# Gay PCs or NPCs



## STARP_JVP (Nov 25, 2005)

I'm just curious here; this was sparked by a conversation I had just recently. Without editorialising homosexuality itself, has anybody here had a gay or bisexual PC in their game, or a gay or bi NPC? I'm just curious to see how common it is. It's never actually happened in my game - not for any particular reason, I'd like to stress; it just hasn't.


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## Nightfall (Nov 25, 2005)

Uhm not really make an issue about a PC's or NPC's sexuality...but did have a succubus that preyed more on virtueous female paladins then male ones. Course she was also very chaos touched so judge as you will.


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## jgbrowning (Nov 25, 2005)

STARP_JVP said:
			
		

> has anybody here had a gay or bisexual PC in their game, or a gay or bi NPC?




I haven't. But then again, I really haven't had much sexuality in my games.

joe b.


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## Jdvn1 (Nov 25, 2005)

Sexuality isn't really an issue in my games.


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## Nightfall (Nov 25, 2005)

Probably not for most but I do think some people do tackle it as a means of being more "mature". Whatever that truly means...


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## Dog Moon (Nov 25, 2005)

Pretty much only in our most immature times we have lesbians.  I won't say anymore than that.  Besides that, no.  If we play a female gay character, we're like 'woohoo' [immature] and if a guy gay it's like 'Ewww.'

It sounds kinda bad, I know, but I'm being honest, so that has to count for something, right?  It's just one of those things which isn't really thought of much, probably for the above reasons.


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## Nightfall (Nov 25, 2005)

That...and honestly do you see any Gay/Lesbians monsters while you're hacking away at them? I mean really?


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## Goblyn (Nov 25, 2005)

Nightfall said:
			
		

> That...and honestly do you see any Gay/Lesbians monsters while you're hacking away at them? I mean really?




Exactly ... the PCs encounter gay and lesbain monsters and NPCs all the time ... they just never find out because the sexuality of pre-kibbled baddies never comes up and thus becomes a non-issue.  The same stands for pre-kibbled PCs.


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## Nightfall (Nov 25, 2005)

Uhm certainly not for pre-kibble bad guys/monsters, but PCs? eh...dunno. I think it's more a mentality most PCs have. There's an instinctive need to kill. Kind why people play FPS', the need to see blood. 

At least that's my theory.


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## haakon1 (Nov 25, 2005)

I've had some gay NPC's . . . in particular, the heir to the throne is gay and not particularly interested in governing -- inspired by the historical Edward II of England, as seen (a little exaggerated, right about his sexual orientation) in "Braveheart".

That makes for some interesting political complications.  Insiders know about the "problem", but the people don't know (they'd be upset).  The king knows his older son is gay and not interested in ruling, but basically a decent person, and his younger son is straight, but far too interested in ruling -- and of questionable moral decency.

So, the succession solution was a political marriage for the older son to a reliable, smart, LG princess who wouldn't mind a sham marriage.  The PC's managed to negotiate that, which actually brought their kingdom into a war, but in a great for the campaign way.    

My point is . . . characters can be gay without it being "Will and Grace" gay.  I play it like "real life" as I've seen it, which is that gay people are basically the same as non-gay people, with some interestingly different plot hooks.  One decision for a DM to make is how accepting or non-accepting of homosexuality their campaign world is.

My campaign world is probably something like 1950s New York -- everyone knows homosexuality exists; some communities are "out there" and accept it; most people think it's scandalous; there's not a lot of official repression but there's also no concept of gay rights -- gay people mostly just want to be left to their own business, and other than gossiping, most people are fine with that.

I once worked with a guy who was in Vietnam with the 1st Cav in 1964, at the very start of the ground war.  He said, during the gays-in-the-military crisis in the Clinton Era, what's all the fuss about?  Of course there have always been gays in the military.  In his outfit, the solution wasn't to TALK about such an uncomfortable subject or make rules (1964 was pre-hippy era), but to switch from 2-man tents to 12-man tents, so there wasn't so much of it obviously going on.  With 12 guys, people weren't sleeping together anymore, and as long as they weren't open about it, nobody cared.


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## Nightfall (Nov 25, 2005)

Yeah...but let's face it. While we might not CARE about it, when it affects us, it can be good or bad. In D&D terms, while we don't care about, unless we have something that's "in your face" about sexuality, drugs, rape, sexual abuse, stuff that's kind of "vile darkness", it's not something the PCs are that interested in. At least that's been my experience.


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## pogre (Nov 25, 2005)

I've always assumed the gay players at my table are playing gay PCs and the straight players are playing straight PCs. Sexuality does not come up a lot, but I assume they usually play what they know unless they say otherwise.


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## Nightfall (Nov 25, 2005)

Like anyone  REALLY knows how to play a dwarf or an elf...


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## Owen K.C. Stephens (Nov 25, 2005)

While it certainly hasn't been the focus of games I've been in or run, I've had PCs and major NPCs who were hetrosexual, gay, lesbian, and bisexual. I've also had all those orientations as players. I've also had male players running female characters, female players running male characters, and a homosexual player playing a hermaphrodite (though that last one only once).

As long as everyone is adult about it, it's not a prblem.


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## haakon1 (Nov 25, 2005)

Nightfall said:
			
		

> Yeah...but let's face it. While we might not CARE about it, when it affects us, it can be good or bad. In D&D terms, while we don't care about, unless we have something that's "in your face" about sexuality, drugs, rape, sexual abuse, stuff that's kind of "vile darkness", it's not something the PCs are that interested in. At least that's been my experience.




There's a different from bothering PC's with stuff and having it exist in the game world.  For instance, there was a fairly important blind NPC in my campaign, but I'd never actually have a PC get blinded by the bad guys . . . that's just too freaky for a game.

In the same way, I assume there are gay NPCs in my campaign, and 99% of the time, it's irrelevant and no one knows (not even me).  But if it comes up as a fact of character background on an NPC, it hasn't freaked out my players (ages 28-45 or so) and I figure it adds a little depth of verisimilitude -- similarity to real life makes supension of disbelief work better, IMHO.

So, IMC, magic powered street lights and other magic for the sake of it = out.  "Politically correct" NPCs including disabled, gay, anything I can think of that's "real" and isn't disrespectful of anybody = in.  Peasants with manure on them who work hard for nothing = in.  Wolves chasing down hungry PC's in the forest = in.  Gay incubus or orc who wants to mess with PCs = very very out on taste reasons.


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## Li Shenron (Nov 25, 2005)

Interesting how many point out that there's no place for sexuality in their game, but what about _romance_?

In our groups there have been pretty little romance (and zero sex), except on a couple of occasions when it was player's initiative and the whole thing wasn't related to the main story plot. So it's pretty much left unspecified what the characters may prefer.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Nov 25, 2005)

I have...

I had one player who insisted on playing his Avoreal (Winged Elf) as a gay PC...as in stereotypical flamer type gay...in order to disrupt the game.

On the other hand, I've played 2 lesbians and 2 female bisexual, as serious PCs.  (No problems)

And several gays and a couple of swingers have gamed at my table.  (Also, no problems.)

Like was said before- if everyone's an adult, things go smoothly.


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## Bront (Nov 25, 2005)

I've had it enter a few games, though realy nothing of any note or importance, but there are cultural reasons for many of these issues.  It's handled maturely, and we move on.

Now, it's something that's come more into play in PbP games than in my FtF games.  But honestly I think some of that is just removing awkwardness.


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## Samnell (Nov 25, 2005)

STARP_JVP said:
			
		

> I'm just curious here; this was sparked by a conversation I had just recently. Without editorialising homosexuality itself, has anybody here had a gay or bisexual PC in their game, or a gay or bi NPC? I'm just curious to see how common it is. It's never actually happened in my game - not for any particular reason, I'd like to stress; it just hasn't.




I'm gay. My PCs, unless I have some particular reason otherwise, are gay too. I presently have a necromancer who's asexual for story purposes. Unless I think of a concept that particularly demands it, I generally play gay PCs for the same reason (aside from the possibility of certian hostile groups and/or DMs) I think straight people generally play straight PCs: there's not much motivation to do any differently. The sexual inclinations of PCs are rarely at issue.

EDIT: I did play one PC that was a halfling bard and almost stereotypically flaming (though not to the degree of throwing himself) but he was essentially acting out to keep from falling apart due to a huge helping of survivor's guilt. Poor guy lost his whole family.

In the games I've run, I've had a few gay NPCs. Rufus and Burne in my Hommlet are in a long-term, openly-acknowledged, but fairly quiet relationship. They retired as a couple. This only came up a few times when the party was bringing news of dire doings to them and Rufus laid a comforting hand on Burne's thigh. The sexuality of NPCs is generally of about as much import at that of the PCs: not much.

I do see more sexual situations where orientation and other issues are relevant in PC backstories players hand me. This ranges from a PC who amounted to a temple prostitute to the raped or nearly-raped PC who went on the run. In one of my rarer non-fantasy games, I've played a teenaged PC who was gay, but didn't quite get it yet for various reasons. Never a major character arc, but it was an interesting subtheme in a PC who focused on issues of alienation.


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## Percivellian (Nov 25, 2005)

In our longest and (arguably) most memorable campaign, set in Westgate, FR, we ran into a lot of adult themes that were alluded to very well by our DM. It was just enough to make you acknowledge the reality of what was going on in this city, but not done overtly so that it crossed any lines.

One particular NPC, an tavern owner, was a recurring element - everything from giving our party a hideout, to providing us with missions. It was made clear that this guy was tough as nails, although he didn't really look the part. Every time we'd meet with him he'd have a new bandage, or liberally bleeding wound that didn't seem to bother him as much as you'd think it would. We later found out he was a key agent for the Nightmasks thieves' guild, and when our party rogue had originally met him in session one, though he was masked, it was this very same tavern owner who cut off his finger nail as a warning to keep out of his way while he walked in the street.

About 3/4 way through the campaign, some city wide tragedy had affected a lot of people, quite a few deaths in gang feuds and the like, and we were in said tavern owner's establishment when a random spot check revealed him being comforted in a very significant other type of way by the tavern's cook, also a man. We all just sort of went: "Huh. Well, that's new." and carried on with the campaign. It was pretty inconsequential, but integrated quite realistically and well.


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## STARP_JVP (Nov 25, 2005)

I totally agree about the "if everyone's an adult" thing.
We tend down downplay sex and romance in our campaigns (by "we" I mean my group), but it is there. Everybody I know is open-minded enough to not freak out at an openly, or even subtly, gay character, or some kind of homosexual dalliance. And Haakon's dead right about gay not meaning a flaming type. If I ever actually did it, that'd be the way I'd do it - a subtle, implied way, not a Julian Clary, Kenneth Williams camp-fest. 
Now that I actually come to think about it, in one of the old _Shadowrun_ campaigns I played in, I decided that if it ever came up, my runner would be gay. It never came up, so it never mattered.


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## haakon1 (Nov 25, 2005)

Li Shenron said:
			
		

> Interesting how many point out that there's no place for sexuality in their game, but what about _romance_?
> 
> In our groups there have been pretty little romance (and zero sex), except on a couple of occasions when it was player's initiative and the whole thing wasn't related to the main story plot. So it's pretty much left unspecified what the characters may prefer.




Nod.  In my campaign, there's been player-initiated romance, and one case in my e-mail game it got up to kissing and so forth (female straight player, male straight DM, friends with some chemistry in real life), but actual sex is off-screen.  Definitely there for some PC's, but definitely off-screen.

It's always been straight, because everybody I play with is straight, so far as I know.  (As Seinfeld says "not that there's anything wrong with that".)

FYI, romance has always been PC and NPC, not two PC's.  Two PC's might be a little odd.  And about it always being PC initiated, that's not really true -- once an NPC did lead a PC on, as part of a plot -- definitely not about romance from her POV.  And the PC in question was hitting on NPC's on a regular basis, so he walked right into it.


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## haakon1 (Nov 25, 2005)

Samnell said:
			
		

> In the games I've run, I've had a few gay NPCs. Rufus and Burne in my Hommlet are in a long-term, openly-acknowledged, but fairly quiet relationship. They retired as a couple. This only came up a few times when the party was bringing news of dire doings to them and Rufus laid a comforting hand on Burne's thigh. The sexuality of NPCs is generally of about as much import at that of the PCs: not much.




Cool.  I never saw Rufus and Burne as being gay, but it certainly works.



			
				Samnell said:
			
		

> I do see more sexual situations where orientation and other issues are relevant in PC backstories players hand me.




In a Boot Hill campaign, I had 2 out of 2 female players create female characters who were passing as males (AKA, in drag, only the other way around).  One of them wasn't deeply developed (apparently doing it just because it was easier to get by on the frontier that way), but the other one ended up having lots and lots of backstory.  I've never figured out, though, if that character was a lesbian or not -- I think the player was unsure which way to go, and never decided.  Sometimes, it's more interesting to let the character decide who they are for themselves, rather than know the answer before hand as the creator . . .


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## Herobizkit (Nov 25, 2005)

I haven't played any PCs or DMd any PCs as gay or lesbian, though I have run a few NPCs as having a "taboo" encounter or two.

