So less on here than in real life situations but still in general when I see groups of characters the break down of gender usually goes something like this:

Males:
Fighters, rangers, clerics

Females:
sorceresssesssss(you have to hiss the end of that word for coolness,)rogues, bards, wizards, druids

I guess I was wondering if anyone else noticed the general lack of a pretty hammer swinging female barbarians or the rough and tumble Xena-like female fighter. When they are played they usually are a parody of sorts, generally half-orc or dwarven and considered "undesirable" as lovers/defeminized. (I may have made that word up.)

It has bothered me more as I got older for a couple reasons. One being that I know a lot of lady warriors, most of them in the Army, that are still amazingly gorgeous and very feminine that could probably hog tie and brand half the men I know and yet they're treated like less than women for not being at home with babies and something cooking. Another reason is the lack of diversity. In general D&D females come in some variation on two general ideas. Which I'm going to make jokes about.

Sailor Moon: The tall, thin, unearthly beautiful magic user either so slutty or so naive it hurts.

She-hulk: Gave up her femininity years ago to compete with the boys, probably would eat the guy who dared ask her out for dinner.

I know I've been guilty of it but part of me wonders why it is so hard to play a strong female character that is a fighter instead of a wizard. D&D gives no buffs or penalties for gender so it's not like it's any harder stats wise to play a more melee combat oriented female. Roleplay wise I can see where some people would have issue with it but it isn't like it's a hard concept to play. Woman take up arms for different reasons than men but ask any female innmate with children if we lived in different times and something threatened those kids she wouldn't take a dwarven war axe to whatever foolish soul did so, exotic weapon penalties or no.

Bah, I've fizzled but you guys get the idea.

Let's hear your own character stereotypes, gender based or not.

Note: There's nothing wrong with this of course, I was just making personal observations.

...and, in my experience, pretty darn accurate, too, now that I've thought about it. Generally speaking, anyway... *nods*

That said, I have had the opportunity to game with a handful of folks who have seen those stereotypes, snorted in derision, and tossed them directly into "File 13"...

I recall one girl I played with in High School had a penchant for playing fighters and did so without so much as brushing against the stereotypes above... The one character of hers that sticks in my mind was a barbarian fighter-type (who's name escapes me after all these years) - the character was "muscular" for a female, of course, but far from unattractive and far from having the "She-Hulk" complex mentioned above...

Personally, other than very early on in my gaming career, I veered away from the burly, brawny, fighter type and I have never played a cleric (and I've really only played a mage of any sort here at the Inn in Alacrity's CWWLLO game). In fact, my personal preference in characters leans toward the roguish-sorts (thieves, assassins (yay, Nyx!!!), and the like) and, should those particualr spots be filled in a game, then I look towards ranger (but, you know, I've pretty much ignored the 'magic' abilities that they gain as they level... guess I'm just not the mana-slinging type at the heart of it all.)


Meh... lookit me runnin' on about nothin'... ... I've got a meeting to go to!!!

I should go back to bed, cuz I totally just actually read mayo instead of mana...

Apparently I play rogues a lot, I've got rogues in three games right now, and since I'm only playing in four games at this exact moment that's quite a few. This is a new development. I prefer druids and fighters myself, but I played male characters up until recently too.

EDITED VERSION:

Depending on the dice and what the party has/needs. I find a lot of people enjoy playing fighters, but most don't like playing spell casters.

I have no problem playing male characters, female characters, animals.

I will usually play whatever the group needs to stay balanced, tis why I normally choose my character last when possible. I try to balance out the group, if its mostly females then I'll choose male character.

I've been pretty lucky on this end... I have had quite a few female warriors in my groups. Of course, I may be the exception that proves the rule.

Amy in Loaded Dice plays a ranger.

I have played strong female, fightery types (a couple made brief stints in Olan's games, I recall). I have also played some very cool female clerics too (and I always enjoy playing clerics). So I'm not sure how true it is in my case.

I'm much like Eol, though, in that I no longer really want to play fighters of any sort. Or at least not straight fighters at any rate.

So maybe it's something to do with women not wanting to play the meathead of the party (whether male or female)?

Why is it that a fighter has to be a meathead? A good warrior has to be intelligent as well as strong. Sorry, just stirring the pot on that one.

Female paladins seem to be few and far between too.

As a girl who has pretty much only played female characters, I've definitely some patterns I have a tendency to follow, though it may be more a quirk of me as a player and my preferences rather than something to do with the setting.

