Ben,

Uh huh. So, this female character that was about being a good man, how'd that work? Details! Now!

Ben,

Ah, that sates me. Thanks!

Ben,

This is the thread where I ask you questions, damnit! What made you think it was fair to ask me to reveal myself the way I'm asking you to reveal yourself?

::grumble::

Fine. I'll answer.

It depends on the game and what I'm doing. (Gee, Brand answers "It's contextual." Can we all die of the shock now?) When I'm PCing and NPCing the two answers are going to be very different. When I GM the answer is almost always going to be "whichever combination of those will make the character compelling for the situation and the PC in question." So when I'm setting up a rake to seduce Mo's character, he/she isn't going to have much to do with the man/woman I want to be -- or even the man/woman Mo wants to be with. It may, however, be much to do with the man/woman with whom Mo wants to have a fantasy affair (a different beast than a real affair).

But that's the cheap and easy answer, ain't it? What about when I PC a girl? To be honest, I've done all of the above. I've also been the woman I fear, and the woman I would fear being. Playing characters that scare me, that speak to my own faults and inadequacies is always a popular set of instruments for me. So playing characters that represent the things that I fear in the "other" and forcing myself to confront the issue is something I've done more than once.

When I was younger, so much younger than today, I used to play girls that were some version of my sexual fantasy woman. Of course, given who I was even as a teen, that usually meant Amazonian ass-kicker who was smart and tough as well as built like a brick house. The characters (usually) were the sort that didn't cause offense to the female players at the table, but I think it was painfully obvious that I fetishized them -- and the degree of sick on a pedestalness of the play may have been offputting to some of the girls. I recall, dimly, one girl saying something about how my character was like Cindy Crawford with a PhD*. At the time I took it as a compliment, but in retrospect I'm fairly sure it was a dig about how I was setting up a woman so fantastical she was as divorced from reality as the woman on the cover of Savant and Sorcerer.

Now days I still play sexualized women from time to time, but I try to do it without either fetishizing or debasing their sexuality or simplifying their issues. I probably have less experience with this than others, as I've been doing way more GMing than playing for the last 5 years, and so my total number of PCs is low – meaning I haven't had a huge chance to play this type of character. I did one who was a seductress type, a femme fatal, who was a mixture of Madonna and whore herself, who ended up (against my expectations) having a history of sexual abuse that caused a lot of her trauma. She started out as a character I may have wanted to have a torrid fantasy affair with, and ended up as a character whom I wanted to hold while she cried. That was also… um… like a year ago.

My other "female" PC at this point is actually a gender-switcher that is tied to another character. Due to a magical geas the character has to assume the sex opposite that of hir master, so she's a girl when the master is a boy and a boy when the master is a girl. In both forms the character is highly sexualized and built to be both the boy and girl that you would want to fuck but wouldn't because you knew it was bad trouble. So the girl is certainly that tempting bit again, but the boy is too… and the whole thing is complicated by the fact that the character is basically the bound mount and companion of another character.

The other recent time that I played a girl, sex wasn't part of the make up at all. I didn't, oddly enough, sexualize the character much at all other than to say that she was moderately attractive, but not so pretty as to scare guys with low self confidence. This, however, was also in a game played with a largely gamist agenda by guys who aren't into deep characterization or story, and so I was much more interested in the characters ability to waste shit with her crossbow.

As for how I play male PCs towards female NPCs... that too depends a lot on the game and the situation. When Mo and I are playing a solo game in which there is sex and seduction going on fast and heavy, there is obviously going to be a heavily sexual relation and sexualization element towards some of the female NPCs. OTOH, in the Blue Rose oneshot that I played a few months back there was almost painfully little sexual attaction between my noble judge and his shy lady love, played moderatly uncomfortably by one of my friends as GM.

If I had to make a generalization... I'd say there is probably more overt and active sexual draw and sexuality towards female characters in game than towards the women in my actual life. Not a huge amount, neccisarily, but it certainly is there. Due to the fun of the libidinal nature of play, the fantasy element of story (how many WW games did I play where everyone was a voluptous satyr running about free and horny?), and the fact that most of the women I play with like sex in their games in order to intensify story (or just play about with sexuality) there is a more sexual focus on the characters.

But then, I also don't have any problem being sexually attracted to someone and still being a friend and seeing them as a subject rather than object, so I'm not fully sure what to say about that.

*Edit addition: I was dating the girl who made the comment.

