D&D 5E D&D Promises to Make the Game More Queer

[tombowings]

Yes, 'acknowledging people who exist and treating them as people' is surely a sick, sad agenda.

No. It's a great agenda - my opinion. But propaganda is not the right way to advance one's ideology - also my opinion.

 

[tombowings]

I'm really sorry you live in a place like that.

I'm America. I live here by choice. I feel like I'm making a real difference in the world (maybe I actually am) by doing workshops and summer camps with teenagers in which we discuss issue of bride napping, female circumcision, honor killings, tolerance, etc. My plan was to leave after two years, but I could leave, feeling like my work here wasn't done. I would rather be here than anywhere else in the world.

 

[schnee]

No. It's a great agenda - my opinion. But propaganda is not the right way to advance one's ideology - also my opinion.

Propaganda:
information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote a political cause or point of view

How is portraying a gay or queer person as just another character 'biased or misleading'?

What kind of thing are they misleading you into that way?

 

[tombowings]

If you didn't follow Gradine's supplied link, here is MLK Jr.'s thoughts-

"First, I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Council-er or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can't agree with your methods of direct action;" who paternalistically feels he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by the myth of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a "more convenient season."

Shallow understanding from people of goodwill is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection."

There is something bewildering with a person who takes the position that, hey, it's fine to have a gay NPC in published materials, but it's not fine once he learns that the NPC is in there because the designer is gay and wanted something that represented him.

A concern that would likely not be evident if that designer had been a nerdy outcast, and specifically put in an NPC that was a nerdy outcast.

Many of us started playing D&D because we were marginalized in our own ways, and found community. We should not deny to others what we have found. That ... isn't ideological, it's hypocritical.

Moreover, asking designers (storytellers!) not to imbue their stories with parts of their own lives is a fruitless and demeaning demand.

The designer being gay is irrelevant. If he was straight, I wouldn't care. If he was merely including something from his only life, I wouldn't care. In fact, I would commend him, but using a game to openly push an agenda instead of dealing with it in a logical, factual way is ludicrous.

 

[Jester David]

If one of the designers tells a reporter that he included the gay dude in order to make a point. The only reason I have any problem with these NPCs inclusion is because Crawford went up and told every he included them in order to push an ideological agenda.

And in this case, his "ideological agenda" is "People like me exist. People like my family exist."

Oh my god. What a radical.
What's next, people who are brown? People who have bad eyesight? Girls?!?

First, what you do at your home game, if none of my business. If you brought an LGBT character to table at my home game, I would love to see the faces of the other players at my table who it would made completely uncomfortable.

I've had gay characters in my homegame for the last decade. This isn't a revolutionary thing.
It certainly says a lot about your table if even the idea of homosexuality makes them uncomfortable... Imagine if one of the players was actually gay and not just pretending.

If you brought it to the game I run at a local private school, I'd make you OK it with the other players and make everyone swear not to tell any of the teachers or the school director, because they would probably fire me for allowing you to play it (although they would probably fire me anyway if they knew I was playing board games with students on the premises).

If that's their reaction to a student pretending to be gay in a game of imagination, I shudder to think about how they'd react to an actual gay student.

Or rather, openly gay student. Since 5% of the population is gay, there's probably more than one already, living a lie every single day or being deeply confused.
Y'know, the kind of student that might really need a game of D&D where they can "pretend" to be a gay individual to sort out those feelings in a safe environment with a degree of separation from reality.

 

[tombowings]

Propaganda:
information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote a political cause or point of view

How is portraying a gay or queer person as just another character 'biased or misleading'?

What kind of thing are they misleading you into that way?

It is neither biased not misleading. It is the presentation of information to promote a point of view, something I'm not sure it best done in a game, but in a clear, focused, healthy debate.

 

[Morrus]

I'm America. I live here by choice. I feel like I'm making a real difference in the world (maybe I actually am) by doing workshops and summer camps with teenagers in which we discuss issue of bride napping, female circumcision, honor killings, tolerance, etc. My plan was to leave after two years, but I could leave, feeling like my work here wasn't done. I would rather be here than anywhere else in the world.

I'm not America. I also don't hold seminars on bride napping. But I can say with 100% certidude that I am not slightly bothered by game designers including gay characters in their adventures. I'm sorry that you think that's an agenda, but get used to it. This is the world. We include everybody, and if we're don't, we try to.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[tombowings]

And in this case, his "ideological agenda" is "People like me exist. People like my family exist."

Oh my god. What a radical.
What's next, people who are brown? People who have bad eyesight? Girls?!?

Exactly. Correct message, wrong medium. It's as simple as that.

I've had gay characters in my homegame for the last decade. This isn't a revolutionary thing.
It certainly says a lot about your table if even the idea of homosexuality makes them uncomfortable... Imagine if one of the players was actually gay and not just pretending.

If that's their reaction to a student pretending to be gay in a game of imagination, I shudder to think about how they'd react to an actual gay student.

Or rather, openly gay student. Since 5% of the population is gay, there's probably more than one already, living a lie every single day or being deeply confused.
Y'know, the kind of student that might really need a game of D&D where they can "pretend" to be a gay individual to sort out those feelings in a safe environment with a degree of separation from reality.

Like I said to the other guy, I live in a country in which being gay can get the local priest to ask his choir boys to come over and drown you in a river - and it's not a uncommon occurrence. It's a sensitive topic. Honestly, I would be doing it just as much for your safety as I would be for their sense of comfort, because if word got out that there was a chance you could be gay, your life would be in serious danger.

 

[Caliban]

Don't take this the wrong way, but Dude. I live in a country in which being gay can get the local priest to ask his choir boys to come over and drown you in a river - and it's not a uncommon occurrence. It is sensitive topic. Honestly, I would be doing it just as much for your safety as I would be for theirs, because it word got out that there was a chance you could be gay, your life would be in serious danger.

So, because you live in a socially backward country, you feel justified in judging the actions and motivations of people who live and work elsewhere?

(Not claiming America is necessarily any better. Being gay in America can be dangerous if you live in the wrong area.)

But being gay isn't a sin. It isn't a mental condition. It isn't even a choice (unless you are in fact bisexual and choose to focus on one sex over another for some reason.)

It's biology - a tiny minority of people are born that way, due to some combination of genetic and environmental factors that isn't fully understood.

So homosexuals will exist in every society on earth, and if you want a fantasy society to mirror real world society outside of the fantastic elements, then they will exist in that society as well. Usually as a minority, (unless the one of the fantastic elements is a much higher ratio of LGBT individuals).

It doesn't take a "gay agenda" or "gay propaganda" to include them in an adventure. It just takes acknowledging that they exist in the game setting, just like they exist in the real world. Jeremy Crawford included a homosexual household in the adventure that mirrored a real world homosexual household - his own. He didn't make them the focus of the adventure, he didn't have them spouting "gay rights" propaganda, and as far as I know, there were no "gay themed" quests given out as a result of their inclusion.

So despite your claims to the contrary, it is hard to believe you are objecting to gay propaganda, because there is none to be found.

You instead come off as objecting to the mere existence of a gay couple in the adventure.