Do you typically play characters of the same gender and age as yourself?

[Guest]

I typically play female characters (though I have had a couple male PCs), but I like to mix up the ages of my characters a lot.

For V:tM and V:tR, by “age” I mean the age you were Embraced.

[atamajakki]

Played enough girls that I wondered if there might be a reason why. Figured it out at 21

[nofather]

No. Obviously when Storytelling I play a wide range of characters. As a player I tend to go 50/50 my gender or something else, though that's more new. Ages all over the board, tend towards young.

[wyrdhamster]

I like to play shapeshifters, of various kinds, where I'm cis bisex bear man. So... kinda not? Kinda yes? I just like shapeshifting, where I'm cis on day-to-day basis.

[jamiemalk]

Ages can be all over the place from kids to old age. Never generated a female character though, played them as npcs when i gm, but never had any interest in a long-term character.

I can only think of two people I've played with that actually played a character that wasn't the same sex as them

[Guest]

Awesome!!! Thanks for answering.

[Heavy Arms]

I typically play characters that share my gender, but not exclusively. Age I tend to jump around a lot more on, though I find a lot of RPGs orient towards starting ages of 20-30 (or equivalent for non-humans). Either as established enough to be competent but still young enough for a lot of potential room for growth, or for game where characters tend to live a very long time, they tend to stop aging (or have it stopped) in their physical prime.

[Guest]

Heavy Arms In Dungeons and Dragons most of my characters and the characters of people I’ve played with have been in their late teens to mid-twenties (or the equivalent for nonhumans). For WoD and Trinity Continuum the age range has been more diverse.

I think people usually play the gender they feel most comfortable with. I prefer female characters, but I’ve had two male PCs, once when we were all just goofing around and once in a more serious long-term campaign.

[Heavy Arms]

I think there is a contextual element.

IME one-shot con games, and certain styles of online play seem to be much more likely to have people playing farther from their personal identities. Con one-shots tend to mean being handed a pre-gen sheet and doing your best to run with the notes you get, so nobody's feeling too self conscious about how well they're doing. A forum PbP game means you only have to try to convey things via text; nobody is expecting you to try to match accents, inflections, and other affectations to help get into character even if it isn't serious acting.

One of the things I definitely had to get over when I shifted from player to GM, was my nervousness about playing characters I simply can't act out in any meaningful way. When I was me, playing another teen white guy, they sounded authentic to me because I was playing something close enough to me that I felt it sounded right. Playing a 20 something looking actually over 100 year old female vampire that immigrated from China to the US, and having her sound like me? It felt exceedingly inauthentic because wtf did I know about sounding like someone with that experience? She just sounded like me (or worse me doing really bad voice work). As a GM, I'm never going to be someone who's NPCs are memorable because of my acting chops, so I know I need to put in my work on making them have moments in other forms. But I think this is something that probably impacts a lot of people.

When you take away the pressure of live performance of characters, i've seen people far more willing to try things.

[Guest]

Heavy Arms I totally understand.

Both of my male characters I created myself (not pregens). One, Liam O’Rourke of House Leanhaun, I took a lot of time creating and I played him over the course of several months. The other was a half-ogre barbarian named Zorg who liked to kill stuff and get laid a lot. I basically played him for shits and giggles over the course of a weekend with my friends.

[No One of Consequence]

If playing in person, I'm 95% likely to play as male. The exception is the handful of times I've had one whose personality was directly based off a fictional character I was able to mimic moderately well. (Rarity from MLP works surprisingly well as both Glass Walker and Etherite.)

[Dex Davican]

I’m about 60/40 gender-wise, leaning toward playing women though I’m a man. Age is all over the map, though I think 20’s are most common. Most of my games have been by text, which does make it easier .

[Guest]

No One of Consequence,@Dex Davican cool.

[Charlaquin]

As a genderfluid person, it’s kind of a shrodinger’s cat situation as to whether or not any given character I play is the same gender as me. But I play characters of genders and ages across the board.

[Guest]

Charlaquin awesome! 😊