Gender in RPG

[Aqua-chan]

I think I've become accustomed to playing either way, though I find that I'm currently leaning towards male characters. Romance options, better looking males in newer games (in Morrowind, at least) and just more of a sense of "Grrr, rugged adventurer!"

[Shine]

Considering the importance of RP to me, I would not even consider playing a male. It isn't me and it doesn't interest me. That said, I do enjoy playing a tank and just having at it - what stress relief.
So obviously I would really dislike having paid my money for a game and then being forced to play a male character just to get that extra strength point or two.

Point is, assigning a difference of a few points based on gender stereotypes has no place in a fantasy world. Game designers should trust that, if a player picks up a 100-pound halberd and takes a run at a golem, the player probably has a warrior-type in mind, be that male or female. And even if not, so what? If someone can imagine a super-strong female in a size three chainmail, all the more fun, I say.

Artwork can help, of course. Kudos to Icewind Dale for a very rich library of NPC images to choose from. There it is possible to find a capable-looking female warrior who doesn't look like she's about to fall out of her thong (and without looking big, brawny, ugly and dumb, as someone suggested). And some of the male NPC portraits are downright yummy.

[Lady Dragonfly]

We were discussing Age of Decadence in the other thread so I looked up the AoD official site and even registered there. (Saw a few familiar names too...). I was curious how the devs addressed gender differences in AoD.

First, I've found this in Unofficial FAQ:

Q: Does my gender affect gameplay, or is it irrelevant?

A: "You can play a seductive female assassin armed with a poison kiss; there are a few gender specific quests; sometimes a woman would have a harder/sometimes easier time. Male characters get a bonus to intimidating, female characters get a bonus to persuasion..."

Also, here is what Vince D. Weller said on the subject:

Men and women are treated about the same. Not because the AoD gameworld is that progressive, but because we didn't have time to implement the sexism properly. Yes, there are female guildmasters and important female NPCs. The Imperial Guards is a boys-only outfit though. A female recruit won't be accepted.

Male/female

Gender differences definitely add replayability value. I wonder what the game would've looked like if they had time to implement sexism properly...

[Tricky]

Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.

[GawainBS]

Appointing a difference of a few points between genders doesn't bother me. I tend to think of gender in these terms as a "subspecies" of the race. Maybe Orc women in the Elderscrolls are statistically smarter than males? It's their fantasy world, their rules. Ofcourse, when you introduce humans, you get some problems. There are real-life statistics.
In the end, I don't think it is necessary. I believe that if your female character wanted to be a warrior, she probably trained as hard (or even harder, given that, statistically, men have more muscle-mass than women) as every other warrior to become one. So why shouldn't she be allowed to have great strength, constitution, or dexterity, and maybe all that training and the constant battles have made her less persuasive and more intimidating?
There certainly shouldn't be a reason to disallow females to wear platemail. Generally, platemail is easier and more comfortable to wear than chainmail.

I do like the option to choose the gender of your protagonist. I like to get inside the head of the character, and sometimes the story of the character tells itself when I play an RPG. That story is vastly different for males & females at times. I'm just as curious to play an Orc or Dwarf and "discover" their attitude as I am to do the same with a woman. Even in D&D I play female character from time to time, and the female players say that I portray them pretty well. (Not the slutty stereotype most men give to their female characters, or the man-hating she-hulk, etc.)

Some games offers you different options based on gender, and I think this is a good thing. I'm thinking about Fallout & Arcanum here. It's only logical that a not-ugly woman can solve some problems by bedding her antagonist (Men are susceptible to that.) or that men-exclusive organisations only want to have contact with, well, men. It can offer nice gameplay-variances. For example: if you're a man, you can talk your way in to that organisation, if you're a woman, you have to use stealth.

[fable]

How would one go about building a culture (in a reasonable RPG environment) that reacted differently to a heroine, than a hero? How far would this go? Consider: if you played an orc or troll halfbreed, would you expect to be let into nobody's home? To find backs turned to you from questgivers? To have merchants passing the word along and closing their shops when they saw you coming? Think of it as an instant -10 modifier to a charisma roll, plus a lifetime's supply of insults and ingenious cruelty. Where's the fun in playing that?

