The men who get weird while playing female characters are usually also weird when playing male characters.

@Mark73

2 ай бұрын

And weird when talking to women in real life.

@ryaneaston3487

2 ай бұрын

They’re just weird.😆

Only one man can't. Derek from Indiana is banned from playing women. Actually, he is just banned in general. Banned from everything. He knows what he did

@Nikolith

2 ай бұрын

God damnit, Derek.

@justanidiotmk2749

2 ай бұрын

Everyone knows what Derek did that's why he's banned universally.

@ramirezthesilvite

2 ай бұрын

Freaking Derek. He's such a Craig.

@flaminyawn

2 ай бұрын

Those poor people...

@ryaneaston3487

2 ай бұрын

Am I supposed to be afraid to ask? ._.

I have an entire party where all the dudes are playing women, none of them are being wierd about it.

Women are people too. Just play them as a person

@WhatABinglylittlescronklylil-

2 ай бұрын

It’s sad to think some people need to hear this ☹️

@Puzzles-Pins

2 ай бұрын

They need to understand it. I'm sure they've heard it plenty but it just doesn't click

@dr3dg352

2 ай бұрын

The George RR Martin method!

@realrealwarpet

2 ай бұрын

Me, an eldritch horror: ah, yes. People. I am one of that

Best advice for RPing something you don't identify as: just don't tokenize the character and play it straight. You can run any character like that.

@lysandergorisch1969

2 ай бұрын

RPing a young elven girl who learns necromancy to find friends because she was a outcast in her villiage. She is level 2 so not really a necromancer yet my DM gave me a skeleton dude who due to her inexpirence is somewhat constantly falling apart and who is pretty much destroyed every battle with a personality of a old school chiverlrous knight in charge of a lady which he sees alsmost like a daughter. Alot of fun to RP . I think the key to make female characters work is just to make them characters and not some kind of vehicle for fetishes .

@alexinfinite7142

2 ай бұрын

​@lysandergorisch1969 oh man your DM sounds amazing. Whats the deal with the campaign?

@ultimativerHexer

2 ай бұрын

As a gay man I'm often playing something I'm not and as you said: I play it straight! 😁

@lysandergorisch1969

2 ай бұрын

@@ultimativerHexer lifehaxs get born as bisexual and you can authenticly play most sexualities apart from Ace but lets be real Ace is pretty easy to play.

@liquidlen2

2 ай бұрын

I was in a game with my brother; he was playing a half-elf as usual, and I wanted to try an elf. He tasked me to write our backstories, so I made his character my character's half-brother. Now, I call him my brother because we grew up in the same household, but he's 'really' my half-brother. So just to put a twist on it I made my character his half-SISTER (I have one brother and four half-brothers, so none of us ever had the experience of a sister or half-sister.). It wasn't any more complex than that. I really enjoyed that character and would play her again any time.

I'm an asexual trans woman. My player characters are generally lesbian cis women though I play a hetero Owlbear grandmother on Fridays. When I DM most of my NPCs are male for no particular reason. I was in a stage play once as the hetero mother of another character. In the stories I've written most of my protagonists are male. Most of it is just "what would a person do?" with things like gender and sexuality only adding a little flavor to the other personality traits

You had so much great advice in this month's Q&Play! As for men playing women, a now former friend unfortunately once explained that he never made female PCs because he would "only be capable" of playing 3 archetypes, the "not like other girls" tough girl, the nature lover, or some other one (probably the flirty type, but I honestly don't remember). Like, I'm totally down for people choosing to not play a certain type of character they're not interested in. But it was just bizarre to me that this guy had this mental block telling him that only 3 kinds of women exist. Honestly glad we're no longer in touch.

Yoooo my comment Made it in! I appreciate this more than my degree which I haven’t even gotten the physical paper for yet despite graduating in December. Wishing you all the best Krispy. Your advice has been helping me in my campaign I started with work friends who’ve quickly become some of my best friends and can’t thank you enough.

I'm currently running two female characters in two of my four games, nobody has said anything about them so far other than one of the guys who's from India and couldn't quite wrap his head around it, until I explained that I was using the opportunity to practice RPing the opposite gender for a game I run for a different group. Roza and Irie are very much appreciated by their respective tables, mostly because of how they interact with each party member. Roza is played with the intention of giving the other players a gentle nudge to participate in RP by giving them an easy setup to jump in and do something cool since her whole party is new to the hobby. Whereas Irie is more the type to drag the party along by their shirt collars so that they actually do anything other than strategize over the coffee table for 4 hours.

