RP Made Simple

Gender Switching in MMORPGs

Section: Enhancing RP | 4 Comments »

Blizzard has a new feature for the mmorpg World of Warcraft – Character Re-Customization. What does this mean to folks?

This service lets you change your character’s gender, face, hair and skin color, hairstyle, name, and other cosmetic features determined by their race and gender combination. You cannot, however, change your character’s race or class.

I’m not sure how it will be used (or abused) but hopefully it’ll help some folks. But what does this mean role-playing wise?

“Lucy, you got some ’splainin’ to do…”
- Ricky Ricardo (Desi Arnaz), from the I Love Lucy Show

Basically, if it’s going to happen, you might as well have a good reason. Right?

It may be that you may actually want to shell out the coin for the service for one reason or another. Perhaps to “freshen” a stale character, plotline or background?

Many reasons can be justified for doing so, even if it’s just to get a fresh start/reboot with an existing character – especially since the service includes an optional name change as well.

Really, really can’t stand a facial feature or skintone that you made years ago? Ta-da! Lots of reasons.

But for IC (in-character) use if you were playing the character that somehow “switched” or altered something, how would you explain this?

Gender Switching in tabletop games is nothing new. One of the items that a friend of mine got “stuck” with was a Girdle of Femininity/Masculinity back in the “old school” days playing AD&D. Looked like a really good magical belt… much to his dismay, of course – and our party’s amusement of the situation.

Possible ideas, off the top of my head:

• “That Dimensional Ripper was FINE yesterday!” – Gnomish Inventions gone horribly, horribly wrong or working as intended.

• A magical Curse or Cursed item – [Girdle of Femininity/Masculinity] anyone?

• “Opps! I broke a wand!” – Magical item failure/glitch when an item damaged.

• “Wow… that spell NEVER did THAT before!” – Wayward/Wild/Corrupted Magic mishap.

• Chronomatic Time Variant (Yeah, I made that up!) – Welcome to an alternate timeline version of you!

• A misphrased/corrupted wish… or a granted one!

• The secret is out! – Whatever magic that was masking you as a male/female has dispelled!

• Switcheroo! – You’ve just switched bodies with someone! Who? Who Knows!

• “Sure it’s safe, trust me!”- A new magic item, potion or spell has an “odd” side effect!

• “This should work!”- Spell research that worked… or failed!

• “Now, show me on the doll…” – Touching/using an [Artifact] is serious business!

• “It’s all the rage in Silvermoon…” – Magical healing or technology used to correct small cosmetic features, even reshaping the physical form.

• Showing your age? – This is a great way to “age” your existing (long-played) character possibly, using subtle changes in your facial features. See what “clicks” for your older look. (Thanks to Sean for the prod!)

• “You did something to your hair, right?” – A variant idea of the aging idea: Perhaps aging backward, via magic, potion or other means…

Hope this helps if this service, or similar one for another game that has this option.

So, what do you think?