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Lake Huron
2019-01-11, 07:21 PM
Hello, lads. I hope this is the right place to put this. If not I do apologise.

So I'm embroiled in a bit of player vs. DM controversy and I'm hearing two sides, I wanted your opinion on this. Was I the bad person here?

Long story short, we resumed a campaign after a long hiatus, the last time we played these characters I believe it was 2017. In any case we're getting reacquainted with each other and our PCs and Larry (we'll call him Larry) during a summary of his male Dwarf fighter reveals that said male Dwarf fighter is married to another fella. We talk about that for a minute until the conversation abruptly draws to a close when Sally (we'll call her Sally) takes me aside and expresses she's uncomfortable with this. When asked she explains that she feels it contradicts the PG tone of the campaign to have an openly gay character. I'm a little confused because it isn't as though Larry was being sexually explicit or overbearing about this one character trait. So I explain to her that I don't think that's adequate grounds to ask Larry to change his character and that there's nothing inherent to homosexuality that's sexually explicit, to which she responds that I'm not being conscious of her feelings and her sense of comfort. The conversation becomes somewhat circular and progressively heated until I decide to call her ultimatum. So I say to her that between her remaining in the campaign and Larry's decision to play the character he wants I choose the latter. She leaves, and I hastily cobble together a reason our Druid has gone missing.

She's claiming now that I unfairly and despotically kicked her out. Opinion on this issue is divided. On the one hand, many people felt I was being unfair and heavy-handed and that it's not my place to dictate to other people how they're supposed to feel about certain things and that, as a DM, it's my job to come to concessions and reach compromises with players rather than unfairly favour one player over another. The other side (the side I agree with, at least until I hear something more compelling) is that I'm well within my rights to dictate who is and who isn't in my game and that if I feel someone is making unreasonable demands of other players that compromises the integrity of their creative vision then they need to leave. Some people are accusing her of being homophobic, others are claiming that's too harsh, some people are saying it's not relevant, others emphatically disagree. It's a big ol' mess I don't have to tell you. It's getting a bit too personal now for me to get any useful feedback out of that dialogue, so here I am.

I need the opinions of folks who don't have a personal investment in these players and won't be biased or swayed any one way or the other. If I've acted out of line I'd sincerely like to know. I don't think I have but, as stated, I'm much too close to myself to possibly have an unbiased perspective. If I've been an ogre I can try to patch things up. If not then, well, I need some suggestions about where to go from here.

Thanks for your help.

Koo Rehtorb
2019-01-11, 07:28 PM
So, first of all, it's not your job to mediate between the players at all. It's your job to play the NPCs and the rest of the world, nothing more. If she had a problem with a gay dwarf PC then she should have talked to the player about it. Unless you're the only adult in a group of children, I suppose.

But no, I don't think you're the jerk. You might have been the jerk if you said "Nope. Get out and don't come back." but any variation of "I'm not asking him to change, leave if you can't deal with that." is not only fine, but practically required. She's way out of line.

The Cats
2019-01-11, 07:31 PM
Well, according to your story you didn't kick her out. She asked you to force another player to change his character and when you got tired of arguing why you weren't going to do that told her to deal or leave, and she left.

I'll say this a million times and it'll never be less true: Players control their characters. The DM controls everything else. They shouldn't limit the player's character choices, even at the behest of another player.

If she was complaining that his dwarf had being a serial rapist or something in his backstory then yeah the argument would hold water and the group as a whole should've asked him to change. But her being uncomfortable because he made a legitimate character choice doesn't justify imposing her will on the other player. I mean, if she had brought this issue to this forum she would've been inundated with advice telling her to do exactly what happened: if you're uncomfortable in the game, leave the game.

gkathellar
2019-01-11, 07:54 PM
You were entirely within your rights. You may have been a bit hasty, and it may have been possible to deescalate the situation (it may still be possible), but your behavior doesn't strike me as unreasonable by any means.

mucat
2019-01-11, 07:56 PM
If it all played out as you describe, then obviously you did nothing wrong. A player who is "not comfortable" with some group that exists in real life is asking their gaming friends to validate their real-world biases. They're the ones who are abusing the friendship, and they're the ones who should leave.

(Unless, of course, the trait she's uncomfortable with is an actual despicable one. I wouldn't like it if someone at the gaming table made a white supremacist character, and expected the other PCs to cooperate with this character. But if a player tried to claim that a gay character belonged in that same category, then they'd just be confirming their bigotry.)

The only thing that gives me pause here is...the answer seems really, open-and-shut obvious. Why are you asking us this question in the first place, and why are some of your group disagreeing with you? If there's more to the situation than you've described -- if the character or his player are actually doing something potentially objectionable, and not just "dwarfing while gay" -- then I might reconsider the woman's argument.

Lake Huron
2019-01-11, 08:12 PM
The only thing that gives me pause here is...the answer seems really, open-and-shut obvious. Why are you asking us this question in the first place, and why are some of your group disagreeing with you?

I answer that in the OP. There's an potential element of tone policing, favouritism towards one player over another and a failure on my part to reach any sort of concession or compromise. I'm wondering if that's true or not.

Your insinuation that it's one-and-done black-and-white seems to fall pretty hard on the side of "not true", but there's definitely a point to my asking, I feel.

The Cats
2019-01-11, 08:14 PM
Grizzled veteran: "Uhhh dispatch we're gonna need some backup here. We got a 472."

Wide-eyed Rookie: "472?"

Grizzled Veteran, looking at his new partner super-serious over his cool cop sunglasses:
"dwarfing while gay"

Wide-eyed Rookie is shook.

An Enemy Spy
2019-01-11, 08:18 PM
There's nothing un-PG about a gay character, anymore than there's anything un-PG about heterosexual characters, so long as you aren't roleplaying explicit sex scenes. Her reasoning is a pretty transparent mask to rationalize her homophobia in a group where saying she doesn't like gay people might not fly. My advice is to tell her to either deal with it or leave. You don't need that kind of negative energy at your table. I wouldn't tolerate a player who gets angry that another player has a human character that isn't white, and this is no different.

zlefin
2019-01-11, 08:22 PM
it sounds to me like you did nothing wrong. There may've been slightly more optimal ways to handle it.
would she have had a problem with heterosexual marriage? it sounds like she would not have, but pointedly asking the question of them might've clarified.

the basic problem is that some people's sense of comfort is violated by things that are viewed as necessarily acceptable by others. Sometimes people are just too far apart. you can't satisfy one's comfort without seriously violating anothers comfort by forbidding something that should be accepted. (I'm assuming typical Western standards, cultural standards do vary quite a bit by location of course).
it's not unfair of you to make a choice when one is forced upon you, and it sounds like in this case you were forced to make a choice between the two players.

mucat
2019-01-11, 08:28 PM
I answer that in the OP. There's an potential element of tone policing, favouritism towards one player over another and a failure on my part to reach any sort of concession or compromise. I'm wondering if that's true or not.Naw. If there's no more to the story, then you didn't play favorites or miss any chance to forge a sane compromise. The druid player's demands were absolutely out of line, and giving in to them would only sow the seeds of more problems.

Thrawn4
2019-01-11, 08:32 PM
You were entirely within your rights. You may have been a bit hasty, and it may have been possible to deescalate the situation (it may still be possible), but your behavior doesn't strike me as unreasonable by any means.

I agree, and would like to add that deescalation is still on the table. Sally might be somewhat homophobic and you might be able to ease her into it by establishing some ground rules. Or maybe the dwarf player does not really care about the gay thing.
Did everyone in the group get a chance to utter their voice? They might have some ideas.

Lake Huron
2019-01-11, 08:36 PM
Did everyone in the group get a chance to utter their voice? They might have some ideas.

They didn't during the initial argument right before the session but they have now on social media. Opinions range from moderate to pretty staunchly in favour of barring her from ever joining back up again. The most pro-Sally is her friend who is still in the group (we'll call her Nancy, I hope I remember all these fake names and don't get confused). Nancy agrees that the demand was a bit much but thinks I didn't do enough to smooth things over or open up a dialogue.

Larry has said that while it's not an integral part of his character he won't change it out of principle.

Erloas
2019-01-11, 08:40 PM
Given the assumption that nothing big is missing from the OP story as presented, I'm saying you did exactly the right thing. It seems like a clear case of homophobia and nothing else. The standard "I don't want to say I hate X but I'm going to do everything that someone that hates X would do" line of reasoning that happens so much these days.

zlefin
2019-01-11, 08:43 PM
They didn't during the initial argument right before the session but they have now on social media. Opinions range from moderate to pretty staunchly in favour of barring her from ever joining back up again. The most pro-Sally is her friend who is still in the group (we'll call her Nancy, I hope I remember all these fake names and don't get confused). Nancy agrees that the demand was a bit much but thinks I didn't do enough to smooth things over or open up a dialogue.

Larry has said that while it's not an integral part of his character he won't change it out of principle.

ask nancy what she thinks could/should have been done to smooth things over; and/or what sort of dialog she would seek to have. There's still plenty of time to have a dialog after all.

Darth Ultron
2019-01-11, 11:26 PM
I'd say you are not a jerk.

Even if your game was dead set on being Disney PG....well you might note that 2019 Disney PG is a lot more inclusive then say, oh, 1980.

Celestia
2019-01-12, 12:07 AM
You handled the situation better than I likely would have. I think you're fine. Introspection is fine, but don't let it get to the point where you second guess all your decisions. You did nothing wrong.

Pauly
2019-01-12, 03:44 AM
Without knowing any of the backstories of the players.

Why did “Larry” declare his character to be (a) homosexual and (b) married to another male?
If in 2017 “Larry”’s character’s sexuality wasn’t discussed then springing these two revaltions is a pretty big reveal.

You mention no campaign related teason ad to why this player decided to announce this. So I assume that previously it has never been mentioned or discussed. I am deeply curious as to Larry’s motivations.

To me it seems like a classic passive-aggressive way of making Sally upset and angry because she has a different world view on homosexual marriage than he does. One interpretation of events is he was deliberately trying to bait her, and when she went ballistic, he gets to play the poor innocent victim while she appears unreasonable.

Mr Beer
2019-01-12, 04:33 AM
"I don't like gays"
"Deal or leave"
"K bye"

Is that right? Seems like her problem not yours if as stated.

Neknoh
2019-01-12, 06:26 AM
Beauty and the Beast is Pg

Also, you repeatedly kill things in gruesome ways.

You did nothing wrong and despite her saying you kicked her out, you did not, she left.

You should absolutely welcome her back in, but only if she deals with it. Make sure to police the other players so that they do not shower her with gay jokes or innuendos however. (Personally I'm on the "she deserves it tho" side of that second part, but to keep a good tone and possibly show her that a character being gay isn't actually that big of a deal, holding back on the "bother the homophobe" might be a good idea).

Have any of you brought up with her or her friend that the reaction she had is just as unacceptable as if it was toward a revelation that the dwarf was black or Jewish?

Also, again, what were you meant to mediate? She escalated, you told her to deal or leave, you cannot make a safe space for uncomfortable bigots.

DeTess
2019-01-12, 06:38 AM
I'm going to agree with the rest here that you didn't really do anything wrong. Maybe ask Nancy for her suggestions, and based on that you might want to consider reopening communication with Sally about rejoining, provided she doesn't kick up a fuss over LGBT rights and accepts that being LGBT is normal and acceptable in your world.

AMFV
2019-01-12, 06:46 AM
I don't think that you are the jerk in this situation.

I do think that the Dwarf Player's declaration does seem to be a little odd and out of the blue though. I would be very careful about that. There are lot of people who try to "prune" their friend and drive off people who don't have similar views on that sort of issue. I'm not saying that the player who left didn't act badly, but I am saying that if the Dwarf player had had previous interactions with her on this topic and knew that she was uncomfortable with that and the very first thing they do is something that's designed to instigate a problem, that to me is a worse problem than homophobia would be. That's somebody being willing to completely derail the game and deliberately try to drive people out who don't agree with them.

Now if they didn't have prior interaction, or that wasn't the player's intention, obviously that's not a big issue, but I would imagine that they had prior interaction about this and this was a deliberate attempt to start something with the other player. I would sit both players down and let them know that regardless of their views your game is not a place for that sort of bickering and if it becomes a problem for Dwarf player, that romance of any kind will be banned in your game, and then let the other player know that her being uncomfortable doesn't mean that she gets to control other people's experience.

Aneurin
2019-01-12, 07:44 AM
The conversation becomes somewhat circular and progressively heated until I decide to call her ultimatum. So I say to her that between her remaining in the campaign and Larry's decision to play the character he wants I choose the latter. She leaves, and I hastily cobble together a reason our Druid has gone missing.