So unless you fake the heroine part, simply modifying some stats to represent only the physical side of matters (slightly higher constitution and weaker strength, perhaps a bit more charisma if in a culture where women are viewed as sexual prey rather than men), you end up with something along the lines of the orc, but on a very reduced scale. Innuendos, instead of outright insults. Leers, smirks, a few attacks from people who need to be separated from their organs of reproduction for the benefit of all humanity. That might work, actually, though there are bound to be people who find such a depiction on the one hand too stereotypically feminist, and on the other hand too mild and unrepresentative.

Maybe we should just go back to the stats idea. At least it's on the same order of difficulty as simply clicking on a monster, and killing it.

[GawainBS]

It could work, but like you said, fable, it would stir up a hornet's nest. Personally, I don't see why it would be a problem if that RPG would also handle topics like corruption, murder and racism. Why not sexual descrimination? Could be intresting.

[DesR85]

Personally, I don't see why it would be a problem if that RPG would also handle topics like corruption, murder and racism. Why not sexual descrimination? Could be intresting.

If whoever that develops that game have the courage to stand up to the wave of criticism it will generate. CD Projekt's the Witcher and Rockstar's GTA series went through that wave, sure, but that doesn't mean everyone will want to risk that.

[GawainBS]

Like I said: a hornet's nest....

[Lady Dragonfly]

How would one go about building a culture (in a reasonable RPG environment) that reacted differently to a heroine, than a hero?

I think the main reason why such cultures are not being built, storylines generally suck, dialogue trees are shamelessly primitive and NPC have no personality is that nobody wants (or can afford) to spend time and money on crafting a finely tweaked gameworld full of meaningful interaction.

How far would this go? Consider: if you played an orc or troll halfbreed, would you expect to be let into nobody's home? To find backs turned to you from questgivers? To have merchants passing the word along and closing their shops when they saw you coming? Think of it as an instant -10 modifier to a charisma roll, plus a lifetime's supply of insults and ingenious cruelty. Where's the fun in playing that?

Given your example, a half-orc should expect difficulties dealing with humans, yes. Would a merchant treat a stinky half-orc grunt (Int 4, Wis 3, Cha 2) and a noble human paladin (Int 12, Wis 16, Cha 18) the same way? No. But the initial reaction would change after our half-orc earned a few reputation points. Or if he looks intimidating enough to get a discount. Perhaps he will not be accepted in fashionable salons even after that but hey, that is a role you play (and there is always a back alley to settle a score). By the same token a noble paladin will not get quests from the thieves and vampires.

So unless you fake the heroine part, simply modifying some stats to represent only the physical side of matters (slightly higher constitution and weaker strength, perhaps a bit more charisma if in a culture where women are viewed as sexual prey rather than men), you end up with something along the lines of the orc, but on a very reduced scale. Innuendos, instead of outright insults. Leers, smirks, a few attacks from people who need to be separated from their organs of reproduction for the benefit of all humanity. That might work, actually, though there are bound to be people who find such a depiction on the one hand too stereotypically feminist, and on the other hand too mild and unrepresentative.

Maybe we should just go back to the stats idea. At least it's on the same order of difficulty as simply clicking on a monster, and killing it.

All this is better than sterile generic nothing.

I think gender differences in RPG can be approached from different angles:

1. Stat/attribute difference is similar to racial differences. If I am not mistaken, in Wizardry females could not carry heavy weight even if you set STR high.
2. Profession difference - yes, a female can be a fighter but she cannot wear heavy armor (and no, chain bikini should not be considered a viable alternative). It is similar to the 2-handed weapon restriction for Halflings/gnomes.
3. Some gender-specific quests and/or gender-specific solutions, along with class-specific quests.
4. Gameworld reaction is a sum of statistics that should include race, gender, stats/attributes modifiers, social status, reputation/fame, guild affiliation etc. and result not only in scowls/smiles and higher/lower prices but in different dialogue options, quests and NPC attitude.

While ##1-3 are pretty straightforward and easy to implement, #4 requires some talent, creativity and time, meaning $$$.

Imagine PC entering a seedy dockside tavern full of drunken sailors. In all games we play there is no difference whether PC is a mean, 7-feet 400 lb barbarian or a petite elven maiden in risque outfit. The reaction is the same: Welcome to the Sea Urchin! Would you like beer for 3gp, gin for 5gp or rumors for 10gp? Oh, and btw I have a quest for you.

