Your PC's sexual preference

[Kesnit]

I've played 2 WoD characters that had stated sexual orientations. One was a bisexual, barfly bimbo (Vampire). The other is a male escort (Changling). They have stated orientations because it is part of the character concept.

I think the issue has come up once for each character. The bimbo went to Las Vegas in-character because I had to miss game because I was in Vegas. So she came back with "evidence" of her conquests (cards with phone numbers, tickets to a topless show, pictures of dancers, etc). The male escort was part of a group attempting to get materials for a ritual to rescue the kidnapped Spring King. One of the items was "tears of a mortal wrongly accused." We sat around and made accusations at each other in the "hopes someone would cry" and we could use those tears. One of the other PCs turned to mine and said "you're gay!" I laughed and said "yeah, I am!"

[MidgetMarine]

It doesn't really come into play. I mean, the furthest I've seen it, as far as becoming an influencing aspect of the game is that my current Gnome Cleric (dnd 3.5) is getting married.

[MidgetMarine]

Correction: that's not the only time. One of my players' characters in a Shadowrun 4e campaign I'm running is an female elven face who, on multiple occasions, has seduced/flirted her way into locations where she is most definitely not allowed. (This technique is often combined with a pair of shock gloves that she keeps on her person. While one hand slides downwards, the other one slides into her pocket and slips on the shock glove. You can guess how this ends for the poor guards) but unlike most of the time, I don't find this to be uncomfortable to be narrating or interacting with because it's one of the most clever character builds I've seen in a while that takes advantage of basic human weaknesses (and metahuman, for that matter.)

[Terraoblivion]

Frankly, it doesn't come up much, usually. The sort of games I play frequently involve mucking about in a dungeon, killing monsters, and making off with the loot.

Most of that shouldn't generally involve sex if living is a priority.

Except once you've killed the monsters and run off with the loot and it's time to celebrate.

Unless you only play asexual workaholics, who don't celebrate, I guess.

[Xzeno]

Unless you only play asexual workaholics, who don't celebrate, I guess.

Well, I would play something like that, but I try not to play myself.

When I'm not playing a lesbian elf princess, which is at least 75% of the time in D&D but literally never in a video game, I roll dice to determine my character's sexuality. Because I'm a class act.

[Lord Tyger]

Well, I would play something like that, but I try not to play myself.

When I'm not playing a lesbian elf princess, which is at least 75% of the time in D&D but literally never in a video game, I roll dice to determine my character's sexuality. Because I'm a class act.

D4? Straight, Gay, Bi, Asexual?
D6? As above, but throw in pansexual and polygamous (reroll for targets?)
D8? As above, but add Omnisexual (think Captain Jack Harkness), and Object Sexuality?

[phelgeos]

The issue seldom emerges for sinister eunuchs...

[PairO'Dice Lost]

Sometime last year, my gaming group back home noticed that our past few campaigns had involved lots of PCs that were basically variations on the player's personality--the short woodsy guy from Maine played forest gnome rangers a lot, for instance--and decided to do a series of one-shots where we made characters drastically different from ourselves to provide some variety and help us work on certain aspects of our roleplaying. Everyone came up with a different schtick and then DMed that one-shot. One of the suggestions was for everyone to play someone of the opposite orientation (or opposite leanings, for the one bi girl in the group), to get people out of "go to tavern, flirt with waitress, repeat" mode and to help them with their NPC interaction skills, and after a bit of spirited discussion about what level of detail people would be comfortable with we decided to give it a try.

Everyone was being stereotypical with their characters to some degree, so I decided to go all-out with a high-Cha, well-dressed, flouncy elf wizard named Bruce who focused on prismatic spells and glamers. I'm sure you can guess how he was played. Everyone else got their moment in the spotlight, then we headed to an inn with a tall, dark, and handsome well-muscled bartender. My character threw open the door, sashayed toward the bar...and started chatting up the serving girls, entirely ignoring the barkeep. Before the other players entirely knew what was going on, Mr. Limp-Wrist-And-Rainbows was taking three lovely elven ladies up to a private room. One player, very confused, asked if I remembered that we were supposed to make characters of the opposite orientation, and I told him that I remembered very well, thank you.

And that's how I came out to my gaming group. (The blatant lesson on paying too much attention to stereotypes was a nice bonus.)

[Morithias]

This is going to sound stupid but..."anything that moves and won't kill me when I stick it into me/stick myself into it"

Mainly so I can justify trying to seduce female or male guards. I don't need some evil overlord beating my Ninja because he thought to have a group of female guards for the female prisoners.

Besides, most of my characters are changelings, who have no genders.

[lady_arrogance]

I have feeling, tha I have spoken about this before. But I say it again.

I have used to play campaings where romance is as good plot element as fighting with enemies, or shadow-y intrigues in some court. So sexuality is also something to think about.