When you say "call her ultimatum", do you mean that Sally was threatening to leave at this point? Or do you mean you issued her an ultimatum; deal with it or leave?

Because if it's the latter I can sort of see where this has come from, since you kind of did kick her out while she was (apparently) still willing to talk. I don't agree with her by any means, and do think you were perfectly right, but I do see that this could ruffle a few feathers and could have been handled better if you were the one to throw down an ultimatum.

Cluedrew
2019-01-12, 08:43 AM
Unless she wanted everyone in the campaign to be asexual...

I doubt that was the case. No you did not handle the situation in the best way possible, maybe laying out some rules about what is PG and applying them equally to heterosexual and homosexual couples (which I think covers all of them because equal to or not equal to should cover everything).

But if she is demanding a double standard for certain types of couples, I think you are not the issue.

some guy
2019-01-12, 08:51 AM
You didn't do anything wrong. If you didn't talk to the player before she left, the "unfairly and despotic" claim might hold the teensiest amount of ground, but you did talk to her. You gave her the chance to explain her stance. No jerkiness was performed by you.

PrismCat21
2019-01-12, 04:27 PM
I don't think that you are the jerk in this situation.

I do think that the Dwarf Player's declaration does seem to be a little odd and out of the blue though. I would be very careful about that. There are lot of people who try to "prune" their friend and drive off people who don't have similar views on that sort of issue. I'm not saying that the player who left didn't act badly, but I am saying that if the Dwarf player had had previous interactions with her on this topic and knew that she was uncomfortable with that and the very first thing they do is something that's designed to instigate a problem, that to me is a worse problem than homophobia would be. That's somebody being willing to completely derail the game and deliberately try to drive people out who don't agree with them.

Now if they didn't have prior interaction, or that wasn't the player's intention, obviously that's not a big issue, but I would imagine that they had prior interaction about this and this was a deliberate attempt to start something with the other player. I would sit both players down and let them know that regardless of their views your game is not a place for that sort of bickering and if it becomes a problem for Dwarf player, that romance of any kind will be banned in your game, and then let the other player know that her being uncomfortable doesn't mean that she gets to control other people's experience.


Without knowing any of the backstories of the players.

Why did “Larry” declare his character to be (a) homosexual and (b) married to another male?
If in 2017 “Larry”’s character’s sexuality wasn’t discussed then springing these two revelations is a pretty big reveal.

You mention no campaign related tension ad to why this player decided to announce this. So I assume that previously it has never been mentioned or discussed. I am deeply curious as to Larry’s motivations.

To me it seems like a classic passive-aggressive way of making Sally upset and angry because she has a different world view on homosexual marriage than he does. One interpretation of events is he was deliberately trying to bait her, and when she went ballistic, he gets to play the poor innocent victim while she appears unreasonable.

This is what I thought of when I read the OP.
I see similar stuff happen all the time and often is the one having to deal with it. People go out of their way to screw with someone else indirectly. Their intention is to screw with them, but try and do it where it seems their hands are clean or they get to play the victim.
I assume these Player's are at least familiar with each other. If so, Larry likely knew about Sally's issues, or suspected something along those lines. Him suddenly deciding his character was homosexual when supposedly the history of the character gave no indication, seems like a problem. It may have been intentional, it may not have. In my experience, it usually is.
Sally seemed to believe this game had an established expectation on what was and was not supposed to be in it. Apparently not everyone agreed on what that expectation was.

You as the DM may not have handled this situation wrong, but it could have been handled better. For any game in the future, make sure everyone is well aware of the sorts of things that will and will not be allowed. If you or anyone else suspects that someone is intentionally trying to screw with someone else, handle it right then and there before it escalates.

Velaryon
2019-01-12, 04:50 PM
One more vote to the "you did nothing wrong, and Sally should get over it or find another gaming group" tally.


This is what I thought of when I read the OP.
I see similar stuff happen all the time and often is the one having to deal with it. People go out of their way to screw with someone else indirectly. Their intention is to screw with them, but try and do it where it seems their hands are clean or they get to play the victim.
I assume these Player's are at least familiar with each other. If so, Larry likely knew about Sally's issues, or suspected something along those lines. Him suddenly deciding his character was homosexual when supposedly the history of the character gave no indication, seems like a problem. It may have been intentional, it may not have. In my experience, it usually is.
Sally seemed to believe this game had an established expectation on what was and was not supposed to be in it. Apparently not everyone agreed on what that expectation was.

You as the DM may not have handled this situation wrong, but it could have been handled better. For any game in the future, make sure everyone is well aware of the sorts of things that will and will not be allowed. If you or anyone else suspects that someone is intentionally trying to screw with someone else, handle it right then and there before it escalates.

Even if Larry made the character gay specifically to bait Sally (which is something for OP to look into if they think it's a possibility), this sounds like very minimal bait. The mere presence of a gay marriage in a character's backstory is in no way reasonable grounds for Sally to declare "make him change it or I quit." If one of the other PCs was the husband, or Larry was trying to roleplay the relationship in great detail during the game, that would perhaps be unacceptable (to say nothing of derailing the game). But "my character has a husband back home who will probably never enter the game for more than 5 minutes" is the kind of detail that a reasonable person, even one who is personally opposed to that kind of lifestyle, should be able to overlook if they have any respect or friendship with the others at the table at all.

Friv
2019-01-12, 05:19 PM
I'd say you are not a jerk.

Even if your game was dead set on being Disney PG....well you might note that 2019 Disney PG is a lot more inclusive then say, oh, 1980.

Darth Ultron and I are in full agreement on a subject. This is rare enough that you know it means we're right.


To me it seems like a classic passive-aggressive way of making Sally upset and angry because she has a different world view on homosexual marriage than he does. One interpretation of events is he was deliberately trying to bait her, and when she went ballistic, he gets to play the poor innocent victim while she appears unreasonable.

Frankly, if Sally is so homophobic that the mere presence of a happily married gay man as a character in a story she is playing is enough for her to demand it be removed or else she walks, she is unreasonable, and it doesn't matter if she's being passive-aggressively prodded about it.

I don't want to have a player at my table who is going to go ballistic about something like that. Honestly, OP, I think you were extremely reasonable not to boot her on the spot for making that kind of a demand; it would be friendship-damaging at the very least if it happened to me.

Deophaun
2019-01-12, 06:03 PM
The only thing you did "wrong" was not telling Sally that you aren't interested in policing the campaign for her and if she has a problem with it she should politely take it up with Larry. But then, even that could blow up. Really, you're running the Kobiashi Maru here.

As for what is and is not PG, I would be seriously circumspect about allowing anyone in that industry to determine what is and is not appropriate for anyone. There are several prison populations I would consult on morality before going to Hollywood. But that is a much broader topic.

AMFV
2019-01-12, 06:14 PM
Even if Larry made the character gay specifically to bait Sally (which is something for OP to look into if they think it's a possibility), this sounds like very minimal bait. The mere presence of a gay marriage in a character's backstory is in no way reasonable grounds for Sally to declare "make him change it or I quit." If one of the other PCs was the husband, or Larry was trying to roleplay the relationship in great detail during the game, that would perhaps be unacceptable (to say nothing of derailing the game). But "my character has a husband back home who will probably never enter the game for more than 5 minutes" is the kind of detail that a reasonable person, even one who is personally opposed to that kind of lifestyle, should be able to overlook if they have any respect or friendship with the others at the table at all.

It's certainly minimal bait, BUT the fact that he did it at all is a bad sign, because next time it might not be so minimal, at the very least, if it is bait (and the DM should know better than we) he should be told that being a jerk is not acceptable for him either, just because he holds a view that's more in-line with what is socially acceptable to hold.

zlefin
2019-01-12, 06:36 PM
It's certainly minimal bait, BUT the fact that he did it at all is a bad sign, because next time it might not be so minimal, at the very least, if it is bait (and the DM should know better than we) he should be told that being a jerk is not acceptable for him either, just because he holds a view that's more in-line with what is socially acceptable to hold.

I see little reason to suspect that it would be bait in the first place.
also seems doubtful it would even qualify as "bait" in any event.

that bait line of inquiry; while theoretically possible; seems more like an excuse/rationalization to try to shift blame than anything else; in the absence of more pointed evidence.

AMFV
2019-01-12, 06:43 PM
I see little reason to suspect that it would be bait in the first place.
also seems doubtful it would even qualify as "bait" in any event.

that bait line of inquiry; while theoretically possible; seems more like an excuse/rationalization to try to shift blame than anything else; in the absence of more pointed evidence.

Mostly it's because usually in my experience, in social groups featuring both people who are so religiously extreme that they might refuse to play in a game with a gay dwarf and people who are wont to play a gay dwarf, it's unlikely that either would be unaware of the other person's feelings on the subject. It's possible that that would be the case, but it seems really unlikely. And bringing that up first thing, first session when that knowledge is likely possible seems to be at the very least an attempt to get under the person's skin and at the worst an attempt to get the person kicked out of the group.

Again, only the DM knows how well these two know each other. So they are the only person with any standing to actually recognize or discuss what's going on. But if it was an attempt to aggravate the other player, that also needs to be shut-down. Particularly on the off chance that it was intended to get that player out of the group. Because that's not at all an appropriate way to do that.

Erloas
2019-01-12, 07:22 PM
And bringing that up first thing, first session when that knowledge is likely possible seems to be at the very least an attempt to get under the person's skin and at the worst an attempt to get the person kicked out of the group.

It would seem more like baiting if the game *had* been going a while before it came up. Giving a brief character background at the start of the first session seems like a pretty standard thing. Now if he were the only one telling the group anything about their backstory and the backstory consisted of nothing else, then I could see that as likely. That is clearly not the case though, as it was described as everyone giving background info about their character and this seemed to only be a part of the dwarf's background.

Koo Rehtorb
2019-01-12, 07:38 PM
If all it takes to bait someone is saying that your character has a husband, then they are not a person you should be associating with anyway.

Pauly
2019-01-12, 08:20 PM
If all it takes to bait someone is saying that your character has a husband, then they are not a person you should be associating with anyway.

Thank you for illustrating perfectly the point.

It is possible:
Larry decides that his character will be (fill in the blank’. If he knows Sally is morally opposed to (fill in the blank), which we should assume he knows given that it has been a social hot topic of conversation in recent years.

Larry decides that because she has a different morality than him. She therefore is a bad person and must be shown to be a bad person. He suddenly makes his character have (fill in the blank) quality. He does this because he wants everyone to know Sally is a bad person because she has wrongthink.

Sally tries to avoid direct conflict by talking to the DM. The DM does not understand the core reason for Sally’s distress because she fails to communicate it properly. Sally blows up.

Larry gets to play the poor innocent marty and Sally is shunned for being an unperson with wrongthink

It is possible that Larry was using his character to attack Sally the player’s social position in real life. Your comment demonstrates how and why this scenario might have played out.

zlefin
2019-01-12, 08:37 PM
Mostly it's because usually in my experience, in social groups featuring both people who are so religiously extreme that they might refuse to play in a game with a gay dwarf and people who are wont to play a gay dwarf, it's unlikely that either would be unaware of the other person's feelings on the subject. It's possible that that would be the case, but it seems really unlikely. And bringing that up first thing, first session when that knowledge is likely possible seems to be at the very least an attempt to get under the person's skin and at the worst an attempt to get the person kicked out of the group.

Again, only the DM knows how well these two know each other. So they are the only person with any standing to actually recognize or discuss what's going on. But if it was an attempt to aggravate the other player, that also needs to be shut-down. Particularly on the off chance that it was intended to get that player out of the group. Because that's not at all an appropriate way to do that.

or, far more likely: because it's session 0, where expectations are being set and plans made. so people go over what they're doing to look for problems.

if the group has fundamental incompatibilities, figuring them out in session 0 is important and worthwhile, far better to do so then than to have a long-running campaign derailed when they come out later.
the notion that it's an intentional plot to get another person kicked out rather than simply looking to address an issue that may well come up seems quite sketchy. It, once again, seems like an attempt to deflect blame on another side rather than admit one's own problems. (admittedly issues like that go on an endlessly nested rabbit's hole, so it gets hard to tell).

and re: pauly's above
what if sally's viewpoint is in fact terrible? the word choices you use seem to exclude the possibility of an actual reprehensible viewpoint existing.
and it remains the case really, that some people have viewpoints that are quite incompatible; figuring that out in session 0 is a good thing. better then than later.
while it remains theoretically possible, why choose to ascribe such a malicious motivation to larry rather than something more neutral?

