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Bartmanhomer
2016-04-28, 09:44 PM
Have anybody ever used a character who's a lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender in your roleplaying games? Also have you run an LGBT themed campaign in your roleplaying games as well? If so, how do you feel about it? Tell me your opinions about it.

Geddy2112
2016-04-28, 10:11 PM
I have played a transgender man once. Another player in my group has played a bisexual female character and a homosexual male character.The only time it ever came up was a couple times with the bisexual female, and only in a couple sessions. Otherwise, the rest of the party never really knew, or it never really came up or mattered.

I think it is totally fine to flesh out a characters gender identity or sexuality, but for most adventures I doubt it comes into play. It might mean your character responds differently to sexual advances from random bar NPC #37, or perhaps a female character's motivation to become a necromancer would be her dead wife, or stuff like that. Dragons trying to kill humans,evil cults taking over the world, and wars on epic scale usually don't care about such details.

TheCountAlucard
2016-04-28, 10:16 PM
Have anybody ever used a character who's a lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender in your roleplaying games? Also have you run an LGBT themed campaign in your roleplaying games as well?Yes and yes.


If so, how do you feel about it? Tell me your opinions about it.They're people, like you and me. Don't treat them like space aliens and you should be fine.

SethoMarkus
2016-04-28, 10:47 PM
They're people, like you and me. Don't treat them like space aliens and you should be fine.

This. Really, that's all there is to it. I mean, unless you're turning your game into something sexually charged and generally NSFW I don't see how it would even come up as something more complicated than "I'm an Elf" or "I'm a wizard" except that LGBT actually exists in real life. Like that one quote from George R. R. Martin regarding his strong female characters, replying "You know, I've always considered women to be people". If the character seems plausible and believable, you're doing it right.

As far as LGBT themed campaigns? I don't really understand your question. Are there Straight/Cis themed campaigns? Surely the campaign isn't themed as such, even if most relationships seen are of a certain type. I mean, I guess if you wanted to you could make a campaign reflecting the struggles of acceptance, but I don't really see the point. At least for me, fantasy games are a way to escape reality and have fun with situations that are impossible in real life. Sure, I might play in a game where Half-Orcs face prejudices, but I doubt I'd personally play in a game that was focused on, say, equality between the social and working classes. If that's the game you're interested in, great! But it's not for me.

digiman619
2016-04-28, 11:07 PM
Honestly, the only thing that might affect a LGBT character differently in a D&D game than any other context is the easy availability of transmutation magic; a person wanting to be a different gender can get an elixir of sex shifting for 2,250 gp. Which, yeah, is out of reach for commoners, but could easily be a motivation to go adventuring in the first place.

ImNotTrevor
2016-04-28, 11:51 PM
As a GM, yes.

As a player, no.

I honestly feel that taking a character and making them (insert sexuality here) as part of their "depth" is lazy. It is usually best left as a quirk that sets them apart. (Like being fat or having an eyepatch or being an elf or all three.)

But there are, in fact, LGBT themed rpgs out there because those are necessary I guess? I know of one based on Apocalypse World, which strikes me as weird because Apocalypse World already handles that stuff as well as any system ought to. *shrug*

Jeff the Green
2016-04-29, 12:20 AM
Have anybody ever used a character who's a lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender in your roleplaying games?

Yes. One of my current characters is a female changeling who tends to pick male alter egos and has dysphoria in any body. I hesitate to call her trans, though there's trans themes there. She's definitely bi. One of the other characters in the same game was involuntarily transformed into a woman in a way that most magic can't remove. Another of my characters is pansexual, which is a slightly broader term in D&D than in real life.


If so, how do you feel about it? Tell me your opinions about it.

It's really less interesting that it might sound. It changes who you seduce for information, depending on the setting might be a "shameful" secret that could be used against you the way it was against spies in the Cold War. If you have romantic subplots it changes those a bit, obviously.


As far as LGBT themed campaigns? I don't really understand your question. Are there Straight/Cis themed campaigns? Surely the campaign isn't themed as such, even if most relationships seen are of a certain type. I mean, I guess if you wanted to you could make a campaign reflecting the struggles of acceptance, but I don't really see the point. At least for me, fantasy games are a way to escape reality and have fun with situations that are impossible in real life. Sure, I might play in a game where Half-Orcs face prejudices, but I doubt I'd personally play in a game that was focused on, say, equality between the social and working classes. If that's the game you're interested in, great! But it's not for me.

I could see it. I play for the same reason I write: because I have characters and stories I have to let out of my head before they go crazy. If I were really part of the LGBT community or felt I had a better handle on it I might run a game of vampires attacking patrons of a gay bar pre-Stonewall. It could be very interesting, though I'd probably need something lighter going on on the side.

Recherché
2016-04-29, 01:51 AM
Have anybody ever used a character who's a lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender in your roleplaying games?

I'm personally queer and my two current characters are a lesbian and a fem-leaning genderqueer asexual. Past characters have also been straight and pansexual.


Also have you run an LGBT themed campaign in your roleplaying games as well?

Once again I'm not really sure how you make something LGBT themed. I mean we're everywhere in ur society living normal lives. Being queer doesn't really impact character's motivations or lives that much other than what other characters you're character falls in love/lust with. Your motivations for saving the world/slaying the dragon/avenging your family/conquering the world/whatever don't really change.


If so, how do you feel about it? Tell me your opinions about it.

It's really no big deal. For half my character their orientation's never come up. I think the only time its been a major part of a game was the one lesbian character making another PC start questioning their own sexuality. That being said please don't throw too much heteronormativity or homophobia at me in game. I get enough of it in real life and I would prefer not to have to deal with it my fun time. Just treat my characters as normal people (or at least semi-normal adventurers) and we're good.

I personally would not be terribly interested in a LGBT themed campaign just because it seems like it would be hard to have that as a theme without treating queer people as other. Also because its just not something I like to spend lots of time obsessing over.

Jon_Dahl
2016-04-29, 01:59 AM
I have a major NPC in campaign who is transgender. She's a beautiful woman in her early fifties. Her transgenderness has no other relevance except that my players tend to smile when other NPCs make a pass at her.

TheCountAlucard
2016-04-29, 01:59 AM
Another of my characters is pansexual, which is a slightly broader term in D&D than in real life.Barbus in my seafaring game is pansexual; he ended up getting physically intimate with a thunderbird a few months back. :smallamused:

Likewise, Misu the pirate-admiral from the same game is bi, and spent the better part of two game sessions being the secret lover of a Dragon-Blooded Dynast.

Mastikator
2016-04-29, 02:48 AM
All of my characters have been asexual, does that fit into the alphabet soup of nonhetero? If so, yes. If not no. And no I never will.

Knaight
2016-04-29, 03:41 AM
As a GM, yes. As a player I think the question might actually come to a no, although that's a mix of being a GM 97% of the time and the default for a character being ambiguity more than any decisive information one way or another.

In both cases, it's really not a big deal. People are people, and gender and sexuality are only particularly relevant in a small handful of things, plus whatever the society they're in tends to make them relevant for. The latter case can impose some common experiences (which for LGBT people tend to tilt towards the negative), but it's not going to impose common personalities or anything.


It's really less interesting that it might sound. It changes who you seduce for information...

It doesn't even necessarily do this much, actual attraction to the people being seduced for information is a complete side issue.

Chromat
2016-04-29, 03:49 AM
I placed an gay bar and swashbuckling gay NPC captain of the airship and his merry men in Sharn once as a DM. It quite confused my party as they couldn't sense what's with this guy. It was silly and much fun.

It happened through the years but usually sexual orientation doesn't come in to the focus. Mostly as some backstory of the PC or NPC.

Eldan
2016-04-29, 04:04 AM
Sure, I might play in a game where Half-Orcs face prejudices, but I doubt I'd personally play in a game that was focused on, say, equality between the social and working classes. If that's the game you're interested in, great! But it's not for me.

Really? Revolutionaries are pretty common, in fantasy adventure, I'd think. And there's Steam- and Cyberpunk of course, where that's half the point.

As for the OP: I don't think it would ever come up. We're five straight dudes in a group, my last group was six different straight dudes in a group and I don't think in any RPG group I've been in, sexuality has ever come up in any way. Not even the "I seduce the barmaid" thing that's occasionally mentioned on the net.

Lord Raziere
2016-04-29, 04:09 AM
to be honest, the only LGBT characters I have are in an online freefrom roleplay and only because I can play both of them as a lesbian couple, and even then their sexuality doesn't come up often- they are just two women who love each other and have other more important things to deal with most of the time, and help to balance each other out- one is more cynical, the other more idealistic and they keep each other from becoming too harsh and extreme measures or too naive and trusting.

I'd honestly only portray such relationships if I'm allowed to play both characters so that there isn't any inter-player awkwardness.

BWR
2016-04-29, 04:12 AM
Most of my characters are straight, when I bother to consider sexuality at all. I've had a couple of homosexuals but nothing more. No bi, transgender or transsexual, intersex, etc. characters. Partially because I'm worried I'd focus on that aspect of their personality rather than how they fit in with the game. Mostly because when I make PC and NPC personalities all sorts of other things seem more important to get in there than sexuality, gender identity, etc. It's the sort of thing that really only develops during play if the situation comes up.

Yora
2016-04-29, 04:16 AM
One player in my last group decided that his character would be gay. 5 minutes after character creation that was forgotten and never came up again.

And that was about the only time sexuality or sexual preferences ever got mentioned in any of the games I played in 16 years.

Knaight
2016-04-29, 04:21 AM
As for the OP: I don't think it would ever come up. We're five straight dudes in a group, my last group was six different straight dudes in a group and I don't think in any RPG group I've been in, sexuality has ever come up in any way. Not even the "I seduce the barmaid" thing that's occasionally mentioned on the net.

Not even for NPCs? On the PC side I basically never see it, regardless of group composition (and group composition has varied). On the NPC side though, just about any social structure is going to have families, and even if the extent of interaction with social structures is popping in every once and a while between dungeon crawls, NPC sexuality can come up. It's just likely to be more along the lines of "This is the tavern owner, this is his wife, these three are their children" or "The two women who run the infiltration and distribution sides for the group of smugglers are also lovers" or even "This NPC who's after you with a vengeance? Yeah, that would be because you killed his husband". It's the familial bond side more than anything that is likely to be relevant, is my point.

Eldan
2016-04-29, 04:32 AM
I suppose there's married people, so that counts... apart from that, I can't think of anything, no. And now that I think of it, yeah, over those 20ish years of roleplaying, all those marriages were heterosexual. But even then, it's not a thing that is relevant much.

Edit: wait, there was a game where the players blackmailed the city mayor in a game set in the 30s because he had a gay lover.

DJ Yung Crunk
2016-04-29, 05:00 AM
The paladin I currently play is bisexual and had a sexual relationship with his mentor, a man.

Though I'd hardly call either of them good role models. My character is vain and pompous and his former mentor is a secondary antagonist looking to perpetuate a police state.

Inevitability
2016-04-29, 05:49 AM
One of my players once played a male bisexual monk. It came up maybe once, when he unwittingly drank a philter of love during negotiations and started making out with the kobold representative. The other players were horrified, though that was more because they were watching a 6' tall burly man locking lips (do kobolds have lips?) with a reptile-dog-humanoid.

I also once played a male homosexual rogue, who was pretty close to the classic hedonistic swashbuckler archetype. His romantic advances just happened to be directed at other men. I never made it into something big, just the occasional remark.

DJ Yung Crunk
2016-04-29, 06:06 AM
One of my players once played a male bisexual monk. It came up maybe once, when he unwittingly drank a philter of love during negotiations and started making out with the kobold representative. The other players were horrified, though that was more because they were watching a 6' tall burly man locking lips (do kobolds have lips?) with a reptile-dog-humanoid.

To each his own, that's what I always say.

goto124
2016-04-29, 06:20 AM
I played a character who started off straight. Well, sort of, I made that character years before I even knew the very concept of any sexuality that wasn't hetero. Some time later, I wanted him to have a polyamorus relationship with a female PC and a male PC. Now he's bisexual.

In addition, he's genderfluid, because the male PC is straight and the player isn't comfortable with that PC becoming bisexual. And I wanted to keep his 'maleness' which is important to his characterization. He's also sexfluid by magic :smallbiggrin:

I find that bisexual is the most 'free' sexual orientation. Playing gynosexual characters means I can't have them flirt with males (and vice versa), and I hate wasting opportunities if the above examples show anything. But with bisexuality, I can hit on whoever I want, whenever I want. A bisexual character could never appear to hit on e.g. females, but in my mind the character actually has done such flirting off-screen.

(I have no idea what my RL orientation is. I need to get outside more.)

Confession: I don't feel confident enough to play trans characters. I fear I'll somehow portray them wrongly. Or that the gender identity dysphoria gets really annoying in the face of larger issues such as dragons and saving the world. Or that at best their trans-ness is pushed so far into the background it doesn't quite matter.

I have a ghost girl who was killed by her male ex for political reasons. And a male knight who's of the 'women are weak and need to be protected' mindset. They haven't really gotten themselves into romantic or sexual situations. Though, as it turns out, the knight's awkwardness around female characters is shipping fuel - and that's coming from the players of the female characters!


Don't treat them like space aliens and you should be fine.

But they're elves/dwarves/gelatinous cubes! Rather like space aliens! :smalltongue:

Frozen_Feet
2016-04-29, 06:28 AM
Really? Revolutionaries are pretty common, in fantasy adventure, I'd think. And there's Steam- and Cyberpunk of course, where that's half the point.

I happen to own a Cyberpunk supplement with a ready-made campaign structure. The player characters are three apparently unrelated women working as dancer and/or prostitutes in a seedy bar. Then a local crime boss reveals them they were originally three brothers who were operated to female against their will and their female personalities are implants.

Oh, by the way, this all happens in an Islamic society where some characters are (or were) devout muslims, occasionally conservatively so.

The fact that this got published AND translated to obscure languages like Finnish proves that some people play to tackle societal hot topics, not to run away from them.

goto124
2016-04-29, 06:51 AM
That sounds like horrible punishment :smalleek:


their sexuality doesn't come up often- they are just two women who love each other and have other more important things to deal with most of the time, and help to balance each other out- one is more cynical, the other more idealistic and they keep each other from becoming too harsh and extreme measures or too naive and trusting.


NPC sexuality can come up. It's just likely to be more along the lines of "This is the tavern owner, this is his wife, these three are their children" or "The two women who run the infiltration and distribution sides for the group of smugglers are also lovers" or even "This NPC who's after you with a vengeance? Yeah, that would be because you killed his husband".

Knaight's idea of "sexuality coming up" is also my idea - I consider "a couple that happens to have two females" to be enough of a case of "homosexuality coming up".

Maybe examples of "trans coming up" could be "the boy you met in your childhood days is now a lady"? Or "the thief is trying to steal the potion of sex-change because he identifies as male and wants to have a male body"?

Ninjaxenomorph
2016-04-29, 07:13 AM
In PFS I have a lesbian paladin (the character I based her off of turned out to be gay, and I followed suit), and a transgender mesmerist. I particularly like him, and it's only come up for s few disguise checks he has made. I'm not gonna buy him the elixir, probably, going to hold out for a cursed belt.

Knaight
2016-04-29, 07:17 AM
Knaight's idea of "sexuality coming up" is also my idea - I consider "a couple that happens to have two females" to be enough of a case of "homosexuality coming up".

Maybe examples of "trans coming up" could be "the boy you met in your childhood days is now a lady"? Or "the thief is trying to steal the potion of sex-change because he identifies as male and wants to have a male body"?

It could even be less than that. I used comparatively overt examples, but to use a real world example, something like "A coworker has a picture of his wife and kids on his desk" qualifies as sexuality coming up. A change in presentation between two photos would also be more than enough to count as gender identity coming up.

Lentrax
2016-04-29, 07:28 AM
How much sexuality matters in your game is dependent upon you and the people playing the game with you. It's cool backstory, and if you have players who you are confident will be spending the time to get to know your world, then it's a nice thing to consider. There could be whole nations in your world that go to war over things like that. Or everybody could be blasé aand not really care.

The only time this would be a bad thing to have (in my opinion, of course) is when you know it will trigger negative responses from your players, and making these facts blatant could run you world straight into the ground.

DJ Yung Crunk
2016-04-29, 07:31 AM
It's cool backstory, and if you have players who you are confident will be spending the time to get to know your world, then it's a nice thing to consider. There could be whole nations in your world that go to war over things like that. Or everybody could be blasé aand not really care.

I play the game with a bunch of bisexuals. It's a point of note when one of our characters is heterosexual, otherwise it's just assumed.

Same with the NPCs. The whole setting is rather unconcerned with sexuality.

Jeff the Green
2016-04-29, 07:37 AM
It doesn't even necessarily do this much, actual attraction to the people being seduced for information is a complete side issue.

Possibly. I was running based on my feeling that if I tried to seduce a gay man for information the best I could expect is to have my awkwardness laughed at while I have at least a small chance of succeeding with a straight woman, but I am probably not the best analogue for a Cha 18 bard.


It could even be less than that. I used comparatively overt examples, but to use a real world example, something like "A coworker has a picture of his wife and kids on his desk" qualifies as sexuality coming up. A change in presentation between two photos would also be more than enough to count as gender identity coming up.

Yep. This is, incidentally, why it's so galling when someone gripes about gay people "rubbing their noses" in their sexuality at work. I'm of an age where my friends are constantly rubbing their heterosexuality in my face by posting wedding photos or baby pictures on my Facebook timeline.

And maybe your games are different, but flirting comes up on occasion in my games. (Part of it is that I play a fair amount of PbP, where it's less awkward.) It's a significant part of how people interact with each other and it seems fake to leave it out. It also affects how my character is going to think of and remember NPCs: is it the hot serving wench and menacing bouncer, the deliciously dangerous bouncer and the serving wench who will have back problems in a couple years, or some split difference? Sexuality is a small portion of one's personality, but how it affects our relationships is not insignificant.

Daedroth
2016-04-29, 08:08 AM
A current character of mine is a pansexual female changeling with multiple personality, some of them male (The current one its male, i want the rest of the group to assume that my character is male :smallbiggrin:).

Frozen_Feet
2016-04-29, 08:11 AM
That sounds like horrible punishment :smalleek:


The alternative would've been to kill them, but the fourth brother was too afraid of heavenly retribution to do that, so he came up with this plan instead to get rid of his other brothers so he could take over the family business.

FlumphPaladin
2016-04-29, 08:23 AM
The mature way to use LGBT characters: make them normal characters, just changing their responses to being hit on. With how surprisingly rare hitting on PC's and NPC's has been in my groups, my fellow players would probably never care enough notice this unless it was made blatantly obvious and repeated a couple times.

The only way I've heard of LGBT characters used in my IRL circle: IC lesbian slutfest, OOC Beavis and Butt-Head snickering from everyone. Fortunately, I've never seen this in action.

Knaight
2016-04-29, 08:51 AM
The mature way to use LGBT characters: make them normal characters, just changing their responses to being hit on. With how surprisingly rare hitting on PC's and NPC's has been in my groups, my fellow players would probably never care enough notice this unless it was made blatantly obvious and repeated a couple times.

This is a mature way to do that. but in some settings there might be more of an impact than that. For instance, in the US there's a disproportionate presence of LGBT homeless people and especially homeless teens, caused by a number of issues with things like being thrown out of your house as a teenager because of being gay or trans as one of them. Something like that being in the background of a character matters a lot, and it will change responses to a lot more than just being hit on. How it changes responses is going to vary hugely, but the point is that there is a change. It's also much more relevant for that character than others.

That doesn't change that the character is still a normal character, being put in the game as a character.

FlumphPaladin
2016-04-29, 09:19 AM
This is a mature way to do that. but in some settings there might be more of an impact than that. For instance, in the US there's a disproportionate presence of LGBT homeless people and especially homeless teens, caused by a number of issues with things like being thrown out of your house as a teenager because of being gay or trans as one of them. Something like that being in the background of a character matters a lot, and it will change responses to a lot more than just being hit on. How it changes responses is going to vary hugely, but the point is that there is a change. It's also much more relevant for that character than others.

That doesn't change that the character is still a normal character, being put in the game as a character.

Good point.

Malimar
2016-04-29, 09:26 AM
In my D&D setting, 90% of NPCs are bisexual (with the remaining 10% not persecuted or experiencing any societal opprobrium at all). This is mostly to facilitate an atmosphere where if a PC wants to sleep with an NPC, they can, regardless of respective genders. There's also a touch of the political to that decision, trying to counteract "bi erasure" and be generally LGBT-friendly, and also my setting is enough of a crapsack world in its own special ways that adding real-world crapsackiness would just be redundant and depressing, but it's mostly the other thing.

Belac93
2016-04-29, 09:28 AM
One thing I heard about this, is don't make it the 'thing' of your character.

Your character is a dwarf, or an elf, or a human. They are a fighter, or a ranger, or a wizard. They might be a crazy illusionist, or a cast out tribes(wo)man, or a dragon worshiper, or they made a deal with the devil. They have grey eyes, green hair, tanned skin, and are more muscular than it seems they would normally be

Oh, and they just happen to be gay.

It doesn't need to be a big thing. My LGBT friends don't make a big deal about it, aside from telling new people to call them by the gender they prefer. I just learned last week that a friend I've known for almost a year was bisexual, and its not such a big surprise. It was actually more shocking to realize he had bad eyesight.

Jeff the Green
2016-04-29, 09:41 AM
Oh, I have another story.

I ran an introductory D&D game for my brothers and cousins a couple years ago. The game started off with the party in camp and I told them to put their markers where their characters were. Some of them put their chits down by the fire because they were standing watch, others in their tents. My cousin and his friend/roommate (both straight) had made their characters old friends and a mercenary package deal, so they tossed their markers down in a single tent. One of the markers came down slightly on top of the other.

"Dude, is your character ****ing mine?"
"...Yep."
"Cool, I guess our characters are gay."
"Are they in love?"
"Nah, yours just has an awesome ass."

And they proceeded to play a pair of bloodthirsty gay mercenaries. There were jokes, but they revolved around no one else getting sleep because they were too loud or having to fight naked because orcs caught them in flagrante delicto.

DJ Yung Crunk
2016-04-29, 10:34 AM
In my D&D setting, 90% of NPCs are bisexual (with the remaining 10% not persecuted or experiencing any societal opprobrium at all). This is mostly to facilitate an atmosphere where if a PC wants to sleep with an NPC, they can, regardless of respective genders.

Our DM does the same thing. Cracking good policy that.

Yora
2016-04-29, 10:48 AM
I am not taking any offense by any means, but somehow it makes me feel disappointed that "LGBT characters" is still a term that comes naturally to us in conversation.
Instead of different groups of people with different concerns, we're casting a net so wide that "anything but straight" is already considered a catch. :smallannoyed:

DJ Yung Crunk
2016-04-29, 10:52 AM
I am not taking any offense by any means, but somehow it makes me feel disappointed that "LGBT characters" is still a term that comes naturally to us in conversation.
Instead of different groups of people with different concerns, we're casting a net so wide that "anything but straight" is already considered a catch. :smallannoyed:

There's a lot wrong with the world right now. That's on the list right above the common cold and right below the fact that people actually pay money to see those ghastly Marvel movies. But you have to roll with the punches.

digiman619
2016-04-29, 03:55 PM
I'm of an age where my friends are constantly rubbing their heterosexuality in my face by posting wedding photos or baby pictures on my Facebook timeline. With respect, I'm sure that if you had any nonhetero friends get married/have kids, they'd post it a lot on facebook, too.

