Your PC's sexual preference

[Strawberries]

Please define the acornym: LGTB?

It usually is LGBT, standing for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender.

[Mono Vertigo]

EDIT: ninja'd again!

[Knaight]

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).

I can guarantee you that sexually in your face straight cis people do the exact same thing, often to a greater extent, and the only reason it doesn't get commented on is that it is so ubiquitous that it flies under the radar. Plus, it surrounds people to the point where discomfort is rare, so the cognitive dissonance needed to justify discomfort but not acknowledge it through a dodge like "these people are up in my face" doesn't emerge.

[Serpentine]

I dunno, I find sexually "in your face" straight people pretty annoying most of the time, too, unless they're charismatic enough to pull it off (which goes for LGBT people too).

[Dr Bwaa]

In 99% of games, I create a character personality and background first, then fit him/her to the setting, then fit him/her to the mechanical system, so that I don't accidentally tie myself down to anything in particular. It often happens, sometime during creation of a backstory, that I realize "huh, I think <character> is <orientation>." And that's that. It is somewhat rare for it to come up in-game (unless it's a particularly promiscuous character obviously); the important part, like every other facet of the character's development, is how it contributes to my picture of who this person is and how they view the world and react to situations.

[Roderick_BR]

Hah, yeah. The great majority of male players that roll a female character will maker her homosexual. Fact.
Myself, unless I have some worked out background, I just default my character as hetero, since it's easier for me to play it.

That said, it doesn't come up in my game, other than the ocasional leg-pulling and general faux-roleplay silliness when my friends are in OOC mode.

[Blisstake]

Hah, yeah. The great majority of male players that roll a female character will maker her homosexual. Fact.

I don't believe there is any substantial evidence that suggests this, actually.

[Werekat]

Pair'o'Dice - great story!

As for "men making lesbian characters"... Huh. I've DM-ed all cross-gender games, and never once did I see a lesbian female character or a strictly homosexual male character. And my gaming groups involve long-term friends who are comfortable with exploring a lot of things.

My own characters are usually either bisexual or asexual, though I've done straight female and straight male, as well. Just for something completely different. :D

As for coming up in game...

One prominent character is an asexual vampire, for whom being a vampire removed a lot of the pressure she felt socially in this respect. It hasn't come up in game other than in my own understanding of how to play her. When you're human and weigh 50 kilograms, people who are interested in you and are rough and loud about it are scary. When you're a vampire - they're food.

I also have a bisexual elven wizard (in a world where most elves are bi). One of the party found out he was bi long after the game was over, and was very surprised, which was funny. ("You didn't know about it because you're not my type", and a dirty-dirty look from the straight party paladin who did know about it, though he would probably have preferred not to.) There was also a funny story about resisting the half-elven rogue's advances - she was 19, and the elf saw her as about 12-14 years of age (human years) - way too young to be interested in - while the rest of the party, used to humans being of age at about 14 (and the young lady being raised human), didn't get his point.

Straight female has come up with two rival martial artists who wound up in bed together just 'cause they had a good bit of training and a good bit of drinking together.

Another completely straight female has the honor of having my weirdest sexual relationship to date. The game was a space opera with psychics, and the man (NPC) who would later become her husband (and was someone she liked at that point, but hadn't told him yet, and who was some 40 years her senior) died. She was griefstricken, but a little while later, his voice spoke in her head. It turns out that, since he was telepathic, he made a last-ditch and successful effort to transfer himself to her consciousness. They'd make him a young clone body, but the transfer back into a separate body was very dangerous, and there was a large chance that he'd die. So the two spent the last night before the transfer sharing memories - and at one point he said, "Come on, you have to be curious what it's like for men. I could show you." Without going into too much voyeuristic detail, he did, with triple sensory experience for both of them - the experience of the memory, the experiences of the female's body at present time, and the additional experience of knowing the other is there and also sharing in the sensations.

The transfer was successful, they got married, happy end. :D

Straight male - nothing particularly interesting to tell that I can remember right off the bat. I'll have to correct that. :D

Speaking of interesting additional questions - is there more PC-NPC romance in your game or PC-PC? We usually have PC-NPC - simply because parties aren't put together on sexual attractiveness, and the chance that one character will like another is pretty slim. The DM, however, is free to mess with the players' minds. :D

[Callista]

Maybe it's easier for straight guys to make lesbian female characters because that way they can still flirt with the female NPCs and it doesn't feel as awkward for them.