Most character I make, I assume they are straight, as most people are. But as the games go on, there might be changes to that: either there is some (n)pc with same gender as my character amd whom my character finds attarctive and realises s/he has first same-sex -crush (as it happened on one D&D- campaign) or I decide that character has been gay all a-long (if there hasn't been romance to opposite gendeer before).

I think that my own bi-sexuality has much to do with this - I don't feel like liking males or females is gross, so it gives me kinda neutral starting ground.

I think that playing homophobic character might be a challenge... I have to try it sometime.

[Mono Vertigo]

[awesome story snip'd]

*thumbs up* Heheh, very nice story!

I've got one (currently unused) human character who presents as a gay male. The truth is that she's actually female, disguised as a male version of herself for several reasons. Because she's straight, she pretends she's gay, so she can keep checking out guys. Not that she actually does it often, she's got tons of problems that monopolize her attention.

[Serpentine]

D8? As above, but add Omnisexual (think Captain Jack Harkness), and Object Sexuality?

Oh my God. Object sexuality could actually be really feasible in D&D!
New character concept ahoy!

[golentan]

Oh my God. Object sexuality could actually be really feasible in D&D!
New character concept ahoy!

And it could be a consensual relationship... Wow...

[Lord Tyger]

So... I'm not the only one wanting to play a character in a committed romantic relationship with their talking sword then?

[Maugan Ra]

Hey, by the time you reach higher levels, your talking sword could well be your best companion. They've been with you through thick and thin, and never once abandoned you. They've seen you at your best, and at your worst. They've likely saved your life many times over, and you've almost certainly come to rely on their strength and abilities without question. Hell, if you're using the alignment rules, then you might well owe your sword for keeping you on the right path and protecting you from temptation.

Damn right there's potential for a proper romance there.

As for character sexuality... It's only really come up once, and that was when I was playing an Infernal Sorcerer/diabolist in my Kingmaker game. He was pretty much omnisexual and uninhibited, and being a sorcerer was basically sexy as all hell. The willingly damned are usually quite open to experimenting, because as far as they're concerned the worst that happens is they experience a mediocre evening. More than one public scandal was caused by him being less than entirely discrete...

[jaybird]

Pyromaniacs often derive sexual pleasure from burning stuff, right?

[Manly Man]

My characters are mostly straight but their preferences hardly ever come up. The only time the preferences have any real screen time is when I play bards, whom I usually roleplay as similar to 80s metal musicians.

Needs to be switched to David Bowie.

[Raimun]

I play male characters only and I usually assign/assume them to be straight. I don't really think about it that much beyond that.

The reason for that is simple. That stuff never really comes up in our games... unless you count a few, mild, extremely lame remarks which are more of a joke than a serious attempt to explore the characters' sexuality. Instead, I try to find some other motivation that actually comes up during the game.

Also, it could get creepy.

Edit: Of course, warforged/robots/etc. would be asexual.

[Zaq]

Very few of my characters have an explicit preference, because that sort of thing just doesn't come up. That's just not the kind of game I play in, really. Sometimes it's by design (for example, in one game, I'm playing a gnome Psion whose guiding character model is "what would Pinkie Pie do?", and you couldn't pay me enough to go to the part of the internet where people discuss that kind of stuff), and sometimes it just happens.

That said, there are exceptions. I did have some fun playing a dwarf on a quest to avenge his dead husband. My other current character is mostly obsessed with tropes and "the way stories should be" (think Elan, only zoomed out a level or so), so he's hired actresses and/or prostitutes to make a big show of being the tearful lover begging him not to risk his life on his latest quest, but that's more because "all the great heroes have tearful lovers doing that, right?" than anything else.

[Gavinfoxx]

So... I'm not the only one wanting to play a character in a committed romantic relationship with their talking sword then?

Yay sapiosexuals! <3

"Oil me, dear!"
"Yes love!"

Anyway, where do odd pairings end up with your characters?

Be they intelligent items, intelligent constructs, or various species of sapient/sentient/communicative people that are, you know... not generally seen as 'appropriate'?

I once roleplayed a short lived romance (okay, well a crush) between a whisper gnome and a prismatic dragonwrought kobold (my character was the whisper gnome; when a kobold with a 16 charisma and the most beautiful shiny multihued scales came along, she was instantly smitten)...

Hmmm. My characters seem to fall for dragonwrought kobolds more often than not. There was the (male, but with alter self at will, he spent PLENTY of time as a female...) Lesser Fey'ri wizard who was passing as a Grey Elf who kinda fell in lust with the party gold dragonwrought kobold...

[Marlowe]

I once had somebody play a female Elf Wizard. Who had three seperate personalities. Number one thought she was male, and Lawful good. Number two was true neutral. Number three was Chaotic Evil and gay. Three managed to seduce a Vampiress at one point.

