Crossplaying
This month’s Patreon poll has ended, and it’s had quite the effect on Wizard. After all the votes were tallied, it looks as if the gender bending from Classy Quests, Part 4/4 is here to stay. I suppose that makes sense. Wizard has always been a bit of a drama queen, and this character choice is causing intraparty sparks already. I hope that robe of the archmagi was worth it.
It’s been well over a year, but I told you guys about my own experiences with crossplaying way back here. For those of you unfamiliar with the term, I’m using it here to describe opposite-gendered players and PCs. Being an IRL dude, that fashion-obsessed noble lady of mine serves an an example. She’s since escaped Ravenloft and retired, but I think the experiment ended in success. Certainly there wasn’t much in the way of awkwardness at the table. From the stories I hear around the net, however, I think I may have been lucky in that regard.
You know the kind of stereotypical cringe-fest I’m talking about. Dudes playing oversexed lesbians or declaring that, “I flash my boobs for a Persuasion bonus!” give crossplaying a bad name. I suppose that sort of thing can work depending on the group, but more often than not it ends in embarrassed laughter at best and genuine discomfort at worst. That’s exactly the sort of thing I think Fighter is worried about in today’s comic, and it’s that same worry that nearly kept me from giving crossplaying a try.
But you know what guys? When you get beyond that kind of anxiety you open up a lot of interesting character possibilities. The best intraparty romance I’ve ever seen involved a crossplay. Laurel’s current paladin of Cayden Cailean is a frat boy, with predictably hilarious results. I’ve got my eye on a mama bear concept for my next druid, and you can explore some really unconventional territory with the three-sexed Shirren over in Starfinder.
My point here is that, when it comes to tabletop RPGs, it’s possible to take on the kinds of roles that you would never get cast for in traditional drama. That’s an exciting creative possibility, and it’s a shame to shut down so many options for the sake of self-consciousness.
So how about it, guys? Have you tried crossplaying yourself? Have you encountered it out in the wild? Was it a positive experience, or did you come away with a bit of a cringe? Let’s hear your tales of opposite-gendered players and PCs down in the comments!
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I have seen cross playing 3 times so far. Once a long time ago in which a player decided to play as caitlyn from league of legends with the leadership feat to get leona as a support. That didn’t end up as much as anything, in part because that player was often absent. More recently with my bard elliot the unlucky when he got turned into a stout halfling female with a bit of frog added in due to a reincarnation spell cast by a frog shaman. There were a couple of awkward moments with that, but nothing too bad, and I got some really good character moments with my characters fiancé while stuck like that in which I think I did a pretty good job acting out with the dm how someone stuck in a body that they don’t consider there own would feel, how it would effect their confidence, and how it would effect there relationships with others, particularly since any sexual attraction would have gone away. Eventually Elliot managed to get that fixed though, and got a mostly happy ever after ending. Finally, another person play a female sorlock during the tomb of annihilations campaign who was played as an extreme narcissist which was a fun character. They also ended up getting gender bent as well in the end to a male due to a fountain that either gave a decent amount of temp hp, caused a very large amount of necrotic damage, changed your gender, or silenced you for a day. Unfortunately they died a few sessions later due to a very nasty death trap where they got eaten by locusts.
I don’t know that I’ve ever encountered a full on Curse! Sex Change in a real game. I suppose it’s a trope for a reason though. It hadn’t occurred to me to think of that in terms of crossplaying, which in my mind is usually a choice made at character creation. I suppose it would have to count though.
I sorta consider it something like a subcatagory of crossplaying, somewhat seperate from the rest.
I just went to a gaming session that consisted of one male DM, four male players and one female player. One of the guys was arriving late, so the DM has us describe our characters. Turns out, all three of the male players present (myself included) had gone and gender flipped, while the female player had a character of the same gender. Independently of one another, we had all gone and accidentally made an all-female party.
Then the one late guy had to show up and ruin it with a male human as a character.
I’m quite the cross-player myself, and despite being male, around 35-40% of the characters I’ve played have been female. I’ve never seen any cringing experience from crossplaying, possibly because I’m usually the one playing that character. However, the one guy from the aforementioned story who didn’t play a female dislikes cross-playing, not because it’s weird but because he recognises that, whenever you play a character of different gender, it’s going to be hard to remember to swap around he and she and him and her and it’ll just get really confusing. Which is a real problem; I’ve noticed myself doing that a lot when someone else is the cross-player, so I’ve tried to cut down on the cross-playing while in the same sessions as that player.
For my next character in the campaign that will include that player, I plan to be an androgynous elf who is secretly female! Bwahahahaha
He may have ruined your Rat Queens adventure, but I bet he quite enjoyed starring in his own harem anime. 😛
The pronoun thing can be obnoxious for immersion, it’s true. I’ve got a female friend playing a male ysoki at the moment, and she almost retconned the character’s gender it happened so much.
Do you try to use a character voice when you play a female character? I’m wondering if that could help.
I do have a female voice. I think that it does help, but doesn’t fully solve the problem, as people still slip up. One person in our group is an aspiring actor, and is currently studying voice acting, but people still got the pronouns wrong.
This wasn’t helped by the fact that he was a changeling, so not only did we have to switch pronouns when going from in-character to out-of-character, but we had to switch pronouns for whichever form s/he was in. And I was the DM and thus knew all of his different forms, and his/her true form was male, but spent most of his/her time in a female form, so… yeah. Confusing.
Sorry for the tangent. The How To Be a Great GM channel has an episode or two about different accents, and there was some great advice in one of those episodes about how to play a female/male voice; if you’re about to be a GM, or cross-play, this is a helpful video/s to watch.