I'm a girl in a group of mostly or entirely guys--sometimes I make female characters lesbian in a group of male or straight female PCs just because I rolled a high Charisma and know they'd be very attractive to other PCs. Sometimes it's nice to have a legit reason to have her reject their advances without hard feelings on either side.

It's mostly an IC/OOC thing; I don't want them to think that real-life me is attracted to real-life them. The other people in the group are nice and all, and good friends; but I'm asexual and they're not, so I'd prefer not to send any of the wrong signals.

[Cerlis]

it would be hard to "prove" anything, unless there was some sort of communal Census.

But I wonder how many straight male characters who play females characters dont get put in a situation where the option to flirt with a male npc.
What i'm getting at is I'd think that it would be more understandable for a male to play lesbian, because its not like you can expect them to be comfortable roleplaying a character who is sexually attracted to men anymore than you could expect them to play a gay male.

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and im well aware of annoyingly sexual straight people

co-workers are annoying.

[Knaight]

What i'm getting at is I'd think that it would be more understandable for a male to play lesbian, because its not like you can expect them to be comfortable roleplaying a character who is sexually attracted to men anymore than you could expect them to play a gay male.

When I've seen it (never from anyone above 14 or so) done poorly, the reasons are usually closer to "two chicks making out? Hot". I'd imagine that the prevalence of this is why it is usually frowned upon in the first place. As for expecting them to be comfortable roleplaying a character that fits that description - if you're a decent roleplayer, you'll probably be fine. After all, people are comfortable playing characters with religious and political views drastically different than their own, not to mention moral and ethical views drastically different than their own. Sexual, or more likely romantic preferences are small potatoes compared to that.

[Set]

Maybe it's easier for straight guys to make lesbian female characters because that way they can still flirt with the female NPCs and it doesn't feel as awkward for them.

That's happened to me once. The *second* another male player or the GM/ST made some sort of RP romantic overture, I decided that my female PC was into the ladies, just to avoid uncomfortable-ness.

[SlyJohnny]

Mostly I just assume my characters are straight, and it doesn't come up much. The two notable exceptions are two AD&D characters. My Dark Sun mul gladiator, Brannak, who is powerfully built, thuggish and a cold blooded murderer, but has zero experience with women and any attempts at seduction directed at him make him nervous and uncomfortable. He's mostly too busy running for his life to cultivate relationships, anyway. I also have a half-elven druidic adviser, Shyellin, who's in this homebrew campaign, where the premise is that the PC's are members of this Mongol-esque horde that swept across the continents before being betrayed and wiped out. His original mission was to gain the trust of the warlord, steer him away from rampaging through the forest heartlands, and come home, but Shye wound up falling in love with the guy and getting swept up in the adventure of it all, and wound up campaigning with him half way accross the world. Unrequited love for a man that probably didn't even notice or care.

Shye is especially fun, as the warlord is now dead, and my character is the only one that even gives a damn; the warlord was something of a psychotic bastard, and the other PC's are mostly all tired, grizzled veterans with varying degrees of post-traumatic stress disorder who are just pleased that they finally get to go home. We're slinking homeward over the ruins of the countries we previously curbstomped, and we're being confronted with the fallout of all the horrible things we've done or had to do. So my guy is torn between loyalties and is something of an apologist, wailing "He wasn't like that! He was a great man!" to an audience that could not possibly be any less sympathetic or understanding.

[Flickerdart]

Time spent sexing is time that could have been spent killing things and taking their stuff and then using that stuff to kill other things to take other stuff. If you're attracted to someone, they'll always turn out to be secretly evil, and then you'll have to kill them and take their stuff anyway, so why delay it?

[PairO'Dice Lost]

Time spent sexing is time that could have been spent killing things and taking their stuff and then using that stuff to kill other things to take other stuff. If you're attracted to someone, they'll always turn out to be secretly evil, and then you'll have to kill them and take their stuff anyway, so why delay it?

Are you kidding? That makes it even better! If your DM has given an ally of yours some sweet loot and you want it but can't kill them to get it, just romance the NPC and suddenly they're evil and thus fair game.