[fable]

Given your example, a half-orc should expect difficulties dealing with humans, yes. Would a merchant treat a stinky half-orc grunt (Int 4, Wis 3, Cha 2) and a noble human paladin (Int 12, Wis 16, Cha 18) the same way? No. But the initial reaction would change after our half-orc earned a few reputation points. Or if he looks intimidating enough to get a discount. Perhaps he will not be accepted in fashionable salons even after that but hey, that is a role you play (and there is always a back alley to settle a score). By the same token a noble paladin will not get quests from the thieves and vampires.

I would take it further than that. A half-orc wouldn't be accepted by either orcs or humans. He/she wouldn't be given an opportunity to earn reputation, or if s/he did, that reputation would fade quickly, based on the suspicion and prejudice of the community. S/he might get in with some of the lowlives of the world, but even they would likely hate the half-orc. Fellowship among thieves only goes so far. Being an half-orc, now: that's something basic, isn't it? So this particular PC might find the only available options being death or running away into the wilderness, living by itself, possibly setting up ambushes for the occasional very small "civilized" party as an easy source for supplies, and just for plain revenge and anger.

We could sanitize this. We could reduce it to stats, and make reputation a constant unaffected by bigotry. We could reduce the scope of time necessary to remove ideas held for a lifetime to a few quests in a few weeks. But that wouldn't really reproduce the problems associated with realworld prejudice in an RPG. Just as giving a female character slightly different stats and expecting her to enter a riverfront dive filled with drunken sailors (great example) without getting anything from propositioned to handled to raped is hardly realistic, either.

So I would opt for choice #4 from your list:

4. Gameworld reaction is a sum of statistics that should include race, gender, stats/attributes modifiers, social status, reputation/fame, guild affiliation etc. and result not only in scowls/smiles and higher/lower prices but in different dialogue options, quests and NPC attitude.

If we were honest, though, we should expect some biases to be impossible to overcome, and severely limiting to the PC's progress. Not that any of this would be fun to play, but it would be accurate, and reproducing at least some of it in context might give the player a more grimly authentic experience than the cookie-cutter action RPGs that everybody is turning out nowadays.

[GawainBS]

I think the main reason why such cultures are not being built, storylines generally suck, dialogue trees are shamelessly primitive and NPC have no personality is that nobody wants (or can afford) to spend time and money on crafting a finely tweaked gameworld full of meaningful interaction.



I think gender differences in RPG can be approached from different angles:

1. Stat/attribute difference is similar to racial differences. If I am not mistaken, in Wizardry females could not carry heavy weight even if you set STR high.
2. Profession difference - yes, a female can be a fighter but she cannot wear heavy armor (and no, chain bikini should not be considered a viable alternative). It is similar to the 2-handed weapon restriction for Halflings/gnomes.
3. Some gender-specific quests and/or gender-specific solutions, along with class-specific quests.
4. Gameworld reaction is a sum of statistics that should include race, gender, stats/attributes modifiers, social status, reputation/fame, guild affiliation etc. and result not only in scowls/smiles and higher/lower prices but in different dialogue options, quests and NPC attitude.

I don't see why such cultures, if represented in an RPG, would be dull and badly implemented. Not saying that it is impossible, but I don't see why it's a given. The main reason why they aren't implemented is because it would create a small row.

Your first point is quite mistaken: in Wizardry (at least in VIII) women can wear all the armour their class allows.
The second point... Well, why?? If she's a warrior, she's trained to be one, hence she can wear and use all the gear. That's part of being a warrior. Maybe she's more of a Swashbuckler-like warrior, but that's a different focus. Maybe induced because she is less strong due to her gender, but the limit to gear would be derived from "class" or "profession". Once again: "Heavy Armour", like Plate Mail is easier to wear than Chain Mail, so why would she be barred from using Plate Mail in the first place?
I don't think female infantery Marines get lighter armour and guns, just because they're females. If they can't wield their gear, they won't get to join the infantery, but instead do something else. (Pilot, Technician,...)
The third and fourth points are very good ideas, but certainly the third is already being used. Not much, but sometimes. I have seen the fourth being used in some NWN mods.

[Domi_Ash]

I don't see it as a dilemma at all. I want the game to be non-genderless, ie I want to definetly play as a female, which corresponds to my gender in RL.

However, I do not want the gender differences to be accounted for by the mechanical means, ie I don't think the game should bully you into having parrticular statst and, consequently bullying every female into playing a wizard or a healer, and every male - into a fighter.

What I want to is dialogue differences, ie both romantic and non-romantic choices and situations targeting different genders. For example, I just came accross a hilareous dialogue in the MotB with a mad bard that tried to persuade me that I am a male. That was good. More of this kind of things will be even better.

