"Alternative lifestyles" in your campaign world

[Gizzard]

I'm thinking of introducing the topic by way of an NPC asking the party to find out what happened to his companion.

I did exactly this with Brother Egil and Lucius in the Freeport series of modules.

The reason why the issue is important is because it conveys something about the motivations of the characters. Considering that you can't trust many people in Freeport, I felt it was important that Egil have a strong story about why he was willing to go to rather extreme lengths to find Lucius.

Now: our group is 6 players in their 30's and 40's. And we live in the Bay Area, so homophobia isn't a sustainable option.

Its still a little tricky to pull off; I imagined that homosexuality is tolerated but not encouraged in Freeport. So Egil doesnt have to hide the fact, but he's also not the kind of guy who trys to hook up a bunch of burly adventurers from the mainland by saying "I'm gay and my gay lover has been kidnapped". So, I just sort of edged around the subject, like I imagined that Egil would, calling Lucius "a good friend" and letting the party fill in the pieces.

As far as how it went, it went OK. The party put the pieces together pretty quick ("Oh, you were in Lucius' room 'comforting' him after his ordeal again, eh?"). So there was a little RP gained out of the situation and then people pretty much settled down to business. ("OK, whatever. How much will you pay us to find him?")

 

[Ciaran]

Celebrim,

I apologize for my knee-jerk crankiness on the subject. I gather that I read certain things into your post that may not actually have been there. I really don't mean to antagonize you; I have a great deal of respect for your personal philosophy as expressed in certain debates with SHARK. Let's just say that making preparations for my Valentine's Day dinner have left me a bit on edge today...

You haven't? That sounds kinda odd to me. Let's reverse that. Do you think you've ever known people who decided NOT to get romantically or sexually involved with a specific gender because of thier philosophy on life, moral or spiritual beliefs, or other aspect of thier character? Hmmm?

This was an error on my part; I should have said that I've never known anyone to get involved with someone of the same gender for those reasons. Yes, I've known people who have chosen their romantic and/or sexual involvements based on the mores of their religion; and in every case, in accordance with some rather excessively conservative dogma, they chose to avoid gay relationships and go with heterosexual ones. I'm not sure whether I'd call one's adherence to a religion a "personal" philosophy, but that's pointless nitpicking. In any case, if you know of a religion that encourages its worshippers to participate in homosexual relationships and condemns one to eternal damnation for participating in heterosexual dalliances, then I'll cede you the point.

I guess the point is that people can choose who they date/marry/sleep with, but they can't choose who they want to do all that stuff with. Barring high-level Enchantment spells, of course. Or something like that. I suspect that I'm meandering here, so I'll stop.

What the h3ll are you talking about? Where in the blue blazes did that come from? Are we still having the same conversation?

This came from the notion that if one's romantic inclinations derive from personal philosophy rather than from animal instinct, and if one has a strongly traditionalistic personal philosophy, and if one lives in a society in which homosexuality is not traditional, then one wouldn't be attracted to people of the same gender. Or something. It's been a long day, I'm not thinking too clearly here.

In any event, the philosophy I developed for the character was one of extreme intellectual individualism - a sort of radically honest libertarianism. As such, childhood experiences or not, it would have been a complete betrayal of his character to assert that one 'ought not to do something if one wanted to' and I naturally upon reflection assumed that would most certainly include anything considered immoral. I tried to play the character as caught in a tension between believing that everyone had the right to do what they please, and that he had a right to do what he pleased regardless of what other people felt. And I think I succeeded.

This makes things much clearer. I interpreted your prior post to indicate that your character was not actually attracted to persons of his own gender, and that any such liaisons he might embark upon were solely for the purpose of transgressing against the social order. This is a very different circumstance, and is perfectly reasonable.

In any case, I suspect we'd best just drop this argument for the sake of our poor, sensitive moderators.

- Eric

 

[Ciaran]

Oops, didn't see Dinkledog's response until after I posted.

Dinkedog, feel free to delete anything of mine that you find offensive or provocative.

- Eric

 

[Darrin Drader]

In my personal games, I usually leave what happens in the bedrooms of NPC's (or PC's for that matter) out of the game entirely.

That said, Oathbound, which I've done quite a bit of design work on, included at least 5 gay characters in the core setting, and I introduced another 3 in an adventure I wrote in Plains of Penance.

Aside from the mere fact that they're written in as having same-sex lovers, I don't see how it affects game play a whole lot.

 

[Kahuna Burger]

A group I played with had a bit of romance and sex in the background - a couple of the characters had lovers or spouses and one fighter in particular met every female pc or npc with a 'compliment' eric's grandmother wouldn't aprove of.

So when I introduced an amazon, her sexuality was gonna be an issue. Being a hardcore traditionalist, she was of course a lesbian. (she didn't hate men, the background I had for her tribe was symbiotic with a more 'mainstream' village.) The fun RP part was that I decided that amoung the amazons, heterosexuality was thought of the way centrist republicans sometimes think of homosexuality. "What, do you think I'm one of... THOSE type of amazons? I mean, those that, ehem, prefer the company of men? Don't get me wrong, I still think they can be amazons, and it doesn't bother me if they keep it private and it doesn't effect the tribe, but... well, my family doesn't run that way."

pretty fun, esp since I was the only female player, but several of the guys played female characters...

