The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion - a career guide to making money in Cyrodiil

 Of all the video games I've played, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is probably still my favourite of all time. Since the greatest joy of a Bethesda game typically lies in the exploration of the world, the ability to purchase and upgrade a home is important as it provides a feeling of putting down roots. Homes also let you stash items that you don't wish to carry or sell and strategic placement of these objects can give a sense of identity to your character.

Unfortunately, homes and upgrades cost a huge amount of money compared to most other things in the game. Or maybe you'll actually try to follow popular advice and Train 5 times per level, which is very expensive in the early game. Upon figuring out how little money simply playing through quests pays directly, you'll likely find yourself looking for ways to deliberately earn coin.

What follows is a list the main occupational earning possibilities available to a player character – at least in the original version of the game. I expect this advise will hold true for the Remaster but it will be a little time before I can confirm this. (On the other hand, the Remaster's release is why I figured it was worthwhile to write such a guide for a very old game).

Scavenger

The simplest way to get a little coin in Oblivion is to take items you are legally allowed to take and sell them. The Imperial City in particular is full of crates containing small amounts of goods and even a few coins. A remarkable number of cultivated crops in farms are also free to take – even the vineyards just outside of Skingrad are full of grapes you can hoover up with impunity. This is probably the least effective way to get rich but it is the foundational way to get money.

Thief

If your aim is to grab items and sell them, not discriminating between owned and unowned goods is likely to net you a better haul. Pickpocketing is always a roll of the dice but stealing from houses and castles is basically risk free if you only grab when the stealth eye symbol shows that you are hidden. Murdering people for their stuff like a bandit isn't a profitable option because the law enforcers of the Empire are as all-seeing as the Dark Brotherhood. Horse theft is also a non-starter as horses can't be sold and stolen ones will wander off as soon as you dismount.

The main problem with being a thief is that if you haven't got The Skeleton Key yet you will have to take the cost of lockpicks off your profit margins. You also need to gain access to a fence to actually sell the stolen goods to – but you should do this anyway. The willingness of a fence to buy stolen goods is nothing compared to their real virtue: they will buy any type of item. If you have Mercantile of less than 50 this will save a lot of trekking around between stores. Fellow Chronic Fatigue sufferer Ongar also does business 24 hours a day!

Adventurer

The presumed default livelihood for a player character, this method of making money entails exploring the world at random. If anything attacks you you kill and loot it. An aspiring hunter can also shoot harmless deer for Venison. If you find a ruin, fort or cave you go in and scour every inch for valuables.

This method can produce excellent results but the rewards are highly variable. Slain beasts and monsters rarely have much beyond a single pelt or alchemy ingredient whilst humanoid opponents will have little beyond the gear they have equipped. Weapons and armour have relatively poor gold to weight ratios so you'll soon have to head back to a merchant. This questing is all about the occasional rich find such as an enchanted item, although at higher levels you'll lament the fact that no single item can ever be sold for more than 3000 gold.

The biggest problem you'll face is that avoiding death and slaying foes requires the expenditure of potions and enchantment charges as well as inflicting wear on your gear. Less profitable expeditions can see the proceeds eaten up by these expenses.

Energy Drink Salesman

Alchemy is a great way to boost the sale value of applicable items. Combining ingredients will usually produce a potion or poison more valuable than the ingredients themselves. You can even 'launder' stolen ingredients into a potion that is legally yours.

The main limiting factor on Alchemy is that you need to combine different ingredients with the same unlocked effect. Fortunately almost every kind of food has Restore Fatigue as the first effect listed. Such food ingredients are cheap or free and exist in over 20 different common forms. This means that making money from Alchemy mostly consists of making large numbers of Restore Fatigue potions and offloading them to a vendor in the largest batches they can pay for.

Hero of Cropsford

A family is trying to build a new farm at Cropsford, only to find that it is currently the battlefront of a war between two goblin tribes. If you can solve these zoning issues they actually build the farm over the next in-game month. After full completion the larger house will have a Reward Chest upstairs. Once a week the family will deposit around 10x your level of gold in it just for you. It isn't much, but passive income is no small thing in Cyrodiil.

Mages Guild Member

None of the organisations available in Cyrodiil offer steady weekly work to the PC until they are at the top of the hierarchy. Instead each offers a quest chain of one-off jobs. The Mages Guild are the worst at compensating you for these efforts with actual coin – which is to say they never do. It seems that the majority of the Guild make money by trading, training or teaching spells they've managed to invent with the University resources.

This culture persists even when you are Archmage. There is no salary or benefits except that you can use a magical chest in your new private quarters. This provides 10 duplicates of an ingredient you already possess once a week, augmenting your existing Alchemy hustle or providing a modest sales income.

This picture changes significantly if you become a Fake Vampire Hunter. If you get in with them the right way the Order of the Virtuous Blood will pay 250 gold per Vampire Dust delivered. An unscrupulous Archmage can therefore relieve them of 2500 gold per week without actually risking contact with a vampire.

Unlike the Fighters Guild, the Mages Guild actually has items of reasonable value lying around everywhere that you can take once you've joined. The only downside of this is that the Guilds look a lot less nice without their set dressing. If you are planning on visiting often (for example via the portals in Frostcrag Spire) you may come to regret giving these places a post-plague-of-locusts look.

Arena Fighter

The Arena will employ anyone who wanders in off the street if they can withstand the abrasive greeting they will receive. Successful applicants are invited to to go and fight a candidate with a similar number of Arena wins to the death. Considering the mortality rate the rewards are absurdly small, starting at only 50 gold for your first few wins. The money isn't levelled so many players do this quest line early. You can at least get the work done quickly – just walk up one corridor, commit murder, return and get paid. Repeat as often as you can handle for the 12 hours the Arena is open. Once you become Grand Champion you are instead tasked with levelled monster fights for levelled gold but limited to one bout per week.

The main issue with this job (aside from the dystopian slaughter) is the same as Adventuring. Resource use such as potions and weapon charges and any wear on your gear cuts down on the profits. Thanks to a cast iron rule against looting fallen opponents you won't even be getting arrows back.

Fighters Guild Member

The dismal inability of the Fighters Guild to provide employment or equipment for its membership is half the plot of their quest line. At least they generally pay a low but levelled fee for jobs done and you'll always have a quest to do until you become Guild Master.

As Master you will receive a cut of the Guild's proceeds. This is a random amount of gold from 0 to 990 with a a small chance of receiving a magic item (or up to 3 if you focus on Recruitment at the cost of halving your gold). The main issue is that the payout is only made monthly and has no prompt, so good luck remembering when to check the chest. The fact you can potentially get 0 gold and no item when the month ticks over is the icing on that cake.

Thieves Guild Member

The Thieves Guild make it clear that they expect you to work as an independent thief and simply provide the means to sell the results and reduce any bounty costs you incur. That said they have a quest chain of 'special jobs' if you use these services enough. Once you get settled in helping out with these they pay good money for services rendered.

Becoming the Guildmaster doesn't come with any kind of regular passive take from the membership although you do get private quarters. Judicious use of certain Guildmaster-only options can however make you pretty much immune to bounties and even Infamy for crimes if you are able to run fast enough. Encumbrance is henceforth the only real limit on your crime sprees.

Dark Brotherhood Member

The Dark Brotherhood prefer to compensate members with magic items (which are themselves valuable) but when they do pay gold for their hits the amount is relatively high. It is worth noting that their quest chain is unique in having a two-tier reward scheme – completing a kill in a mediocre fashion will see you forfeit the 'bonus' portion of your payment. If you want to make bank with these people you'll need to bring your best.

