It’s also worth saying that some people would exist who are XX and a man or nonbinary (trans people exist!)
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Yes, you are right there! It was a point brought up in an older post about the game and it would work. Thank you for reminding me!
EDIT: I would need to make sure I got some sensitivity readers if I went down that path.
Yeah not to derail the thread but you would have to be careful in how you handle it. Especially since it would essentially mean anyone who is able to use magic is going to be ‘outed’ as either intersex or trans.
If you allowed an intersex MC it would require special considerations since many conditions associated with intersexuality are debilitating and not to be treaded lightly. While for transmasc MCs it would be… difficult… to try to avoid the prior mentioned ‘outing’. I guess if your world doesn’t really have issues with trans people then it wouldn’t be as much of an issue but I could definitely see some players who are transmasc avoiding using magic as much as possible to avoid people ‘finding out’.
For me though having the option to play the game at all would be better than feeling locked out because I don’t feel comfortable playing a girl character. 
I don’t understand why Robinhood would need to be locked male though. [Is there a specific reason for it?]
I wouldn’t tell you how to write your story, I am just asking because realistically Robin could wear a disguise or take on aliases. Nobody could know what they ‘really’ look like. I’m not sure what you had in mind though so this is just me rambling.
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Yeah I definitely don’t want to hurt people. I would have to consider that very carefully. But yeah I would not have anybody be outed. Despite not every women being able to become a witch or every man doesn’t get resistance to magic. I’d see witches accepting of anyone who can use magic.
But I need to correct myself the only outing possible is telling someone you are a witch or saying someone else is a witch (which is one of the laws you can break to cause you to be trapped as a familiar) which would happen prior to the story.
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Quiver is just a personal preference. A lot of HC were gender-locked female so I wanted to write one for myself plus I want to see how it affects my ability to tell a story. If that makes sense. Apologise if it doesn’t I’m tired and about to head to bed.
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Since gender in and out of itself most of the time never matters, because it doesn’t actually change the story, I prefer gender-locked titles as long as the locking it’s because of a plot point in the story, if it’s just “because” while it wouldn’t be a deal-breaker it would make me scratch my head as to why it could not be possible to have any other gender to fit in.
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Trans-woman come to throw in my two cents: personally I’ll never a male gender-locked IF. It’s wildly uncomfortable to me, especially with all the second person narration. If I buy one that’s male gender-locked without realizing, it’s an instant refund for me.
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Personally for me, gender-locked male is a deal breaker, gender-locked female depends on the story, but expanding further than that, the ability to play as trans characters is a grab for me. Like INSTANT purchase. They’re so rare, like non-binary options exist, but never binary trans characters.
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For what it’s worth, I am male, and I would totally play A Familiar Magic. In fact, I am more interested in it than Quiver from what you have posted. Although the title itself is neat.
Gender has never bothered me. I have lost count of the number of times I have played Breach and Lost Heir as a female MC.
On another note, I am a big fan of magic systems (comes from my love of The Wheel of Time and The Cosmere books) and I love the concept you have come up with.
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Yes. I just generally don’t play any gender-locked games. There are many games out there that forces you to play as fixed male/female PC. Games with fixed Non-Binary Protagonist? It’s quite rare.
PC’s Gender might not matter much to some, but it matters a lot to me.
Gender-locked, Name-locked, personality locked and sexuality locked? That’s one helluva instant pass. Which means majority of games out there.
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Thank you all for your comments so far. I am heading to bed now as I’ve got work in the morning but I will reply more tomorrow.
Goodnight all.
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In all honesty, in addition to what was mentioned upthread about trans men and nonbinary people for the A Familiar Magic concept, I would be very unlikely to want to play a game that was not only gender-locked to female and does not allow a PC to state that they’re a trans woman, but whose setting lore also explicitly excludes trans women PCs - it wouldn’t sit right with me. I would be wary of playing what would seem to be a chromosome-locked, as opposed to a gender-locked, game at all, regardless of the chromosomes involved.
In general I prefer to be able to choose my PCs gender in games, though there are a few exceptions.
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Don’t think it’d be a dealbreaker, but may need to take a closer look at the story and ROs. I am used to a lot of general games though playing as guy by default (wish Persona would give options) that I tend to lean female when given the option, but otherwise I don’t usually mind depending on the story.
Yeah for HC I’d definitely go for it. I tend to like the specific romances there, even if some aren’t my usual.