Koo Rehtorb
2019-01-12, 10:12 PM
Thank you for illustrating perfectly the point.

What is the point? That seems like a perfectly reasonable chain of events to me, if phrased in a less biased manner. If Sally is the sort of person who blows up over gay marriage then it doesn't particularly matter whether someone was intentionally highlighting it or not. She's still not someone I care to play with. I'm not going to walk on eggshells to mollify homophobes.

AMFV
2019-01-12, 10:15 PM
What is the point? That seems like a perfectly reasonable chain of events to me, if phrased in a less biased manner. If Sally is the sort of person who blows up over gay marriage then it doesn't particularly matter whether someone was intentionally highlighting it or not. She's still not someone I care to play with. I'm not going to walk on eggshells to mollify homophobes.

The issue is that if a player is willing to intentionally cause a blowup to eject another player (supposing that is what happened) then it might not always be issues like homophobia that cause it, what if next it's political affiliation or religious affiliation, or any number of things. If a player has issues like that with another player they should bring that up with the DM in private before a game session, not goad the other player with them.

Of course, it is possible that the player wasn't attempting to goad the other player, but if they were in the same social circle I find that extremely unlikely.

Friv
2019-01-12, 10:22 PM
Sally tries to avoid direct conflict by talking to the DM. The DM does not understand the core reason for Sally’s distress because she fails to communicate it properly. Sally blows up.

Sally did not try to avoid direct conflict. She tried to blackmail the DM into compliance with her worldview. She is the one who stated that the other guy playing a gay character was, and I quote, in violation of the PG rating of the campaign.


The issue is that if a player is willing to intentionally cause a blowup to eject another player (supposing that is what happened) then it might not always be issues like homophobia that cause it, what if next it's political affiliation or religious affiliation, or any number of things. If a player has issues like that with another player they should bring that up with the DM in private before a game session, not goad the other player with them.

Of course, it is possible that the player wasn't attempting to goad the other player, but if they were in the same social circle I find that extremely unlikely.

With all due respect, this argument is garbage. Context matters. Context always matters, and you absolutely cannot remove the context of this argument.

Existing is not provocation. The other player did not try to force Sally's character to be involved in queerness He did not try to force Sally's player out of the game. He did not "goad" her except so much as the very existence of gay people goaded her to be a terrible person.

AMFV
2019-01-12, 10:28 PM
Sally did not try to avoid direct conflict. She tried to blackmail the DM into compliance with her worldview. She is the one who stated that the other guy playing a gay character was, and I quote, in violation of the PG rating of the campaign.

Well Sally might have a different viewpoint as to what constitutes PG. The compromise position would likely have been to remove all relationships of that sort from the game, hetero or homosexual. But nope moral indignation made that impossible. And again, if the character knew that she was so inclined and chose to this to goad here.



With all due respect, this argument is garbage. Context matters. Context always matters, and you absolutely cannot remove the context of this argument.

Existing is not provocation. The other player did not try to force Sally's character to be involved in queerness He did not try to force Sally's player out of the game. He did not "goad" her except so much as the very existence of gay people goaded her to be a terrible person.

But coming into a game where you know somebody is going to be bothered by something and shoving that thing into their face in the very first session is not a great start. No matter how much you agree that homophobes should be banned from playing D&D, this sort of behavior is a bad precedent to set. Because one day it'll be you who is holding the socially unpopular position. The right thing to do again is to discuss these issues with the DM if you know the other player is going to have issues with that. At that time even refusing to play with them is fine. But provided that the gay dwarf player knew that this was going to be an issue for Sally then he should have discussed this with the DM first before springing it, even if only to give a heads-up.

Friv
2019-01-12, 10:47 PM
Because one day it'll be you who is holding the socially unpopular position.

I'm trying to find a polite way to say this.

Existence is not provocation.

You cannot have a group at which queer people and homophobes are both comfortable. You cannot have a group in which anti-semites and Jewish people are both comfortable. You cannot have a group in which racists and black people are both comfortable. It is a fallacy to believe that you can just paper over that and keep going happily. It is not merely a "socially unpopular opinion". It is not politics. It is not taste. It is someone having an opinion about whether or not other people are allowed to exist, and feeling strongly enough about that opinion to attempt to police her group about it. It is hatred.

If I have to choose between a gaming group that is safe for my friends who are not straight, and a group in which a homophobe feels comfortable because we're pretending that gay people aren't real, that homophobe can go right to hell.

It's nice that you live somewhere where you can consider people telling you that you don't deserve to exist something that's just socially unpopular. We don't all have that luxury.

*EDIT* And quite frankly, it's pretty rude of you to think that just having a character be gay is a provocative action that's deliberately designed to kick someone out. You shouldn't have to walk on eggshells around hateful people out of fear of drawing their ire.

Erloas
2019-01-12, 10:57 PM
Well Sally might have a different viewpoint as to what constitutes PG. The compromise position would likely have been to remove all relationships of that sort from the game, hetero or homosexual. But nope moral indignation made that impossible. And again, if the character knew that she was so inclined and chose to this to goad here.
There is nothing even kind of "PG" about marriage. There are many G rated movies with families, marriage, and "romance." Considering the game hadn't even started yet it wasn't even like any sort of details of any relationship would have been laid out there. If he had wanted to pick up someone in a bar and go through any sort of details in that, that very well could be a legitimate issue for the table, regardless of the genders involved. But simply being married, or just having a relationship, is nothing.

It doesn't define the tone of the game, it doesn't dictate what anyone else can or can't do. There is no legitimate complaint to be had.

Durandu Ran
2019-01-12, 11:21 PM
Thank you for illustrating perfectly the point.

It is possible:
Larry decides that his character will be (fill in the blank’. If he knows Sally is morally opposed to (fill in the blank), which we should assume he knows given that it has been a social hot topic of conversation in recent years.

I've played tabletop games with a number of people who started out as friends of friends, and who I didn't see much of away from the table, and the topic of homosexuality didn't really come up super frequently or in great detail. Plus, there are a lot of people out there who deliberately avoid talking about politics with people who are mostly just acquaintances. It's not really that hard to picture a scenario where Larry honestly didn't know Sally's beliefs, and just made his character gay for his own reasons. In the D&D podcast The Adventure Zone, Taako, an elven wizard, doesn't mention anything about his sexuality for the first couple dozen episodes, but at some point, he flirted with a male NPC, later asking him out on a date. I remember the player, Justin McElroy, saying that one of the reasons he made Taako gay was that he liked to give his characters qualities that were different from himself, which is a pretty simple and understandable reason to me. Makes more sense to me than immediately deducing that this guy Larry must have had a nefarious plot to smoke out social conservatives.


Larry decides that because she has a different morality than him. She therefore is a bad person and must be shown to be a bad person. He suddenly makes his character have (fill in the blank) quality. He does this because he wants everyone to know Sally is a bad person because she has wrongthink.

Sally tries to avoid direct conflict by talking to the DM. The DM does not understand the core reason for Sally’s distress because she fails to communicate it properly. Sally blows up.

You are literally just making up motivations that directly contradict the OP's story. Sally is the one who asked the DM to interfere because another player's morality differed from hers.

(I think saying that a character in a same-sex relationship described by the DM as "not explicit or overbearing" is inappropriate for a PG rating is implicitly a moral judgement. Perhaps you disagree, but then again, you seem to have also come to the conclusion in your post that Sally's objection was moral in nature. You just also came to the conclusions that Larry was both aware of Sally's moral position, and deliberately made his character gay to provoke her, neither of which seems obvious to me, and which Sally herself does not seem to have accused Larry of, according to what we've heard from the OP).


Larry gets to play the poor innocent marty and Sally is shunned for being an up person with wrongthink

It is possible that Larry was using his character to attack Sally the player’s social position in real life. Your comment demonstrates how and why this scenario might have played out.

Or maybe Larry had his own reasons for making his character gay, and it wasn't at all about Sally until she made it about her, because she is the one who complained to the DM that another player did not agree with her morality. The OP is probably better suited to judge that than you.

JNAProductions
2019-01-12, 11:24 PM
To the OP-you did absolutely fine. There are, theoretically, better ways to handle it, but none that I can think of, and for the situation you were presented, you did the best you could.

To the rest-remember the forum rules (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/announcement.php?a=1).

Mutazoia
2019-01-12, 11:46 PM
Without knowing any of the backstories of the players.

Wait for it.....


Why did “Larry” declare his character to be (a) homosexual and (b) married to another male?
If in 2017 “Larry”’s character’s sexuality wasn’t discussed then springing these two revaltions is a pretty big reveal.

You mention no campaign related teason ad to why this player decided to announce this. So I assume that previously it has never been mentioned or discussed. I am deeply curious as to Larry’s motivations.

To me it seems like a classic passive-aggressive way of making Sally upset and angry because she has a different world view on homosexual marriage than he does. One interpretation of events is he was deliberately trying to bait her, and when she went ballistic, he gets to play the poor innocent victim while she appears unreasonable.

Soooooo.....have you considered the possibility that "Larry" is gay himself, and was using this as an opportunity to sound out his group of friends before "coming out"? That is never an easy thing to do, no matter how long you've known some one, even if you know that they are not "homophobic". His line of reasoning could have simply been "if they accept my gay, married Dwarf, there's a good chance they will accept me." And he found the one person in the group who wouldn't accept his gay Dwarf....

Of course, all of that could be completely off base. But the thing is, I'm pretty sure your "baiting the homophobe to get attention" angle is so off base, it's not even on the ball field...it's out in the parking lot, scalping tickets.

Said Dwarf's sexuality had never come up before, and would probably never come up again. But "Sally" wanted to push her personal morality on the issue. Not fair to "Larry", and not fair to the OP by trying to strong arm him into strong arming "Larry" into changing something that would probably never even be mentioned again. Since the game has a PG setting, there is never going to be an instance where "Larry's" character (or anybody else's character, for that matter) is going to be hopping in the sack with anybody. It was a non-issue from the start. The only "attention seeker" here, is "Sally".

"I made an unreasonable demand, for no good reason, was told no, and now I'm the victim."

Sorry "Sally", that's not how this works...that's now how any of this works.


But coming into a game where you know somebody is going to be bothered by something and shoving that thing into their face in the very first session is not a great start. No matter how much you agree that homophobes should be banned from playing D&D, this sort of behavior is a bad precedent to set. Because one day it'll be you who is holding the socially unpopular position. The right thing to do again is to discuss these issues with the DM if you know the other player is going to have issues with that. At that time even refusing to play with them is fine. But provided that the gay dwarf player knew that this was going to be an issue for Sally then he should have discussed this with the DM first before springing it, even if only to give a heads-up.

You assume that "Larry" had foreknowledge of "Sally's" opinions on human sex and sexuality. Last time I checked, that kind of information was not something that people have tattooed on their foreheads, and it is generally not a topic for light conversation. There are people I've know for 30+ years, whom I consider good friends, and I have no idea what their opinion on homosexuality is, nor am I really all that interested in finding out. Unless they want to tell me, it's really none of my business. Unless they start acting the fool and attempting to force that opinion on others, or worse, try to get me to do it for them.

Lake Huron
2019-01-12, 11:56 PM
I am reluctant to provide clarifying details at this point for fear it will exacerbate this argument.

Just know that I'm aware my thread is in flames.

Mutazoia
2019-01-13, 12:01 AM
I am reluctant to provide clarifying details at this point for fear it will exacerbate this argument.

Just know that I'm aware my thread is in flames.

lol

Oh, trust me, it's not in flames. It may be belching a little smoke, but it hasn't quite gone all orange and hot yet.

Lake Huron
2019-01-13, 12:05 AM
Well in the interest of keeping it from being orange and hot I think I'll withhold the clarifying details a bit.

This is all getting somewhat out of hand. I came here to avoid drama, y'see.

DaOldeWolf
2019-01-13, 12:53 AM
As long as the conversation was calm and you remained level headed, (there is a difference between being firm and being angry) I would say that you did well. It is your campaign and you should get to decide what is and what isnt allowed. It is a shame that things got to the point where they got but not everyone can be reasoned with.

Stormageddon
2019-01-13, 01:40 AM
It's seems due to the nature of the conflict the OP was damned if you do, damned if you don't.

If OP had asked Larry to change he would have been blasted as homophobic.

Removing the controversial nature of the conflict of the conflict. It's not the DM's job to sort out real world political correctness. If Sally had a problem with larry. Or Larry had a problem with Sally. I assume they are adults and should have handled it among themselves in stead of dragging the game into it.