Nancy,

I had the same reaction to Dogs when just -reading- it. I struggled with it a lot, and it took me a long time to coming around to playing it. When I did, both games, I played a male Dog to get around my issue with it. So, there, you're braver than me.

Andy, Ben, Brand, here's more info you might find useful to help explain this. Nancy's story is likely not my own, but I'm sure we'll have some kind of similarities.

In the setting of the game there were dynamics that bothered me. The indication that women were property (Female Dogs have the right to refuse a man marriage means the other women don't), that abuse was normal (if the husband of a former Dog treats them badly they can expect that people will take their complaints seriously, which implies that it's not true for other women), plus some issues I have about the control and ownership issues that are raised by hierarchical polygyny.

Haven't I played in settings before in which women were abused, in which they were second class citizens, in which there was an oppressive level of patriarchic control and commodification of the female body and soul? Well, yeah, of course I have. Have I enjoyed playing in them? Yes. Have I fucked around with the gender issues that arose in them? Yeah, and (as Brand can attest to) in a pretty hardcore way.

So what's the difference?

Well, I'll tell you. In those other games, I generally would play around with stories in which I played female characters who pushed outside the structures, or who overcame their enculturation, or who became downright misanthropic and homicidal. In Dogs though, even though I can become a Dog and step outside the traditional expectations of women in the Dogs' society, I am not a rebel. I do not transcend the expectations: I am expected through my office to enforce them. In the game Pride, the source of all evil, comes into gender roles when someone wants more than what their place in the society dictates. My job as a Dog is to eliminate Pride.

Could this tell a good story? Sure it could. Was it a story I wanted to pursue. No. At least, not yet. Did I want it to necessarily be the first story that I played in the Dogs world? No. Could I play a female character and not approach that story? No. At least not my first time around. So there it was: I told that story or a I played a male Dog. My first time out I didn't want to play a gender story, I wanted to play a Dog story. So I played a male Dog. The second time out, I didn't want to play a gender story, I wanted to play a different kind of Dog story, so I played a male Dog too.

With a lot of Dogs experience maybe one could play a female Dog that wasn't a gender issues story, but I'm still hard pressed on how to do it. That means there are a lot of things I can't do (as a player) because I'm playing a female Dog, even if, in the story, female Dogs are exempted.

Jess,

The dynamic of that character was quite interesting, but not fully under my control. I didn't create the character, I just played her. And I didn't instigate the child abuse, someone else suggested it. We were playing the Pool, they did an idea roll about something like her having a "funny uncle" and I ran with it.

The thing about it was that despite that there was, no doubt, a tie between this characters specific sexuality and the abuse that built up quite quickly in my mind due to relationships I've had with abused children and women who were abused as children. She had an agressive, predatory sexuality that early on spoke to me of someone who could have esteme in herself only when she was being lusted after by someone else. At first this was sort of just playing to type, but as the game went on it got deeper and deeper.

It was a bit of a difficult issue for me -- but it was worse for one of the other players. He was a guy who would pick up at clubs, and apaprently he saw a lot of his former one-night stands in my character. To be confronted with the idea that some of the women he was with may have been doing what they did because they were subconciously repeating an abusive pattern that started when they were a child was horrifying to him. For that matter, it was horrifying to me. The male fantasy of the sexual woman who wants you and comes after you so that all you have to do is sit there and let her seduce you was suddenly turned into the realization that everyone has reasons for what they do -- and for some those reasons are not healthy. Some of our fantasy women are abuse victims. And what does that make us?

OTOH, one of the girls in the game afterwards told me she was really weirded by the whole thing. She saw what I was doing and approved, but was odded out by the fact that it was a man doing it. She said it felt too much like me judging female sexuality and finding it sick at the core. We didn't get to talk about it much, but one thing she did volunteer (I didn't ask) was that if the character were played exactly the same way by a female player, she didn't think she would have the same reaction.

For the next question: I've never played a PC sexual abuser -- that one is way too much a hot button for me. I have played PCs that were abused both in backstory and in the course of the game, both male and female PCs.

As for dealing with players who have been abused: that's why I usually set up some expectations about the game before play -- including some kind of safeword for those who need something to stop right there so we can talk about it.

Mo:

I admit that I had some concerns about playing a character who has to enforce gender roles that I have personal problems with - but that is exactly why I wanted to play the game, and to play a female Dog in it. I think your description of your difficulty is really clear and really insightful, though, and it's definitely made me think more critically about what I find interesting about the game, and how I can separate my concerns as a player from my character concerns.