Bonus suggestion: At last year’s Denver Comic Con, there was a panel on voice acting. It was for cosplay rather than tabletop, but it was still pretty informative. One of the panelists mentioned this thing as a good resource for dialects:
https://www.amazon.com/Accents-Manual-Actors-Revised-Expanded/dp/087910967X/ref=asc_df_087910967X/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=312166025508&hvpos=1o3&hvnetw=g&hvrand=18310550757601695370&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9051840&hvtargid=pla-473573476731&psc=1
Pronouns are rough in general. I’ve been having that trouble with a host Shirren over in Starfinder. Remembering they/them takes something of a mental/linguistic leap when you aren’t used to it.
Edit: okay it later turned out that I am not male
lol. Four years later with the update. XD
Here’s hoping that the pronoun swaps you described in the earlier comment haven’t plagued you IRL.
Yeah, I was clicking through the archives (looks like the “random” button is again an at-will ability rather than 1/day, nice) when I spotted past me being oblivious, and gave an update after I finished laughing.
I haven’t had too much issue with pronouns, mostly people just making a mistake at first, correcting themselves, then moving on. The biggest hiccup came a week or two after coming out, when we started a nautical campaign/series of one shots, where I played a swashbuckling manly pirate. My flatmates had just gotten using she/her pronouns, when suddenly once a week I was slapping on a fake moustache and screaming, “ADVENTURE!!!” in my deepest voice.
> My flatmates had just gotten using she/her pronouns, when suddenly once a week I was slapping on a fake moustache and screaming, “ADVENTURE!!!” in my deepest voice.
That is amazing. XD
> looks like the “random” button is again an at-will ability rather than 1/day
I think it’s only on some phones and operating systems. It works for me on Windows 10 + Chrome, but others have complained. Neither Laurel nor I are good enough at WordPress to fix it. 🙁
This is a funny thread to come back to after Self-Discovery.
Scroll all the way to the bottom, lol.
I knew it.
I have never run into the term crossplaying before, thought it said cosplaying the first time I read that sentence.
In my local gaming culture it happens regularly and is considered completely unremarkable.
The only time I have seen anything resembling the mentioned grossness was once more than 10 years ago when I was an immature teen and even then I think the same would have happened if the gender of the player had been the same as the gender of the character.
I think you’re on-point to suggest that there’s a link between the “mentioned grossness” and immature teens. Sometimes those early experiences stick around throughout a player’s career, and so the distaste continues on through that hobby for years. I’ve heard more than one story of tables outright banning the practice, for example.
Anywho, the term “crossplaying” is (apparently) associated with cosplaying more than anything else. At least, that’s what it seemed like after a few googles for this comic. I first heard it applied to TRPGers who play opposite-gendered characters though. Whether that’s colloquial or a widely-used term, however, I’m less sure.
One of the players in our Rise of the Runelords game is crossplaying at the moment. Given that he’s playing a Gathlain though, the fact that his character is female is pretty overshadowed by the fact that she’s a fey spirit made out of wood, who doesn’t understand the mortal world or mortal concerns very well.
More often than not I crossplay in CRPGs, although I don’t particularly know why. I think it would take a bit of a push for me to crossplay in a TRPG though, and it hasn’t really occurred to me to do so so far.
It does seem a bit silly to fret about gender when you can be a bug-person or an awakened goldfish. Still, I think it’s easier for a lot of players to try for the fantastically different than the IRL different. It’s almost as if you need an excuse to not just make the PC your own gender.
In my own case, the noble lady was a legacy character from a pirate campaign: a descendant of my old goblin cabin boy PC, who had ended his campaign as the governor of Jamaica. I knew that my character would be leaving the Caribbean behind and heading into Ravenloft. Given those circumstances–a noble character from a pirate world being spirited off to deal with undead–I decided to go for an Elizabeth Swann sort of PC. With that template in mind, it only made sense to do a female character.
My wife crossplays a ton. Her two favorite characters so far have been a fish person warrior poet who has a very affected way of speaking and a street smart Tiefling wizard con artist (like an evil mage Aladdin). In our brand new Curse of Strahd campaign, she’s playing her very first female character, a washed up, alcoholic army doctor who happens to be a wood elf. Think Dr. McCoy as portrayed by Arwen.
We have another player who’s crossplaying as well, but since he’s playing an elderly gnome grandmother with the survival instincts of a facehugger from Aliens, I’m not entirely sure if that qualifies.
We don’t do too many voices as a group, but we do keep character pretty strongly. We’ve never had any problems with crossplay, but we also have a 50/50 split of players’ genders so that certainly helps keep things in line.
Ditto.
I suspect that, culturally speaking, it might be easier for women to crossplay. We’re inundated with the Mulan story on the one hand (I want to run off and be a soldier!) and White Chicks on the other (I’m wearing a dress, isn’t that hilarious?).
Mostly, I’m wondering what Rogue will think of this…
Well I don’t see what the X-Men have to do with it. I should think that Thief would have much more of an interest. 😛
Well I can guess what Rouge will think of it at least. =P
I confess myself entirely open to hearing conjectures in that regard.
Something lewd. The default mandated by her master of course. 😉
I’m not alone in this nomenclatural misstep!
I’ve no problem with crossplaying. Magical realm nonsense, that’s when you turn everything into some sexualied fetish, is what can kill the concept of crossplaying. General rule of thumb when I play as female characters (I’m a dude): if I wouldn’t do that as a guy, probably shouldn’t do it as a girl. Of course the slight difficulty there is I’m a bisexual, so flirting and such tends to go both ways, but even so I’m aware of such awkwardness and the last thing I wanna do is alienate everyone by being a rampant homosexual. Unless it’s that kind of game.
