"All halflings are heterosexual."

[fusangite]

None of the PCs or NPCs ever fall in love?

No. And here's why: D&D has the following social skills: Bluff, Gather Information, Perform, Sense Motive, Diplomacy and Intimidate. It's pretty clear that none of these skills could be employed as a shortcut to roleplaying falling in love. Haggling over goods, negotiating for the release of hostages, pleasing a crowd, etc. are all interactions for which a dice-roll shortcut is available as an alternative to playing out the scene.

What this tells me is that one would actually have to play out the process of falling in love in greater detail than much more important things like the sample tasks I listed above.

Playing out falling in love is not socially appropriate in a gaming group for the following reasons:
(a) I think most normal people would find it uncomfortable to act out the process of falling in love with one of their friends
(b) Players other than the one falling in love cannot participate or contribute to this process so they are left as bystanders/observers of a socially awkward performance by their GM and a fellow player
(c) Successfully falling in love often escalates the form of interaction from the social to the physical; this aspect clearly has no place in the game

Flirt with the staff at the inn?

Yes. But this is uncomfortable to play out. Thus, people tend to want to play out scenes with no sexual overtones even if they are for the same purpose (ie. gathering information, currying favour with the local populace). Therefore, the interactions that get played out in local taverns are those that do not involve this component. In the last gaming group I ran, players fell into three categories: (a) straight men (b) gay men (c) my ex. Acting out flirting would be socially awkward with people in any of these categories. I could even add these categories (d) women I am interested in (e) women interested in me and we would still have a situation wherein acting out flirting would be inappropriate, awkward and icky.

Fondly remember the girl/guy they left behind when they started adventuring?

I think this is a great idea. I have no objection to it, firstly because it is an activity interior to the character and secondly because it doesn't take up any actual playing time.

Try to win the girl/guy of their dreams through bravery and heroism?

Again, great motivation. I do not object for much the same reason as above.

Get married for love?

If this was the case of a pre-existing relationship requiring no playing time, no problem. But the marriage wouldn't be especially relevant to the game or take up playing time. -- Unless it was the start of a kidnapping or extortion plot in which the bride or some part of her party was abducted; that, I could make use of but again, no playing time would be sacrificed to the actual relationship.

I have never played in a game, nor read a single fantasy novel, in which these sort of interactions were omitted.

I agree that these interactions are common in fantasy literature, although some of my favourite fantasy stories do not involve them at all such as the Hobbit or the Wizard of Earthsea. Or involve them minimally like Lord of the Rings, which gives just one chapter to the Eowyn-Faramir thing and consigns Arwen and Aragorn to an appendix.

But I think this is an example of something that works well in literature that does not work well in gaming, due to the social structure of gaming interactions.

It would seem oddly bland to me, like playing in a campaign world where no character ever enjoyed meal or loved his homeland.

Characters can enjoy their meals and love their homelands but this doesn't mean we have to play out the enjoying and loving. Characters can be motivated by things that never become a part of play. While I like to provide the occasional description of a meal in my games, many GMs do not and when I play games in which food is never described, I find I don't miss it.

And, by the way, if a player ever told me he wanted to play a black character (and didn't seem to be motivated by racism), I would find a way - even if the PC had to come from another continent or an alternate Material Plane. Because, why not? What harm would it do?

It could do all kinds of harm. In one campaign I ran, people lived on a small archipelago which had had no contact with the outside world in 819 years. A foreigner showed up with a specific mission and objective; the exceptional nature of this event shaped the game. So, if I had introduced a PC from a completely different region of the world who also somehow washed up on these islands, yes, tremendous violence would have been done to the campaign.

 

[fusangite]

On the campaign I ran in which all paladins were gay, ptolemy18 asked,

Are you serious? That's awesome.
P.S. I mean this both in the semi-sarcastic sense, and also out of genuine respect for your audacity and for whatever campaign world this was...

Absolutely. It was important for parents -- if as their little boy grew up they found he didn't like girls, they knew that this might mean he was called to something higher, that maybe his disinterest in the opposite sex was actually a sign from the gods that he had been chosen to fight against the forces of darkness.

The paladin in question was played by my very conservative gay friend so the sexuality of the character was never relevant to the play of the game beyond what it said about the structure of the game world's culture. Because I really don't like running societies in which sexual orientation is an operative identity category, I thought this might be a neat way to represent homosexuality as an activity or relationship without all this modernist baggage.

 

[WayneLigon]

No. And here's why: D&D has the following social skills: Bluff, Gather Information, Perform, Sense Motive, Diplomacy and Intimidate. It's pretty clear that none of these skills could be employed as a shortcut to roleplaying falling in love. ... What this tells me is that one would actually have to play out the process of falling in love in greater detail than much more important things like the sample tasks I listed above.

Playing out falling in love is not socially appropriate in a gaming group for the following reasons:...

So utterly unlike most games (not only D&D but the myriad of others) I've run or played in (with many different groups, not just a single insular group of people I've known over that period of time) over the last couple decades that it's like looking up at the night sky and finding it white with blazing black dots scattered over it.