I love spellcasters. Well, no, that's not quite true To elaborate further, I have a tendency to really like magic systems. In Witchcraft, characters are more likely than not to have magic. Characters in Exalted are, well... demigods kinda. Buuuut when it comes to D&D, I don't mind playing the spellcaster, but I don't necessarily like the system. Of course, that's a whole other rant of mine which really is just personal preference. (for the curious, I have a tendency to be easily miffed by arcane vs divine magic)

Back to the characters themselves though... I have a tendency to make 'outcast' characters. Characters that don't visibly belong in a majority. That in itself isn't too bad but it's just a habit of mine. I try not to go too far out there.

Examples of my chars:
C - computer hacker, side stepped her human appearance a bit with her cat ears and eyes (futuristic setting). Playful and cat like.

Linnix - I'm not really claiming her as my character, since I picked up the character after her original player left, but the way I had her develop, she eventually got over a short temper and overall became a better person, discovering what she wanted to follow. Would've taken the Shadowdancer route

Riina - ranger, though more druidic in her views. Followed a sort of 'defender of the forest' archetype, though what exactly she defended was the natural order; she had no quarrel with travellers, or lumberjacks even (provided they didn't take too much). Had a tendency to use comparisons to animals in order for comprehension of situations (not in a degrading way, more just compared similar scenes to understand them better, and to better judge morale, motivation levels of opponents, and similar)

Roseanne (real name Janelle) - *really* weird girl. Weird in the sense that she has an absolute paranoia about clocks and time. An adept fencer, and very strong, uncontrolled power.

I think that's enough examples from me, otherwise this post will be huuuge.

In the end though, I've had my share of rogues, clerics, rangers, wizards, druids... Apart from the 'outcast' kind of template to the setup of their background, I'm not exactly sure if I could find particular convergences of design. Of course, I don't exactly have them all in front of me to cross reference

EDIT: Yeah, I've never done a paladin. It just feels somewhat unappealing to me. In particular because of the restrictions it has.

...Reralae's ever-unique characters!

Y'know... speaking of Rosie/Janelle... I really miss that little troupe... Alex and Smoke and Rosie... *sighs wistfully* ... those were definitely some interesting tales to tell.

And you had just met up with Alice too...

Over the course of the last 7 1/2 years in Trilogy I would have to agree with Kriea above as to leanings towards certain character types by both men and women. Though there have been a few female fighter types in my game, case in point the three longest were Haila a female human Fighter/Mage who was originally played by her creator Jinxa and recently before her death by Cdnflirt. The second and third are presently Rayne a female Ranger/Cleric played by Brianna, the third an NPC Fighter/Innate Psionicist. Though there have been a few others I have played with like Lady Dark's Gladiator in Alacrity's fizzeled game Audalis Dreaming. I can say Trilogy has never had a solo female fighter played by a female player.

Maybe its like Ginafae said that female players are just smarter then to play a Hack & Slash only character

I think it has to do with types of people, not male or female. I know guys who only play melee-types, and I know guys who will always return to the wizard. Everybody has some kind of preference.

Maybe it has to do with there not being too many female players out there (oh yes, their number is growing, but it's still a vast minority)?

If you really want to investigate this, get an all-female D&D group together. See what happens.

Anybody ever experienced that?

I happen to imagine most rangers as female. I have only seen one male ranger in my gaming groups, and we have a 50/50 RL gender split. Our most recent game has a female cleric, female fighter, female monk, female ranger, male druid, male sorcerer, and male rogue. We have a male DM for the record.

Maybe we're just weird? I can't really add any comment because I just don't notice the gender split of roles. Surely barbarians are abnormally skewed to male, but other than that I haven't really noticed it. Maybe because all the females in our group happen to be engaged/married to the males in our group?

I had the honour of DMing a group for a number of years, that was four females and one male. The one male was the thief. The women were Barbarian, Ranger, Cleric and Archer/mage.

Gender roles are out there but you can easily buck the trend within your own party.

Just gonna say, I'm so impressed everyone's jumping out to comment on this. <3

As to getting together an all female gaming group there's a few difficulties to that. One, as it's been mentioned there aren't many female gamers. Especially not in a concentration enough to get a decently sized group together in real life (around here anyway.) I'm not sure if it is because of the level of experience, not being face to face with the rest of the group or some other amount of variables but the women on here don't seem to feel pressured to fall into a category of acting one way or another, in character or out.

Man I'd love to see the results if it did happen though.