Just for trivia's sake, the _Blue Rose_ campaign setting has openly accepted gay/lesbian relationships in their game world, even having in-game terms to describe the relationships.


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## the Jester (Nov 25, 2005)

STARP_JVP said:
			
		

> I'm just curious here; this was sparked by a conversation I had just recently. Without editorialising homosexuality itself, has anybody here had a gay or bisexual PC in their game, or a gay or bi NPC? I'm just curious to see how common it is. It's never actually happened in my game - not for any particular reason, I'd like to stress; it just hasn't.




I have had plenty.

Currently in my low-magic game, instead of alignments I'm using a 'character traits' system.  One of the (male) pcs (who, ironically, recently married another pc that was female) secretly likes men as one of his traits.  

In the past I've had several gay or bisexual pcs in my games.  I've also had several gay or bi npcs.  Some were sort of caricatures, some were very serious characters, and some were in between.  Some of them, it never came up except as a background note.  

I've also run several pcs that were bisexual, and one (an epic-level alienist) who was, er, omnisexual- she would do it with anything with tentacles.  Er, or other limbs.  

Er, or anything else, really, as long as it was corporeal- heck, as long as they could manage it at all.


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## HeapThaumaturgist (Nov 25, 2005)

Well, I have to say that for my own RttToEE game, Rufus and Burne were gay.  I don't even know if my players quite "got" it, though I think somebody did ask once:  "So they both are retired and live here together in the castle?"

It just seemed to work.  It was mostly a conceptual thing ... how would a couple view things as opposed to two straight room-mates?  

For my part, I just find that themes dealing alot with sex and sexuality can be done, but are one of those "High Risk" areas that it's just easier, and JUST AS FUN, to not bother with.  If I can make an interesting murder mystery this week or an interesting gay romance drama, but there's a chance the gay romance drama might spin out into a discussion about sexual orientations or start my wife in on a political rant ... we'll go with the murder mystery.  

The game we're currently playing, my wife's character is a gender-ambiguous elf (Varsuvius-ish).  When speaking third-person she says:  "She" sometimes or "He" other times, just to keep it confusing.  The guy playing the female cleric is playing her up as a promiscuous go-getter, which really concerns me only insomuch as I'm playing a cleric of St. Cuthbert who disapproves when he gets wind of it.  That's about it.  I guess I could do my cleric as a conflicted homosexual in a strict religion that frowns on his life-choice ... 

But I prefer hittin' wrongdoers with a stick.

--fje


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## Zappo (Nov 25, 2005)

An old adventure I ran revolved around a very libertine male character who hired a psion to switch his mind with a woman, to see what it's like from the other side. Then he didn't want to come back. Does that count?


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## Uder (Nov 25, 2005)

My last druid PC had a gay cohort. Never got to do much, my PC died very soon after.

I thought it would be fun to turn the standard cohort/PC relationship on its ear - my druid was very "not gay and not headed that way," especially not at the ripe ol' age of 70. I was looking to have a dedicated defender who my character most assuredly didn't want around at first, but it would turn out they were deep friends and depended on each other for survival. Lots of dichotomies involved too - age (~20 vs. almost 70), sexuality (gay vs. straight), outlook (conservative vs. bacchanalian), etc.

Perhaps it was for the best. The cohort was an incredible flamer, and I don't know how well the other players would've dealt with it... although they got a kick out of him for the 1/2 session he was around, it might've just been for the comedy value.


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## Professor Phobos (Nov 25, 2005)

STARP_JVP said:
			
		

> I'm just curious here; this was sparked by a conversation I had just recently. Without editorialising homosexuality itself, has anybody here had a gay or bisexual PC in their game, or a gay or bi NPC? I'm just curious to see how common it is. It's never actually happened in my game - not for any particular reason, I'd like to stress; it just hasn't.




Yep; one of my players had a gay PC for a while (then he got turned into a vampire and had to be staked) and there have been a couple gay NPCs. (I should probably throw in another one, come to think of it)

If it matters, the gay PC was played by a (as far as I know) straight guy. There's a gay player, but he's played straight characters thus far.


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## monboesen (Nov 25, 2005)

I once played a bisexual, and quite flamboyantly so, master duelist and swashbuckler. It was fun and everybody was ok with it. He even sometimes used his reputation to annoy and unsettle opponents.

I don't even see why it could or should be a problem. At least none of the people I game with have problems or issues with gay people in or out of the game. And while sex isn't a part of our game, romance certainly is.


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## Uder (Nov 25, 2005)

Samnell said:
			
		

> In the games I've run, I've had a few gay NPCs. Rufus and Burne in my Hommlet are in a long-term, openly-acknowledged, but fairly quiet relationship.



Strange, I ran Rufus and Burne in a similar way. I wonder if there are cues in the modules that suggest this, or if it's just a really obvious idea.

IMC, They weren't exactly out, but most everyone knew... in "my" Greyhawk, their sexuality would cause problems with politics in most regions, and speaks to why they settled down outside of traditional human lands (never could figure out why Hommlet is so deep into gnome territory... yet doesn't have any sort of sizeable gnome population)


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## HeapThaumaturgist (Nov 25, 2005)

As to Rufus and Burne ... I mean ... maybe I'm stretching here, but two otherwise normal guys who settled down, together, in a castle ... together ... to run a small town ... together.  With no mention made in the module that they had wives, girlfriends, or anything else.  It just seemed like a natural conclusion.

I liked my male roommates well enough in college ... but I don't really think I'd want to permanently settle down with them ...

Well ... Scott DID do all of the cooking, and was great at it.  And kept the place clean. ... Hrmmmmmmmm.

--fje


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## Samnell (Nov 25, 2005)

Uder said:
			
		

> Strange, I ran Rufus and Burne in a similar way. I wonder if there are cues in the modules that suggest this, or if it's just a really obvious idea.




To me it was really obvious, but then again I'm a gay male and I've done reading about the days before any political movement by and on behalf of gay people. They read to me as a pair of what might have once been called "confirmed bachelors". They cohabitate. They share a job. They don't need to say anything. One could extend this analog and presume that as long as they kept it quiet (no public touching, etc) and were largely absentee lords their presence would be tolerated. Those who had an idea about gay couples would catch on, and those who didn't, wouldn't.

Whether this was intended way back in the late 70s, I have no idea. Gary certainly didn't have them speaking Polari. Or dressing up in mouse costumes.


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## Trellian (Nov 25, 2005)

I've had an evil NPC Sultan of Calimshan who made no secrets about his likings of young boys.. which made the PCs hate his guts even more.. I've also had a PC succumb to necrophilia while running a Call of Ctulhu game after failing several insanity checks.. that was rather shocking as he performed his "insanity" on the dead female PC who died in a fire and was badly burned... yuck...


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## ForceUser (Nov 25, 2005)

STARP_JVP said:
			
		

> I'm just curious here; this was sparked by a conversation I had just recently. Without editorialising homosexuality itself, has anybody here had a gay or bisexual PC in their game, or a gay or bi NPC? I'm just curious to see how common it is. It's never actually happened in my game - not for any particular reason, I'd like to stress; it just hasn't.



In a Marvel game many years ago, I played a gay speedster based upon the Northstar character from Alpha Flight. When it came out that the PC was gay, it made the other players pretty uncomfortable. 

Around the same time I had a gay player who, as with many gamers, always played characters with the same gender and sexuality as himself. 

I like including gay NPCs from time to time for verisimilitude, as long as the group can handle it maturely. Of the groups I'm running at the moment, two groups have gay players and don't have a problem with the occasional gay NPC; a third group, however, would probably be uncomfortable with encountering such characters, so I doubt I'll ever use them in that game. In a previous campaign with that group, I introduced the idea that in human culture in the region, marriage was between two people of any gender. I mentioned it as an "Oh, by the way..." sort of cultural background tidbit--it went over like a fart in church, so I simply mentioned it and left it at that.

I did have a lot of fun recently with role-playing a flamboyantly gay transvestite "madam" that ran a guild of prostitutes. I love freaking players out.


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## Angel Tarragon (Nov 25, 2005)

I own the Book of Erotic Fantasy and have played and GMed my share of gay charcters & NPCs.


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## shilsen (Nov 25, 2005)

I've played a bisexual PC and had a few gay and bisexual characters in my games, but it's never been a subject that featured strongly.


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## Jonny Nexus (Nov 25, 2005)

STARP_JVP said:
			
		

> I'm just curious here; this was sparked by a conversation I had just recently. Without editorialising homosexuality itself, has anybody here had a gay or bisexual PC in their game, or a gay or bi NPC?




White Wolf's Aberrant Superviser's Screen included a scenario which prominently featured a gay NPC.

When I ran it, my players maimed his boyfriend.*

I haven't tried repeating the experiment.

*Not because he was gay, I should stress. They were just the sort of characters who went around maiming people. There was a lot of immature humour going on mind, which didn't exactly help.


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## fusangite (Nov 25, 2005)

STARP_JVP said:
			
		

> I'm just curious here; this was sparked by a conversation I had just recently. Without editorialising homosexuality itself, has anybody here had a gay or bisexual PC in their game, or a gay or bi NPC? I'm just curious to see how common it is. It's never actually happened in my game - not for any particular reason, I'd like to stress; it just hasn't.



It's been fairly rare; I've had a lot fewer gay PCs than gay players but this is mainly because sexuality doesn't really come up in my games beyond the two sentence throwaway lines about ale and whores when people get to a new town. I just don't run games is which romantic relationships are ever formed.

The best gay character I've had in a game was a paladin; working collaboratively with the player, we came up with the idea that all paladins in the campaign world were gay. Parents who found their boys weren't interested in girls would hope that their son was destined to be a paladin. Heterosexuals never received the special favour of the god Orthanov that gave paladins their special powers. It all worked really well.

EDIT: I don't see why characters being non-heterosexual should require an all-adult group. Having a clearly homosexual character does not imply the presence of sexual scenes or themes in a game any more than having a clearly heterosexual character does.


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## Bront (Nov 25, 2005)

fusangite said:
			
		

> EDIT: I don't see why characters being non-heterosexual should require an all-adult group. Having a clearly homosexual character does not imply the presence of sexual scenes or themes in a game any more than having a clearly heterosexual character does.



Having played with an immature group as a mature gamer, I understand why.

It's hard enough keeping the players on a fairly serious note (I had one druid who insisted his wolf was a submissive peer, a Aasimar Paladin who threatened to wack people if they didn't listen, a Frey Sorceress (Paladin's RL GF) who liked to try to ride IN the paladin's armor, and generaly a group that couldn't stay on topic in a serious manor for more than 10 minutes), and if I had introduced homosexuality in the game, in any form, not only would there have been comments about it constantly, but it likely would have caused RL problems for whoever had to deal with said person.  (AKA, why I don't roleplay with teenagers who don't have RP references anymore).


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## Gold Roger (Nov 25, 2005)

So far I've seen one lesbian charakter (played by a female) and I think at least one bisexual. We always had sexuality in our games, but it mostly was a background thing. My current favorite NPC is a lesbian mercenary, but it isn't a really important feature.
I think as long as handled in a mature way it enhances the game. It's just like defining other parts of a NPC's personality and just like the whole palett of moods should be represented in NPC's, so should be sexuality.

Edit: Just remembered, I've playeda changeling wizard PC once who could be described as slightly bisexual. He defined himself as man mostly, but changed forms constantly (we're talking minutes sometimes). He had a large garderobe and liked to change into beautiful females and just walk around in fine dresses. He enjoyed the looks he got for it, because he considered forming a beautiful form artful craftmanship. He also was very pragmatic, so, if the need of a beautifull female or even male had arisen to step in and "convince" someone, he wouldn't have hasitated.


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## Torm (Nov 25, 2005)

I played a female Noble in a Star Wars campaign that was a lesbian, but was actively allowing herself to be courted by a male noble for a situation that would be beneficial to her world. _Sex_ never featured in the game for my character (the female robot assassin being played by another player is another story altogether  ) but it was an interesting romance/intrigue aspect of the game.


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## Nifft (Nov 25, 2005)

Sex isn't something that happens on screen, but PCs & NPCs are assumed to have sex off camera (just like they go to the bathroom off camera). However, romance can happen -- PCs can get favors from NPCs, and can piss them off by seeming to lead them on. Romance is such a huge plot-driver in fiction, it's kinda sad that it's so severely limited in RPGs.

So far there have been two gay PCs (played by gay players) in my campaign, and they have caused no trouble in game at all.

 -- N


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## Tarril Wolfeye (Nov 25, 2005)

Well, the Pharaoh of a desert land IMC is a lesbian woman pretending to be a man and really in love with her consort, who is finally pregnant (from the pharaoh) thanks to some inventive PCs.
As for gay PCs, there weren't any (I think).


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## CronoDekar (Nov 25, 2005)

The only encounter with a homosexual character I can think of was a game with a one-session comically flamboyantly gay villain (interestingly enough, the DM was gay herself).  Otherwise, it never really came up.