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That’s actually a double strike. You’re locking gender and name locking aka it will be considered a character lock not just a gender lock 
Doesn’t bother me personally and I like the idea of playing as existing fictional characters as you can pretend to put yourself into the shoes of someone you’ve already heard a lot about and make your own stories with them. The tighter story focus can provide quite a different experience to blank slate MCs (So I’d actually like you to write it), but see examples like Donor and Oedipus or even Nuclear powered toaster which has set male and female characters you can choose for how much that will likely get a large proportion of people to skip your game.
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I love genderlocked female. I never even touch male locked stories.
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I wouldn’t say it’s an instant deal breaker for me… but it is definitely a strike in the “against” column. It would probably have to have significant word of mouth on how good the story is for me to read a story that is gender locked female (as a man).
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For me its not a dealbreaker, but it does raise the bar, although in some ways, I maybe prefer gender locking to a story where there’s an obvious intended MC gender, but they add gender variability for the sake of customization.
The gender lock has to add something to the story for me to not have it there as a mark against the game as a whole.
- In Study in Steampunk its ok for me because its obviously supposed to be a Sherlock/Watson parallel. Could it have worked with a gender variable MC? Sure, probably. Would I have gotten the Sherlock/Watson parallel without the gender locked MC? Maybe, but probably not.
- The Infinity Saga has a male locked MC. I think the author could have very easily made it a gender equal world, but the way they wrote it also allowed them to explore political issues further and in more complex ways, mainly the interesting perspective of having characters that are feminist, but also extremely classist, which I find quite interesting when most stories have a character all in (femenism, class equality, race/nationality equality) or nothing.
There are a few stories, mainly early CoG where the gender variability is extremely distracting and I think it detracts from the story as a whole.
- Choice of Broadsides. It just feels really, really off to have a female MC. There might be a degree of internalized misogany involved, but it feels very, very weird to have an age of sail game where if you pick a female MC, all the important characters are very obviously intended to be male, but you have the option to have them referred to by female pronouns and feminine names just to allow customization.
- Affairs of the Court is similar. The main RO is very clearly supposed to be male and the MC is female. They take on those gender roles for the time period generally being represented and it feels off for them to be different genders. Its even weirder if you have the same gender MC and RO, I appreciate them trying and the inclusion of magic same gender baby making, but the world building is extremely confusing in what determines who is looking for a wealthy head of household to marry and who is looking for a spouse to support.
I think in both cases, if they had done something with the gender roles swap, it would have been interesting. In a world where men stay at home and women work, how would they handle pregnancy and children, especially in Broadsides where the women are doing high activity and dangerous work? Do women get maternity leave? Or do they tend to wait until much later in life to establish a family?
In Affairs of the Court, it would have been interesting to explore legitimacy of children. Like its much easier to pass a child off as legitimate if the Monarch physically gave birth to them than if their legal spouse was very obviously not pregnant. Or in the case of the rare life mage baby, I feel like in certain gender combinations it could have been interesting to have the MC accused of infidelity, just because of how unlikely an occurrence it is.
TLDR: Gender locking should have a purpose in the story, but at the same time, gender customization shouldn’t be forced either. If you’re going to flip the gender of an entire cast because your story includes clear gender roles, make small changes to worldbuilding to accommodate biological differences, as well as considerations to how genders outside of male/female fit into your world (if you include that option) or things just feel really, really weird.
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I spent enough time playing a male before my egg cracked lol, so I don’t go anywhere near games gender locked as male.
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I agree with all of this. In fact, the description of how magic works in A Familiar Magic gave me WoT vibes, and I always liked the idea of men and women having different strengths in magic (the different sources part always bugged me, but I enjoyed how each weaved magic). In this case, it would appear to fit the story well and offer a new perspective on things, especially if there will be male ROs (a hunter falling for the witch would be super cool).
I know others may not like it, but it sounds like a neat idea and would love to play it.
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For me genderlocking of the MC isn’t the dealbreaker rather it’s whether or not there are ROs of the gender I’m attracted to or not.
I don’t play many games without romance anymore, but if the MC’s gender doesn’t match what I like then the gameplay better be super amazing otherwise I’m not interested. For story-focused RPGs and CYOAs it would be more of an automatic dealbreaker to not be able to play as what I’d like in comparison to something like a puzzle platformer for example.
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