Once you become Listener of the Brotherhood your role changes. Performing a simple non-combat task once per week will net you a standard cut of 200 gold. This is much less than even the Archmage or Arena Grand Champion can earn from their roles (although it is much safer than the latter). Coordinating a murder cult is clearly a religious vocation first and a money spinner second.

Master of the Crimson Scars

If you want a more mercenary approach to these activities you can recruit the Dark Minion as an Upgrade to the Deepscorn Hollow lair. He can be sent out to murder, returning 2 days later and immediately being ready for another trip if you are there to greet him. He will dare to return even if he fails you (a 25% chance) and tracks suspicion back to you so ineptly that his kills give you Infamy. Despite these failings he will bring back levelled gold on a success and has a 10-25% chance each of depositing 8 different types of loot in a special chest. If you don't care about your reputation with the righteous this is likely to be a far more profitable alternative to managing the entire Fighters Guild.

Captain of the Black Flag

The landlocked pirate ship in Dunbarrow Cove can be filled with useful employees for a fixed total cost of 5500 gold once you've cleared it out. As you bring people in regular pirates will also join your 'crew' despite the total lack of seaworthiness. A full crew of pirates can be sent out to plunder, returning in one week and requiring a day of rest before going out again. They bring back gold equal to 100x your level every time, meaning that this home base can actually turn a profit relatively quickly. Even better you will receive a prompt when they return wherever you are in the world, making them the most user-friendly of all the timed income sources in this list. The only reason not to claim this place at the earliest possible opportunity is that the current residents are actually a challenge for a low level character and will kill you if you are reckless or poorly armed.

Protector of the Isles

After completing the main quest line of the Shivering Isles you will have the duties of Protector. When you enquire with the Chamberlain whilst in the Palace, there is a 50% chance that he will inform you of an attack. You can then either take the matter up personally or command that the guards handle it. When you next travel to the settlement in question you will either face a fight or see your guards leaving victorious. You can then collect a levelled gold reward. Although the reward is higher for personal intervention the fact that your guards always win makes this an effortless way of gaining gold once you've got every settlement open to fast travel. Since the Isles are far too chaotic to be limited to one incident per week, you can basically get as much money as you want with minimal waiting before heading back to Nirn to spend it. This is therefore the best way to make money in Oblivion with the exception of...

Console Commander/Glitch Farmer

In the original form of Oblivion, PC users could open the command console and enter codes. Entering the code additem F (number) after clicking on the player character in third person would add that number of gold to the character. The console commands are different in the Remastered version due to using a different engine but some version of this wealth spawning may exist.

Bethesda games are famed for their glitches and new ones to exploit are being found all the time. Some can be exploited in a sequence to take as much gold as you like.
Neither of these methods are 'in universe' ways to get money – but if you just want to skip the grind on your latest character these methods will get you that upgraded house straight away.

Making the Phantom Thieves in Dungeons and Dragons 5e

 I recently finished my play-through of Persona 5 Royal – an epic game with a play time in the hundreds of hours. Although I'd have to caution any Christian readers that it goes VERY hard on the 'treating figures from the Bible as fantasy bestiary material' trope, I'd otherwise unreservedly recommend it to anyone able to ration out that much gaming time over the next year or so. One of the main strengths of the game is the cast of characters, most of whom are real pleasure to spend time with in the slice of life sections before using their support to hammer through dungeons too slickly presented for the grind to get dull.

Articles describing how to make a particular character from fiction in D&D 5e seem to be a very common thing at the moment. Although I strongly support the notion that players should try other systems rather than attempting to bash every square peg into that particular round hole (I recently saw an article for making David from Edgerunners in 5e when Cyberpunk Red is right there) I found myself mentally deciding how each of the Phantom Thieves should best be translated. Listing them in this way naturally constitutes a spoiler of sorts as they are gained throughout the game, but I've tried to keep things a little cagey.

It should be noted that the status of the characters as young people is very important to the themes of the game and that the school life sections are a vital counterpoint to the action. The Thieves would therefore work really well in a campaign using the Strixhaven supplement. The Jobs, Extracurriculars and Relationship systems will bring that element to life whilst the Initiate Feat granted by the Strixhaven Backgrounds will ensure that everyone can cast spells just like in the game. I've therefore included a most likely College for each character.

Joker – Rogue, Warlock or Cleric

Given the amount of screen time and extra abilities that come with being the protagonist, it isn't surprising that Joker can be represented in multiple ways. My own favoured way would be to play him as a Rogue. By their very occupation every party member has touch of this class to them, but Joker is the model almost all of them follow after on their heists. He personally emphasises mobility and light weapons but hits very hard when he gets the right opportunity. Unsurprisingly the Phantom Archetype is a good fit – allowing him to suddenly gain new skills by communing with beings no one else can see. At higher levels you can snatch a mystical reward at the moment of an enemy's death and use it later as a power up. Sound familiar? You'll never experience the late game arcane might of the character this way, but you will be able to ape his demeanour and slip in a good few nods. Starting out as a Variant Human with Crossbow Expert will allow you to use a hand crossbow in much the same way as his prominently featured pistol.

If you prefer to focus on the mystical element of the character, Warlock is a good way to represent the Velvet Room and the importance of 'deals' to the protagonist. Igor could be argued to be any one of several different types of Patron and he frequently keeps in touch and assigns tasks. The several different types of 'Sight' Invocation allow you to play a PC who appears to have a veritable Third Eye. The pain of limited spell slots will be familiar to those who have struggled with the SP gauge of the one guy you can't switch out of the party... but you can always count on Mona to advocate for more rests.

The third way is just to run a Trickery Domain Cleric. All Clerics can select from the entire Cleric Spell List every time they prepare spells, allowing them to manifest wildly different magical abilities every day whilst also possessing adequate martial prowess. This has long made them a 'top tier' class. Whilst you will eventually possess the highest level of spell slots, you will always be beholden to an external beneficiary for your powers. Although less tightly themed than the other options, this is probably the best way to experience the overpowered nature of the main character.

Whatever your class, consider the Chef Feat and bug your GM to let you learn how to craft the Bottle of Boundless Coffee from the Strixhaven book.

College: Silverquill. His carefully measured social interactions bring out the best in others.

Mona – Druid

Although he insists that he is a polymorphed human rather than an actual cat, Mona is not averse to using his feline shape to help the Thieves' activities in the real world. In the mystical world of the Metaverse he has access to far grander shapeshifting abilities that are vital to the team. He also knows a huge amount about the mystical underpinnings of this strange landscape and acts as a guide for the others. All of this makes him a good candidate for the Druid class (most likely Circle of the Moon, although his meme-inspiring advocacy for sleep could be referenced with the Circle of Dreams). He even uses a slingshot like the Druid in the upcoming film!

Although there is no need to make all of the other characters human just because of the source material (Skull would make a good half-orc, for example) Mona should definitely be a different race. Either a Tabraxi of a small sized creature would be a good fit. You could also homebrew some sort of house-cat form to be stuck in with the GM, providing you can speak and cast and can get someone else to carry your stuff! (I once built a character like this for my wife on the concept of 'awakened cat with Wizard levels'. He was a Necromancer who used his undead servant as a porter. I went all in with the equipment list too, replacing things like the bedroll and whetstone with a cat bed and scratching post).

College: Mona never exactly has an academic or career path in the game, but in Strixhaven he could sit on top of his very own desk. His desire to probe the secrets of the depths of the Metaverse probably puts him in Quandrix.

Skull – Fighter

Skull is a track athlete who outshines the rest of the group in that department. He is loud, direct and rejects social norms in a way that fits Barbarian, but I think another character should take that class. His physicality also works well for a Fighter, most likely a Champion. Second Wind, Action Surge and Remarkable Athlete will all serve to provide the right impression. The Interception Fighting Style will also showcase his notable loyalty by protecting other characters. It's a bit basic, but so is he.