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## SBMC (Nov 25, 2005)

This came up one time in our group a long time ago where the DM stated an NPC liked men; and it was for a back story of why some folks, ridiculed, laughed and giggled at him – causing the guy and anyone who talked to him a lot of embarrassment and such – but we needed to talk to the guy for info. So I guess this is like that previous poster on page 1 who said his world represents the “1950’s”.

We are all mature (anywhere from 28 – 34 at that time) and no one (in or out of character) even paid it any merit/attention/cared except for one fella that we all sort of new would (but it was just an “ewww” kind of thing – and that was in and out of character - for other reasons he is no longer with us anyways). Other than that we never had a gay PC or NPC (at least that we knew about).

Other sexuality; my character is a straight male fighter who can never get enough; at every town he goes for the whorehouse as quick as he can (or better yet a freebie from a local). The details never get stated except him wanting 4 women or whatever. Normally a number of jokes are made (half of them lewd per se’ - we are all guys) and we all laugh and such – and at times he has needed a “cure disease” spell cast the next morning. It is really light humor without any of the up close details of the actual act(s). It is part of my character that makes him what he is.

On one occasion the barmaid he took upstairs ended up being a succubus – that was VERY humorous!


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## GQuail (Nov 25, 2005)

Jonny Nexus said:
			
		

> White Wolf's Aberrant Superviser's Screen included a scenario which prominently featured a gay NPC.
> 
> When I ran it, my players maimed his boyfriend.




That's a personal favourite out of all the Critical Miss stories.  We've all, at some point, played in a game that has nosedived, even if not _quite_ like that.  ;-)


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## Pinotage (Nov 25, 2005)

I've had a gay PC in one of the games I ran. Didn't make any real difference to the game as such. I have also had loads of romance, but never gone down the sex route as such as either a DM or player character. Whatever makes for interesting and fun roleplaying is always a good idea.

Pinotage


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## Odhanan (Nov 25, 2005)

I run games with 5 female and 1 male players.

Within this group, only the female players seem to fancy bisexual characters. That is, I have one female player playing a bisexual female character and using it in roleplay. I know another two other female characters are bisexual, but only one of them made allusions about it in game. 

Plus, I have a margravate of witches in my homebrew setting, and these witches (think about Rashemen and you're real close) practice lesbianism as a way for pleasure, while using the men of the clan for mating purposes.

So I guess for me that's a big yes. And really, I don't think this has anything to do with a supposed "maturity" of the game at my table. At other tables, I'm sure some can show off like this, but my players aren't "that" kind of players.


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## Aust Diamondew (Nov 25, 2005)

Once in shadowrun one of my friends played a bisexual character.  Really weird character.  Didn't last too long pretty sure he got fragged four or five sessions later right after another PC deckers head exploded after fighting a black IC.  Of course my character being a tough as nails minotuar (troll metavariant) shaman escaped.
Other than that I can't think of anything.


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## jdrakeh (Nov 25, 2005)

STARP_JVP said:
			
		

> I'm just curious here; this was sparked by a conversation I had just recently. Without editorialising homosexuality itself, has anybody here had a gay or bisexual PC in their game, or a gay or bi NPC? I'm just curious to see how common it is. It's never actually happened in my game - not for any particular reason, I'd like to stress; it just hasn't.




I ran a Victorian Age adventure game, wherein the main villain was a wealthy, hashish smoking, London business magnate who had his hand in a number of criminal activities that spanned the globe from Britain to India. He was an affirmed homosexual, as well - but he wasn't a stereotype in that regard, and his sexuality didn't come into play but once that I can remember. 

I think stuff like that is perfectly acceptable - what I find to be in poor taste is the PC or NPC deliberately created to turn homosexuality into a running joke (i.e., the flaming gay character that turns every line into some kind of 'in joke' ripped from old episodes of Will & Grace) or some other kind of walking cliche. 

In short, sexuality as a definining aspect of a character is fine. Sexuality as the _sole_ defining aspect of a character is balderdash. That said, YMMV.


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## Lord Rasputin (Nov 25, 2005)

I've never seen a gay or bisexual PC. Something tells me I may have seen one or two as an NPC, and the GM was making light of this, but I really can't remember, and were this so, it was long ago, circa 1990 when I was still in high school. We weren't mature then, and in 1990, gay-bashing was much more socially permissible. Since the younger brother of GM in question is now known (for sure, we'd long suspected) to be gay and my younger brother is bisexual, I doubt we'd do the same now. I know there's no way I'd let that happen in my current group. It's too wrong. I'm not sure I'd want to see someone try it either; it could end the game very quickly.

In other adult-themed hijinks, one player in my current group usually plays very horny characters. When using GURPS, he always takes the Lecherousness disadvantage; when playing other systems, he plays his characters as if there were a Lecherousness disadvantage. Mostly, I use this trait as a way to get his characters in trouble.  The player is rumored to have the same issue in real life.

There have been two other sexual situations of note recently. One was my own, the chronically masturbating bionic implant surgeon. Revealing this trait was pretty fun for me, since I let it on slowly, the PC (the lecher, as it happens) wondering why there was all these holo-centerfolds on the walls in the guy's office and where this guy was going every few minutes. The other was when another PC tried picking up a date for fun and video (he was an ex-political officer, so he spied on everyone). I had him meet three Angelina Jolie clones, who themselves were harvesting DNA for cloning purposes, and instead of perversion on optidisc, he got three nude Angelina Jolie clones kicking his butt on optidisc, saved only by the lecher PC showing up at the right time.

I guess it's fair to say that trying to have sex in one of my games isn't a good thing, though that may be because my PCs are always using it for less-than-good purposes. Since I'm not a prude myself, I wonder why I'm always trying to teach them a lesson ...


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## Shadowslayer (Nov 25, 2005)

I dunno. I ran a game once where the PCs had to deal with the Herald of a particular noble, and I played the herald as having a very effeminate manner. He actually wasn't gay, he was just a little comic releif. But it made one of my players _really_ uncomfortable. I thought that was strange. (maybe he was in the closet himself and thought I was making fun of him.)

Anyway, PC sexuality has never come up in any games that I played, save for a newer one I just joined into. I play an elf. Unbenownst to me, the DM has this idea that in his world, most elves "swing both ways". I thought it was dumb. But on the other hand, it doesn't come up except when the party's NPC dwarf decides to start throwing verbal jabs at the elf...and that's not very often.

SIde note...in that new game, we had a player that had really only played Vampire LARP. He didn't seem to grasp D&D that well. One day his PC drew a card from a cursed deck that changed his gender. He (the player) got mad...really mad. I mean turning purple with outrage. Asked what kind of sick bastard the DM was and stormed out, leaving us alll gawking at each other and saying "what the hell was THAT all about?"  Never saw him again. 

Go figure.


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## Zander (Nov 25, 2005)

Samnell said:
			
		

> I'm gay. My PCs, unless I have some particular reason otherwise, are gay too.... I think straight people generally play straight PCs: there's not much motivation to do any differently. The sexual inclinations of PCs are rarely at issue.




I use the same assumption as pogre and Samnell: if the player is gay (or bisexual or whatever) so is his character unless he states otherwise. As I've DMed a gay player, I assume that his character was gay too but sexuality wasn't an issue in that campaign so I don't know what the player's intentions were for his PC.

FWIW I use the same player/PC assumption for handedness.


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## John Q. Mayhem (Nov 25, 2005)

I never bring sexuality or romance up in my games, because I often play with my siblings, and I'm not comfortable playing that sort of thing with them; also, they're in their early teens.


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## Sidereal Knight (Nov 25, 2005)

Most of the groups I have played with never really explored the sexuality of characters. While there has been a little off-screen romance for PCs, little attention has been payed to this part of their background.

(The one exception that comes to mind is a player who had his character get married for political reasons.  The DM ended up having the player roll Constitution checks to see if he could sire offspring.    )

I'm currently running an Eberron game, and have recently introduced a bit of backstory that involves a same-sex couple. The NPCs in question were involved in a long-term relationship that occurred while one of them was already married (to a member of the opposite sex).  When the story was relayed to the PCs, the teller treated it as a major scandal, which it was... but because of the extramarital affair, not because of the same-sex relationship.

I think my players (including my husband) were a bit suprised by this portrayal, probably thinking that I would always choose to show gay people in a positive light since I am gay. As someone said earlier, sexuality is only part of a character's makeup... it doesn't make them intrisically good or bad, in my opinion.


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## Olgar Shiverstone (Nov 25, 2005)

Yes and yes, but it's never been an issue.


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## Kenson (Nov 25, 2005)

I've played characters who were gay, straight, or largely asexual (simply because the question never arose). It hasn't been an issue in our group, but we're all (ostensibly) mature adults in our 30s.


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## Kenson (Nov 25, 2005)

Oh, and for folks who might be interested, I co-moderate a yahoo mailing list for GLBT gamers. Click over to:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/gaymers

If you'd like to check it out.


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## MonsterMash (Nov 25, 2005)

In most of the games I play sexuality is pretty much left out, there is little if any hetrosexual activity and the same goes for gay/lesbian. Most PCs have not really had any preferences expressed so it is assumed that it matches the players.


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## fusangite (Nov 25, 2005)

Bront said:
			
		

> Having played with an immature group as a mature gamer, I understand why.
> 
> It's hard enough keeping the players on a fairly serious note (I had one druid who insisted his wolf was a submissive peer, a Aasimar Paladin who threatened to wack people if they didn't listen, a Frey Sorceress (Paladin's RL GF) who liked to try to ride IN the paladin's armor, and generaly a group that couldn't stay on topic in a serious manor for more than 10 minutes), and if I had introduced homosexuality in the game, in any form, not only would there have been comments about it constantly, but it likely would have caused RL problems for whoever had to deal with said person.  (AKA, why I don't roleplay with teenagers who don't have RP references anymore).



What you are describing here is a group of adolescents who are barely under control in terms of sexualizing the game, regardless of what happens. I guess I'm not thinking about such groups but rather about the kinds of groups I was in as a teenager.







			
				Sidereal Knight said:
			
		

> As someone said earlier, sexuality is only part of a character's makeup... it doesn't make them intrisically good or bad, in my opinion.



Another thing to note, here is that homosexuality was not really thought of as an identity category in most societies outside of aboriginal North America (and there, the identity was halfway between modern ideas of homosexuality and transsexuality) prior to the very recent past. Homosexuality as an activity is something we have seen in all societies historically. Homosexual relationships have also been pretty common. But homosexuality as in "I'm gay," not so much. 

Most societies limited problems with women having girlfriends and men having boyfriends, provided they fitted into heterosexual or asexual social structures. If men wanted to sleep with other men and maintain close relations with their male "friends," that was a whole lot more likely to be accepted if the man _also_ got married or took vows of celibacy. A man's homosexuality might be common knowledge but he would be unlikely to face any significant persecution/prosecution unless he deliberately chose to be public about it.

For this reason, unless a game deals directly with either sexuality or romance, unless it is an Eberron-type setting where D&D is just the modern world with magic instead of electricity, a character being gay is unlikely to have any operational meaning unless you create a unique social space for a gay identity in the form of a special order or social role.


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## Nightfall (Nov 25, 2005)

Li Shenron said:
			
		

> Interesting how many point out that there's no place for sexuality in their game, but what about _romance_?




Uhm not much of that either since most PCs aren't interested in the after-effects of said romance.


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## billd91 (Nov 25, 2005)

This has usually only come up for us in more recent-era games. I ran a Cyberpunk 2020 game in which one player (female) played a gay male helicopter pilot. That's about it. In most other circumstances, it has never come up.

Interestingly enough, while the player was identified as straight at the time, she decided during the following year that she identified lesbian. Makes me wonder what inklings she had at the time she was playing in my game.


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## Bartmanhomer (Nov 25, 2005)

Just to be mature and realistic about this topic, I have a question, Can a transsexual male and transsexual female could make a couple? I know it's confusing and awkward.


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## diaglo (Nov 25, 2005)

Olgar Shiverstone said:
			
		

> Yes and yes, but it's never been an issue.




at one point in the campaign over half the players were gay. Ryan, his beau, Shayne, and Sean. with Sam, Marty, and I straight.

some sexuality did come up in game. and has on occassion. Ryan's played a female. and made moves on various NPCs and PCs.

and Sean has changed sexes due to reincarnate.

now that Joe is a woman.... well Cha 21.. how can it not cum up...


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## Nightfall (Nov 25, 2005)

Uhm...well it's a couple of SOMETHINGS that for sure.

*is glad mind flayers don't have this issue* They're just evil and spawn like fish.


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## demiurge1138 (Nov 25, 2005)

I've DMed for one gay PC, although it was very briefly (as in, two sessions after we found out he was gay, everybody got killed). I'd have been interested to see where the player took it, because it was not done seriously at all, at least what we saw.

In DMing, I've had gay NPCs a couple of times, but it's never been at the forefront, just like romance and sex in general isn't much of an issue in my games. If it ever came up, I'd be fine with it, but it hasn't yet.

Demiurge out.


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## WayneLigon (Nov 25, 2005)

Bartmanhomer said:
			
		

> Just to be mature and realistic about this topic, I have a question, Can a transsexual male and transsexual female could make a couple? I know it's confusing and awkward.




