I most often play Pathfinder, with a mostly-canon Golarion setting. I almost always play a woman - sometimes I make her trans, and sometimes I don’t. Her trans status is usually based on the rest of their characteristics, and whether I feel it “makes sense” for my character to realize she’s trans.
When I played a brash, independent sorceror, or a young noblewoman with resources and connections and a supportive family, it made sense to make my characters trans because they were in a position to figure that out and had the ability to do something about it. In my current Pathfinder game, my character was raised in a militaristic cult that isn’t a good environment for deep introspection, so I made her cis.
When I made my character for Baldur’s Gate 3, she was a self-insert alongside my BF’s self-insert, so she was transfemme and it was an easy decision. I’ll generally prefer to make trans characters, but only if I can make up a good justification to do so.
I recently spoke to a friend who primarily makes cis woman characters as part of the whole “power fantasy” that comes with roleplaying, and her experience was a little different than mine, so I thought I’d ask here. Trans Hexbears, are your RPG characters trans?
I mostly make my characters cis women but their backstory will usually have some kind of trans allegory in it. I feel like it’s a safer way to interact with my feelings about being trans without necessarily having to explicitly deal with the types of things that can be overwhelming / traumatic IRL.
My current character is cis but has a “deadname” from before she joined her monastic order. It’s allowed me to play with this idea, but ngl it still hurt a little when my character got deadnamed in-game.
Ironically my trans characters don’t usually have to deal with any trauma about it, and it usually comes out as jokes about peeing standing up.