One of the guilty (or should it be "geeky"?) pleasures of gaming is to talk about your favourite characters and their exploits. In RPGs, FPS and MMORPGs, there's often plenty of customization available, almost like the traditional table-top roleplaying games. I've found that I prefer games where stealth and non-violent options are possible - brains before brawn, so to speak. That's something that spilled over from my table-top RPG years, where I opted for rogue characters, or fighters with a twist. Another thing is that I prefer playing female characters if possible. Now, this is probably not as kinky as it sounds, and appears to be quite common - players preferring to play characters of the opposite gender. I found a good artivle on the subject: Why do guys play female characters?. I tend to believe that it is nicer to see a good-looking character in 3rd person games, and that it is more fun to play a strong female character than a standard male. Anyway, I suspect that most female characters played by guys are essentially prettier-looking fighters with boobs, but otherwise displaying "typical" male behaviour.



Right now, I'm playing Dragon Age: Origins for the third time, the second time with a female character. My current character is the city elf rogue/assassin Caillin. Her background will let me explore some choices that it would've been bad roleplaying if chosen by my other characters (human nobles). Caillin will side with prince Bhelen in Ozrammar, and will have even less problems with going after humans in her quest for vengeance (a bit of Kill Bill, her being a bereft bride and all).

In Deus Ex: Human Revolution I opted for a stealth/hacker style of play, mostly because I like the option to avoid killing common grunts and guards who just eke out a living. I like it when games offer something more than run-and-gun gameplay.

As for MMORPGs like WoW, I avoid them because it would mess up what little I have left of spare time, but a male friend who played a female character made some interesting observations. Other players tended to ignore "her" suggestions when it came to plan a dungeon raid, while others hit on "her". Little did they know that she was played by a 40ish guy who looked anything but an attractive girl. He told me that playing her gave him a rather rude awakening when it came to sexist attitudes among gamers. But maybe some of the attraction of playing female characters lies there: playing someone who has to fight not only orcs and barbarians, but also their real-world counterparts...

OK, I see that I've covered several subjects, but let's keep the thread on the subject of your character preferences and observations you've made.

I also tend to play female characters. I play a meat-head in real life, no need to be one in fantasy land

In Monster Hunter I tend to play a female, but I do have a few male characters too. In single player games I'm usually female, unless I'm completely put off by the design of the female characters. In MMO games I'm almost always male, just for the sake of hiding myself from the plethora of assholes out there. My main in WoW is a male Tauren druid, who I love now for his totally huggable fuzziness, but in the beginning was made only for two reasons: Tauren because I wanted to be both Horde and a druid and only Tauren were druids at the time, and male to avoid getting hit on by (physical or mental) 14 year olds.

Stealth if possible. Usually male first time playing through, female second. In games with a romantic interest I find it a bit uncomfortable if I'm playing a female and my love interest is male. If both of us are female that's fine with me...

For games with an obvious good/bad distinction like Fallout 3 or Knights of the Old Republic I'll sometimes have two games going simultaneously one where I'm good the other evil.

In Skyrim I'm playing a female Khajiit character but it really doesn't seem to make a difference, same with most of the Fallout series. The last time my gender choice seemed to matter was playing Mass Effect, again I opted for femshep and have never played the male protagonist. I guess the main reason was that I thought playing the archetypal masculine hero type would make the story seem trite. Playing a strong, capable woman just seemed to add another layer of complexity for me.

As for gameplay, I like to play sniper when I can and flit from cover to cover when I can't. It taps into that very visceral sense of projecting oneself from a distance that so many of us have. I also tend to be a bit of a perfectionst; trying to get perfect headshots and using cover perfectly. I quicksave and load constantly in games like S.T.A.L.K.E.R and Deus ex. I'm currently playing Deus-Ex all the way through with a lethal/non-lethal mix with my quicksave button unassigned. I felt that I missed out on the sense of danger during stealth and hacking runs when I constantly reloaded.

I play a female character in Lotro. It's my first time playing this sort of games, and I didn't even consider for a minute playing a male character.
I really enjoy kicking some ass in a pretty dress.

MacIver wrote:Stealth if possible. Usually male first time playing through, female second. In games with a romantic interest I find it a bit uncomfortable if I'm playing a female and my love interest is male. If both of us are female that's fine with me...

For games with an obvious good/bad distinction like Fallout 3 or Knights of the Old Republic I'll sometimes have two games going simultaneously one where I'm good the other evil.