If you mean 'create a child', no; the plumbing is there, but it's not connected to the mains (except in the case of urination) ie, unless magic or slightly technology is used than we currently have available, there is no means to carry a child or to actually produce semen. At least one temporary uterus transplant has been done, and there is the possibility of the insanely dangerous ectopic (outside the womb) pregnancy (again, magic could greatly aid this process). Transsexual women can nurse, though.


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## Nightfall (Nov 25, 2005)

Wayne,

*stuffs wax in his ears* *hums loudly* I'm not listening!!!


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## WayneLigon (Nov 25, 2005)

I've done two gay PC's, though neither in D&D. One was a bisexual Call of Cthulhu investigator I played for a couple years, and the other is a super-patriot superhero I'm doing in a current online game. Gay NPC's appear occassionally, as the situation warrents, though unless it comes up (seldom, but the question does arise) the PC's selcom notice it. 

For an NPC, sometimes it just makes sense that it is so. One or two times at least, it's been important to the scenario that it be so. (One time, they were on the trail of a shapeshifter spy who typically changed to a very beautiful half-elven female in order to get close to the military types so she could glean information from them. There was one young man it never could seduce, though, and it was really getting ticked off. Enough so that it made a few mistakes that led the PC's to the fact it was a shapeshifter they were dealing with. The PC's tried to figure out how this was possible, until one of them hit on the obvious and flat-out asked the officer. With that bit of info in hand, they could then clue him in on what was going on so he could playact and help them trap the shapeshifter by feeding it wrong information).


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## Kemrain (Nov 25, 2005)

WayneLigon said:
			
		

> If you mean 'create a child', no; the plumbing is there, but it's not connected to the mains (except in the case of urination) ie, unless magic or slightly technology is used than we currently have available, there is no means to carry a child or to actually produce semen. At least one temporary uterus transplant has been done, and there is the possibility of the insanely dangerous ectopic (outside the womb) pregnancy (again, magic could greatly aid this process). Transsexual women can nurse, though.



 Thank you, Wayne. I was going to try to field the question, but you covered it very well and I'm still not sure what the origional question _was_. Such an informative and tasteful answer.

- Kemrain the Appreciative.


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## painandgreed (Nov 25, 2005)

A DM I had in the 80's had most of the elves in his campaign being bisexual. Some (about 10%) had preferences one way or another but the culture as a whole wasn't concerned with gender unless trying to have a child and they just slept with whomever they felt like. This carried over into my campaigns and PCs I have played and has never caused any trouble. Nobody really seems to have an issue with bi effeminent elves, but as typical, sex never really happened that much anyway.

Every now and then there will be either some NPC villain who will usually have a host of sexual deviancies that PCs will encounter. There will also be the typical stereotypes. Anytime a PC goes to get fancy clothes made in a large city, the tailor almost always ends up being gay. In the game I'm currently in there was a flaming gay bugbear tailor that made our clothes for us and the DM went into great detail on the care this bugbear had spent on combing and styling his hair all over his body. He has been a wealth of information on the social situation in the city we currently inhabit.


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## jueqel (Nov 25, 2005)

Sexuality, sex, romance, and gender crop up all the time in the games I play (as player and GM). Even when I steer clear of the topic and focus on "killing the monster" sessions, it rarely fails to crop up. Some PCs use sex as a weapon (seduction mostly), and interesting plot points can conveniently crop up to keep players on their toes.

When running one-shot games for strangers and sexuality does come up, I make sure there is variety in the sex department. 

So, yes. I always have gay, straight, and bi characters in my games. Hmmm... just like the real world. Sometimes the straight ones are not so obvious, but they are there.


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## CaptainCalico (Nov 25, 2005)

I'm a female DM running for a group of 5 men (including my husband) and 1 woman. We are all in the late 20's - early 30's age group, and the camapign is strongly focused on the social aspects of the game. In fact, we refer to it as the "religion, politics and sex" game. *grin*

Given that, I felt free to have a major NPC be gay. When he was presented to the group he came across as "flame-lite", dressed to the height of fashion, very flirtatious, but also genuinely friendly. At first the male PCs were glad to have somone who could help them through the intricacies of court life. Then, when another NPC did the 'nudge-nudge, wink-wink' bit and told them he was gay they all instictelvly recoiled. A few months later in the campaign they figured out how much their PCs could use his help, and suddenly the phrase "Well, he _is_ a damn handsome man....." started to come up just about every session.   

But then, true love, arranged marriages, and contract births are all grist for the mill in my campaign, and my players keep coming back, so I must be doing something right.


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## Darth K'Trava (Nov 25, 2005)

No. Can't say that it's come up in any of our games. But then our group's too immature at times to handle it with any sort of dignity. Yes, we're bad.


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## Eluvan (Nov 26, 2005)

I'm really quite surprised to see how many people say romance doesn't come up in their games.

 I'd always seen it as kind of integral... just like almost every book or film has some kind of romantic subplot (at least), all my games seem to have the same. 

 Anyway, for my part... I'm a straight male, and I've played straight males predominantly. But I have been known to play women. I played a lesbian once; it was tasteful, I think, and I was mature about it, but it still made me feel a little odd. I guess it's just that, even though it wasn't my motivation for playing the character, I inevitably *did* get kind of a kick out of it for the 'wrong' reasons. So... I'm not sorry I did it, but I wouldn't do it again. I'd lose all my credibility if I got a reputation for playing lesbians. 

 Anyway, the lingering feeling of oddness from that makes me want to play a gay guy some time soon. Also, I just like challenging myself and I want to see if I can do it.


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## Kenson (Nov 26, 2005)

Eluvan said:
			
		

> I'm really quite surprised to see how many people say romance doesn't come up in their games.



Well, I'd say part of it comes from the fact that (and I say this without rancor) most straight people take for granted the amount that romance and sexuality infuse both stories and their daily lives simply because they (unlike sexual minorities) don't have to think about it.

Take, for example, the following classic plot hooks:

• A noble's spouse is having a scanalous and potentially ruinous affair.

• A merchant's child has been abducted and sold as a potential mate or pleasure slave.

• A young couple is fleeing their oppressive families so they can be together.

• The ghost of a victim murdered due to jealousy seeks vengeance and to protect its beloved.

• Someone who takes a shine to a PC is found murdered shortly thereafter, with the PC the prime suspect.

Any of the above (as well as countless others) could just as easily involve same-sex couples as they could heterosexual couples, and I'd be willing to wager that most players don't consider them "romance" plots when they involve "normal" (straight) relationships and serve just as hooks to get adventurers involved with interesting plots (and I put "normal" in quotes to mean "the norm" rather than as a prejorative).


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## was (Nov 26, 2005)

I don't really know if I have or not, we don't play out sexuality in our characters..


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## haakon1 (Nov 26, 2005)

HeapThaumaturgist said:
			
		

> As to Rufus and Burne ... I mean ... maybe I'm stretching here, but two otherwise normal guys who settled down, together, in a castle ... together ... to run a small town ... together.  With no mention made in the module that they had wives, girlfriends, or anything else.  It just seemed like a natural conclusion.




Perhaps, but people were like that in "olden times".  As in, gayness was so far out of the norm that people didn't go looking in every closet to find it, and two men or two women could live together without (so far as I can tell) whispering about it.

For example, Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson are clearly not meant to be gay characters.  Post 1968 or so, it seems like they MUST be gay, but pre-1950 or so, it's more like "what's gay again?  People do that?  Really?"


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## Monte At Home (Nov 26, 2005)

It was not the intention of the original creators of Rufus and Burne (who were PCs together and played through the adventure) that they were gay.

However, it was absolutely my intention to portray them as such in Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil (there's only the one bedchamber for them in the entire castle), without saying "and they're gay," which would be silly. (Silly because it's really not an issue, and because I didn't identify straight characters as such.)

There is also a gay couple in Dead Gods, and there are a few characters in other products I've written who were gay in my conception for them, but really, in D&D, it just isn't really all that relevant. 

It happens that way in my home campaign all the time. NPCs I create are sometimes gay, but rarely do the PCs ever know one way or another, because most of the time they don't care. They just want the information they need from the NPCs, or they want to kill them and take their stuff. That's D&D. Occasionally, it comes up, like when they were hunting a particular vampire and learned that she had a half-dragon lover. They assumed that the half-dragon would be male, and almost overlooked the half-dragon female involved.


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## Pseudonym (Nov 26, 2005)

Bartmanhomer said:
			
		

> Just to be mature and realistic about this topic, I have a question, Can a transsexual male and transsexual female could make a couple? I know it's confusing and awkward.




I know one couple that consists of a transsexual male and transsexual female.  They've been together for years, so yes, it can work out.


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## MavrickWeirdo (Nov 26, 2005)

In one game I was playing a (born male) changeling cleric of the traveler (chaotic-trickster god). If the campaign had not ended, then at some point my PC would have started flirting with the male paladin PC, but only to annoy him.


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## Shemeska (Nov 26, 2005)

STARP_JVP said:
			
		

> I'm just curious here; this was sparked by a conversation I had just recently. Without editorialising homosexuality itself, has anybody here had a gay or bisexual PC in their game, or a gay or bi NPC? I'm just curious to see how common it is. It's never actually happened in my game - not for any particular reason, I'd like to stress; it just hasn't.




I've had almost all the gay male PCs in my campaigns played by straight female players, and the one player who happens to actually be bisexual, he has only played straight male or female PCs.

I've played NPCs of all stripes, it doesn't bother me one way or the other to RP a bi or gay male or female character, I can just 'get' better and portray a straight male or bi/gay female character more easily simply because of my own ooc preference in partner.

Sexuality rarely matters though, and I've had some NPC fiends that don't have a distinct or a fixed gender, and they'll use this as a weapon in many ways. I've had my namesake show up at social functions with eye candy of either, or both genders, perched on her arm as escorts and dinner dates etc. Tanar'ri can shift gender if they wish to, simply through enough concentration, and yugoloths tend to be either hermaphrodites or able to shapechange at will. Thus for many fiends, it doesn't honestly matter in many cases, and their ideas of preference might not conform to the mortal ideas of sexuality in the context of two distinct genders. Life thus gets more complex.

Fiend to PC - 'Shall I be X gender for our dinner meeting? Or shall I surprize you?'

Such can happen, and they might swap gender just to keep you off balance. Show up as a dashinging dressed male one meeting, then as a gown wearing female the next, but very obviously being the same person. Gender and sexuality in my fiends tend to transcend mortal ideas of fixed biology and distinct sexual dichotomy. Baatezu come the closest to mortals since they have distinct male and female genders, and remain in a fixed gender. But I haven't had to deal with Baatezu sexuality before, just some instances with 'loths (one PC got romantically involved with an arcanaloth, and another PC did much later on, but it was more business with pleasure on the side, and no feelings involved) and some instances involving a Tanar'ri brothel and its alu-fiend owner who moved in next door to the PCs.


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## fusangite (Nov 26, 2005)

Monte At Home said:
			
		

> NPCs I create are sometimes gay, but rarely do the PCs ever know one way or another, because most of the time they don't care. They just want the information they need from the NPCs, or they want to kill them and take their stuff. That's D&D.



This sort of statement would be why you enjoy the level of respect you do in the industry. This isn't just D&D correct; it's anthropologically correct. We know Alcuin, Charlemagne's most important civil servant, was gay. But we don't care because being gay did not constitute the meaningful identity category it does today. And, in part, because people in 9th century Francia has better things to worry about.


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## Umbra (Nov 26, 2005)

I'm gay but I've only played two gay characters.  One was open about it; the other kept the information concealed although my reactions were suitably 'colored'.  The other (straight) players knew there was something different about him.  They just couldn't figure out what it was.  

I've also played in a game with six other gay men.  Out of some fourteen characters that have been played, only one was gay.  Go figure!

As a DM I've had gay NPC's but no-one has ever discovered their sexuality.  As Monte said, the information was irrelevant.


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## S'mon (Nov 26, 2005)

Some of my female Fighters would be classed as bisexual or lesbian in 21st century Western society I guess.  Doesn't really make sense in a medieval paradigm though.


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## S'mon (Nov 26, 2005)

I think in a straight group, gay men often play feminine straight female NPCs - not Lara Croft macho type PCs, those are played by straight men.


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## Stormrunner (Nov 26, 2005)

My groups have generally been in their 30s or so, and not afraid of sexuality (though actual character copulation has remained off-screen).

I'm bi, and so is Stormrunner.  Stormy's preferences have impacted the plot a few times (such as when she seduced a mermaid who had been intended as a Charm-weilding impediment to the PCs).  An earlier PC of mine, Snakey the lizard-woman, was basically "straight" by human standards - she did end up in a seven-way marriage (4 males, 3 females) but that was normal for her culture.