Jeff the Green
2016-04-29, 04:48 PM
With respect, I'm sure that if you had any nonhetero friends get married/have kids, they'd post it a lot on facebook, too.

They do. I'm sick of them rubbing their homosexuality in my face. :smalltongue:

(I was using "rubbing it in my face" ironically; I don't expect anyone to hide the fact that they're married or love someone, and it's bigoted to expect gay people to do so.)

goto124
2016-04-29, 06:46 PM
The alternative would've been to kill them, but the fourth brother was too afraid of heavenly retribution to do that, so he came up with this plan instead to get rid of his other brothers so he could take over the family business.

Please tell me he got even worse heavenly punishment when he's eventually found out. Killing would've been more merciful.


This is a mature way to do that. but in some settings there might be more of an impact than that. For instance, in the US there's a disproportionate presence of LGBT homeless people and especially homeless teens, caused by a number of issues with things like being thrown out of your house as a teenager because of being gay or trans as one of them. Something like that being in the background of a character matters a lot, and it will change responses to a lot more than just being hit on. How it changes responses is going to vary hugely, but the point is that there is a change. It's also much more relevant for that character than others.

That doesn't change that the character is still a normal character, being put in the game as a character.

Seems most people here just don't like to play out realistic consequences of being LGBT in an LGBT-hostile world. Maybe it comes off as the players/GM being LGBT-hostile themselves. Maybe people don't like that level of 'realism' which is more borrowing negative consequences from real life needlessly, much like why so many fantasy worlds are played as gender-equal - people already experience sexism, homophobia, transphobia, etc in the real world, there's no need to replay them in a fantasy game that had space for better stuff.

Also, adventurers are already homeless :smalltongue:


90% of NPCs are bisexual (with the remaining 10% 100% of them not persecuted or experiencing any societal opprobrium at all). This is mostly to facilitate an atmosphere where if a PC wants to sleep with an NPC, they can, regardless of respective genders.

This is me :smallbiggrin: My NPCs and PCs don't really have opportunity to show their sexual orientations, but when they do, they're pretty much inveitably bisexual. I suspect it helps I have zero sense of bi-erasure and had to have it explained to me. Which means I don't feel the need to 'prove' someone is equally attracted to both sexes.


With respect, I'm sure that if you had any nonhetero friends get married/have kids, they'd post it a lot on facebook, too.

If I understood Jeff correctly, that is exactly what Jeff meant. That if the homosexual isn't taking a "I'm gay!!!" flag and slapping it to your face, but merely talking about his boyfriend/her girlfriend, that does not count as 'rubbing homosexuality in other people's faces'.

Depending on the extent of the Facebook posts, it could count as rubbing their personal lives in other people's faces. Just use the same metric as heterosexual people - for example, uploading 500 photos of a baby in one day is a bit much :smalltongue:

Malimar
2016-04-29, 07:26 PM
90% of NPCs are bisexual (with the remaining 10% 100% of them not persecuted or experiencing any societal opprobrium at all). This is mostly to facilitate an atmosphere where if a PC wants to sleep with an NPC, they can, regardless of respective genders.This is me :smallbiggrin: My NPCs and PCs don't really have opportunity to show their sexual orientations, but when they do, they're pretty much inveitably bisexual. I suspect it helps I have zero sense of bi-erasure and had to have it explained to me. Which means I don't feel the need to 'prove' someone is equally attracted to both sexes.
Good point on the 100% thing, I phrased that poorly. Indeed, nobody faces persecution or opprobrium for their sexual orientation, be they in the majority or the minority.

I'd say nobody faces problems based on sex or gender, either, but there are a few societies that practice agnatic (male-first) inheritance and probably have other patriarchal business going on. Though there are also enatic (female-first) societies (not just the drow, even! merfolk too!), so maybe that balances out. And the main society where PCs adventure is cognatic (no distinction between men and women).

soldersbushwack
2016-04-29, 07:49 PM
Many settings that have disproportionally large amount of LGBT human characters feel kind of fake and artificial to me. I feel the same thing about many settings that lack racism, sexism, religous bigotry and religious radicalism among humans. In D&D terms I guess I prefer settings with most humans and human gods being neutral or evil along the good-evil axis.

Now, I'm not going to tell anybody that their personal fun is wrong-bad-fun but if they were going to try to tailor their games to be more to my liking I guess I'd have them answer a few questions:

In your setting why isn't there an overriding evolutionary pressure for humans towards producing a child? Evolution needs lots of babies. A largely bisexual setting seems somewhat plausible to me but a largely homosexual setting seems silly to me.

In your setting why isn't there an overriding societal pressure for humans towards producing a child? Societies need babies for war and farming and often you don't get to argue with your dad about being married off to the ugly person whose dad owns large tracts of land. Maybe homosexuality for second sons and so on makes sense I guess.

Honest Tiefling
2016-04-29, 07:56 PM
Yep. This is, incidentally, why it's so galling when someone gripes about gay people "rubbing their noses" in their sexuality at work. I'm of an age where my friends are constantly rubbing their heterosexuality in my face by posting wedding photos or baby pictures on my Facebook timeline.

Simple! Acquire small animal, like a dog or a cat. Dress them up in clothes and address them as your child and gush about them as much as your friends/relatives/acquaintances do about their human children. You'll probably start getting a lot less notifications or announcements, but also a lot less invitations to social events. Depending on your tolerance of small children, this might be a good thing. Especially if the animal is stuffed or a plushie.

More on topic, as a player, it rarely comes up. Very often the proverbial poop has hit the fan so sneaking down to the bar for a quickie isn't really possible, let alone more long-term applications.

As a DM, it comes up far more often, but then again, I often play with people who think of nothing of seducing NPCs or throwing them at each other to aid in political relations or blackmailing anyone they get dirt on and so forth. It also helps to show how culturally different groups can be. For instance, if Culture A believes in homosexual marriage but hates the mere mention of sex in almost all social situations, it is quite clearly different from Culture B that might not believe in homosexual marriage but has legalized prostitution and politically influential courtesans. If a character mentions having two uncles or visiting a prostitute, it becomes clear what culture they are from and can help players distinguish the two places in ways other then 'Has loot, has guards' and 'We might be working for these guys'.

As for the issue of prejudice, I've done it, but I also have spread around the prejudice. Male, female, gay, bi, trans, whatever, everyone can be treated like crap for a day! But yes, I only do it with people I know and that I feel comfortable discussing it with because I neither wish to upset anyone nor get known for being anti-whatever. There's also the point that it is difficult to justify it if a particular group is known for demon-summoning or shooting fire out of their face. Priorities!

Vknight
2016-04-29, 08:01 PM
Have anybody ever used a character who's a lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender in your roleplaying games? Also have you run an LGBT themed campaign in your roleplaying games as well? If so, how do you feel about it? Tell me your opinions about it.

I'm running an Eclipse Phase campaign. So when you can decide to swap around the parts down there(and it can be done as quickly as under 6 hours) or even be a robot well it means a lot less. So for the most part NPC's in eclipse phase go with what feels right for them.
Course this is also my bias to trans-humanism.

This is the stuff I can touch on without spoiling things for the game.
I got a NPC Boxer who is female who is in a female body who is dating the female pc in a herm body.
Meanwhile the Military Vet Sniper is male in a female body for a stunt as a favor to some people he knows from back when he made movies.
And there is a female ex-human(Long story part of the setting) who is female and has about a dozen copies of herself running around the galaxy. 1 See's itself as a harem alpha and is off doing that, another has made a swarm of lesser copies like a queen bee(but there all robot bodies), and another decided to be an octopus

So go wild in some settings Eclipse Phase and the like when you have the ability to try out being a girl with no downsides why not?

Outside of Eclipse Phase I don't care you do you.
A campaign with its theme based around that sounds poorly thought out. I think it would fall into any number of sinkholes, from straw manning the issues, to numerous other things.
Do I think you can include characters how embody these things? Yes and I also think you can maybe do a story arc on it(thought look above for my worries on that), but I would avoid a full campaign.
If a player wants to play a straight person or a bi-person, or a gay/lesbian person I don't really care as long as they have a good character.

obryn
2016-04-29, 08:05 PM
Yeah, Ancient Greece and Rome are totally unrealistic and their presence in world history breaks my verisimilitude.

Honest Tiefling
2016-04-29, 08:32 PM
In your setting why isn't there an overriding evolutionary pressure for humans towards producing a child? Evolution needs lots of babies. A largely bisexual setting seems somewhat plausible to me but a largely homosexual setting seems silly to me.

Evolution requires babies. History does not. A lot of history is centered around getting one's rocks off without producing a baby that would starve to death or cause a social/political mess or dealing with excess babies no one wanted. For a large part of history, most families couldn't support more then two (if that), and any baby born without a father was a huge burden and they...Didn't really tend to thrive. Culturally allowed homosexual behavior was often a temporary relationship for unmarried men who would then 'graduate' to a relationship with a woman so they wouldn't run off and get someone pregnant that they really shouldn't have and start a feud.

Ancient Greece, ancient Rome, feudal Japan, feudal China(I think), and the Norse all had socially approved homosexual relationships, some of which persisted as friendships and political marriages after marriage. Depending on your source, there might have been homosexual or asexual female/female relationships in seventeenth century England. Parts of Asia and many Native American tribes had third genders. The very idea of homosexuality is a modern one, so even applying that to civilizations based on ancient cultures is entirely incorrect if one wished to be technical. There's also a lot of debate if the majority of the human population would even fall into the standard definition of heterosexuality.

Also, why would an entire world do things the same way? America can't even agree how to put the toilet paper onto the holder, and you think several races and hundreds of nations are going to all agree on sexuality and marriage?

Thrudd
2016-04-29, 08:59 PM
I have never run or been in a game which had a focus on sexuality or romantic relationships in-general. The friends and folks I've gamed with have mostly all been on the same page regarding the topic in real-life; that is total acceptance of whatever someone's preferences are. Nobody I know would blink an eye if someone said their character was gay, bi, trans, or any variation thereof. Of course, I've rarely if ever had two PCs engage in romantic behavior with one another. Labelling your character with a sexuality will be a trait that rarely comes up in the game. If it became relevant, I would feel fine with assigning a percentage of the NPC population that will be various other-than hetero-normative, and rolling to see the dominant orientation of any given NPC. If I wanted to get really detailed, I might assign different percentages for different fantasy races, just to mix it up.

I mostly don't care for trying to simulate real-world hot-button social issues, and I haven't had a group that has expressed any desire in wanting to do so. Adventuring is an equal-opportunity profession.

Talyn
2016-04-29, 09:05 PM
I am a heterosexual man in real life, and most of my characters have been heterosexual males, with the occasional heterosexual female. I did play a lesbian in a Cyberpunk 2020 game once, but it was a one-shot and her sexuality never came up.

Our current campaign has widespread and culturally normal (male) homosexuality among our dwarven kingdom. When we were building the world, we decided to go that route because it allowed us to play with some of the typical fantasy "dwarf" traits (specifically, that dwarf women have beards and that male dwarf babies are more common than female dwarf babies) in an interesting way. In our culture, there are fairly rigid gender roles within traditional dwarf society - some things are for men only, and some things are for women. Note, however, I used the term "gender" and not "sex." Female dwarves are rare, and many male dwarves go before the local council of elders and get declared legally female, so that they can marry their male partner and/or participate in a 'female' profession. This is referred to among the dwarves as becoming a "bearded wife."

The idea that "dwarf women have beards" comes from humans and elves being introduced to a dwarf's wife, who happens to be a fully bearded male dwarf, but is referred to by the feminine pronoun and is for all cultural and societal purposes considered female.

Male humans and elves who are bisexual or homosexual are referred to as "living in the dwarf style," and are generally considered odd, but how accepted LGBT people are among non-dwarves varies from culture to culture, or even by social strata within cultures, similar to real life historical views.

ImNotTrevor
2016-04-29, 09:37 PM
There's also a lot of debate if the majority of the human population would even fall into the standard definition of heterosexuality.


Based on pretty much every survey ever done, including ones that use that one analog scale of sexuality, 60% or more fall into the "pure straight" category and if you include the "incidentally homosexual" one as "Straight" then is bumps into the 90s.

So no. There is no real debate on this one. Being homosexual/bisexual/whateversexual is ok even if a very small portion of the population is that. (And most of the relationships mentioned were far from commonplace. They DID occur, and were not frowned upon, but for most societies having lots of babies was a good idea because infant mortality rates were super high. Out of 8 babies, maybe 2 would survive. People died A LOT back then. There was a lot of pressure to reproduce often.)

Siosilvar
2016-04-29, 09:46 PM
Based on pretty much every survey ever done, including ones that use that one analog scale of sexuality, 60% or more fall into the "pure straight" category and if you include the "incidentally homosexual" one as "Straight" then is bumps into the 90s.

You know, except recent ones, where a minority (admittedly, only barely so - 48% is the number cited) of teens identify as exclusively straight.

Recherché
2016-04-29, 10:11 PM
You know, except recent ones, where a minority (admittedly, only barely so - 48% is the number cited) of teens identify as exclusively straight.

Can you link me to a source on that? Not trying to challenge you just curious.

Vknight
2016-04-29, 10:34 PM
Evolution requires babies. History does not. A lot of history is centered around getting one's rocks off without producing a baby that would starve to death or cause a social/political mess or dealing with excess babies no one wanted. For a large part of history, most families couldn't support more then two (if that), and any baby born without a father was a huge burden and they...Didn't really tend to thrive. Culturally allowed homosexual behavior was often a temporary relationship for unmarried men who would then 'graduate' to a relationship with a woman so they wouldn't run off and get someone pregnant that they really shouldn't have and start a feud.

Ancient Greece, ancient Rome, feudal Japan, feudal China(I think), and the Norse all had socially approved homosexual relationships, some of which persisted as friendships and political marriages after marriage. Depending on your source, there might have been homosexual or asexual female/female relationships in seventeenth century England. Parts of Asia and many Native American tribes had third genders. The very idea of homosexuality is a modern one, so even applying that to civilizations based on ancient cultures is entirely incorrect if one wished to be technical. There's also a lot of debate if the majority of the human population would even fall into the standard definition of heterosexuality.

Also, why would an entire world do things the same way? America can't even agree how to put the toilet paper onto the holder, and you think several races and hundreds of nations are going to all agree on sexuality and marriage?
Evolution requires babies. But so does History one exists from our history so producing heirs leading to the current point happens

This is true in regards to the friendships, but the second part is. Well if your going with the fact some young men were trained by there future fathers in law then yes that could have happen. Its all long confusing and goes to show things we have done in history that have changed over the centuries.
The Oxford definition of heterosexuality is, simply the following; sexual attraction to people of the opposite sex
Can't really say much more on that because I can't tell where or what your point is in that

You are very right the various cultures, philosophies, ideologies, and religions agreeing upon set standards is improbable if not outright impossible.
God I could go for days just with that premise alone, this is super true and it gets super complicated.



You know, except recent ones, where a minority (admittedly, only barely so - 48% is the number cited) of teens identify as exclusively straight.

Science is interesting with that, and we can delve deeper into that.
But the numbers you quoted there at 48% are completely false with that actual numbers ranging based on age, location etc. from 88 to 93%.

Siosilvar
2016-04-29, 10:41 PM
Science is interesting with that, and we can delve deeper into that.
But the numbers you quoted there at 48% are completely false with that actual numbers ranging based on age, location etc. from 88 to 93%.


teens

You know, it's been a long week. And I'm really tired of people responding to me without actually reading what I write. Like, it's not even just misinterpreting me because I phrase things oddly (which does happen sometimes), it's straight up ignoring the words in my post.

I will give you 80-90% of people as predominantly heterosexual. But I did explicitly state teens and exclusively. And that is very much not "completely false".


Can you link me to a source on that? Not trying to challenge you just curious.

Here's the most complete article I've seen about that particular survey. (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/teen-sexuality-survey_us_56e827f4e4b0860f99da5ef0)

edit: "study" to "survey"

ImNotTrevor
2016-04-29, 11:03 PM
You know, it's been a long week. And I'm really tired of people responding to me without actually reading what I write. Like, it's not even just misinterpreting me because I phrase things oddly (which does happen sometimes), it's straight up ignoring the words in my post.

I will give you 80-90% of people as predominantly heterosexual. But I did explicitly state teens and exclusively. And that is very much not "completely false".



Here's the most complete article I've seen about that particular study. (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/teen-sexuality-survey_us_56e827f4e4b0860f99da5ef0)

I can't find the survey presented, so it is very difficult to say if the data has been skewed, but then again it is self-report and "incidentally homosexual" isn't particularly well defined in the first place. Am I incidentally homosexual if I admit that X male is attractive even though I would not want to have sex with him? What if I am simply not put off by the idea of kissing a man even though I would have no sexual jollies from such activities and wouldn't seek it out? (IE, if it was part of a performance I was doing, I would be ok with it.) Are those things Incidentally Homosexual?

What influence does culture have? Where was the survey gathered from? We would likely get a very different spread in the Rural South (especially since it is self report) than from UCLA. And given that many LGBT friends of mine have growing concerns that being non-hetero is becoming a fad/shield from disagreement rather than a legitimate part of one's real life, and given the increasing hostility on scial media towards straight,cis-gendered individuals, I would not be surprised if this is a temporary effect rather than a permanent shift in humanity.

So no, I disagree with the survey-taker's opinion that their under-1000 responses are expandable to the population. And the fact that no one provides links to the actual study is highly suspicious. If you think your study os valid, it should be visible for all to see and review. And it accounts for...basically no confounding variables.

*shrug*

Honest Tiefling
2016-04-29, 11:07 PM
I think the next time someone complains about too many straights/gays in my campaign world, I will force them to link to 3 studies with sizable pools, clear definitions of sexuality that represent human behavior and clear indications of cultural bias taken within the last 20 years that all agree with each other. That oughta keep them busy for what...50 years at least?

The Fury
2016-04-29, 11:22 PM
I don't think of my more recent player characters as all that interested in sex with anyone. That said, nearly all of them could pass for queer-- there were even moments when other PCs speculated that they might be.

In a game that I'm running, one of the players said that her character was homophobic. Essentially she wanted a character arc about learning compassion and tolerance. So I pretty much had to include LGBT NPCs in some capacity. Yeah, I know I'm using imprecise language here-- there's a reason for that. As presented, it's not all that clear who's interested in who, though there's plenty of room to speculate. Right now, I'm taking the fifth and just allowing that speculation.

Siosilvar
2016-04-29, 11:44 PM
-snip-

Valid methodology concerns. Except the sample size one, even Gallup only polls about 2000 people when they want to be really accurate. How about the British survey linked at the bottom of the article?

And as far as LGBT identities being a fad... I haven't even heard of that being a complaint in any of the groups I frequent since very early last year. Nor have I seen the same level of hostility since then, either. So my anecdote cancels out yours.

Honest Tiefling
2016-04-29, 11:55 PM
Even if it was only a fad, there's nothing to say that NPCs couldn't also follow suit and gay it up as a fad anyway. People are pretty prone to that.

unwise
2016-04-30, 12:15 AM
I run gay characters all the time. It gives them a reason to leave their traditional homes, or just seem realistic. So far the list includes:

Male dwarf lesser prince - he was due to get married but was in love with a battle-brother from his order. He took a warhammer style Slayers-Oath so as to be ineligable marriage and be able to go out with his lover to fight evil alone. In his society being gay as OK for males (there are very few women) but not getting married and having kids was not. You could not have a husband, just a lover before you were married.

Dwarf female - similar, fleeing from a marriage. She was open to the idea of being with guys, but had to remain "pure" for marriage at a later date, so she only lay with women.

Elves - pretty much all of them are bi in my games.

Northwomen Valkyrie- nobody thought anything of it, most of the shield-maidens were that way inclined. Men were for marrying, women were for fun.

Trans-warforged - this guy/girl had no concept of gender or gender roles, so just clipped on whatever accessories they wanted at the time. So would have a metallic beard, boobs and a dress. They were totally free of social expectations.

I'm a hetro male myself, so its not that the characters are easier to relate to, they are just interesting.

<edit> As you can see, in our games, being gay may or may not be a big deal in cultures, but being exclusively gay is. If you are not willing to get married and have children, you are frowned upon badly. A gay guy can just marry a lesbian, have a couple of kids and take lovers on the side an nobody will bat an eyelid in many cultures. Fail to meet society expectations of making a family unit and you are likely to be called all sorts of names.

GrayGriffin
2016-04-30, 02:16 AM
Honestly I'm not sure any of my characters are straight anymore. Some of my earlier RP characters might technically be considered straight just because I was kind of casually homophobic when creating them, but my idea about their sexualities has also shifted over time. And most of the possible pairings I've thought of for them are not straight as well.

Not quite as related, but a lot of my recent characters have also been polyamorous, mainly because I'm kind of sick of love triangles and have selected the best method to handle them.

goto124
2016-04-30, 06:02 AM
Do polyamorus and/or open relationships count? Strictly speaking not LGBT as they're not sexual orientations, but the idea of "non-standard romance and sexuality" is there.


As you can see, in our games, being gay may or may not be a big deal in cultures, but being exclusively gay is. If you are not willing to get married and have children, you are frowned upon badly. A gay guy can just marry a lesbian, have a couple of kids and take lovers on the side an nobody will bat an eyelid in many cultures. Fail to meet society expectations of making a family unit and you are likely to be called all sorts of names.

Come to think of it, a discussion of LGBT characters would also include a discussion of different cultures' attitudes towards LGBT people. One culture may lump all LGBT people into "burn at the stake", another may respect the LGs (lesbians and gays) while burning the BTs (bisexuals and trans), yet another may not burn anyone but dismiss the LGBT people as "silly teenagers". This is a huge oversimplification, and it helps to look at real-world cultures (of both past and future) to see all the possible nuances while still making them verisimilitudinous.


Honestly I'm not sure any of my characters are straight anymore. Some of my earlier RP characters might technically be considered straight just because I was kind of casually homophobic [goto: In my case, not even knowing there're sexualities beyond hetero] when creating them, but my idea about their sexualities has also shifted over time. And most of the possible pairings I've thought of for them are not straight as well.

Not quite as related, but a lot of my recent characters have also been polyamorous, mainly because I'm kind of sick of love triangles and have selected the best method to handle them.

My first PC (bisexual female, somehow her bisexuality doesn't seem really important to state) and another player's straight male PC fell for each other, and started a relationship. The male PC, who was a ladykiller, had stopped his 'flirts-with-lots-of-women' actions for the sake of the relationship. My female PC actually fell for him precisely due to his ladykiller attitude, but found it too normal to mention. One day, this exchange took place in a night club:

The male PC: Mind if I smoked one?
My female PC: Of course I won't [mind]! Otherwise I wouldn't be so silly as to bring you here, out of all the more normal bars!
The male PC: Oookay... *pulls out a cigar and lights it* ... what did you think when I mentioned smoking?
My female PC: You know... doing things with another lady.
The male PC: *widens eyes* Really? You don't mind?

Soon afterwards, he hit on my other (second) PC, who before this situation was (in my mind) a straight male PC that just looked feminine. But because this incident took place, and the idea of a three-way was appealing to me, the PC became a bisexual genderfluid sexfluid. Now they're in a polyamorus and open relationship, and I took too long to type out this post.