@TheMightyBattleSquid

2 ай бұрын

Yeah, only weird experience I've ever had RPing a woman was when the DM put me in charge of controlling an NPC and chose some busty art. Another player could not WAIT to say "LEMME ROLL TO IMPREGNATE HER" 🙄 DM was going to let him roll charisma, which was his good stat, but since I was put in control I told him he needed to prove his strength in the upcoming battle, which bought me time since the character would disappear afterwards.

@halodude7167

Ай бұрын

@TheMightyBattleSquid while I see no inherent issue in using busty art, the problem there lies with the "charismatic" creep and the DM enabling them. It is entirely possible to have an encounter where a PC flirts with someone, meets a sexy character, or even wears some revealing clothing, and not having it lead to sex. For example, Irie, one of the characters I mentioned, is by her background a pole dancer(Performer for 5e sake), everyone at the table is mature enough about it that we had a very hilarious scene of the Goliath Barbarian trying to join her on stage and breaking the pole. Moral of the story: You shouldn't ever feel the need to make an NPC or PC disappear to avoid a creep, if nobody at the table signed up for that, or if you're not cool with what they're doing, tell 'em to back off.

I am usually a silent watcher but for once I just wanted to say how much I love your videos! I binge the horror story videos all the time and I'm in the middle of going through all the Tavern Tips. Your advice is super useful and I am more excited than ever to play and improve my games thanks to you! 💚

Any special death condition which in the rules is "can't be revived with anything short of a Wish spell" I usually interpret as "requires a special quest to revive." It's not (necessarily) permanent loss of a character, it's a hook for a new part of the adventure!

As a woman myself, my advice to non-women who want to play woman characters is to just play the character like you’d play any other character, but with she/her pronouns. If you can play a tough-talking male fighter, you can play a tough-talking female fighter. If you can play a flirtatious male rogue, you can play a flirtatious female rogue. If you can play a male cleric who spent most of his life cloistered in his temple and knows little of the outside world, you can play a female cleric who spent most of her life cloistered in her temple and knows little of the outside world. I could keep going with every class and personality type. Just come up with a character and have her use she/her pronouns. It’ll only be weird if you make it weird.

@dr3dg352

2 ай бұрын

Best advice! 👏

In all the games I play, I actually mostly play as a Female character. And the only time we got anywhere close to weird was when me and my party were going undercover I described my Gnome Forge Cleric in a bit of a tavern wench styled dress and being very well endowed(She normally wears a Chestbinder of Holding) Sounds like the start of an RPG horror story, but it was my own personal choice, I made sure everyone would be comfortable with it first, it was literally only one time like 10 sessions ago, and noted to be something she'd never where OUTSIDE of this kind of scenario of trying to not arouse suspicion of her real identity since anyone that's seen her knows she's either always dressed conservatively or in plate armor. It did however also lead to a really funny moment where the head of her church and forge (A Dwarf who's a dick to her because they don't believe Gnomes can be blacksmiths.) didn't recognize her and tried to hit on her. Only for me to tell them "I like men with sharper ears if you know what I mean." In which he vomited, said "Ya know what, never mind." and walked off. All this to say: The easiest way to play a character of the opposing gender on both the DM and player side is to 1) Play them as a character first and foremost but 2) Be mindful that they ARE the opposite gender for the purpose of roleplay moments.

Gender can get so bleak. We need more people playing and having fun with it. I’m afab (assigned female at birth) and pretty much unanimously read as a woman in any setting that’s not text-based. It’s functional, but being able to play with gender means I know that agender is a much more accurate description of me. I think most people have something worthwhile to learn from playing characters that aren’t like them, but even if you literally don’t and are just having a good time, one person’s willingness to respectfully explore makes it easier for the people around them to think about trying it themselves.

In the current campaign I'm playing in, my buddy is playing a woman. He plays her as an assassin who pretends she's calm and professional but gets a little trigger happy with the Eldrich blasts. She's kind of entertaining because you'd look at her and think she's the serious, reasonable one in the party but she's often doing a lot of the same shiz as the barbarian only with more magic. We also learned recently that she's married which was a bit of a suprise. She also has taken to calling her hireling her "work husband" because it's funny. She also insists we call the result of her Dancing Lights spell Linda (Linda is kind of an honorary 5th party member at this point). I give my friend props for this character, you'd never think it was a guy playing her.

I bought Flee, Mortals! because of your endorsements. Amazing and inspirational.

I came in a dnd mindset and I ended up back in a "f**k mountaintop recluse us back!!! Ahhh" mindset. Into the light is really cool so far though.