In terms of the original question... as long as your campaign world isn't dominated by a particular god, it seems to me highly unlikely that sexual taboos (or those of any sort) would be imposed outside of one's religion. That is to say, if someone asks "how does my religion veiw this" I would give some suggestions based on allignment and description but make sure to add "you can extrapolate that according to your conception of your characters religion, but any taboos are going to apply to you personally as a cleric, not what everyone in the world has to do. If your religion was that way about personal conduct, it would have killed itself against all the other religions by now. You may find it distasteful, but you have no mandate to stamp it out."

This is just my opinions obviously, but a culture with several religions which are in fact ALL TRUE is going to have few hard and fast enforced taboos on consensual behavior. Most religious taboos would fall more into the catagory of jews keeping kosher than conservative whatevers trying to stamp out a practice they don't like.

Kahuna Burger

 

[Nifft]

IMC, families are large, and many children die before "settling down" and having kids of their own. Adventurers are strange folk to begin with -- not steady & stable at all, no sir, not the sort I'd want to send my daughter off with.

Adventuring women are uncommon and are frowned upon by certain segments of the population, but viewed as "trophy wives" by another, richer segment.

Homosexuality isn't viewed as such -- it's a matter of taste rather than lifestyle. Everyone is expected to have at least a few kids, because that's what people do. Life is dangerous, and you need someone to care for you when you get old.

What you do once you've done your military service and had your kids is really up to you. Homosexuality isn't rare or shocking -- it's winked at like any other extra-marital liason, of which there are plenty.

-- Nifft

 

[Celebrim]

What Nifft describes is by far the more common Indo-European cultural phenomenom, and is a good example of divorsing sexual practice from a modern dicotomy that some other posters seem trapped in. Although, Nifft only touches on some of the double standards and social stigmas that exist even in societies that function like that.

KB: It seems entirely unlikely given what we know about humans that most religion and cultures are not going to impose sexual taboos. Even if those taboos might seem alien to you, they are still taboos bearing the force of law in many cases and can still get you killed or ostracized for dishonoring some god, goddess, to whom that taboo is (or is supposedly) in honor of. Consider all the various Taboos of the Hindu religious caste system, despite of, or maybe because of its multiplicity of gods (Have you ever actually read the real Kama Sutra?). Or consider the Roman example. In ancient Rome being a homosexual was considered distasteful in the extreme and the profanity of the day very much resembled modern derogatory comments (read the poetry of Cutullus for instance), but homosexuality was defined not in terms of which sex you favored but whether or not you were the penetrated partner. A similar situation exists in several other cultures both ancient and modern. And I'm sure we could get into even more alien human social mores, but I would like to keep this PG and a history of human sexual behavior just can't.

Ciaran: Get some sleep. You are going to be alot more fun to debate with when you start making sense. (I'm headed to bed myself.)

My point in posting was to try to discourage adding any sexual content - heterosexual, homosexual, asexual, bisexual, trisexual, monosexual, or otherwise - simply for shock value or novelty - 'to spice things up'. I wasn't entirely sure what the thinking of the poster was, so I was trying to be subtle. I'm still trying to discuss this thread, but people keep bringing modern politics into this, trying to tell everyone what homosexuality is and what we should think about it good or bad, criticizing belief systems about homosexuality, and everything else instead of focusing on how and whether it should be introduced into a campaign. 'K, folks?

 

[willpax]

I have several homosexual NPCs, but sexual relationships don't figure very highly in my campaign--at least yet.

One twist I do put on one campaign religion: the temples to the goddess of sexuality and fertility in one regional polytheistic culture go the whole nine yards in terms of sexual openness--temple prostitutes, carnival orgies, bacchanalian harvest festivals, and so on. However, they think that any sex that isn't intended to increase fertility is an affront to the gifts of the goddess. So I have the most (heterosexually) open group be the one that disapproves, thus crossing our modern expectations slightly. (I like to do things like this--white cats are considered unlucky IMC).

As others have posted: use it if it works for your players and enriches the world and the play. If not, don't bother about it.

 

[Nightfall]

One of the aspects of gaming that gets overlooked and yet plays so intergrally into our own lifes (or lack thereof in my case) is sex and love. I mean we watch on TV all the time, read about in books, even if it's not quite what we have in mind when we are gaming.

Part of the fun can be letting out darker selves. (Which is why some people are a little considered about the "mature" stuff in BoVD) This also includes (and I'm not saying Homosexuality is wrong, or ANY sex is wrong.), sex and love. When we act out such things, it's difficult because we get a little more involved than some might feel uncomfortable revealing. In any case, to answer these questions:

Have I used a Gay/Bi character? Once but she didn't last too damn long.

Have I used a Gay/Bi NPC? No, but not for the lack of trying. I just have certain ideas and using that kind of relationship isn't quite in the cards. However I have used one in my play by posting. "Minds in Hedrad". But otherwise not really.

 

[Azure Trance]

For my world it depends alot on where and who you are talking about.

High elves have no problem with it... In fact, most high elves are bisexual. They re-incarnate every 300 years or so, and often come back in bodies of a different gender, but with the same memory, so gender doesn't mean much to them.

You know, that's a really cool idea. Imagine a character falling in love with a beautiful female high elf, and then she's suddenly reincarnated into a he. Do they simply die, and get reborn as children, or something a bit more advanced?

For Dwarves, I could see plausible (within fantasy limits ) reasons for both discouraging and encouraging same sex. Too little females, same sex male relationships accomplish nothing. Too little females, same sex male relationships are an alternative. Though, for a same sex Dwarven culture I imagine it with a heaby Sparta theme. Battle brothers and so on.