As for myself, well, I recently managed to break a DM by having my character out herself as bisexual and promiscuous. By successfully seducing the barmaid. Which I swear to god I only tried because I was tired of watching the party barbarian making such an inept job of doing the same.

EDIT: The crime in question, if anyone feels like telling me what a horrible person I am.

[Arutema]

My PCs are typically asexual, mostly because of my own issues.

My next character is going to be a female bisexual bard on account of being based on a real-life bi woman. That's definitely going to be a role-playing challenge for me.

[WitchSlayer]

It doesn't really come up but sometimes when I'm thinking up a character a sexuality will pop into my head. Like my German Rockstar Werewolf Alpha being homosexual (although it doesn't really come up that often), or my Warhammer 40k Navigator being bisexual (because he's crazy rich and does not care, lodsofemone) Sometimes it comes up if I decide one of my characters is married or used be, again the aforementioned Navigator who is actually married and has a child. And sometimes? Sometimes I play a character in the One Piece universe, a nun necromancer or a crazy church sanctioned assassin who are, for all intents and purposes, asexual.

[lsfreak]

snip

That's awesome.
---
It's never come up when I played, but I keep it in mind when playing and when DM'ing. Culture-building, the three first things of the first things I develop are rough sketches of their religion, social hierarchy, and views on sex and marriage.

If you're rolling, something closer to realistic (but still far too simplistic) might be 1-85 heterosexual, 86-97 homosexual, and 98-100 something in between. Asexuality or polygamy should be different rolls altogether.

[Xzeno]

Actually, if you're me, it's best to develop a wildly inconsistent system in which you look at wikipedia pages and search for statistical averages before rolling a couple d%, having only some vague idea of the purpose of any of these rolls, then assigning largely arbitrary values and rolling. Also look into a d6 for position on the Kinsey scale. Since you're still me in this hypothetical, you spend an uncomfortable amount of time doing such weighted randomization.

Pair'o'dice, that story was beautiful. It always warms my heart to see tabletop games meaningfully affecting people's lives. Makes me feel good about the hobby.

[Gavinfoxx]

Also, people... you should give your sapient/sentient magic items which are not innately mobile, mage hand or unseen servant or greater mage hand at will. So they can affect the world around them and stuff...

[Blisstake]

It usually doesn't come up for me... but that's mostly because when I'm not the DM, our campaigns only last one or two sessions. In my PbP games, on the other hand, I usually think about it as I'm making my character.

The first one I've thought about the most, but can't actually decide on. I keep changing my mind whether he's straight or gay (but oddly enough, I'm not really considering bisexual that much). It hasn't come up at all, so it really isn't a big deal, thankfully!

The second is attracted to violence, regardless of the other characteristics of a person. I'm trying to make him a bit creepy, so that helps. I highly doubt this will come up in game, though (which is probably for the best!)

[Cerlis]

Hey all,

Just came from a New World of Darkness game and one of the players had a strange focus for her PC. It was that the PC was gay, and its not that I question that view but how much does does the Giant collective include sexual preference in their games. It seemed that the game turned into her players desire for sexual contact which was fine role playing on her part but seemed more like a public reading of erotica than actually a theme to move along a quest.

well generally when you make a character you already know their sexual preference orientation. Its just that when your character's matches the most common form, you dont notice it.

Even I often create a character who has a "normal" sexual orientation, simply because its more common. I mean, as common DnDers you got to admit you'd be disappointed when you found out the suave cultured sorcerer doesnt want to try seducing the empress because he doesn't swing that way and it might get awkward. But none the less I'm sure I'm only slightly less uncomfortable making a character who likes girls , than your average straight man is being pressured by the party to have his character seduce a male guard.

But the main point being, i think people who dont think they haven't decided their character's preference on creation think so only because they either went with what is normal in their eyes and didnt even notice, or people who see their character as a wacky tool to have fun times in game (the type who's have their character flirt with anyone and anything as long as they beat the encounter or w/e)

----------------

And just like how a roleplaying game can help a shy person be assertive, or an awkward person be social, or a follower become a , it can help a person get used to an aspect of themselves they themselves aren't comfortable with. In this case their sexuality.

There is however, a fine line between a subject being a major fact in someone's life and thus that conflict bleeding into character creation and motivation( A Admirable act that should be respected) and being proud of your newborn realization at your own sexuality and wanting to try it out in every fashion (which, in my opinion, is what sexually in-your-face LGTB people are doing).

----------------------

[Hyena]

I usually play heterosexual characters of both genders, though they barely acknowledge that part of their lives beside light flirt with comrades. There were twwo exceptions, though - I played the married assassin and the paladin who was gay (however, for the majority of the game, there were two or three people who knew what she looked like under the robe and hood and wondered if she was even human (she wasn't), so the fact of her orientarion came as... Surprise for some)

[Shadow Viper]

(which, in my opinion, is what sexually in-your-face LGTB people are doing).

----------------------

Please define the acornym: LGTB?