I think one problem that does come up whenever one crossplays, which I think is a somewhat cultural thing so that’s its own can of worms, is that it’s hard to visualize some of the more gruesome fates of adventuring when using a female character. Bunch of dudes fighting and losing to orcs will result in them being killed and eaten. A woman… Might be lucky if that’s all that happens.
Of course the maturity of the group factors into that too. If they’re immature they will at best just ignore the implications and treat females the same as they would makes. At worse, they’ll single out female characters because “the world is dangerous and you should have known the risks”. On the flip side a mature GM and group can handle that sort of thing, with the collective agreement that yes, this thing does happen. And instead of just using it as an edgy one-off thing it can help set a mood or tone for a game or just the enemy.
But I digress. One of my best characters, Annabeth, is a crosscharacter and being female actually allowed me to explore the ideas and implications of being transsexual in a world where such a thing isn’t completely understood. And yes, we did have a few giggles about me, a dude, playing as a girl, who feels like she should be a dude. But once that died down my GM was very cool with me by explaining how different parts of the world see gender roles between men and women, which has come in handy for things. It allowed me to really get to thinking about these sort of mental blocks in our head we learn growing up from our culture. Annabeth was someone who was born a girl but felt like a guy, confused about how she should really act, much like how I’m a guy playing as a girl but confused about how to act.
Very interesting to say the least.
I think I’ve seen a movie about Annabeth: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0265987/
It’s cool that you can use the game to explore that sort of theme. That does indeed take a bit of player maturity. Grats to you and yours for pulling it off.
Aye, helps that my whole gender thing wasn’t a “big” deal, so much as it emphasized that adventures are different from everyday people. It’s one of those things where as a gamer you don’t think about too much, but in real life things like gender roles do have a purpose.
One example that came up was when our group, a fairly do-good gang, came across a village with mostly women. The country was at war so many of the men had been drafted into war, and those left behind ended up dying due to banditry. This was suppose to be a seven samurai sort of situation, but a lot of people in the party wanted to train the women as a militia. It honestly felt u comfortable when they kept trying to use me as an example of a female warrior, as Annabeth that is.
Fortunately my GM was very smart and what he did really hammered home why it was hard for these women to just take up arms and fight; the bandits turned out to be deserters of the nation’s army, soldiers obstentialy meant to defend them. Many of them who knew the girls in the village but even that didn’t save some of them. Additionally many of the girls were young and still broken up about the deaths of their family too, and to the surprise of some not everyone who’s had significant others killed turns into stone cold badasses.
And for me I had mixed feelings. On one hand as a character Annabeth is definitely the type who wouldn’t let tragedy hold her down (being a Paladin helps), but at the same time I also felt a certain level of fear. The implications and the difficulty it’d be to not just stand up against a group who were not only meant to protect you, but also are far stronger than you, and the only other group experts you to simply beat them as if things were truly equal. It taught me something about equality, and it’s that just because you’re being treated the same as others, doesn’t mean you’re being treated fairly.
Fortunately group got the hint and did most of the fighting, having the villagers set up traps and assured indirectly against the bandits. My personal favorite feat was our party bard training the girls to combine their voices to emulate a dragon’s roar to cause a really clutch AoE frighten effect against the enemy.
Goddamn I love players. I’d never come up with that mess in a million years.
I’ve got some sympathy for the group’s “let’s turn the ladies into a militia” inclinations. It’s tough deciding whether to handle this sort of situation in the realistic mode (like you did) or go with the trope:
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SweetPollyOliver
It takes subtlety on a GM’s part to guide a table in one direction or another, and it sounds like yours handled the situation with aplomb. Well done that man!
I remember this being quite common in games I played when we were all immature teenagers. Oddly enough the disturbing / awkward stuff didn’t really come up at that point, it was more having a fun time being people we weren’t.
Maybe I just got lucky with who my friends were.
I can remember a couple of “I flash them as a distraction” incidents in my high school days. Suffice it to say I envy you your acquaintance.
Happens all the time in my group. While there’s been a few cringy moments (such as my first self-made character admittedly >.>…), it’s mostly just been part of the game without too much attention being drawn to it. Well, at least beyond a few chuckles for one player of, “It’s [Player], of course his character is a little anime girl.”
Recently, we’ve actually had our first confession scene between a female half-orc barbarian and a party member (both male players) which was hilariously awkward, especially as the rest of the table chimed in saying that’d it probably be a bad idea to turn down an aggressive half-orc.
For myself, two of my favorite characters I’ve played were actually crossplays. One was a tiefling mahou shoujo who was sort of an “innocent monster.” On one hand, she was a happy and enthusiastic little girl who valued love and friendship. On the other hand, her morals were horrible warped as a result of a daemonic familiar/magical guide (“Yay, Murder!”), and she had a habit of cheering for the wrong side in conflicts that didn’t involve the party (sees people fighting a evil dragon in an arena, loudly cheers for the dragon).
The other crossplay I loved was an awkward/antisocial bookworm schoolgirl in a sort of magical school campaign who was a bit of a deadpan snarker and hypocrite. After hearing her mumbling derisions about her assigned groupmates/party members (“Group of Weirdos”, “Midget”, “Religious Nut”, etc.), I had another player laughing and saying that this was his favorite character of mine. Said character also ended up in a very awkward love triangle as another player’s (female) character developed a crush on her, but she found it annoying and developed a crush on that character’s (male) roommate NPC instead (with the GM not being prepared for this development at all).
Yeah, Ima need the details, lol.
The love triangle thing is interesting. Very often it’s easier to think in terms of “gender doesn’t matter in adventure games.” When you run into romance subplots though, it begins to matter in a hurry.