College: Whichever it is, he's skipping most of the classes.

Panther – Sorcerer

Panther mostly uses magical fire attacks, which are conspicuously strong compared to most other party members. Her choice of element also reflects her personality more directly than some others (Queen's penchant for nuke, for example). This makes her a straightforward choice for Pyromancy Sorcerer. Her frequently noted beauty and ambitions to be a professional model make a Charisma focused class logical for her too.

College: Prismari is likely to be the home of fashion and will be full of artists wanting to make her their muse.

Fox – Fighter, Monk or Bard

Fox stands at the intersection of these two fandoms as he is voiced by Matt Mercer. His combat style is overtly based upon a samurai, which exist as a fairly unremarkable Fighter Archetype. His notably ascetic lifestyle could be demonstrated by making him a Kensei Monk instead – although in his case the cause is a deprived upbringing and terrible budgeting skills. In role-playing terms his obsessive devotion to beauty and the arts produces behaviour that everyone would normally associate with a Bard. I don't really have a strong preference – there are no bad characters in the P5R main cast but I didn't gel as closely with Fox as I did with most of the others.

College: Fox spent most of his food budget on Prismari paraphernalia the day he arrived, even though you don't choose a College until your second year.

Queen – Monk or Fighter

Queen is a self-disciplined and relatively sensible person who wows the rest of the party with her martial arts skills. This makes assigning her the Monk class an easy option complete with a higher than average Wisdom score. As with most versions of D&D or Pathfinder, however, Fighters are a valid alternative when trying to create a punching expert. Queen rapidly becomes the tactician of the group and has abilities that let you assess the prowess of monsters in advance. If you play a Battle Master with the Unarmed Fighting Style and the right choice of Manoeuvrers, she can do all of this by the time she has Know Your Enemy.

College: Lorehold is probably a good fit for her book-smart approach to academic success and ambitions in the field of Law.

Oracle – Wizard or Artificer

Oracle is a slight challenge for this exercise because she is a non-combatant, assisting the party purely by remote. Unlike many other TTRPGs D&D equips all characters with some ability to mix it up with the enemy. Wizards are among the very squishiest options in terms of Hit Points and proficiencies, without being funnelled toward offensive magic in the way that Sorcerers tend to be. With the right spell choices a Divination Wizard could mimic Oracle's role as Navigator quite well. Intelligence should certainly be her primary Ability score in any case. Her extreme tech skills are an obvious match for the Intelligence-based Artificer but this class is typically much more directly combative. However the Unearthed Arcana rules contain the Archivist option which is perfect if the GM allows it.

This character's anxiety and unusual approach could be interesting to play, but it is worth making sure that the other players know your intentions in advance. Such retiring tactics could make some fights tougher.

College: Quandrix and Lorehold both intersect with her fields of interest. Whichever college she calls her own, she fully intends to amass a complete set of Cuddly Strixhaven Mascots.

Noir – Barbarian

The daughter of a very wealthy family, Noir is a picture of social propriety and dresses like a musketeer in the Metaverse. However, she is too shy and too much of a people pleaser to operate as a social powerhouse – she has been raised to be a pawn rather than a player. When the dam inevitably breaks she enters combat with a two-handed battleaxe and a surprising amount of hidden strength. Fighting gives her a degree of pleasure that sometimes unnerves even martially-orientated characters like Skull and Queen. Although she is dutiful to her family's business interests her personal passion is learning about plants and how to make the best food from them. For these reasons I would place her as the game's best candidate for Barbarian – albeit one so non-stereotypical that I'd love to play her.

College: Witherbloom. Whether chopping wood or tending a flowerbed, Noir loves to get her hands dirty.

Crow – Paladin

Crow professes doubt that the vigilante activities of the Phantom Thieves are preferable to the law as a form of justice, but eventually finds it necessary to seek to join them. As a late game addition to the roster it is unsurprising that he is a powerful character from the moment he joins. Paladin is a hard hitting class that is traditionally viewed as a foil for rogues and chaotic characters in general, so it works to portray him as one.

Of course, 5e has dispensed with alignment restrictions and Paladins now seek their own justice from a variety of perspectives. Crow is ruthless figure to his enemies – and also to himself, driven to excel in all things and judging his worth only by success. He eventually confesses to be bitterly jealous of Joker's special abilities and becomes obsessed with proving himself superior in spite of them. This means that the Oath of Conquest suits the character well, particularly the description of the third precept: “You shall rule until a stronger one arises. Then you must grow mightier and meet the challenge, or fall to your own ruin”.

This self-destructive obsession could even lead to Crow becoming a Hexadin – the Paladin/Hexblade Warlock multi-class with an infamously high damage output served with a side of angsty internal conflict.

College: Silverquill. It is hard to imagine such a competitive character NOT learning Silvery Barbs.

Violet – Rogue or Bard

Violet is so late to the party that she is only added to the team in the expanded storyline of Royal. As such there is less to say about her relationship to combat (although she has an engaging personal arc). As an aspiring gymnast she is graceful and highly mobile, favouring a light sword. The Swashbuckler's Fancy Footwork and the College of Sword's Flourishes both demonstrate this well. I'm currently playing a mutli-class of these two in my regular game and enjoying it.

College: Prismari is the natural home of people committed to artistic excellence.

Retail Work: That NPC feeling

 There is a comedy comic by Jacob Andrews in which the main character is seen serving someone in a shop. After the customer leaves they have a sudden moment and declare in horror “I'm an NPC!”

I've been a role-player and gamer for over 20 years and I am currently reading some extremely dense deep dives into the theory and history of such play. I was also a retail employee for over 15 years until I was finally able to leave shortly before turning 40. Overall, it is hardly surprising that I'd produce an over-thought response to this concept.

The first point to make is that everyone is an NPC to everyone else. This isn't obvious at first sight when playing these games – most are designed to support multiple PCs against a backdrop of NPCs. We are told that instead of having a single 'main character' TTRPGs have a whole group of them who share the spotlight equally.

The truth is a little more complex. Every player experiences the game from from the perspective of their own character and must immerse themselves in that position to play the role well. Each player is only privy to the thoughts and intentions of the character they are responsible for, seeing only the external actions of the other PCs. Rather than writing a story with six main characters, the group is writing six versions of the same story with a different protagonist for each. In every one, the other five are simply the principal supporting cast – differentiated from the rest of the NPCs only by who is performing their part.

(I have written before about the pit-falls of playing a character whose intended arc revolves around failing to keep their own secrets. To you, the core personal plot of the main character relies upon those beats. To everyone else, it is merely an optional side quest involving one of many NPCs).

It is a well-known piece of writing and acting advice that 'everyone is the hero of their own story'. However, this is most commonly invoked when helping people to get inside the head of the actual villain. The true applications are much broader. In gaming terms, the real world sees us crafting billions of versions of the same story. Each one has a different protagonist and in every other one we are a larger or smaller member of the supporting cast. So don't worry about it – everyone is an NPC!

One of the more noted features of NPCs in video games is the limited nature of their interactions and activities. A vendor typically says the same thing each time you talk to them and spends most of their hours standing in the same position so that the player can find them on their schedule. It is unsurprising that working in actual retail would bring on such feelings of ennui. It is literally a requirement of the job to behave in this way to provide the exact same standardisation and utility for the customer. It isn't so much that you ARE an NPC of this type, rather that you are obliged to spend a dispiriting amount of your life pretending to be one by your corpo overlords. It's enough to make anyone dream of being an edgerunner...