I have a male knight who's a wannabe version of the stereotypical Knight In Shining Armor. So far, his awkward actions towards women make for great shipping fuel... but I'm not really interested in putting him in a relationship anyway. I'm more than happy with what I already have.

For now, he's from a vaguely medieval fantasy world where LGBT-ness is met with derision and mostly treated as non-existent. I could make it closer to what unwise mentioned. Either way, the male knight just grew out of childhood and is too shy to pass judgment - very important in a world where LGBT-ness is the least weird thing there :smallbiggrin:

Frozen_Feet
2016-04-30, 06:12 AM
Please tell me he got even worse heavenly punishment when he's eventually found out. Killing would've been more merciful.


It was Cyberpunk, so no heavenly punishment was actually confirmed to exist. The scenario presumes the player characters will just shoot him, because... how else do player characters solve problem? :smalltongue:

Anyways, to comment on Yora, the acronym soup doesn't come to me naturally, and almost half of the questions in this thread can be generalized to be about the romance genre and how to tackle societal hot topics in a game, not about LGBT folks in specific. I'd say this topic came up in this context because that is one of the few societal hot topics that actually 1)allowed and 2) popular on these forums.

Yora
2016-04-30, 06:25 AM
Honestly I'm not sure any of my characters are straight anymore. Some of my earlier RP characters might technically be considered straight just because I was kind of casually homophobic when creating them, but my idea about their sexualities has also shifted over time. And most of the possible pairings I've thought of for them are not straight as well.

Everyone is pansexual until evidence indicates otherwise.

DJ Yung Crunk
2016-04-30, 06:47 AM
Do polyamorus and/or open relationships count? Strictly speaking not LGBT as they're not sexual orientations, but the idea of "non-standard romance and sexuality" is there.

I played a game where the whole party was polyamorous. Everyone was 'an item' so to speak.

goto124
2016-04-30, 07:38 AM
Everyone is pansexual until evidence indicates otherwise.

How many humanoids are into non-humanoids (or vice versa)? Pansexuality in a fantasy lots-of-sapient-races world tends to have that sort of implications. In a more ridiculous world, sapient pans (as in kitchen pans) may even exist!

In RL where humans are the only known sapient race, I believe it's to cover non-binary people. Maybe create a new term for attraction to other fantasy species?

Yora
2016-04-30, 07:40 AM
I am working on a Neolithic/Bronze Age barbarian setting. Polygamy seems an obvious setting element. Monogamy would actually be unfitting.
Though I don't really have a clue how that would work out in a culture that isn't heteronormative.


How many humanoids are into non-humanoids (or vice versa)? Pansexuality in a fantasy lots-of-sapient-races world tends to have that sort of implications...
Oh yeah, I hadn't even considered that. That makes things even more complicated.

goto124
2016-04-30, 07:45 AM
Polygamy is having more then one spouse (gender-neutral). Polygyny is having more than one wife (form of polygamy that most people are familiar with). Polyandry is having more than one husband.

Why would heteronormativity mess things up? Seems one could have e.g. a female-male-male relationship and it would be normal. Or male-female-female. Looks more like the lack of heteronormativity opens up more possible combinations for people to share their loves and responsibilities.

How did polygamy work in the Bronze Age? While we're at it, what does heteronormativity mean in this context?

Jeff the Green
2016-04-30, 07:59 AM
How did polygamy work in the Bronze Age? While we're at it, what does heteronormativity mean in this context?

It was pretty much exclusively polygyny. Wealthy men (e.g. King Solomon) had many wives and/or concubines, and few to no women had multiple husbands.

Yora
2016-04-30, 08:14 AM
Polygynous societies tend to have a high attrition of young men. They lack combat experience and have a high inclination to get into stupid fights, so you automatically get a women surplus. Death from childbirth is also not uncommon, so a family is more capable to raise children with more than one wife.

Jeff the Green
2016-04-30, 10:58 AM
Polygynous societies tend to have a high attrition of young men. They lack combat experience and have a high inclination to get into stupid fights, so you automatically get a women surplus. Death from childbirth is also not uncommon, so a family is more capable to raise children with more than one wife.

It's not just that. Pre-agricultural societies aren't as likely to be polygynous. Agricultural societies are very winner-take-all. They allow, and to some extent require, monopolizing resources. This means some people become very rich and some don't. It also amplifies the importance of brute strength, since there's suddenly wealth you need to protect or can steal, which increases the power of men compared to women. All this tends to create a patriarchal society where some men see having lots of women as their right.

Vknight
2016-04-30, 01:53 PM
You know, it's been a long week. And I'm really tired of people responding to me without actually reading what I write. Like, it's not even just misinterpreting me because I phrase things oddly (which does happen sometimes), it's straight up ignoring the words in my post.

I will give you 80-90% of people as predominantly heterosexual. But I did explicitly state teens and exclusively. And that is very much not "completely false".

Here's the most complete article I've seen about that particular survey. (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/teen-sexuality-survey_us_56e827f4e4b0860f99da5ef0)

edit: "study" to "survey"

Interesting though I got to say with less then 1000 respondents and the fact it was solely in New York means it cannot be applied to the greater nation at large like is suggested.
But it nonetheless is a interesting read and the UK study does show the trend towards a changing environment towards what one see's themselves as.

I apologize if I offended but thankyou for providing a link to this page talking on the study.

Outside of that reading this is an interesting take on why I think people in the role-playing community are so open and accepting of others.
We don't care, do what you please and have fun with the character is the most important thing about a game.
This is also why I think games, and gaming are so important as a topic.

Siosilvar
2016-04-30, 01:55 PM
Interesting though I got to say with less then 1000 respondents and the fact it was solely in New York means it cannot be applied to the greater nation at large like is suggested.

1000 is, again, only slightly smaller than typical. Gallup runs surveys usually with 1200-1500 people in the sample.

Inevitability
2016-04-30, 02:12 PM
It's not just that. Pre-agricultural societies aren't as likely to be polygynous. Agricultural societies are very winner-take-all. They allow, and to some extent require, monopolizing resources. This means some people become very rich and some don't. It also amplifies the importance of brute strength, since there's suddenly wealth you need to protect or can steal, which increases the power of men compared to women. All this tends to create a patriarchal society where some men see having lots of women as their right.

Wasn't there a recent study that revealed that polygynous societies are at a disadvantage because STD's can more easily spread, which removes most of the benefits of polygyny?

Yora
2016-04-30, 02:16 PM
Instead of two people per family affected you have three or four per family. To spread across a society it would have to cross married groups, in which case the system of marriage shouldn't make a difference.

Though young widdows remarrying could be a factor. But then it's still mostly about uneven marriage ages.

Edit: I actually found a study on that subject from 2013 titled "Sexually transmitted infections in polygamous mating systems". However, it seems to be primarily about animals (especially herd animals) and mentions humans in the context of migrant workers and prostitutes, which are explicitly not married and don't have any kind of stable relationship at all.

Polygamous marriage is a completely different situation from that. (Though that doesn't rule out that there are studies about spread of diseases in polgymous societies that did find a similar corellation.)

Vinyadan
2016-04-30, 02:43 PM
Well, polygynous societies still exist, and they seem to only depend on cultural factors. I also don't believe that agriculture or lack of males has anything to do with polygamy - Greece and Rome were both agricultural and monogamous, while nomadic Bedouins were (are) polygamous. After a catastrophic battle between Argos and Sparta which left most of Argos males dead, the city simply allowed for immigrants to become citizens, instead of allowing polygamy.

Honest Tiefling
2016-04-30, 02:50 PM
Neither ancient Greece nor Rome were monogamous, given the number of prostitutes, slaves and concubines. Bedouins might not be agricultural, but they are pastoral so many of the same theories apply to that, as opposed to a hunter-gatherer society. (which I assume Jeff the Green was talking about in comparison to an agricultural society, but I could be wrong.)

Jeff the Green
2016-04-30, 03:53 PM
Neither ancient Greece nor Rome were monogamous, given the number of prostitutes, slaves and concubines.

Right. Remember that the whole plot of the Illiad is that Achilles was pissed off that Agamemnon, who is married, has stolen his captive Briseis to be his concubine.


Bedouins might not be agricultural, but they are pastoral so many of the same theories apply to that, as opposed to a hunter-gatherer society. (which I assume Jeff the Green was talking about in comparison to an agricultural society, but I could be wrong.)

Right. The same factors that apply to agriculture apply to herding, if not more so because it's easier to steal herds than fields. Even if they weren't, they were heavily influenced by surrounding agricultural societies.

Vinyadan
2016-04-30, 03:55 PM
Neither ancient Greece nor Rome were monogamous, given the number of prostitutes, slaves and concubines. Bedouins might not be agricultural, but they are pastoral so many of the same theories apply to that, as opposed to a hunter-gatherer society. (which I assume Jeff the Green was talking about in comparison to an agricultural society, but I could be wrong.)

I think we use two very different meanings of monogamous, then. To me, a society in which the State only recognizes a single marriage is monogamous, especially if this has relevance when giving legitimacy to the children and transmission of citizenship. There was no marriage with slaves, concubines and prostitutes. You also couldn't marry more than a single citizen. Slavery and prostitution were different institutions from marriage. A prostitute or a concubine wouldn't live under your roof; if she did, this would have been seen as against morals. As for slavery, rape of slaves was persecuted in Athens, and children of citizens and slaves were slaves. In the end, the only institution recognized by the State as the means to reproduce undoubtedly legitimate, free, eligible for heredity children was marriage, and it was monogamous.

Honest Tiefling
2016-04-30, 04:00 PM
True, in those societies, only one wife was recognized (in others, the children of concubines would be technically legitimate), making them socially monogamous, but not sexually monogamous. However, given that someone earlier posted about STD spread, it was worthwhile to point out that even in societies with only one legally recognized wife, that did little to actually limit the spread of anything. Also, prostitutes and slaves would often produce children that would later be exposed, so not all children were valued. (Even higher ranking Roman families would expose legitimate daughters due to a lack of food and little wish to pay a dowry.)

Jeff the Green
2016-04-30, 05:40 PM
I think we use two very different meanings of monogamous, then. To me, a society in which the State only recognizes a single marriage is monogamous, especially if this has relevance when giving legitimacy to the children and transmission of citizenship. There was no marriage with slaves, concubines and prostitutes. You also couldn't marry more than a single citizen. Slavery and prostitution were different institutions from marriage. A prostitute or a concubine wouldn't live under your roof; if she did, this would have been seen as against morals. As for slavery, rape of slaves was persecuted in Athens, and children of citizens and slaves were slaves. In the end, the only institution recognized by the State as the means to reproduce undoubtedly legitimate, free, eligible for heredity children was marriage, and it was monogamous.

There's definitely gradations. Some societies are strictly monogamous, in that they don't tolerate extra-partner daliances. Much of America is like this now. There's fully polygynous societies, like ancient Jewish society, where elite men have multiple wives. Then there are intermediate societies, where only one wife is permitted, but elite men are expected to have concubines or mistresses. Ancient Greece and Rome definitely fall in the middle ground. Think the Ironborn in ASOIAF: only one Rock Wife is permitted, but a man can take any number of Salt Wives.

And of course there are gradations in between, like Early Modern Europe, where strict monogamy was upheld as expected, but having a mistress was normal, and the king's mistress often grew to be very powerful.

legomaster00156
2016-04-30, 08:22 PM
Right now, I am GM'ing a Pathfinder adventure path where there is a trans woman in a lesbian marriage with a half-orc, and a halfling and a human cleric of a god of love function as a gay couple. That's just my GM side, because I also play a bisexual rogue in another campaign. So... yes. :smallamused:

Incanur
2016-04-30, 09:54 PM
In 3.5 D&D (and 3.0 if I recall correctly), alter self explicitly enables characters to play with gender. That makes it all but inevitable that those would access to such magic (mages, adventures, the elite in general, etc.) would be awfully queer by 21st-century Earth standards.

My current group started out with (and continues to have) a significant number of queer anarchists, so having LGBTQ characters in the game world has always been automatic and unremarkable. One player typically plays ambiguously gendered characters who seduce various NPCs of various gender identities.

digiman619
2016-05-01, 12:17 AM
There's definitely gradations. Some societies are strictly monogamous, in that they don't tolerate extra-partner daliances. Much of America is like this now. There's fully polygynous societies, like ancient Jewish society, where elite men have multiple wives. Then there are intermediate societies, where only one wife is permitted, but elite men are expected to have concubines or mistresses. Ancient Greece and Rome definitely fall in the middle ground. Think the Ironborn in ASOIAF: only one Rock Wife is permitted, but a man can take any number of Salt Wives.

And of course there are gradations in between, like Early Modern Europe, where strict monogamy was upheld as expected, but having a mistress was normal, and the king's mistress often grew to be very powerful.

It's also worth noting that ancient Jewish wedding had marriage contracts; essentially the old-timey prenup. It specifically said when each participant was required to do, and if either side can prove that the other failed to uphold the contract, they were free to take everything they owned and return to their family (including the stuff they got during the marriage).

Vknight
2016-05-01, 07:53 PM
It's also worth noting that ancient Jewish wedding had marriage contracts; essentially the old-timey prenup. It specifically said when each participant was required to do, and if either side can prove that the other failed to uphold the contract, they were free to take everything they owned and return to their family (including the stuff they got during the marriage).

This is true its a long and strange road.

ThinkMinty
2016-05-02, 06:04 AM
Neither ancient Greece nor Rome were monogamous, given the number of prostitutes, slaves and concubines. Bedouins might not be agricultural, but they are pastoral so many of the same theories apply to that, as opposed to a hunter-gatherer society. (which I assume Jeff the Green was talking about in comparison to an agricultural society, but I could be wrong.)

Given those facts and the divorce rate as of late, honestly we're just pretending at monogamy at this point.


In 3.5 D&D (and 3.0 if I recall correctly), alter self explicitly enables characters to play with gender. That makes it all but inevitable that those would access to such magic (mages, adventures, the elite in general, etc.) would be awfully queer by 21st-century Earth standards.

My current group started out with (and continues to have) a significant number of queer anarchists, so having LGBTQ characters in the game world has always been automatic and unremarkable. One player typically plays ambiguously gendered characters who seduce various NPCs of various gender identities.

You sound fun.


Have anybody ever used a character who's a lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender in your roleplaying games? Also have you run an LGBT themed campaign in your roleplaying games as well? If so, how do you feel about it? Tell me your opinions about it.

I'm a straight guy, and I play whatever for the variety. Sometimes because it's funny, sometimes because I'm bored, sometimes because it fits the character better.

Some of my most recent characters were nightmare creatures I made up on the spot, so they ended up...well, odd. I had one that was a cloud of psionic hive-minded spiders who all spun around like little helicopter blades making little raspberry propeller noises with their spider-mouths (Think PPPPPBTHHH being belted out a few thousand times); his name was, appropriately, "SPIDERS". SPIDERS was just into crawling into people's orifices. I don't know if "like sexually-fixated kandiru but for all the holes, and also an army of nightmare phantom spiders" is a sexual orientation.

Yora
2016-05-02, 06:16 AM
The purpose of marriage has always been managing property rights. Who own what when a shared household splits and when a person dies? Bans on sexual contact outside the marriage are to ensure certainty about who is an heir and who is not.

Over time you get all kinds of rituals and social values associated with marriage, but the original and primary purpose is managing ownership of property.

(For nobles it also was a way to exchange hostages without making it obviously look that you don't trust each other.)

ThinkMinty
2016-05-02, 06:30 AM
The purpose of marriage has always been managing property rights. Who own what when a shared household splits and when a person dies? Bans on sexual contact outside the marriage are to ensure certainty about who is an heir and who is not.

Over time you get all kinds of rituals and social values associated with marriage, but the original and primary purpose is managing ownership of property.

(For nobles it also was a way to exchange hostages without making it obviously look that you don't trust each other.)

Since certain types of people still think of marriage as a property contract regardless of how the property model of marriage is both out-of-date legally and repugnant morally, that's why the concept of same-sex marriage is so hard for them to grasp. They don't grok the idea of equal partnership at all.

goto124
2016-05-02, 08:17 AM
What does the property model have anything to do with the same-sex-ness of the people in a marriage? If anything, the property model says "marriage is to transfer property, so the sexes of the people don't matter!"

Are there people who opposed same-sex marriage who don't also oppose homosexuality anyway?

illyahr
2016-05-02, 11:24 AM
Maybe create a new term for attraction to other fantasy species?

There is, actually. Xeno- is generally used to refer to other sentient races. An attraction to a different species would be Xenosexual or Xenophilia, depending on which you prefer.

I once played a pansexual half-elf bard. He turned out to be one of my most famous character. Not just because he had a very effective support/melee build, but because he was consistently pansexual. My DM even once had him lose the words to his bardic music due to the BBEG, a very charismatic male sorcerer, strip down in combat in order to escape a web spell and my bard got distracted. Other than that, he would shamelessly flirt with any PC or NPC he met, no matter the race or gender. The other players just rolled their eyes as he usually got them discounts and free room and board with his antics. :smallbiggrin:

As a DM, I randomly determine whether my NPC's are SLGBT. It rarely comes up, but it has thrown the party off a couple times. It mostly doesn't affect their game, though. Such as:

Me: You barge into the room and see a naked, mountain-sized woman built of solid muscle. Her partner yelps and pulls the blankets of the bed up to her neck to hide herself.
Player1: Wait, her neck?
Me: Yep, her neck. The mountain-woman is over seven feet, red hair, extremely well-defined, naked as the day she was born, and very angry at you.
Player2: "Wow, you are huge! Do you eat livestock whole? Old McDonald had a farm, e-I-e-I-oh my god you ate the farm!"

DontEatRawHagis
2016-05-02, 11:28 AM
Have anybody ever used a character who's a lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender in your roleplaying games? Also have you run an LGBT themed campaign in your roleplaying games as well? If so, how do you feel about it? Tell me your opinions about it.

Yes. She played a Gay Male Paladin. The gay Govenor's Secretary NPC was liked but not loved.

digiman619
2016-05-02, 12:42 PM
There is, actually. Xeno- is generally used to refer to other sentient races. An attraction to a different species would be Xenosexual or Xenophilia, depending on which you prefer.

Technically, Xeno just means alien as in "very different from your norm"; so people attracted to a different ethnicities or nationalities than themselves technically qualify.

Douche
2016-05-02, 01:38 PM
I play a eunuch. Where does that fit in? Asexual, I suppose?

TheCountAlucard
2016-05-02, 02:04 PM
I play a eunuch. Where does that fit in? Asexual, I suppose?Only if he isn't attracted to anyone, doesn't have any interest in sex, et cetera. Keep in mind that even without genitals, oral sex is still a thing.

Vknight
2016-05-02, 02:20 PM
Given those facts and the divorce rate as of late, honestly we're just pretending at monogamy at this point.

You sound fun.

I'm a straight guy, and I play whatever for the variety. Sometimes because it's funny, sometimes because I'm bored, sometimes because it fits the character better.

Some of my most recent characters were nightmare creatures I made up on the spot, so they ended up...well, odd. I had one that was a cloud of psionic hive-minded spiders who all spun around like little helicopter blades making little raspberry propeller noises with their spider-mouths (Think PPPPPBTHHH being belted out a few thousand times); his name was, appropriately, "SPIDERS". SPIDERS was just into crawling into people's orifices. I don't know if "like sexually-fixated kandiru but for all the holes, and also an army of nightmare phantom spiders" is a sexual orientation.
A bit cynical of a way to see things
This chat proves to me why I wish I could get more people from Giants to join my online games.
Arachnophillia? I dunno or something jokes aside it could probably simply not have any comparable attraction to humans


What does the property model have anything to do with the same-sex-ness of the people in a marriage? If anything, the property model says "marriage is to transfer property, so the sexes of the people don't matter!"

Are there people who opposed same-sex marriage who don't also oppose homosexuality anyway?
It matters because heirs. The couple has to produce valid children to cement who keeps X when the parents pass
That is why in the contract for money and land model marriages ending genetically in a dead end are worthless and abhorrent.

I can name a few(And there is a politics joke in there), but it does not matter there are people out there in the world that exist.

Yora
2016-05-02, 02:27 PM
So do what the Romans and Japanese did and adopt some heirs. That was commonly done even if biological sons were present because the sons just weren't cut out for the job of taking over control of the family property. Or the inheritance goes to a brother, a nice, or a cousin when no heir is present.
That's not really a problem.

It only becomes a problem if you have a religion that would prefer if people don't have sex at all, but not figured out how to sell that to the masses. Limiting sex to married couples of one man and one woman each is the compromise to keep humanity from going extinct, but you still tell them that they sin if they enjoy it.
Sex between husband and wife is not okay, it's just the lesser evil.

Douche
2016-05-02, 02:37 PM
Only if he isn't attracted to anyone, doesn't have any interest in sex, et cetera. Keep in mind that even without genitals, oral sex is still a thing.

Nah, he doesn't give in to base desires. It gets in the way of him hunting undead & similar monsters

illyahr
2016-05-02, 02:46 PM
Technically, Xeno just means alien as in "very different from your norm"; so people attracted to a different ethnicities or nationalities than themselves technically qualify.

I'm aware of that. That doesn't stop it from being used in the manner I spoke of. Orson Scott Card used the word Xenocide when describing the destruction of an entire alien race when he wrote his Ender's Game novels.


Nah, he doesn't give in to base desires. It gets in the way of him hunting undead & similar monsters

The fact that he has the desires means he isn't asexual, he's just disciplined. If he had no desires, then he'd be asexual.

Yora
2016-05-02, 02:48 PM
"A xenocide" doesn't make much sense, unless the law treats killing of humans different than the killing of other intelligent species.
"Xenocidal" would work though, for a murderous xenophobe.

illyahr
2016-05-02, 02:51 PM
"A xenocide" doesn't make much sense, unless the law treats killing of humans different than the killing of other intelligent species.
"Xenocidal" would work though, for a murderous xenophobe.

A xenocide makes as much sense as a genocide, only the scope is different. A genocide is the mass murder of a specific group or subset of a race. A xenocide, then, is the mass murder of an entire race.

ThinkMinty
2016-05-02, 03:05 PM
Only if he isn't attracted to anyone, doesn't have any interest in sex, et cetera. Keep in mind that even without genitals, oral sex is still a thing.

Sounds like someone's figured out the solution to the mermaid problem.


Arachnophillia? I dunno or something jokes aside it could probably simply not have any comparable attraction to humans

SPIDERS wasn't into spiders, he was a bunch of spiders. Or a nightmare-phantom conjured by the madness of a haunted house. Or some other thing. Nightmare-creatures don't gotta make sense.


What does the property model have anything to do with the same-sex-ness of the people in a marriage? If anything, the property model says "marriage is to transfer property, so the sexes of the people don't matter!"

By property model, I meant the one where the wife is property of the husband, transferred over from her dad.


Are there people who opposed same-sex marriage who don't also oppose homosexuality anyway?

Honestly no, there aren't, but some of the opponents like to claim that. Doesn't mean they're not homophobes, just means they're doing verbal gymnastics to avoid dealing with their own prejudices.

Vknight
2016-05-02, 03:12 PM
Fair enough on the nightmare spiders just making a joke. It is spiders after all and nightmare spiders at that.

