D&D 5E 5e's new gender policy - is it attracting new players?

[Mouseferatu]

In internet speak, tolerance is "agree to disagree" followed by stopping demands that the other side agree with you.

I'm not seeing tolerance from a lot of people here.

When it truly becomes a personal thing--when people who disapprove of gays keep that solely within the realm of a personal belief--you might have a point.

But right now? Most don't. There are still pushes against gay marriage. It's still legal to fire someone for being gay in most states. There are still motions on the table to make it okay not to serve gays, or otherwise discriminate against them. There are places where gay partners don't get benefits.

And that? That's not "agreeing to disagree." That's asking people to accept overt inequality. That's asking people to shut up and "tolerate it" when people are being actively harmed.

As soon as all that is gone, I'll be happy to treat "disapproval of LGBT people" as a personal opinion and nothing more.

 

[Lanefan]

It's the last bit of the sentence that I do not hold to. We are playing a game. If a player sits down at my table and says "I want to play X", it is my job as a GM to accomodate that to some extent or another.

Only to a point. By the same token, it's also sometimes your job as DM to say "you can't do that".

If a player says "I want to be a female knight of Xerexington", I can't say "no, they're all male!". I CAN say "Well, they're all male. But maybe we can figure out a way to make that work." and go from there.

Or you could say "No, they're all male; but there's the Cavaliers of Terenia among whose numbers no male has ever resided - let's start there." At which point you (and maybe the player) continue inventing the Cavaliers of Terenia, which didn't exist anywhere until you dreamed them up while uttering that sentence.

That said, my biggest "you can't do that" moment was when an established player in a previous campaign came to me-as-DM wanting to play a full Vampire as a permanent character in a mid-level adventuring party where said Vampire would be, to say the least, vastly overpowered. Fortunately, I realized that ju-ust might be part of the motive - to passively end up with the baddest badass in the game and then quite likely end up trying to force the party to do its bidding - and that it wouldn't end well. Hell, it wouldn't even start well. So things very quickly got to Banhammer 1, Vampire 0.

And when it comes to things like sexuality, I should never get in the way.

Agreed.

Lan-"licking my chops at the delicious rivalry possibilities should a Knight of Xerexington and a Cavalier of Terenia ever find themselves in the same party"-efan

p.s. in reply to post 664: I'm 99% sure the braid-tugger was Nynaeve, not Egwene.

 

[aramis erak]

When it truly becomes a personal thing--when people who disapprove of gays keep that solely within the realm of a personal belief--you might have a point.

But right now? Most don't. There are still pushes against gay marriage. It's still legal to fire someone for being gay in most states. There are still motions on the table to make it okay not to serve gays, or otherwise discriminate against them. There are places where gay partners don't get benefits.

And that? That's not "agreeing to disagree." That's asking people to accept overt inequality. That's asking people to shut up and "tolerate it" when people are being actively harmed.

As soon as all that is gone, I'll be happy to treat "disapproval of LGBT people" as a personal opinion and nothing more.

You obviously have NOT kept up with the news... for the last 4 months. The decision recently made it clear that as far as the SCOTUS is concerned, Gay is equivalent to black or latino.

 

[Tia Nadiezja]

You obviously have NOT kept up with the news... for the last 4 months. The decision recently made it clear that as far as the SCOTUS is concerned, Gay is equivalent to black or latino.

Except for the majority of states, where your boss can fire you, your landlord evict you, your bank turn you down for a loan and close your account, if you actually exercise that right to marry.

And it is legal.

 

[IlluminatedSeraph]

Not many, and not often.

And players who fixate on such characters are explicitly unwelcome at my table. It's a clear and up-front expectation.

See.... I was going to pass this by until you used the word "fixate." As if somehow having an interest in such characters is a strange and unhealthy quality, somewhat like describing the violence in the game in loving detail (not that we haven't all been at the table with that person, too...). You're welcome to have whatever expectations you want, and that's your business, but there's something unseemly to me about someone who looks down on the whole business of love, romance and sex enough to exclude it entirely from their storytelling. Just... it seems like an odd thing to try to shove out of your stories.

*shrug* But it's your table, so whatever.

 

[aramis erak]

See.... I was going to pass this by until you used the word "fixate." As if somehow having an interest in such characters is a strange and unhealthy quality, somewhat like describing the violence in the game in loving detail (not that we haven't all been at the table with that person, too...). You're welcome to have whatever expectations you want, and that's your business, but there's something unseemly to me about someone who looks down on the whole business of love, romance and sex enough to exclude it entirely from their storytelling. Just... it seems like an odd thing to try to shove out of your stories.

*shrug* But it's your table, so whatever.

If they continue to play such character after being told it bothers one or more other persons involved, they're just being an ass.

And they're not welcome.

 

[Mouseferatu]

You obviously have NOT kept up with the news... for the last 4 months. The decision recently made it clear that as far as the SCOTUS is concerned, Gay is equivalent to black or latino.

No, they said that was the case with marriage. (And some places try to fight it anyway.) It's still not protected in other cases. People can still be fired because of it. Florida's working on a law right now to allow hospitals to turn gay people away.

Things are still far from equal.

 

[rollingForInit]

Regarding official D&D products, in Erin Evan's Forgotten Realms books there are multiple gay characters. Not characters that are just random people, but important characters. And it's not just mentioned in passing, it actually gets casual attention.

That was very nice.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

If they continue to play such character after being told it bothers one or more other persons involved, they're just being an ass.

And they're not welcome.

I have mostly stayed out of this because I know I'm not the best spoken on sensitive topics... but I have to +1 this with a caveat.

I run 2 groups regularly (right now a mage (owod) game and a 5e game) and on and off run games including my niece and nephew. At each of them I would expect different levels of 'allowable' sex related info to be passed along.

my Tuesday night group got a good laugh when I had the two half orcs (both male) that owned a local bar be married, and when there daughter showed up we had an interesting discussion of what magic could and could not do... How ever they bearly batted an eye lash when the NPC hafling baron had a noncursed gender swap belt he used for 'special parties'. When the female warlock NPC fell for a succubus's charms and that lead her to question things about her self... we left most of her thoughts less said. When a guy playing an elf wizard to the 9's on gay sterio types got mad when in game someone said he might be but then out of game admidted he did that on purpse... we rolled with it...

on saterday night 2 of my Tuesday players are there with 3 others who are not... if any of the above happened it would be bad...very bad. Sexuality even in our vampire games needs to stop at a certain point or it gets WAY to crazy at that table. We know that.

If on the other hand anyone tried to do anything even as sexual as we get on Saturdays on an off game with my niece and nephew... they would no longer be welcome at any of my games...


there are times and places were discusions of gender and sex are not correct, maybe because of young players, or jerk/immature players, or just because it's an issue at the table.


end result is know who you are playing with and respect them, there boundries and know who can be a grown up and who can't

 

[seebs]

If they continue to play such character after being told it bothers one or more other persons involved, they're just being an ass.

Maybe! Consider the case where one of the players happens to be gay, and plays a gay character because that's easier for them to get into character with. And someone else says that bothers them. Well, being told that who you are bothers someone is not something that I think necessarily creates a moral duty in you to turn into someone else.