Of course, the difference between a PC and an NPC isn't just composed of the former having free expression and an unpredictable daily routine. The real mark of a player character is the conflict they had along the way. Without all the killing and death traps, the average PC is just a victim of the gig economy – an outsider reduced to knocking on random stranger's doors (or more accurately barging into their houses) to ask if they have any one-off jobs available whilst being low-key threatened by the cops every time one walks past. Although a fertile source of escapism and narrative drama, neither clause of the murder-hobo lifestyle is commonly considered aspirational in the real world.

Perhaps the best thing PCs have going for them is the triviality of living expenses. Most are free to pour every coin they earn into the eventual ownership of buildings with no bills or upkeep costs. Some games even allow you to marry or adopt without accruing any kind of ongoing fiscal responsibility. When game do include living expenses, they are usually minor when compared to the fortunes that pass through the character's hands as a result of selling on loot or unusually fair hazard pay. Although rarer games like Dungeon Bitches do explore the idea of adventurers as a marginalised group, for most it is a two-year fast track to either death or retirement in a gold-plated castle.

In the real world, these kind of high risk/ high reward options are harder to define even outside the law. If everyone is an NPC, then maybe the classical PC doesn't really exist. Those who claim to have followed these kind of arcs often tend to have started out with many unstated advantages (making both the risk and reward relatively lower) or to have followed a path more typical of a major world antagonist.

Sounds political? Yes it is. As Avery Alder put it brilliantly in an interview for issue 15 of the comic DIE: “I think all game mechanics are inherently political. What game mechanics do is model our reality. And since it is impossible to create a system the objectively models the universe without it being the size of the universe, you as a designer end up making choices about what enables someone to achieve their goals in the world. Is it having broad-reaching, generationally-linked coalitions of support? Is it being individually skilled and self-possessed, and having a discrete set of skills, like 'use of broadsword,' and 'animal tracking,' that you can pick up and take with you, out of a community? And usually it's the latter, in role-playing games. But even just that starting premise of, 'our skills and power and capacity grow over time, are embedded within us as individuals, are contextless, are fully meritorious, and self-deserved, and self-possessed.' There are a lot of political assumptions built into that alone.”

Viewed from a political standpoint, there are darker implications to the PC/NPC divide. At a game-mechanical level the NPCs are not 'full' characters and exist for the benefit of the PCs. Since PCs gain through conflict, the usual assumption is that they will gain exponentially by taking from at least a certain sub-set of NPCs. If players don't take care to avoid it, this can impact how the characters behave within the fiction. Indeed, some player groups deliberately embrace the idea on the quest to level up.

As a retail worker serving customers for a shareholder-owned corporation, it is easy to feel like you are on the wrong side of this line. Every customer service worker has experience of rude or demeaning treatment at the hands of people who got away with it due to the institutionalised power imbalance between them. I've certainly had smiles demanded from me by complete strangers far more than the average for a cis male. But even when customers are polite and equitable – as most are – the imbalance is still a burden. Some of my least favourite customers were not 'Karens' but friendly people who regarded me as their regular cashier. I would have to make inane chat about the weather without calling out the obvious neo-nazi symbols on their possessions, or asking them if they even remembered we once knew each other before they went to prison for terrible crimes. In exchange for this you get paid a small amount – but aside from the fleeting glorification of 'key workers' society generally makes you feel like a failure for not earning your money a different way.

I'm going to go on a slight digression here in the light of recent news. Halifax Bank recently started including pronouns on the name badges of their staff members, which produced an outraged backlash from some customers and toxic coverage in the media. There is a whole mess of transphobia and right-wing hostility behind this reaction – one that seems nonsensical if you consider name badges as purely a guide on how to address the wearer.

The truth is that some customers do not regard name badges this way. The involuntary presentation of one's name actually feeds the imbalance between customer and staff member, since the customer will rarely offer their own whilst wearing out yours. More importantly it allows the customer to effortlessly secure your identity information at the start of the interaction, in case they feel the need to complain about you to your boss afterward. (And yes, certain old and partially sighted customers did start a transaction by peering at my badge and then openly telling me that was why they always did so).

Adding pronouns to the badge flips this script. It places the focus on the customer's behaviour during the transaction and defines acceptable standards of etiquette from them. I suspect that some amount of the outrage directed at this 'woke' move comes from discomfort at the shift from enabling the viewer to advocating for the wearer, even if the objectionable customer doesn't consciously realise it.

The demoralising factors of retail work can end up highlighting a potentially fairer worry associated with NPC comparisons – the lack of positive change. NPCs often begin a game with an established mix of home, family and/or job that put starting PCs to shame. Once the game is on, however, they seldom experience life changes without the intervention and aid of a player character. This feeling of inertia could itself be the catalyst needed to prompt some sort of action to improve one's lot. Although the stabs-to-riches tale of a fantasy hero may be out of reach, embracing some sort of risk and reward strategy may be necessary. Self-employment or taking a shot at a better career can be worth it if one is honest about the trade-offs going in.

Of course this kind of self-help advice leans into a very narrow view of the PC and risks reinforcing some of the worst habits of the paradigm. As noted above, PCs spend a significant amount of their time not on changing their own lives but on helping others improve theirs. For me, the most satisfying element of an RPG is often the ability to make a positive impact on other characters within the world. This is especially true for video games, where the world state you leave behind is typically the most compelling variable of a play-through. Many players prefer this kind of game to one based on level grinding in a vacuum, since the power gained is meaningless without a context. Someone who has put many hours into such good works is certainly a PC – even if they haven't touched what society would call the 'main quest'.

In my article on representation I said that fiction treating particular demographics as the natural 'main characters' of life is harmful whether you are within that demographic or not. Believing that only some vocations can confer the status of 'full character' is a trap to avoid. Although it is true that each player experiences their own PC as the protagonist, you certainly shouldn't try to act like the main character in your contribution to group play. Uplifting the experience of the other people at the table is perhaps the most important TTRPG skill of all.

I've always had a personal fondness for games that allow anyone from the game world to serve as a functional PC. Although I am biased due to it being among my first RPGs, I love the way that first edition Hunter: the Reckoning allows you to play anyone who happens to get 'Imbued' with power and encourages you to play as an every-man. Chosen One narratives can feel tedious and unearned, but Hunter avoids these traps by leaving you out-gunned and feeling rather like a disposable tool in the eyes of your 'benefactors'.

Even my favourite video game Oblivion blurs the lines somewhat. Although your actions drive the story forward in the expected way, you are ultimately a replaceable ally of the true hero. Things are so dire that the destiny of the world actually lies in the survival of the character played by Sean Bean...

I bought the City expansion to Talisman for the Tavern Maid character and Red Dragon Inn 7 to play the Wench. Although alchemists are rather outside my usual wheelhouse, there is a special pleasure in having the archetypal background NPC (and thus someone marginalised in most games) step forward and beat the adventurers at their own game.

Or maybe I just want to wipe out the clientele with the Crown of Command.

From HeroQuest to HeroQuest: my Return to Board Games

 During the past two years of socially responsible withdrawal I have been fortunate enough to be part of a three person household of geeks, with others forming part of of our bubble. Unsurprisingly gaming has been the backbone of our leisure activities. Although we have been able to keep up some RPG play, board games have perhaps been the most prominent part of our schedule.

Although I still I consider myself a role-player first and foremost, I probably now think of myself as a board gamer more than a wargamer. This isn't really anything new – I had largely dropped out of wargaming some time before the Old World was killed off by Games Workshop. Even so, the conscious realisation of that fact is a little strange to me. I got into 'heavier' board games like HeroQuest and Space Crusade at a young age (heavy when compared to mainstream fare like Cludo and Risk at any rate). I then 'graduated' to the wider and deeper waters of the wargaming hobby, enthralled at the superior scope and rules nuance available there. With the recent arrival of the gorgeous HeroQuest remake at my house, I naturally feel like I have come full circle in some way. So why the change?

