D&D 5E celebrating pride and lgbtq+ players 2021

[Yaarel]

While D&D is a perfect environment to allow players to experiment with playing the role of any character of any gender, without all the prejustices of real life. I find it almost just as interesting to allow players to experience what it was like to be a man or a woman in a specific period of time.

LGBT people have always existed, but in the time period that my campaign emulates, people often had to keep up appearances. While plenty a monarch was secretly attracted to members of the same sex, they would often be in a very unhappy sham marriage because that was expected of people at the time. Anything else would be a scandal. And of course there was also plenty of sexism, with women not being allowed to occupy certain important positions.

I occasionally let my players experience these aspects of the time period, because it is interesting to reflect on it with our modern sensabilities.

And to be fair, heterosexual nobles were also forced by politics to be in difficult or loveless marriages.

 

[Faolyn]

I've got the bad faith sealion you're responding to on block, but I will also say that as far as I'm concerned, we use the correct names and pronouns for everyone; real or fictional. TTRPG characters, because of how intimate their portrayal usually is (even NPCs) are very far from being an exception to that rule.

You're totally correct here. I just didn't want ECMO3 to potentially derail the thread further with cries of "but it's a fictional character so it doesn't matter!" since they're very good at ignoring the actual points in favor of claiming that one can only stereotype playing someone of a different sexuality. (But that nobody would ever stereotype playing someone of a different biological cis-gendered sex.) I have to wonder what they feel about people who decide to play someone of a different human ethnicity.

I'll say that I was tempted to edit my post and point out that, for someone who claimed that biological sex/gender didn't matter and that they never had a default sex or gender in mind, they were strangely insistent on using male pronouns for Chance.

 

[Umbran]

A DNA test run on you will say differently. Nothing science can do to put you in the correct body can change this and bigots and haters will always have this one thing to use against pre- or post-op Trans people.

Mod Note:
And, in doing so, they demonstrate their ignorance that a human is more than their genetics.

This is a site about gaming. We can discuss where these matters intersect gaming - like representation in RPGs. This is not a site on which anyone will finally and definitively answer, "What the heck is gender, anyway?" So we would take it as a favor from all of you to let folks here define what they are for themselves. And stop trying to tell them that they are (or will be considered) something else.

This is fairly central to being welcoming and accepting. If you don't want to be welcoming and accepting, then please leave this thread.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

This is fairly central to being welcoming and accepting. If you don't want to be welcoming and accepting, then please leave this thread.

I am always welcoming and accepting and have been intentionally not replying to the trolls in this thread. I made a simple statement as one member of the community to another. I am sorry if you somehow saw that as an attack or something.

 

[Yaarel]

I want to clarify my feelings about singular they.

(Sometimes I feel people are so busy fighting battles, they sometimes fail to notice that sometimes there is no battle happening.)



The singular they is a normal part of the English language. It emerged as a solution for indefinite number (not knowing whether there is one or more), and its use for indefinite gender (not knowing whether there is masculine or feminine or other) is natural and well established.

My difficulty with the singular they is stylistic.

For my taste, it too often matters whether the referent is singular or plural. And in my personal use, the failure of the singular they to distinguish number, is too often problematic for natural casual use.

The English language includes many, many, terms. I dont use every one of them in my own speech and writing.

For example, the literary term "s/he" is also a normal part of the English language, but I normally dont use it for style reasons. In this case, I find the use of the slash punctuation distracting, and while I assume the letters should be pronounced "she or he", that too I find distracting.

A gender neutral pronoun is in need − useful and significant. There are many different proposals for how fulfill this need. No doubt, singular they enjoys more usage than other proposals. But I remain unsatisfied with it.

Currently, I use the indefinite pronoun "one", which is also normal English. In all cases where the referent is unknown, it works great. But in contexts where the referent is known, it is awkward. Then I use the term "the one". It too is normal English, and is good enough for my purposes. But it too can get distracting, when it is almost like saying, "the she" or "the he".

I am still on the look out for a better gender-neutral pronoun.

Honestly, if English speakers accustomed to saying, "they is", making the verb singular when the they refers to a singular referent, that would help me enormously. In other words, "they" becomes an all-purpose pronoun for any number and gender, and the let the verbs do the work to help specify.

 

[Steampunkette]

That is... kind of a thing.

In southern speech and AAVE generally there's a tendency to use "They is" instead of "They are" when referring to a singular individual.

But alla them Northern type folks don't like to hear that kinda grammaticalization of the common vernacular.

 

[Yaarel]

That is... kind of a thing.

In southern speech and AAVE in generally there's a tendency to use "They is" instead of "They are" when referring to a singular individual.

But alla them Northern type folks don't like to hear that kinda grammaticalization of the common vernacular.

If we can get away with borrowing from the dialect, I am all for it!

 

[Yaarel]

I am going to try saying "they is" in my normal speech, and see if it can start feeling natural.

 

[Cadence]

That is... kind of a thing.

In southern speech and AAVE generally there's a tendency to use "They is" instead of "They are" when referring to a singular individual.

But alla them Northern type folks don't like to hear that kinda grammaticalization of the common vernacular.

The south also gifted us with y'all to help in the singular vs. plural you situation. <insert some random thing on whether it's always plural though and if it's mostly northerners who mess it up, and about the brilliance of all y'all>

 

[Steampunkette]

The south also gifted us with y'all to help in the singular vs. plural you situation. <insert some random thing on whether it's always plural though and if it's mostly northerners who mess it up, and about the brilliance of all y'all>

Do not forget the amazing apostrophe power of: y'all'dn't've.

You all shouldn't have, you all couldn't have, and you all wouldn't have, all in one word!