Mr Beer
2019-01-13, 03:23 AM
Darth Ultron and I are in full agreement on a subject. This is rare enough that you know it means we're right.

Yeah it has a 'the stars aligned' feel to it when the Darth starts being all reasonable about something.


Frankly, if Sally is so homophobic that the mere presence of a happily married gay man as a character in a story she is playing is enough for her to demand it be removed or else she walks, she is unreasonable, and it doesn't matter if she's being passive-aggressively prodded about it.

Yep basically this.

Mr Beer
2019-01-13, 03:25 AM
Well in the interest of keeping it from being orange and hot I think I'll withhold the clarifying details a bit.

This is all getting somewhat out of hand. I came here to avoid drama, y'see.

Wrong place sir. It's rare to get a topic that everyone agrees on and we love to chew over an argument, even when it requires inventing some background details in order to support our position.

Pauly
2019-01-13, 05:16 AM
Wait for it.....



Soooooo.....have you considered the possibility that "Larry" is gay himself, and was using this as an opportunity to sound out his group of friends before "coming out"? That is never an easy thing to do, no matter how long you've known some one, even if you know that they are not "homophobic". His line of reasoning could have simply been "if they accept my gay, married Dwarf, there's a good chance they will accept me." And he found the one person in the group who wouldn't accept his gay Dwarf....

Of course, all of that could be completely off base. But the thing is, I'm pretty sure your "baiting the homophobe to get attention" angle is so off base, it's not even on the ball field...it's out in the parking lot, scalping tickets.

Said Dwarf's sexuality had never come up before, and would probably never come up again. But "Sally" wanted to push her personal morality on the issue. Not fair to "Larry", and not fair to the OP by trying to strong arm him into strong arming "Larry" into changing something that would probably never even be mentioned again. Since the game has a PG setting, there is never going to be an instance where "Larry's" character (or anybody else's character, for that matter) is going to be hopping in the sack with anybody. It was a non-issue from the start. The only "attention seeker" here, is "Sally".
.

To restate for Captain Obvious, I was putting an alternate hypothesis out, other than the “Sally’s a homophobe, let’s burn her at the stake” comments. There is a possibility, based on the limited information available that “Larry” was deliberately yanking “Sally’s” chain. If that’s the case then it becomes a different situation to what most people had assumed. At no point did I side with either “Larry” or “Sally”. Nor did I express any opinion about homosexual marriage. I generally would advise gamers to avoid hot topic social issues in fantasy games.

Lake Huron has deliberately kept the details vague, and doesn’t want to provide extra details. Which is perfectly fair.

Neknoh
2019-01-13, 06:04 AM
The thing that your opponents is saying is not that Larry may or may not have known, but rather that a character's background having "is married to a man" should not be considered "yanking chain" or "shoving into face" since that is simply a matter of existence. If Larry had gone to either make gay-coded passes at Sally's character, or actively gone out of his way to flirt with NPC's and try to bed them, trying to push for more detail, then this could well be considered "yanking chain" or "shoving into face."

Also, if Larry knew, as you say, then his actions are not necessarily to goad Sally into leaving the group, but rather to play a gay character "in spite of" remarks that Sally may have made, rather than targeted at her "because of" previous remarks.

Aneurin
2019-01-13, 07:53 AM
I am reluctant to provide clarifying details at this point for fear it will exacerbate this argument.

Just know that I'm aware my thread is in flames.

That's fair. I wouldn't say the thread's in flames, but it does seem to be getting unproductive for your purposes.


If you're worried you were being a jerk, here's a few things to ask yourself about the situation - and maybe to ask Sally and Larry about, too. You don't need to tell them to us if you don't want, just think about them a little.


What exactly is Sally's problem with the gay marriage? Was it that it's gay, or was it that it's a marriage/relationship at all? How sure are you that she wasn't using the wrong words to talk about her actual issue? I'm sure there are quite a few players out there who aren't comfortable with in character relationships, even with NPCs. Different people have different levels of comfort, and people do get squicked out by in character romance being played out even if there's nothing explicit about it.
Who was it who issued the ultimatum? Was it you or Sally who first said 'my way or the highway' as it were?
How hard did you really try to understand everyone's side of the problem?
Has a problem like this come up before with anyone involved this time around?
Why did Larry announce this now - or was it always there, and just got overlooked? I know it's a minor background detail and all, and probably irrelevant, but it's caused a problem which maybe means it's worth asking 'why'? There's also the question of what he was going to do with this detail, which could loop back to point one; if he's unfaithful, or a flirt, or bothers everyone the character considers attractive... then maybe the issue isn't about being gay.
What relationship do Larry and Sally have outside of the game? Could the problem come from there?
Where does Nancy come into this, and could she be egging Sally on into making this a bigger problem OOC than it already is?

AMFV
2019-01-13, 08:37 AM
You assume that "Larry" had foreknowledge of "Sally's" opinions on human sex and sexuality. Last time I checked, that kind of information was not something that people have tattooed on their foreheads, and it is generally not a topic for light conversation. There are people I've know for 30+ years, whom I consider good friends, and I have no idea what their opinion on homosexuality is, nor am I really all that interested in finding out. Unless they want to tell me, it's really none of my business. Unless they start acting the fool and attempting to force that opinion on others, or worse, try to get me to do it for them.

That's why I specific that only the DM knows about this particular subject. Most people who are my age and in a social group have at the very least discussed this in their friend groups in the past three or four years for obvious reasons. Now this may not be the case, or they may not be part of the same consistent social group. It is entirely possible that the dwarf player had no idea this would happen (a thing which I have mentioned in very nearly single post in this thread). But if this is a preexisting thing, and I'd bet it was, then this is a problem from both sides, because regardless of the views the player had, that is not an appropriate way to handle it.


The thing that your opponents is saying is not that Larry may or may not have known, but rather that a character's background having "is married to a man" should not be considered "yanking chain" or "shoving into face" since that is simply a matter of existence. If Larry had gone to either make gay-coded passes at Sally's character, or actively gone out of his way to flirt with NPC's and try to bed them, trying to push for more detail, then this could well be considered "yanking chain" or "shoving into face."

Also, if Larry knew, as you say, then his actions are not necessarily to goad Sally into leaving the group, but rather to play a gay character "in spite of" remarks that Sally may have made, rather than targeted at her "because of" previous remarks.

It depends on the relationship the people had outside of the game. If the character knew that Sally didn't consider gay marriage to be a topic that she wanted to discuss with her friends (because they disagree on it) and he knew that. He was in the wrong to even bring it up in a game where she was present. If he didn't know that or what-not, then it's fine. But it's like having a game about a "refugee crisis" in a group that's politically divided and has decided not to talk about that sort of thing out of game, it's not appropriate to bring it into a game world if you're already not outside it. And I've seen a lot of smug people who brag about "cutting people out of their lives"

Edit: Also as far as the "right to exist" goes. The Dwarf character does not, unless the player is of the same orientation (in which case Sally is much more in the wrong, or at the very least it's likely unsalvageable).

Mutazoia
2019-01-13, 11:00 AM
Basically, the situation boils down to this:

Was "Larry's" character being gay ever going to be brought up legitimately in game again. (i.e. were they going to have a "Gay Dwarf goes home to spend time with his husband" episode.)?


If not, then "Sally's" reaction was unreasonable, as was her attempt to get the OP to talk Larry into changing a bit of unimportant background fluff. That she went to the DM, rather than Larry to begin with could be construed as a bit passive-aggressive, but then, if she's so uncomfortable with the idea of a pretend person having a same sex relationship with another pretend person in the same pretend world has her pretend person, I'm sure raising her concern to the creator or the offending pretend person, in person, would be a bit too personal.


Edit: Also as far as the "right to exist" goes. The Dwarf character does not, unless the player is of the same orientation (in which case Sally is much more in the wrong, or at the very least it's likely unsalvageable).

I would counter with the argument that neither you, nor anybody else, has a right to tell somebody what kind of character they want to play. Unless said Gay Dwarf was being played in such a way as to be demeaning and derogatory to homosexuals, I see no reason why a straight person could not play a gay character. How many times have you played a female character, despite not being female yourself?

To the OP:

I think you handled that about as well as it could be. You got put in a position that you shouldn't have: Having to mediate a social issue that was far above and beyond your scope as a DM. It was not right for "Sally" to force you to pick a side on this issue. Gaming is suppose to be a past time where people can leave all of that real world bantha poo-doo behind for a few hours.

In the future, I would suggest making a table rule that disallows any mention of such real-world social and/or political issues (such as validity or non-validity of non-binary romantic/sexual relationships) by requiring all PC's and NPC's to be confirmed bachelors with no greater love than being little murder-hobo's.

AMFV
2019-01-13, 11:16 AM
Basically, the situation boils down to this:

Was "Larry's" character being gay ever going to be brought up legitimately in game again. (i.e. were they going to have a "Gay Dwarf goes home to spend time with his husband" episode.)?


If not, then "Sally's" reaction was unreasonable, as was her attempt to get the OP to talk Larry into changing a bit of unimportant background fluff. That she went to the DM, rather than Larry to begin with could be construed as a bit passive-aggressive, but then, if she's so uncomfortable with the idea of a pretend person having a same sex relationship with another pretend person in the same pretend world has her pretend person, I'm sure raising her concern to the creator or the offending pretend person, in person, would be a bit too personal.

It's also a little bit unreasonable to expect that somebody shouldn't be willing to alter a small piece of background fluff if it irritates another player or causes a real world problem. I don't know that they should have too, but at the same time it's an issue that shows both players (if the Dwarf player was aware) are not looking to have a good time.



I would counter with the argument that neither you, nor anybody else, has a right to tell somebody what kind of character they want to play. Unless said Gay Dwarf was being played in such a way as to be demeaning and derogatory to homosexuals, I see no reason why a straight person could not play a gay character. How many times have you played a female character, despite not being female yourself?

Quite often, I generally DM. But if one of the players had a huge issue with women, and asked that I tone down certain behaviors, I would consider doing so. Even though that stance isn't morally upright, because sometimes people who hold reprehensible stances can be otherwise good people. Now if he were asking a woman in that hypothetical game to behave differently that would be outright unacceptable. Do you see?



To the OP:

I think you handled that about as well as it could be. You got put in a position that you shouldn't have: Having to mediate a social issue that was far above and beyond your scope as a DM. It was not right for "Sally" to force you to pick a side on this issue. Gaming is suppose to be a past time where people can leave all of that real world bantha poo-doo behind for a few hours.

In the future, I would suggest making a table rule that disallows any mention of such real-world social and/or political issues (such as validity or non-validity of non-binary romantic/sexual relationships) by requiring all PC's and NPC's to be confirmed bachelors with no greater love than being little murder-hobo's.

Excellent advice! If the party cannot handle talk about grown-up relationships (for whatever reason) the fairest thing is to cut them out of the game.

Friv
2019-01-13, 06:48 PM
Quite often, I generally DM. But if one of the players had a huge issue with women, and asked that I tone down certain behaviors, I would consider doing so. Even though that stance isn't morally upright, because sometimes people who hold reprehensible stances can be otherwise good people. Now if he were asking a woman in that hypothetical game to behave differently that would be outright unacceptable. Do you see?

I do see, and I disagree.

Here's the thing. If you say, "someone with a reprehensible stance can otherwise be a good person, so I'm going to bow to their prejudices," you are telling that person that their reprehensible stance is okay - that if they raise a stink, they will get their way. That they don't have to try to change. That as long as they don't hurt people in front of you, they can hurt people elsewhere.

That is the attitude that allows reprehensible people who are not interested in changing or moderating their behaviour to drive the people they dislike out of their social sphere.

If you know someone who holds reprehensible beliefs, and they're otherwise good, you have a responsibility to say so. You have a responsibility to say, "Look, friend, I am your friend and I will support you but you cannot do that. Please, if you care about me, don't do that." And if they backslide or slip up, you can be gentle. You can let little things slide as long as they're trying. But you absolutely cannot just let them have their way, and doing so is not being a good friend, it's being an enabler.

And if your friend is more interested in being reprehensible than in not hurting you, you might learn something about how good they actually are.

Friv
2019-01-13, 06:49 PM
In the future, I would suggest making a table rule that disallows any mention of such real-world social and/or political issues (such as validity or non-validity of non-binary romantic/sexual relationships) by requiring all PC's and NPC's to be confirmed bachelors with no greater love than being little murder-hobo's.

Keep in mind that all PCs and NPCs will also have to have no more than one living parent, and all deceased parents must be forbidden from being mentioned.