Same game, now recommended for players 5 years older

Player Numbers

Wargames for large groups of players have a long history. As far back as the 1930's Fletcher Pratt was running a naval wargame on an 18ft by 18ft floor for up to 50 players (half of them female) who commanded a single ship each. Almost any wargame can split the control of a single force between multiple players, yet at their core most wargames are intended as a test of skill between two opponents.

This suited me fine when I was young and only needed to recruit one friend to have a proper game. It worked great when I was regularly attending a club with a whole group of possible opponents to arrange matches with. For a small friendship group, however, the two player format is much less suitable. Not only is it hard to find space for multiple games to take place simultaneously, there is only a half chance you will have an even number of players to pair off. I actually maintain a list of the player counts of every game in our collection and we usually buy any available expansion if a base game 'only' goes to 4 people.

Tactical Inertia

Although the army lists of a game like Warhammer offer a huge number of choices to every player, there isn't a lot of opportunity to 'try before you buy'. Getting a new unit for your army is a significant investment of both money and time spent assembling and (possibly) painting them. Wargaming is never cheap, but the cost difference between being able to field a decent sized army and being able to meaningfully customise your selection of troops is huge.

This unfortunately means that the odds of having a 'fair fight' with a given opponent are not actually all that great. You both bring your best army to the table and the player with the best designed force wins if they play correctly. You might learn from your mistakes and play better next time – or figure out what new regiment you need to buy in order to break their current tactics – but there is rarely much point in re-fighting the same battle with the same forces week after week.

Collectable card games like Magic: The Gathering have the same issue to an even greater extent, although most players are able to maintain multiple decks and have a large reserve of spare cards to alter their composition. Both hobbies are ultimately dependant on having a large pool of players you can switch between, fighting a different enemy each week as you try to work your way up the overall rankings through a mix of experience and expenditure.

Board games are deliberately designed to provide a balanced game between specified sides, with the best ones allowing for quite different strategic situations depending on the set up or the side you are playing. If one player proves unbeatable with a given side, you can simply ask that player not to keep playing it every time or gang up on them early. (If playing a particular side a particular way always brings victory to whoever takes it, we probably won't play that game for long). The relatively bearable cost of a complete game means that excessive repetition can be avoided by switching between different games. For a consistent group of friends, this is once again a much better situation.

Skirmish wargames do of course exist. These require few enough models that you can change up your forces more easily and offer campaign options that allow you to enjoy a persistent narrative with the same opponents. Unfortunately the resulting shoot-outs have struck me as a bit limited compared to a good board game and I haven't attempted to get into any of them lately. Most also do not offer a narrative experience to compare with the likes of Gloomhaven. I still have a huge soft spot for first edition Necromunda though, which was an absolute classic.

The Eurogame Style

'Eurogames' are a genre of boardgame defined by several key factors. They don't allow players to be eliminated before the end of the game, they have only limited direct conflict between players and they use scoring methods that are partially secret until the end of the game.

Given how lengthy some adult board games can be, not having a player knocked out hours before the conclusion is obviously a benefit. The addition of secret scoring means that no one really knows who has won until the final results are tallied, maintaining everyone's interest. With each player's focus being kept primarily on building themselves up rather than knocking down their rivals, Eurogames provide a solid basis for a relaxed social environment between the participants. Most of our favourite games are Eurogames and I think that this design philosophy has played a significant role in my current love of the board game.

I haven't completely lost interest in wargaming. When clubs are safe again and Games Workshop finally gets round to resurrecting the Old World I may well try to get my Vampire Counts back out there. For now though, I am more than happy playing the likes of Firefly, Small World and HeroQuest with my wife and friends. (If you don't know why HeroQuest is so great, you can find out here).

Role-playing - Character Goals

Although I have several more characters that are theoretically still ongoing (most notably the ones from an occasional Rolemaster campaign that has been going for decades) I currently have two player characters that I would consider 'active'.

The older of the two is a character from my weekly local LARP system. He was created in response to a change of working hours that reduced the amount of time I could commit. After both of my previous PCs ended their arcs by assuming the throne of a country, I needed a character less prone to machinations and pre-planning.

Isadil is an elven warrior who worships of the goddess of honour. After centuries of training, he left the safety of the elven homeland to battle the forces of evil and defend the innocent. He has gained a degree of prominence over the years solely due to the relentless rise of his martial prowess and his conspicuously upright and noble behaviour (to the point that a Pit-tainted priestess of the god of murder once sent him a written apology after stabbing him).

Isadil in action

My other current PC is is from a Pathfinder static campaign. Due to the joys of being in my 30s, she was also designed with an eye on limited availability because of work. Trill Tannika is actually the dissociated alter of my wife's character Riell. The idea was that whichever of us was able to make the session could take charge of our shared character, without any discrepancies in characterisation and knowledge detracting from the game. Trill was the only one of the pair that began play with an IC awareness of the reason for their 'memory lapses'.

Terrified that Riell would attempt to find a 'cure' if she was exposed, Trill engaged in a desperate campaign of deception and secrecy whilst ruthlessly protecting them both from anything she considered a threat. Her ambition was to settle in a city large enough to form a different social circle. Trill was outed when Riell began to receive training in magic (which Trill has no talent for) forcing the pair to try and become good head-mates. Riell's mentor is currently working on a ritual to Reincarnate them into separate bodies, since we've both been able to attend more sessions than expected.

Trill (via Skyrim)

I enjoy playing both of these characters, but I definitely enjoy Trill more and spend far more time thinking ahead to my next session as her. The reason is pretty obvious on reflection – Trill has a far more dynamic character arc with a wider variety of objectives. This prompted me to start thinking about the different kinds of motivations and goals I've built into my characters and I decided to share what I came up with here.

Aggressive Goals

Aggressive goals are specific objectives that your character wants to go out and achieve. They are milestones that can be definitely completed in one fashion or another. Most games are built around a particular aggressive goal supplied to the party by the GM – if the PCs don't stop the villain from doing a particular bad thing, both they and the world will suffer the consequences. Adding additional aggressive goals to your PC provides a sense of what they wanted out of life before they got caught on the plot hook. They also exert additional influences upon the PC's decision-making, producing a more distinctive character.

It is important to share these goals with your GM. They can then weave opportunities to complete them into the narrative, greatly enriching it and making your character feel less interchangeable with other possible PCs. In role-playing terms the 'main quest' of The Princess Bride is to stop the evil Prince Humperdinck starting a war via murder. The fact that his sidekick/lover is the object of Inigo's 20 year revenge quest is pure coincidence – but imagine how much less fun the story would be if Rugen was in another castle. Imagine if Westley was just a wandering rogue who decided to save a pair of perfect breasts, rather than a doggedly returning true love.

The downside of aggressive goals is that they can only pay off if they compliment the GM's main plot rather than conflicting with it. Players work with the GM to create appropriate characters for their campaign, but the GM won't necessarily wish to reveal surprise details ahead of time. The meet premise for our Pathfinder party was that we were all on a ship bound for a large city – so I created Trill to have urban ambitions. After almost 2 Acts of rural and wilderness adventures aimed at thwarting the plans of an evil Druid, she has gained an exasperated loathing of the outdoors that almost rivals her enmity for the villain.

Defensive Goals

In contrast to aggressive goals, defensive goals are specific things that your character wants to protect from change. The nature of early D&D has given rise to the concept of the 'murder hobo' – a person without family, employment or home and with no assets save the military-grade arms and armour that they carry. Such a person fears nothing except mutilation and death and has nothing else to do but follow the call to adventure. Although such characters are very convenient for play purposes, they don't have any roots within the game world they inhabit.