I think Jess' sexual abuse issue should really be split off into it's own topic -- since it isn't necessarily related to cross-gender play. I'll see about starting one off...

Hey, I want to jump into the Dogs conversation. If it makes things easier (since there's already a Jess) you can just call me peaseblossom, or pease, or whatever.

Anyway, we already know that I tend to jump into gender issues feet first. When I played Dogs I played an alcoholic lesbian. She had been secretly in love with her best friend, the woman who made her coat, but when she went off to be a Dog her friend got married and was beaten to death by her husband.

My character was straddling the cutting edge between "I have to do what's right because I'm a Dog" and "What I do is right because I'm a Dog". Unfortunately, we only played a one-shot, and while the gm did do a great job of confronting me with an attractive young, rebellious girl who definitely had what it took to become a Dog herself, other plot points intervened and we didn't push the issue as hard as we could have.

Mo, that's it exactly! Also, as a dog, I'm *expected to uphold those same tenets that my character presumably became a dog to escape*. Really, why would a woman become a dog (for religious reasons, to show devoutness) if a woman's proper role in society is to get married, have kids, and keep a household? So she is deliberately choosing to step outside the bounds of normal society, only to enforce those bounds. It seems hypocritical or something.

The game I played was also a one-shot, so the character had no chance to develop, but I didn't like playing her at all. She seemed flat, hypocritical, and weak because she got out of something only to enforce it. There is no great story in that, there's no revenge, there's no struggle. I personally had a struggle playing a character enforcing such conservative values. I may try again just to see if I *can* play something so contrary to my own nature, but the first time wasn't so fun.

--Nancy

On the sexual abuse level, I once played a character who used to be a prostitute because she had no other way to earn money and then turned to thievery. I played her with no emotions that attached her to other people: no love, no hate, no remorse, no friendship. She shut everyone out. She would work with you, save your life, even, but she didn't care about anyone else, not even family. She was even sleeping with one of the other characters because there was no reason not to and it helped to have someone to watch her back, even if she didn't trust him. She was really really awesome to play and one of my all-time favourite characters.

--Nancy

Mo:

I'd love to see that picture; I've found so few visual representations of Dogs that really excite me. Got a link?

Pease-Jess:

I'm happy to be kleenestar if you'd rather be Jess - after all, you were here first! Or we can disambiguate as necessary on the fly. :)

As far as Dogs goes, your character sounds quite interesting, one I'd love to play opposite or GM for! My own concept is to create a woman who is much more traditional - who truly believes in the system, and genuinely agrees that the situation of women is right, and over time slowly has to ask herself, "Why am I the exception to the rule? Why is it okay for me to have certain freedoms when other women don't?" In other words, to move from someone who is totally bought-in, to someone who is conflicted and confused, and to see where that might take the character.

If only there were a way to play Dogs online with you and Mo . . . .

Thomas:

I'm a guy, what business do I have exploring the victimization of rape victims?

Come play with me! I definitely want men taking the issue seriously and working it through, because men also have to live with the consequences of rape, even if they're not the direct victim. Plus something like 10% of rape victims are men in any case.

Mo says:

What business do you [as a guy] have exploring the victimization of rape victims? Lots of business if you're doing it sensitively and with learning exploration in mind (besides which, I firmly believe that rape is not something that only happens to women).

It calls for the question though: What have you learned/ taken away from the experience?

I guess this is still on topic since it's about whether or not I'm getting positive milage out of playing cross-gender, but I'm sure Brand will come down like a ton of bricks if it's not...

Anyway, to actually answer your question... What have I learned? That's a tough one...

I guess if I'm completely honest I have to say I don't feel I've learned much, but it's hard to say really. One of the reasons I want to explore the issue is that I already have an incredibly strong stance and set of thoughts regarding it.

Since I haven't played with it much, it's difficult for me to identify where my established ideas end and the lessons learned in play pick up. That's one of the big reasons I'd be interested in doing it again sometime: experience tells me that I would learn more by exploring more. Well, I'm young, there's time...

Thomas

Arg! I go into a meeting for just an hour, and suddenly everyone posts on the topic I wanted to split!

[shrug] Oh, well. So, I've started another thread on "Sexual abuse in games". Post as you see fit.

In the meantime, I'll see about commenting on Ben Lehman's question.

Okay!

Everyone: issues of abuse over to John's thread! Quote liberally from this thread as you need!

Issues of cross gender play, stay here!

Issues that are both, do what seems most on topic for you!

