PCs dealing with sexuality

[SnowleopardVK]

Most of the time when I see people play a PC who is gay, or bisexual, or anything other than straight really, it's treated like a joke (which tends to upset me a little).

Second most often, the PC is treated as totally open and comfortable about it.

I don't think I've ever seen anyone play through a PC who is conflicted, still figuring it out, or who doesn't want to admit their sexuality.

I find that strange because such things can make for some rather emotional moments, the kind of stuff that would work great for roleplay. I know because I've been through it myself in real life, realizing I like other girls and whatnot.

Well anyways, my current character is the first one I've personally seen who is coming to terms with her new feelings, her uncertainty about letting the world, and even most of her teammates know, and other issues. That certainly doesn't mean it probably hasn't happened plenty of times before though.

So has anyone else here played a PC through those times? How did it go?

 

[Celtavian]

re

This is a game where people kill and die regularly and people shrug it off like it is nothing when in real life if such things happened, they would probably be shattered or frightened into near catatonia. I have only had one gamer in the entire time I've been gaming react with a deep, intense emotional response. It was to a situation where he was captured and his woman was killed. He nearly flew across the table and attacked me as DM. It was great.

But that's one time in 30 years of gaming.

I would say most people do not want to spend their time trying to deeply explore their character's emotional nature. Most players react logically rather than emotionally to emotional situations. They suffer a tragedy and they turn to the bottle for a day and then it's over. Or they say their character cries, but they're not going to play long-term sorrow or confusion of the kind you seem to want to see.

Mainly because that isn't fun and most people still play for fun. Who wants to sit around the table playing Byron the Wizard in love with Kothar the Barbarian with Byron knowing his love will never be returned because Kothar comes from an extremely masculine culture and might kill Byron if he found out Byron had such feelings for him. Then Byron charms or uses illusions to seduce Kothar, who eventually finds out, then your entire party is destroyed. And quite possibly if the player of Kothar is strongly heterosexual himself, he is probably angry and never coming back to the table to game again.

You're just asking for trouble exploring deeply emotional material of any kind at most tables. You would have to have a special group of players more interested in acting and psychology than playing an RPG.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Most of the time when I see people play a PC who is gay, or bisexual, or anything other than straight really, it's treated like a joke (which tends to upset me a little).

Second most often, the PC is treated as totally open and comfortable about it.

I don't think I've ever seen anyone play through a PC who is conflicted, still figuring it out, or who doesn't want to admit their sexuality.

I haven't played a gay/bisexual PC as a joke, but I have seen it.

I have played the second kind.

I have NOT seen a conflicted PC of this kind...and I really don't see the fun in doing so.

 

[S'mon]

I don't think I've ever seen anyone play through a PC who is conflicted, still figuring it out, or who doesn't want to admit their sexuality.

Thing is, when I've played a PC like that, the DM didn't notice!

In a game centred on killing orcs and trying not to die, the sexuality of a PC who isn't very 'open' about it, as you say, often simply will not be apparent. It can be hard for the GM to distinguish between a realistically played character, and one where the player simply hasn't thought about the sexuality of the PC at all.

In my case my PC Zana Than was a female Ironborn Fighter in the grim Midnight setting, very tough and determined to follow in the footsteps of her Sarcosan noble father Lord Than, a flamboyant ladies' man who had impregnated and abandoned Zana's low-born mother. But Zana was about the exact opposite of flamboyant, she was extremely reserved and unexpressive, except occasionally when she got angry. She was in love with another female PC, Jess, but she was not sure whether that was 'Platonic' or not. She also clumsily tried to court a handsome young male NPC by giving him gifts of treasure taken on raids against the Shadow forces, but the (female) GM did not pick up on that, and I did not explain it OOC.

So, my feeling is that if you want realistic depictions of non-flamboyant sexuality in an RPG, the GM will have to make some effort to focus the game on interpersonal relations, to pick up on relatively subtle cues - difficult with 6 players at the table - and/or make efforts to address the question OOC.

 

[S'mon]

Mainly because that isn't fun and most people still play for fun. Who wants to sit around the table playing Byron the Wizard in love with Kothar the Barbarian with Byron knowing his love will never be returned because Kothar comes from an extremely masculine culture and might kill Byron if he found out Byron had such feelings for him. Then Byron charms or uses illusions to seduce Kothar, who eventually finds out, then your entire party is destroyed. And quite possibly if the player of Kothar is strongly heterosexual himself, he is probably angry and never coming back to the table to game again.

I think you can have sexuality in an RPG without needing to have PCs using mind-magic to rape other PCs! That is true whether the victim is male or female and the rape is heterosexual or homosexual. Very few players are going to regard it as acceptable to have their PC victimised like that, especially not by another PC.