Most real people have someone or something they would care about losing. They possess some form of role or status that they would like to maintain. By adding these things to your character you create additional motivations that add depth to your play. You also contribute directly to the setting by adding NPCs, locations and groups via your backstory.

The GM can threaten your defensive goals to provide you with personal plot and focused play. Giving your character something they care about beyond their own skin opens up a wealth of dramatic opportunities that most GMs will be eager to capitalise on. Conversely, an unmolested defensive goal feels like a success for your character because they got through the whole plot without losing what they cared about – whereas an untouched aggressive goal is just a set up that went nowhere.

The problem with defensive goals is that the best way to fulfil them is often to avoid action. If the stakes of the main quest do not directly threaten their defensive goals, a PC built around them may be disinclined to take the risk of getting involved. A heavily defensive PC requires more work from the GM and may be left behind if there isn't time for it. I typically find such characters a good fit for horror games where the peril reliably comes to you. The place you really don't want them is in a sandbox game with player led plot – such a character will spend most of the campaign simply digging a deeper moat around their own sandcastle.

Permanent Goals

Permanent goals are objectives that cannot be definitively resolved over the course of the campaign due to their scope or vagueness. As such they will always guide your actions. Trill can definitively achieve an aggressive goal by getting her own body – or fail a defensive one by seeing her separated sister die. Conversely, saving the world last year by killing the Pit Emperor had no effect on Isadil's commitment to fighting evil and protecting the innocent. Win or lose there is always another fight around the corner.

Permanent goals are the vital core of PCs in one shots or short campaigns. Your character needs to hit the ground running and there will be little time to explore personal side quests. Many games require all members of the player party to be part of the same organisation so that they all have an ongoing commitment to the same agenda. Unless the campaign goes beyond the battle of Endor, helping the Alliance defeat the Empire is a permanent goal in a typical Star Wars game.

The problem with permanent goals is that they don't allow for much of an actual character arc. If your character has already made the commitment to them before play begins and can never complete them during play, the only possible development is to revise or abandon the goal. Since the original goal is often the reason your character is involved in the story in the first place, this might cause their identity to collapse and their logical next action to be leaving. This means that a character ruled by permanent goals will eventually start to feel stale as you are basically repeating the same story beats over and over again.

It is worth noting that your PC's flaws are often a great source of permanent goals. A character who wants to become rich may eventually fulfil this goal by all reasonable estimates, but one who is greedy will always be up for chasing another bag of loot. A PC who wants to win the war may see their dreams realised, but for a character motivated by hatred of the enemy the war may never be over. Even a serial killer's compulsions or a vampire's hunger can be seen as permanent goals of a sort.

The power fantasy element of RPGs means that players often find flaws to be an unwelcome intrusion. Once you learn to lean into them, however, flaws can provide you with a great deal of play. I've got a lot mileage out of Trill's Paranoia Drawback, such as the time I accused a Paladin of being secretly in league with the Lich we'd just killed (it actually made sense in context). If you do ever manage to 'abandon' a flaw-based permanent goal, it will be a victory rather than a collapse.

The Perils of Secrets

It is worth giving special mention to the use of secret character goals. It is often tempting to put some some secret agenda into your character's backstory, in order to lay the ground-work for some dramatic reveals later on.

Some secrets take the form of aggressive goals – a hidden agenda or secret mission that your PC keeps from the rest of the party. Although these can be fun, designing your personal plot to exclude the other characters won't help it to see play. At best, you will be repeatedly splitting the party as you slip off to advance your scheme.

A more serious problem is that a secret of this kind is usually withheld because it does not suit the common interests of the other PCs. Although the risk of character death if you are revealed can be a thrill, the destruction you wreak if you succeed will only please you. Suddenly orchestrating a party wipe after months of patient treachery will be the perfect ending for your game, but will only satisfy the other players if they were racing to do the same thing. Save these kind of secrets for games involving vampires, Sith or Westerosi nobility.

The majority of secrets are simply defensive goals. You begin play with the information hidden and your PC wants it to remain so. The issue here is that the secret can only produce real play if it is revealed – placing your IC and OOC aims in direct conflict. Not only must you 'play to lose' for this to work, but ultimately it is up to the other people at the table to advance your plot for you.

This is especially problematic if the reveal is vital to the overall continuation of your character's story. It can be very frustrating waiting for players and GM alike to act upon your carefully placed clues. Due to the unplanned departure of several starting characters and the late introduction of new ones, I had been playing Trill for over a year by the time she introduced herself to the rest of the party. Although this makes for an interesting anecdote in hindsight it was a very long road at the time.

The best secrets are probably ones that your PC will choose to reveal for themselves once the party has earned their full trust. My wife's character in a Dragon Age campaign I ran was an escaped slave who had slit the throat of a Magister. She eventually told the others why they kept getting attacked by blood mages, but not until after they had evolved from a gang of adventurers into a tight-knit squad of Grey Wardens.

Happily Ever After?

If all goes well your PC will gradually complete their starting aggressive goals during the campaign. In some cases these goals don't require any further attention afterwards – the guy you killed is dead and unless you have reason to fear discovery of your deed you can simply leave it behind. This can leave your character lacking direction both IC and OOC. Fortunately all you have to do is find new goals to strive for, such as learning piracy in the case of Inigo.

In other cases your achievement will afterwards require guarding. Having secured wealth, love or power your PC will normally want to keep on enjoying these things for the rest of their life. This effectively transforms your aggressive goals into defensive goals. If you don't consciously recognise that fact you might find that your character seems to have grown stale.

It is sometimes possible to use your accomplishments as springboards for grander goals. Games like Adventurer Conqueror King are deliberately designed to chart the party's ascension to larger-scale objectives over time. Other games are fixed at a particular scale – neither of my old LARP characters have been suitable for regular play since they ascended to their thrones because nation ruling isn't really supported by that game. One makes a cameo every so often because I enjoy the persona too much, but the other has long been officially retired.

Even if it possible to reach further, you might simply not want to. Most players want happy endings for their characters because they identify with them and it feels like a gameplay victory. If all of their dreams have come true, you may find yourself fighting to preserve them in that perfect frozen moment. In these cases, the best way to accomplish that end is usually to step back from the relentless flow of events that surround active characters by retiring them.

Of course, not all characters need to be built for a happy ending. Some can be reckless or over-ambitious enough to be almost certainly doomed, or evil enough that you frankly want them to end badly. If your Star Wars character has the aggressive goal of 'kill Darth Vader' your true OOC goal is probably to 'get a cool death scene fighting Darth Vader'.

It can be very liberating to play a character like this. You are freed from the normal long-term considerations to run with decisions you'd never normally take. The important thing is to make someone you have fun playing as long as they last. Like the reveal of a secret, the death of your PC is largely in the hands of the other people at the table. If you spend every session wishing for your villain to get their Karma you will rapidly get frustrated as their wretched life drags on.

Keep It Simple!

From what I've said so far, it would be possible to get the impression that more goals are always better. They add play opportunities to your character and depth to both the PC and their world. However, that world is at heart the creation of the GM. Your side quests are just that - they should not overwhelm the main quest even if you personally get more fun out of them. Flooding the GM with too much content will result in much of it going unused – or cause less prolific players to get neglected if the GM is too indulgent.

There is a writing trick where you ask yourself if the events of the text are the most interesting part of your protagonist's story. If they are not, you ask yourself why you aren't telling the more interesting parts instead. Your PC is the protagonist of the game from your point of view – as such, you should normally build them so that the upcoming campaign is the most interesting part of their life so far. Since you don't know in advance how exciting or large-scale the plot will be it is worth erring on the side of caution. You don't normally want to be playing a character who is too jaded to be engaged by the key events of the story.