Jay R
2019-01-13, 09:39 PM
I will never say, "You did nothing wrong" based only on your description of what happened. I could believe that on another thread somewhere, people are assuring Sally that she did nothing wrong, based on her description of the situation, which might be very different from yours.

But one thing is clear -- Sally and Larry can't play in the same game.

His fault? Her fault? Your fault?

The questions themselves are based on the often mistaken notion that somebody must be at fault, which is based on the false belief that any group of people should be able to enjoy any activity together. I see no evidence of this belief, and much evidence in our world that it isn't true. Sally and Larry can't play together right now, and there's nothing wrong with that.

There are D&D players I don't want to play with. So I don't play with them.

I wish Sally would take responsibility for her own unwillingness to play in a game with this particular PC.
I wish Larry would consider how his character decisions would affect other people.
I wish you had the counseling skills to help people get through this.

But I won't blame anybody -- you, Sally, or Larry -- just because what two different people want out of a game aren't the same things.

OverLordOcelot
2019-01-14, 01:39 AM
I don't see what the problem is. If someone had a marriage between a European-looking human and an African-looking human, and someone objected because interracial marriage is a hot topic for them, would you handle it differently? If someone objected to another player's female character having a job outside the home because it's a hot topic for them, how would you approach that?


Nor did I express any opinion about homosexual marriage. I generally would advise gamers to avoid hot topic social issues in fantasy games.

Conversely, I would advise anyone who considers allowing the mere existence of people I am close to to be open to debate, much less a 'hot topic', to not consider me their friend at all, because they won't be friends of mine once I find out. And probably would not want to be my friend in the first place if they knew my dating history, or saw the amount of rainbow flags that somehow happen to make their way into the outfits of my friends.

Edreyn
2019-01-14, 04:13 AM
I think that Sally is the one wrong.
But I think there is another way to solve this.
If there is a conflict between players, and you can't take both, because that will ruin the whole game, I'd decide who should stay not by judging players, but rather I'd choose which character is more interesting, and has more harmony with other characters.

First, you must warn your players that you'd make a decision by characters, and not players ideology. Then just choose a character. If you warn everyone in advance, no one should get offended.

RedWarlock
2019-01-14, 04:35 AM
No, I'd say "Sally" was entirely in the wrong. Then again, I admit, I'm biased; as a gay man, I would prefer my existence wasn't 'a political issue' that someone finds issue with.

My boyfriend and I are part of a long-running group (my BF had been playing with them for a number of years before I even started dating him) which was looking for new players a while back. We had one new guy show up (apparently he'd been there for a session we missed due to a scheduling conflict), and afterwards, he emailed the other guys, saying he didn't realize and wasn't comfortable with "such an alternative couple" being present. We had done nothing but make casual conversation and sit next to each other (at the time, it was a tableless game run mostly from several couches) and play the game.

On the other hand, I've just started a new group with my boyfriend and two other gay couples. Entirely gay male table. I still ask, "Okay guys, what are your characters' gender identity and sexual orientation?" We're playing the Dresden Files RPG, still making characters. Anything works there.

Florian
2019-01-14, 04:38 AM
My 2 cp to this:

- This is first and foremost a thing that the players have to clear between themselves and not something that the GM should be bothered with.
- Insisting to keep bothering the GM about directly changing a players character because you have a problem with it, especially a thing that might never come up in the actual game, then keeping on bothering the GM to the point that a ultimatum is needed already is already going to far.
- My tolerance level for the intolerant is very low. I generally ask my players in session zero about red lines and trigger topics, to know what to avoid, but I´d also kick people like Sally here out of the group, because they also limit what I can use as a GM.

Metahuman1
2019-01-14, 05:31 AM
So, I seem to be missing something here. This dwarf was already a previously established character in a group of previously established characters. And the game went on Hiatus. And then the game started back, it was mentioned even though it wasn't going to have any baring on the game whatsoever that he was gay and had a husband around somewhere, for no reason.

And no one thought to ask "Why has this character evidently been retconned?". It had to have been a Retcon, cause if it wasn't I'm forced to think Sally would have raised issue with it sooner. Frankly, I'd be checking Lukes social media and forums as best you can, seeing if he's bragging about getting rid of the homophobe/Nazi/wrongthinker/whatever the insult of the day is at the moment.


Cause, that change? That retcon for no reason that we've had listed and thus we have to speculate about the why of? That seems to have been link 1 in the chain reaction.


That said, 2 points to keep in mind.

1: Ok, so let's say he does have this character. It never, ever, ever, ever comes up aside from that 1 conversation. You can tell Sally that, and that solves that problem.

Or it does come up, and now she has to watch people playing out interactions that she clearly doesn't want a front row seat too. (And I am telling you this as someone who finds ALL flirting uncomfortable if I'm in close proximity too it but not directly receiving or instigating it. And that includes trying to RP anything romantic in person with anyone of any freaking Gender. If you ever want to make me squirm, those are some VERY fast ways to do it.). In which cause, perhaps she phrased it wrong/poorly, but, she does have a concern now.


2: As far as "Right to exist.". No one is saying real Gay Men don't have a right to exist. I do however feel the need to point out that there is another right. Right not to associate with people you don't want to associate with. If as a Gay man you find Neo Nazi's morally reprehensible, or Evangelical Christians utterly insufferable, you'd don't have to hang out with them. You also don't have to hang out with Tweenage girls that are shrieking about whomever the big Auto Tune Pop Star boy of the week is right now if you find them grating. Or hardcore Weebo's if you find the hobby annoying.

And the thing about that is, it goes both directions. If someone is uncomfortable with your sexual preferences/love life, they should have the option to not have to associate with you and, subsequently, it. And you can't say they don't, unless your willing to agree you and everyone else has to also associate with all the other groups you might not and probably don't want to associate with.

And of the 2, I see one who injected it into the game the other one was already involved in with out a problem 1st. That would be Luke. Given that, it's not unreasonable for her to go to the DM and go "Hey, this is a thing I'm not comfortable with, can we not, particularly because it's this retcon that came out of left field during the Hiatus.".




I am pointing these things out not to completely absolve Sally or anything. Merely to make sure the point is made that it is not, necessarily, black and white.


And at the very least to advise you to keep an eye on Luke. If he's bragging about it on Reddit or Twitter or Tumbler or Facebook or what-not, that's probably a big red flag about what he was doing. I'd also be mindful if this starts to be a pattern, were he adds things into his character that make other characters uncomfortable. Once could well be happenstance. I doubt twice would be coincidence in this case however, and even if it were, thrice or more is all but certainly deliberate.

Florian
2019-01-14, 06:03 AM
So, I seem to be missing something here. This dwarf was already a previously established character in a group of previously established characters. And the game went on Hiatus. And then the game started back, it was mentioned even though it wasn't going to have any baring on the game whatsoever that he was gay and had a husband around somewhere, for no reason.

Could be the case, must not be the case. If I read the OP correctly, the game is more or less PG and the players are having a recap of their characters to get reacquainted. Could also well be that nothing has changed and the whole topic never came up before the game went on hiatus. It´s like, you know, me having fun at fooling around with my character backstory, including, say, explaining my sorcerers abyssal bloodline (and possibly being a Tiefling), with having been raised by a male warlock and his incubus lover, but than never coming up with the whole topic, because, well, PG gaming doesn't often lead there, or just forgetting to mentioning it in the first place.

Metahuman1
2019-01-14, 06:22 AM
Could be the case, must not be the case. If I read the OP correctly, the game is more or less PG and the players are having a recap of their characters to get reacquainted. Could also well be that nothing has changed and the whole topic never came up before the game went on hiatus. It´s like, you know, me having fun at fooling around with my character backstory, including, say, explaining my sorcerers abyssal bloodline (and possibly being a Tiefling), with having been raised by a male warlock and his incubus lover, but than never coming up with the whole topic, because, well, PG gaming doesn't often lead there, or just forgetting to mentioning it in the first place.

But if that is the case, why not mention it at the actual games session zero, but mention it at the first post Hiatus session? If it didn't matter at session zero or for the whole campaign up too the Hiatus, why was it suddenly, coming back of the Hiatus, something he felt needed to be brought up?

After all, If I had that Sorcerer backstory, and ran a whole extended campaign with out it ever coming up, and then we went on Hiatus, there would be really no logical necessity to bring it up when doing the quick recap. Just a need to recap what was already known/experienced by the party. And subsequently, I wouldn't do it. Unless, perhaps, it was a Retcon.

Which, in turn, begs the question, if it was a Retcon, what motivated/necessitated the Retcon in question?

Knaight
2019-01-14, 06:37 AM
This seems like it was handled just fine to me. Sure, it might technically fall within the bounds of favoritism, but you are under no obligation to like all people equally. You can, for instance, favor an entirely reasonable player over someone who throws a pearl clutching hissy fit over nothing. You can favor a player who just plays the game over one who installs a floor made of eggshells, demands everyone walk on them, then whines about how some of them are getting cracked. If Sally wanted to stay in a group she could find a strategy besides making sure she's less liked than someone, creating an ultimatum where one of them goes, then whining about favoritism when it's her.

As for intentional provocation - I couldn't care less. The thing about intentional provocation as a thing is that what would work on someone says a lot about them as a person. Sally looks out of line here because she's out of line, and that's on her, not on anyone involved in revealing her flaws.


And the thing about that is, it goes both directions. If someone is uncomfortable with your sexual preferences/love life, they should have the option to not have to associate with you and, subsequently, it. And you can't say they don't, unless your willing to agree you and everyone else has to also associate with all the other groups you might not and probably don't want to associate with.
Literally nobody is saying that Sally doesn't or shouldn't have this option. We're generally of the opinion that she should have taken it, and thus left. She's the one for whom it was a dealbreaker, the rest of the group was on the other side, so she should have left. I would have, were the positions reversed. If someone finds interacting with you a problem, and you find interacting with them a problem, well, there's a really obvious win-win solution in there.

That's not what Sally did though. Instead she tried to demand that the OP had an ethical obligation to be neutral on the matter because of a game, then got pissy when that's not how things shook out.

DeTess
2019-01-14, 06:42 AM
Which, in turn, begs the question, if it was a Retcon, what motivated/necessitated the Retcon in question?

Maybe the player has come to the realization that he's gay himself over the hiatus? Maybe a friend or brother or something of his has come out as gay, and the player decided to add that touch to his character as a kind of solidarity? Maybe the player is just generally open-minded and decided that being gay just fit this character?

I think there's plenty of options before we get to "was intentionally trying to rile up the homophobe', especially because this is a pretty subtle shot if you're trying to get an argument going.

edit:

As for intentional provocation - I couldn't care less. The thing about intentional provocation as a thing is that what would work on someone says a lot about them as a person. Sally looks out of line here because she's out of line, and that's on her, not on anyone involved in revealing her flaws.

This is also something that bears repeating. The dwarf didn't have some unrealistic character trait or some reprehensible philosophy. Instead, he had a realistic character trait that's common in our world, and Sally tried to have this removed because it didn't fit her world-view. Well, if your world-view involves the marginalizing of a significant portion of the population, I think it needs to be challenged at every possible opportunity so that hopefully at some point you realize that it is not right to try to oppress people just because they like something different than you do

Metahuman1
2019-01-14, 06:42 AM
As for intentional provocation - I couldn't care less. The thing about intentional provocation as a thing is that what would work on someone says a lot about them as a person. Sally looks out of line here because she's out of line, and that's on her, not on anyone involved in revealing her flaws.

By that logic, no parent should ever punish there child for being annoying on purpose, on the grounds that doing so says bad things about the parents and the flaws of the parents and all the other people around, and not about the child needling and goading them, no matter how much the child does it. Or how maliciously.

Metahuman1
2019-01-14, 06:45 AM
Maybe the player has come to the realization that he's gay himself over the hiatus? Maybe a friend or brother or something of his has come out as gay, and the player decided to add that touch to his character as a kind of solidarity? Maybe the player is just generally open-minded and decided that being gay just fit this character?

I think there's plenty of options before we get to "was intentionally trying to rile up the homophobe', especially because this is a pretty subtle shot if you're trying to get an argument going.

There are people who specialize in subtle emotional manipulation. Indeed, people who are very nasty who excel at it.


Maybe it was a benign happenstance thing. Maybe it wasn't. Best way to figure it out is to keep the other player under the microscope for awhile going forwards. See if there bragging about it behind the DM and possibly Sally's back. And be very mindful if very similar incidents start becoming a thing that happens with them.