Woops, forgot to check for replies until seeing today’s comic.
My first self-made character was a Changeling Witch with the Deception patron. If you’re not familiar with Pathfinder Changelings, they are an all-female race born from an evil hag + another race. My character decided to be descended from a Green Hag, which gave her the racial trait of, “The changeling gains a +2 racial bonus on Bluff checks against creatures that are sexually attracted to her.”
The first time I ended up trying to bluff another PC, they saw that little note on my macro (the group having moved to Roll20 for the summer) and ended up dragging the entire group into a discussion on whether or not their male samurai would be “sexually attracted” to my witch. Needless to say, this ended up being more than a little awkward, especially since I was fairly new to roleplaying at the time.
As for something a bit more more cringy, my Witch also had a hat of disguise that she loved using to customize her clothing, etc. for various situations. When she used it in front of the group for the first time to swap into an elegant dress meant for a formal party – she suddenly got bombarded with requests to change into “a revealing swimsuit,” as well as various fetish outfits. I was… actually a bit taken aback at the time, as I had not expected everyone else to react that way and the character had never acted towards the party in a way which would indicate she was open/okay with that.
Considering the love triangle popped up in a sort of magical school campaign, gender actually came up a few times just due to the setting. For example, the GM had the idea of assigning our dorms as 2-person rooms with the rival-party… which then lead to a few of the rooms being assigned as co-ed. This ended up raising some eyebrows in the group along with questions of, “would our parents really be okay with this?”
Another situation came up when the frat bro Paladin was desperately trying to convince the elf girl to meet up with him alone after curfew hours (to secretly investigate plot related issues) and everyone had a realization that the entire situation looked really sketchy. The elf girl (crossplay PC) ended up having to establish that she was bringing her treant to the meeting place (Druid Plant Companion) and would have it beat up the frat bro Paladin if he tried anything lewd.
Wow. When the “sexually attracted” thing is right there in the rules as a conditional, it kind of hard to get around it. I think people tend to dismiss the issue because “adventurer” is a career. Culturally, gender isn’t supposed to be a factor in your career. When you get into any kind of social interaction than “I kill monsters for a living” however, it can begin to matter in a big way, viz your dorm rooms.
Thanks for Sharon all the details! I hadn’t given changeling a look before, but the race is suddenly on my radar.
I mean, couldn’t wizard just sew more material onto the “robes”? If you can remove bits and have it still work, surely adding more wouldn’t render it nonmagical.
That would reduce the drama potential. Most drama requires an obvious route to be avoided. Then again, maybe Wizard’s needlework is no better than Thief’s.
Sadly, there’s not enough of the original garment left to withstand further alterations. The poor thing barely survived Succubus’s diabolical curse sewing in the first place.
Well, what about wearing it below, or above other clothing? Surely that should be no problem?
It’s the size that’s the issue. That thing barely fits on Wizard’s female form. There’s no chance for it to go on dude-Wizard without bursting at the seams.
Believe me, Wizard has gone over all the options which a considerable arcane intellect could muster, listing them out and crossing them off one by one on a bit of spare scroll parchment. This is the only option.
And here we thought Fighter couldn’t tell the difference with Wizard’s transformation.
It’s surprising how many questions this comic raises about Fighter. He’s obviously not as one-dimensional as we thought.
You’ve gotta be smart to be that dumb.
My group has had several instances of crossplay and I don’t think any have been cringy at all.
Guess we have just been lucky.
Currently I have a female SoM Brawler who follows Cayden Cailean in one of our campaigns.
My favorite part has been that she doesn’t like occult things and the party scared her to death about ghosts and peeling skin and the like…
Anyways one of the NPCs walked in the morning after and nudged her to wake her up.
This did not go well for him:
Me: She wakes up screaming “NOT MY SKIN!” And punches at him.
DM: like fending him off or an actual attack?
Me: … an actual attack. She did just get shook out of a nightmare.
DM: Roll it.
Me: ’20’…
everyone: LAUGHING MANIACLY
DM: well he’s surprised too so let’s look at the crit generator… (I forget what it was, but it had a debuff, max damage, and some extra damage too)
DM: so you scream and deal about a quarter of his health in damage… directly to his junk…
Everyone: oooooooooooo
Even after healing magic, he couldn’t speak or walk right for a while…
Many jokes about divine intervention to have kids one day, and snickering about permanent CON damage were had that session.
Funny note, every time she has hit this person (even in sparring) it has been a crit.
I think what most people should remember when crossplaying is ‘What Would You Do?’.
I mean, a LOT of situations are gender neutral, unless you are trying to dip into tropes… then you do you… er… them… I guess… 😛
I’ll never forget my new-to-RP friend playing her first archer.
“That’s a crit! Even with minimum damage, this medusa is done for. Go ahead and describe your kill!”
Without hesitation: “I shoot her right in the tit!”
Cracked our shit up pretty good.
Myself and most people I play with usually crossplay pretty freely – I think about half of my characters are female and I’m a guy. I like experimenting with different genders and sexualities, even if they don’t come up. I feel like it’s pretty normal? You are pretty much forced to do it if you’re GMing, anyway. How often does gender and sexuality become relevant for an adventurer, really?
I’ve definitely seen and grumbled about the “crossplay-gone-wrong” moments, too, but that’s usually with people I wouldn’t want to hang out with anyway.
And there’s the rub. It’s only weird if you make it weird. And this kind of person makes it weird without fail.
Personally (I usually play online), I have roughly equal numbers of guys and gals that I play. Even as a straight guy IRL, I don’t have any problems portraying both in-game. For the most part, I don’t consider it too much when coming up with the concept for my character, and only somewhat guides my characterization of them as well. People are people, after all, and I’ve found are way more likely to be guided by occupation/age/social status/skills when it comes to their actions than what their chromosomes say.