The Fate of Firefly

Once you have established your character's goals and begun to play, the pace of an RPG campaign means that it will be months or even years before your preparations fully pay off. As I have said before in my article for GMs, many campaigns come to an unplanned demise long before their plots are fully resolved.

It is normally impossible to truly continue your character's adventure in a future game. If the campaign folded almost immediately you can simply wait for someone else to run the same system and setting – which might itself be a long wait. In other cases your PC will have an essentially random amount of advancement that will be unsuitable for starting characters in the next campaign. More importantly, they will have far too much background as a result of prior play – few GMs are able or willing to import the entire canon of another GM into their new game, especially if you would be the only source of information regarding it.

Every experienced player has unfinished campaigns that they mourn. Investing in your characters this way will increase those frustrations which is worth being aware of. Yet the rewards when things go well are more than worth it. The best campaigns don't just have great plots and skilled GMs, they have memorable and complex characters too. Providing those is the job of the player group – and the most memorable one for you will be the one that you bring to the table.

Role-playing - Advice for Cross-Gender Role-Playing

As readers of my previous GMing article will know, I've been role-playing for long enough to try to analyse the underlying structure of the hobby and make pretentious pronouncements based on my conclusions. This exploration has naturally involved looking at the online articles and videos available on the subject. YouTube being the algorithmic stalker that it is, I've had an increasing number of videos on that theme pop up on my front page as a result.

This caused me to encounter a creator called Bacon Battalion RPG, who has produced a large series of instructional videos called GREAT PC. Each one looks at a different aspect of being a player. Along the way he has created videos in response to questions asked by viewers, leading him to make one in response to the question “how do you play a member of the opposite sex?”

It was a train-wreck. The fact that he responded by making a video called 'How To Roleplay A Female Character In Your Table Top Game' indicated that he might have some blind spots, but the whole thing was painful in many different ways. I'm not writing this article to tear him down, so I'll leave you to critique the video for yourself.

After being informed in the comments that he actually had female viewers, he went on to make a similar attempt at explaining how you play male PCs. At the end of the latter video he issued an apparently frustrated call to his viewers to make their own videos on the subject and increase the resources available. I'm not in the video business at the moment, but I'd winced enough at his effort to feel obligated to accept this challenge in my own way. It's not a specialist subject for me though, so here goes nothing. I noticed that all my own specific examples were based upon playing females, but I've genuinely tried to make the techniques themselves as broadly useful as possible.

One of the first things I remember that attracted me to RPGs was an advert for D&D in a comic I was reading. It opened with the line 'if you've ever read a book or watched a film and thought 'I wouldn't do that!' when the hero does something stupid, this game is for you.' One of the main attractions of playing is the opportunity to have a go at being the protagonist and discover how well your own genre-savvy judgement would work out. Players get into their character's head and respond to the situations before them by asking 'what would I do?'

Because of this, the early characters most players create are similar to themselves except where the game role requires otherwise. This means that cross-gender role-playing (or cross-playing for short) is something a player usually only attempts after they have mastered the basics of play. Since it is either a self-directed process or the result of random pre-gen assignments, players of equal overall experience can have wildly differing skill levels in this area.

Some players actively do not wish to engage in cross-play for various reasons. That's fine unless your reason is awful. For everyone else, here are the best pointers I can offer for refining this particular skill. I consider it to be an inherently valuable ability because most players desire to become at least theoretically capable of GMing – and a GM will almost always need to cross-play, albeit on a more superficial basis.

It IS mostly the same

During the second video, Bacon noted that many commenters had responded that you should just play your cross-gender characters the same way because we are all people. He found that frustrating, asking what the point of cross-play was if you didn't do anything different. Without going off on a tangent about why it is still worth doing (more diverse world, better gender balance in the party, different romantic dynamics etc) these commenters did in fact have a point.

At a basic level, all humans have far more similarities than differences. Despite entrenched stereotypes about rational males and emotional females, actual descriptors like logical, calculating, wrathful and compassionate are gender-neutral because they reflect human experience as a whole. Although the gender divide might feel unbridgeable, we actually understand each other pretty well compared to how well we understand other species. Indeed, even playable non-human races universally have more human-like features than alien ones – otherwise most players couldn't empathise with them well enough to portray them.

From a player perspective, a character who sometimes acts more like your own gender is likely to be far better received than a character who is a misfiring stereotype. If cross-play is a skill to be learned, it is better that you spend your time gradually learning to differentiate than gradually learning to restore basic humanity to your cross-gender characters.

The impact of professionalism should also be considered. Most PCs are very skilled in their fields and often save the day by applying their expertise. Many skills involve proceeding in the 'right' fashion without any real input from the personality of the wielder. Many professions even train their members to adopt a supposedly optimum persona when they are working.

Your character's gender may impact upon the causes they champion and the methods they advocate for advancing them. This is important because such character moments are the heart of role-playing. When the party execute their plans, however, the extended action sequences that follow pay little attention to gender variations. The Tank and Healer will tank and heal in the most tactically efficient manner – regardless of whether they are motivated by stereotyped masculine protectiveness and feminine care-giving.

If you aren't playing male, be prepared to put in extra prep work

Since role-playing is a form of collaborative storytelling, the masses of stories that already exist in other media are an important source of inspiration for players and GMs alike. Indeed, many popular RPGs are explicitly concerned with recreating the worlds described in particular books, films and TV shows. This means that if your character isn't (intentionally) based on yourself your role-playing cues are likely to be drawn from specific fictional figures.

Unfortunately there is a distinct numerical bias toward male characters in most media. This is especially true regarding who gets to occupy the protagonist role. (If you don't believe me, go to the DVD section of your local shop and count the male and female faces on display). I'm not denying that there are tons of awesome female characters out there – but from the perspective of 'name five gender-appropriate characters that embody your chosen archetype' it's a lot harder if you're playing a woman. Those that do exist may have less screen time than you'd expect and consequently leave you with fewer solid cues.

If you want to play as a non-binary character from a sexual species, you might struggle to name any if you haven't explicitly gone looking for them. Even when a fictional species has no sexes, universal male coding is vastly more common than portraying them in this way.

I, uh... run around a bit? Fall over?

This all means that non-male players have spent far more time being taught to empathise with and understand male characters. They may even be experienced video game players, where the requirement to engage in shallow cross-play is frequently an admission price for non-males. This has the potential to make cross-playing as male seem like an easier and smaller step to take because there are far more resources to draw upon.

The first thing to do in trying to overcome this disparity is to actively seek out the portrayals that do exist. Hunt down media that will provide you with inspiration for characters. Favour material created by members of the gender identity concerned, since you will obviously learn more from how they portray themselves.

The second way to broaden your horizons is to move beyond fiction and into the real world. However one-sided the representation of your favourite fiction might be, most people personally know loads of real women. If you know a woman well enough you can probably imagine how she would react in a variety of situations – just like you can with a well-realised fictitious character. Pick someone you think is cool and use them as the basis for your social role-play. Unless you are an exceptional actor it is unlikely that anyone will recognise that you are doing this, but the result will have an inherent sense of believability. You probably don't know as many non-binary people as you do men or women, but if the idea of playing a non-binary character has occurred to you it is likely that you (knowingly) know at least a couple.

Use stereotypes as questions, not answers

One of the worst things you can do when cross-playing is treat received gender stereotypes as an obligatory character brief that must be obeyed to avoid 'doing it wrong'. This is an extremely reductive attitude that you would never apply when playing your own gender. Combined with the fact that these stereotypes are rarely entirely complimentary, a character ruled by them will end up looking like an exercise in ignorance and prejudice.