I need to play a Faerie in my next game

Honest Tiefling
2016-05-02, 03:16 PM
SPIDERS wasn't into spiders, he was a bunch of spiders. Or a nightmare-phantom conjured by the madness of a haunted house. Or some other thing. Nightmare-creatures don't gotta make sense.

I love how we got from using LGBT characters in RPGs to the discussion of a nightmare's sexuality. Through it does show that in more magical and extreme settings, human norms mean increasingly little. Why wouldn't all elves be bi? They're not human!

Frozen_Feet
2016-05-02, 04:09 PM
Are there people who opposed same-sex marriage who don't also oppose homosexuality anyway?

There are, but those people tend to be opposed to marriage, full stop. And occasionally, all institutions.

Milo v3
2016-05-02, 04:38 PM
You know I rather like the fact that Pathfinder's have people who are bisexuals, genderfluid and transgender as default characters for the game.

EnglishKitsune
2016-05-02, 04:48 PM
For the purposes of this discussion please note I am a Trans MtF Pansexual. So I tend to draw a bit from my experiences and background in creation of characters. Also, my various gaming groups throughout the years have ranged in terms of LGBT players, and even dipped into BDSM/Kinky groups as well. (Very Creative 3.5 Rogues with an amazing Use Rope Skill.) :smallredface:

I've played quite a few LGBT characters across a range of RPG's. Generally without comment from my fellow players, if it's ever come up at all. Sometimes used for plot by the Dm, (With my Permission of course.) Sometimes used for comedy in more light-hearted games. (Had a Firefly/Serenity Campain wherein being Attracted to Masculine Persons seemed to be prerequisite for occupying any position of power in the Alliance. :smalltongue: )

Find below some summaries of my favourite characters.


Nimtolion was supposed to be a throwaway character for a run of the 4E Tomb of Horrors Module. He became, through time, one of my most famous characters, to the point other players would often make me tell his adventures to new gamer-friends. There were three things you generally needed to know about this Enigmatic Eladrin:
1. He was a Pyromancer, who wore Leather Armour and used a sword, resorting to his Fire Magic only when necessary.
2. He was Evil, with the capital E, though you couldn't necessarily tell that at first, he was nice and charming, right up until he was making deals with Vecna behind the parties back. (Well, they had shoved him through a portal that led to an Avatar of Vecna.)
3. He respected, and sometimes "Lusted" after, people in power. Power was Nimtolion's one Desire, his goal, his mission, he would seduce, schmooze, and whisper into the ears of some of the Realms most powerful people, turning them all towards one goal, his goal.

The seduction was all to gather the biggest army in the realms, consisting of Gods, Demons, Mortals and Elementals, all for one purpose. He wanted to ascend to Godhood, the way The Raven Queen had, but he didn't want any gods spot, oh no, he had his sights on Tharizdun, in all his chained glory. He planned to weaken the jail holding Tharizdun, and then, when the Chained One broke out, the army would attack the weakened God and defeat it, leaving Nimtolion in the perfect Position to steal it's power and become the new god of Chaos, Destruction and Cycles. Sadly we never got that far as the DM moved to another City.



Michelle holds a special spot for me, as she was a character I played before I came out, and so I projected a lot through her at the time. 16 Years Young, Michael Kingston was growing up a normal Londinium Life, well, apart from the secret stash of Girl's clothes he had acquired via the Cortex. His Father, a highly respected, Alliance Scientist, was highly traditional, and often spoke of how he still thought that a lot of the 'Verse's Problems could be solved through "Correctional Medicine." Growing up in this Household, Michael felt more a prisoner than a protege, and made plans to escape. One day, he left the house to go to the Academy, but never arrived, his parents at first suspected Kidnapping, and anxiously awaited a ransom, none never came, a Flag Alert was put out, searching for Michael, meanwhile, on the far side of Londinium, Michelle boarded a Public Flight to Persephone, resolving to never again bear the Kingston Name.



R1L3Y was a Hacker/Rigger, of little Reknown, they prided themselves on this, as it meant they were able to go most places more or less unnoticed, a sign of their skill. Riley found themselves running with a small crew that operated around the Azlan, CAS, UCAS and the Pueblo Corporate Council Borders. Primarily involved in smuggling between these four countries, they occasionally pulled heist jobs, being back across the border before the Suit's could find them. Riley was never present with the team however, operating out of a Trinity of Drones and occasionally remote Piloting the Vehicles used by the crew. The discussion as to Riley's true identity often varied, from a Rogue AI from before the Purge, to the Ghost of a Technomancer haunting the Web, to a Super-Intelligent Canine that escaped from a Military Laboratory. R1L3Y, for what it was worth, would fuel these theories, often appearing as and quoting Pop Culture References, such as Darth Vader, Krypto the Superdog or HAL 9000. The most anyone ever saw Riley show affection, or attraction of any sort, was when they encountered a suitably advanced piece of Technology, which would often cause Riley to pause and admire it's design.



As one of the newer recruits signed up to the Watch, Arlee Anvilarm was one of a growing trend of Dwarven Women. Wearing Iron-heeled shoes (She welded them herself, thank-you-very-much.) and displaying a smooth and silky black beard, braided carefully with dark green ribbon, Arlee was thrilled to be assigned to the Forensics lab, where she worked with Cheery Littlebottom, one of the most famous Dwarven Women in Ankh-Morpork. It was only after several weeks, and numerous complaints, that Cheery took her to one side and explained it wasn't exactly womanly behavior to catcall and shout lewd comments to the Male dwarves as they were changing. Such comments, like, "Give us a Flex Stud!" and "That's a Beard I could run my fingers through!" Made some of the other Dwarves feel a little... objectified. It was, Cheery and Arlee decided, down to the fragility of the Male Psyche. Arlee was eventually promoted and assigned to her own Forensics Lab after she and several other recruits were able to uncover a plot to blow up the Patrician's Palace using Alchemically Primed Cabbages.

Knaight
2016-05-02, 05:00 PM
It matters because heirs. The couple has to produce valid children to cement who keeps X when the parents pass
That is why in the contract for money and land model marriages ending genetically in a dead end are worthless and abhorrent.

It's probably also worth observing that you described a pretty sanitized version of the property model. In a lot of them (speaking in a historical sense here) the woman is generally thought of as part of the property, and something like a same sex marriage in that context makes no sense, because there's no model for which partner is the property. While in a modern sense of traditional marriage the straight up person as property model is usually dropped in name, it still generally exists in a milder form.

ThinkMinty
2016-05-02, 05:36 PM
It's probably also worth observing that you described a pretty sanitized version of the property model. In a lot of them (speaking in a historical sense here) the woman is generally thought of as part of the property, and something like a same sex marriage in that context makes no sense, because there's no model for which partner is the property. While in a modern sense of traditional marriage the straight up person as property model is usually dropped in name, it still generally exists in a milder form.

This is what I was getting at when I said certain types of people are incapable of comprehending same-sex partnership at all, because they don't get the idea of marriage beyond the property model.

Honest Tiefling
2016-05-02, 05:53 PM
As one of the newer recruits signed up to the Watch, Arlee Anvilarm was one of a growing trend of Dwarven Women. Wearing Iron-heeled shoes (She welded them herself, thank-you-very-much.) and displaying a smooth and silky black beard, braided carefully with dark green ribbon, Arlee was thrilled to be assigned to the Forensics lab, where she worked with Cheery Littlebottom, one of the most famous Dwarven Women in Ankh-Morpork. It was only after several weeks, and numerous complaints, that Cheery took her to one side and explained it wasn't exactly womanly behavior to catcall and shout lewd comments to the Male dwarves as they were changing. Such comments, like, "Give us a Flex Stud!" and "That's a Beard I could run my fingers through!" Made some of the other Dwarves feel a little... objectified. It was, Cheery and Arlee decided, down to the fragility of the Male Psyche. Arlee was eventually promoted and assigned to her own Forensics Lab after she and several other recruits were able to uncover a plot to blow up the Patrician's Palace using Alchemically Primed Cabbages.


I may have to steal this for a campaign. For some reason, a very femininely dressed dwarf shouting lewd comments with potentially lethal iron-shoes (or so I assume, given...Dwarf.) at passing men amuses me greatly.

EnglishKitsune
2016-05-02, 07:25 PM
I may have to steal this for a campaign. For some reason, a very femininely dressed dwarf shouting lewd comments with potentially lethal iron-shoes (or so I assume, given...Dwarf.) at passing men amuses me greatly.

Feel free too, as is the case with many of Sir Terry*'s Dwarven Women, they tended to keep to traditional Dwarven Styles, so lot's of Leather/Metal Armour, but instead of trousers it was a Plated Skirt, heeled Iron Boots, braiding their beards, wearing eyeliner and nail varnish etc etc.

Really in some ways The Discworld Dwarves are one of my favorite versions of that particular race. Right up there with his version of Elves actually.

May he rest in peace, in the Desert Black under the Endless Night.

illyahr
2016-05-02, 07:27 PM
In a thread about the sexual/identity preferences of fictional characters, I'm trying to wrap my head around alchemically primed cabbages.

Honest Tiefling
2016-05-02, 07:28 PM
Feel free too, as is the case with many of Sir Terry*'s Dwarven Women, they tended to keep to traditional Dwarven Styles, so lot's of Leather/Metal Armour, but instead of trousers it was a Plated Skirt, heeled Iron Boots, braiding their beards, wearing eyeliner and nail varnish etc etc.

Really in some ways The Discworld Dwarves are one of my favorite versions of that particular race. Right up there with his version of Elves actually.

May he rest in peace, in the Desert Black under the Endless Night.

I've read the books, so I am well aware. :smallwink: I just assumed that such leather and iron had a bit of a feminine flair, but could still kill people and be used as armor. I'm thinking a metal reinforced corset for the adaption...

EnglishKitsune
2016-05-02, 08:07 PM
In a thread about the sexual/identity preferences of fictional characters, I'm trying to wrap my head around alchemically primed cabbages.

I'll make a write up and post it in a new thread. It was a relatively short campaign, but definitely had some memorable moments.

goto124
2016-05-03, 02:31 AM
Technically, Xeno just means alien as in "very different from your norm"; so people attracted to a different ethnicities or nationalities than themselves technically qualify.

In a fantasy world with many wildly different species, a different ethnicity or nationality probably isn't 'different' enough to be considered in-universe as 'xenosexual'.


Me: You barge into the room and see a naked, mountain-sized woman built of solid muscle.

I first thought the mountain-sized woman was literally a giant the size of a mountain, which is a lot more than 7 feet tall.

Thus me thinking "How large is that room? How did the PC just barge in when the door is so huge?"


By property model, I meant the one where the wife is property of the husband, transferred over from her dad.

I'm now thinking of a drow culture where the husband is property of the wife, transferred over from his mom.

"I now pronounce you woman and husband."

I also seem to remember an elven culture where anyone would become property, whether you were male or female or non-binary. Mostly based on how politically powerful your family is compared to the other family you're marrying into.

90sMusic
2016-05-03, 12:48 PM
Doesn't and shouldn't matter 99% of the time.

You are there to slay monsters and collect money basically, not to start relationships. I mean that "can" happen during an adventure and so on but it isn't super common. As long as they aren't in your face about it and telling you about it constantly and bringing it up all the time in conversation, I don't really care. But if you start mentioning it constantly you're coming off as either insecure or an attention-seeker of varying sort.

Your sexuality shouldn't represent who you are as a person anymore than your ethnicity or religion should. It's one tiny aspect of the bigger whole and any character who is basically "the gay guy" is not a good character because they are one dimensional. Now if you are friends with a rogue for a long time and during some downtime in between adventures he says he is going to go back to his home town to spend some time with his boyfriend or something like that, I think that is a more acceptable character because their sexuality isn't their only trait, it is just a small piece.

Anytime people want to be in your face about virtually anything, not limited to sexuality, it irritates me. I've seen games on Roll20 who were looking for members and in the description they say the players themselves are transgender and things like that and I read it and I think to myself, "Why do I care? Why do I need to know this? It has no impact on the game at all." And I avoid such games because I feel like people who just advertise themselves under certain labels want to fully embody those labels in any way they can and make it the biggest part of their identity and who they are. People just aren't interesting like that, be it NPCs or players.

If you have a couple of NPCs that happen to be in a same sex relationship or whatever, that's fine, as long as there is more to them than the one thing. But if those NPCs exist for no other reason than to have a same sex relationship, it is pointless and feels like forced fluff.

I think having characters like this is a little more difficult to work with because the people who make them want everyone to KNOW that they are gay, but they try so hard to make it known it becomes their defining characteristic which leads to a boring character. If they can work it in as a subtle fact-of-life or whatever, I think its great.

As for me, I nearly always play straight, but when i'm playing a succubus i'm bisexual. I mean she will have sex with literally anything if it gains her something from doing so. The funny thing is, even as a succubus her sexuality isn't the biggest part of her character or identity. Some people just want a gay character so bad they wayyyy overdo it.

Knaight
2016-05-03, 02:16 PM
Doesn't and shouldn't matter 99% of the time.

You are there to slay monsters and collect money basically, not to start relationships. I mean that "can" happen during an adventure and so on but it isn't super common. As long as they aren't in your face about it and telling you about it constantly and bringing it up all the time in conversation, I don't really care. But if you start mentioning it constantly you're coming off as either insecure or an attention-seeker of varying sort.

Slay monsters and collect money is a specific type of game, and it's far from the only one.

Mastikator
2016-05-03, 03:41 PM
Doesn't and shouldn't matter 99% of the time.

You are there to slay monsters and collect money basically, not to start relationships. I mean that "can" happen during an adventure and so on but it isn't super common. As long as they aren't in your face about it and telling you about it constantly and bringing it up all the time in conversation, I don't really care. But if you start mentioning it constantly you're coming off as either insecure or an attention-seeker of varying sort.

Your sexuality shouldn't represent who you are as a person anymore than your ethnicity or religion should. It's one tiny aspect of the bigger whole and any character who is basically "the gay guy" is not a good character because they are one dimensional. Now if you are friends with a rogue for a long time and during some downtime in between adventures he says he is going to go back to his home town to spend some time with his boyfriend or something like that, I think that is a more acceptable character because their sexuality isn't their only trait, it is just a small piece.

Anytime people want to be in your face about virtually anything, not limited to sexuality, it irritates me. I've seen games on Roll20 who were looking for members and in the description they say the players themselves are transgender and things like that and I read it and I think to myself, "Why do I care? Why do I need to know this? It has no impact on the game at all." And I avoid such games because I feel like people who just advertise themselves under certain labels want to fully embody those labels in any way they can and make it the biggest part of their identity and who they are. People just aren't interesting like that, be it NPCs or players.

If you have a couple of NPCs that happen to be in a same sex relationship or whatever, that's fine, as long as there is more to them than the one thing. But if those NPCs exist for no other reason than to have a same sex relationship, it is pointless and feels like forced fluff.

I think having characters like this is a little more difficult to work with because the people who make them want everyone to KNOW that they are gay, but they try so hard to make it known it becomes their defining characteristic which leads to a boring character. If they can work it in as a subtle fact-of-life or whatever, I think its great.

As for me, I nearly always play straight, but when i'm playing a succubus i'm bisexual. I mean she will have sex with literally anything if it gains her something from doing so. The funny thing is, even as a succubus her sexuality isn't the biggest part of her character or identity. Some people just want a gay character so bad they wayyyy overdo it.

Ok this is an interesting rant, one that I take umbrage with.

Your ethnicity does matter, NPCs may treat the character differently, it may limit where the character is allowed to be.
Your religion does matter, it informs your morality and decision making.
Your gender matters, it determines what is and what isn't appropriate behavior for members of your culture. (and by the way culture matters, a lot)

I can't speak for online tabletop RPGs, but in meatspace it is important to stress those aspects of your character, it's literally the only way to communicate who your character is to the other players and the DM. And this is in fact crucial information that they need for roleplaying.

"But if those NPCs exist for no other reason than to have a same sex relationship" This I agree with, tokenism is unnecessary and it's totally fine not to represent every demographic. Considering the very limited attention span it would only take away from the protagonists and the plot

"I think having characters like this is a little more difficult to work with because the people who make them want everyone to KNOW that they are gay, but they try so hard to make it known it becomes their defining characteristic which leads to a boring character. If they can work it in as a subtle fact-of-life or whatever, I think its great." Now this I disagree with, in my experience being subtle doesn't work, people don't always pay close attention and if you're not super obvious they will occasionally miss important facts about your character. Facts that will influence how they see him. Any player can only be expected to remember 3-4 character traits of your character, and new ones will make them forget old ones, I've seen this happen. So if you have a character who is extremely gay you will have to remind everyone every once in a while.

ThinkMinty
2016-05-03, 04:59 PM
I think having characters like this is a little more difficult to work with because the people who make them want everyone to KNOW that they are gay, but they try so hard to make it known it becomes their defining characteristic which leads to a boring character. If they can work it in as a subtle fact-of-life or whatever, I think its great.

I think you might notice it more than when people play straight characters.


Anytime people want to be in your face about virtually anything, not limited to sexuality, it irritates me.

You're equally offended by people playing up their heteronormative sexuality as you are by people playing up sexualities that are otherwise, I imagine. Fair's fair, after all. Has absolutely nothing to do at all with any personal discomfort you may or may not have towards certain orientations on your part, regardless of possible context where you're only complaining about certain expressions of sexuality in games rather than the expression of sexuality in games itself.

Jeff the Green
2016-05-03, 05:49 PM
It could even be less than that. I used comparatively overt examples, but to use a real world example, something like "A coworker has a picture of his wife and kids on his desk" qualifies as sexuality coming up. A change in presentation between two photos would also be more than enough to count as gender identity coming up.

Yep. This is, incidentally, why it's so galling when someone gripes about gay people "rubbing their noses" in their sexuality at work. I'm of an age where my friends are constantly rubbing their heterosexuality in my face by posting wedding photos or baby pictures on my Facebook timeline.

And maybe your games are different, but flirting comes up on occasion in my games. (Part of it is that I play a fair amount of PbP, where it's less awkward.) It's a significant part of how people interact with each other and it seems fake to leave it out. It also affects how my character is going to think of and remember NPCs: is it the hot serving wench and menacing bouncer, the deliciously dangerous bouncer and the serving wench who will have back problems in a couple years, or some split difference? Sexuality is a small portion of one's personality, but how it affects our relationships is not insignificant.


(I was using "rubbing it in my face" ironically; I don't expect anyone to hide the fact that they're married or love someone, and it's bigoted to expect gay people to do so.)

I'm just going to leave this here.

90sMusic
2016-05-03, 06:30 PM
You're equally offended by people playing up their heteronormative sexuality as you are by people playing up sexualities that are otherwise, I imagine. Fair's fair, after all. Has absolutely nothing to do at all with any personal discomfort you may or may not have towards certain orientations on your part, regardless of possible context where you're only complaining about certain expressions of sexuality in games rather than the expression of sexuality in games itself.

It would irritate me if being hetero and sexual were the only defining characteristics of a character. I have never known a character to go around introducing himself to everyone as being a straight male and really going out of his way to point it out at every opportunity. That is the kind of thing that irks me. I just prefer characters to have more depth and complexity instead of being caricatures defined by one thing. Unfortunately that ends up being the case for anything that doesn't fit the normal standard. They become one dimensional representations of something. It works for sitcoms I guess but usually I like my partymembers to put more thought into their characters.

I guess a good example of a gay character I like would be Dumbledore. He has a little history with another man in his youth, and the author confirmed it, but the books never really went into much detail about it because it wasn't important at all. Dumbledore had way more important things going on to worry about trying to get into relationships with people. Professor McGonagall was never really stated to be one way or the other, but it was the same situation. It wasn't important to the story and it didn't matter, there were more important things going on. My complaint is when people try to push something irrelevant like that forward and make a major plot point out of it. I mean I guess it "could" be a major plotpoint in a world that was very anti-gay and there were serious consequences just as there would be consequences for being a race with a strong negative stigma or something along those lines, but I feel like that kind of setting and story might hit a little too close to home for some people to really want to do that.

I mean what sexuality am I in real life? Or even what gender? You don't know, because it doesn't matter. Maybe I say something about my boyfriend at some point and you can guess. Or perhaps I mention my girlfriend and you wonder. But i've always been opposed to the whole in-your-face walking up to people saying "I AM X", regardless of what it is. Matter of fact, im playing a game right now where one of the players can turn into a dragon and he is constantly walking around as a dragon drawing attention to himself over it and he has to continually explain basically his entire life story to every random NPC we encounter just to try to excuse his presence there. I mean maybe technically he's not doing anything wrong, and he obviously enjoys playing his character that way, but I just dont like that kind of stuff. I find it tedius hearing them say the same things over and over to everyone we meet, but when characters like that INSIST on telling their life stories to everyone just to get it out there to as many people as possible, it's just annoying to me. I told him he should just get a magical card that gives that speech every time someone asks him so we dont have to spend so much time on it. That is the kind of thing I dont like.

Unless you're planning on having highly sexually charged adventures, I don't think your sexuality should really ever even come up because it just flat out doesn't matter when you're doing quests, saving people, or whatever else you do in your games that isn't explicit. I just find far too many people want to yell it from the rooftops when they have a gay character and it just seems pointless to me. It's taking away from actual character development from everyone for the one person to just focus on that one aspect of their character as their only "thing". As I said, one-dimensional.

That's all im saying really, it's just a very limited set of circumstances where sexuality even comes up naturally so if you have a player who really wants that out there, it becomes borderline disruptive for them to assert it out there constantly so you dont forget. It turns an otherwise interesting character into a one-dimensional one simply because they go around exclaiming "im gay" so much, it's all you ever think about when discussing the character. If they worked it in with subtle methods from time to time as part of actually building and developing the character that is wonderful, but when they want to tell everyone they pass on the street it becomes taxing and unfortunately that is more often than not the reality.

This is actually reminding me of a guy I played with a while back who had an unusual character who apparently had no genitals of any kind. It wasn't really a hot topic of discussion amongst the adventuring party as you can imagine. The only reason we found out was at some point a couple of months into the adventure, the rogue in our party wanted to kick him in the groin to sicken him for a moment because he was insulted. That is when we found out there was nothing there. He never told us and we never had any reason to know before that moment and when it happened we were all rather surprised, especially the rogue. But that is the difference. I think a character can have any number of traits or quirks or characteristics and they all increase the depth and complexity of a character, but when you have something that largely doesn't matter in an adventure such as your sexuality it very, very rarely comes up but because those players made their character gay its like they hate the fact you dont know it so they want to go out of their way to remind you all the time because it doesn't occur naturally.

I dunno, maybe im not making myself clear. It's not all that important anyway. :P I do love my succubus though. She has made it very clear she has no preferences one way or the other but it still doesn't define her entire character. The fact she is a lying, manipulative B-word might though. And soooo evil.

ThinkMinty
2016-05-03, 07:54 PM
It would irritate me if being hetero and sexual were the only defining characteristics of a character. I have never known a character to go around introducing himself to everyone as being a straight male and really going out of his way to point it out at every opportunity. That is the kind of thing that irks me. I just prefer characters to have more depth and complexity instead of being caricatures defined by one thing. Unfortunately that ends up being the case for anything that doesn't fit the normal standard. They become one dimensional representations of something. It works for sitcoms I guess but usually I like my partymembers to put more thought into their characters.

