Yeah, I know it isn't always. But it is. Maybe I'm a product of our eeeevil patriarchal society, but when I think "protagonist" I think male. And yes, I can think of plenty of counter- examples too, but the default is still... male. I best like games that feel like 80's action-adventure TV, only with a fantasy or sf flavor (and that's different from 80's sf TV, need I say). Unrepentantly aimed at the the male demographic. The main characters are male. Ergo, the characters I feel like building in similar RPGs are male. (That also may tie into my static-character thing... TV-show characters, at least in the 80's before the rise of story arcs and all that, weren't supposed to change too much so you didn't have to show the episodes in order.) Okay, so if I like "guy stuff" like that, it shouldn't be a problem for me when roleplaying games are "guy stuff." And it usually isn't... except that I'm not a guy. And my characters (all the good ones, anyway) are. Makes for some cognitive dissonance in face-to-face gaming, and in at least once instance resulted in a fellow player calling me "he" post-game at Denny's. In front of the waitress. -- Karen J. Cravens silver@phoenyx.net ---------------------------------------------------------------- GAMERS Home Page: http://www.phoenyx.net/gamers/