But if they don't have money/resources to do it, I will take a completely gender-neutral game (ie BG1) over a one-gender game any day. And of course, I will not touch a male-only game with a 10 foot pole.

My problem with the 'realistic' and 'historically accurate' is that it always will be a female protagonist that will be discriminated against, and I am not interested in RP'ing the Outstanding Heroine that flies in the face of the conventions but can't cook every time. Most times I don't want to deal with 'proving that women are humans' at all. Instead I want to enjoy being one in a fantasy setting.

[fable]

My problem with the 'realistic' and 'historically accurate' is that it always will be a female protagonist that will be discriminated against, and I am not interested in RP'ing the Outstanding Heroine that flies in the face of the conventions but can't cook every time. Most times I don't want to deal with 'proving that women are humans' at all.

It probably would be designed in that fashion, but it needn't be. There's no reason a good developer couldn't turn the gender equation on its head, and make a culture in which females are more aggressive and take leadership rules, while men struggle against discrimination. Or again, a culture where rough parity is reached, either with heavily circumscribed sexual roles, or without. The possibilities for fine-tuning are nearly endless. But this would admittedly require thinking outside the box by game developers.

[Domi_Ash]

One look at FR's drow will show you how to do it a wrong way. A successful reverse that is not seen as gimmick and cross-dressing is tough to pull, and I think will be even tougher to sell. I think that discrimination against females is already an understandably tough sell, but discrimination against males will probably be recieved with even less enthusiasm.

[Lady Dragonfly]

Your first point is quite mistaken: in Wizardry (at least in VIII) women can wear all the armour their class allows.

I did not say they could not wear heavy armor. I said they could not lift heavy weight, e.g. no more than 98 kg (or so). That means males and females with STR 15 would be able to carry 150 and 98 kg of inventory respectively. Btw, I thought that was weird.
Anyway, initial stat/attribute difference for male/female was used in quite a few games. Not as extensively as racial stat/attribute difference though.

The second point... Well, why?? If she's a warrior, she's trained to be one, hence she can wear and use all the gear. That's part of being a warrior. Maybe she's more of a Swashbuckler-like warrior, but that's a different focus. Maybe induced because she is less strong due to her gender, but the limit to gear would be derived from "class" or "profession". Once again: "Heavy Armour", like Plate Mail is easier to wear than Chain Mail, so why would she be barred from using Plate Mail in the first place?

That was just an example. However, let's take a closer look. Chain shirt’s weight is about 45 pounds, not such a big deal. On the other hand, the weight of a full suit of plate armor is 75 pounds. Add a claymore (7 pounds) and other medieval paraphernalia, and it will be closer to 100 pounds. Full plate armor is more cumbersome. It's hard to imagine a female wearing all these pans and pots and wielding a hefty two-hander unless she is a half-troll on steroids.
Jeanne d'Arc was wearing plate armor but she was not actually fighting.

Nevertheless, I myself played armed to the teeth female tanks and had fun with them.

I would take it further than that. A half-orc wouldn't be accepted by either orcs or humans. He/she wouldn't be given an opportunity to earn reputation, or if s/he did, that reputation would fade quickly, based on the suspicion and prejudice of the community. S/he might get in with some of the lowlives of the world, but even they would likely hate the half-orc. Fellowship among thieves only goes so far. Being an half-orc, now: that's something basic, isn't it? So this particular PC might find the only available options being death or running away into the wilderness, living by itself, possibly setting up ambushes for the occasional very small "civilized" party as an easy source for supplies, and just for plain revenge and anger.

We could sanitize this. We could reduce it to stats, and make reputation a constant unaffected by bigotry. We could reduce the scope of time necessary to remove ideas held for a lifetime to a few quests in a few weeks. But that wouldn't really reproduce the problems associated with realworld prejudice in an RPG.

I think this scenario is extreme. In a gameworld where half-orcs are a common sight (even if they are basically outcasts), there should be more options than death or exile. Otherwise, why give players an option to create a totally unplayable character in the first place? I think the controversial concept of the "lesser races" has a great potential. The Witcher explored racism, and Dragon Age is going to present a similar version of racial tensions.

Let's play a female half-orc who aspires to be something more than just a green stinker with attitude. She carries a tattered photo of her 100% Homo Sapience Mom in her inventory (grants +3 to Rep., cannot be unequipped).
She knows that half-orcs are regarded as a lesser race. She believes that to be true. Fire is hot, water is wet, and half-orcs are a lesser race. That is the nature of things. Nothing can be done about it. Compliance is the saddest aspect of the “lesser races” business.