Go!

So I dig that some people have issues with Dogs, but I guess I view the role of the PCs a little differently. For example, in the first game of Dogs I ran on IRC with Ben and Claire and some other cool kids, the PCs ended up declaring one of the Mountain People to be in charge of the town. That's INSANE if you see the Dogs' duty to be upholding the social order outlined in the book. But I don't think Vincent intends that to be what Dogs do at all. The Dogs just try to fix things as best they can, in the manner in which they see fit. Which regularly means ruling against the social order that empowers them.

I definitely grok Mo's point that playing female Dogs, because of the setting, means that gender is always going to be a major issue. It's just like how, when women are regular participants on a roleplaying forum, gender will eventually become a major topic for discussion (and I'm SO glad this is working out here), because of the massive gender imbalance.

Rolling back up to Brand's questions. I think exploring male sexuality in roleplaying is something I'd like to do more of, but I'd need a good group of kids to do it with and I'm not sure I can find a crowd nearby who'd be both 1) interested, and 2) supportive. I might be able to do it in Mike Holmes' HeroQuest IRC game, but I'm playing a <i>pregnant ice troll</i>, so that's not really possible there :)

To answer your questions specifically...

I think I'd like to address male sexuality and what-it-means-to-be-a-man both 1) with female players involved and 2) just with other guys. I think starting with a flirty rapscallion swashbuckler-type character would be a good first step, to just do fun male sexuality that is cute and ridiculous, and so not especially threatening. And, from there, I might model characters after friends and acquaintances who tend to be more sexually overbearing than myself, to see how those interactions play out. I don't know what to say about "issues I really want to nail." I guess I'd like to play a male character who was sexually aggressive without being morally repugnant. I have several other glimmers of ideas, but nothing that I can really articulate.

I've played in a few games in which I was the only male involved, but I was always GMing there and didn't talk with the other players to see if they wanted to take advantage of that rare opportunity to do something interesting and valuable. Instead, it was one of those, "empower women by not making a big deal about them being women" things. Like the Powerpuff Girls. And doing something else may not have worked for that group. If the opportunity came up again, I'd love to do it, but I'd rather be a fellow player and not the GM.

I forgot!

Nancy, you said....

I didn't like playing her at all. She seemed flat, hypocritical, and weak because she got out of something only to enforce it. There is no great story in that, there's no revenge, there's no struggle.

There *could* be, but only as you, say where there's time to play around with the dynamic of getting something only to enforce it. It's a sad, hard issue in marginalized culture, and all too common that within deeply oppressed groups, single members of the group will fall out and give over to the oppressor in an effort to curry favour or save themselves. There's lots of story in that, terrible struggle, some revenge. The problem is that it's not something all people can play, most often we like to like the characters we play, not just understand why they came to be.

It makes me want to try some day though.

Brand asks:

That's an interesting observation. It's one I've thought about too. Much as I'm now talking about some cross gender play that has changed me, I have to say there are equal (greater?) amounts that haven't.

What do you think the difference is? Is it a timing issue? A matter of the things you face in game? How strong of a pre-judgement you go into the game with?

That's a tough one, and it goes way beyond cross-gender play. I mean, some of my play with male characters has really changed me, and some has not, and if I'm not mistaken it's been in roughly the same proportion. I'd guess that X% of all my play changes me significantly, and I'm not sure that there's a weight to cross-gender or not.

As to actually answering your question about what the difference is... The short answer is to exclaim, "Uh... look, a distraction!" while pointing emphatically over your shoulder. The long answer is "Uh... I don't actually know off the top of my head, maybe that should be a new thread?"

Thomas

So, Pease, Jess & Nancy,

Brand did his thing up there about doing a Dogs game online, and it got me thinking how wicked awesome cool it would be to play an all female Dogs group with you three. Four female dogs who had four different takes on being a woman and a Dog, affected differently by individual lifetimes of to being brought up in the setting who go out into the world and confront what it's about and what it's like to suddenly be given the authority in a land that's always treated you like a second class citizen.

John,

Not surprising maybe, but fascinating none the less.

Brand, I totally want to go to Toronto this summer. I was hoping to visit UofT and see if it's worthwhile paying Canadian tuition to be able to study in some place that isn't as batshit as the US. I think the answer is "probably not" but it'd give me an excuse to hang with you and Mo. I'll cook you dinner!