[Ravenica]

my characters sexual preference...

An INT over 6

[Serpentine]

This character I described earlier:

I've just double-checked with a friend of mine I game with. His character in my game (when it happens ) is a heterosexual ("Oh yes, very much so. The thought would never even cross her mind, she is oddly innocent in a strange way because she is entirely impulse driven and if she doesn't have the impulse then doesn't even think about it.") female gnome. This character has possibly the best fleshed-out background I've ever come across (we've even been in her house and met her family! :O), which included a love interest back home - they'd been dating in a previous incarnation, but in the current one there would have only been a spark interrupted by her wanderlust.

is played by a heterosexual man.

[Flickerdart]

Are you kidding? That makes it even better! If your DM has given an ally of yours some sweet loot and you want it but can't kill them to get it, just romance the NPC and suddenly they're evil and thus fair game.

...I...that's brilliant. Where's my Circlet of Persuasion? Papa's gonna get his hands on some sweet loot!

[Kalirren]

<== The character pictured to the left is Melinda. As her world's first triply-ordained priestess of all three goddesses of sex, Melinda sleeps with people. She sleeps with people for love, for friendship, for fellowship, for advantage, for tempting and being tempted, for money, for power, for fun, for religious mysticism, and for all other manners and sorts of human reasons. She's been with men, women, outsiders, and one demonic goddess-queen over the course of the campaign, and that's just people she's explicitly or implicitly been with that have been covered in significant PC-PC or PC-NPC interactions I've had as a player. I presume there are countless people in the background with whom she has sex completely off camera, who never warrant narrative focus or mention.

The best thing about it all for me as a player is that the existence of sex in her life is not at all exotic. Just another day (or night, I suppose) in the life. A night alone is a night wasted, and that's that.

But really, Melinda just sleeps with people. She exhibits a slightly compulsive, discreet, yet unabashed pansexuality that is really fun to play.

[comicshorse]

my characters sexual preference...

I would say a pulse but, you know, Vampires ........

[Sir_Gabes]

Sexual preference in a game like WoD is great! It adds flavour to characters. I personally think that sexual moments in games should be summed up in a stamina roll and move on. Flirting isn't so bad to role play, but it's how mature your group is that determines what level of sexuality you want in a game. Certainly don't make it a central focus on the game and if someone plays a flirty character no big deal. Just make malleable NPCs. He/she can seduce and your good. Just point out you want to summarize any actual sex.

[Toofey]

Most of my characters end up involved with each other if they're opposite sexes, it's a little meta gamey but it was really awkward the time I was playing a swashbuckler type and tried to flirt with a barmaid played by my best friend...

[Jay R]

Most of my characters end up involved with each other if they're opposite sexes, it's a little meta gamey but it was really awkward the time I was playing a swashbuckler type and tried to flirt with a barmaid played by my best friend...

Here's the best example I know about.

This is part of why my character and my wife's character are getting married in the current game.

[inexorabletruth]

You've got to establish your boundaries, but sexuality in a campaign can make a character more palpable.

In many of our campaigns, everyone tends to play a chaste character. Its unrealistic to think that all these characters are so young, virile, athletic, beautiful and famous and don't have any interest in flirting with the barmaid, or courting the local aristocrat.

As a DM, I try to encourage players who look deep into their character's psyche and motivations including matters of sexual orientation and libido by creating subplots just for them, because I like how it rounds out a character. Everything above PG-13 happens "off-camera" in my campaigns, but the potential for romantic interludes always exist if the players want to go there.

One great example was in a 3.5 campaign I ran with a Human Female Ranger who was sort of an awkward outsider from the mostly male group (IRL and IC).

Spoiler

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She decided that her character's awkwardness was due to a crush she had on the DMPC, a Cloistered Cleric (it was a Protect-the-Virgin-Priestess Quest for noobs) that she hadn't reconciled with her upbringing yet. During the course of the quest, she began acting on her urges and trying to awkwardly flirt with the Cloistered Cleric (who, yes, was a virgin and had never considered any kind of relationship, let alone a homosexual one), so I made her roll Diplomacy checks each time she flirted. If she succeeded, the CC would accept the attempt. A failed roll meant the CC rejected her advances and would have to wait a period of time before the CC lowered her emotional defenses again. That romantic sub-plot became almost as interesting to the players as the main plot was, and there were several after-session discussions that were based mainly on the love interest between her character and my DMPC.

