Gay PCs or NPCs

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.

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.

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.

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. :lol:

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.

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.

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.

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).

was · Nov 26, 2005

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

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?"

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.