Heroine makes living exterminating vermin while dreaming of an opportunity to prove herself worthy of highest honors in the human society. Like saving the world and being allowed to attend Sunday school. Stuff like that.
So far, she is merely tolerated by guards and merchants who still remember "poor Betsy kidnapped by that awful beast. Gods bless her soul, the poor lass was so ugly it was most likely her only chance to find a mate".

After certain events take place, our Heroine is viewed in more favorable light. She is cheap, stupid and expendable and doesn't ask smartass questions (“You know your place, lass. That’s good.”), and citizens decide that they can entrust her with more important tasks, the ones the guards refuse to perform.

From there, she can follow different paths: she can become a bloated in self-righteousness Ranger and meet King Richard in the forest or she can double-cross her employers and end up with Men in Tights and meet King Richard in the forest. But that’s of course a lame cliche.
Alternatively, she can be duped into scam by a disingenuous NPC pretending to be her boyfriend who "venerates her modesty and chastity and respects her so much that he can't even think of premarital sex with his beloved angel - that would've been sacrilege." Eventually, she is arrested and put on trial. The boyfriend is a witness for the prosecution. She is found guilty beyond reasonable doubt and sentenced to death. However, according to the Sacred Tradition, only citizens in good standing are eligible for execution on the Town Square. While the lawyers debate the best methods of disposal of lesser races, she manages to escape and meet King Richard in the forest.

King Richard can’t afford to be choosy at the moment; every supporter, even a stinky half-orc, is a valuable asset. Sometimes, alliances are forged out of necessity, and who can inspire cannon fodder better than King Richard? Things will be very different after the victory, but today Heroine enthusiastically joins the Royal Ragtag Army etc. etc.

Apparently, if PC is a human male, the Chapter One scenario should be different.

If we were honest, though, we should expect some biases to be impossible to overcome, and severely limiting to the PC's progress.

Yes, but why go to this extreme?

[DesR85]

But if they don't have money/resources to do it, I will take a completely gender-neutral game (ie BG1) over a one-gender game any day. And of course, I will not touch a male-only game with a 10 foot pole.

Not to be rude but what do you have against games with a set protagonist? It's not like they're all bad.

[GawainBS]

I did not say they could not wear heavy armor. I said they could not lift heavy weight, e.g. no more than 98 kg (or so). That means males and females with STR 15 would be able to carry 150 and 98 kg of inventory respectively. Btw, I thought that was weird.
Anyway, initial stat/attribute difference for male/female was used in quite a few games. Not as extensively as racial stat/attribute difference though.



That was just an example. However, let's take a closer look. Chain shirt’s weight is about 45 pounds, not such a big deal. On the other hand, the weight of a full suit of plate armor is 75 pounds. Add a claymore (7 pounds) and other medieval paraphernalia, and it will be closer to 100 pounds. Full plate armor is more cumbersome. It's hard to imagine a female wearing all these pans and pots and wielding a hefty two-hander unless she is a half-troll on steroids.
Jeanne d'Arc was wearing plate armor but she was not actually fighting.

Nevertheless, I myself played armed to the teeth female tanks and had fun with them.

In Wizardry VIII, there was no difference between the carry capacities of males & females. Sorry about misreading it earlier.
About the armour: it's not about the weight, it's about distribution of the weight. Platemail is more comfortable to wear than chainmail: the weight isn't such a factor, because platemail distributes it over the whole of the body and doesn't let it drag on the shoulders alone.
I won't nitpick about the claymore: it might just as well be a sword weighing about 2 pounds, depending on specific type.
Anyway, I find this limit artificial: if you're a warrior, you can do every thing a warrior can, or else you aren't one. I think the Marine-example made it quite clear.

I like the Half-Orc heroine story you've written out, but I don't think that developers would ever go to that extent. It's about the depth of the Body/Thievesguild choice in BGII, or ever more profound.

Domi, I have to join DesR in his question? Why do you hate male-protagonist-only games so? I mean, refusing to play PS:T solely on the fact that the protagonist is a male, is like shooting yourself in the leftfoot before the 100m sprint because you wanted to punish that lefty-sucker for being left and not right. (Like in "Left" used to be always bad; always shake hands with the right hand, etc. No political context whatsoever.)
I can understand that you can identify less with a male protagonist, but it could still be a great game. I've played several games with female protagonists and enjoyed them. Same with books.

