I am a Male, I work around males, I do not want to spend my free time looking at a male character.

I don't understand the question. Why wouldn't we play women?

In a fantasy world I would rather be what I'm not in the real world.

Where can I find the "Why do you ask why I play a dunmer in Skyrim instead of an argonian?" topic, I might be in the wrong topic?

Anyways, anyone who has ever been four years old knows that the *real* answer to any question that begins with "Why" is "Because."

I like playing a slight character who uses tactics, speed, distancing, and brains to overcome bigger, stronger, and stupider foes.

I'm surprised that this question keeps coming up. The game allows a wide range of role playing choices; why would one person's choice be the same as another's?

I don't.

I play as female characters because I identify as female and it is more enjoyable for me to watch a female character living in Tamriel. I've only played as a male a handful of times.

However, I think the OP is giving too much credit to how abundant female player-characters are. The majority of people on this forum play as male characters. Also, TES games have many, many female players, and just as many females want to play as female as males want to play as male.

As far as more female-oriented mods and screenshots, come on, women just look better than men, so they're more inclined to take pictures and work with fashion when playing as a female character!

In Oblivion, I would play female Bretons for the Speed increase, or spcifically for the strength decrease to get more levels, depending. Id play female Khajiit because the Endurance bump is more useful to a rogue than the strength increase, IMO.

In skyrim i havent gotten around to other characters.

In Morrowind id play, I think, female to get an extra quest dealie at some point. But Id never, ever, EVER play a female breton in Morrowind. If you wanna see why, go make one and let her get hit by mudcrabs til she screams.

AAIEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!

F*** that.

I've only played once as a female Argonian in Morrowind, but since spears got removed in latter games, I don't find it interesting anymore.

I play women sometimes since they're prettier than men, or I have a character in mind that I want to play out.


And before you begin wondering, no, I don't use mods.

Well for me, since I like to role-play my characters with a back story, and personality, that's sort of like asking a writer why they add female characters to their stories.

If anything I focus more on strength and brutality with female characters. But I don't relate with them that well, so I usually copy them from other games, films, television series and in one instance outside of TES, the song "Blue Monday". So they end up being terribly one dimensional as I find that they don't quite fit into the game. That includes:

• Jessica Sanders and Elle Bishop from Heroes.
  
• Miho from Sin City.
  
• Ivy Valentine from Soul Calibur. With some TES equivalent of the 2nd less revealing military style outfit, actually.
  
• Catalina from Grand Theft Auto.
  
• Alexia Ashford from Resident Evil: Code Veronica. She joined House Telvanni obviously.

I dread to think what that says about my ideas about the "fairer" six.

I just felt my Archer character should be Female.
and for the Variety, although it's kind of Hypocritical to say that because 4/5 of my characters are Khajiit, including the Archer.
I don't know why but my Human characters felt completely dull so I was left with 4 Khajiit and 1 Argonian o.o

I tend to play characters that are flexible in their approach to things, able to juggle magic and a bow for example. They also tend to be agilty based rather than sluggers ( which I find extremely boring). For me a female character is closer to this than a male character as I find this relates more to real life - women are definitely able to multitask and adapt faster than men (I'm male btw)

i am not sure, but MAYBE just MAYBE it has something to do with the thousands of mods for females only? the thousands of armor mods for ONLY females?

go on skyrimnexus. look at the most popular armors and mods. than ask again, why ppl make threads like this.

Because I decide I want to and that's the only reason I need.

That wouldn't explain why certain people are equally fascinated with this subject in every game I have ever played, whether it could be modded or not.

Here's a clue as to what's going on. The question is almost always asked by a male and is almost always: Why do males play females? These people almost never ask, Why do females play males? Why is that? Why are they not equally obsessed with the concept of females playing males?

I believe the answer is this: the people who ask this question are insecure males.

Hey now, let's not get mean, it's supposed to be a pleasant discussion. Like I mentioned before, any reason is sufficient, its just a general question and there is no wrong answer, unless it is insulting each other .

As for me personally, I said in the intro of my thread that I actually played a female in a similar game to Skyrim: Dark Souls. In particular I roleplayed a female Knight named Huurwen, based off of the female Bosmer Fighter's Guild member from Oblivion. I modeled the character to match and everything. That was okay for me because the roleplay elements were there, the combat system was there to allow for it, along with the diversity in equipment and gameplay to bring it all together. In Elder Scrolls games though I never really feel like I can roleplay that same "way" because of how its constructed, and it feels weird to me to play a female "just because" in ES. So basically I wanted to just ask why other people picked females just to broaden my horizons and mentality about it.