I guess a good example of a gay character I like would be Dumbledore. He has a little history with another man in his youth, and the author confirmed it, but the books never really went into much detail about it because it wasn't important at all. Dumbledore had way more important things going on to worry about trying to get into relationships with people. Professor McGonagall was never really stated to be one way or the other, but it was the same situation. It wasn't important to the story and it didn't matter, there were more important things going on. My complaint is when people try to push something irrelevant like that forward and make a major plot point out of it. I mean I guess it "could" be a major plotpoint in a world that was very anti-gay and there were serious consequences just as there would be consequences for being a race with a strong negative stigma or something along those lines, but I feel like that kind of setting and story might hit a little too close to home for some people to really want to do that.

You like your gays in the closet. Got it.

Dumbledore's possibly romantic subtext with Grindlewald makes their eventual falling out and epic wizard duel for the fate of Magical Europe a bit more poignant and tragic though. They coulda been lovers, but no, Grindlewald had to go and be an imperious Dark Wizard-ing *******.

Knaight
2016-05-03, 08:07 PM
I guess a good example of a gay character I like would be Dumbledore. He has a little history with another man in his youth, and the author confirmed it, but the books never really went into much detail about it because it wasn't important at all. Dumbledore had way more important things going on to worry about trying to get into relationships with people. Professor McGonagall was never really stated to be one way or the other, but it was the same situation. It wasn't important to the story and it didn't matter, there were more important things going on. My complaint is when people try to push something irrelevant like that forward and make a major plot point out of it. I mean I guess it "could" be a major plotpoint in a world that was very anti-gay and there were serious consequences just as there would be consequences for being a race with a strong negative stigma or something along those lines, but I feel like that kind of setting and story might hit a little too close to home for some people to really want to do that.

Harry Potter is a good example here, but not for your reasons. Just off the top of my head, we see character sexuality in these contexts:

Harry has a dating life.
Other main characters have a dating life.
Every so often, some people will be snogging in the hallway.
There's a major dance in Book 4, with several chapters of pre-dance dating type stuff.
We see a number of adult characters who are married.
We get to know at least the basic details of a number of characters parents - Harry, Ron, Hermione, Luna, Neville, Malfoy, the list goes on, though it gets less prominent.
We see a decent amount of Sirius's family history in the genealogy they keep, the photos, etc. in that one scene where his black sheep status is shown by him having been systematically purged from the records.
We see characters swooning over hot quiddich players, classmates, visiting students from other schools, etc.
Rita Skeeter mentions various clandestine affairs and the like, and the whole ladybug form thing of hers is there as evidence that she isn't making things up so much as methodically spying on people without appearing to.
There's the whole thing with Hagrid and the other half giant, where Hagrid is very happy to have found another person like him, they have a bit of a fling, he mentions being a half giant, and it turns out she's in denial.


I haven't read the books for years, and I'm still able to compile a pretty sizeable list. Some of them are at least significant plot points, such as the number of people who adored Cedric Digory and were distraught because of him being brutally murdered. Some are still there, but mentioned in passing. Essentially none of them see any complaints, especially not the background ones. In short, any number of them could have been changed, and without double standards in play none would qualify as "people try to push something irrelevant like that forward and make a major plot point out of it".

Milo v3
2016-05-03, 08:25 PM
You like your gays in the closet. Got it.
That's a rather harsh misrepresentation. I think it'd be more accurate to say he likes his characters talk about relevant things.

90sMusic
2016-05-03, 08:44 PM
You like your gays in the closet. Got it.

Well if "In the Closet" and "Stereotypical caricature that constantly announces their sexuality" are the only two options, then I guess so. In actuality I like the middle ground so they are, you know, more like real people. But that is just me I guess... I prefer characters to act and behave more like actual human beings than stereotypes.

As far as the Harry potter comparison, there are big differences there. Dating, relationships, and so on are basically only ever mentioned in and around the time of one of their dances where they feel forced (by peer pressure, expectation, etc) to get a date. Dating was kind of a minor afterthought in the story and ive actually heard a lot of people complain (since people obviously complain about anything, this thread being more evidence of that :P) that there was far too little sex at the school as they were a bunch of teenagers with very little supervision and thrown together in more or less the same living areas. People said it wasn't very realistic in those terms, but obviously that sort of thing was left out of the book because it's not what it was about. It wasn't a teeny bopper "i fall in love the rest of my life with the first person who looks handsome" romance book.

But anywho, there's a couple folks that seem way oversensitive to have any kind of discussion here and seem to be looking for reasons to get upset, and my understanding was the thread was just kind of asking for input or opinions and that sort of thing and not to actually engage in much debate here, so i'll stop posting here to end all the pointless back and forth. Im also mildly concerned about the people who think sexuality should be a major part in their characters' existence... Makes me wonder what sorts of games they play in. I have gone entire campaigns before without taking any action based on sexuality, even as little as saying "that guy is cute". For it to be such a huge deal to some folks is a little worrisome. But to each their own I suppose. Everyone is into something different and that's just fine.

My bottom line is basically this: A character can have any kind of characteristic you want it to have and it shouldn't really hurt a game, just don't let one trait or one small piece of the whole come to dominate the entire character or it becomes a very dull character. Even a guy who is out for vengeance and wanting to hunt down the people who killed his family has other aspects to his personality and other things going on in his life. As long as you don't dwell overly so on something, it's fine. Just don't fall into that trap.

ThinkMinty
2016-05-03, 10:27 PM
That's a rather harsh misrepresentation. I think it'd be more accurate to say he likes his characters talk about relevant things.

There's a very prevalent double standard in play, though. It's only "irrelevant" enough to complain about when they're not straight characters.

Knaight
2016-05-03, 10:59 PM
But anywho, there's a couple folks that seem way oversensitive to have any kind of discussion here and seem to be looking for reasons to get upset, and my understanding was the thread was just kind of asking for input or opinions and that sort of thing and not to actually engage in much debate here, so i'll stop posting here to end all the pointless back and forth. Im also mildly concerned about the people who think sexuality should be a major part in their characters' existence... Makes me wonder what sorts of games they play in. I have gone entire campaigns before without taking any action based on sexuality, even as little as saying "that guy is cute". For it to be such a huge deal to some folks is a little worrisome. But to each their own I suppose. Everyone is into something different and that's just fine.

Ah, the old "jump out of a discussion via claiming that other people can't have one" gambit. Typical. As for these entire campaigns of yours, are you saying that you never so much as saw a family group? That's all it takes to qualify, and while I suppose there are some games so killing and loot focused that you never even see that much, I'd be surprised if they were at all common. Or, to borrow your phrasing "Im also mildly concerned about the people who think there should be no evidence of sexuality in their settings... Makes me wonder what sorts of games they play in. For it to be such a huge deal to some folks is a little worrisome".

That your response to your examples being discredited is this evasive nonsense is also particularly charming.

DJ Yung Crunk
2016-05-03, 11:02 PM
Well. For what it's worth, we made it five pages before the wheels came off and the car caught on fire.

ImNotTrevor
2016-05-03, 11:23 PM
There's a very prevalent double standard in play, though. It's only "irrelevant" enough to complain about when they're not straight characters.

He literally said that a character whose entire schtick was being "Token Straight Guy" would be annoying. But it doesn't happen often enough to be worth mentioning.

However, "Token Gay Guy" and "Token Pandemisexual Attack Helicopter" do happen. Those are bad. Why are they bad?

Because they are reductive and inaccurate caricatures and parodies meant to attract attention to how weird their weirdness is.

Good representations of a gay character:
Prosper from Rollplay's "Swan Song" series.
Rajani Van Dorn from the same series.

Why?

Prosper was openly gay, and had a husband back on his home planet. However, this came up so infrequently (because it so rarely mattered) that one of the players forgot the character's sexuality had been established at all and had a "Wait, husband? Prosper is married?" Moment. (Note that the problem is with Prosper being married, period. Not with being married to a dude.)

Edit: I feel like noting here that the reaction was blown up in-character for the sake of comedy, which led to the fantastic line "I didn't know you were gay, I just thought you were French!" Which is a joke, and the GM (who identifies as "not straight") found the whole exchange very funny. Because it was.

Rajani is an NPC played by the GM, and her being a lesbian comes up a bit more frequently but is still far from the most interesting thing about the character.

So I can understand the complaint.

The goal of equality is for all sexualities to receive the exact same "meh" non-reaction. Which for the most part, they do. Until someone presses the issue and makes it a big deal.

My reaction to a gay character is "meh." My reaction to a straight character is "meh." My reaction to a character who is So Straight that he walks around with a big Female symbol on hos chest and a shirt that says "Female Body Inspector" and goes around calling all the ladies hot and trying to get into their pants is "wtf?" My reaction to a character who is So Gay that he walks around with a big male symbol on his chest with a rainbow scarf and a super exaggerated "gay-lisp" and wears shorts that say "Open for business" across the butt is "wtf?"

Yes, I went to an extreme. But both are equally obnoxious about their sexualities.

Austin Powers is the shining beacon of being "annoyingly straight." Because he's a carciature. He's meant to be mocked. Do the same thing with a gay man and suddenly that's perfectly ok for a serious setting? A blatantly exaggerated caricature of a whole sexuality?

The hypocrisy is not ours.

Knaight
2016-05-03, 11:37 PM
Austin Powers is the shining beacon of being "annoyingly straight." Because he's a carciature. He's meant to be mocked. Do the same thing with a gay man and suddenly that's perfectly ok for a serious setting? A blatantly exaggerated caricature of a whole sexuality?

Nobody is advocating for this, despite repeated attempts to set this up as a strawman.

ImNotTrevor
2016-05-03, 11:40 PM
Nobody is advocating for this, despite repeated attempts to set this up as a strawman.

Except for the big dogpile on the guy who essentially said "I dont like Token Gay Guy characters."

Which is OK so long as they're Gay, apparently.

Edit: (or at least, disliking Token Gay Guy characters means you're a homophobe, and not just sick of Token X Characters.)

Knaight
2016-05-03, 11:52 PM
Except for the big dogpile on the guy who essentially said "I dont like Token Gay Guy characters."

If you completely ignore the cultural context, sure. If you put it back in though, that's not what it looks like. For instance, there's the praise of Dumbledore as a "good" gay character, using a character who's only gay because of post publication retcons in a series chock full of straight characters playing it up. There's the assumption that if a character is gay it will be obvious, which goes into that tired old trope about it being "rubbed in people's faces". There's the assumption that a character being gay can never be legitimately relevant to the story, despite the presence of story after story where characters being straight ends up relevant.

illyahr
2016-05-03, 11:55 PM
And that is nowhere near what anyone has said in this thread. What everyone is trying to say is simply this: a character whose biggest defining feature is that he/she is gay is just as annoying as a character whose biggest defining feature is that he/she is straight. Sure it might come up, it might even be relevant on some occasions, but the fact that they can swing a sword or cast a spell is far more relevant and is usually all anyone cares about.

ImNotTrevor
2016-05-04, 12:06 AM
If you completely ignore the cultural context, sure. If you put it back in though, that's not what it looks like. For instance, there's the praise of Dumbledore as a "good" gay character, using a character who's only gay because of post publication retcons in a series chock full of straight characters playing it up. There's the assumption that if a character is gay it will be obvious, which goes into that tired old trope about it being "rubbed in people's faces". There's the assumption that a character being gay can never be legitimately relevant to the story, despite the presence of story after story where characters being straight ends up relevant.

Here is the measuring stick:

Would the ending of Harry Potter's story been significantly different if Ginny was actually Jerry and the kids in the final scene were adopted?

Would it be weird if NOTHING ELSE but the genders of his love interests was swapped? Would the story make less sense?

If no, that means his sexuality is not plot-critical. (Woopie)

If yes, his sexuality IS plot-critical.

Now, take any story wherein the point of the narrative is to explore the struggles of a specifically gay character and the SPECIFIC problems that arise from being Gay. I'm sure you can think of one. Now make that character straight, railing against a world where nobody understands her because she likes boys, even though nothing else about the world has changed.

The second character's sexuality IS plot critical.


Essentially, my opinion is this:

Some great characters are LGBT.
Having a character be LGBT does not autimatically make them great.

No one feature makes a character great. Relying on just one feature is lazy and ineffective, REGARDLESS of what that feature is, including being Gay, being Black, being Transgender, being White, being Straight, etc. No one single feature is sufficient to make me like your character, nor am I obligated to think a character is deep or special because he likes boys any more than I should because he likes girls. LGBT characters need the exact same attention to detail as straight ones. End of story.

Honest Tiefling
2016-05-04, 12:30 AM
I wonder if criticizing gay characters touched a nerve with some folk. I don't think the poster meant anything more then they tend to play hack n' slash games where it's largely irrelevant, which is fine. Swinging a sword is more important then how you swing in the bedroom in probably most table top games.

Just I've had a lot of experiences where others playing LGBT characters (or cross-playing) was a way for them to come out of the closet. I don't know if other's had the same experience, really. But surely people can see how people might get a little touchy with this?

Knaight
2016-05-04, 01:02 AM
Some great characters are LGBT.
Having a character be LGBT does not autimatically make them great.

No one feature makes a character great. Relying on just one feature is lazy and ineffective, REGARDLESS of what that feature is, including being Gay, being Black, being Transgender, being White, being Straight, etc. No one single feature is sufficient to make me like your character, nor am I obligated to think a character is deep or special because he likes boys any more than I should because he likes girls. LGBT characters need the exact same attention to detail as straight ones. End of story.

Again, there's no disagreement here. Nobody is saying that all LGBT characters are great, or deep, or special, or anything of the like. Nobody is saying that you can scrimp on detail because a character is LGBT. What we're saying is that a character being LGBT can be visible within a plot without it being either some sort of central conflict or extremely contrived, and that painting the sort of incidental sexuality that crops up all the time with straight characters as extremely contrived is a tactic to remove gay characters. Take the Lord of the Rings movies, specifically the character of Aragorn. There's a largely incidental arc with him and Arwen, which isn't critical to the movie. It adds to the character, but it's a side note to the journey to and war against Mordor. It also shows up, and it showing up is noncontroversial. Had Arwen been a male character instead, we'd be seeing howling about how the entirety of Aragorns character is that he's gay, and howling about how him being gay is irrelevant and thus the Aragorn-Arwen scenes should be cut, and whatever else.

That's the double standard. An incidental bit of characterization that is totally fine becomes an irrelevant detail pushing an agenda that needs to be eliminated. Similarly with Harry Potter, with Dumbledor the acceptable level of a character being gay is some extremely ambiguous subtext buried in their backstory and nothing else. Meanwhile the acceptable level for a character being straight (we'll use Harry here, but we've got lots of options) is them dating a number of people, the extended Harry-Ginny relationship, and the occasional notice taken of other characters. It's all incidental to the conflict between Harry and Voldemort. None of it serves a central plot purpose. It's just sort of there.

digiman619
2016-05-04, 01:57 AM
Essentially, my opinion is this:

Some great characters are LGBT.
Having a character be LGBT does not autimatically make them great.

No one feature makes a character great. Relying on just one feature is lazy and ineffective, REGARDLESS of what that feature is, including being Gay, being Black, being Transgender, being White, being Straight, etc. No one single feature is sufficient to make me like your character, nor am I obligated to think a character is deep or special because he likes boys any more than I should because he likes girls. LGBT characters need the exact same attention to detail as straight ones. End of story.

Bravo. This to me, needs to be shouted from the mountaintops because unless a character's preference is a key plot point, or the author is planning to hook him or her up in a hetero fashion, the vast majority of times, it's a nonissue. Were you planning on hooking up Steve and Suzie? No? Then it doesn't matter that he'd rather have John. Make it be an aspect of their character, you can even have it be an important aspect of their identity, but make sure it's just one aspect. A character with one note is always bad, regardless of what note it is.

ImNotTrevor
2016-05-04, 03:01 AM
Again, there's no disagreement here. Nobody is saying that all LGBT characters are great, or deep, or special, or anything of the like. Nobody is saying that you can scrimp on detail because a character is LGBT. What we're saying is that a character being LGBT can be visible within a plot without it being either some sort of central conflict or extremely contrived, and that painting the sort of incidental sexuality that crops up all the time with straight characters as extremely contrived is a tactic to remove gay characters.

When did we say anything other than "If a character's entire schtick is their sexuality, that is annoying?" All sexual info should be incidental. That's the goal.

The goal is not "Straight losers have 0 reaction and all gay couples in cinema get showered in adoration for being brave!" The point is to make having a character being gay not be see as "brave" but as being exactly as non-issue as being straight. (And guess what? When done tastefully, nobody complains at all. The lesbian lady in Jessica Jones? Nobody cares. Why? Because her being a lesbian was not her only feature. She was a dynamic character. A total sociopath who was also brutally effective at her job, and you weren't sure if she was admirable for helping Jessica or total scum for everything else she did. And nobody cared that she was a lesbian, even though the whole issue with her wife was a major plotpoint. Any issue with it was pretty small. (To the point that I as a fan of the show heard no commentary on it at all, but I'm sure you'd find it if you actively sought it out. You can find nearly anything you actively seek out on the web.)

That new show The Catch (which I only watch because a friend is in it) has a lesbian couple now and nobody thus far has raised an objection. It does feel a liiiittle bit clumsy and weird, but all of the romance on that show feels clumsy and weird, so that's not exactly breaking any rules.

For some reason the only show with a gay male couple I can think of is The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, but that doesn't really count because Titus Andromedon is SUPPOSED to be ridiculously, flamboyantly gay for the sake of comedy. (To the point of attempting to seduce a Nebraskan man by dressing like a sexy hillbilly with a bushel of corn.) And his boyfriend, I can't remember his name because I fell asleep while my wife was binge watching season 2 and missed about half of it. But I know she thinks they are very cute, and that the romance is well done.

Basically, these complaints just aren't happening as much as you claim, EXCEPT when it's legitimately irritating. (And when it is done poorly, why defend it?)

No one has said LGBT characters are bad. But what has been repeated is "Token, poorly done LGBT characters made to fill a 'gay quota' are annoying."

Because they don't feel interesting, they feel like cashing in or trying to not offend anyone via exclusion. Which doesn't actually help make more great LGBT characters, it just turns the whole thing into a joke like the Token Black Guy in horror movies. It's not a good thing, don't praise it. Call out the laziness.

I have never said anything contrary to that opinion.

To clarify, a gay character "rubbing it in our face" is usually trying to make it very obvious that the character is gay so that nobody forgets there is a gay character in this movie and isn't it so great that we put a gay character in this movie? Give us more money for putting a gay character in! You guys love those gays nowadays! LOOK HOW GAY HE IS! This movie is better because of this gay guy! Reminder: he's gay.

If it is THAT, then duh. Of course we'll be annoyed. It's annoying just to read. Gay people find it annoying and insulting. Don't try to insinuate that we're bad or on the wrong side of history for disliking obnoxious characters just because they're a certain KIND of obnoxious. That's BS.

Nobody has said that a character being LGBT is always bad. But a call for making sure your LGBT characters aren't obnoxious about it is ok. Characters in general shouldn't be obnoxious. People shouldn't be obnoxious. About anything, who you wanna bed included.

The fact that I have to have an extended argument to show that being obnoxious about a thing is annoying just baffles me.

goto124
2016-05-04, 03:50 AM
At times, the argument against gay characters seems to be "straightness is normal. But the moment someone's gay, that aspect automatically overshadows everything else about the character and makes the gay character one-dimensional and unbearable!"

Or rather, being told "don't make gay characters unless you made sure they aren't of that Camp Gay stereotype" implies there was a rather high chance of me creating Camp Gay stereotypes to begin with. It's like being told "you can't play female characters unless you can convince me she isn't a useless deadweight Damsel in Distress". Why would I create a useless PC, regardless of gender? Similarly, why did someone think that "creating a gay character", by default, means "creating a Camp Gay stereotype"?

To be fair, seems that much of mainstream media does play many gay characters as campy. Might also have to do with the culture of past players and GMs, who might have followed a pattern of playing Camp Gay stereotypes for nearly all gay characters. To use an analogy, there are GMs here who don't allow players to play characters of the opposite sex, after several horrible experiences with male players playing the 'stripper lesbain ninja' stereotype. If the otherwise wonderful and nice (this is why the GMs haven't left - said male players have zero issues with male PCs) culture one plays in has such issues, sometimes making accommodations is easier and better than moving away.

Knaight
2016-05-04, 03:51 AM
When did we say anything other than "If a character's entire schtick is their sexuality, that is annoying?" All sexual info should be incidental. That's the goal.
You didn't. 90sMusic put it in the subtext.


The goal is not "Straight losers have 0 reaction and all gay couples in cinema get showered in adoration for being brave!" The point is to make having a character being gay not be see as "brave" but as being exactly as non-issue as being straight. (And guess what? When done tastefully, nobody complains at all. The lesbian lady in Jessica Jones? Nobody cares. Why? Because her being a lesbian was not her only feature. She was a dynamic character. A total sociopath who was also brutally effective at her job, and you weren't sure if she was admirable for helping Jessica or total scum for everything else she did. And nobody cared that she was a lesbian, even though the whole issue with her wife was a major plotpoint. Any issue with it was pretty small. (To the point that I as a fan of the show heard no commentary on it at all, but I'm sure you'd find it if you actively sought it out. You can find nearly anything you actively seek out on the web.)
That's not the goal. We share a goal here. What we don't share is the ridiculous perception that "nobody complains at all". The internal Jessica Jones fanbase probably didn't care, but that's just because the people who did weren't predisposed to like Jessica Jones to begin with. Consider Bandana's line in passing where she mentions that she has some clothing and armor that fits Haley because it used to belong to an ex of hers. That saw a gigantic flamewar on this forum, because it was being called gratuitous, and excessive, and a whole bunch of other things. People were generally careful to avoid outright saying that OoTS shouldn't have gay characters, but the instant it did it was suddenly a matter of how it was bad for a whole host of reasons.

It should have been a complete non-issue, nobody should have batted an eyebrow. Instead we got tens of pages of borderline flame war, and that's here. With media in general, there's much worse.


To clarify, a gay character "rubbing it in our face" is usually trying to make it very obvious that the character is gay so that nobody forgets there is a gay character in this movie and isn't it so great that we put a gay character in this movie? Give us more money for putting a gay character in! You guys love those gays nowadays! LOOK HOW GAY HE IS! This movie is better because of this gay guy! Reminder: he's gay.
That might be how you use the term. It routinely gets used for stuff like "someone in the office has a picture of his husband on his desk" or "Someone outright asks about someone's wife/husband when seeing a marriage ring and gets corrected" or "In a public park full of people holding hands, one of the many pairs is a gay couple", and I don't just mean in movies; this gets directed at real people routinely.

goto124
2016-05-04, 03:59 AM
The double standard is that subtly showing one's non-hetero sexual orientation is considered "shoving in peoples' faces", because non-hetero sexuality is considered 'too special' in and of itself.

What would be a real "shoving in peoples' faces"? Camp Gay stereotypes. Or a movie that pauses the plot every 5 minutes to have its main character suffer gayngst or correct people on the gender of their lover. I'm not sure how often this sort of thing happens in the media... or RPG campaigns.

ThinkMinty
2016-05-04, 05:28 AM
For some reason the only show with a gay male couple I can think of is The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, but that doesn't really count because Titus Andromedon is SUPPOSED to be ridiculously, flamboyantly gay for the sake of comedy. (To the point of attempting to seduce a Nebraskan man by dressing like a sexy hillbilly with a bushel of corn.) And his boyfriend, I can't remember his name because I fell asleep while my wife was binge watching season 2 and missed about half of it. But I know she thinks they are very cute, and that the romance is well done.