In the CyFurPunk campaign I ran a few years ago (Shadowrun-type setting, the PCs were all "jennies" - genetically-engineered animal-people) there were a number of gay characters.  Boingo and Lirip (kangaroo and otter respectively) were a flamingly-gay punk couple (rainbow-dyed fur, multiple piercings, etc.) who ended up being oft-recurring NPCs.  One of the main recurring villains was Gypsy, a lesbian Doberman enforcer for the local Mob, who kept getting more and more obsessed with killing the PCs as they kept messing up her plans.  (There was also a gay horse among the lesser enforcers, but the PCs put a bullet through his skull without discovering his orientation).
Among the PCs, there was a gay fox (the party's Fixer) played by a gay player (his RL partner played a straight PC, a Unicorn whose maxed-out charisma resulted in him being propositioned by just about every NPC he met), and a bi female otter (the party techie, played by a female player) who was extremely lecherous and would bed anything just for kicks (very useful in the plot hooks department, her multiple partners effectively became multiple sources of info for the party).


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## Psion (Nov 26, 2005)

Though on occassion sexuality and romance comes up in the game, only one time can I recall a campaign relevant situation where homosexual orientation of an NPC was important enough to bring up -- and that was a Fantasy Hero game.

For my typical game, I find bringing up sexuality outside of the occasional succubus is an invitation to typical male sex-joke off-topicness. Well, I guess the succubus really isn't an exception, but its sort of hard to avoid the topic in that case.


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## fusangite (Nov 26, 2005)

S'mon said:
			
		

> Some of my female Fighters would be classed as bisexual or lesbian in 21st century Western society I guess.  Doesn't really make sense in a medieval paradigm though.



Thanks for recognizing this. As I suggested in my post above, homosexuality of course existed in that period but did not function as an identity category.


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## Kahuna Burger (Nov 26, 2005)

fusangite said:
			
		

> Thanks for recognizing this. As I suggested in my post above, homosexuality of course existed in that period but did not function as an identity category.



the problem with that theory is that the vast majority of campaigns don't take place in "that period". As far as I'm concerned, if there is a female character with the right of self determination to be something other than an arranged wife, and characters marrying for love instead of family interest, there is no reason not to have "gay" characters. If folks don't want them, thats fine, but I find anachronism a deeply dissatisfying excuse (not reason) to avoid it.


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## fusangite (Nov 26, 2005)

Kahuna Burger said:
			
		

> the problem with that theory is that the vast majority of campaigns don't take place in "that period".



Fair enough. As you can see in my post that preceded that one, I made note of that. In Eberron-type worlds where D&D is just the modern world with different tech, gay characters make perfect sense.







> As far as I'm concerned, if there is a female character with the right of self determination to be something other than an arranged wife, and characters marrying for love instead of family interest, there is no reason not to have "gay" characters.



I can't let this go by unchallenged. All but the highest ranks of medieval and early modern society typically married much as we do: in our twenties and motivated by individual love and personal choice. And even at the aristocratic level, as can be seen from medieval romance literature, the ideal of marrying for love remained a serious propositon.







> If folks don't want them, thats fine, but I find anachronism a deeply dissatisfying excuse (not reason) to avoid it.



Again, if you look at my previous posts on this thread, you can see that I actually talk about a highly successful instance of a gay character in my campaigns.


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## Morrow (Nov 26, 2005)

STARP_JVP said:
			
		

> I'm just curious here; this was sparked by a conversation I had just recently. Without editorialising homosexuality itself, has anybody here had a gay or bisexual PC in their game, or a gay or bi NPC? I'm just curious to see how common it is. It's never actually happened in my game - not for any particular reason, I'd like to stress; it just hasn't.




The game I DM and the game I play in each have a gay male PC.

Morrow


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## Tetsubo (Nov 26, 2005)

I've had a lesbian Cleric PC being played by a lesbian. I've had a bi-sexual Mage/Fighter being played by a bi-sexual, transgender player. I've played a lesbian Rogue (I'm a male heterosexual). The Elves in an old 2E campaign of mine were pretty much universally bi-sexual. It hasn't ever really been an issue.


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## Mouseferatu (Nov 26, 2005)

I've had a few gay NPCs in my various campaigns, but as others have said, the topic rarely came up, so I don't think my players were particularly aware of most of them.

In the game I'm running now, however, one of my players is playing a gay character, and he actually worked the orientation thing into his backstory.

In brief, he began the campaign as a fallen paladin, though the rest of the party thought him just a fighter/barbarian. He had been excommunicated from his Church when his orientation was exposed, and had lost his powers because he felt his god had abandoned him. In a recent game, when he actually came face to face with an angel who told him, in so many words, that it was only the mortals of the Church who had turned their backs on him, and his god never had, he found his faith and his powers restored.

I'm not sure the brief summary is doing it justice, but it was really a great scene to play through, especially since none of the other characters (or players) had any idea all this had happened until they witnessed the conversation with the angel.


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## Xath (Nov 26, 2005)

I wanted a PC of mine to be gay once because of in-game reasons, but it didn't really come up until a private conversation with the DM.  Then he said that homosexuality didn't exist in his world and that it wasn't allowed.  Since my character's sexuality hadn't been an issue in the game as of yet, it didn't change the story much, but I always thought it was wierd that the GM would prohibit it.


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## John Q. Mayhem (Nov 26, 2005)

Xath said:
			
		

> I always thought it was wierd that the GM would prohibit it.




Well, were there any younger peoples in the game? That'd account for it. Also, he might just want to ignore the whole issue, or he might not feel comfortable discussing that kind of thing. Doesn't seem strange to me at all, really.


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## Gahnomen (Nov 26, 2005)

I was a fellow player in a game where this "interesting" character turned up. He was a gay dwarf, and his name was Necrotic. That really should set the tone right there, I don't think I've seen or even heard of a worse name than that   

Beyond that, the dwarf was extremely ugly (4 or 5 CHA I think) and extremely stupid (6 int). He was also a complete racist, hating any and all half-races. So whenever we encountered half-orcs, half-elves or what have you, he lashed out, spat at them and wanted to kill them   

He also hated halflings, because he had misunderstood their name and thought they were a half-race as well. 

This character was eventually forcefully made to better his ways (about his racism, not sexuality of course   ). He never got 'lucky' with anyone or anything, but not for a lack of trying. If nothing else, it was a character not soon forgotten.


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## arscott (Nov 27, 2005)

I tend not to play in campaigns long enough that the sexual orientation of characters comes up.

In the RPGA games I get sucked into, the plot is merely an excuse to drag the characters from one combat to the next, and I'm pretty sure that player and character orientations match.

I recently ran a one-shot modern game revolving around a 'haunted' production of MacBeth.  The director was played as one of those stereotypical, flamingly gay theatre types (though he was actually straight).  An Elven actor/information resource was loosely based on Ian McKellen, including inclination towards men.

Both characters prompted 5 minutes of jokes.  That would have concerned me more if every single plot element I introduced hadn't elicited the same response.

I'm somewhat intrigued by the number of bisexual elves posts.  What is everybody's reason for giving elves that tendency?


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## Ogre Mage (Nov 27, 2005)

*Gay PCs*

I played a gay male semi-closeted spiked chain fighter.  His sexuality never really came up in the game so I doubt any of the other players noticed.  But I knew, and the DM knew.


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## Stormrunner (Nov 27, 2005)

arscott said:
			
		

> I'm somewhat intrigued by the number of bisexual elves posts.  What is everybody's reason for giving elves that tendency?




I suspect it's because elves are generally portrayed as tall, slender, good-looking, and long-haired - i.e., looking a lot like manga _bishonen_ pretty-boys.


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## CrowGod (Nov 27, 2005)

I played in a game once with a blatantly gay dude who practically only played female characters. So we had a gay player more comfortable playing a straight female rather than, say...a butchy CONAN type of warrior. It was weird at first and interesting to say the least. If it wasn't for his crappy personality (as a person) and stinking attitude/munchkin-ism my pals and I would've played in the group a little longer.


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## Cursed Quinn (Nov 28, 2005)

I played a lesbian paladin, who got involved with the high priestess of her temple. Long, drawn out romance. Very amusing and fun to play.


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## Henry (Nov 28, 2005)

Never played a gay NPC or PC, but I've seen one played by another player, and the only time it came up was when the PC (female) was being courted by a male noble.

Most of the time, as most people here, it's never come up.


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## Rockwolf66 (Nov 28, 2005)

STARP_JVP said:
			
		

> I'm just curious here; this was sparked by a conversation I had just recently. Without editorialising homosexuality itself, has anybody here had a gay or bisexual PC in their game, or a gay or bi NPC? I'm just curious to see how common it is. It's never actually happened in my game - not for any particular reason, I'd like to stress; it just hasn't.




Ok I have not publically touched on that subject in D&D. Altho My current Teifling does lean that way.

I have a Cyberpunk 2020 character who is Bi-sexual. How blataint she was about it dependied on how old she was in the game. at 18 she was in the coset for the most part. by age 36 she was married with two kids and while working along ways from her husband ended up involved with the only other female PC in that game.

in a latter game earler in her life I did get some flak from another gamer who knew my character liked females. 

IRL: I am a straight Male with a small line of Bi-girlfriends. I do usually treat sexuality as something normal and usually accepted. Then again I am decended from the Hellfire Club of England. What I consider normal usually is not that normal.


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## Herremann the Wise (Nov 28, 2005)

In terms of players, the one gay guy who has played in our group always played female PCs. The one time he played a male character, the PC got killed in his first combat. He kind of gave up playing male characters after that one. In terms of the sexuality of thecharacter's he played, none of us ever knew.

In terms of NPCs, there is only one NPC that comes to mind and that is Chess - see story below. She was crafted as a character whose profession meant that her sexuality mattered. If it was men then it was business and if it was women it was for pleasure (or at least pleasurable business). It helped to characterise her "man-eater" personality. Aside from this, sexuality has never really come up in our game.

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise


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## I'm A Banana (Nov 28, 2005)

> I'm just curious here; this was sparked by a conversation I had just recently. Without editorialising homosexuality itself, has anybody here had a gay or bisexual PC in their game, or a gay or bi NPC? I'm just curious to see how common it is. It's never actually happened in my game - not for any particular reason, I'd like to stress; it just hasn't.




Why, yes, my current game has elves. Why do you ask?


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## mhacdebhandia (Nov 28, 2005)

I played (very briefly) a gay man in a game of _*Spycraft*_ back when it was new and exciting. He was only gay because I was sick of hearing one of the other players talking about how her character's high Charisma and various social feats made her "irresistible" even to the other PCs - so I snapped back that my character was gay.

Having made that kneejerk decision, I would have stuck with it and treated it seriously, but that game fell apart after one or two sessions.

Generally speaking, my characters are motivated by things other than sex and romance - but, then again, I was having fun playing out a difficult romance with my *d20 Wheel of Time* cavalryman and a minor noblewoman before that game went on seemingly-permanent hiatus, so I don't shy from it either.


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## Duncan Haldane (Nov 28, 2005)

Monte At Home said:
			
		

> It was not the intention of the original creators of Rufus and Burne (who were PCs together and played through the adventure) that they were gay.
> 
> However, it was absolutely my intention to portray them as such in Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil (there's only the one bedchamber for them in the entire castle), without saying "and they're gay," which would be silly. (Silly because it's really not an issue, and because I didn't identify straight characters as such.)




Monte,

I wanted to thank you for this.  I remember running through a little of ToEE when I was a teenager, and I seem to recall at the time there were jokes about Rufus and Burne's sexuality.  

When I ran RttToEE I played up their relationship with some humour (I am gay, as is one of the players).  I remember when the party were in the Welcome Wench, possibly the first night of the first campaign day, I had R&B having dinner at the table.  I remember describing it as a table with a candle, a flower in a vase, etc, all being set up for a "romantic evening", even though the rest of the tavern was your usual D&D type.  

I always played up the warrior as the strong, silent type, and the wizard as the one who like the public displays, the "we" in conversations, etc, while his boyfriend silently put up with these affectations.  It was a lot of fun.  (also reminded me of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern of Hamlet - couldn't remember which one was Rufus and which was Burne, etc).

A little off topic: It was interesting to find excuses during the RttToEE campaign for R&B, and the other Homlett elites, to not get involved in the adventure;  R&B spent much of the campaign simply not believing the characters, claiming that they would be aware if the temple were rising again;  Cannoness Y'Dey would constantly remind the PCs that she had been involved last time, and that things were much tougher then, while belittling the PC's achievements, etc  (boy did they hate her!).

Back to the main topic - I rarely mention the sexuality of NPCs when I'm running a game.  It rarely comes up at all, and although I've opened the door for characters to have romance, etc, it's not really been taken up (there was an instance during RttToEE where the Paladin was trying to purchase two matching rings as components for Shield Other, which he intended on casting on the (female) mage.  The shopkeeper, who was familiar to them, leapt to the conclusion that they were engagement rings.  When he congratulated the Paladin on his upcoming nuptuals, the paladin decided that perhaps the wizard would also think the ring was an engagement ring, and therefore he would have to propose to her.  He got on his knee to ask her and was promptly smacked over the back of the head by a very embarassed wizard.

