmetic bodymods is the new pink mohawk.

So, I'm just curious what you think, since you brought this up, and because gender roles and behaviors is something I'm trying to piece together myself right now...

Do you feel that women generally are more emotionally motivated than men?

trickster! charlitan! flim flammer! i thought it was gonna be about hot babes in schoolgirl outfits and thong thong thong thong thongs!

anywho, I try to limit my kids what the see on tv, games, etc.. of grossly exaggerated images of people. Let them be kids for as long as possible


I never did play any women characters.


lol to the jokes. HIlarious!

As opposed to a male lesbian?

Not my best use of English ever. Perhaps if I had separated female and lesbian with a comma the sentence would have been less ridiculous.

Re-reading this thread has been interesting.

Since my original post I have played several more varied roles on dumpshock.

There is the gay, male, orc physad. Uncomfortable to start with but I've adapted to the role and quite enjoy him now.

Then there is the octogenarian, female, human Technomancer. That was easier to play and she's subsequently had Leonization so she is the typical fabulously attractive young woman but still thinks and acts like your Granny. That's a bit odd. It actually became more difficult to play at that point because the mind-set moves out of something that you have experienced or can look up into something that is pure fantasy.

Recently there is the twenty-something, female, paraplegic, vivisected, human Technomancer who suffers from Arrested Development and has the body of a 12 year old. That has started very much in the realm of fantasy and so is easier to play, there is no right or wrong.

The real sticking point in all transgender role-playing is romance. Whether in RL or in PbP there is very little difference between role-playing a romance scene with someone you don't have a romantic interest in and doing it for real. If my 'character' is sleeping with Brent's 'character' is there any real difference between that and me 'cybering' with Brent? If there is I might find it very difficult to explain it to my wife so that she could understand...

So long as you steer clear of IC romance I think transgender roleplaying is good for you. Walk another mile in someone else's shoes and all that.

Not that my characters don't have romances, it's just that I am much more comfortable authoring both roles.

There are huge difference between IC romance and "cybering". IC Romance is something you do for the story, for the game while "cybering" is mostly sexual. Still, me and my groups don't go too far with IC romance and throw a dikoted veil over what happens behind the bedroom door (the female streetsam telling the male face "You know I don't need to breathe underwater?" was as far as it went)

As long as people understand the difference between characters and players it's ok. And if they do not then I'd be a bit more worried about them playing out acts of murder and other crimes than consensual sex.

I'm sorry I dropped the ball on this -

No.

I believe that gendered stereotyping says that it is more acceptable for women to appear emotionally motivated than men, and that it is more acceptable to characterize men's motivations in ways that don't center emotions.

In addition, there's a lot of pretty standard censure aimed at women for "being too emotional" (as something that women do) and censure aimed at men for "being too emotional" (as something men shouldn't do). In the latter case, stuff like "harden up" or "man up" or insults like "don't be a pussy." I don't believe that this kind of censure would exist if men were truly not all that motivated by emotions.

I don't believe men or women are strictly ruled by emotions.



I'm not sure I buy the Uncanny Valley as anything but "people are creeped out by nearly lifelike animation/robots."

I think the implications of this steer a bit too close to naturalizing prejudice against LGBT people. I also don't think humans have any kind of accurate sense of "this is what men are really like" and "this is what women are really like" because under most circumstances, you're just falling into "no true Scotsman" territory. I think it's more likely that some people are unsettled by other people who roleplay members of a different gender or sex, and it's not strictly a matter of how well someone plays, although I think that in such cases stereotyped portrayals might be seen as more acceptable (lesbian stripper ninjas, etc).

I do agree that people playing characters significantly different from themselves can cause cognitive dissonance, but I still find it a bit odd that a man playing a woman or a woman playing a man is more likely to trigger this than anyone playing a troll of either sex (for example). I've also seen numerous instances at gaming tables where people argued vehemently about the proper ways to play elves, dwarves, etc in various games (including one GM who was insistent that all elves be vegetarian or you're just playing a human with pointy ears). So, I can't help but wonder that it's less about verisimilitude and more about cultural baggage about crossing gender lines.

So what I noticed from the poll is that there are not enough Smokin Hot Chicks playing Shadow-run. Obviously we need some better "girl" PR and recruiting.

There are actually plenty. I've been pleasantly surprised by the caliber of women we got at the Shadowrun tourney's and events I've run at Gen Con over the years (Not to mention the number of very attractive freelancers and such that have worked on the game). However, they don't spend all day posting on Dumpshock

Oh, and I'm not gonna bother with the "mod voice", you guys have been pretty good so far, but just a friendly reminder to keep the topic on Shadowrun, and to try and avoid too much explicit "sex talk", in-game or real world. Especially real world. That's one of our three "off limit topics (along with religion and politics), and it often leads to trouble and madness.

Oh, and you forgot the option that allows most of us to actually answer this poll honestly with: "I'm an out of shape and/or overweight nerd that..."