 

[Mark Hope]

I played this lesbian ninja stripper in a Vampire game once. Does that count?





OK, not really. I did have a player with a gay character in a long-running Dark Ages game. The player was gay as well and wanted his character (a young Templar squire who was Embraced during his knighting) to explore his sexuality in the context of late 12th Century Europe. So he was dealing with certain degrees of prejudice and developed this really interesting platonic relationship with an NPC knight (the one he had initially been squired to).

His need to hide his vampiric condition doubled as a metaphor for his need to conceal his sexuality, as well as for the eventual acceptance shown him by the object of his affections. (Plus it allowed for a nod to the historical allegations of homosexuality made about Templars, which was neat for absurd history buffs like ourselves).

We added sexual tension and the whole unrequited love angle by determining that the NPC knight was heterosexual and eventually fell in love and found a wife, while still acknowledging and respecting the love the PC had for him. When the NPC left the party to settle down to married life, the player used that as a way for his character to say his last farewells to the final vestiges of mortal life and mortal emotion. The PC became a much more distant individual, at last fully accepting his undead status, even as he said farewell to the man he loved.

In the end, unrequited mortal love mirrored the loss of mortality itself, and accepting his cursed vampiric state reflected the hardships of his own sexuality in that place and time. Worked well.

 

[ACreepierFolklaw]

It seems an interesting thing to want to explore at the table, but perhaps it needs a very select group. In the world I play in, homosexuality is just as acceptable as any other for the most part and nobody cares; right now I’m running a 1 on 1 where the PC is a heterosexual female and her NPC companion is a homosexual male. Ironically I did this in order to avoid the issue of sexuality/romance between the characters.

In many ways perhaps exploring the difficulties in coming to terms with oneself can be a tender issue on or off the table; especially if the players have irl issues…

Personally, in game and out of game my reaction to homosexuality is really the same: I just don’t care. Its not an issue I have to deal with irl, and when (a statistically surprising number of occurences) a friend comes out to me it doesn’t bother me in the slightest, its just not that interesting IMHO

 

[NewJeffCT]

Most of the time when I see people play a PC who is gay, or bisexual, or anything other than straight really, it's treated like a joke (which tends to upset me a little).

Second most often, the PC is treated as totally open and comfortable about it.

I don't think I've ever seen anyone play through a PC who is conflicted, still figuring it out, or who doesn't want to admit their sexuality.

I find that strange because such things can make for some rather emotional moments, the kind of stuff that would work great for roleplay. I know because I've been through it myself in real life, realizing I like other girls and whatnot.

Well anyways, my current character is the first one I've personally seen who is coming to terms with her new feelings, her uncertainty about letting the world, and even most of her teammates know, and other issues. That certainly doesn't mean it probably hasn't happened plenty of times before though.

So has anyone else here played a PC through those times? How did it go?

In terms of sexual issues - gay, straight, bi, etc - those things I've almost always played as something that happen off camera... "After you save her from the ogres, the comely young lass shows her gratitude towards the heroic fighter..." If it goes to anything beyond that, I'll work with the individual player privately via email. After that, you might hear something like, "And, you notice the comely lass that you guys rescued from the ogre seems to be spending a lot of time with Tom the Fighter..."

I've been gaming for 30+ years now, and I've found most players seem to prefer that sort of thing stay in the background. And, most gamers don't want to watch somebody else play out sex/sexual scenes at the table.

 

[Aeolius]

A night hag in one of my games shape-changed into male form and mated with one of her covey sisters, simply because they wanted to see what would happen... but I don't think that's what we're talking about, here.

For the curious, a "male hag" known as the krampus was born from the union. A natural-born hag-slayer, he was imprisoned on a floating island, in actuality the shell of a dead zaratan, from which he later escaped.

 

[SnowleopardVK]

Yeah, in response to a lot of the above; I would agree that it would take both a very particular kind of group, and a certain kind of game to pull off. A group that puts roleplay first is my kind of group though. Bad guys and monsters are more of a method to cause tension and further roleplay than anything else.

The current one I'm in was meant to be focused pretty heavily on characters, and has secrets each character is trying to keep. For example of the ones I know; there's my (currently bi-curious) character of course, the fighter is pretending to be his dead master both to carry on the master's name and to erase traces of his own, the dhampir's reluctant to admit she isn't human, etc. (The setting we're in does not seem to be big on tolerance. Misfits and outcasts tend to get drawn together and group up, hence our party of men and women with weird circumstances.)

And of course sex scenes don't get played out at the table! Sheesh, that's not the only part of a relationship you know.