I've tried to do bad guy playthroughs on games like Bioshock, Fallout and mass effect (well.. renegade) but I just can't do it. I just don't want my character to be greedy, resort to violence or be a moral monster. I've had the theives guild quest open in Skyrim for days now but it just isn't something I feel my character would do.

Never played games online or even on the puter much.


I do miss my accomplished assassin on Ragnarok Online though. It was on the the best RO server ever and I was just getting into it when the stuff that is not shinola hit the fan. I've been looking for a half-decent RO server ever since really, just recently downloaded a new server for it but can't even connect, let alone reproduce the glory days of zunzun my extremely froody assassin.

It's funny that some players project themselves on their characters, playing decent people if they are decent themselves, while others seem to revel in playing amoral killing machines. Different strokes for different people, I guess...

Varangian wrote:It's funny that some players project themselves on their characters, playing decent people if they are decent themselves, while others seem to revel in playing amoral killing machines. Different strokes for different people, I guess...

And Ragnarok Online was a good melting pot for all types of gamers - lots of teen male grinders but alo lots of females just chilling out in a virtual reality...

Whenever i get the chance, I try to get my characters to look like me. But i often end up making them way better looking than myself in real like.

When I create a male character, I tend to go for an appearance that somewhat resembles mine, or what I'd want my appearance to be, at least, not overly muscular, but still muscled enough, lean and mean. With fems, I like to put on some extra muscle where the games allow it, I tend to go for shorter haircuts, above the shoulder, also if I can a bit of tomboyish look, just generally not oh-my-nails-baby-doll types. Rough.

Also, I don't exactly role-play. I play myself. The choices I make are the ones I'd make in real life, if the in-game moral choices are diverse enough, that is. With this, I tend to mix up good-bad, nice-mean, peaceful-aggressive, coercion...etc. I also relate to in-game characters the way I'd relate to them if they were real. For example, in Skyrim, I would've have had to smash up and intimidate nice, quite friendly shop-owners, who would have then turned hostile, for an initiation quest for the Thieves Guild, would have loved to get the awesome looking Nightingale Armor at the end of their quest-line, but even in a game I can't stomach to do such a thing. Now, if there had been an option to somehow let the owners know I'm only pretending and want to take down the guild, or lead them for the better (neither if which is possible, as far as I know) it would have been awesome. In Dragon Age II, I had rivalry with Isabela, didn't even hate-fuck her, as there's a sex option even with rivalry, go figure, generally berated her. I killed Anders, for his action, at the end, no matter how useful he was otherwise.

I tend to play stealthy characters first, male rogue/infiltrator, assassinations or dual-wielding, fast and high DPS, if there's option for some subterfuge or low-blows, all is fair in war and I don't care about the other thing. I never use potions, bombs...etc. Think the whole chugging down philter after and philter mid-combat looks incredibly stupid. Oh, we're nearly dead, chug, chug, chug, chug, all better now, oh, nearly dead again, chug, chug, chug, chug. Plus, more loot that way.

After I'm down with the rogues, I either go for a male warrior/soldier, with two-handed swords, or for a female rogue or mage/biotic/etc.

If there is an option to romance female characters with females, I go for it, if they're good enough (Isabela with my female Hawke; Merrill > Bloodmage > Naive > Deluded > no thanks, other than that she's cute and funny; Liare turned into a mad-woman in ME2, no thanks - or maybe; Kelly Chambers > dull, naive > no thanks.)

Getting back to morality, just role-playing and choosing only positive or only negative responses and builds is no fun, and I can't take it either. If some annoying creep of a conniving character wants to be spared or think they can just walk away, they'll get a dagger in their back (Javaris in DA2, "He bothered me.") I would have handed Isabela to the Arishok, too, but he had to go on a rampage, kill all those innocent people and the Viscount, sorry, can't let that pass. Cake or death? DEATH.

For Nora,

My latest fem Shepard, Virgo, made today, Vanguard, Spacer, War Hero.

Two more:

Bribase wrote:In Skyrim I'm playing a female Khajiit character but it really doesn't seem to make a difference, same with most of the Fallout series. The last time my gender choice seemed to matter was playing Mass Effect, again I opted for femshep and have never played the male protagonist. I guess the main reason was that I thought playing the archetypal masculine hero type would make the story seem trite. Playing a strong, capable woman just seemed to add another layer of complexity for me.

I found the female voice actor in the first Mass Effect much more skilled than the male one, so that also played a part in my choice to be penis-less.