Though I will take into consideration your suggestion that I might be insecure; anything is possible after all .

Also, I don't think you told us your reason =/. What is it?

Nobody is actually obligated to answer, of course.


Insecurity might display itself as "feeling weird" about a particular idea. It appears to be the case that the question is always asked by males who don't play female characters, never by females who either do or do not play opposite six characters.

This subject came up recently in the Oblivion forum. To give a short version of what I said there, my characters are not "me." I play characters who are interesting to me, who allow the possibility to see things in ways I don't experience in ordinary life.

I asked this question. Anyway, I think it is an interesting topic, and I don't think there's just one reason for me. Here are the possibilities I can think of.


- I find females more sixually attractive (also one of the reasons that if I play a human, I usually play a white human, hope nobody interprets that as racism, it's just physical preference)

- I find females more aesthetically attractive, they often look "cooler" than males

-I have a somewhat androgynous personality and do not identify well with many male archetypal attitudes, so I have just as much feminine personality and thus do not feel overly inclined to create male characters all the time

-I like the concept of betraying gender roles and strong, independent women

-I like a change of perspective now and then.

-I just like to play a role of a female character I have in mind now and then, but this isn't too often, I don't usually roleplay that deeply



There are undoubtedly other reasons, but I am no master psychologist, so I don't know what other reasons they could be. I just enjoy playing female characters a little more than males (though I still play them as well).

For me, it all goes back to Super Metroid.* I remember beating that as a little kid, probably four years old, realizing I had played as a girl the whole time and thought "What?! That's kind of awesome. Why don't more games have female main characters?"

So, when given the choice I'll often times do both. Or a specific gender just might seem to "fit." For instance, in Halo Reach I played the entire campaign as a female Noble 6 because it just seemed to "fit." On the flipside, I just can't play as Femshep. Mark Meer is where it's at for me when it comes to Commander Shepard.

* Funny enough, I recently went back and replayed Super Metroid, only to discover whenever you die your armor breaks apart and reveals Samus is a girl. How I made it through the entire game as a kid without noticing that amazes me.

I play a roughly even mix of males and females. Generally the roles are split evenly too - I've played many a brawny female (e.g Nord Barbarian) and frail male (e.g Altmer Mage) as much as the 'traditional' strong dude/smart gal.

I honestly don't see the big deal. I see some male players post stuff like "Well I can't imagine myself in a female character's place from a RP perspective". No offence to them, but do these guys really think females are so unimaginably different and alien? That women bimble around all day thinking about flowers and babies and whether that glass cuirass makes their derriere look big?

Okay, if someone is finding it weird to play a female but wants to make the switch, try starting out with a kind of masculine female character. Like the Nord Barbarian I played - an axe-crazy Berserker from the North is an axe-crazy Berserker from the North no matter what bumps they've got going on under their furs and chainmail.

Long ago I was talking to someone about Diablo 2, and I still remember being baffled at the fact that he had never played as the sorceress class solely because it was a girl.

Other than insecurity, which does seem to be common, there also seems to be a couple different types of roleplayers in place; those who see the person in the game as a character they "invented", and those who see it like themselves in a costume, pretending to be someone else. The latter, obviously, tends to me much less likely to roleplay a character outside of their comfort zone. That said, it's still a weird question to me. Nobody asks "how can male authors write books with female characters in them?" That requires putting yourself into the character more than simply making an avatar that resembles a female.

Like old man Yahtze said: "And wherever there's gore there's also [censored], his lovely wife and business partner."

I like to play female chars in ES games, but never as my main char. I prefer my main char to be a warrior and female characters in every game are just not fit for that. It's rediculous how fighting women are portrayed in games and in other media like films or comics, Skyrim and Saints Row at least allow you to "bulk" your girl up a little, but the majority of modern media are just stupid in that regard. I always laugh when I see those big bulky steroid abusing soldiers in movies and there's this one hot chick in the platoon and she does the same as the guys. Seriously? The steroid abusers wouldn't be able to run more than two minutes anyway and the skinny girls would die of starvation half way through. I understand now why in every war movie and game you're always driven around...

But hey, I got used to it, so I just pretend that the top model I'm playing is in fact well trained in the art of sword fighting and it works for me. It's still stupid but hey, it's developed mostly by males and I can understand it. When I take a look on the Nexus I'm actually glad how it's now, those hentai mods give me the chills.

Yep, and she has eye shadow like she's working the streets. Hooray for space hokers!