You're certainly not obligated to do anything. But what you're describing here is a great way to insulate yourself from other ideas, and exist in a perpetual echo chamber.
It's a rejection of the underlying principles of free speech.
D&D 5E 5e's new gender policy - is it attracting new players?
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You're certainly not obligated to do anything. But what you're describing here is a great way to insulate yourself from other ideas, and exist in a perpetual echo chamber.
It's a rejection of the underlying principles of free speech.
Because heterosexuality is the standard.
That is not cruel, or exclusionary, or homophobic. It's a simple statistical fact.
Instead of being able to see, blind people are unable to see.
Instead of using electricity, Amish people rely on old traditional technology.
Instead of dying in infancy, most people in the modern first world live a long time.
When something deviates from the norm, this is the sort of language you use. It's not a value judgment. Some abnormal stuff is great. Some sucks. A lot of it is somewhere in between, or value neutral.
But none of that changes the fact that there are still baselines and norms.
This desire to twist language in on itself for the sake of someone's feelings is really perverse.
It's even in the introduction of the Rules Cyclopedia. I was thinking about Birthright too. In the Forgotten Realms, Cormyr is also supposed to have feudalism.
Maybe I'm just a history nerd but there are many things that suggest D&D worlds have very little in common with medieval Europe. For example, if a book author accidently talks about the laws of Cormyr, then the feudalism of Cormyr isn't the one from medieval Europe. When a game designer creates a prestige class that is both a knight and a commoner, you know it's not a knight from medieval Europe. When homosexuals aren't burnt as heritics, you're not in medieval Europe. Etc.
The game worlds are a modern world with a modern world understanding of laws, justice, property, war, nations, political institutions, moral, etc. And that's fine. It makes the game world more accessible.
The context of the sentence was whether D&D worlds have anything in common with medieval Europe. Of course I wasn't talking about Dark Sun or Al Quadim. But even those worlds are modern. They just have a different coat of paint than the ones supposed to look like medieval Europe.
I'm sorry if it bursts your little bubble but the D&D worlds have very little substance. They're plaster and paint.
That's debatable. If you look at our furry companions, they're bisexual. Dogs, cats, or rabbits take turn to stick it in each other's arse.
Would heterosexuality still be the standard in a world not influenced by religious moral?
Shemeska
Adventurer
Unless you alter the underlying way in which biology and the brain structures responsible for sexual orientation work, yes, it would still be the standard if religious morals vanished. That's not a value judgement whatsoever, it's just the (incredibly complex) science underlying the issue.
thallantyr
Villager
I'm afraid that just isn't the case, as ancient Greece and Rome clearly show; sexuality is not purely defined by biology, it is a social and cultural construct. Their religions made no moral judgements about same-sex relations, and indeed their gods took both male and female lovers (the goddesses did not take female lovers, but that is because Greco-Roman culture was wholly focused on masculinity). The terms homo- and heterosexual, which were created in the nineteenth century, just don't work for these civilisations, in which it was your gender which defined who you could have sex with; the citizen man was dominant, women and boys were passive. In Greece in particular, the adolescent male was the epitome of beauty, and relationships between men and youths were at the heart of boys' transitions into adulthood. But even outside of these standardised relationships, our evidence for male same-sex relations is widespread throughout Antiquity. For starters, slaves of both genders were available to their masters for sex, and prostitutes of both genders served those too poor to own slaves. Graffiti in Pompeii shows clearly that men of lower social status freely engaged in sex with both women and other men/boys. Obviously not every man took part in same-sex relations, but it was far, far more prevalent than in contemporary Western societies.
I think perhaps people make the assumption that Greco-Roman culture was still predominantly "heterosexual" because, despite all of the above, the most visible relationships to us are married couples, who were always male-female pairs. This again is a product of the focus on masculinity; marriage was a way of controlling women's sexuality, and ensuring that citizen men were fathering legitimate offspring to sustain the state. Romance was absolutely not part of the ideal marriage. But male couples did exist, informally, often between otherwise married men. As long as they had done their duty and produced male heirs, the state didn't care what they got up to.
I'm not sure what your second sentence is meant to say, but unless the laws of Cormyr specified are absolutely irreconcilable with feudalism then there's little reason to think that it's not similar to one of the many different versions of medieval Europe. For instance, the prestige class that's both a knight and a commoner - there were knights who were serfs, and others who were certainly from common backgrounds despite acting in other ways as knights, so saying you can't be both is just wrong.
D&D is about you and your group and playing the way that you and your group want to play... as a DM, you are free to make whatever changes you want to your game. If you want to make those changes, go ahead. That is what D&D is about. But, telling me that I have to make these changes is not what D&D is about.
I have read some of those Paizo APs. I felt like there was way too much emphasis on sexual orientation, and I really hope that WotC does not follow suit. I had not seen that much attention paid to other relationships and it felt unnecessary to the story. If we ever play through that AP, then I'll probably gloss over most of that. Will I change the characters to not be gay? No, probably not. But, I don't think I would spend much time on that at all.
I hope WotC continues on the path of making it easy for DMs to change the story to suit you and your group. I feel that they have done that pretty well. Paizo, not so much.
Azurewraith
Explorer
Cant way i noticed the shift nor care at all. If it helps i play with 2women n 4guys
There aren't really any nation-wide laws in feudalism. A kingdom with nobles bound to each other by vassalage isn't feudalism if the nobles aren't the kings of their manor. You had royal decrees but they were fairly marginal compared to the canon law or local customary laws.
A serf with a heavy armor on a horse isn't a knight. A horseman became a knight after the dubbing ceremony. He also became a noble during the ceremony.
But you can do whatever you want in your game world! The imaginary version of medieval Europe you find in Hollywood movies or the History channel are also entertaining places to play in. MechaPilote asked how faithful to medieval Europe D&D worlds are. I just gave my history nerd's point of view.
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