I remember a couple of instances where the PCs have found themselves being hit on by members of the same sex, but this was usually done for humour value (one instance where a PC was being berated by someone for flirting with the berator's wife - the PC then declared (falsly, I believe) that the character was in fact gay.  The Berator was taken aback for a moment, and then said "I'm sorry, we seem to have gotten off on the wrong foot, could we start again?  And then smiled knowingly at the PC, while offering to shake hands - it was very funny, and the PC had to feign interest in the NPC for some time).

Anyway, enough from me,

Duncan


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## Aikuchi (Nov 28, 2005)

Oddly enough, none of my gay players play gay characters.

Much like other posters, the issue of sexual orientation doesnt come 'out' . And when romance of both hetero-homosexual in nature occurs, it doesn't faze anyone. 

Hmm.
I had 2 groups playing over one weekend (Sat and Sun). One consisted of 5 gay men, and the other 5 straight guys. (IN the past there was a combination of 4 gay men and 1 straight gal but thats beside the observation i'm trying to make).

My gay group didn't play their characters to reflect any sexual need, romantic social interaction in the least. When it was brought up, it was largely handled as straight characters. All characters were male. Some Charismatic beyond belief, others more rough and tumble. A spectrum of personas. 

My straight guy groups consisted of half female characters. Over hte course of several games, at least half the group was always female. In a White Wolf Vampire game, there ALL played female characters. Only one of them played a lesbian once. But there were 2 bisexuals overall.

I have to put this in context of culture as well.
We are of different asian ethnic races playing in South East Asia. 

I never gave it much thought really. 

Hmmms.


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## tetsujin28 (Nov 28, 2005)

STARP_JVP said:
			
		

> I'm just curious here; this was sparked by a conversation I had just recently. Without editorialising homosexuality itself, has anybody here had a gay or bisexual PC in their game, or a gay or bi NPC?



All the time. It is officially Not An Issue.


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## Kahuna Burger (Nov 28, 2005)

My only overtly gay character was an amazon warrior (going for a traditional legend of the amazons feel - one breast, no men) who was very much lesbian by default (her tribe thought of heterosexuality with all the range of tolerance levels commonly assigned to homosexuality). She was an ale and whores kinda warrior who happened to be a woman. Another character was a semi-redeemed succubus, who technicly had no gender and was willing to be whatever anyone wanted. 

I also played a male soldier in a modern game who was "don't ask don't tell" even to himself - he wasn't particularly interested in women and had severely compartmentlized his thinking to avoid ever really considering if he might be interested in men.

There have been a lot of characters where sexuality never came up, and a couple who were straight but with defining relationship preferences. (the female gladiator who had no interest in other warriors and is currently mooning over a halfling wizard, or a proto assassin who was pathologically afraid of childbirth and born into a society with arranged marriages.)


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## Dragonbait (Nov 28, 2005)

It all depends on what group of people I am gaming with. My current group (all straight guys) has no sexuality in the game, so it never comes up. A previous group of mine (2 straight females, 1 gay male, 1 to 2 straight males) was very different. I do not put sexual tones in my game. I am not romantic, and I don't think I am mature enough to handle such subjects without a smirk or blush, so I don't write it into adventures. If such things happened, they were done "off-camera". Yet, that group had a lot of character on character hanky-panky going on.. This was usually instigated by the gay male player, or one of the female players, but not exclusive to either. The group was very role-play heavy, so any romances/sex was normally handled in an adult manner. On several occasions, things got carried away: there was some strange lesbian orgy that they just *had* to plot out... Oh yeah, and a hot tub scene that went into so much detail that I learned details about characters that I never needed to know..  ... Of course, I had to destroy the "hawtness" of the hot-tub scene by having the uber-villain show up and off one of the characters... Was that immature of me? I don't know.

To get back on subject: I have seen gay characters, played by gay players. I have seen lesbian characters (I don't know if I've had a lesbian in my group). One was a guy playing a "Huh-huh-huh, I'm a lesbo. Huh-huh-huh." I've seen bisexual characters. I have seen female players play their characters romantically interested in another character, also played by a female. I've seen male players play their characters romantically interested in another character, also played by a male. I don't discourage any of it, but in most of my games it just does not come up unless the players themselves push the subject.


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## S'mon (Nov 28, 2005)

Kahuna Burger said:
			
		

> the problem with that theory is that the vast majority of campaigns don't take place in "that period". As far as I'm concerned, if there is a female character with the right of self determination to be something other than an arranged wife, and characters marrying for love instead of family interest, there is no reason not to have "gay" characters. If folks don't want them, thats fine, but I find anachronism a deeply dissatisfying excuse (not reason) to avoid it.




I played a female PC Fighter in a Midnight game.  Her strong emotional feelings - "love" - was for a female PC.  For her to say "I am a lesbian", though, would have seemed utterly silly and incongruous.  The concepts of homosexual & heterosexual do not exist in all societies, indeed the form we're familiar with is a particular modern north-European/western one.  Put it  this way - would it make sense in the context of LOTR to say "Frodo is gay (or bi)"?  I don't think so.


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## Immak Antunel (Nov 29, 2005)

A couple campaigns ago, one of my female players had her also-female character try to flirt with the barmaid. I confess I was caught off guard, but fortunately the easiest solution (polite refusal) was perfectly in line with the situation (world-weary 40something barmaid being hit on by female dwarf adventurer). The campaign collapsed before things got much further (persistance and fancy gifts would've paid off), but I did mark the player's weakness for women. 

The first adventure of my next campaign featured a clever feytouched female freedom-fighter who seduced about half the party... that was fun. By the time the characters (all drow, mostly female) figured out what she was up to, she'd freed all they slaves they'd caught but she herself was captured and sold to a brothel, earning just enough for the drow to break even. Of course, even in slavery she might have a trick or two remaining...

The moral of the story is that sexual interest of any kind is a weakness just begging to be exploited by a DM    .


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## Arrgh! Mark! (Nov 29, 2005)

Only one. There's two players in my current group that see themselves on a macho scale, though when the gay PC came up it wasn't an issue.

Player was my fiancee, and she was playing a spartan-like culture where homosexuality was deemed normal. The issue never really cropped up; the one time it did (NPC of an extremist monotheistic suicide cult) the PC made sure the entire cult met it's wanted end somewhat ahead of time. Not because he felt bothered by it; mainly because they had the goods to steal and the temerity to insult him.

Leaving burned snake-temples whilst covered in soon-to-be-pissed-away loot..


I was using the Conan system, though my own weirdo homebrew world. 

the players did have fun. I should ressurect it one day.


Romance and such however is merely alluded to unless it's a key part of the plot (Princess in love with stable-boy, whatever).


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## runtime (Nov 29, 2005)

My last character (RIP) was Chud, a lesbian half-orc barbarian. She wore silver thong armor.


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## Dinkeldog (Nov 29, 2005)

My PCs are generally gay, although typically the other players and frequently the DM don't catch on.  Sort of like real life.


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## Rafael Ceurdepyr (Nov 29, 2005)

I played a gay guy (I'm female) in a Call of Cthulhu game set in the 30s, but he was firmly in the closet and pretty much in denial. I had a whole backstory with his affair with his mentor, a male professor who died tragically. His sexuality never came up in the game, but I kinda suspect it would've made the males in the group (including my husband, who was GMing the game) uncomfortable.


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## fusangite (Nov 30, 2005)

Dinkeldog said:
			
		

> My PCs are generally gay, although typically the other players and frequently the DM don't catch on.  Sort of like real life.



I hope I remember to quote this the next time there's one of these threads. Beautifully put!


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## Oryan77 (Nov 30, 2005)

Gay PC's & NPC's? What's the big deal about having _cheerful_ characters?


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## Eli-kun (Nov 30, 2005)

I've played heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual and asexual characters of both genders. Sometimes I don't think about the sexuality of my characters because it doesn't come up.

 My first character that lasted more than one session was a lesbian. She was a half-orc barbarian/fighter with a low charisma. An attractive female NPC cleric entered the tavern where the entire party met. While 2 male PCs were fighting over her, she went with the party's female bard. My character eventually got to join them, and she also beat up the male PCs who were attempting to peep.

My most flambouyant male character was heterosexual. He was a bard.

My female dwarf Drunken Master is attracted to anything with a beard. She also doesn't really care very much about sex. She's more interested in killing things and getting drunk.

I've occassionally seen other players play homosexual or bisexual characters.


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## JoeBlank (Nov 30, 2005)

diaglo said:
			
		

> at one point in the campaign over half the players were gay. Ryan, his beau, Shayne, and Sean. with Sam, Marty, and I straight.
> 
> some sexuality did come up in game. and has on occassion. Ryan's played a female. and made moves on various NPCs and PCs.
> 
> ...




diaglo is speaking of my PC in Olgar's game. He was a male gnome, but thanks to a reincarnate is now a female halfling. As a sorcerer, she has a high CHA, and diaglo's halfling has been giving her a few too many sideways glances.

Of course, the group is not currently in a situation for anyone to consider sexual escapades, which is good because Ozzy (nee Sully) had not yet figured out how to handle this development.

I have had gay NPCs in games I have run, and oftentimes the PCs and players have no idea. To be slightly less than politically correct, I recently ran Hall of the Rainbow Mage, and the players made some assumptions about the Rainbow Mage based on his name.


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## Flexor the Mighty! (Nov 30, 2005)

It's never come up for us, I don't put sexuality as a big issue in the games.  If your character is gay that's fine.  If you want that to be a major plot point or the focus of the session I'd tell the player they would be much happier in someone elses game.


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## Bardsandsages (Nov 30, 2005)

I've only deliberately used homosexual NPCs twice.  The first was to annoy a homophobic PC who was working my one last good nerve by being a rules lawyer (the worse kind...one that doesn't even know the rules).  So as a little passive-aggressive mischief, I had a gay bard hit on his dwarf.  He overreacted, killed the bard, and got arrested.  The party had a paladin in the group, so instead of breaking him out of jail and fleeing the area, they actually sought out to hire a lawyer for him.  For my own amusement, I let one of the players roll up and design the "lawyer" character and play it in court.  He argued that the human male bard was actually verbally assaulting the dwarf, and the dwarf was acting in self-defense.  After all, why would even a gay man hit on a dwarf?  The trial took up two sessions and was just hysterical.  

The second time was a pair of lesbian dancers.  The players were a _bit_ immature, and evil aligned.  So after a victory they decided to hire some prostitutes.  Then one of the guys, trying to get a rile out of me, said he wanted to hire lesbians.  So I gave them lesbians, but they were actually assassins.  Killed two party members with them     The boys were just not prepared for combat.


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## Bartmanhomer (Dec 8, 2005)

Is it really neccessary to play a homosexual characther?   :\


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## Kahuna Burger (Dec 8, 2005)

Bartmanhomer said:
			
		

> Is it really neccessary to play a homosexual characther?   :\




it isn't technicly neccessary to play a character at all, I suppose - you can just play a sheet full of stats, feats and equipment.    But if you are interested in playing characters, and your personal and/or literary experiece includes gay charaters, you may eventually come up with a character concept that is gay. Nothing neccessary about it, but nothing anymore unneccessary than any other characterization. *shrug*


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## ForceUser (Dec 8, 2005)

Bartmanhomer said:
			
		

> Is it really neccessary to play a homosexual characther?   :\



Is it really necessary to play a heterosexual character?  

Hm.


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## Umbran (Dec 8, 2005)

Character sexuality doesn't enter much into it, unless the player is interested in playing through romance plotlines.  Only a few of my players have been interested in such.  What few have been interested in romance have played heterosexual.  Probably only because romance plots are hard enough to play without "switch hitting", and the individuals have all been hetero themselves.


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## Bartmanhomer (Dec 8, 2005)

ForceUser said:
			
		

> Is it really necessary to play a heterosexual character?
> 
> Hm.




What is the difference between homosexual and heterosexual?


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## Michael Silverbane (Dec 8, 2005)

homosexual's got an 'm' in it.

Later
silver


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## Samnell (Dec 8, 2005)

Bartmanhomer said:
			
		

> What is the difference between homosexual and heterosexual?




The two terms were coined in the late 1800s by a German sexologist who's name escapes me at the moment. A heterosexual person would be one who experiences romantic and physical interest in a person differently-sexed from he himself or she herself. A homosexual person is one who experiences the same with people of the identical sex. A bisexual person would do both to some degree. 

The majority of the human populace appear to be heterosexual, much as they appear to be right-handed. A minority are of the homosexual persuasion, with estimates difficult to attain given remaining social stigmas and so forth. The rights of this minority are currently a major political issue under contention in the US.


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## Nine Hands (Dec 8, 2005)

Actually we have had several PCs and NPCs that where of various sexual orientations.

Terry - An australian Valkyrie pilot for our Robotech game who was homosexual.  He made a great friend for my character (who was a woman), they had lots of things in common and it worked out well.

Rae - My current PC in our Robotech game who after 10 years has gone from exploring homosexual contact to embracing her strong feelings for other women.  She is a very different person now from when she started.

Several Elven NPCs (I run an all elf game), who cross the line both male and female but mainly bisexually and usually as a short passtime.