DM prep is all over the place. My prep, aside from maps, and music, though I usually forget to play the music, is... a couple of sentences about each scene, nearby stuff. In the saturday game I play in, one of my fellow players shared their player notes. The two who are GM's for other games and the DM for that one, were stunned. She took far better notes than we did for any session prep. All kinds of Dms out there, but I find we are more like mathmeticians. Lazy and filled with shorthand. Which sucks when you forget the shorthand. Only universal note, players also for the names of random guards or bandits. Every. Single. Time.

Some of my most beloved characters were women.

@zacharysieg2305

2 ай бұрын

My brother plays male and female characters with approximately equal frequency, and hasn’t once made either one weird.

I am a cis white guy who has been playing for 27ish years (i'm old), and roughly about half of my characters are women. They're just people with their own backstories and motivations. Some are intelligent. Some are sarcastic. Some are more heroic than others. Some are more comedic than others. Some are more straightmen when it comes to humor. Some are more arrogant than others. Some are more socially outgoing than others. How much being a woman affects them as a character varies as well - pretty much like how some of my characters might be half-elven vs human vs dwarven vs half-kender vs whatever and that impacts their personality to varying degrees (i.e. could be none, could be a lot, could be somewhere in between). In the end, I've discovered that the biggest impact on my characters is how they form and conduct their relationships with other characters (both PCs and NPCs). A bulk of the other stuff is secondary - note: rarely completely negligible, but secondary.

I think the false hydra is neat, but almost impossible to _actually_ run due to how it works. Also, appearance-wise, it's literally just Dead Hand from Ocarina of Time, but with multiple heads.

@RadiusIgnus

2 ай бұрын

My group ran a one shot featuring the false hydra where the excitement was much higher before we knew what we were dealing with. The stilted way the NPCs acted, the constant wisdom checks yielding nothing (No one ran a cleric so rolling a high wisdom save was rare).. the whole thing felt chilling when we didn't know what horror we were dealing with. When we finally got to the finale and the actual fight the poor thing got mercilessly bodied in about 3 turns. It reminded me of old horror movies where our imagination of the creature was far scarier than the creature itself once faced.

I'm a cis woman and sometimes I play male characters... for the same reason as Crispy mentions, they just "feel" more masculine to me. One time I couldn't pick... I was making a kobold in 5e...then I remembered according to Volo's Guide to Monsters kobolds are sex-fluid so... would they have a gender identity at all? I decided no, and made a kobold who was not only nonbinary but flat out did not understand the concept of gender. They have a mate and multiple children...they take turns being the "donor" and the "egg layer". (Though since I'm not used to using they/them myself I sometimes accidentally misgender them as he/him... something I'm trying to get better at. At least I have this fictional character to practice with who won't get upset about the misgendering, so that I can hopefully be better with the real nonbinaries I meet, both online and IRL.) At least us women don't have a reputation of being weird when playing male characters...some players have a reputation of being weird about us playing male characters though... Luckily I have yet to encounter such a player. I also later made a trans/enby gnome with a preference for she/her because every time I drew her she looked kinda androgynous. Instead of trying to "fix" that I just made it a part of her. In the setting nobody treats LGBT characters any differently so it doesn't really affect how I RP her (or the kobold who exists in the same setting), especially since she uses she/her pronouns regardless. She just may have been assigned male at birth, and that's okay. (The party and the DM have been told and are okay with it.)

One thing I’ve done as a dm, which I both don’t recommend and do recommend, if you try and make fantasy names by spelling normal names backwards, say them out loud before you use them! I will never get over the time I spelt the names Elaine and Laura backwards… a pair of. Characters who were sisters. My players still reference that moment because it was so funny. Also, I loved the false hydra. I ran it (had to boost its stats as my players were level 17 at the time, we’ve been playing this campaign regularly for 5 years now). It was probably one of the most memorable combat encounters my players have had. I included a mechanic where I had a really creepy lullaby playing randomly in my game’s sound track and every time it played, my players had to roll a wisdom save. It upped the tension massively.

As someone who’s three main archetypes are constructs,buff women and powerful children. Yes you can be a man and play a woman without making it weird. In fact im playing in 2 campaigns as a woman currently

I remember playing a female character in D&D and the only person who made it weird was the dungeon master. The DM made me role persuasion to convince every first person they met they were a woman, but that aside I liked the experience the character had great synergy with the other players and plan on using them again.

INTO THE LIGHT

My biggest fear is just being called out on the fact I'm playing a woman in any campaign. I have some friends that have made rather rude remarks in the past about characters other people wanted to play (also men wanting to play women) which lead me to believe it was a weird thi g to do so, thanks for the vid Crispy, I'm just glad to know I am not the weird one for wanting to play as a female character while I'm male myself.