Knaight
2019-01-14, 06:52 AM
By that logic, no parent should ever punish there child for being annoying on purpose, on the grounds that doing so says bad things about the parents and the flaws of the parents and all the other people around, and not about the child needling and goading them, no matter how much the child does it. Or how maliciously.

That logic extended to parents would say that the parents responding to their child "being annoying" says something about them, yes. For instance, it might say that they find the question "Why?" repeated for fifteen minutes straight irritating. It might say that they find loud repeated pot-clanging noises irritating. Regardless of what form "being annoying" takes, what annoys the parents is information about them. It's just information that has plenty of potential to be totally innocuous and unremarkable.

Metahuman1
2019-01-14, 09:29 AM
That logic extended to parents would say that the parents responding to their child "being annoying" says something about them, yes. For instance, it might say that they find the question "Why?" repeated for fifteen minutes straight irritating. It might say that they find loud repeated pot-clanging noises irritating. Regardless of what form "being annoying" takes, what annoys the parents is information about them. It's just information that has plenty of potential to be totally innocuous and unremarkable.

Except by the logic you've laid out, innocuous and unremarkable or not, it's bad on the part of the parents, always, it's a failure they should be ashamed of, always. No if's, ands or but's about it. No exceptions.





And since either I missed it earlier or you edited it in afterwards, with regard to your rebuttal of the point of freedom to associate or not associate.

Sally choose to Associate with the game. Sally did so for a long time with out a problem.

Luke comes in after a hiatus period, and retcons in something, possibly to be deliberately antagonistic, that Sally doesn't want to associate with. (And you can't say it's a harmless background trait unless it was being made clear that it would never ever come up, in which case it begs the question why Luke felt like drawing extra special attention too the retcon. And if that's not the case, well, now she has to sit there at the game sessions she choose to associate with, while they take time to focus on something, like RPing of Gay Flirting or whatever was going to happen between the DM and Luke that came of this Retcon of Luke's character being relevant. Something that I've explained above could very validly be uncomfortable.)

This was not what Sally signed up for, so she tried to bring that concern to the GM. Perhaps failing to phrase it perfectly on the fly under pressure.

And instead she gets taken out of the game. She has her association with that game ended, because someone else did something she wasn't comfortable associating with. Had Luke not throw out this retcon, for, as far as we can confirm, either no reason or no good reason, none of this would have happened.


And now she's being crucified for it. Rights be damned. She's a horrible evil person for not wanting to associate with something that wasn't there till Luke forged link 1 in this chain of events with his Retcon. Period, she ought to be perma-banned! And form all of table top gaming! She's that evil! She should never have been allowed to associate, even though there was only a problem after a long smooth run when another person threw in a Retcon that either will have nothing to do with anything and never be mentioned again, or will come up and be something she's uncomfortable dealing with in her escapist fantasy!

Meanwhile, there is open resistance to the very idea of checking on/monitoring the motive of the person who forged Link 1 in this little chain of events. Who, even if he never meant for this to come about, was the one who set the chain reaction off. And that's giving him the benefit of the doubt, and assuming it was all a freak accident of chance and circumstance.

OverLordOcelot
2019-01-14, 09:36 AM
2: As far as "Right to exist.". No one is saying real Gay Men don't have a right to exist. I do however feel the need to point out that there is another right. Right not to associate with people you don't want to associate with.

Yes they are. The person who's so bothered by the idea that gay people even exist that they're raising complaints because someone's character's backstory includes marrying another man most certainly does not want gay men to exist, and is doing the next best thing and pushing for the DM to make a 'straights only' game world. The only reason for a casual mention of marriage like this to be a 'hot button issue' is if you don't think the marriage should exist in the first place.


I am pointing these things out not to completely absolve Sally or anything. Merely to make sure the point is made that it is not, necessarily, black and white.

I don't see what's at all not black and white about it. Sally is a bigot who wanted to force a group to actively support and celebrate her bigotry, and she got shut down. It's really weird that, on one hand, you talk about the right not to associate with people you don't want to associate with, but on the other seem to think it's absolutely terrible that people don't want to associate with Sally.

zlefin
2019-01-14, 10:04 AM
@metahuman
there's no reason to assume it's a retcon; and once again, your line of inquiry looks like one of those that seeks to displace blame from an actually guilty party to another one. It looks more like a rationalization/blame shifting tactic than something that's likely from the evidence. While it's theoretically possible, and the OP can check for it, it's not likely at all. It's choosing to ascribe a malicious motivation when there's far more likely alternatives. (i.e. the simple motive of wanting to play a character of type X; or the more complex motive of wanting to defend the rights of the oppress rather than to malicious hurt someone of the outgroup)

Some of the stuff in a character background isn't mentioned to the whole group, just to the dm, because not every char knows every detail of every other char's past. And the backgrounds are often boring.

Dumbledore wasn't revealed to be gay for quite aways after the Potter books came out. why? because it just wasn't that relevant to the story. By the sound of it, the same applies here, the gay marriage never really mattered to the story so it didn't come up. I agree it would've been good to cover in session 0, but it's not like it's a major revelation or plot point; it has no real effect on the game at all.
It's a basic techniqje in writing to flesh out characters by having background more fully written than the parts that are actually mentioned.

Rhedyn
2019-01-14, 10:24 AM
This isn't that hard. It's a PG campaign. In modern times that doesn't exclude the existence of gay people in the campaign. No one is doing anything sexual though.

Sally is of the opinion that homosexuality is inherently a sexual thing and therefore not PG or appropriate to children. That is not the modern consensus. She had the opportunity to adapt and didn't.

Now maybe Larry was being malicious and crafted his character to upset Sally, but Sally chose the wrong hill to die on. Keep an eye on Larry.

Conservative opinions are allowed, but you need a very thick skin to have them in this hobby.

OverLordOcelot
2019-01-14, 10:52 AM
It's choosing to ascribe a malicious motivation when there's far more likely alternatives. (i.e. the simple motive of wanting to play a character of type X; or the more complex motive of wanting to defend the rights of the oppress rather than to malicious hurt someone of the outgroup)

Or the really simple motivation of not thinking it's a big deal in the first place, since it's just a random bit of background fluff. I also wonder how much policing of players Sally would insist on - if after the hiatus Larry turned up and casually mentioned 'I can't go late tonight, I have to take my boyfriend to the airport tomorrow', would she object to that to and demand that Larry not talk about ordinary life with his partner unless the partner met with her approval?

Talakeal
2019-01-14, 12:08 PM
This "debate" reminds me a lot of people who boycott video game developers for having the audacity to let the player have the choice to play a female character.


Although I have to say, if I were DMing I would have to think long and hard about allowing a same sex marriage in a dwarven society, not because I have anything against gay PCs but because dwarven society in my campaign world is ultra traditionalist and conservative and I can't really think of any justification for them to have such a custom.

Kapow
2019-01-14, 12:32 PM
I don't get it.
There are many cases, in which it would be good to respect other peoples feelings and worldviews, homophobia simply isn't.
(Except it would be a real phobia, so a case of mental disorder. But even then, I would say, that Sally should get a therapy and the game would go on without her)

If I would know, that someone in my social group thinks like Sally apparently does, I would, depending on her history and how she behaves otherwise, either remove her (or me) from this social circle or try to ease her into a worldview, that is more humane.
And I wouldn't know a much easier way to do this, than having a fictional off-screen relationship in a fantasy game.

I mean, I could (and did) live with homophobic, sexist, racist and sociopathic characters. But this only works in a safe environment, that is, I KNOW that this is fictional and not the stance of the players.

tl;dr: There is no reason ever to accomodate homophobia

Merellis
2019-01-14, 01:04 PM
I'm not sure if I should feel bad that I'm not surprised there are people thinking that someone made their character gay for the sole purpose of discomforting someone who has issues with same-sex marriages.

Which is all kinds of nonsense for the fact that from what was said here, is that the player literally did nothing beyond mention that their character is a dude and has a husband and that it was somehow the straw that broke the camels back enough to have this other player try to say it's not PG to have a married couple.

PG movies and the like have married couples all over the place, so the fact that this particular couple is such an issue, when it may or may not come up in game at all, is all sorts of ridiculous.

OP, you did well enough here with this situation. Could you have smoothed it over some more? Possibly, never really going to know. Could you have corralled the others to not be all over the place? Well no, everyone's going to have different opinions in regards to Geek Social Fallacies and the intersection of people existing as homosexual and other people being uncomfortable with people who exist like that.

You run the game, you're well within your right to say that you aren't going to budge on a position that a character is allowed to be homosexual and be married.

I mean hell, with the people I play with, the idea of a player character having a husband, or even just parents and childhood friends, is so low because they don't want to give the DM any firepower against them.

Your player has handed you a plot point with dwarven clans, family relations, and just marital issues! Go forth and make use of a personal relationship between a PC and an NPC to make plots happen~!

@Talakeal: Then make it a non-custom, the PC is married, but out adventuring because the Clan has issues with that. Could still have family that are fine with it, but the Clan itself could be formally against it.

Talakeal
2019-01-14, 01:26 PM
@Talakeal: Then make it a non-custom, the PC is married, but out adventuring because the Clan has issues with that. Could still have family that are fine with it, but the Clan itself could be formally against it.

Oh sure, I can think of a thiusand ways to make it work, but most of them would require some sort of extraordinary justification rather than just "By the way, I am a happily married dwarven man with a husband waiting for me back in the mountain clanhold."

Which is not a bad thing at all, PCs are all about being extraordinary, I am just worried that this might clash with a player who has "Can be openly gay and in a same sex marriage," as part of the escapist fantasy for their character.

Friv
2019-01-14, 01:31 PM
Although I have to say, if I were DMing I would have to think long and hard about allowing a same sex marriage in a dwarven society, not because I have anything against gay PCs but because dwarven society in my campaign world is ultra traditionalist and conservative and I can't really think of any justification for them to have such a custom.

This is a more interesting question than people trying to defend homophobia as a valid life choice, so let's spend some time on it and brainstorm interesting ways that an ultra-traditionalist culture might be in favour of gay marriage! I will start with three possible dwarven civilizations.

#1 - Marriage in dwarven culture is very much an alliance of families, much more than it is an alliance of people. If a family only has sons, and another family only has sons, you don't let a little thing like lack of children get in the way of a good alliance! Maybe there'll be some daughters fifty years down the road to continue the family line, but you have to worry about the now. Especially given long dwarven lifespans coupled with low fertility rates, it's just not that big a deal.

#2 - Dwarven families mainly adopt children from communal creches. People often choose to have children, but it is rare for the child's literal parent to be the one raising them. Instead, children are raised by whichever family has the resources to shower them with attention and education right now. This isn't a problem because dwarves imprint on children comunally rather than individually, and mothers don't care more for their own kids than for other dwarven kids.

#3 - Dwarves actually believe that your first marriage should always be one that is same-sex. It gives a chance for young dwarves to adventure and learn about a caring family life without having accidental kids mucking up the mine's numbers. There are heterosexual dwarves who marry an opposite-gender dwarf right off the bat, but people kind of give them the side-eye and complain that they're trying to be old before their times.

Merellis
2019-01-14, 01:41 PM
Oh sure, I can think of a thiusand ways to make it work, but most of them would require some sort of extraordinary justification rather than just "By the way, I am a happily married dwarven man with a husband waiting for me back in the mountain clanhold."

Which is not a bad thing at all, PCs are all about being extraordinary, I am just worried that this might clash with a player who has "Can be openly gay and in a same sex marriage," as part of the escapist fantasy for their character.

Guess that mostly depends on how attached they are to playing a dwarf at the same time.

If the dwarves in this world of yours are generally staunch traditionalists that would have clan laws that would not allow such a marriage, it'd still be interesting to be a married dwarf who's been banished from the clan. I mean, most dwarven adventurers are either outcasts, banished, or just plain weird in regards to being a dwarf. Wouldn't be the first dwarf defying clan traditions to marry for love. :smallbiggrin:

Also doesn't mean that the entire clan is against it, they definitely could be, but I doubt they'd all be 100% for this dwarf being banished. (Heck, could have been banished because this dwarf married from a clan that they're rivals with, did magic instead of cleric work, all kinds of things.)

@Friv: Or any of those too.

Erloas
2019-01-14, 04:13 PM
You could also have "very traditional dwarfs" like Pratchett did. They were so traditional that any show of gender was considered taboo, so in fact any dwarven marriage where one was clearly female would have been bad. It was also pretty clear that even talking about gender was bad, so a dwarven couple could have been dating and in love long before they even figured out if they could have children. It would explain the low birth rate too if you didn't even know if you could have kids until well into a relationship*.
*Given you can of course see all the relevant bits without any sort of relationship, but in a very conservative and strict culture where that sort of thing is highly discouraged, it would be much less likely. And if no one in society acted like they cared or even wanted to know what gender anyone else is "falling for someone of the wrong gender" would hold no social stigma because there is no gender to be the wrong one of.