Honestly, I thought Brian and Steve from The Sarah Silverman Program were well-done.


The double standard is that subtly showing one's non-hetero sexual orientation is considered "shoving in peoples' faces", because non-hetero sexuality is considered 'too special' in and of itself.

This is what I was getting at earlier. When it's a non-hetero sexuality (or even hetero-kink, to be honest), it's much more quickly relegated to the "shut up you special snowflake" pile.


What would be a real "shoving in peoples' faces"? Camp Gay stereotypes. Or a movie that pauses the plot every 5 minutes to have its main character suffer gayngst or correct people on the gender of their lover. I'm not sure how often this sort of thing happens in the media... or RPG campaigns.

As a moderately masculine heterosexual man, I am getting pretty tired of people conflating camp with bad. Ain't nothing wrong with camp, it's that people leap to camp=bad that's the problem. Might be lingering remnants of homophobia.

ImNotTrevor
2016-05-04, 06:14 AM
You didn't. 90sMusic put it in the subtext.
Subtext isn't quotable. Unless he said it, you have to imply that they meant it. That's your interpretation. Nothing more or less.



That's not the goal. We share a goal here. What we don't share is the ridiculous perception that "nobody complains at all". The internal Jessica Jones fanbase probably didn't care, but that's just because the people who did weren't predisposed to like Jessica Jones to begin with. Consider Bandana's line in passing where she mentions that she has some clothing and armor that fits Haley because it used to belong to an ex of hers. That saw a gigantic flamewar on this forum, because it was being called gratuitous, and excessive, and a whole bunch of other things. People were generally careful to avoid outright saying that OoTS shouldn't have gay characters, but the instant it did it was suddenly a matter of how it was bad for a whole host of reasons.

Excuse my mild exaggeration in stating something that might be implied to mean no one on the entire planet had an issue with it. (Which I later said probably isn't the case, but you'd have to go hunting to find it.)

Believe it or not I haven't read more than about 10 pages of OotS. I just like the forum. *shrug* I would ask how long ago this occured and how many people were doing the thumping about "Gay is bad" vs how many were telling them to shut their face, because it takes at least 2 to have an argument. And I'll bet that upon review it was maybe a small handful of very vocal complainers. (As is usually the case)


It should have been a complete non-issue, nobody should have batted an eyebrow. Instead we got tens of pages of borderline flame war, and that's here. With media in general, there's much worse.

I think that's both true and not true. With general media there's either barely a whisper or a huge asplosion of rage, and little in-between. Then again, the Stephen Universe fandom exploded on an artist for drawing one character in am unusually skinny fashion (or something) and created such a huge stink that the creator of the show called them out for being morons. The internet will get riled up about nearly anything, so unless the argument spills out of its initial battleground, I consider it a small issue. (Comparatively, 10 pages of forum flame is nothing when matched up with the #gamergate fiasco, which is a better example of widespread divisiveness. Which happens way less often.)



That might be how you use the term. It routinely gets used for stuff like "someone in the office has a picture of his husband on his desk" or "Someone outright asks about someone's wife/husband when seeing a marriage ring and gets corrected" or "In a public park full of people holding hands, one of the many pairs is a gay couple", and I don't just mean in movies; this gets directed at real people routinely.
People who use it like that are obviously misusing it to express discomfort. Which is fine. Tumblr has proven that everyone has a right to be offended by anything. Common sense tells us we get to ignore the idiots.


The double standard is that subtly showing one's non-hetero sexual orientation is considered "shoving in peoples' faces", because non-hetero sexuality is considered 'too special' in and of itself.
Uuuhhhh....aside from aforementioned professional offense-takers....who does this?



What would be a real "shoving in peoples' faces"? Camp Gay stereotypes. Or a movie that pauses the plot every 5 minutes to have its main character suffer gayngst or correct people on the gender of their lover. I'm not sure how often this sort of thing happens in the media... or RPG campaigns.

Media: a lot. Because it makes a quick buck. Advertisement and Movies don't define culture, they react to it. The first corporations to cash in on the changing winds get instant free PR points. It's stupid not to. They don't have to do it well. They just have to do it. (Because the majority of the public doesn't actually care.)

In RPG campaigns.... I've had a player who would occasionally throw out characters with a laundry list of labels and terms that the rest of us would promptly ignore, and so long as they didn't get snippy about the particulars of the laundry list, everything was fine and dandy. One of those characters became a running gag because of the initial discomfort among the group. (Basically it was a post-apocalyptic MtF transsexual prostitute who was VERY into flaunting her...special quality and skills between the sheets. It was quite awkward at first until they finally let on that the character was meant to be taken as somewhat ridiculous and everyone breathed a sigh of relief and the innuendos began to let fly as easily half of the puns in any given table. It was great, honestly.)
But outside of that one player? Not often.

I don't think the DEFAULT is "Token Campy LGBT Person" but I DO think it is a very easy pitfall when making a character like that, especially as a non-LGBT person. That, and it can come across as vaguely fetish-y if done wrong in another, creepier direction. (All fetish characters are icky. All of them. Teenage boys playing lesbians is probably among the most prevalent and awful of them all.)

I guess you could consider it a "How to play an LGBT Character" guide for us heteronormative cis-scum.

Step 1: Make a character in exactly the same way you would a straight one.

Step 2: At the last second, make them LGBT. Change nothing else (except changing spouses to be of the appropriate new sexes, etc.)

Tadah, you did it. And it won't be campy.


LGBT people playing LGBT people works out pretty well 99% of the time. It's when those dang heteros try to do it that things go sideways. (Fer reals)

goto124
2016-05-04, 07:20 AM
I made a rather feminine male character. He was hetero by default.

Then, after some rping, he became bisexual because I wanted him to be lovers with another male and another female character.

That's not stereotyping, right?


As a moderately masculine heterosexual man, I am getting pretty tired of people conflating camp with bad. Ain't nothing wrong with camp, it's that people leap to camp=bad that's the problem. Might be lingering remnants of homophobia.

It's the stereotype part that's bad.

illyahr
2016-05-04, 07:35 AM
As a moderately masculine heterosexual man, I am getting pretty tired of people conflating camp with bad. Ain't nothing wrong with camp, it's that people leap to camp=bad that's the problem. Might be lingering remnants of homophobia.

People are starting to get irritated with Camp Gays for the same reason that people are getting irritated with Drizz't clones. Not because there is anything bad with the concept itself but because it is so seriously overdone that we'd like some variety. I'd rather see Jarlaxle than Drizz't occasionally, but that doesn't mean I don't like Drizz't.

I have no issue with the Camp Gay concept as long as it isn't the only gay character I see portrayed. I actually surprised my gaming group last week, after having a realistic mix of SLGBT characters, by having them encounter a Camp Gay character. They loved him, even the straight players, because he was distinct from any other NPC they had met.

EnglishKitsune
2016-05-04, 08:08 AM
Uuuhhhh....aside from aforementioned professional offense-takers....who does this?

Speaking again as a Transwoman... Anyone, absolutely anyone. Less than a week ago I was confronted in the street by a man, with kids in tow, demanding if I was a Man or a Woman, I responded Woman, and he forced the issue, saying I had an adam's apple, and how he was confused. What right does a stranger have to comment on how I was dressed, let alone how I look? And yet this is something I deal with on a monthly, if not weekly basis.

Consider this in pure RPG terms, the Horny Bard has become a trope, a staple of Rpg games, a hetero-Male whose codpiece hits the floor faster than you can say "I roll for Seduction." Yet turn this around, make the Bard Gay, suddenly, he's hitting on every man in the village, would this offend 90smusic or be the kind of 1-dimensional person that offends? THAT is the issue here. I made a character, which I posted about earlier in this thread, that plays off this very issue. Arlee Anvilarm, a Dwarven Woman, who for all intents and purposes, acted exactly like a stereotypical bullish "Dude-bro." Hitting on men and making vulgar comments about their looks etc. It is a double standard that exists, whether or not you want to believe it.

My personal issue with 90sMusic original post is, rather than retell their own experiences, as the OP asked for, they started posting in a way which dictated and laid down flat that noone should use sexuality in RPG's. That is a very arrogant thing to say, it is up there with someone saying "You can't play a bard because bards are ****." Or even simpler "You are playing your character wrong*."

Now, in 90sMusic Campaigns, they can happily walk through room after room, being Murderhobo's and killing and looting, that is fine, that is their group's choice and one that works well. Saying that that applies to everyone is where people get offended, because suddenly you are labeling them without their consent, something I am all to familiar with I can assure you.

I personally, like my character's to have a bigger personality than it takes to swing a Shortsword. I like them to have Lives, and meanings, beyond killing and adventuring. this extends to and does include, sexuality, gender representation, and attraction to others. I am not saying everyone needs to go to these lengths to have an enjoyable campaign, because that'd make me as bad as 90sMusic's statement. But nevertheless it is how I like to play characters and I make this quite clear to GM's before I play a game.


LGBT people playing LGBT people works out pretty well 99% of the time. It's when those dang heteros try to do it that things go sideways. (Fer reals)

Can't tell if your being serious or joking or satirical in this, but quite simply, no, god no, again drawing on personal experience, some of the worst trans-phobic people I have had the misfortune to encounter were on the LGB spectrum. The only time I have been physically attacked, came from a Gay Male who shouted in my face after he punched me. I cannot repost exactly what he said, but it was along the lines of "A *bundle of sticks or gravy based meat product* like you is what's making us gays look bad! F**k off back home and die you *bundle of sticks or gravy based meat product*"

Now, with this in mind, consider what people have been saying here, that showing anything about yourself related to sexuality or such isn't important. It is endemic to a much wider, and more serious issue, outside of playing a tabletop game. We live in a society where, even people who are different, will beat up and degrade others who are more different for "making them look different." Consider that, seriously consider it, and then wonder why I will fight tooth and nail to play my characters the way I want to, social "norms" aside, because there are Dragons in the sky, magic at my fingertips, and the mayor is an athletic man with a damn fine ass and a large codpiece. I am going to flirt with him because that fits my characters type. And because it is a game and botched roll doesn't end up with me in the hospital being treated for a broken nose and concussion for choosing to wear a dress and feel comfortable with myself for one night.


*NOTE: Playing your character wrong DOES NOT EQUAL playing a character Badly. It means that the person saying the phrase actually means: I wouldn't play the character that way so I don't see why anyone else would either. Just for clarification.

goto124
2016-05-04, 08:58 AM
I now need to meet a gay BardTM.

EnglishKitsune
2016-05-04, 10:56 AM
I now need to meet a gay BardTM.

I seem to be inspiring that feeling in a lot of people nowadays. Kind of reinforces the fact that yes, these characters very definitely DO have their places in RPGs. :smalltongue:

Honest Tiefling
2016-05-04, 11:40 AM
I now need to meet a gay BardTM.

Not gay, but once the dang bard in Talisman won the game because he'd snagged both the Prince and the Princess once. Clearly an OP sexuality!

And here's a question: If those who rally against having overly gay characters in the game are simply doing that, what level of gaying it up is too much?

DJ Yung Crunk
2016-05-04, 11:42 AM
I now need to meet a gay BardTM.

If bi ones count, the campaign I'm running right now has one.

YossarianLives
2016-05-04, 12:20 PM
Well. For what it's worth, we made it five pages before the wheels came off and the car caught on fire.
Frankly, I'm surprised we made it this far.

DJ Yung Crunk
2016-05-04, 01:07 PM
Frankly, I'm surprised we made it this far.

I figured here, of all places, it wouldn't be a hot button topic.

illyahr
2016-05-04, 02:31 PM
And here's a question: If those who rally against having overly gay characters in the game are simply doing that, what level of gaying it up is too much?

It's not the having of "overly gay" characters, it's that this becomes their defining quality. I've played everything from asexual to flamboyant pansexual but this was only ever a single aspect of the character. They were more than their sexuality and I think that is the point we are trying to convey. A person should be more than their sexual identity or orientation and so should a character.

EnglishKitsune
2016-05-04, 05:32 PM
And here's a question: If those who rally against having overly gay characters in the game are simply doing that, what level of gaying it up is too much?

Asking this is a bit of a minefield, due to it's opinion based nature, it's like saying "No Powergaming" But where is the line drawn then? Obviously there is a point where it is powergaming, but the exact line is incredibly blurry and varies from person to person.


It's not the having of "overly gay" characters, it's that this becomes their defining quality. I've played everything from asexual to flamboyant pansexual but this was only ever a single aspect of the character. They were more than their sexuality and I think that is the point we are trying to convey. A person should be more than their Sexual/Gender1 identity or orientation and so should a character.

I agree with both of these quotes, just to be clear, but I want to go into a bit more depth on it. (As I am actually quite interested in this as a topic.)

Sadly I know far far to many real life people who have a one dimensional Personality. It's sadly part of life. Especially LGBT people, as being repressed/hidden for so long DOES make you want to shout from a rooftop. When your whole life is spent in hiding, that moment when you are finally safe to be yourself can make you broadcast it in no uncertain terms to everyone. Other people use it as a shield, showing only one side of themselves so that they don't show the other sides. Consider other such people like Vegans/Vegetarians, Various Religous Types, Political types etc etc. Sure, they may have more sides to them, they could a D20 or a D100, but they will often only ever show one side. In the inverse it is similar to how some people will never show others a certain side, E.G. "Boys don't cry." Which lead to even more problems when people do show said sides.

However, really, blaming people who show what they want of themselves is a bad behavior to start with. They2 are blaming someone for showing a side that They2 personally don't like. They2 have their boundaries, however, They2 often overstep themselves when their Boundaries cross into another Persons. This is sadly why we now have to deal with the hot topics of Gender Bathroom Laws, Criminalization of Homosexuality in certain Countries. Even the ridiculous Idea of a "Gay/Trans Panic Defense." as a genuine thing in numerous Legal Systems. And this is in REAL LIFE.

Another good look at it is to compare "flat characters" to "Round Characters." A theory that is explored in the video I'll link to below. Even if it is about Video Game RPGS it can still easily apply to TTGs. So in TTG you have a group of "round characters", normally 3-4 sometimes much larger. These are the PC's. They bounce around the flat characters, the NPC's. However, they also bounce around each other, and the few "Round" Characters the DM does add. Bad Guys, Allies, etc etc. This limits how many sides each character reasonably should have. To prevent spotlight stealing. So if someone chooses their Gender/Sexuality as one of those sides, that's a choice they have made as to that character it IS that important to them. To that person/character their gender identity/attraction is a defining trait.

illyahr hit the nail on the head when they said:
"A person should be more than Sexual/Gender1 Identity or Orientation"
Should be being the most operative point, again, in real life, people should be a lot of things, kind, open, accepting, etc etc. However, this is rarely the case. There are, again, some people I know who define themselves and others by their sexuality, and to these people it is of great importance and central to their, in the kindest way possible, imperfect lives. It is, as mentioned above, a shield, a coping mechanism. Now I'm not saying games should be all gritty and realistic, that'd be boring, give me my Celestial Alicorn in Golden Dragonscale Horse Armor any day and I'll be over the rainbow to introduce those Carebears to a 3d6 sneak attack bonus... But at the same time, to avoid characters being flat, they generally need flaws. To the point where some TTG systems have this as a core mechanic. (The main one that comes to mind is the Cortex system, and I believe Shadowrun uses a similar feature too from memory.) The game must have conflict, have drama, have *problems* that the heroes deal with, whoever said those problems always had to come in the form of 2d6 Goblin Raiders?



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3QpXqO3lZY

I added Gender Identity because it is a very important part of this discussion, without it, you are merely Discussing LGB, leaving the Trans-people floating in the wind, or worse, thinking that a Transperson's desire to change gender is entirely sexual in nature. It isn't, I can assure you.

I use Them very cautiously, as it has a vagueness and implications to it I generally try to avoid, similar to how you often hear. "You know what People Say..." I've never met these People, neither have you, they are a People in Potentia, gray shapes formed by ideology and hearsay. So let me try and clarify who "They" are.
Note this might get a bit wibbly wobbly philosophy.

They are people, (Not "The People" however.) They live their own lives, and generally don't bother others. Or so they think. Occasionally, They do, or say something, which impacts on and degrades, another person's quality of life. Some do it more than others. Some do it Deliberately, other's don't. Some do it trying to help, other's do it intending to put us down. In describing this, in blaming Them for these actions, I am One of Them. Because they ARE us. All of Us. But it's easier to think of Us as Them because that distances Them from Us. It is a tactic used a lot nowadays by lots of various people. It dehumanizes a type of people to make other's feel better. The only way to solve this, to stop Us from being Them, is to make people realize I am Them as you are Them as you are me and we are all together. Coo Coo Cachoo...

Honest Tiefling
2016-05-04, 06:43 PM
Asking this is a bit of a minefield, due to it's opinion based nature, it's like saying "No Powergaming" But where is the line drawn then? Obviously there is a point where it is powergaming, but the exact line is incredibly blurry and varies from person to person.

I know it is a minefield, and I know it varies from person to person. However, this entire thread is one of subjectivity and opinion. And honestly once the gay word comes in, it's already a minefield. I am curious as to what some people consider 'shoving down our throats' and what are 'humorous quips'.

Zale
2016-05-04, 06:45 PM
As a gay man, I can't help but feel a little weird about the complaints on "Gayness being a defining characteristic", because I consider my sexuality to be a fairly important part of my identity.

If I were straight, I'd be a very different person. If I were a character, my entire backstory would suddenly not make any sense at all.

There's this spectrum of characterization: On one hand you have the cardboard cut-out gay stereotype and on the other you have a character for whom their sexuality (Or gender identity) is just a tiny post-it note stuck to them.

I'm not terribly enthused by either, really. The far end of both tend to produce characters who I can never really emphasize with. The first isn't a person, but a stereotype. The second is someone who is totally unimpacted by their sexuality at all- which I can't relate to at all.

It's kind of like saying that someone is an amazing baker, then having nothing in their backstory or behavior that ever indicates that they bake; never bringing it up over the course of the story- not even as a tiny side-note.

And, to me, that just ends up feeling more like a token gay than the campiest gay character ever.

On another note, Dumbledore as your model gay character? Please.

Dumbledore's "outing" struck me as more of a publicity stunt by someone who didn't want to risk her book series writing a gay character (Understandable, the south already thought it was witchcraft, an openly gay character would have sank it); then saying, after the book series is established and safe, that this character is gay! Isn't that progressiive?

I'd take the campiest, loudest, most theater loving character over someone who was pronounced gay after the end of the book series.

Honest Tiefling
2016-05-04, 06:50 PM
Dumbledore's "outing" struck me as more of a publicity stunt by someone who didn't want to risk her book series writing a gay character (Understandable, the south already thought it was witchcraft, an openly gay character would have sank it); then saying, after the book series is established and safe, that this character is gay! Isn't that progressiive?

I'd take the campiest, loudest, most theater loving character over someone who was pronounced gay after the end of the book series.

Yeah, when I first heard about Dumbledore, it made me regret ever buying the books when I was younger. I think the reason he was never out with it was better explained later on, but one should not have to hide their gayness in order to be considered a character or non-distracting to the plot. If this is the level that others are comfortable with, I would have to politely ask them to leave my gaming table.

ThinkMinty
2016-05-04, 07:58 PM
I'd take the campiest, loudest, most theater loving character over someone who was pronounced gay after the end of the book series.

Word of Gay (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WordOfGay) is just the worst.


To use an analogy, there are GMs here who don't allow players to play characters of the opposite sex, after several horrible experiences with male players playing the 'stripper lesbain ninja' stereotype.

Now I want to play a stripper lesbian ninja right just to show that the archetype has a place.

Incidentally, the phrase "stripper lesbian ninja" makes me think of that indie movie D.E.B.S. from way back.


Yeah, when I first heard about Dumbledore, it made me regret ever buying the books when I was younger. I think the reason he was never out with it was better explained later on, but one should not have to hide their gayness in order to be considered a character or non-distracting to the plot. If this is the level that others are comfortable with, I would have to politely ask them to leave my gaming table.

You like your gays in the closet. Got it.

This is why I was saying the people complaining are upset with gay characters being out/obvious. Not as open-minded as they like to think they are.


Dumbledore's "outing" struck me as more of a publicity stunt by someone who didn't want to risk her book series writing a gay character (Understandable, the south already thought it was witchcraft, an openly gay character would have sank it); then saying, after the book series is established and safe, that this character is gay! Isn't that progressiive?

She could have outed him in the last book. People were already on her side. She led from behind with the post-hoc announcement, and the same homophobes still complained. It's not like Dumbledore's orientation being hard canon rather than soft canon would've made more people homophobic. Whole thing kind of perpetuates the notion of homosexuality's taboo being a valid opinion by not challenging it more directly.


Yeah, when I first heard about Dumbledore, it made me regret ever buying the books when I was younger. I think the reason he was never out with it was better explained later on, but one should not have to hide their gayness in order to be considered a character or non-distracting to the plot. If this is the level that others are comfortable with, I would have to politely ask them to leave my gaming table.

The read for Dumbledore being gay is definitely there. Remember that the books are set back in the 1990's; Dumbledore's homosexuality is easily read as an open secret, something suspected but not confirmed, sort of like where George Takei was in the 1990's. The more conservative, likely former Death Eater-y faction of Magical British society really really hates Dumbledore even though he's a modern Merlin. His political career is held up despite him being massively qualified both as a sorcerer and a person for reasons that are never quite defined. Why so much opposition to such a capital-G Good Wizard? He even has a Phoenix! So the opposition to Dumbledore from the Lucius Malfoy and Dolores Umbridge types is essentially that Dumbledore's accomplishments don't matter because he's a gay man, and that's somehow terrible.

Plus it's kind of neat that (if we follow the Potter-verse's timeline, rather than the release dates of the books) Dumbledore was gay first, and acquired wisdom over his very long life-time like any other man would, rather than being a "Magical Queer".

Unfortunately, this remains subtext and a possible interpretation, rather than the canon of the text.


On the plus side, in the Percy Jackson follow-up series, The Heroes of Olympus, Nico di Angelo's gay in-the-canon (the vocabulary isn't used, but there is no denying that he's gay within the text). It's a whole subplot, and it's relevant to his characterization without informing his whole character. Nico might hit the gay misery saucepretty hard, but seeing as he's the son of Hades and spent most of his childhood back in the 1930's and 1940's, his having gay-angst makes sense. His being gay is just another thing on his list of reasons he pushes people away, because he's afraid of being hurt.

Lord Raziere
2016-05-04, 08:54 PM
Now I want to play a stripper lesbian ninja right just to show that the archetype has a place.

Incidentally, the phrase "stripper lesbian ninja" makes me think of that indie movie D.E.B.S. from way back.



An interesting challenge.