Played a couple of female characters over the years. One was a Dwelf (Dwarf/Elf) detective Ranger for a one-shot (Cthulu inspired), another a Tabaxi Juggernaut Barbarian merc for a longtime character (sadly that game fell apart). The way I went about making either, but especially the later character, is I first thought of the circumstances of the characters' upbringing. How was their upbringing, how does that relate to who they are, etc. That gives excellent blueprints to what the characters are like personality-wise and actions wise.

Half of all of the 32 characters I’ve created thus far to potentially play in a DnD game are female, or have a feminine body type. I think that as long as you don’t make being a woman the character’s entire personality, you should be good as a male playing a female character

Problem with False Hydra is that you need players who are okay with being gaslit. I won't be running it for the same reason I won't run anything involving Lolth or Miska the Wolf-Spider - I have players who put hard no on excessive spider things and hard no on gaslighting.

hearing people say "coinkidink" makes me smile. Thanks for making me smile :)

I'm male and four of the five D&D characters I've played so far have been female. (I've _created_ thirteen D&D characters -- six female and six male, one for each of the _Player's Handbook_ classes, plus a nonbinary artificer. Having played only the female ones is just how things have worked out so far.)

As a man who has about a 90% rate of playing female PCs instead of male PCs, I think I can also answer that question--I usually make my character based on an emotional need/desire I can relate to, and have that serve as both the impetus behind my character's motivations/actions, and also the medium by which I can connect with my character. I can give two examples of this, I think. In a pokemon campaign, I'm playing a girl whose older brother left Fuchsia City for the Unova Region after leaving home on some less than ideal terms. I, as someone who romanticizes sibling relationships like the weasley twins or FuwaMoco or those kinds of perfect "best friend" bonds one can have with their sibling but does not have that kind of bind with his own siblings, wanted to make a character who desires to fix her own sibling relationship, and find her older brother before it's too late to fix it. That love for one's family is the vehicle by which I can connect to her. As another example, in a vampire killer campaign, I played a girl whose grandpa was killed by demons. As a member of a demon hunter family, she couldn't manifest the magic necessary to be a demon hunter until her grandpa was killed, and his death was her fault. And I, as someone who lives with shame for failing to live up to a dream or expectation I once set for myself, have made this girl a person who seeks to redeem herself so she no longer has to live with the guilt and shame and self-hatred she has or, failing that, give her life for the good of the party. Her shame and desire to redeem herself or be 'of use' to the greater good is the emotional bond I share with that character. Its about putting a little bit of yourself in your character and using that as a means to cennect emotionally to them.

I’m a straight CIS male and I play a female character, Scrambles the Death Dealer who is a gnome barbarian berserker who wears bear hide armor that looks like she’s wearing a teddy bear costume and is definitely not sexy. She’s a battle axe wielding psychopath that takes bites out of still living animals and sometimes people.

When someone asks me that question, a lot of red flags start to appear in my mind XD.

"INTO THE LIGHT!"

the games i play do we not have any lvls and minions are dangerous, for a bullet to the head will basically one shoot a player, and bosses may just be abit more skilled of having 85% hit chans compared to 55% of a minion and he may have better quality weapon and armor, but still 1 hit may kill them or at least disable them. So combat is alot of reduce the risk of being hit, hide behind objects, sneak so the enemies dont know you are there so you shoot first. Combat is fast and leathal and preferable you start it or aboid it.

"Into the light!"

As a man, you can play women, if your friends don't become freaks when they play D&D and consider that the gender of your character is an invitation for SA in game...

I play female characters all the time and i don't think people really need to justify doing that. No matter what in DND you're playing a character. There's my artificer Izumi My phantom rogue Ashelynne And on the NPC side there's the cleric of mystra Aurellia The adorable mouse knight annadora Even the main BBEG Madeline I don't know why i made those characters women but who cares, they are what they are.

I played a female character, and it was fine. The character simply worked better as a female than a male.

How to play a female character? The same as the male ones. Literally the same. Just rp people... as people, it's that simple. I've never offended anyone doing this. I've played males, females, and others but they're all made with the bare bones requirements of "must be willing to go on the adventure" and "must be willing to work with the party." Then I just add whatever fun gimmick I want to act out and it's done.

Despite being a straight, cis, male, most of my TTRPG characters have been female. Don't know why. It just happens, and nobody bats an eye.