Lake Huron
2019-01-14, 04:42 PM
Although I have to say, if I were DMing I would have to think long and hard about allowing a same sex marriage in a dwarven society, not because I have anything against gay PCs but because dwarven society in my campaign world is ultra traditionalist and conservative and I can't really think of any justification for them to have such a custom.

Fictional conservatism and real-world conservatism aren't necessarily the same thing.

Cluedrew
2019-01-14, 07:19 PM
Although I have to say, if I were DMing I would have to think long and hard about allowing a same sex marriage in a dwarven society, not because I have anything against gay PCs but because dwarven society in my campaign world is ultra traditionalist and conservative and I can't really think of any justification for them to have such a custom.Wait...

Are you implying there are female dwarfs for male dwarfs to be in a heterosexual relation with?

Anyways, sidestepping the actual social issues for a moment, I personally very much enjoy societies that don't quite match up with what you would expect. So I will put my vote in that hat.

Talakeal
2019-01-14, 07:33 PM
Fictional conservatism and real-world conservatism aren't necessarily the same thing.

While this sounds reasonable, I am having trouble wrapping my head about what it would actually mean.


Then again, it might be like the BoED and BoVD where D&D uses real world philosophical terms for things that are completely contrary to their meanings in real life.

Friv
2019-01-14, 07:54 PM
While this sounds reasonable, I am having trouble wrapping my head about what it would actually mean.

That's going to be a tricky one without getting too far into real world politics, but: in our culture, "conservative" things have a tendency to be fairly in lock-step with traditional Abrahamic faith (Christianity especially, but also Judaism and Islam.)

This not actually necessary. All that a culture needs to be conservative and tradition-bound is to have a very long-standing set of cultural traditions, and strong social penalties for violating them. If the culture's original traditions did not put a strong emphasis on having children, it is likely that you won't see their cultural traditions hitting against things that violate that particular norm.

Dwarves might get in a lot more trouble for being poets than for being gay, basically.

Kish
2019-01-14, 08:03 PM
Like most other people in this thread said: You were more than reasonable, and Sally is a thoroughgoing homophobe--which, the weasel-wording of the few people here who have been defending her aside, is not merely an "unpopular" view.

My suggestion is that you tell anyone who asks exactly what she demanded, and let the chips fall where they may. No matter how many people choose to walk away from your group because "he chose to boot someone rather than issuing a statement that same-sex marriage is more inherently sexual than different-sex marriage," nothing of value will be lost.

Knaight
2019-01-14, 08:30 PM
Except by the logic you've laid out, innocuous and unremarkable or not, it's bad on the part of the parents, always, it's a failure they should be ashamed of, always. No if's, ands or but's about it. No exceptions.
That's not remotely what I said, and your decision to misrepresent it speaks volumes. I said that what works to provoke people gives information about them. That doesn't remotely imply that all of that information corresponds to failings in any way. It does for Sally, because her moral failings are the only reason that she could have been "provoked", it doesn't for the parents, because there's legitimate provocation there.


And since either I missed it earlier or you edited it in afterwards, with regard to your rebuttal of the point of freedom to associate or not associate.

Sally choose to Associate with the game. Sally did so for a long time with out a problem.

Luke comes in after a hiatus period, and retcons in something, possibly to be deliberately antagonistic, that Sally doesn't want to associate with. (And you can't say it's a harmless background trait unless it was being made clear that it would never ever come up, in which case it begs the question why Luke felt like drawing extra special attention too the retcon. And if that's not the case, well, now she has to sit there at the game sessions she choose to associate with, while they take time to focus on something, like RPing of Gay Flirting or whatever was going to happen between the DM and Luke that came of this Retcon of Luke's character being relevant. Something that I've explained above could very validly be uncomfortable.)
You can't associate with a game. She chose to associate with a group, which then got to choose not to associate with her. Which just a few posts ago was some right you were defending. It's almost like you only care about it in the context of shutting up people you dislike.


This was not what Sally signed up for, so she tried to bring that concern to the GM. Perhaps failing to phrase it perfectly on the fly under pressure.

And instead she gets taken out of the game. She has her association with that game ended, because someone else did something she wasn't comfortable associating with. Had Luke not throw out this retcon, for, as far as we can confirm, either no reason or no good reason, none of this would have happened.
Exactly. Someone else decided to do something she wasn't comfortable associating with, she revealed that discomfort, and everyone else got to decide how they felt about her willing to demand that her comfort be catered to.


And now she's being crucified for it. Rights be damned. She's a horrible evil person for not wanting to associate with something that wasn't there till Luke forged link 1 in this chain of events with his Retcon. Period, she ought to be perma-banned! And form all of table top gaming! She's that evil! She should never have been allowed to associate, even though there was only a problem after a long smooth run when another person threw in a Retcon that either will have nothing to do with anything and never be mentioned again, or will come up and be something she's uncomfortable dealing with in her escapist fantasy!
"Crucified" in this case meaning that people who think her morals are rotten choose not to associate with her. That they didn't know about them earlier are irrelevant. That they hadn't come up earlier are also irrelevant. There's transparent cover used as arguments because you're apparently unwilling to just say that you have no issue with Sally's ethics here.

After all, say we had a different situation here. I'll pick one where I'm at least reasonably confident you consider the moral stance unacceptable* - infanticide. For two years, no infants come up in game. It's adventurers adventuring, they're dealing entirely with adults, it just doesn't come up. Then a player mentions that their character has a baby back home. Sally says that that's disgusting, babies not being killed is an abomination, and that she wants the game to never feature babies unless they're getting killed on screen.

Somehow, I don't think you'd be arguing that the problem here was that she was provoked by a player mentioning a baby, that there was only a problem after a long smooth run when another person threw in a retcon.

Oh, and while I'm at it - there is no right to play RPGs with anyone you want, regardless of whether or not they want you there. You have no right to be exempt from criticism. No rights were violated.


Meanwhile, there is open resistance to the very idea of checking on/monitoring the motive of the person who forged Link 1 in this little chain of events. Who, even if he never meant for this to come about, was the one who set the chain reaction off. And that's giving him the benefit of the doubt, and assuming it was all a freak accident of chance and circumstance.
That's less the benefit of the doubt, and more not veering into conspiracy theory. But sure, say your ridiculous conspiracy is completely true. It changes nothing - the group as a whole still finds Sally unethical. They still think her morals are screwed up.

*I can't be completely certain, given your history of ethnic cleansing apologetics, but this seems like a safe bet.

Trampaige
2019-01-15, 01:06 AM
I'm thankful to see that the majority of the replies don't argue for some scenario in which Sally isn't 100% wrong.

You literally can't play in a game with a homophobe as a queer person. It's a real life safety and security danger that transcends a stupid game. And yes, this is about a character, not a player (as far as we know), but allowing hatred to exist in your group is a real issue.

It must be nice to live in a world where some of you can safely debate things like other people's right to exist as a matter of discomfort for someone else. Actions have consequences, do you really want to associate with people (not characters) who are bigots? Your choice, always. Your choice sends a message to others.

The OP's scenario basically came down to siding with homophobia, or siding against it. There's no Grey area on the topic. Allow me to express my thanks again that you chose what you did.

Florian
2019-01-15, 01:42 AM
And now she's being crucified for it. Rights be damned. She's a horrible evil person for not wanting to associate with something that wasn't there till Luke forged link 1 in this chain of events with his Retcon. Period, she ought to be perma-banned! And form all of table top gaming! She's that evil! She should never have been allowed to associate, even though there was only a problem after a long smooth run when another person threw in a Retcon that either will have nothing to do with anything and never be mentioned again, or will come up and be something she's uncomfortable dealing with in her escapist fantasy!

You don't get it, right? You know why nobody here really cares why Luke did that? Because we're living in a day and age when things like being queer have started to be normal and have to be accepted at face value.

I´m getting sick of people trying to hide behind flimsy excuses. Knaight put it aptly, it really is more telling about a person when he/she feels provoked by something, than about the person doing the provocation. So don't try to come up with any imaginary rights, try to evoke tradition or come up with a stupid "if he would not had said it, she would not have flipped"-BS. Sally outed herself as a homophobe, made a fuzz about it and got what she deserved, so simple.

Rynjin
2019-01-15, 03:52 AM
Everybody's in here arguing about whether it was "fair" to kick "Sally" out for having an opinion OP didn't like and I'm here wondering why that matters in the first place. "What if she had a good reason?" "What if 'Larry' was jebaiting her?" Who cares?

This is a D&D table, not a grand high tribunal. Everybody at the table has the right not to associate with someone they don't like or can't get along with. Nobody needs to be perfectly objective automatons about whether every conceivable circumstance was viewed and discussed in their entirety. Does it really matter whether "Larry" or "Sally" were in the right?

In the grand scheme, all that's at stake here is "Sally" doesn't get to play elf-games with OP's group any more because she threw a tantrum about someone's character choice and turned it into a "me or them" scenario. It wouldn't have mattered if she was "in the right", or what the exact circumstance was. Maybe she's marriage-phobic. Maybe (probably) she's afraid to catch gay cooties or whatever runs through homophobe's heads. In an alternate universe maybe she's triggered by any mention of the color blue.

Doesn't really matter when it comes down to it what the reason was or who was in the right. GM and group member had a difference of opinion that couldn't be resolved. Player got the boot. Life goes on. Happens ten times a day without 4 pages of arguing and the first embers of a real knock down, drag out flamewar.

Rhedyn
2019-01-15, 08:08 AM
I'm thankful to see that the majority of the replies don't argue for some scenario in which Sally isn't 100% wrong.

You literally can't play in a game with a homophobe as a queer person. It's a real life safety and security danger that transcends a stupid game. And yes, this is about a character, not a player (as far as we know), but allowing hatred to exist in your group is a real issue.

It must be nice to live in a world where some of you can safely debate things like other people's right to exist as a matter of discomfort for someone else. Actions have consequences, do you really want to associate with people (not characters) who are bigots? Your choice, always. Your choice sends a message to others.

The OP's scenario basically came down to siding with homophobia, or siding against it. There's no Grey area on the topic. Allow me to express my thanks again that you chose what you did.

The GM would have been in the wrong if Sally decided, "Well it makes me uncomfortable, but I'll just deal with it." and the GM decided to kick her out anyways for having an uncouth opinion.

OverLordOcelot
2019-01-15, 10:31 AM
The GM would have been in the wrong if Sally decided, "Well it makes me uncomfortable, but I'll just deal with it." and the GM decided to kick her out anyways for having an uncouth opinion.

So you're arguing, like Metahuman1, that Sally has the absolute right to decide who she wishes to associate with, but the GM does not have the same right; that is (to use his phrasing) that Sally is being 'crucified' if the GM decides he doesn't with to associate with her? It's odd how one-sided this freedom of association thing that's being pushed here is - apparently you're required to associate with bigots, but bigots have an absolute right to tell you what you're allowed to do with your character, allow in your game, or discuss about your life on the basis of free association.

Rhedyn
2019-01-15, 10:41 AM
So you're arguing, like Metahuman1, that Sally has the absolute right to decide who she wishes to associate with, but the GM does not have the same right; that is (to use his phrasing) that Sally is being 'crucified' if the GM decides he doesn't with to associate with her? It's odd how one-sided this freedom of association thing that's being pushed here is - apparently you're required to associate with bigots, but bigots have an absolute right to tell you what you're allowed to do with your character, allow in your game, or discuss about your life on the basis of free association.
I didn't say that.

GM told her that Larry does not have to change her character. She decided that meant she couldn't play with them. That's entirely her own problem.

If Sally expressed the concern and was told Larry didn't have to change his character and she decided to "just deal with it" (by doing and saying nothing about it), then the GM would have been in the wrong to kick her out for daring to express a different opinion.

Do you see the difference between those two situations?

In one, Sally decided her quibbles were reason enough not to play with the group and she exiled herself. The GM didn't push her away but was firm that Sally's preferences were not to be respected because the GM and group did not agree with them. Sally is being intolerant of harmless behavior. (Which yes, you totally have the right to not associate with her because of her actions here)

In the other situation, the GM would be pushing Sally out of the group not for her behavior but for thinking bad thoughts. The GM is being a bigot in this HYPOTHETICAL (because this situation didn't happen), he is intolerant of harmless behavior. (bad thoughts are not action).