So how to do it right? lesbian stripper ninja....well likes women, and ninja are both plausible it seems, if its just a lesbian ninja I don't see how anyone would have a problem with it, but how to work in the stripper part of it? Because that means being scantily clad and whatnot, and nerds get really angry at combat characters not having reasonable ways of protecting themselves, so you'd have to come up with a good reason why they are scantily clad, which is the challenging part of it in my mind.

but If I were to guess, the ninja part of it could work to help with that, if you play up the deception and using tricks to make people lower their guard through the stripper part? but thats kinda of already a bit of a ninja cliche. mostly because thats how some historical female ninja actually worked, believe it or not.

so the stripper part might be a cover for the ninja part: make everyone believe that your just some sex-worker and no one will ever suspect you of being the ninja. after all, they'll be too focused on the sex part to pay attention to SUDDENLY: KNIFE IN YOUR FACE! lust is a really strong and distracting desire after all and a ninja uses any tool in their arsenal to win.

and then use the lesbian part as an internal conflict where they are uncomfortable about seducing men even though its supposed to be required for her job, so its actually an obstacle for her spy work. I mean sure, she is still capable of doing it, but I doubt they are going to comfortable doing it, even if its important like having to kill the evil emperor by getting close to him through seduction, so she has to find an alternate way to do it without arousing suspicion.

just some ideas, and trying to think this out.

Honest Tiefling
2016-05-04, 09:02 PM
Changeling (or other shape shifters) with Glamour abilities. Does it count as stripping if you are not actually stripping, but everyone thinks you are? The shapeshifter part is because stripping, real or not, tends to make it hard to conceal certain features that could identify someone. I suppose the sexualized part of it could be that the character has no respect for men, and therefore uses vulgar tactics against them. Or to show that they really are just base creatures that deserve their fate, because they are hypocrites in their culture or unfaithful to their wives/lovers. Or because no one expects such a silly thing to actually work.

goto124
2016-05-04, 09:15 PM
In many depictions of political seduction, the only kind of seduction shown is female spy/ninja seducing a man in power. Probably because the default assumption of the society is one where all the people in power are heterosexual men, and women are the ones seen as weak. But especially since we're playing alternate societies with different gender roles and expectations, why not mix it up? Why not let this stripper lesbain ninja get chances to seduce women in power? Every once a while she'll have to seduce a man (perhaps by grabbing a friend and making use of Girl on Girl Is Hot... we now have two stripper lesbain ninjas :smallbiggrin:), but she doesn't have to seduce nothing but men.

On a side note, I should play a male-identifying animated closet who's attracted to male humanoids. You know, a gay closet.

I'll go sit on the corner over there.

Honest Tiefling
2016-05-04, 09:17 PM
In many depictions of political seduction, the only kind of seduction shown is female spy/ninja seducing a man in power. Probably because the default assumption of the society is one where all the people in power are heterosexual men, and women are the ones seen as weak. But especially since we're playing alternate societies with different gender roles and expectations, why not mix it up? Why not let this stripper lesbain ninja get chances to seduce women in power? Every once a while she'll have to seduce a man (perhaps by grabbing a friend and making use of Girl on Girl Is Hot... we now have two stripper lesbain ninjas :smallbiggrin:), but she doesn't have to seduce nothing but men.

Because all Lesbian Stripper Ninjas seduce men! Appeal to women? What is this witchcraft you speak of?

ThinkMinty
2016-05-04, 09:39 PM
An interesting challenge.

So how to do it right? lesbian stripper ninja....well likes women, and ninja are both plausible it seems, if its just a lesbian ninja I don't see how anyone would have a problem with it, but how to work in the stripper part of it? Because that means being scantily clad and whatnot, and nerds get really angry at combat characters not having reasonable ways of protecting themselves, so you'd have to come up with a good reason why they are scantily clad, which is the challenging part of it in my mind.

but If I were to guess, the ninja part of it could work to help with that, if you play up the deception and using tricks to make people lower their guard through the stripper part? but thats kinda of already a bit of a ninja cliche. mostly because thats how some historical female ninja actually worked, believe it or not.

so the stripper part might be a cover for the ninja part: make everyone believe that your just some sex-worker and no one will ever suspect you of being the ninja. after all, they'll be too focused on the sex part to pay attention to SUDDENLY: KNIFE IN YOUR FACE! lust is a really strong and distracting desire after all and a ninja uses any tool in their arsenal to win.

and then use the lesbian part as an internal conflict where they are uncomfortable about seducing men even though its supposed to be required for her job, so its actually an obstacle for her spy work. I mean sure, she is still capable of doing it, but I doubt they are going to comfortable doing it, even if its important like having to kill the evil emperor by getting close to him through seduction, so she has to find an alternate way to do it without arousing suspicion.

just some ideas, and trying to think this out.

Some-but-not-all female ninjas (especially in pulpy/fantasy fiction) play up their femininity and sex appeal as a means of "performing their ninja jobs". It's essentially the ninja chick-equivalent of Black Canary wearing a rack-tacular catsuit. A bit less than realistic, but permitted by genre. No heels, though, heels just don't...work with the whole sneak-sneak-stab-stab routine. Dressing a bit whore-ish to look like a prostitute to an uncritical eye is entirely within standard ninja operating procedure.

From there, there's nothing that precludes lesbians from being ninja chicks. Lesbians, especially ninja lesbians, are going to know how to pass for straight if they have to. She probably won't honey-pot a male target if she can avoid it, but she'd know how to fake it if she had no better options.


In many depictions of political seduction, the only kind of seduction shown is female spy/ninja seducing a man in power. Probably because the default assumption of the society is one where all the people in power are heterosexual men, and women are the ones seen as weak. But especially since we're playing alternate societies with different gender roles and expectations, why not mix it up? Why not let this stripper lesbain ninja get chances to seduce women in power? Every once a while she'll have to seduce a man (perhaps by grabbing a friend and making use of Girl on Girl Is Hot... we now have two stripper lesbain ninjas :smallbiggrin:), but she doesn't have to seduce nothing but men.

She could also go after that guy's wife or twenty-something daughter. Not all routes need to be direct to get you in the door.


Because all Lesbian Stripper Ninjas seduce men! Appeal to women? What is this witchcraft you speak of?

I...who would play a Lesbian Ninja Stripper just to seduce male NPCs? That's what Bards are for.

ImNotTrevor
2016-05-04, 09:45 PM
Speaking again as a Transwoman... Anyone, absolutely anyone. Less than a week ago I was confronted in the street by a man, with kids in tow, demanding if I was a Man or a Woman, I responded Woman, and he forced the issue, saying I had an adam's apple, and how he was confused. What right does a stranger have to comment on how I was dressed, let alone how I look? And yet this is something I deal with on a monthly, if not weekly basis.

So here's why this doesn't work as an argument to my point:
You're talking about an individual who, upon the mere sight of a person who might not be female adorned in a dress, became so entirely offended that he felt the need to publicly harrass this person.

That's exactly the kind of person I'm talking about as being the kind of people this behavior is expected from.

If, as you say, literally anyone and everyone has this opinion and can at any time bring down hell and thunder upon you, this should be a DAILY, nay, Hourly or even more frequent experience. You should be unable to leave your house. On any given day that involves a lot of movement through public spaces, you are coming into indirect contact with hundreds, if not thousands of people. If we assume that you pass by 200 people in public on any given day, and get harrassed by a person once per week (pretty much the worst possible math I can give you for this) that means that 1 out of 1400 people gets offended enough to have a major cow about it. Bump it to 500 people per day and it's 1 out of 3500 people.

Human brains are designed to only notice the not-normal occurances (The times when harassment DOES happen) and tend to overestimate how often then occur and with negative opinions tend to over-apply them. (This isn't an insult to you or anyone, it's just a human brain thing.)

Which means that you're not noticing the many hundreds of people who don't give a crap compared to the small handful that do. Throw in Diffusion of Responsibility (google it) and you'll see why it's so rare that people will get involved to help you out.(Look up Kitty Genovese if you want to know how powerful Diffusion of Responsibility is.)

In summary:
I'm sorry that crappy things happen to you.
The majority of people still don't care, and most of the people who cause these crappy things to happen to you are in the minority. By a lot.


And so long as we're still talking about characters, there are many ways to handle them. I had a transgender prostitute in one of my games. Another had a psychic eldritch abomination inhabiting the bodies of a genderfluid individual, a gay guy, and a trans lady. (Though it being eldritch and their orientations/genders were not connected) both (all 4?) were great. It had only somewhat to do with their LGBT statuses.

But again, just being LGBT does not make a character instantly good, nor does it make me a bigot to dislike the character.

Do I play LGBT characters? Yes, as a GM I do.

As a player? Not yet. I haven't had a character concept yet that felt enhanced in any way by the addition, so I haven't yet. (Don't take that the wrong way, I won't add anything to a character unless it beefs up the core concept or I find it funny.)

Lord Raziere
2016-05-04, 09:46 PM
In many depictions of political seduction, the only kind of seduction shown is female spy/ninja seducing a man in power. Probably because the default assumption of the society is one where all the people in power are heterosexual men, and women are the ones seen as weak. But especially since we're playing alternate societies with different gender roles and expectations, why not mix it up? Why not let this stripper lesbain ninja get chances to seduce women in power? Every once a while she'll have to seduce a man (perhaps by grabbing a friend and making use of Girl on Girl Is Hot... we now have two stripper lesbain ninjas :smallbiggrin:), but she doesn't have to seduce nothing but men.


Thats a better idea than I had.

and why not in the interests of gender equality, have gay stripper ninjas as well? y'know, the male version of the lesbian stripper ninja. make them totally bishonen, and round out the archetype by acknowledging the male version exists as well. make them an organization, and their homosexuality can be useful, because there were some societies that saw homosexuality as a way to avoid unwanted birth and didn't think of sex as a part of your identity, just as a thing you did, so you could totally have people of the same sex just doing it for fun so they don't have have to worry about reproduction, so the stripper ninjas could have the stripper part be a front where lords and ladies have some fun without worrying about inheritance and such.

goto124
2016-05-04, 10:04 PM
Any lesbain stripper ninjas I play will sooner or later turn into bisexual stripper ninjas.

Milo v3
2016-05-04, 10:07 PM
Thats a better idea than I had.

and why not in the interests of gender equality, have gay stripper ninjas as well? y'know, the male version of the lesbian stripper ninja. make them totally bishonen, and round out the archetype by acknowledging the male version exists as well.
Memory's a bit fuzzy but I think one of the Dragon Age companions was like that.... though he might have been bi.

BayardSPSR
2016-05-04, 10:27 PM
I'm glad this thread exists and has gotten to this point, since the Right Way of doing human sexual identity in gaming is something I've been thinking about for a while.

For context, I have never controlled a PC whose sexuality came up, but I have run at least six named NPCs who were identifiable as various shades of queer when it came up, and arbitrarily indefinite numbers of unnamed background PCs whose sexuality was relevant and queer (one bar oriented to gay men, and a Theban Sacred Band style royal guard unit composed of women). Some of the NPCs were planned LGBT because of backstory reasons (uniquely unmarried in a patriarchal society; royal guard), some were LGBT because I rolled for it (a PC's uncle; the bar), and one was LGBT because a player rolled for it (high seduction check leading to interesting roleplay). I've also had heterosexual NPCs with relevant sexuality (one character seeking wealth and status to justify marriage, successful seduction rolls by PCs, once to fit a stereotype of a male action hero sexuality, and so on).

So far, I have had two players exhibit mild discomfort regarding my use of LGB (I just realized I haven't used trans characters at all) NPCs: one (I suspect) because he felt my "rolling for sexuality" was taking it too lightly, and the other (I suspect) either because for... reasons of deeply-held personal values... she was uncomfortable with the idea of a micro-society of people with non-normative sexualities, or possibly because she felt that there was something haram about a male GM inventing a micro-society of lesbians. Neither player explicitly expressed discomfort, and I didn't process their facial expressions at the time, but in hindsight I think I'm reading their emotions accurately and making a fair guess at the causes based on knowing them.

So, mostly good results, but I'm sure I could do better.

Oh, and I'm not a fan of the way Dumbledore was handled at all. It struck me (and continues to strike me) as a way of scoring values points with certain straight readers without attempting to include LGBT ones, which tends to reinforce social perceptions that some (straight) people's lives, views, and experiences are more important than (LGBT) others. Less so than not even having token diversity, of course, but far more than a demographically accurate world might have. Good for 1997; less so, perhaps, for 2007.

Of course, that's a book series, not an RPG. In an RPG, it would be more like playing through a years-long campaign, ending it, having the GM discover some of the players were progressive, and saying "by the way, DMPC was gay all along." Even if the DMPC was, in the GM's head, gay all along, that's still not the same thing as actually including an LGBT character in gameplay - especially if they would have been literally the only LGBT character the players ever met.


If, as you say, literally anyone and everyone has this opinion and can at any time bring down hell and thunder upon you, this should be a DAILY, nay, Hourly or even more frequent experience. You should be unable to leave your house. On any given day that involves a lot of movement through public spaces, you are coming into indirect contact with hundreds, if not thousands of people. If we assume that you pass by 200 people in public on any given day, and get harrassed by a person once per week (pretty much the worst possible math I can give you for this) that means that 1 out of 1400 people gets offended enough to have a major cow about it. Bump it to 500 people per day and it's 1 out of 3500 people.

I'd love to see how you'd respond to weekly harassment - or even yearly harassment. Especially once you've seen headlines about people like you being killed just for being like you (regrettably, in what I'm sure is a tragic coincidence, trans people are disproportionately victims of violence).

I'm sure you wouldn't mind in the least. After all, statistically speaking, it's not likely to happen to you on any given day, is it? And even when it did, most of the bystanders wouldn't mean anything harm by ignoring it.


But again, just being LGBT does not make a character instantly good, nor does it make me a bigot to dislike the character.

This is correct. That said, hypothetically, if the only thing you object to in a character is their being LGBT, you might actually be a bigot. But I don't think it actually matters if anyone's a bigot, as long as they don't rub my face in it...


And so long as we're still talking about characters, there are many ways to handle them. I had a transgender prostitute in one of my games. Another had a psychic eldritch abomination inhabiting the bodies of a genderfluid individual, a gay guy, and a trans lady.

I don't know enough about your games to draw any conclusions about them or you, but I feel it is necessary to point out that IF your only representations of LGBT characters are as sex workers or hosts for eldritch abominations, you might not have been doing LGBT folks a favor by representing us.

Nightcanon
2016-05-04, 10:34 PM
Except for the big dogpile on the guy who essentially said "I dont like Token Gay Guy characters."

Which is OK so long as they're Gay, apparently.

Edit: (or at least, disliking Token Gay Guy characters means you're a homophobe, and not just sick of Token X Characters.)

He did kind of imply that 'gay character' = 'one-dimensional, stereotypically camp character', though, as if straight characters are by default complex and multifaceted and having a character be gay automatically negates that. That's certainly a risk, particularly in a game that is stereotypically played by teenage boys, but as this thread shows, there are ways of doing gay characters without the stereotypes.
The stuff about 'I'm not interested in the sexual orientation of the people I play games with, why do they have to make a big fuss about it' has shades of the whole 'you are rubbing my face in your sexuality by bringing a same-sex partner to the company picnic' thing.

illyahr
2016-05-04, 10:55 PM
Memory's a bit fuzzy but I think one of the Dragon Age companions was like that.... though he might have been bi.

In the first game, Leliana and Zevran were bi. Leliana seduced both genders as part of her spy business. Zevran was raised in a whorehouse so he is not picky when it comes to partners.

In the second game, Anders, Fenris, Merrill, and Isabella were bi. Anders is just passionate, Fenris is equally tough to crack for either gender, Merrill is innocent and falls for her hero, and Isabella prefers women but isn't picky (she says as much in party banter).

In the third game, Iron Bull and Josephine are bisexual, Dorian is gay, and Sera is a lesbian. Iron Bull comes from a culture where sexual preference is a non-issue. Josephine is bisexual but prefers men (watch one of the scenes if you romance Iron Bull). Dorian is gay and had to leave his homeland because his father tried to use Blood Magic to make him straight. Sera is just a lesbian. She doesn't make a big deal of it. She does have a thing for Qunari women, though. Woof. :smalltongue:

LGBT characters, even a character is a major character point, but they are not defined by their orientation.

goto124
2016-05-04, 11:06 PM
If an NPC is somewhere on the LGBT spectrum but the players' actions and in-game events just didn't allow a show of said NPC's sexuality, it might be alright for the GM to leave it at that. In fact, many NPCs' heterosexualities are left unmentioned and unused, and there's no problem with that. Well, as long as the various types of LGBT are well-representated.

So, what about that literally gay closet?

Dire Moose
2016-05-05, 06:33 AM
I have an elven hunter in Pathfinder Society who is transgender (she transitioned via magic/alchemy prior to becoming an adventurer), but this has always remained in the background; most aspects of her character have nothing to do with her being trans and it's something she just never talks about. Nobody, in or out of character, has any idea about this. I'm not sure if there is any way to have this be relevant to the storyline, though, unless there's some way revealing an important secret could advance the plot somehow.

WMO?
2016-05-06, 06:46 AM
I have a few, kinda edge cases to the OP question in my opinion, but they were fun, so I'm sharing:

I am a man, and the assumption that your character is "the same as you but an elf" has kinda fascinated me, and made me want to play a woman character. For a one-shot (that turned into a five-shot) detective adventure set in a friend's homebrewed-up version of Neverwinter, I figured it was a good opportunity to try.

I also wanted to play a monk, so being in Faerun my monk was from Kara-Tur. I decided she was from the region that =fantasyIndia, and made her a hill tribesperson, because there was little to no information about them on any wikis so I could make up what I wanted about their monastic traditions. I decided that The Way she followed, and had come to the west to preach, was not an abstinent tradition, though it was ascetic. Her name was inspired by the leader of a human rights activist in mid-1900s Thailand. I wanted her foreignness to be apparent to the other players and characters, I struck on the idea that she saw the men of Neverwinter as dressed and looking like women and the women looking like men. However, while she was dressed in a gender-neutral, culturally different and therefore hard-to-identify way, and she had no hair, she was a ciswoman who was interested in men.

She just had trouble with who the men were (In Neverwinter the men wear their hair and are the height of women back home! and the Neverwinter women wear such sexy manly gowns and long manly hair and are so manly and petite!). By consistently referring to women as men, and expressing interest in them, and referring to men as women, I got weird looks from my gaming buddies, but they laughed and rolled with it. It wasn't until the end of the first session that I realized I'd forgotten to tell them much about my character, including that she was a woman! They thought I was a man who couldn't tell which gender was which, possibly into men!

My first experience with tabletop RP was Call of Cthulhu, 1920. I played a teen who ran away from his life as a police informant in the Boston Mob and ended up in Arkam (the DM never drew from my rich backstory for plot hooks :small frown: :smallbiggrin:).

Eventually he became the student of a history professor (another PC) who was delving into the arcane. He developed what could be described as hero worship or romantic obsession toward his boss and teacher, thinking him right in all things, and the perfect example of manhood.

This after an encounter that the professor planned to capture an eldritch horror threw him into temporary insanity during which he assaulted a female classmate with a two-by-four, thinking her the eldritch horror. And developed a really serious schizophrenic disorder.

In a fit of Catholic guilt and gender-normativity, my character asked out the poor classmate on a cheer-up date, while simultaneously making sure she didn't remember who'd attacked her(trauma-induced amnesia FTW!) He really disliked spending time with her, but kept taking her out and eventually got engaged, like the good boy he was trying so hard to be.

However, when the professor called with a new adventure, he left right away, and was willing to do anything the professor asked him to do. Which, to his (barely detectable) disappointment, was not be intimate partners in mastering the science of magic, but to carry the professor's bags. He did this with a gusto, and followed orders and deferred to the professor as the investigation continued.

Until the day he entered the professor's hotel room with an exiting magical question *sure to get sempai's attention this time* and found him receiving oral stimulation from "a loose woman" (third PC)! Not stopping for an explanation, he fled, practically in tears, and fell into a deep and drunken depression, made worse by his worsening schizophrenia. This started him down a path of self-destructive recklessness and attempts to do *what sempai would think was attractive correct* that got him killed days later.


As for DMing, I fortunately have players that primarily want to find monsters and roll them for loot or to interfere in regional politics, so I've been spared the question of whether a seduction roll should work or not. I've had a gay NPC. Interestingly, his sexuality was only made-note-of/defined because the players identified him as such based on the silly voice I did (was trying for rich+british notetoself-accents need work:smalltongue:). I was running a campaign where some of the major running themes were deception, sources of power, and uncertainty about which side was right, and I hadn't decided on the hidden political leader of one faction yet.

Spontaneously decided to mess with their obvious expectation of "foppish gay noble comic relief" by making him the leader of the good guys, which they only could discover once they proved themselves. I tried to show them that his flamboyant frivolity was only one of many facades he could put up in his role at the center of the coalition, other facades including pious follower of the faith, intense political wrangler, etc, but that through any and all of these personas he was a stone-cold male-loving badass with man-candy hanging off his arm. For an improvisation, it fit the theme pretty well, and I was proud.


I think a "LGBT themed" campaign or setting generally isn't a good idea because:

1) from what I've heard from people who are in some way discriminated against IRL, one of the advantages of a RPGs is escapism, the fantasy part, where they can play a character that may or may not be like they are IRL, but who at least exists in a world where they don't have to deal with our societal bullhicky. How nice must it be for a woman player to be a fantasy warrior woman PC and not have anyone question their role, life choices, or competence, or draw a distinction between them and a male PC? (at least in-character, in-universe)

2) From a world-building perspective, unless it is justified and intentional, it says a lot about the designer's biases if they assume homophobia or sexism as a given, instead of a product of our particular reality, and port it into their fantasy world without examination or contextualizing where that's coming from. And even if they say something like, "well there are gods in this world, and they just say things are this way", well, you're the one who decides what the gods in this world say.

And honestly, where you have absolute control of what is in a world, and there are already monstrous things to fight like illithids and fiends and interspecies genocides, and you choose to also put in sexism? really? doesn't seem a little unnecessary to you? what purpose does it serve? does it really make your game better in any way at all?


A carefully-made adventure or setting could be an interesting educational tool, for people who are unfamiliar to the evolving mainstream acceptance of queer folk. By playing a character, you feel empathy, and you might be able to get a window into a different perspective, maybe just a more accepting one, maybe even a queer one. Or if you've got a straight character, who's essentially an audience stand-in, who interacts with a fantasy culture that has completely different sexual or gender mores, maybe you'll come out of it and think "huh, if the dwarves can do that, maybe I can feel less insecure about transgender people"



On a side note, I should play a male-identifying animated closet who's attracted to male humanoids. You know, a gay closet.

I'll go sit on the corner over there.


So, what about that literally gay closet?

Edit just to comment: Pun Points!

Yora
2016-05-06, 07:23 AM
But again, just being LGBT does not make a character instantly good, nor does it make me a bigot to dislike the character.

The key with minority villains is to not make them villainous because of their minority status. Extremist civil rights activists who start to forget about their cause and starting to focus more on revenge can sometimes work, though even that is difficult to pull off well. But other than that, just don't do it. That's not representation, it's just discrimination.

goto124
2016-05-06, 08:38 AM
Edit just to comment: Pun Points!

*finally leaves the corner of shame*
*is bathed in holy light*


I realized I'd forgotten to tell them much about my character, including that she was a woman! They thought I was a man who couldn't tell which gender was which, possibly into men!

I once went to flirt with a male PC... having forgotten my own character's sex (male, while I'm female IRL). None of the other players commented on this, but at that time I did not know homosexuality was even a thing, and considered myself a bit of a weirdo.

Some time later, random loot blessed me with a girdle of femininity/masculinity.

