I run an RPG where we often use props and visual aids. One of the things I’ve encouraged is for my players to get photos of actors and actresses that they think would ‘play’ their character, if the game were a movie (or long-running adventure serial… Hollywood, I hope you’re listening! ;))
Anyway, I’ve had absolutely no problem comming up with pics for the NPC heroines or villains. What I have problems with is the NPC heroes. I need to come up with good-looking ones, and as a heterosexual male, I really have no idea what is ‘attractive’ in an actor.
The current problem is a possible love interrest for one of the PC’s. Male, dark-skinned, muscular. I’ve looked at twenty or so actor pictures blankly, thinking to myself, “Is he good looking? No idea.”
I’ve asked the players, but they really prefer it when I can surprise them with a picture.
Can anyone advise me what the heck I should be looking for?
Generally speaking, you’ll want to look for symmetry of facial features.
I personally find a mix of soft and sharp features very attractive. Think Johnny Depp, Antonio Banderas, Denzel Washington, Taye Diggs, et cetera.
Mostly soft features tend to make a person more pretty than handsome (e.g. Leonardo DiCaprio and Orlando Bloom), and mostly sharp features (e.g. Alan Rickman and Crispin Glover) can make one look more sinister than you would want a hero to be.
Are you kidding? You have no idea what constitutes attractiveness in a male and you’re blaming it on heterosexuality? Nonsense. I’m queer as a football bat and I can still manage to figure out whether a woman is attractive. Just because I’m not personally attracted to her doesn’t mean I don’t know she’s attractive.
Erm… I can’t tell. I don’t know what looks good in a guy. I know what looks -bad- (I see it in the mirror a lot), but I don’t know what looks good. I don’t think effort has much to do with it.
The Storyteller of my superhero game made up an entire high school yearbook for our game, using pictures he got from hotornot.com and other dating sites with pictures of random people on it. The plus of using hotornot is that you can select for age or gender and it TELLS you if the person is considered attractive by the general public, more or less, and then you don’t have to bias the players’ minds by associating an NPC with a certain specific celebrity. Just an idea.
Otto has a good point: many people are objectively attractive, and recognizing them has nothing to do with sexual orientation…
I almost said The Rock, too! Vin Diesel looks good on paper, but he does absolutely nothing for me on screen. The Rock, on the other hand…yowsa!
(Digression: You know, that is only the second time in my life I have used the word ‘yowsa’…the first time was also on the SDMB, in the Playgirl thread. It’s a little old-fashioned, but I kinda like it!)
I’m with you. Unless it’s somebody obvious like Brad Pitt or Johnny Depp, I generally can’t tell if a guy is good-looking to women. (And actually, feminize these guys and they’d make pretty good-looking women.) If I didn’t know better, I’d think Tom Cruise was just an average-looking guy in a wholesome kind of way. I would never in a million years guess that David Duchovny was hot.
I have to admit, that as a heterosexual female who has been bombarded with images of sexy women my entire life, I am still surprised at some of the women that you guys supposedly think are sexy. Tara Reid? Really?