OverLordOcelot
2019-01-15, 10:58 AM
Do you see the difference between those two situations?

The differences are irrelevant. Sally has already made her bigotry clear, and there's nothing unreasonable about saying "I don't want to hang around with people who object to race mixing, or same-sex marriage, or to Jews existing, or anything like that." That freedom of association thing is really pretty simple.


In the other situation, the GM would be pushing Sally out of the group not for her behavior but for thinking bad thoughts. The GM is being a bigot in this HYPOTHETICAL (because this situation didn't happen), he is intolerant of harmless behavior. (bad thoughts are not action).

In other words, like Metahuman1 you think that only bigots like Sally get freedom of association, that if the GM refuses to associate with her based on her behavior, then the GM is 'crucifying' her and is a 'bigot' for exercising his freedom of association. But refusing to associate with bigots is not, in fact, bigotry. The weird idea that if you object to bigotry you are a bigot for not tolerating bigotry is patent nonsense; "I don't want to associate with someone who thinks I should be killed/enslaved/banished because of innate characteristics I was born with" is not the same thing as "I think you should be killed/enslaved/banished for innate characteristics you were born with". And yes, her asserting that the mere existence of LGBT is 'not PG' is an assertion that they should be, at the very least, banished from society.

Further note: As the GM is not claiming to be psychic in this story, there is no way for him to know what thoughts she's thinking or to take any action based entirely on her thoughts. He would actually be responding to her ACTION of labeling a same-sex marriage as 'not PG'.

Talakeal
2019-01-15, 11:08 AM
Note that bigotry is defined as intolerance of beliefs and ideas, not of groups or behaviors. So it is technically true that in this case the homophobe is not a bigot but the people who kick them out are. Of course, this also calls into question if bigotry is a bad thing.


On another note, I am really curious if there are any updates to the situation that the OP is willing to share,

Friv
2019-01-15, 11:12 AM
The differences are irrelevant. Sally has already made her bigotry clear, and there's nothing unreasonable about saying "I don't want to hang around with people who object to race mixing, or same-sex marriage, or to Jews existing, or anything like that." That freedom of association thing is really pretty simple.

I'm going to slightly shift sides, but I'm ending up halfway between you guys. In this hypothetical situation in which Sally backs down, and decides that her friends are more important than being a bigot, I do think the right thing to do is to keep her. I wouldn't tear apart someone who decided they didn't have the energy for that, but I think that if she is actually willing to make an effort, having friends who will support her while also making it real clear they don't support bigotry and will continue to hold the line means the possibility that Sally will learn better. Cutting her loose just reinforces her beliefs.

Now, none of that applies if Sally doesn't make the first gesture. I don't think anyone is beyond changing. I do think that they have to demonstrate a desire to change before that is time worth spending.

Rhedyn
2019-01-15, 11:34 AM
He would actually be responding to her ACTION of labeling a same-sex marriage as 'not PG'.
Hmmmmmmm

I think you can argue that is an action. I wouldn't say it's anything to be too up in arms about. What is "PG" is a social norm or agreed consensus. That consensus is not going to shift back anytime soon. You aren't ethically obligated to make her stop thinking that, but if she brought it up all the time or decided that game was now "R-rated" and proceeded to play that way, while the game is in-fact "PG-rated" then that becomes a problem. She isn't acknowledging that her beliefs are uncommon and is acting on them in an unacceptable way.

I think you need to have hard rules on what is and isn't tolerated and such rules need to be generally applicable. I personally strive to tolerate "harmless behavior". Idc if someone is homosexual. That behavior doesn't cause harm to others. I also don't care if someone is uncomfortable with homosexuals but doesn't act on those beliefs. It's the subsequent action that I have a problem with, which I personally do not include voting as an action to have a problem with (I consider much of the election process a measurement of what people are thinking and I believe in free-thought as a separate ideal).

The problem I have with excluding people with thoughts that you do not personally agree with is because if no one tolerated such things, no social progress would have ever been made. I can live with that making some bigot's life easier if that keeps me open to future progress and prevents my own bigotry towards things I find offensive.

OverLordOcelot
2019-01-15, 04:10 PM
I think you can argue that is an action. I wouldn't say it's anything to be too up in arms about. What is "PG" is a social norm or agreed consensus. That consensus is not going to shift back anytime soon.

The thing is, you don't get to decide what bothers me, or the original DM. That's that pesky freedom of association thing again, none of us require the approval of the sort of person who tries to create safe spaces for outright bigots in order to decide who we want to game with or allow into our homes.


I think you need to have hard rules on what is and isn't tolerated and such rules need to be generally applicable. I personally strive to tolerate "harmless behavior". Idc if someone is homosexual. That behavior doesn't cause harm to others. I also don't care if someone is uncomfortable with homosexuals but doesn't act on those beliefs.

I don't regard people who actively try to erase any mentions of marriages like the ones my friends have and who object to their very existence to be engaged in 'harmless behavior'. I wonder if your attitude would be different if we were talking about people who wanted to revoke major parts of your life, and to remove your ability to live in society at large.


I can live with that making some bigot's life easier if that keeps me open to future progress and prevents my own bigotry towards things I find offensive.

I have no obligation to spend my personal free time hanging out with people who believe that my friends deserve to be imprisoned (or stoned to death, or burnt at the stake, or banished from society, or whatever). If you want to create safe spaces for bigots in your own time, I certainly can't stop you - but the whole 'people who don't want to hang out with bigots are the REAL bigots' claim is simply absurd.

Lake Huron
2019-01-15, 04:18 PM
On another note, I am really curious if there are any updates to the situation that the OP is willing to share,

Given how heated things are getting, no. I'd rather not provide fuel for the fire. I've got my answer and I thank all of you for your help in arriving to it, but this current topic is not something I feel comfortable immersing myself in.

Florian
2019-01-15, 04:20 PM
Note that bigotry is defined as intolerance of beliefs and ideas, not of groups or behaviors. So it is technically true that in this case the homophobe is not a bigot but the people who kick them out are. Of course, this also calls into question if bigotry is a bad thing.

Do you know Karl Poppers Paradox? The basis of a free and open society is the credo of "No tolerance towards the intolerant".

JNAProductions
2019-01-15, 04:23 PM
Given how heated things are getting, no. I'd rather not provide fuel for the fire. I've got my answer and I thank all of you for your help in arriving to it, but this current topic is not something I feel comfortable immersing myself in.

If that's how you feel, you should probably just unsubscribe from the thread entirely.

But to everyone who's here...

Would you play at a table with a homophobe? Take Sally out of the equation entirely. Let's make a hypothetical where one of the players at the table literally said "I hate the gays and think they all deserve to die and rot in hell."

No ambiguity, no provocation, no nothing, just outright hatred of a group of people for their sexual preferences. Would you play at a table with them?

Florian
2019-01-15, 04:30 PM
@JNAProductions:

I hang out with a pretty bad crowd of people, including drug dealers, addicts and outright Neonazis. When I hit the pub after work, that's just the regulars and you have to socialize with them somehow.

Yeah, we shake hands, are on a first-name basis, share cheers with a beer and some jokes, but I would never invite any of them to my home or engage in an activity like playing an RPG.

Erloas
2019-01-15, 04:49 PM
I hang out with a pretty bad crowd of people, including drug dealers, addicts and outright Neonazis. When I hit the pub after work, that's just the regulars and you have to socialize with them somehow.
I'm going to mostly disagree with this. Unless it is your job and you have no choice but to serve or work with them, then yes. But to actually socialize? No.

At this point I've seen enough bigotry and spreading of hate from some of my own extended family that I'm not sure I would even acknowledge them, let alone socialize.

Kapow
2019-01-15, 05:02 PM
@Florian: Is that the only pub in your area?
I wouldn't want to hang out in a pub with neonazis, like at all.
I like to think, that I rather wouldn't go to a pub at all.
I had racists and homophobic people in my larger social circle for a time. And I just couldn't stay silent. So I wasn't safe. And I am hetero, cis, white, male and christian - can't even imagine how targeted people would feel.
I work with young people and under those circumstances I work with those, but in my free time? No, never again!

Florian
2019-01-15, 05:02 PM
I'm going to mostly disagree with this. Unless it is your job and you have no choice but to serve or work with them, then yes. But to actually socialize? No.

At this point I've seen enough bigotry and spreading of hate from some of my own extended family that I'm not sure I would even acknowledge them, let alone socialize.

Only pub in town. Downside of not living in a metropolis.

Edit: The up-side is that they also have to live and socialize with me. Been quite some time since someone made casual racist jokes when I'm around.

@kapow: I´ve a pronounced self-destructive streak and I don't care for my safety when it comes to my convictions. I'm pretty open about my political stance and membership in a certain political party, which ought to make me no friends, but I'm pretty well liked and respected as a member of the local community, and believe it or not, if trouble is brewing, I can count on some heavy-hitters to take my side in any conflict, more or less ending them in an instant.

Calthropstu
2019-01-15, 05:08 PM
There's nothing un-PG about a gay character, anymore than there's anything un-PG about heterosexual characters, so long as you aren't roleplaying explicit sex scenes. Her reasoning is a pretty transparent mask to rationalize her homophobia in a group where saying she doesn't like gay people might not fly. My advice is to tell her to either deal with it or leave. You don't need that kind of negative energy at your table. I wouldn't tolerate a player who gets angry that another player has a human character that isn't white, and this is no different.

Why is it called homophobia, when it's clearly homo-disgust? It's not like people are really afraid of homosexuals. They just dislike them. Someone saying "Homsexuality is contagious and will surely infect us all unless..." would be homophobic. She just doesn't like the idea of homosexual behavior. That's not homophobic, phobia is fear.

As to the op, I am going to agree with most here with one caveat: You probably should have said something along the lines of "I'm not going to ask him to change his character, but I will let him know it makes you uncomfortable and that he should not go into any form of detail. " Or something along those lines.

There are a lot of people who disagree on many issues. This is a hot button issue, whether people here agree or not. Many people would rather it simply not come up. She, contrary to many here, did nothing wrong with the demanding of a change of character. She had an issue, it was a big enough issue that she didn't want it around her. She decided to leave because of it after you refused to intervene on her behalf. If she is now misrepresenting that, then yes she is in the wrong. I fail to see any form of compromise available here, either the character is gay or it is not.

If it has split the table like this, I have a feeling there is more at work here. Is it possible the player in question knew of the girls dislike for gays and purposely tried to drive her away using it? Because that's not ok in my book.

Florian
2019-01-15, 05:13 PM
Why is it called homophobia

That's based on the conservative mindset. Most fear what they don't understand, the next step would be hatred.

Unavenger
2019-01-15, 05:17 PM
Homophobia is, put simply, not just an opinion, and not something that we can casually agree or disagree with. The only thing required for evil to triumph, yadda yadda - moderates need not apply on this issue. And all of those assuming, for no good reason, that the player who wanted his character to be gay had some kind of hidden agenda... well, your bigotry is showing.

You don't have to "See both sides" of an issue when one side is clearly and utterly wrong, wrong, wrong.


That's based on the conservative mindset. Most fear what they don't understand, the next step would be hatred.

...Leads to the dark side? :smalltongue:

Lake Huron
2019-01-15, 05:24 PM
If that's how you feel, you should probably just unsubscribe from the thread entirely.

Probably a good idea.

I actually know "Sally" and "Larry" and I have an established history with them. Hearing them spoken of as broad archetypes or as players in some conspiracy is pretty gross and uncomfortable. I don't like to picture Larry as some backdoor politics player or Sally as some fascist ultra-conservative.

I know I said I wouldn't add any information but this one point keeps coming up and I want to take a bullet to it here and now.

Larry doesn't have a mean bone in his body. He is the nicest, kindest, most open-minded and inclusive guy I have ever met. I could only aspire to be half the person he is. It is not possible for him to want to surreptitiously or underhandedly drive out another human being. The notion that he brought up his character's marriage as an intentional trap for Sally, aside from being a very long bow even without this clarification, is utterly incongruous with him as a person.

Calthropstu
2019-01-15, 05:27 PM
That's based on the conservative mindset. Most fear what they don't understand, the next step would be hatred.

I'll have to disagree. I don't understand women's mindsets on many things. I don't fear them for it.
I don't understand the principles of quantum mechanics, I don't fear them.
I don't understand other languages, I don't fear them.

It is when there is an overt attempt to force things we dislike into our lives that anger comes about.

Roland St. Jude
2019-01-15, 05:29 PM
Sheriff: Locked for review. As a reminder, real world politics and religion are inappropriate topics on this Forum, even when they intersect gaming topics.