Yes, I'm totally into playing a game involving male sexuality at GenCon. I'll hopefully have a version of Vesperteen done then, and that would be a good game to do it with, since VT's gonna be like "Truth or Dare" meets Buffy on HBO. But it might be better to do it with a system we all sorta know and sorta ignore, if we want to focus on content and not system.

Let me think about the "playing with guys vs. playing with girls" question, since that's not especially on topic. I'll get back to you when I have something substantial to say.

Mo, yes! I'd love to play a game with all-female dogs! I think it would have a totally different dynamic.

Brand, I'm going to carry my character discussion over to the sexual abuse thread, 'cause I think that's where it really belongs.

--Nancy

Mo:

Yes! I'm totally up for Dogs, though you may have to discourage me from referring to us as the "Bitches in the Vineyard." :)

I'm also about to disappear for a few days thanks to Passover, so I'll send you my email address and we can work this out offline.

Matt:

I'm not sure that's where the answer is, really. I mean, it should totally be okay for there to be groups that are all guys, and games that are more appealing to men, and so on. We just have to identify them as such, rather than as what's 'normal.'

YES. Let us be large; let us contain multitudes. Perhaps we should have a Whitmanifesto to get behind!

Matt,

What an excellent answer. The question I'd ask is how you make sure that it is an issue of "not for me" rather than "what's normal." I mean, how do you convey that to anyone other than your private group? Fuck, how do you convey that to your private group?

However, I think I must have asked the wrong question. Let me try to start over. Let us say that you and I and Jonathan are going to do a game in which we explore issues of masculenity and being a man in a way that gets at issues of men being distanced from their emotions. We want a fourth to join the game, and to GM for us. Does the gender of the GM mater to you at that point? Not because of "what is normal" or "what we should do as enlightened men who want to welcome women into our hobby" but because of "what will make you most able to get the issues you want."

See, for myself, I'm not sure. If it was Mo, I'd probably want her in the game. But there are other women in the group I game with whom I would not want in the game. Not because they are women, but because of the nature of our relationships. OTOH, I wouldn't want the VAST majority of guys I know in the game either.

So I wouldn't want some women, but I wouldn't want LOTS of men. Which means that there is, somewhere in my lizard brain, something that is saying, "I'd rather do it with a female GM than with a male GM who has a different/opposed idea of what being a man means, but I'd probably most want to do it with a man whom is on the same vibe I am."

Not because it's normal, or because its essential, but because... well, for some of the same reasons that the womenz are wanting to do Bitchez in the Vineyard.

Ladies, any thoughts about hearing me say that? Any insight for me into things I may be missing?

Huh.

I wouldn't want to GM that game, because I don't feel that I know enough about you, personally, to help you explore those issues - and I can't draw on my general knowledge of issues regarding masculinity, because it's not a problem I've spent as much time thinking about as I have on issues of femininity. I would, however, really like to be a fly on the wall. :)

So I totally understand why you would want a sympathetic male GM over a female GM, although I'm sure that there are plenty of GMs of both sexes who could do a good job.

--Jess

I think I probably suck compared to most GMs, so that's probably true.

And now I'll say probably again.

Oh shut up, you so do not.

You know me and my reticense to GM for a bigger group, but even if I could get over that, I'd have to think long and hard before committing to GM your "Iron John" game.

I think I'd want to know why you wanted me to GM, and if it was because I was a woman, and what you thought we would accomplish by it being specifically me as the GM. We'd have to do some serious prep exploration so that I could be sure I was capable of bringing you the thing you wanted.

Which is funny, because when thinking about the "Women Who Run With the (Wild West) Wolves" game (BitV) I just assumed that you could run it without all of that. I know it's just because it's you and I have played through some really delicate gender issues in your games, and you've totally earned that trust. It's funny though what assumptions we make unconciously even when we're trying to keep track them.

Oh god, we've become Joshua (BR) and Laura !

Uhoh, if the "H" in your email addy stands for the last name "Heisenberg", I'm going to have to get out the flyswatter.

Nope, not Heisenberg . . . and I'm a little confused what the Heisenberg you're talking about. (It's late and I've been writing all day, so my brain is only kind of working by now!)

Brand,

The most amusing overtone to Nancy's little story (from my point of view) is that the player in question was me, her boyfriend of nearly 1.5 years, and our relationship has been basically devoid of those sorts of little games (thank God...). My character was a bit more clueless than I like to think I am, even aside from being preoccupied at the time with his demonic guitar and the recent murder of his parents. I can't authoritatively speak for the other players, but a decent amount of my visceral "Oh shit, what do I do now?" feeling was directly tied in with my relief that Nancy doesn't put me through that sort of thing in real life.