It depends on the character and the setting. This stuff matters in drow society, for example.
We live in a post-Vaarsuvius collective gaming culture, we don’t see a difference when it comes to Elves. No secondary sexual characteristics.
Well, my group already do oversexed and embarrassing pcs, even without crossplaying, and in our country we re not shy about sex, you can see women doing the pole dance in national TV, and it gets very high rating. Also the oversexed and embarrassing player characters are not even in a Exalted game, but when we play Exalted, well, the game already is very open about sex. We have not ever try crossplaying or at least we have not done it as a group and as a premise, we have played one or two cross-gender characters, but even with pc with our corresponding gender we still make jokes about using flashing to get a diplomacy bonus and i am not going to talk about the jokes about using the Rod of Lordly Might of our heroes, and in the group are three guys and a girl and she doesn’t fall back behind us, the guys.
Changing subject. What thinks Thief about her new girlfriend? Is she jealous, full of envy, curious? Will they break fueling the new party drama queen dramatic flames?
Like I said up top, that sort of thing can work depending on the group. I congratulate you on your sex positiveness and fine use of Rod of Lordly Might puns.
I’ve been trying to think about how to address this. You might have something in that last bit. I’ll have to work on some scripts….
Yeah, we made a lot of bad and shameful puns with the Rod of Lordly Might, somewhere someone is full of sorrow for what he has unleashed. Thanks about our “sex positiveness”, we, and i mean we as a country not only as a group, are not shy about that matters, we are very open and even laid back, pun complete intended, about it. Still as players we always follow that old advise: https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/fade-to-black, rolling D20 in that kind of situations is very silly at best, stupid and discouraging at worst.
I have a question about crossplaying, i was thinking if it counts when you as a player are using a race like the changelings. That is a race i like, and i don’t usually even try non-human races, so if you use they racial abilities to lets say play a male changeling who transforms into a woman to seduce or distract a guard. Does that count as crossplaying? I ask because in that case i have done a lot, even more if i can usa that funny skill to mess and trolling people 🙂
About Thief and Wizard, i think not matter what happens, what it matters is that whatever happens will be interesting and dramatic, and i think Wizard approves this school of though.
As soon as I read the idea of Wizard and Thief breaking up, I felt a rush of horror, discomfort, and crushing despair.
It was at that moment that I asked myself, if my level of attachment to these fictional characters is unhealthily high.
I still don’t have a definitive answer to that question…
Don’t worry, the have not break up… yet 🙂
But yes, i think they make a nice couple, or at least they did it before Wizard decided to sell his manhood to a succubus for a pinky Robe of Slave Princess Leia Might. Thing that when you said in that way is even worst that it was on the comic. In any case lest see what happen, i would really like that the two of them be still together, even if it is a little awkward 🙁
Only ever had one instance crossplay with a male player and female character; there were no problems with the gender of the character, the racist Indian voice was another matter. Not that it’s a problem since he left the group after getting involved in a twisted, unhealthy relationship with his dominatrix. While I’ve not tried crossplay I might consider it if playing a changeling since I like them thematically.
It’s an interesting point of comparison with the gender issue. With the whole Apu controversy lately…
https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/tv/2018/08/02/simpsons-fox-execs-address-shows-future-and-apu-controversy/890780002/
…The thought has been on my mind. I enjoy doing character voices and accents, and have a least a little talent in that regard. Even so, I know I’d feel uncomfortable as a white dude playing the African barbarian as opposed to the traditional Conan ripoff, despite its equal pedigree in the pulp genre. Cultural baggage doesn’t disappear just because the dice come out, you know?
One problem I do have when cross-playing is describing my character. I truely love giving amazing and evocative descriptions, but when I’m cross-playing, it can be difficult, it’s hard to know what you can and can’t say, and what might make you seem like a horny teenager inside.
Go with “heaving bosom.” You can never go wrong with an old fashioned heaving bosom. 😛
For serious though, you’ve got my empathy. When it came time to pick out my character portrait for that dashing pirate noble character I mentioned in today’s blog, I unwittingly went with a pic of the actress who plays Sansa Stark. Since I’d only read the books, I had no idea what my google search for “half-elf blonde female” had turned up. And believe me, the Sansa character isn’t exactly what I was trying to convey.
One of my main characters is a female character, and I think it is something that allows you to try and tackle all sorts of different outcomes as a result. For instance, I doubt I would ever have ended up getting a noble drunk, seducing him, and straight out murdering him in his bedroom if my character was male.
Fun times.
On topic though, I tend to mix up my characters, just because I like the different aesthetics provided by either, and I feel each has their own place. Also, I think it stems a bit from the fact that I cannot stand stories/shows/anime with casts of all one gender. But ultimately, it comes down to trying different styles and possible stories for me.
Yup. There are a lot of creative possibilities on the table when truly anything goes. It’s oddly freeing. 🙂
Speaking of drama the primary thought I have over this development is worry about the stability of Thief and Wizard’s relationship. I hope he talked with her before changing his gender over a robe. She already looked unhappy when he was dancing with the noble.
Anyway as for crossplaying. Well I’m fairly certain I’ve done it occasionally, but nothing sticks out. I play a lot of games and most of them don’t last that long.
Oh actually that sparked my memory of a one shot I played years ago where my character was a japanese cook. Being female was far less of a character aspect than the fact she barely spoke english however. And by far the most memorable part was when I used kitchen knives to dice a deep one apart like a fish. Which might not be too impressive games in a lot of games, but this was a horror game with normal human characters that were supposed to be running from most fights. We got cornered and I got really lucky on my rolls.
