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?
No. Almost always make them cisfemale. I will go offscript though and make them male if it fits the personality of the character I’m aiming for. Like I’m about to put together a Barbarian/Warlock for a game my partner is running and I’m thinking male Tiefling for it for story reasons. Only downside to my rampant voice training is that my male voice sounds fake af now and it’ll be super hard to roleplay it.
To bring this all around though, I’m waiting for the perfect idea before I make a character trans. I just can’t quite get to a character where it would make a very interesting story where it didn’t feel pointlessly inserted just because. I’m certainly going to try. If there’s one thing I love doing with TTRPGs, it’s that I love creating story-driven characters that the DM can work a lot with.