See, I really should read my own posts. I was wondering what in hell that might have to do with a flyswatter. Now I am making with the following of the humor, which at other times might be perceived by an observer to be going over my head. But when no one is looking, I do get the joke. :)

Nerd up!

A question, people.

I've never read DitV, so would someone enlighten me - how/why does someone become a Dog? Is there some sort of a prerequisite? Is it different for men and women?

MarK.

OMGZZ B00000BIEZ U R A LUSER!!1111!!!

Better?

I agree, I love the kind of discussion we're having. I especially love that you can make analogies to the Marxist critique of capitalism . . . and that it totally makes sense, in context. There's actually some research (I think it's cited in Virginia Valian's book on women in science?) about how men and women relate that suggests you might be right about women understanding men, on average, better than vice versa. If I weren't leaving town in two hours I'd look it up, but IIRC it was a study about women listening to men more closely than men listening to women, and how that's modified by the overt power relationship between the individuals involved.

I think that may be where Brand's sense of "the right male GM > a fairly large group of female GMs > everyone else" comes from.

Also: this place rocks, which, I suppose, is why I'm posting here when I'm supposed to be leaving town in two hours. :)

My main Dogs-related issue has been lack of opportunity to play - so, yes, I think all of your suggestions are interesting. I would love to play with a non-dominant male character, and watch him flail to hand off authority, and see how he would handle other people's expectations of him. I'd love to play in a game (hell, any game, not just Dogs) with all female characters but a variety of players. In fact, I think I'm going to try precisely that in the next game that I run. My group generally runs 20-50% female characters, with 0-50% female players depending on the game, but I've only had one game with a majority of female characters and I'd really like to work with that again.

BitV isn't going to be any of those things, of course, but that's why we play these games over and over and over - to try different stuff. :)

Can you post a link to the Feminist Game Design manifesto somewhere?

--Jess

So many posts to keep up with....

Albert,

That makes things much clearer! I have a lot of questions for you, but I don't think they go in this thread -- they're about playing with SOs more than they are about playing with gender. So yea, I'll start a new thread when I get back from my trip, and ping you over there.

MarK,

Dogs are chosen by the Steward of the branch. That is to say, a man in a position of priesthood authority choses from among the youth of a town which are suited to being a Dog. They are then interviewed, and if they accept the call they go off to be trained.

Of course, you start the game as a Dog, so someone somewhere has already found you worthy. Which makes an interesting case for the a priori suitability issue.

Matt,

Makes perfect sense. But then I'm a big social constructivist, so Marxist analogies always make sense to me. And yea, Jess is right, that is where my "the right male GM > a fairly large group of female GMs > everyone else" issue comes from. Because the person who best knows the faults of a system isn't the observant outsider, but the rebelious insider.

Matt and Jonathan,

Story Games rocks. The folks on this thread rock. Both are true statements. We are vast, we contain multitudes.

Thomas,

I haven't seen Paul's either, but Matts rocks the house in a real way.

Everyone,

Today is my last day about this thread for at least a week -- I'm off to Chicago. So if'n you've questions specific for me, ask em while you can.

Jonathan,

In general, I think many female Dogs with one male Dog would be a neato game to play. In specific, I'm excited particularly about BitV because I've had trouble approach it and because it's all girls. I don't suspect that it will take long to find my empowerment after a couple of sessions of that game, so I'd like to do it, but *after* the BitV game for all the reasons I posted about my problems with Dogs earlier.

As for the other: the mixed gender game with an all female Dogs group I would feel different about, and that different = more cautious. Once again, *after* the BitV experiment I'd be comfortable playing it if the other players were, say, You or Brand or Matt, as I have a strong prepared confidence that it would be interesting, and that you might have something to say that was approachable and potentially valuable to me as a woman.

So, different, not bad, but not "Let's do it!" - just yet.

When I was in college, I hung out with the lesbians over in Fairfield Hall a lot. We had a lot of interests in common, and they were the only women on campus who wouldn't flinch when I came within ten meters.

Not sure exactly why that is, but... well, it's immaterial to what I'm getting at...

At one point, several months after I had been hanging out with them, one of them turned to me and said, "You're great, Fred. You're like this six-foot-eight dyke, except you've got a dick."

MarK,

Do you mean "exclusive to character gender" or "exclusive to player gender"?

You mean like City of the Moon or Snow From Korea (any version)?