Mass Effect has two leads, Mark Meer and Jennifer Hale, but you’ll only hear one of them as Commander Shepard per playthrough. According to player stats, most people play as a guy, meaning Mark Meer is their Shepard throughout the trilogy.
However, Meer encourages players to give FemShep a go - purely so they can enjoy the performance of his co-star, Hale. Speaking with PC Gamer, Meer says that he’s a huge fan of her work, and doesn’t have any problem with players choosing to only play as FemShep because of her performance.
If I have the option to play as a woman in an rpg, I almost always take it. Not really sure why.
Not tabletop though. Not really sure why.
When I play RPGs, I don’t make myself. I don’t see the character as an extension of myself. I’d much rather watch a woman do cool stuff than some dude. So I usually make women characters. Maybe some part of my brain sees some cool dude doing cool stuff and goes “great. Now I’m competing with him” and is stressed.
One of my friends would always try to make himself in games. Skinny white guy with short hair and minimal facial hair. He saw himself in the game and liked it. I don’t really want to see myself get blown up or stabbed or eaten by a demon, but to each their own
In multiplayer games where other people might see it as an extension of real me, I more often play male characters. In tabletop, I’ve never played a woman PC. None of the reasons I do so in a video game really apply. (I’ve played plenty of woman NPCs, but that’s different)