I am also a man who creates mostly female NPCs. I just enjoy those type of characters and they run the gamut from simple civilian commoners, to legendarily powerful entities. I am trying to sprinkle more male NPCs in my game for variety, but despite being a heterosexual male, I find it more interesting to be in the headspace of female characters. Also they tend to be more visually interesting. 🤷‍♀ I haven't gotten any negative comments or complaints from my players, so I must be doing it right.

I prefer playing as women in fantasy games because for some reason I can't remove the mental block to not act as myself when I role play as another dude. Don't know why but it really helps my creativity when playing DnD/Pathfinder.

As a male trying out female characters was a nice way to spice things up. I just feel like an idiot trying make my voice sound female lol

First! For once! On a serious note, yes, you can. I'm currently playing as one in a One Piece 5e campaign. She's a Kuja-Merfolk Hybrid Marksman.

As I-DLE said, it’s neither man nor woman

I declare, as a cis male, that I am going to *intentionally* play my next female character weird! Specifically, as a giant shapeshifting spider who is a cleric of Golarion-Africa's trickster goddess, and who has the energy of a non-ironic Disney princess.

@tsifirakiehl4250

2 ай бұрын

I declare, as a cis woman and a DM, that this character sounds awesome and I would love to have her at my table!

When did playing a different gender even become an issue? It's no different to playing Elves, Dwarves Orcs or anything else

I always get weird looks when telling other people when I tell them my dnd charecter is a woman. It's not even like I roleplay her weird she's just an asexual stoner.

Played as girl for mini campaign. Wasn't a big deal.

Into the Blight

Just play a person and everything else can fall into place.

How is this still even a thing? Wanna play a knight even though you don't know how to use a sword in real life? Sure, go for it. Want to play an elf even though you're not an elf in real life? Why not, it's just fantasy anyway. Want to throw around fireballs? Hey, it's all just make believe so go for it! Want to play a female character even though you're male? Woah hold on, that's way too unbelievable!

How to play a character not like yourself? Don't tokenize them and don't fetishize them. I would say focus on the character's personality. Are they brash? Shy? A book worm? Quick to anger? Where did they grow up? Did they grow up where they would have experienced things that differ between the genders? If you are focused on looks, you likely lack the maturity to play the character. How to play a female character? At least 90% of the time it is the same as you would play a male character.

I have roleplayed as a woman before, I just play them as myself, with boobs and hooha, thats it, no diference in behaviour from my male characters. (i think i cannot roleplay, nd stuff I guess)

I am a man who exclusively plays women and I am admittedly being weird with it. Like my fathomless warlock got washed overboard as a child during a storm. She got saved by a Sea Unicorn (a narwhal) and taught how to survive in the ocean. Growing up, she started sabotaging whaling ships to protect her family. Soon legends about the Sea Shadow started spreading in harbour town; if you see a beautiful woman on your ship, your hunt is going to fail. Becoming an adult, she realized she might not actually be a whale and is searching her family with the few memories of her old life she has.

@VexVerity

2 ай бұрын

See, if weird meant raised by whales more often, men being weird about playing women would be in such high demand at the table.

@schwarzerritter5724

2 ай бұрын

@@VexVerity Not whales, sea unicorns.

@VexVerity

2 ай бұрын

@@schwarzerritter5724 Of course, my mistake!

@M_M_ODonnell

2 ай бұрын

@@schwarzerritter5724 Like my gnome barbarian wasn't raised by badgers, he was raised by rageweasels.

@schwarzerritter5724

2 ай бұрын

@@M_M_ODonnell There is a webcomic like that. Although the gnome is a sorcerer.

Honestly? When it comes to game design, it's really hard to say whether there's a right or wrong answer. "Good" game design is one that appeals most to the target audience. There's many different philosophies and every designer has a different philosophy. Dying instantly.due to a failed save might seem like amazing game design to one person, but to another it's absolutely awful design and is overly punishing for no reason. The key to good design is being mindful of what you're trying to do ans who you're trying to appeal to and being intentional to that end. That's why game companies do playtests, to make sure their design is doing what they want and is appealing to their audience.

You egg?

@AnAppleInABox

2 ай бұрын

I don't think someone would know if they were an egg, and though I don't think that's what you were going for, one shouldn't suggest someone else is an egg.

@kaylawoodbury2308

2 ай бұрын

@@AnAppleInABox I was just quoting "You egg?" from a comic strip. People in the community are allowed to joke about their community.

@AnAppleInABox

2 ай бұрын

@kaylawoodbury2308 Ah, I didn't realise you were quoting something. I'm sorry for assuming. Have a good day

I tend to play male characters in games and DnD. The only game character that I have that's specifically female is my Fall Guys bean, and they're androgynous!