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## Sidereal Knight (Dec 8, 2005)

Samnell said:
			
		

> The two terms were coined in the late 1800s by a German sexologist who's name escapes me at the moment. A heterosexual person would be one who experiences romantic and physical interest in a person differently-sexed from he himself or she herself. A homosexual person is one who experiences the same with people of the identical sex. A bisexual person would do both to some degree.
> 
> The majority of the human populace appear to be heterosexual, much as they appear to be right-handed. A minority are of the homosexual persuasion, with estimates difficult to attain given remaining social stigmas and so forth. The rights of this minority are currently a major political issue under contention in the US.




Very well said, although I would add that this issue is more widespread than just in the US.

...

I'll stop now before I stray into politics.


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## The_Gneech (Dec 8, 2005)

Bartmanhomer said:
			
		

> Is it really neccessary to play a homosexual characther?   :\




Yes. Yes it is. And don't try to get out of it, because we'll be sending someone around later to check.  

-The Gneech


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## Samnell (Dec 8, 2005)

Sidereal Knight said:
			
		

> Very well said, although I would add that this issue is more widespread than just in the US.




Indeed.



> I'll stop now before I stray into politics.




I had to do the same.


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## Sidereal Knight (Dec 8, 2005)

The_Gneech said:
			
		

> Yes. Yes it is. And don't try to get out of it, because we'll be sending someone around later to check.




Obviously someone has received an advance copy of the 2006 Gay Agenda!


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## lukelightning (Dec 8, 2005)

I was considering complaining about the "men with lesbian character" situation in which a straight man has an elvish lesbian nympho or something.  

Then I realized that even though I'm gay my character is a horrible caricature of a straight man... he's a witless womanizer who tries to "get with the ladies" at any opportunity.

So my stereotype balances the other out.


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## Henry (Dec 8, 2005)

My latest character cares for no sex - he's merely desirous of more personal power. He's so power-mad, he'd sleep with a capacitor.


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## (Psi)SeveredHead (Dec 8, 2005)

I've seen it twice. Once for Vampire - someone played an NPC from a book who was gay, and once we had an accidental lesbian dwarf.

The character played a female dwarf, then forgot about it. His character got laid (by a female), and he only remembered later (the morning after, if you will) that his character was female.


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## eris404 (Dec 8, 2005)

One player in our group did play a gay gunfighter in one of my games and another played an Oscar Wilde sort of character. Both were fun characters and were probably two of the best developed characters (background and personality) we've had.


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## Dirigible (Dec 8, 2005)

> I played a gay male semi-closeted spiked chain fighter.




*Fighter (to group)*: My comrades, I... I can't live the lie any more.
*Cleric*: Huh?
*Wizard*: Wha?
*Fighter*: This... this flail I carry.... it isn't a flail at all...
*Wizard*: You mean?
*Fighter*: Yes, my friends.... 'tis a _spiked chain_!
*Cleric*: Oh my god (and I know what of whence I speak)! You're a... _powergamer!_
*Wizard*: Augh! Deviant! I can't bear to look at you...

I played a bisexual male space captain once, though the game never got beyond one session. Plus, he looked like a younger Tony Soprano, so he wouldn't have gotten a lot of action anyway 

In my homebrew scifi setting, the majority of people are, in modern terms, bisexual. Assisted reproduction technology was advanced enough to let male/male or female/female couples have genetically related children with ease. 'Strict heterosexuals' comprised only about 20% of the population; 'strict homosexuals' somewhat less.


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## Fenris (Dec 9, 2005)

One of the few female characters I played was in Cyberpunk. And due to the random backgrounds that game has I ended up with several lovers, some male, some female. So I played the character to the background that had been generated.

It was quite fun. Every lover had been killed. Many while I was in prison framed for their murders. She was a very interesting character. A very dark background, but for a random one it came together and painted such a complete character I had to run with it.


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## Terwox (Dec 9, 2005)

My groups and I (emphasis on the I) put together are not mature enough to put homosexual PCs or NPCs into a game responsibly.  There, I said it!  I'm not a mature gamer!  Woo!

I'm not being sarcastic or rude, either.  It's just true.  I don't want to put lesbian characters into games because I don't want to subconsciously use gaming as essentially pornography, and gay men don't really interest me (or I guess the DM's I've played under) as story devices.

That said, sex is also a small part of games I run, although I try to keep it to character defining/event defining, off-screen type of stuff.  Some characters are defined by dalliances, or the last time a couple sleeps together before one of them might presumably die -- that sort of thing.  

I'm just not completely comfortable with it, I guess.  Note that I've never had to play with a gay player, though.  If that happened, I'd get over the minor amount of discomfort I have for their sake, if they wanted to have a gay PC (or NPC as the case may be if they were DMing.)  Just hasn't come up.

I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with a straight guy deriving gratification by vicariously playing a promiscuous lesbian, it's just not something I want to be a part of... because I'd be prone to let myself do it, given the chance, so I avoid it.  (Sorry Eric's grandma!)


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## Panask (Dec 9, 2005)

All my players are adults. Sexuality is rarely overt in the game, but characters (PCs and NPCs) sometimes flirt with each other, arrange assignations, or have dates. (Sometimes these activities tie into "exchange of infomration" roleplaying, with lots of Gather Information, Sense Motive, and Bluff, which is the kind of thing that can be important in my game with or without the romantic aspect.)

There are gay NPCs scattered throughout the campaign world, both in the current day and as a part of history and myth, including stories of god and mortals. Most of the religions in the world - and there's a LOT of them, religiona and myth being key interests of mine - are comfortable with gay couples, and some are quite willing to marry them; but there are also religions that are far less comfortable with the idea.

We've had very few gay PCs. Once PC was a priest of Sepia, the goddess of love (of the more whimsical sort), and the player played him as a bisexual hustler, which added a certain range of different interactions to the game. The player checked to make sure none of the rest of us were uncomfortable with this portrayal; none of us were.

I'm gay, but I've never played gay PCs. (One of my players pointed out that knowing how to play straight was a "Survival skill" for gay men in the real world, and sometimes it is.) Until now - my current character (one of my other players is DM'ing for a while) is a gay human male named Orestes, who is 1/8 satyr. He's also married to a woman, and has two small children. Orestes is a member of a highly respected family in his home town, and he married a friend, whose father had utterly disgraced HER family, in order to improve her status and position in the town. The kids further tie her to the family. In the real world, marriages of convenience between women (gay or straight) and gay men are more common than most people think, and children are often part of the arrangement.

Many years ago, before I came out (even to myself), a woman player in one of my first campaigns played a male fighter named Jerboa, who she played as fussy, huffy, and quite stereotypically gay, to comic effect - although his backstory, known only to me and her, was that he was simply an effeminate heterosexual, with a wife and child. She moved; we lost touch. Years later we happened to run into each other, and I mentioned (among the many other things that had been going on in my life) that I was gay.

She freaked! "I hope that... I mean, with Jerboa... were you insulted, or... I'm really sorry!"

I told her that, on my list of things to be worried about, this was really, really low. (She was, by the way, a wonderful person and a great player.)

Panask
Servitar to Baldur


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## STARP_JVP (Dec 9, 2005)

I find all this talk about 'maturity' interesting, as regards to sexuality in the game. I'm also intrigued by the number of people who say that sex isn't really mentioned, or even those people who said their game doesn't involve romance.

In most, though admittedly not all, sexuality has actually been quite important, and romance has been highly prominent. Many of the characters I have played have had in-game dalliances, and as a DM I encourage such things. Other DMs I know are similar. One of the DMs I've played with has NPCs flirt openly with PCs, and the DM himself flirts 'in character' with players of both genders with no embarrasment or shame. It was a little disorienting at first, being male and pretending to flirt, or something more, with another male, but I got over that when I realised that it was only pretending. 

Romance is _such_ an important part of storytelling that I find it off how many people have eschewed it. Leaving sex out I can understand, especially with younger players, but romance is important. It is such a powerful motivator for any character, for a start. I specialise in playing the 'suave debonaire' 007-type character, for who romantic dalliances are a major goal. I've had one PC fall in love and get married, another one with a crush on another PC, and one PC got pregnant once, although she never got to give birth before the campaign folded. 

Maybe I'm just a bit...well, weird, but all these things come together to make memorable gameplay for me and my group. I'm not saying that those who don't share my view are weird, and I certainly don't encourage anybody to do anything that might make them uncomfortable, but I am fascinated by the number of people for whom love and sex are foreign concepts in their game.


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## lukelightning (Dec 9, 2005)

Ah yes, Cyberpunk. Way back before I came out I played cyberpunk, and all the randomly generated previous lovers of my male character were all male. I thought "wow, this game is trying to tell me something!"



			
				Fenris said:
			
		

> One of the few female characters I played was in Cyberpunk. And due to the random backgrounds that game has I ended up with several lovers, some male, some female. So I played the character to the background that had been generated.
> 
> It was quite fun. Every lover had been killed. Many while I was in prison framed for their murders. She was a very interesting character. A very dark background, but for a random one it came together and painted such a complete character I had to run with it.


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## Kemrain (Dec 9, 2005)

In the game I'm currently playing in sex, sexuality, gender, and romance have played great key rolls in the storylines and character development. On top of that we've had a great variety of genders/sexualities/romances too.

Presently I'm playing a character who started off male, got involved with a woman, was polymorphed into a female, married the woman, had a child with the woman, and later found that she was half demon.
While the Demon thing I wanted, I never asked for the sex change. Being transsexual myself, the GM (who is my boyfriend) and I joked about it one time, because there was a plot point that required the characters to be female, but the intention was to get changed back afterwards. It came down to a will save, and Santel, now Melissa, failed it miserably. However, even having failed the save, she asked her love her preference, saying that if she needed a man, she'd be a man for her without hesitation. Her lover had been a whore and abused by men through her childhood, and found being with a woman strangely comforting, so Melissa remained female, and is now carrying their second child.

While Melissa is open in her love for her wife and is repulsed by the idea of being with a man, she _is_ half succubus, and there was this one time... But she doesn't like to talk about that. That guy's lucky she hasn't killed him.

My latest character, Alar Matahari, is a heterosexual male who is involved in a grand scheme of romance and betrayal. This thread should be a fun one to unravel.

I have another character who is asexual, and 'she' is interesting to play. Lana, as 'she's called, is an amorphous shapeshifting creature (think Odo from Deep Space 9) who has spent the last 125 years growing up in a sort of mental childhood. She usually takes a pretty female human shape because, in her words, "Everyone likes a pretty girl." She gets treated better that way, and she knows it.

While Lana is in many ways immature, she is 'in love'* with the son of a local baron, and will soon marry him. This is causing all sorts of complications, such as the fact that she can't give him an heir, having no reproductive organs.

While Lana engages in sex, she doesn't do it for the traditional human reasons. She has no experience of sexual pleasure, but given the protein rich secretions people make during the process she enjoys it afterwards. While she doesn't 'want' sex in the same way a human does, she understands the human need for it and finds it a convienient way of bonding with someone- though now she's agreed to only have sex with her betroved, at least until he's dead.

It's so strange to play such a naive alien creature. Looking at the world through a whole new perspective is fun.

* When I say 'in love' I don't really mean it the same as with a human. Lana, fortunately for the rest of the world, was 'raised' by caring folks who taught her to care for everyone. She has a very hard time understanding why people would hurt other people, and why everyone doesn't get just along. She's been fortunate enough to have avoided most violent situations, and has only killed one sentient being, by accident. (She thought by looking at her that the dark elf's head wouldn't be so soft.. Squish!)

Great thread. Very mature and insightful. We need to see more of this in the world.

- Kemrain the Pleased.


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## Gnome (Dec 9, 2005)

My current PC in a mini-series I'm playing in is gay, but it hasn't ever come-up in play.  It's possible the mini-series will end without it ever being revealed, since there are only two more sessions!


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## lukelightning (Dec 9, 2005)

That's the "frightening" truth behind homosexuality: outside of sitcoms and stereotypical humor, it really isn't something that comes up.  Now that I think about it, I don't think most of my supposedly straight characters have ever done anything to out themselves as straight (i.e. no romantic encounters, no RP'ed out flirting), so in essence they are asexual.



			
				Gnome said:
			
		

> My current PC in a mini-series I'm playing in is gay, but it hasn't ever come-up in play.  It's possible the mini-series will end without it ever being revealed, since there are only two more sessions!


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## diaglo (Dec 9, 2005)

Gnome said:
			
		

> My current PC in a mini-series I'm playing in is gay, but it hasn't ever come-up in play.  It's possible the mini-series will end without it ever being revealed, since there are only two more sessions!



but besides the ale what then do you spend your phat lewt on???

ale and 'hos are the real meat and potatoes of adventuring.


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## Eeralai (Dec 9, 2005)

STARP_JVP said:
			
		

> but I got over that when I realised that it was only pretending.




That's really the essence of everything here.  We are all playing make believe.  If a group wants to make believe blood and gore than that's what their group does.  If a group wants to make believe romance and intrigue than gender identification is going to play a much more important role and there is nothing wrong about that.  I play in a game that is a lot about blood and gore and yet I find it important to me to write stories about my character and what she does outside of her adventuring time.  Stories like that are encouraged because it's much harder to role play that then the blood and gore for our group.  So the sexuality of my character comes out in her stories.  That's the way I like to play it.  But whatever works for other groups is just fine.