What I have done however is play loads and loads of AI and golem characters. Some of them I default to male with, but I occasionally try to play the completely sexless angle straight.
If nothing else, this comic has made me keenly aware of the importance of Wizard and Thief’s relationship to the community. Scripts are being written with the utmost care.
Also, grats on surviving combat in CoC.
As mentioned in the comments somewhere way back when, my best intraparty romance was also crossplay. In fact double crossplay since we were both guys with female characters.
I’m actually pretty sure I play something like 60-65% female characters. I nor any of the people I’ve played with have ever given anyone any kind of trouble over it. And I think the last time I saw laughably inappropriate sophomoric behavior as a result of crossplay was…. well literally in sophomore year. I always just assumed that kind of immaturity was literally something most roleplayers grow out of as part of becoming more mature in the general sense.
Heck, I imagine that’s even more the case these days with more focus and broader views of gender and sexuality. Especially in younger people than that used to be the case for.
Then again, I could be totally wrong and my experiences and expectations could be basically alien to a significant portion of the population. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time. shrug
For me the most pressing question this comic brings up is something I’m much more highly invested in.
What effect (if any?) will this have on Thief and Wizard’s relationship!? (Note that Thief’s name goes first, since like all things that belong to the party, it is effectively her property. =P )
Hmmmm. I find myself in a mildly awkward situation. I just had a thought pop into my head that I don’t want to share with the rest of the class so to speak, but have no way of sharing with just Colin & Laurel.
Not a big deal I suppose.
I guess if either of you are interested, you can contact me on GitP. (Same name there as here.) Really though, not a big deal.
You can always drop a message via our Facebook or Twitter:
https://m.facebook.com/handbookofheroes/
https://mobile.twitter.com/ColinStricklin
I am belatedly conscious of the fact that I might be giving this kind of immaturity more cultural cache than it deserves. You see a lot of stories about it online because it’s so notably obnoxious when it happens. Of course, being the internet, it’s even money that those stories come from high school games rather than long-standing groups.
I’ve tried Crossplaying. Sadly it doesn’t Work for me. I have a pretty deep Voice. So Everyone always forgets that my Character is female Ingame.
Honestly i simply don’t bother anymore.
That’s too bad. I sometimes wonder whether Role20 and Facerig / voice changers could solve that kind of problem. The possibilities for immersive gaming are intriguing to say the least. At the moment, it seems like more tech trouble than it’s worth though.
Spoiler alert, for those that haven’t done Iron Gods yet.
So there’s a fight later on where an Azata offers to morph you into azata-kin, and my Inquisitor Osvaldt Guendallin had no reason to say no to extra dexterity and darkvision. I don’t know for sure if Azatas are generally female inclined as an archon type, but the DM flipped a coin for my resulting transformation.
The next day, I was Gwendolyn Osvaldt.
It didn’t change much, the character was still dour and taciturn, and the party witch (male, kind of a jokester) made a few witty epithets. Finding Gwen with just her hat was an embarrassing moment for the party, but as she was still used to being “Oz,” she didn’t care until they finally gave her her old clothes back. Eventually, she grew into being female, but it was a gradual ‘oh, boobs get in the way of the feel of my normal archery’ and ‘I have to sit to pee? What a stupid hassle’ progression.
The jokes never stopped until the campaign ended, but I’d say the party handled it pretty well. I enjoyed myself, too.
That all seems to fall well within Ranma 1/2 territory. Fair ball says I!
Does Oz have any advice for Wizard in this situation?
Mostly “What were you good at as a guy? You’re still good at it now. Nothing has changed in regards to what makes you successful.”
followed by
“You now possess a distinct advantage over the people who find your change distressing. Use it as freely as you want.”
I’m hearing, “Mess with Fighter to the best of your abilities.”
Beyond a shadow of a doubt, yes.
The aforementioned witch got smacked with a boob once when he was cackling too much and it got on Gwen’s nerves. Blessed quiet ensued.
Where? I searched through all the pdfs, and the closest I got to “azata” was hAZArd and AZAThoth
“Crossplaying” isn’t really a thing in my tabletop gaming circle… in that we don’t give a second thought to playing a character of a different gender, any more than we do for playing non-human characters with magic powers. I’d be very wary of joining a group that did make an issue out of it, because it feels like it might be a sign of some unfortunate attitudes.
I’ve had male and female players trying to seduce their way out of (or into) trouble with every combination of male and female characters. Usually it works, because I’m lucky enough to play with some very good roleplayers, who understand what is and isn’t a reasonable application of seduction, and they’ve usually got the stats to back it up, too.
It’s a fair cop. And maybe I’m the one guilty of making it weird. Let me explain my thinking though. Even if we inhabit a fictional world when we RP, that doesn’t mean we leave this one behind. Cultural attitudes don’t disappear the moment the dice come out.
Speaking as a man, I can’t help but feel like women have an easier time of it in this one small part of gaming culture. We’re inundated with Mulan stories on the one hand (the girl who bravely became a soldier) and White Chicks on the other (isn’t it hilarious that I’m wearing a dress)? That cultural disparity certainly gets in my head when I contemplate crossplay.
This stuff is present even within our own gaming-specific culture. It’s the same reason that crossplaying is treated as something exceptional when it comes up in Gamers 2. If you’re not familiar, check out the scene in question here.
My whole group is pretty all over the place in terms of the genders played. I’d say I play female characters more often than I crossplay into male, but the guys are frequent enough. I’ve played genderfluid and agender characters too.