It was only after I've quit the game, did I learn about LGBTAI.

digiman619
2016-05-06, 11:22 AM
My first experience with tabletop RP was Call of Cthulhu, 1920. I played a teen who ran away from his life as a police informant in the Boston Mob and ended up in Arkam (the DM never drew from my rich backstory for plot hooks :smallfrown: :smallbiggrin:). You played Call of Cthulu in 1920? :smalltongue:

Honest Tiefling
2016-05-06, 11:55 AM
Is it too late to suggest that the gay closet needs a few knobs on it?

Siosilvar
2016-05-07, 12:26 AM
In summary:
I'm sorry that crappy things happen to you.
The majority of people still don't care, and most of the people who cause these crappy things to happen to you are in the minority. By a lot.

Ah, yes, that explains why literally everybody on the sidewalk when I was in Deep Ellum a few weeks ago was visibly uncomfortable at my presence. And I caught a good half of people inside glancing my way, thankfully mostly curious rather than judging.

It doesn't take willingness to commit a ****ing assault against a stranger for people to treat those breaking cishet gender norms differently, that's the extreme. "Minority by a lot" my left foot, not even half this country is willing to take a strong stand in favor of my right to exist as a person. [Citing sources on that will almost certainly run afoul of board rules on politics, but they're out there.]

ThinkMinty
2016-05-07, 10:04 AM
The key with minority villains is to not make them villainous because of their minority status. Extremist civil rights activists who start to forget about their cause and starting to focus more on revenge can sometimes work, though even that is difficult to pull off well. But other than that, just don't do it. That's not representation, it's just discrimination.

If you include many villains who aren't, there's nothing wrong with throwing in an evil member of a minority group. Every population contains both Good and Evil people, and it's discriminatory (in a positive way) to deny that some of them, whoever they are, are terrible people. They're not terrible because they're in that group, though. They're just terrible.

goto124
2016-05-07, 10:23 AM
Every population contains both Good and Evil people,

Typically, we recommend LGBT people of both the Good and Evil kinds. Oh and Neutral too.

I personally recommend ditching the DnD alignment system, but that's neither here nor there.

JoeJ
2016-05-07, 12:35 PM
All manner of sexual desires have been a part of humanity since the beginning. However, as Foucault showed, the idea that a person's sexual desire says something fundamental about that person, and the construction of identities based on sexual desire, are products of the modern age.

When I create fictional societies, I frequently have them construct gender and sexuality differently than modern Euro-American society does. So, for example, in the realm of Hoat-Bida they recognize four genders, although only three of them have names because the fourth is believed (not necessarily correctly) to be very rare. They do not have categories based on sexual attraction at all, although they certainly recognize that there are differences.

Frozen_Feet
2016-05-07, 02:33 PM
Goto124: the young male prostitute doubling as a spy or assassin is totally a trope in oriental media. Has existed in Europe, too, put fell out of favor in fiction due to moralism. (It was tied to cultural pederasty which since then became defunct in many places.)

Ditto for the handsome male rogue seducing the Queen/princess/other socially high-ranking female.

Honest Tiefling
2016-05-07, 02:38 PM
Ditto for the handsome male rogue seducing the Queen/princess/other socially high-ranking female.

Reminds me of Francisco de Loyola, somehow.

Vknight
2016-05-08, 12:12 AM
Typically, we recommend LGBT people of both the Good and Evil kinds. Oh and Neutral too.

I personally recommend ditching the DnD alignment system, but that's neither here nor there.

I'm planning for my Dresden game a person who is breaking one of the laws of magic to 'help' people but is doing a lot of damage in the process.

Dimers
2016-05-08, 01:09 AM
When I create fictional societies, I frequently have them construct gender and sexuality differently than modern Euro-American society does. So, for example, in the realm of Hoat-Bida they recognize four genders, although only three of them have names because the fourth is believed (not necessarily correctly) to be very rare. They do not have categories based on sexual attraction at all, although they certainly recognize that there are differences.

Nice little detail. Probably the kind of thing that won't ever come up in a game, because the characters are murderhobos uninterested in anything beyond loot and XP (whoops, my D&D roots are showing!) ... but it's great to have that sort of setting material in mind before starting up a campaign.

JoeJ
2016-05-08, 12:31 PM
Nice little detail. Probably the kind of thing that won't ever come up in a game, because the characters are murderhobos uninterested in anything beyond loot and XP (whoops, my D&D roots are showing!) ... but it's great to have that sort of setting material in mind before starting up a campaign.

It's not D&D. I created this for a GURPS game set in a fantasy version of North America (California, specifically. The name Hoat-Bida translates as "the land of two rivers," which is also what I'm calling the setting - the two rivers being the San Joaquin and the Sacramento). You might still be right about the murderhobo thing, though. The setting isn't finished enough to use yet, so I haven't found out.

Velaryon
2016-05-08, 08:59 PM
Sexuality and gender have never been "themes" of any games that I've played in, but there have been a few instances where it has come up with a specific character here and there over the years.

The earliest occurrence I can think of was an NPC sorcerer in a game I played in back in college. He was basically the typical stereotype that is now found offensive that was played mostly for immature laughs at the time: he spoke with a stereotypical lisp, had a servant who dressed in bondage gear, made passes at our party wizard, and when asked for help only provided it on condition that said wizard wear his favor into battle (a pink scarf magically enchanted so that it could not be removed). He appeared maybe once or twice and that was it.

Fast forward some years and with a mostly different group, we were playing a fantasy steampunk game set during an alternate version of 1920's Earth. Our party's German elf nobleman (I think he was a baron or something, historical accuracy was absolutely not a priority in this game) was bisexual. It was a spur of the moment decision on the player's part and came up just that one time - I don't remember if an NPC made a pass at him or the other way around, but he decided to throw it in there since nobody in our group had really done that before.

Another few years later, as a DM I introduced an NPC paladin of Sune whose sexuality has never explicitly come up, but who would most likely set off a lot of people's "gaydar" because he has a few traits considered somewhat feminine. His full plate armor is pink, he sings constantly (maybe this isn't a stereotype but I've known several gay men who do this all the time), and his special paladin mount would be the envy of many a little girl with its long flowing pink mane and tail.

By contrast, gender has never really come up in our games. One time I did build a changeling Cleric of the Traveler in an Eberron campaign, and I thought it might be interesting to explore how a shapeshifting character would view themself in terms of gender identity, but I kind of chickened out of actually doing anything with it, other than shapeshifting into a female character when a situation in-game called for it. Maybe it's because most of the guys in that group don't talk about sexual matters with each other, maybe it's because my ex was part of the game, but when I sat down to play the character it just didn't feel like something I wanted to do after all. Which is really too bad because without that aspect, the character ended up with all the personality of a cardboard box.

goto124
2016-05-08, 09:53 PM
His full plate armor is pink, he sings constantly (maybe this isn't a stereotype but I've known several gay men who do this all the time), and his special paladin mount would be the envy of many a little girl with its long flowing pink mane and tail.

I swear, there was this image of a pink knight using Pinkie Pie as a mount... He would fit perfectly in MLPverse :smallbiggrin:

Also,

sings constantly (maybe this isn't a stereotype but I've known several gay men who do this all the time),

What. I don't know anyone IRL who does this, regardless of sexual orientation.


I thought it might be interesting to explore how a shapeshifting character would view themself in terms of gender identity, but I kind of chickened out of actually doing anything with it

I thought of a similar thing with my male-turned-female-due-to-OOC-considerations elf character, but never amounted to anything. The elf had sex/gender change in order to stay in a romantic relationship with a(nother) male PC whose player insisted remain straight (it was a long discussion). I couldn't let the change in sex/gender get in the way of the romantic relationship, because that would ruin the entire point of the change in the first place.

Freelance GM
2016-05-08, 11:08 PM
My first character ever, Jack the Rogue, got gender-swapped by a cursed mirror. It also changed his ability scores, and he wound up being just flat out better as a woman. Handling the ensuing gender identity crisis in-character was actually pretty fun, in hindsight.

Since then, I've switched over to mainly DM'ing... A consequence of having a lot of LGBT players is that many of my player's characters tend to be LGBT, too.

We've had...

Cruril, gay anthropomorphic Druid separated from his lover by Planar barriers; the Trickster deity plane shifted him to my campaign setting for the fun of it.

Gui, bisexual half-elf Bard. Tried seducing Strahd Von Zarovich to stall for time as the party attuned the Sunsword in Ravenloft's chapel. Unfortunately, the Vampire was "saving himself for Ireena." Also in that game was the gay human Transmuter, Zacherie, but going anywhere alone with Strahd turned out to be a bad idea. Fortunately, Zach brought silver, and escaped with most of his blood.

Cocohontas, lesbian Elf Barbarian. Won the heart of a hermit girl who turned out to actually be a 300-year old Silver Dragon.

Horatio, flamboyantly gay Dragonborn Bard. Currently dating the Elf Necromancer in the party.

As a GM, I've tried to represent the LGBT community in the world and mythology for my players, too.

I don't know... My players are always pleasantly surprised to see LGBT characters pop up in my games. Plus, I've found it just opens a lot of doors for interesting world building. I wound up retroactively changing 2 of the deities in my setting to non-binary genders, and incorporating more and more LGBT characters into the world's history. So, to quit rambling and respond to the OP, including LGBT characters is basically as easy as representing any other group or culture. Do it in a way that's respectful and genuine, and your game will be better for it.

Dimers
2016-05-09, 02:37 PM
What. I don't know anyone IRL who does this, regardless of sexual orientation.

The stereotypical gay man adores showtunes. However, the presenting sign of this* is dance, not singing himself; see for example the cassette tape scene in In And Out. Nevertheless ... in modern and recent United States culture, a man's willingness to sing (by which I exclude rap, which is essentially spoken) in public certainly does earn a hairy eyeball from people who are homophobic or just sensitive to differences. It's considered a flag for possible non-heterosexuality.

I know this from personal experience because I have garnered said hairy eyeball repeatedly myself and I understand the social nuances of the reactions I've triggered. I like to sing, enough so that my wedding celebration this October will feature karaoke. :smallsmile: But I don't sing "all the time" either, just more than most people.

* Er, "this" being "the connection between music and sexual orientation".

ThinkMinty
2016-05-10, 09:03 AM
The stereotypical gay man adores showtunes. However, the presenting sign of this* is dance, not singing himself; see for example the cassette tape scene in In And Out. Nevertheless ... in modern and recent United States culture, a man's willingness to sing (by which I exclude rap, which is essentially spoken) in public certainly does earn a hairy eyeball from people who are homophobic or just sensitive to differences. It's considered a flag for possible non-heterosexuality.

I know this from personal experience because I have garnered said hairy eyeball repeatedly myself and I understand the social nuances of the reactions I've triggered. I like to sing, enough so that my wedding celebration this October will feature karaoke. :smallsmile: But I don't sing "all the time" either, just more than most people.

* Er, "this" being "the connection between music and sexual orientation".

Why can't a guy like showtunes without getting accused of stuff?

Freakin' homophobia, ruining everything for everybody.

Yora
2016-05-10, 09:37 AM
We really need to get an organized campaign going that there is nothing that gay men love more than beer and football.

ThinkMinty
2016-05-10, 10:04 AM
We really need to get an organized campaign going that there is nothing that gay men love more than beer and football.

I'm heterosexual and I honestly prefer musical theater to football. I grew up in one of those houses where they watched the Tour de France religiously every summer, though.

obryn
2016-05-10, 10:09 AM
What. I don't know anyone IRL who does this, regardless of sexual orientation.
I grew up doing community theater shows - primarily musicals - with my mom. Everyone I knew did this constantly, including at home. :smallbiggrin:

goto124
2016-05-10, 10:11 AM
Why can't a guy like showtunes without getting accused of stuff?

Freakin' homophobia, ruining everything for everybody.

I've been trying to create a world where there's no such fear of "men without manliness", after observing that "gender-equal world" in fiction often means "all women are allowed to do the things men do", while all the men still do the stereotypical manly stuff (including "doing things with women" and "avoiding things with men").

Misandrism doesn't get much attention.

Jeff the Green
2016-05-10, 03:52 PM
My first character ever, Jack the Rogue, got gender-swapped by a cursed mirror. It also changed his ability scores, and he wound up being just flat out better as a woman. Handling the ensuing gender identity crisis in-character was actually pretty fun, in hindsight.

I'd like to get the general opinion on this situation: is such a character actually trans*? I mean, there's certainly trans* themes, but I'm not sure the label fits well.


Why can't a guy like showtunes without getting accused of stuff?

Freakin' homophobia, ruining everything for everybody.

Between this and my style of dress girls were always flabbergasted when I asked them out. It was annoying.

Honest Tiefling
2016-05-10, 04:07 PM
I'd like to get the general opinion on this situation: is such a character actually trans*? I mean, there's certainly trans* themes, but I'm not sure the label fits well.

I am cisgendered myself, but I would consider the character somewhat trans if they seriously contemplated acting, thinking, or being treated as a woman. I would not consider them the same thing as an genuine trans-gendered person, but maybe an in-between between trans and cis.

If the character accepted the physical changes but decided to do nothing mentally, then they just got some physical changes that doesn't gel with their identity. They are the gender they were assigned at birth, and magic came and fouled it up.

Heck, I wouldn't be surprised that if easy gender-bending magic did exist, people would swap genders and sexes as a matter of utility, just to try things out, or as a phase.

Jeff the Green
2016-05-10, 04:42 PM
Heck, I wouldn't be surprised that if easy gender-bending magic did exist, people would swap genders and sexes as a matter of utility, just to try things out, or as a phase.

Oh, I certainly would. But then, I kinda want to "try on" schizophrenia, migraines, the manic side of bipolar, personality disorders, homosexuality, asexuality, severe autism, paraplegia, amputation, etc. etc., so I might not be the best person to draw conclusions from.

I just want to know what it's like to be other people or to have other bodies.

digiman619
2016-05-10, 04:55 PM
Heck, I wouldn't be surprised that if easy gender-bending magic did exist, people would swap genders and sexes as a matter of utility, just to try things out, or as a phase.

Alter Self is a second level spell; a wand of Alter Self will give you tons of fun for 4,500 gp; and a permanent version for about 25,000 or so (I can't find if right now, though..), so recreational use is quite possible.

Freelance GM
2016-05-10, 05:08 PM
I'd like to get the general opinion on this situation: is such a character actually trans*? I mean, there's certainly trans* themes, but I'm not sure the label fits well.

I thought the story fit the spirit of the thread, but Jack does kind of enter a weird fantasy gray area. (Born male, magically turned female, still identifies as male.)

To elaborate a bit, the in-character "ensuing gender identity crisis" I mentioned happened over the next few sessions, and requires a bit of backstory. It was my first time playing a tabletop RPG, so I blundered into a lot of mistakes, and Jack's constant near-death experiences became a running gag at the table. The GM had no scruples about killing my characters (as it was Dungeon Crawl Classics, I started with several), but Jack somehow always managed to miraculously survive. However, each time, he suffered a bit of ability damage, or got a new scar. At this point, the ability damage was mounting, and he was noticeably less effective than other characters in the party.

His new, female body had a completely new (and better) array of random stats and none of the scars. When Jack found out in-character that reversing the transformation would cause the scars and ability damage to come back, he decided to keep the new body. Jack spent the next session or two wondering whether or not he still wanted to identify as male if he wasn't going to try changing back. Ultimately, he decided to still identify as male.

Hopefully that explains it a little better. If we had to pick an identity for him, I feel like genderqueer would be a better identity than transgender, but again, it's a weird fantasy gray area. I don't know if there's a real-life label that would fit.

ThinkMinty
2016-05-10, 05:59 PM
Between this and my style of dress girls were always flabbergasted when I asked them out. It was annoying.

I've been mistaken for gay for being able to talk to women without being weird about it. I feel you, dude.


I just want to know what it's like to be other people or to have other bodies.

I'm going to second this. Sometimes a guy just wants to turn into an antelope and run around in the grass taunting things that can't catch him.

Honest Tiefling
2016-05-10, 06:11 PM
I've been mistaken for gay for being able to talk to women without being weird about it. I feel you, dude.

I've heard guys getting taunted for being in Home Ec classes. (You know, the classes with 90% women and cookies?) Because being around women is totally the first priority of a gay man.

illyahr
2016-05-10, 06:27 PM
Heck, I wouldn't be surprised that if easy gender-bending magic did exist, people would swap genders and sexes as a matter of utility, just to try things out, or as a phase.

BoEF actually has a spell that does this as an actual permanent transformation, similar to the "cursed" belt of gender changing. There's even a Hedonism domain with it included.


I've heard guys getting taunted for being in Home Ec classes. (You know, the classes with 90% women and cookies?) Because being around women is totally the first priority of a gay man.

Do some guys still get like that? It stopped in my high school when I picked up a girlfriend after making a stuffed animal for her. Girls wouldn't leave me alone after that one. :smallcool:

goto124
2016-05-10, 10:52 PM
Seems that if a man treats femininity ('femininity'?) as something other than a sacred thing only real women can touch, he's seen as gay.

I really should play more with such male stereotypes, but I'm not male.


I'm going to second this. Sometimes a guy just wants to turn into an antelope and run around in the grass taunting things that can't catch him.

There's an Oglaf comic about this.


I've heard guys getting taunted for being in Home Ec classes. (You know, the classes with 90% women and cookies?) Because being around women is totally the first priority of a gay man.

Cooking, sewing and such are basic survival skills, male or female! Do people really expect a man to rely on his mother until marriage, at which point he relies on his wife for such things?


To elaborate a bit, the in-character "ensuing gender identity crisis" I mentioned happened over the next few sessions, and requires a bit of backstory. It was my first time playing a tabletop RPG, so I blundered into a lot of mistakes, and Jack's constant near-death experiences became a running gag at the table. The GM had no scruples about killing my characters (as it was Dungeon Crawl Classics, I started with several), but Jack somehow always managed to miraculously survive. However, each time, he suffered a bit of ability damage, or got a new scar. At this point, the ability damage was mounting, and he was noticeably less effective than other characters in the party.

His new, female body had a completely new (and better) array of random stats and none of the scars. When Jack found out in-character that reversing the transformation would cause the scars and ability damage to come back, he decided to keep the new body. Jack spent the next session or two wondering whether or not he still wanted to identify as male if he wasn't going to try changing back. Ultimately, he decided to still identify as male.

Hopefully that explains it a little better. If we had to pick an identity for him, I feel like genderqueer would be a better identity than transgender, but again, it's a weird fantasy gray area. I don't know if there's a real-life label that would fit.

My elf character is best described as genderfluid, able to change from male to female at a whim. This was a rather weird case however - I felt his maleness was important to his character concept, but at the same time I wanted her to stay in a romantic relationship with a straight male PC whose player wants the straight male PC to remain a straight male.

Which by right should cause weird gender identity issues, but I don't want to play that out and I doubt the straight male PC's player wants to play it out either. I just wanted the romantic relationship to be by and large happy.

I also have no confidence in playing out gender identity issues.

Lacco
2016-05-11, 08:27 AM
Do some guys still get like that? It stopped in my high school when I picked up a girlfriend after making a stuffed animal for her. Girls wouldn't leave me alone after that one. :smallcool:

In the ancient times when I was in high school - yes. Interestingly - the taunting was usually started by a girl.

It turned the other way around in university - cooking skills were very highly prized and I know at least 2 guys (me being one of them) who picked up girls also due to cooking skills :smallbiggrin:.


Cooking, sewing and such are basic survival skills, male or female! Do people really expect a man to rely on his mother until marriage, at which point he relies on his wife for such things?

This is an interesting question. My wife could cook only sausage with beans and spagetti when I met her. And if we didn't have a child, she wouldn't level up the cooking skill (or baking...and some other things) :smallsmile:.


My elf character is best described as genderfluid, able to change from male to female at a whim. This was a rather weird case however - I felt his maleness was important to his character concept, but at the same time I wanted her to stay in a romantic relationship with a straight male PC whose player wants the straight male PC to remain a straight male.?

Hopefully you won't mind, but the question popped into my mind when I read "I wanted her to stay in romantic relationship": And what did the character want? :smallsmile:

EDIT: Ok, the question should be rephrased into something like "If the character was a real person, what would he/she/it/their/.......* really want?".
*pick one/more and scratch the others...or add your own.

goto124
2016-05-11, 11:13 AM
Hopefully you won't mind, but the question popped into my mind when I read "I wanted her to stay in romantic relationship": And what did the character want? :smallsmile:

EDIT: Ok, the question should be rephrased into something like "If the character was a real person, what would he/she/it/their/.......* really want?".
*pick one/more and scratch the others...or add your own.

Yea, I thought of that question at some point. But then I realized that on an OOC level, that relationship is the most important thing to me, something I would likely never get elsewhere with any other player or character - I have such good chemistry with the player and no one else.

Come to think of it, my character's in a similar situation and would probably think the same as well. He doesn't have anyone else who cares for her so much, in a world where such care is hard to come by. Especially on the romantic level.

But that part - about my character's thoughts- I the player did not think of them. I play by the idea that I'm fully responsible for my actions, and even if I acted by 'what my character would do', I would still lose out on any opportunities/create antagonism/etc, and it would be my fault, not my characters'. I figured that since OOCly I already knew I am keeping the relationship, I could change my character later on to fit in the relationship. To me, it's much like how, instead of having a lone wolf, I would play a character who wants to be a part of the party. So that I'm actually playing the game with the other players.

When it comes to this sort of thing, I feel like I'm an oddball in the roleplaying community...

Jerry
2016-05-12, 02:03 PM
We really need to get an organized campaign going that there is nothing that gay men love more than beer and football.

I prefer basketball, but I do love beer. :smallwink:

As far as rp'ing as a gay character, I have played both straight and gay characters. My roleplay is very character driven and I think sexuality can be a big part of a well rounded character, though it doesn't have to be the defining characteristic. But it certainly flavors your interaction with other characters and npcs if you let it.

I would think a gay themed game would be unnecessary if you have a diverse group in the first place.

RyumaruMG
2016-05-12, 03:58 PM
Since I DM/ST/GM/what have you a lot, I haven't really gotten to play many characters. That being said, I did have a character I was going to play in a Pathfinder game, an Inquisitor of Iomedae. Dude was a trans guy, based on equal parts Lucian from League of Legends and Sam Vimes from Discworld. He was going to be a ton of fun to play, but unfortunately the game never took off. Fortunately, I was able to bring him back as an NPC for another game I ran! Unfortunately, that game didn't get very far.

I've had players have LGBTQIA characters, the primary example of which came from the aforementioned game - a Drow Magus who was asexual. His player really liked playing snarky "why do I put up with you strange people" types, so it was really just another axis on which to be that. Fun times, though!

I'll try to include a wide spectrum of characters in my games, partly because it feels a bit more realistic to me and partly because I feel like people in the rainbow (including myself) need more representation in things - it's not like my personal gaming tables are highly visible to the public, but it's a start.

ZeroiaSD
2016-05-14, 04:43 AM
Lesse, my early characters didn't have any romance. I think two lesbian characters. One of my current characters is Ace. And another one... I haven't decided on, but she has responded to flirting from the group's non-binary paladin.

LeighTheDwarf
2016-05-17, 12:15 PM
I've played a warforged who, while technically not having a biological sex, was designed for a typically masculine purpose, but chooses now that the war is over to live as a woman. I'm not sure if that technically makes her transgender or not.