Quote from: Cipher on April 17, 2024, 07:50:13 PM

Quote from: DonJonKeeper on April 17, 2024, 04:15:18 AM

Quote from: Cipher on April 16, 2024, 02:48:39 PM

Quote from: DonJonKeeper on April 16, 2024, 12:23:47 PMI tend to play male characters when I do get the chance to play, although one of my first characters was a female elven archer (inspired by the Larry Elmore Dragonslayers artwork IIRC). Pretty much every other character I've played was male though.

As many others have said, GMs have to roleplay all sorts of NPCs, and despite some wishing otherwise, GMs are not a special breed with roleplay super powers.

Most RPG creeps will play the same no matter what the sex, race, or nature of their PC.

I've heard the argument but to me its not the same.

An NPC is "scene dressing". You don't really make decisions that drive the game as an NPC, or at least you shouldn't.

So, the GM is roleplaying an NPC that may or may not appear ever again in the game. Which is completely different to a player that will play with the same character for an undetermined amount of time.

If you read some stories, some people have played the same character for years, sometimes even decades.


Ideally, the GM should try to get into the mindset of a prominent or important NPC of the opposite gender and make decisions accordingly, but then again by definition the GM will always be twice removed from the NPCs compared to the Players and their characters.

I see your point.

I think the crux of this thread is about the dissonance created when sat at the table and the player doesn't match the character, which comes more to the forefront with the sex of the PC than their race?

Stereotyped behaviours of how the player perceives a character of that sex should behave, while almost completely ignoring how an elf or dwarf may view things in a different way?

I think the difference is that, specially with D&D, non-humanoids are very close to humanoids anyways.

How different is dwarf culture from a human culture that loves bear, stoneworking, metalworking, axes and hammers, tradition and honor?

How different is an orc culture from a human culture that is savage, tribal, competitive, might makes right, fearless and ruthless?


D&D has never created playable species with enough lore and nuance to actually make them alien to the human experience.

So, I think its easier to imagine yourself (as a man) having grown up in a culture like the orcs that I described above and then use that as a baseline for the character. So maybe the character is more evil than you are, and ruthless in ways you would never be, but you can imagine how that change the orc character's mindset because you can imagine that kind of culture since is not completely alien to our own.

It's the rubberhead aliens Star Wars did, where an alien culture is basically like a human culture with some minor differences. That's why its simple.

Yes, your specific homebrew setting is not bound to follow this, but lets be honest, in core D&D has never presented other humanoids as truly alien, and they always have been human-like. To the tune of being called "races" instead of "species" and even able to breed with humans, like half-elves and half-orcs.

Quote from: HappyDaze on April 18, 2024, 11:55:23 PMWhat about players that play different races (e.g., a white player playing a black character) as opposed to different sexes? Would this also cause you the dissonance you mention?