Our funniest was a tengu ranger who (similarly to Wizard, I suppose) ended up getting am outfit from a succubus (though we had looted her ridiculous chainmail bikini/miniskirt armour). We had a laugh about a creature with an avian figure (not much of a bust on a bird) trying to pull off wearing a succubus’ outfit. It was only after that that we realized it has been 9 levels and we’d never actually confirmed our avian ally’s gender. Apparently, he leaned male, with occasional bursts of femininity.
Any time I think of dudes playing tengu, I’m reminded of a tale I heard over on RPG horror stories subreddit where the gang visited a whore house. Apparently the proudly male tengu player didn’t know what a cloaca was.
Well, cross-playing isn’t inherently weird. It’s actually the reason that helped me discover my trans-gender side! Although, I don’t know if you’d say it’d be cross-playing since then it’d just be a woman playing a woman. But, I’d assume it’s a useful tool in exploring gender and expression whether or not you are Non-binary or trans. Could just wanna play a different character and thats cool too!
Anyways, I do notice I tend to stick to female characters (I have one male pc). I also notice it in other games too. Makes me wonder if my experiences with transitioning and stuff give me an eversion to playing male characters?
Let me start by saying that I’m an ally. Trans people exist, and there’s nothing weird about it. There’s nothing weird about a trans person using RPGs as a source of gender exploration either.
That said, I’m guessing there are more cis people who play outside of their SAB than trans people, at least if we’re going by raw numbers rather than per capita. This is speculation on my part, and I certainly don’t have any studies on hand describing why cis people crossplay. However, my guess is that “earnest gender exploration” would not be high on the list.
If you look at crossplaying as falling within the same general category of performance practices as drag reviews, crossplaying in a cosplay sense, or even culturally-specific theater categories like onnagata, then it’s easier to see how Joe-cisgender might find it unusual. Even more so if they’re coming to TRPGs fresh, and are unaware that the practice is widely considered unremarkable by the community.
For my part, I think it’s bizarre how we arbitrarily divide these performance practices into “normal” and “abnormal.” God knows that Laurel and I had all manner of fun the year we hosted our gender bender Halloween party. I made a fabulous Morticia.
This is interesting given that Fighter literally once tried to turn himself into a werewolf for stat boosts ( https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/there-wolf ) and killed his parents so he’d have a heroic backstory ( https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/the-handbook-of-heroes-13 ), so he should be totally onboard with a simple gender-bend to qualify for a powerful magical artifact. For that matter, he spent at least a sidequest transformed into a bugbear ( https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/karma ) and originally thought that Wizard was female in the first placew ( https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/woodelf ). Then again, Fighter is a hypocrite, a moron and an asshole.
…And I have become WAY too familiar with the continuity of this gag-a-day comic.
I have never been more complimented in my life. :’)
As I believe I have mentioned many times before, my first and longest-lasting character was a cross-play. It wasn’t really intention on my part, it just kind of happened in the pre-campaign development and I said to myself “Well, I’m a writer and I can write female characters, so this shouldn’t be any different.” And it wasn’t, really. My writing has a disproportionately large number of female characters for some reason. I guess they just feel more interesting to me. So maybe that has something to do with it? Or maybe I’m just smart enough to not try and do voices.
Anyways, Bellona Silverlock of the Order of the Red Falcon’s 2+ years of character growth haven’t been particularly tied to her gender, though I did avoid the unfortunate cliché of the “incredibly masculine tough guy girl” that happens when people try to avert the damsel in distress and swing to far in the other direction. Her arc also really hasn’t had anything to do with her status as a half-drow, though that is probably a consequence of it being an AP not really designed for that (though she grew up in a community of supportive humans, so that probably helped her self-image). Instead, Bellona’s arc has mostly been more of a youth-to-experience sort of thing, as she went (both mechanically and RP-wise) from an enthusiastic, reckless and aggressive brawler who wasn’t very effective, got captured trying to solo an enemy fort and got beat up all the time to an invulnerable tank and effective team leader who successfully dragged a crew of random misfits across half a continent in one piece (despite literally all of them having more Charisma than her), going from questing as a means to prove her strength to her mentor to having confidence in herself and fighting truly for the greater good. She’s found faith in Milani, goddess of liberty, hope and independence, and been granted power to protect herself and her team as a result. She’s made a close, (probably) platonic female friendship with a partymate, recovered from the first death of a character under her (de facto) command, triumphed over a reoccurring aasimar baddie who (coincidentally) resembles her equal/opposite and survived walking around for quite a while with 4 negative levels. Not to mention catching not one but three allies at different times with Feather Fall, the most holy of spells. All while rocking a crazy STR-CON-Longsword-Greatsword-Bloodrager-Snake Style-Inquisitor build that looks absolutely nothing like what the internet says a Magus build should be. And the best part, of course, is that I didn’t plan this evolution out – it happened on its own, as I played and learned and adapted to her strengths and weaknesses.
So, you see, Bellona’s gender wasn’t really a factor for most of the campaign. It did come up a few times, such as interactions with the womanizing/coward male Sorcerer PC (though that was mostly “he acted braver when around women he’s just met”), and she always seemed to get on the worst end of the Lawful Stupid Paladin Who Innocently Sexually Harasses Everyone/thing He Interacts With (though that probably had more to do with him healing her with Lay on Hands than intention on the Paladin’s player’s part – “Stop rubbing my forearm like that!”). Or in the bar in the isolated farming town. Ironically, the villain who is supposed to end up with an obsessive stalker crush on a female PC ended up, because of quirks in the system, obsessed with the aforementioned male Cowardly Womanizer Sorcerer. Oh, there was also this moment:
[the KO’d PC Bellona is standing on top of is healed and wakes up.]
GM: “Bellona is standing on top of you. You can see up her skirt.”