On the other hand you shouldn't make a virtue out of shunning the stereotype at every single turn. Although few real people are perfect embodiments of the popular image of their gender, equally few entirely subvert these expectations in every way. From a performative standpoint you also want to firmly fix your character's gender into the minds of the other people at the table. Without any visual cues and only amateur levels of acting at your disposal, a brush with cliché can really help cement the concept in their minds.

As a result you should treat every stereotype as a decision to be made – embrace or subvert? By mixing your answers you will produce the impression of a complex and believable person. Of course it's better if your answers aren't totally random. Consider what your choice means for the character in terms of their attitudes and the life that they've led.

As an archetypal example let's look at the Strength attribute. It is known that the male sex usually find it easier to build muscle and may average a higher value in this area. Some older games give male characters a bonus in this statistic whilst assigning an equal bonus elsewhere for females (Constitution is a good example, Appearance is a less good one). Thankfully this has gone heavily out of fashion so the choice will probably be entirely yours.

So let's say you are a male making a female character. Perhaps you choose to embrace the stereotype and assign a lower score than you normally would. If you do this most potential antagonists will be stronger than you. This will raise the threat they pose at close quarters, potentially altering how you play. This is a valuable experience as a player because it replicates the actual experience of many women. If you are going to try walking in their shoes, you could do worse than learn something from it.

Alternatively you might choose to assign a high value. This is an entirely valid choice – you are creating an individual not a model of the gender as a whole. Although the distribution is not even across all values, the game world will have many people with each possible score and there will certainly be women who qualify for the maximum. The highest rating is not reserved solely for the literal 'world's strongest man' any more than only one character can possess the lowest value. (This also assumes that your character is cisgender – many settings lack the technology to alter hormones but don't have to follow real world history in their degree of recognition).

Of course you can still use the high score as a guide for further questions. Did she build up this might on purpose? Strength values are absolute (a Strength 18 woman can lift the same amount as a Strength 18 man) but men usually find it easier to build muscle mass. This means that a woman who trained herself to Strength 18 had to work even harder to get it. What motivated her to put in that much work? Does she regard the process as 'finished' or does she seek a way to go further? How will she react if she meets a foe who is even stronger? (side note to GMs – maybe don't deliberately trigger that crisis point in the second session).

You could decide that your character was always just naturally very strong. This is valid – many factors besides chromosomes determine physical strength. If you go this route, your character's unusual prowess will have been noticed early in their life. Were they like Brienne from Game of Thrones, mocked for their bulk until it affected their social confidence? Were they like Mikasa from Attack on Titan, protecting their friends from bullies until body-guarding their chosen family became second nature? Were they like Gamora from Guardians of the Galaxy, employing their natural advantages to emerge physically unscathed from a hell that killed or mutilated their weaker peers?

You can apply this process when assigning any trait to any character. Cross-playing simply seems to inspire a greater degree of effort in making sure that your character sheet matches your concept and background. This is also a beneficial skill to develop. It is fashionable to say the stats don't matter as a means of encouraging players to focus on characterisation over gameplay exploits. However, your stats determine both how your character should compare to other people on a mental and social level and how your attempts to do things will actually work out. There is no right order for creating your background and your stat block – but it is vital that you end up saying approximately the same thing in both languages.

Don't play a porn star (badly)

Although you should probably think twice if your first cross-play concept is highly sexualised, I'm not saying that you literally shouldn't play a porn star in a game. Sex workers can be the heroes of adventure stories just like anyone else. What I'm actually talking about are characters who treat what should be serious 'real world' interactions like they are filming a porn shoot, piling on the flirtation and attempting to turn every personal encounter into immediate casual sex.

This form of play is not actually limited to cross-playing. PCs are generally more 'powerful' than the people playing them and players often derive a lot of pleasure from the vicarious empowerment they provide. Playing an utterly gorgeous character who can pull whoever they want is a form of this like any other. When creating a member of a gender you find attractive, however, the Pygmalion-like pleasure of sculpting a personal figure of fantasy becomes available. For most players this involves cross-play. Cross-play therefore tends to see the worst of this as the player is objectifying their character rather than identifying with them. Speaking purely from personal experience, young male players are the worst offenders of all.

Fiction has many genres and the genre of your game will determine what kind of content the players expect. Erotica is not typically a genre chosen for tabletop gaming which means that explicit and detailed sexual content is not what your fellow players will be expecting. You should therefore avoid pressing such narration into your play. If you really want to play a character in that way, the ERP communities of basically every MMO are the best place to scratch that itch.

Characters can have varying levels of libido and there is nothing wrong with your PC having a conspicuously high one if you are content to 'fade to black'. However you must ensure that you prioritise their trysts on a believable fashion. The story is rarely going to be advanced by your character getting laid and their sex life is unlikely to be the reason they are a useful member of the party. If you are constantly going off with NPCs instead of attending to the life and death matters at the core of the game, the other players will suffer from your transparent self-indulgence.

A more complex form of this problem is when players attempt to use sexual attraction to overcome all non-combat obstacles in the game. Many straight male role-players are acutely aware of how quickly they'd fold for the woman they've created and fiction is full of eye-candy characters who 'use sex as a weapon'. If the GM is similarly minded this can become a farcically all-powerful method of bypassing resistance – especially if he carelessly casts 95% of the NPCs encountered as straight men.

From a cross-play perspective, this looks exactly like you stepping into the body of your character rather than attempting to portray someone who has always lived in it. Since you are focused upon the attractiveness of your own character rather than their potential partner, you may also fail to distinguish such manipulation from their idea of actual fun. Seducing a despicable villain is the kind of intimate contact with a horrible person that most people would wish to avoid if at all possible. Using decent people in a manner that ultimately harms them is an unethical abuse of something that sex enthusiasts highly value.

You can undoubtedly craft a PC who works in this way due to a combination of ruthless drive and contempt for their targets. At this point it is up to the GM to integrate them in a balanced fashion. However, such a character should almost certainly be portrayed as perilously close to hitting the bottom of the game's morality system – creating problems as well as solving them. Despite his brave world-saving acts, James Bond would probably spend a D&D campaign oscillating between Chaotic Neutral and Chaotic Evil.

Take feedback and critique your own play

Like any learning process, you will make mistakes and develop over time. Some of these mistakes will only be obvious to players of the gender you are portraying, so ask gender-appropriate players for feedback on your performance from time to time. This does presume that you have such players around you, which I am content to do – although most RPG enthusiasts do seem to be male, female players really aren't that rare. If your insular D&D group has never had a female member consider inviting one or two to join in. If your thriving RPG society has never had a regular female attendee, go read some of the online articles about toxic misogyny in gaming spaces and consider whether any of it sounds familiar.

As your portfolio of cross-played characters grows, examine them to see what patterns are emerging in your play. My female PCs have varied considerably in their degree of physical strength, but they have a very notable bias toward expertise at unarmed combat and knife fighting. This means that I never really have to experience the fear of a big guy getting too close, because the heart of my personal space is also my chosen killing ground.

This skill set is generally something that my character has chosen to develop out of necessity during a dangerous and lonely past. However, this is not the only reason my ladies tend to have rough backgrounds. I prioritise nurture over nature in my characterisation because it helps marry personality to stats – and my female characters are disproportionately likely to be at the dark end of neutral or even outright evil. I suspect that this is because I find it easier to retain sympathy for a female character who has done awful things, which helps me to 'fight their corner' as their player. Of course fiction has a substantial history of fetishising villains and I'm probably channelling that this trope to some extent.

In other words my cross-play is riddled with all kinds of gendered subtexts that I am still in the process of becoming aware of. Like I said, I'm not an expert in this matter – but I hope that this article at least provides some useful cues for advancing your own cross-playing process.