Has anyone noticed a correlation between the gender of the iconic characters and the gender of PCs using the playbook? From what I’ve seen the transformed is almost always male, along with the beacon. The doomed is highly female along with the outsider, but the effect is less pronounced.
Has anyone noticed a correlation between the gender of the iconic characters and the gender of PCs using the…
Has anyone noticed a correlation between the gender of the iconic characters and the gender of PCs using the…
In our group we had a male Doomed (who sadly met his), and my female character just switched to Transformed after a “lab accident”.
I will concede that the only female player decided to play a male Beacon, so maybe there’s something to that.
I haven’t noticed this, myself. I buy that it’s a thing, since picturing oneself as a character like the one in the picture is easier than coming up with a new character, but it hasn’t been true in the games of Masks I’ve run or played in.
My players tend to be really conservative about this, selecting their own gender almost exclusively, regardless of playbook illustration.
My Transformed and Beacon (who was a Delinquent) are women! Like, this doesn’t disprove your point, but it’s how my table rolls.
I would have been much less happy to look at the playbooks with just gear and generic illustration, actually. Seeing women (especially women of color) in kickass poses really got my attention on certain playbooks, and seeing a boy of color on Legacy made me want to give that a second look as well. YMMV, of course.
If this trend exists, I doubt that the images on the playbooks are the cause. I mean, how many female Transformed from Marvel and DC can you name who are not distaff to a male original (like She-Hulk is).
raises hand
Tigra in Marvel, and Hellcat, for a while. I recall the latest incarnation of Cheetah in DC is beast-like.
Nope. No correlation detected here. Current game has a female Transformed, female Delinquent, female Beacon, and a female Nova…all played by male players. In the game I’m playing in, as opposed to running, I am playing a male Transformed, but he’s basically a re-do of a long running hero from another game rather than being based on the stock art…our Outsider (female, with male player) and our Protege (female, with male player) run pretty standard. So it varies.
I’ve only been in two full Masks campaigns, but while the first had a female Protégé, it also had a male Janus, a male Outsider, and a female Transformed. The second game had a non-binary Outsider and female Delinquent and female Legacy. So if anything, my experience is more that the reverse is true.
Good art does have a tendency to affect chargen, but I imagine that would come secondary to the more generic tendency for players to play PCs of their own gender. I haven’t had a huge sample size to contribute, but I can say of Beacons I have seen (all 2), 100% are male, whereas of doomed, I have seen 50/50.
I know I’m late on this conversation, but I wonder if the Iconic characters from comics that the playbooks are based on might have to do with that trend too. For instance, the most iconic Doomed is Raven who is female. The most iconic Outsider is Starfire who is female. The most iconic Transformed is The Thing who is male. I wonder If the trend was also present with the Protege, due to most sidekicks in comics being male, despite having female art.
I can’t speak to a trend, but the two games I’ve been a part of so far have had one male doomed, one female and one male outsider, one male bull, one female legacy, one female and one male nova, one male transformed, and one agender newborn.