Me: “Excuse me, I am not wearing a skirt. I am a knight.”
Excuse me. Why can’t a knight wear a skirt?
https://castlesandcoffeehouses.com/2015/01/31/the-fashionable-knight-in-shining-armour/
😛
We don’t count Crossplay as “GM playing a woman NPC” do we?
But as a player, I’ve actually crossplayed as a female character often. But at the same time it’s usually not a part of their character. They’re a character who’s female, not a female character I suppose.
As an example; Elli is my character female Alchemist. Tiefling with a love of explosions, science and robots. With the goal of trying to reverse engineer robots to try and make life easier for the common folk and maybe send a combat force to the next region over and beat down some demons with them(It’s pathfinder setting, look up Numeria).
She’s not flashing her goods everywhere, or acting like some damsel. No she just carpet bombs things into the ground and gets hyperactive when talking about tech. She could probably work just as well as a Male character given her personality but I just figured “Hey female this time.”
Mind you, I play online most the time and through text only. So I have the advantage of people reading Elli’s words rather than my hard to understand as a guy voice trying to do a female one.
You’re right that we don’t, and it’s an interesting point to contemplate. I think it might have something to do with the distinction between “I choose to inhabit this persona for the duration of the campaign” and “I just play everybody as a matter of course.” I’m thinking in particular about the time a listener wrote in to The Glass Cannon Podcast asking if the dude who always crossplays was trans. The GM didn’t get that question, even though he frequently portrays female NPCs. There’s probably an interesting gender studies paper in there somewhere.
As for Elli though, I think that’s a healthy way to approach character design. Gender doesn’t have to be this big defining character feature.
The very first character I ever played in D&D was a female fighter. I, a 13 year old boy, was extremely mature about the whole thing. So of course after hitting the local tavern and having nary a penny to my name, I flashed the crowd to cover my escape as I bolted for the door. The DM, also a 13 year old boy, allowed it, as he said it was plenty of compensation for the few drinks I’d had. Mind you, my character had a 17 charisma, so I guess she was pretty hot. I think we played for a while longer, I got bored with her, and rolled up a thief instead. Had a lot more fun with him.
I have never flashed back to middle school quite so hard. O_O
Being primarily a text-based player, I can say that cross-playing is an entirely normal thing in every RPG I’ve been in online. Sometimes people are creepy about it, but they are few and far between.
None of my Starfinder grouped batted an eye when I chose to play a male human soldier, and it’s been such a standard part of my RPG career that reading this comic was basically the first time I thought of it as being weird (except in the ‘ew, gross dudes describing their constantly nude female characters in great detail is gross’ way).
Yeah… This is definitely a case where in-person and online render different experiences. As a large caucasian dude blessed with an amount of body hair that can only be referred to as a “gamer pelt,” it’s a bit startling when you hear my dulcet baritone declare that, “I am the countess Thasinia, high priestess of etc. etc.” That’s an issue you don’t have in the world of text-based play.
I mean, I’ve played male characters in irl games. I’m sorry to say that things might be a little skewed against your gender. In my experience, there’s a lot less of a stink raised about women playing men than vice versa. Though I’m pretty butch, so that might have something to do with it.
I wonder what Wizard’s sister thinks of this.
I probably ought to write that script soon. More important question: What does it do to the line of succession?
Well, if wizard is the elder sibling, not much. If it’s a patriarchal system and he’s the younger sibling though I guess it could change some stuff.
It’s normal enough in my group… character gender has little to do with player gender. I have a lot of spare concepts of all genders (and none), so it mostly comes down to which one I feel like playing when a game starts…
Conceptually, this is absolutely true. However, I’ve found that it matters in practice. For example, misgendering a high-voiced woman’s male PC happens, and it can break immersion.
The fictional world is connected to the world of the tabletop, though some groups are better than others at separating the two.
Crossplay can be fun. From here i see most people are good with if, though there are definitely gross-cringy types out there. Ive played a female human rogue/ninja(she like to get involved with other thieving guilds, infiltrating them, finding the next big heist then becoming part of said heist and heist the heisters), and a few Gnolls. Gnolls are fun to roleplay; T’chaka a fighter/kensai who used a dual kusari-gama and had an item to minor earthbend, Crackers a fighter who didnt know the meaning of slow down, and finally my current Gnoll, Knorgih, whos running the trope of the armored wizard.
Were you cross-playing for all of the gnolls? What makes them fun to RP?
Gender isn’t important to my character: all that matters is if they can kill fiends and aberrations. If becoming the other gender gets in the way of that, then they’ll figure out a way to turn back if transformed.
That’s all there is to it.
my female nerd friend played a dude character once,but he didn’t play into any blatant dude tropes, so we kept accidentally misgendering him during the in charachter interactions. We plan on picking that campaign up again when we can, and I bet we’ll get better eventually, but it’s easy to transpose the player onto the character a bit.
I disagree with all of this and I have never crossplayed.
As a wise woman once said: “lol. Four years later with the update. XD”
Ok. As it later turned out, I am not male.
Me neither. :/
I’m so glad I scrolled to the very bottom of this one after Self-Discovery and found the circle closed between It’s_A_Trap and Claire. Congrats to you both!
Gotta take care of those dangling plot threads when you can! 😀
Funny enough, I would say that Wizard transitioning was this comic’s Grow the Beard moment.
(I can add myself to the roster of “started exclusively crossplayinh female PCs, realized she was not crossplaying a few years later”.
Gooble gobble and whatnot. 🙂
Laurel’s art has improved SO MUCH since we started. I, on the other hand, have simply discovered the wonders of intermittent continuity.
The rule of MMORPG, 50% of female avatars are played by 20% of the men. 80% women would play male avatars.