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## der_kluge (Dec 9, 2005)

The topic of sex and sexuality doesn't often come up in most games I play in.

That said, I have had a few non-heterosexual characters that I've played. It makes more sense to me for futuristic and modern characters than for fantasy ones, but that's a personal thing, I guess.

I played a lesbian rigger in Shadowrun. I think all female riggers should be lesbian. It just makes sense to me.   This wasn't a lipstick lesbian, but a real butch bulldyke lesbian. I didn't play her terribly long. Like most games from that time period, we started new campaigns all the time.

In Planescape, I had a bi-sexual female Sensate cleric/wizard. It just makes sense to me that Sensates would all be bi-sexual. It's practically part of their whole ethos.

Also in Shadowrun, I had a male decker who was a pedophile. His favorite phrase was "Hey little girl, wanna make a movie?"  But he never acted on any of it. Mostly he was just kind of psychotic.


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## Arnwyn (Dec 9, 2005)

STARP_JVP said:
			
		

> has anybody here had a gay or bisexual PC in their game, or a gay or bi NPC?



No, this has never come up in our game - and, due to the personalities involved in our group, will likely never come up, either. 

In any case, sexuality never comes up in our game, and romance is virtually a non-issue as well.


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## fusangite (Dec 9, 2005)

Kemrain said:
			
		

> In the game I'm currently playing in sex, sexuality, gender, and romance have played great key rolls in the storylines and character development.



While sexuality and romance are not part of the games I am in, gender certainly is. Gender is a very important identity category in any society and can reveal a great deal about its nature and, in most historical societies, has tended to subsume the category we think of a sexual orientation. Societies that have understood sexual orientation as an identity category rather than a practice have been rare in the extreme (basically this one and that's about it, as far as I can tell). 

Thus, in my games, there are NPCs and PCs who sleep with people of the same sex. Most of them are officially celibate or in or on the path to marriage. A small minority identify as the opposite gender but those are rare individuals who feel the need to have society formally (rather than informally) recognize who their real romantic partner is.







> On top of that we've had a great variety of genders/sexualities/romances too.



I cannot recall ever being in a gaming group in which romances have grown out of play. 

I guess what I can't really visualize the social dynamic that would have to exist at a table for romantic or sexual interactions to be part of play.


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## fusangite (Dec 9, 2005)

STARP_JVP said:
			
		

> I find all this talk about 'maturity' interesting, as regards to sexuality in the game.



I think both "sides" of the debate over whether sexuality and romance should be a component of play think of themselves as more mature. One side associates immaturity with prudishness; the other associates it with collaborative sexual fantasizing with one's friends. I happen to be in the latter group but understand where the former group is comin from.







> One of the DMs I've played with has NPCs flirt openly with PCs, and the DM himself flirts 'in character' with players of both genders with no embarrasment or shame. It was a little disorienting at first, being male and pretending to flirt,



There is no clear or clean boundary between flirting and pretending to flirt, just as there is no clear/clean boundary between sexually fantasizing with the assistance of one's friends and being sexually stimulated with their assistance.







> Romance is _such_ an important part of storytelling that I find it off how many people have eschewed it.



I often enjoy stories in which it plays no role. And I dislike the practice in the standard 2-hour American movie of devoting 15-20 minutes of it to an obligatory romance between the main character and a requisite hot girl. I prefer stories in which romance is not a factor _or_ those in which it is the clear subject and occupies the foreground throughout. The thing is: RPGs are not conducive to telling the latter kind of story due to how they are socially configured.







> but romance is important.



Most Hollywood movies with the 20-minute romantic sideline would be better without it.







> It is such a powerful motivator for any character, for a start.



Yes. But there are all kinds of character motivations and actions that D&D is not configured to address. For instance, RPGs are socially configured to tell stories in which the objective is something all the characters can share in. Questing for loot, the holy grail, etc., fighting to depose a tyrant or achieve political power, protecting a village -- these are objectives everyone can equally share in and fulfill. The same is not true when it comes to romance, unless the society is polyandrous.







> I specialise in playing the 'suave debonaire' 007-type character, for who romantic dalliances are a major goal.



What do the other players do while you're achieving it?







> but all these things come together to make memorable gameplay for me and my group.



Here's the thing: if one of they guys in my group wakes up on a Saturday morning and spends the next 20 minutes "remembering" my game, this is a sign something has gone very wrong with my game.







> I'm not saying that those who don't share my view are weird, and I certainly don't encourage anybody to do anything that might make them uncomfortable, but I am fascinated by the number of people for whom love and sex are foreign concepts in their game.



They're not foreign concepts for us. They're just things that cannot be played out in a normal gaming dynamic.


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## Kuld (Dec 9, 2005)

I am using an NPC in one of my campaigns that is magically disguising himself as a woman and he actually slept with one of the (male) PCs. The PC is aware the she was “the bad guy” but is still unaware that he is indeed a “guy”. There is a lot more to it but that’s the gist.


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## barsoomcore (Dec 9, 2005)

A female NPC in Barsoom fell in love with a female PC. The NPC was a former noblewoman who'd been turned into a vampire (which on Barsoom is a savagely painful and horrifying experience) and spent a few centuries being completely psychotic.

I'm with fu (as I usually am) in that the "roles" of sexuality we currently make such a big deal over simply don't exist in other cultures. This woman had been married in her mortal life, and had a child and held titles as a married woman of her society, and yet her sexual preference was for women and she had female lovers -- but to the society she lived in, this was no problem whatsoever because she was fulfilling her primary role as wife and mother. People flat-out didn't care.

I wondered in fact if such behaviour wouldn't be considered LESS problematic to her society than if she took male lovers -- at least with her prediliction, she has no chance of disrupting the succession with bastard children. The husband never has to worry that her children aren't his.


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## Ralts Bloodthorne (Dec 10, 2005)

I've noticed a lot of women who play lesbians or gay males in order to keep the other male *players* from hitting on thier character.

Having said that, I've had quite a few gay and bisexual characters and PC's over the years.

The most notable one was a Paladin & Wizard in the party. (Interestingly enough, both played by straight guys and not in a stereotypical way.) They kept it hidden and quiet, with niether of them actually acting out on it.

When the Paladin was killed, the Wizard went mad and began researching way to bring the Paladin back. Eventually the Wizard became an NPC (Player's request) and eventually they began to hear about this powerful undead wizard doing horrible necromatic experiments.

So the party ended up facing an old friend and comrade who had gone mad from grief, and refused to recognise that bringing the Paladin back as a Death Knight was wrong.

When the dust settled, and the Wizard was dead, less than half of the original group was left.

It's still talked about now and then. It lead to a VERY interesting campaign spin-off.


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## Kanegrundar (Dec 10, 2005)

I once played a halfling rogue that got the nickname of Haldin Pinchinbottoms.  Since the party was all males, the little guy with the penchant for playing grab ass with the party eventually morphed into a gay character.  There were plenty of jokes all around, but overall it ended up being an interesting character.


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## Queen_Dopplepopolis (Dec 11, 2005)

Well... I've officially read this entire thread and have found it very, very interesting.

Sex and romance have had a place in the D&D game that my old group played for a looong time, however; the PCs that were doing the sex romance were not terribly mature and the game sort of turned into a soap opera...

Sexuality has never come up.  It is assumed that all of the characters were straight because all of the players are straight.  Though, I am an open-minded type of girl with several close gay friends and am very comfortable with their sexuality and my own.  I cannot say the same for other members of the group I currently play it... most of the guys are pretty homophobic midwestern types and so, it would be very difficult to play a gay or bi-sexual character at my table.

Which creates and interesting situation... my current character is very, very young and - having lived a very sheltered life where she was abused by men and found small comfort in the friendship of the other girls that experienced the same torture and slavery - has no concept of romance or sexuality.  At somewhere around the age of 14, she has become a member of an adventuring team and - for the first time in her life - is able to make her own decisions.  So now, she's developing her decision making skills at 14.

I have given much thought to young, sheltered Wu's sexuality and have yet to make any decisions... and, even if I felt that she was a bi-sexual, it would probably not be an appropriate thing to bring to the table.  It would either make people uncomfortable or be an endless source of "OMGLOL Lesbians are so hot!" mockery.

*shrug*

Good thread.


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## WayneLigon (Dec 11, 2005)

fusangite said:
			
		

> But there are all kinds of character motivations and actions that D&D is not configured to address.




I would say there is no RPG - where anyone bothers with the 'R' part - that cannot address any form of character motivation or character-driven action. D&D can be run as wild adventure, quiet politicing, investigative (Law and Order: Waterdeep, coming this Fall), or romantic with no adjustments in anything. I can't really think of any form of roleplaying D&D - or any other RPG - can't accomodate.

Your group may not be interested in it, or do it, but that certainly doesn't mean it hasn't been done extensively in others.


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## fusangite (Dec 11, 2005)

WayneLigon said:
			
		

> I would say there is no RPG - where anyone bothers with the 'R' part - that cannot address any form of character motivation or character-driven action.



I did not say "incapable of addressing"; I said, "not configured to address." I could melt the snow on my driveway with table salt rather than rock salt but it would be much less effective because table salt _has not been configured_ to clear my driveway.







> D&D can be run as wild adventure, quiet politicing, investigative (Law and Order: Waterdeep, coming this Fall), or romantic with no adjustments in anything.



It's true; I could clear my driveway with table salt without adjusting it. But that doesn't mean it's a good use of table salt. 

Centring a D&D game around the kinds of scenes that will exclude most of the players and not utilize most of the mechanics is not a good use of D&D. If you want to build a game around playing out romantic interactions, you want a 1-2 member party instead of a 5-7 member party; you want a robust set of rules for resolving social dynamics rather the ones that are on the books right now; you want balance in this area amongst classes so that good looks and physical prowess can be brought to bear on social situations, etc. In other words, you want to be playing a different game if you intend to place romance at the centre. You'll also want to keep out people who think they're going to play D&D because I doubt they'll be too thrilled with the game their attending masquerading as D&D.







> I can't really think of any form of roleplaying D&D - or any other RPG - can't accomodate.



No. But it's pretty clear that different games are adapted and designed for particular niches in the role playing market.







> Your group may not be interested in it, or do it, but that certainly doesn't mean it hasn't been done extensively in others.



I'm not suggesting that you guys are imagining the games you play in which people's characters engage in romantic interactions. I'm just suggesting that D&D is not configured to address romantic interactions than it is a set of players who are all professional sculptors and want to make the best-looking statue of a centaur.


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## fusangite (Dec 11, 2005)

Queen_Dopplepopolis said:
			
		

> I have given much thought to young, sheltered Wu's sexuality and have yet to make any decisions... and, even if I felt that she was a bi-sexual, it would probably not be an appropriate thing to bring to the table.  It would either make people uncomfortable or be an endless source of "OMGLOL Lesbians are so hot!" mockery.



Your instincts are right. The sexuality of 14 year old female characters is best left out of the game.


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## Kahuna Burger (Dec 11, 2005)

fusangite said:
			
		

> Your instincts are right. The sexuality of 14 year old female characters is best left out of the game.



Thats not her instinct, and trying to boil it down to "sexuality does not belong in the game" just doesn't work. This is a character whose veiw of relationships has been traumatised at a young age. Queen D is talking about the process of her making her own decisions of what she wants to do with her sexuality (and if I may say, for the resident "historical records of gay self definition can't be found so there was no such thing before the last century" booster, prudishness about a 14 year old's sexuality in a 'medieval' setting is distinctly hypocritical.  :\ ) and whether that process might involve women. 

The thing is, if she wanted to role play a "safe" crush on an older completely unatainable adventurer (say the benevolent elven cleric) or developed age appropriate flirtations with a similarly aged *boy* her group would probably consider that good roleplaying in working out the character's past. But switch the genders and its pervy 14 y/o "sexuality".   

Her instincts are probably right _about her group_ but in a non homophobic one there's nothing wrong with considering women in such a character's self exploration.


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## fusangite (Dec 11, 2005)

Kahuna Burger said:
			
		

> Her instincts are probably right _about her group_ but in a non homophobic one there's nothing wrong with considering women in such a character's self exploration.



Given that this is what I'm talking about, I don't think there's any disagreement here.


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## Torm (Dec 11, 2005)

Queen_Dopplepopolis said:
			
		

> Which creates and interesting situation... my current character is very, very young and - having lived a very sheltered life where she was abused by men and found small comfort in the friendship of the other girls that experienced the same torture and slavery - has _no concept of romance or sexuality_.



Based on my experience with real girls in similar situations, I would be very much surprised if she had NO concept of sexuality. More likely is that she has an _over_developed one, but focused on using sexuality as a tool - to get things she wants from men, to avoid other physical abuse, and so on.

No concept of romance, OTOH, I can entirely believe. :\

Also in my experience, it is entirely common for these girls to be inclined to develop a relationship with another girl, rather than with a man - girls are a clean slate, men are associated with too many mistaken notions of how to deal with them in a mature and loving relationship.


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