I've tried to do bad guy playthroughs on games like Bioshock, Fallout and mass effect (well.. renegade) but I just can't do it. I just don't want my character to be greedy, resort to violence or be a moral monster. I've had the theives guild quest open in Skyrim for days now but it just isn't something I feel my character would do.

I agree for the most part. I usually enjoy being good more. But in Fallout I wanted to play evil so I could nuke the town. That was a pretty awesome part of the game. Also (and this is going to sound pretty sick) Fallout annoyed me because you couldn't kill children (same as Oblivion and Skyrim). Although even my evil characters would probably draw the ling at massacring kids I wanted to know the possibility was open to me if I chose it.

@Matt, thanks. But did you actually shoot Miranda, lol!

It's very interesting, this choice of avatar. The only time where I really had a chance to have an avatar was when I played Myst Online: Uru live. There I was usually playing as myself: here's me meeting Yeesha, which, for anyone who knows the Myst universe was a powerful moment for me:



This is Sven and I when we were making our Let's Play. There was a bit when we were doing a practice run and we bumped into a fan and he asked if he could have his picture taken with us. At this point I had changed into a red leather jacket, something I always wanted IRL. I really like this shot:



I also played as a male, Orin, who I created to represent one of the characters in a book I'm writing (who is a Canadian mounty, hence the lumberjack shirt). I found 'in cavern' I got very different responses as a male than as a woman. (For those of you who don't know the Myst games, there's no combat, but you can join together to solve certain problems.)



Recently I've fallen in love with the Mass Effect games, which I can only view vicariously on YouTube (as there's no version for the Mac that would work on my machine). As is obvious from my current RatSkep and FB avatars I really like the default John Shepard. My favourite FemShep was called Juno and was in a let's play that has now disappeared. She was very 'goth', which suited the voice really well, I thought.

matt, sorry to say this but to me your femshep looks like a crossdresser

Mononoke wrote:matt, sorry to say this but to me your femshep looks like a crossdresser

You mean masculine...uh...androgynous?

That's what I'm usually going for. Tomboyish, and definitely not girly.

Nora_Leonard wrote:@Matt, thanks. But did you actually shoot Miranda, lol!

It's very interesting, this choice of avatar. The only time where I really had a chance to have an avatar was when I played Myst Online: Uru live. There I was usually playing as myself: here's me meeting Yeesha, which, for anyone who knows the Myst universe was a powerful moment for me:



This is Sven and I when we were making our Let's Play. There was a bit when we were doing a practice run and we bumped into a fan and he asked if he could have his picture taken with us. At this point I had changed into a red leather jacket, something I always wanted IRL. I really like this shot:



I also played as a male, Orin, who I created to represent one of the characters in a book I'm writing (who is a Canadian mounty, hence the lumberjack shirt). I found 'in cavern' I got very different responses as a male than as a woman. (For those of you who don't know the Myst games, there's no combat, but you can join together to solve certain problems.)



Recently I've fallen in love with the Mass Effect games, which I can only view vicariously on YouTube (as there's no version for the Mac that would work on my machine). As is obvious from my current RatSkep and FB avatars I really like the default John Shepard. My favourite FemShep was called Juno and was in a let's play that has now disappeared. She was very 'goth', which suited the voice really well, I thought.

I've said this before, but no game ever had as much of an impact on me as Mass Effect. When I was running up on the side of the Citadel and saw Sovereign claw away at it, that moment was just FUCKIN' EPIC! One of the three sci-fi novels I wrote my thesis on was the first Mass Effect novel, Revelation. This game got me interested in astronomy and all the rest and eventually led me to the RDF forum, discussion on atheism...etc. the whole thing. I'm embarrassed to admit, but when I played the game I didn't even know that the Horsehead Nebula and all the rest were real, I thought it was just in the game, at least the names, but when I researched it on Wikipedia and saw for real, and I began reading up on stars, planets, discoveries, the sheer size of the known universe...etc. my mind was blown. And I almost completely missed out on this game. I remembered seeing it on my dad's PC, and I had nothing to play with at the time, so I thought, yeah that game looked good, I'll try it. Fast forward. Here I am.

Nora, nice community behind that game, right? Nice Shepard, too. I like goths, depends on the amount of make up, and piercing.

Now, let me start by saying the story in the first Mass Effect was awesome as games go. I haven't played the second but I've heard that's also really good.

BUT

For me, it seemed to be a pretty big rip-off of Alistair Reynold's Revelation Space trilogy.