So yeah, it's pretty awesome. But if your campaigns are derailing into something better left to Book of Erotic Fantasy and that makes you uncomfortable, then maybe it's time to suggest some house rules for in game content, and what does and doesn't remain off-camera.

[Avilan the Grey]

I dunno, I find sexually "in your face" straight people pretty annoying most of the time, too, unless they're charismatic enough to pull it off (which goes for LGBT people too).

Personally I have no problem with that unless they are welll... Howard-like* in their behavior.

Hah, yeah. The great majority of male players that roll a female character will maker her homosexual. Fact.
Myself, unless I have some worked out background, I just default my character as hetero, since it's easier for me to play it.

That said, it doesn't come up in my game, other than the ocasional leg-pulling and general faux-roleplay silliness when my friends are in OOC mode.

Mine tend to be more or less bisexual, mainly because well... female NPCs tend to be better written, or at least more tantalizing, from a sexual perspective combined with my IRL heterosexuality. Those two things combined means my characters tend to only go for a male character if that character REALLY stands out, in a positive way. Hence I never had a female character in BG2 pursuing a romantic relationship, for example, since the male options were severely lacking. As a contrast, I really like Alistair from DA:O and a good 50% of my female characters have dated him (the other half went for Leliana).

*Big Bang theory.

[Craft (Cheese)]

Somewhat relevance.

Today, one of my players came to me with a new character they wanted to play in our next campaign. A pedophile, into the little boys. I wouldn't be comfortable playing one of these characters myself, but hey, there could be some great roleplaying opportunities there, so what the hell, I approved it.

Later today, another player, completely independently, came to me with their new character, a 10 year old boy.

thiswillbeinteresting.jpg

[Dr.Epic]

Dragons. Always dragons. Because I want my offspring to have a kick ass template.

[Scarlet-Devil]

Somewhat relevance.

Today, one of my players came to me with a new character they wanted to play in our next campaign. A pedophile, into the little boys. I wouldn't be comfortable playing one of these characters myself, but hey, there could be some great roleplaying opportunities there, so what the hell, I approved it.

Later today, another player, completely independently, came to me with their new character, a 10 year old boy.

thiswillbeinteresting.jpg

That's hilarious . Hope it all works out alright, that kind of territory definitely has some awkward potential.

Most of the time these days it doesn't come up to often, though I usually have at least some sense of my character's preferences anyway. I've got a character right now, a female monk, who has a crush on an NPC female ranger. It's something the DM and I decided on early on in the campaign, but there haven't been many RP opportunities yet.

[Jerthanis]

Sexual identity and preference are very important aspects of a person's identity and relationship with their culture, so they are often explicitly defined in my case. However, they are by no means the only things which define a person and so I'll sometimes leave them alone and be surprised by them later.

I've played a relatively small number of LGBT characters, but I've always tried to approach the subject matter with respect and maturity. There was a 1920s Pilot/air enthusiast who wound up being a lesbian. I played a halberd-using city guardsman who was ludicrously competent and was gay.

I think the crowning jewel of my gender/sexual identity portfolio was a woman born into a nation where women were disallowed from doing most work, most importantly serving in the military, which she wanted more than anything. She took on the guise of a man in order to enlist. The issue of whether she would prefer to have been born a man, and her uncomfortability with her gender's cultural norms was the center of her arc. In the end, she decided she was a woman inside, and that her anxiety was caused by the imposition of her culture, and so decided to reveal herself in hopes of changing her culture. In her epilogue I described her as sort of a Galileo figure... changing the world, but not in her own time. So she wasn't exactly transgender, but it was an issue for her that she considered and struggled with.

[CoffeeIncluded]

The rogue I'm playing right now turned out to be lesbian when I was going over her after the first encounter. Funnily enough, she's got a thing for the team wizard. Right now it's more a crush stemmed from admiration at her being a wizard (she always wanted to learn spellcasting, but everyone in town calls her "The strange one" or more often "Nuts" so she never got the chance), but I think things are going to run a bit deeper than that with time.