[fable]

I think this scenario is extreme. In a gameworld where half-orcs are a common sight (even if they are basically outcasts), there should be more options than death or exile. Otherwise, why give players an option to create a totally unplayable character in the first place? I think the controversial concept of the "lesser races" has a great potential. The Witcher explored racism, and Dragon Age is going to present a similar version of racial tensions.

My example was deliberately pushed to the limit, to see how far you (and others) would consider the possibilities of realistic relations based on typically discriminatory elements in a roleplaying world. I was hoping to see some discussion of how severe discrimination could be seriously depicted in an RPG, yet remain entertaining enough to play. Of course, I didn't make it any easier by suggesting the half-orc would have to become a hermit or lone ambusher. But then, I didn't want to make it easy. I wanted to show the realistic boundary, so we could decide what portion of the territory we would map out for our own.

I don't think we have to provide the same easy answers such as CRPGs currently furnish, in order to sell a title. We could still do better than simply returning to the usual RPG status quo after an hour of gaming. To use our half-orc, its rep progression could be modified to lead not to local idolization, but ultimately to a moderate degree of local respect. Fear would gradually diminish. Some holdovers of open bigotry would of course remain; I wouldn't think that every merchant would open their doors to our heroic half-orc, even after they recovered the Vicious Doomslaying Mace of Intense Blunt Trauma and Unholy Pain +9. But we might see a merchant down the street from one who continued to shun the half-orc offer to sell him/her items that would normally only be found in the closed shop, out of irritation towards the merchant who continued to spit in the face of the best thing that had happened to their business. By maknig the experience of discrimination as varied and multilayered as it is in the realworld, we would offer the player something strikingly different. And with the prospect of achievable goals in sight, it could be very playable.

In short, I think we're looking at a series of slider values affecting considerably more than attributes. And more than anything PCish. The values would need to be configured for the culture, at all levels.

One look at FR's drow will show you how to do it a wrong way. A successful reverse that is not seen as gimmick and cross-dressing is tough to pull, and I think will be even tougher to sell. I think that discrimination against females is already an understandably tough sell, but discrimination against males will probably be recieved with even less enthusiasm.

Certainly, it would challenge the norm. That's the idea in our discussion about how to depict gender discrimination in RPGs. How to do this in a way that transcends bland stat changes, and offers the reader a genuinely distinctive experience. The problem wouldn't be in doing something different. It would lie, as always, in doing it well. And I think we can all agree that it will not be done, because games are an industry today, and cloning rather than creativity rules.

Doesn't mean we can't dream, does it?

[Domi_Ash]

I can understand that you can identify less with a male protagonist, but it could still be a great game. I've played several games with female protagonists and enjoyed them. Same with books.

Books are different. My interpretation of a CRPG (and I don't play any other genre), is that I co-create the game while playing it. And I co-create it by supplying the protagonist and her relationship to the world and the characters in it. And as a protagonist I always want a heroine. Very definetly a heroine, as in SHE.

It was PS:T in particular that convinced me that I should not waste my toime on male-only game. The only time I had some sort of a success playing PS:T (as in not grinding my teeth in frustration anticipating the alleged greatness to seep in and overwhelm...) was when I said screw you, Interplay, took the dialogues, re-wrote them for the female lead and repalced the main character avatar with a female. Then, Monty's jokes were not a reason to want to go and hung myself wuite so much (though only Shandra managed to take over from him as the most hated character of all times), and Deionar (instead of Deionarra) did not cause me to want to scream in agony at the horrifying cheesyness of the game (hells, I even called him Kivan at first to make it bearable!).

Yes, I played as a male - but only when I needed to test the games. My life is so busy that I don't see myself wasting precious few minutes I can steal here and there on playing something that does not interest me. And PS:T, and it's newest reincarnation - the Witcher- are in that category, no matter what th legions of fans say about them.

In short, and I know, I should have just put that but I already wrote this whole rant... in short, I do not enjoy the games with a male lead. I just don't. I know I won't be able to convince you who can do it that I absolutely do not shoot myself in the foot or steal pleasure from myself, but I do not. And I also have at least two games I haven't played yet (one in progress, MotB) waiting for me to have time for it (not to mention modding and ME coming far too soon, not to mention DA), so running out of games is not an issue as well.