"All halflings are heterosexual."

[fusangite]

CORRECTION: It's POOR TASTE to speculate on something we know nothing about.

Well, fortunately this is ENWorld, which, by your definition, is poor taste capital of the world. So, to contribute my poor taste, I'll make a few observations:

1. As a GM, if I had a player whom I felt was going to place issues of sex and sexuality in the foreground of a campaign, I would probably make up some ridiculous rule like that on the fly too.
2. As a GM, I have never tried to make sexual orientation map 1:1 to a race. That seems rather silly to me. I have made it map 1:1 to a class in one game by ruling that in order to become a paladin, you must be gay.
3. As a player, I can't really imagine how my character's sexual orientation could be a make or break thing with respect to participating in a game so I'm inclined to side with the GM here.

From what little I know about the scene, therefore, I can't see this as an instance of homophobia, just a way of keeping out players one anticipates may be problematic.

 

[Turjan]

I suppose, Henry is right that we don't have enough information to judge the reported scene. If the player just wanted to play out a flirt in a tavern, I would be fine with it as a GM. If she wanted to turn the campaign into a gay rights crusade, I'd object. This all depends on the circumstances .

 

[atom crash]

only tangentially related, but:

one of the members of my gaming group doesn't buy into the concept of bearded dwarven women. he thinks that dwarven women look more like buff halflings. he also plays a dwarven paladin (male). so the rest of the group takes every opportunity to make comments about dwarven women with beards.

he had been absent from the game for a while, and during his absence the other dwarf in the group (a fighter) got a glamered breastplate. so the fighter decided to use it to unsettle the paladin. the paladin got a surprise when he returned to find the fighter wearing what appeared to be a dress!

in general, the less sex and sexual preference comes into play during my games, the better. of course, it was a large part of our games back in high school.

 

[Desdichado]

I tend to agree with Tom and fusangite (by the way, I thought you were from Vancouver...) -- I wouldn't much care about it unless I anticipated that the player would use every opportunity to make a political statement with her character, and I'd have a problem with that.

 

[reveal]

What you heard might have been the DM getting fed up with the players demands for the game. Maybe the player kept asking for this and that, never satisfied with an answer. Finally, she asked if her halfling could be gay and he said what he did.

If the above scenario did not take place, the DM probably either felt a) scared of the topic or b) felt that it had no place in his game.

Myself? I see no need for sexual orientations for PCs in games unless we agree as a group to use them as a roleplaying tool. If the group wants to, that's fine. But if one player is uncomfortable with the topic, then we don't. It's not that important to our game.

 

[GMSkarka]

Frankly, IMHO unless for some reason you want to run a "Adult/XXX" focused campaign, the sexuality of characters is almost irrelevant.

???

Or want to deal with romantic motivations in any way...and gee, fantasy never deals with that, ever.

WTF?

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

Because, as barsoomcore said, it's a strange thing for a DM to care enough about to make such a definitive statement, and so to me, it's indicative of potential issues and attitudes - I mean "All the halflings in my campaign world are heterosexual. Period. End of discussion." ?

Why is their sexuality so important an issue for him?

Who knows? We don't know any details about his game world. And some DMs are sufficiently detail-oriented that they do work out things like how common homosexuality is among the various races.

Let me give an example: Let's assume that there is some fantasy religion that is strongly opposed to homosexuality (not that far-fetched, is it?). Now, how would such a religion percieve a race that apparently has no homosexuals among its members? Especially "blessed" by the god(s)? Free of "original sin"? Things like this have an effect on the social dynamics of a setting.

Now, I guess there were three possibilities in that situation:

- The GM was being homophobic.
- The GM has seriously thought about things like sexuality and worked it into his setting.
- The GM was sick of Nypho Lesbian Halfling(TM) PCs who only disrupt his adventures.

But without knowing any further details, it would be impossible and even rude to speculate on which one is the right answer.

 

[fusangite]

I tend to agree with Tom and fusangite (by the way, I thought you were from Vancouver...)

I've moved to the exotic and mysterious east to obtain a masters degree.

 

[NewJeffCT]

But without knowing any further details, it would be impossible and even rude to speculate on which one is the right answer.

This is definitely one where we need more information. If halflings can't be gay, what about humans, elves, dwarves, half-orcs & half elves?

If it is just halflings, I'm inclined to say that maybe it is something in the DM's backstory of the halfling race that would lead to this situation. Other than that, it would have to be a great reason for me to not think it homophobic.

Personally, I don't think it should be a big deal:

We had one long running villain in a campaign before I joined my current group that was gay and was trying to get revenge on the PCs for killing his male lover early in the campaign. The gay lover thing wasn't revealed until late in the campaign, though. He was just a normal BBEG before that.

And, in a light-hearted moment in a "play-yourself" campaign, a couple of PCs hired a bevy of lesbian dancers to 'perform' at a party for the shock value.

 

[Trickstergod]

It seems like an odd comment on the behalf of the DM, but it's one that I'm not too unfamiliar with myself.

I have one male player who, at least in the past, use to play quite a number of female characters. Furthermore, most of these characters were exceptionally attractive and homosexual to boot. Worse still, when he'd write up a character background for these characters, they'd typically read like a bad porn script.

Now, at the time, my friends were running a lot of World of Darkness games and I, in particular, ran Werewolf. So, after seeing all these characters of his and hearing him talk about how he was still deciding on whether or not his werewolf in my game was lesbian or not, I decided to go into how the breeding urge is particularly strong in werewolves due to their small numbers and that, furthermore, homosexuality is quite strongly, almost violently, untolerated in their society due to that feeling among their people that they need to breed, breed, breed new warriors.

Normally I wouldn't do something like that. But this player just played some of the worst stereotypes that you can expect out of a male player with a female character. Had it been one or two, well, hey, no big deal. I don't have an issue with sexual issues at my gaming table and generally my friends don't, either, but if a characters inspiration comes from a porno, well, its place isn't at my gaming table.

He still plays a good chunk of female characters, but these days he generally just eliminates sexuality as a factor from them.

Now, perhaps the DM in question here had a similar issue, or perhaps he's homophobic. Can't say without more info on what was going on. For my part, I could see myself plunking some strange detail like that into the world; I like odd little cultural bits and don't particularly restrict myself on the topic they might take (for example, I see dwarves as being pretty much heterosexual nearly without exception but, by that same token, elves as being fairly bisexual; I don't think I'm the only one who generally stereotypes them as such). Certainly I add things like that to religions in my games - among the right people, those more controversial details help, I think, to better establish why a character (or player) might like or dislike a certain group, beyond just "Oh, they're evil," or, "Grrr, lawful!"

However, I certainly wouldn't do something like that if I felt a player might be uncomfortable or walk out on me.

I am curious as to this particular DM and players reasoning for what they did, though.