This is the glory of this hobby, really, and something I usually try to bring into any conversation about how people run games. Two D&D (or whatever) games using the same rules set, the same books, the same quasi-shared assumptions (by this I mean things like 'dwarves are like so and so') can be as different as night and day. It's hard to remember that at times.

 

[fusangite]

The only thing I can relate to ya is the fact that my gaming group only allows same sex pc/player (pretty much, a male player cant play a female pc).

Interesting. I've never heard of a gaming group that actually had a rule on this.
(Although in my experience most people play characters of their own gender. For what it's worth, which isn't much, the two (then-closeted) gay players I've played RPGs with both played male characters.)

It's a pretty popular rule where I come from. Or rather, a variant of it is; I always allow women to play male characters if they want to. I just prohibit men from playing women. Why? Because they/we screw it up. I've never seen a man competently play a woman but I have seen women competently playing men.

 

[Barak]

yeah well

Sentence removed. As I already mentioned twice in this thread, don't bring up modern-day politics in EN World, please. -Darkness

If you replace the homosexual ban of halflings with one of arcane casters (IE, "There is no halfling wizards, sorcerers or bards in my world! End of discussion!"), I'd wager that A-No one would be offended, and B-Everyone would think the DM is within the DM-fiat right of establishing what does and doesn't happen in his own Campaign World. ...

And perhaps more importantly, the DM statement would seem to strongly indicate that there -is- homosexuality in his world, since he specifically mentioned that -halflings- are all heterosexual.

As for the -way- he said it, the addition of "End of discussion!" would lead me to believe that the player had brought it up more then once, and probably received less totalitarian answers before, and refused to take the hint, therefore leading to a stronger statement.

 

[Afrodyte]

Given the information the original poster provided (or, more accurately, lack thereof), it seems to me that almost everybody is jumping to conclusions. It's been six pages so far, and the original poster has not made any comment to clarify or elaborate what is happening, so that leads me to believe that those taking the original poster seriously have been had.

 

[Arcane Runes Press]

No. And here's why: D&D has the following social skills: Bluff, Gather Information, Perform, Sense Motive, Diplomacy and Intimidate. It's pretty clear that none of these skills could be employed as a shortcut to roleplaying falling in love. Haggling over goods, negotiating for the release of hostages, pleasing a crowd, etc. are all interactions for which a dice-roll shortcut is available as an alternative to playing out the scene.

What this tells me is that one would actually have to play out the process of falling in love in greater detail than much more important things like the sample tasks I listed above.

Playing out falling in love is not socially appropriate in a gaming group for the following reasons:
(a) I think most normal people would find it uncomfortable to act out the process of falling in love with one of their friends
(b) Players other than the one falling in love cannot participate or contribute to this process so they are left as bystanders/observers of a socially awkward performance by their GM and a fellow player
(c) Successfully falling in love often escalates the form of interaction from the social to the physical; this aspect clearly has no place in the game

Playing out falling in love may not be "socially appropriate" in your gaming group, but I've never been in a gaming group where playing out romance/flirtation/love was ever a problem.

The potential for love to appear as a motivator and campaign issue has always been assumed in my groups, and I've dealt with it many times as both a player and a game master. Rescuing the maiden and falling in love, challenging the black knight for the princess' hand, seducing the baron, saving an elven king from the ghost of his lover and becoming a queen, overcoming the loss of a childhood sweetheart and coming to love a swashbuckling hero devastated by the death of his wife, having and raising a family - we've dealt with all these issues in game, and our campaigns have been all the stronger for it.

Adding in romantic elements has also never caused long lulls in the action, either. Short vignettes and interludes have always been the rule, and the other players aren't left out any longer than they are when one player is using Gather Information to get clues from the innkeeper, or another is using stealth to scout out the bandit's camp.

Playing in a campaing with no possibility of romance doesn't seem very appealing to me - it would be like running a party of robot eunuchs.

Patrick Y.

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

In my Greyhawk game I don't assume elves are gay or switch hitters. They are straight for the most part like humans. Nobody really wants to roll play love or that stuff with another guy as the DM. So some sexuallity is referenced, "I'm gonna go to the bar and get drunk and do some wenching..." but nothing where we are playing that stuff out. If one of the players said, "I'm gonna be a gay Halfling." I'd probably advise them they would be better off in another game as I don't really go into that kind of stuff, we play an adventure game for the most part.

 

[Driddle]

It's a non-issue for our group, hetero or otherwise inclined. We just don't make a point of roleplaying sexuality. Too much other stuff to do.

So none of your scenes ever take place in a bar or other social setting where a PC has the opportunity to flirt with an NPC? No one with a high Charisma modifier ever expresses an interest in manipulating an admirer? Sharing backstory love interests over the campfire never comes up? No one has ever been motivated to seek revenge because goblins killed a spouse?

Seems very strict. And to me, boring.

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

So none of your scenes ever take place in a bar or other social setting where a PC has the opportunity to flirt with an NPC? No one with a high Charisma modifier ever expresses an interest in manipulating an admirer? Sharing backstory love interests over the campfire never comes up? No one has ever been motivated to seek revenge because goblins killed a spouse?

What a dry, boring campaign you must play in.

If they enjoy it what is it to you?

Is this a case of them having badfun?