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

[MechaPilot]

That's not so much to ask, really. The fact that Henry VII married a woman (Elizabeth of York) didn't cause any political drama, but we know it happened, because non-dramatic facts get recorded in passing when we record more dramatic facts like the lineage of kings.

This really should go without saying, but most people are not kings. JFK's philandering probably wouldn't be so well-remembered, and documented, if he wasn't president. Mary Todd Lincoln's insanity probably wouldn't even be an historical footnote if she hadn't been a president's wife.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

This really should go without saying, but most people are not kings. JFK's philandering probably wouldn't be so well-remembered, and documented, if he wasn't president. Mary Todd Lincoln's insanity probably wouldn't even be an historical footnote if she hadn't been a president's wife.

Yes. Therefore, what?

 

[Azzy]

Maybe at some point they'll start including monotheists and atheists in their adventures as well!

And so it begins.

 

[tombowings]

I don't think that "homosexuals exist, and are people just trying to live their lives like everyone else" is a political cause or point of view so much as it is a basic fact.

Absolutely. I agree with you 100%.

However, a significant percentage of the population nor the ideology of the source material does not share our (factual, scientifically supported) beliefs. All I'm saying is that there is a time and a place for advancement of one's ideological and that a D&D adventure probably isn't it. It's been tried. Take a look at Blue Rose - but for me is falls flat and looks more like out of place political pandering than a real attempt at building a believable world.

As an American who worlds in the developing world promoting democratic values and tolerance, flaunting of one's ideologies in parades, marches, and media does little more than fan the flames. Every time, there's a well publicized LGBT march somewhere in the world, my job becomes exponentially more difficult, as intolerant bigots use it as an example of the abnormal behavior displayed by the prominent members of that community.

I already have students who make fun of the half elf bard being a transvestite and the the fiend pact warlock shows us that all Americans support devil worship. The American media has no idea what type of image they are creating for us internationally and how difficult that image is to correct. Political statements need to carefully thought out, no longer only in terms of an American audience, but an international one, too.

You're asking people to provide evidence of a case where something from medieval times didn't cause any political drama, but was somehow noteworthy enough for the facts of it to have been passed down to us in tact from medieval times.

You'd be surprised by the things I've found in the Tower of London. While working on my master's thesis, I even found prop lists scribbled on old bits of parchment for Shakespeare's plays at the Globe. Because people were in the habit of writing letters back then, many of which are addressed to lovers and mistresses, I would be surprised if you couldn't find something to prove your point in one archive or another, should if have existed. If it wasn't a big deal and wasn't causing any drama, the letters wouldn't have been purposely destroyed, would they?

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

And so it begins.

"Whataboutism (also known as Whataboutery) is a form of defensive propaganda used to counter criticism (usually from "the West", and usually on blatant human rights abuses) with a "What about...?"—question vaguely, if at all, related to the original issue. It is a specialized red herring version of the tu quoque fallacy..."

What criticism would you say is being countered by a change of subject in this case? If this is a tu quoque, who is the tu?

 

[tombowings]

Well, kind of. Not in a way that a modern American would recognize though. There'd be a lot less attention paid to who was "gay" and who was "straight", and a lot more attention paid to dominance: who was doing the penetrating and who was being penetrated. It might please the hobgoblin warlord to have his men "use" their defeated foes "like women," but if you tried to turn around and suggest that his men would therefore not be interested in nubile female slaves, you'd get laughed at or worse.

Agreed - and I'm not. I just said it would be relatively common place and I would need to deal with that within the fiction in an appropriate manner, which has absolutely nothing in common with LGBT pride.

 

[MechaPilot]

Yes. Therefore, what?

Therefore, your comment that mundane facts about the lives of royalty being passed down to us today has little bearing on the capacity to use medieval history to document things that were not politically controversial in the lives of a (relatively) small percentage of non-royal people (the largest estimate has been that about 1 in 10 people are homosexual), in a time when non-royal people were generally politically insignificant.

 

[tombowings]

Therefore, your comment that mundane facts about the lives of royalty being passed down to us today has little bearing on the capacity to use medieval history to document things that were not politically controversial in the lives of a (relatively) small percentage of non-royal people (the largest estimate has been that about 1 in 10 people are homosexual), in a time when non-royal people were generally politically insignificant.

Dude. There are vast store of public archives containing exactly the type of information (often in the form of personal letters and diaries) that could hold the key what exactly what you're looking for. This sort of information might be too mundane for secondary sources (textbooks, articles, ect.) to deal with, but it exists and in amounts so extraordinarily board that scholars are still sorting it all out. It's too bad there's so little funding in the liberal arts, otherwise we'd see more of it coming to light.

But don't say the sources no longer exist, they do. They're just waiting for you to discover them, still.

 

[Dualazi]

http://kotaku.com/dungeons-dragons-promises-to-make-the-game-more-queer-1798401117

This is some really good news for me. My gaming group is very diverse. I couldn't imagine trying to get some of my friends to play the game back in 2001 when I started, when a lot of gamer culture felt like a boys club. This is a game about being whoever you want to be. If your group is up to it and mature, it's an opportunity for some exploration. It's nice to see NPCs in the game like yourself, and to have the PHB call out that your character can be whoever they are.

Color me impressed.

If your players weren’t interested because a few NPCs with missable, minor dialogue weren’t in the game, they didn’t really want to play at all, I suspect. Same goes with any insignificant blurb in PHB somewhere, it changes nothing whatsoever. Either you were cool with it before and they wouldn’t have problems making their character the way they wanted (which is what I imagine would happen based on your opinions thus far), or the DM is playing in a setting in which homosexuality is not accepted and they would be stopped whether or not the PHB gave the go ahead. In other words, this was a solved issue pretty much since the get-go, and I doubt this initiative is going to change things in any significant fashion.

Also, what’s with that bit about “an opportunity for exploration”? I don’t know about anyone else, but my group tends to do a fade to black with regards to most romantic stuff, and that’s usually relegated to the barmaid trope. Anyone trying to seriously bring exploration about sexual topics would receive a one-time warning and then the boot if they persist, because I can imagine only a handful of venues less suitable for that than game night with friends in a typically high-fantasy game.

That's not what inclusion means. We want to see characters like ourselves portrayed positively. Maybe we don't want to be reminded of the negativity of the real world.

This is why inclusion is a joke. You’re not just pressured into putting those elements into your work, you have to do it exactly as the vocal minority of viewers wants you to. By the way, at what point are creators ‘allowed’ to have negative presentations of gay people? And who arbitrates that decision?

Do you include rape in your stories too, to create drama, to the discomfort of any players at your table?

Blatantly pointless and misleading analogy. Gay people have the capacity to be good or evil, just like any other, whereas rape is pretty much universally condemned as one of the most repellant acts one can commit. Having a negative gay character is no way comparable.

Kinda surprised this thread is still up though, I figured it would have been nuked from orbit for being related to politics.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Therefore, your comment that mundane facts about the lives of royalty being passed down to us today has little bearing on the capacity to use medieval history to document things that were not politically controversial in the lives of a (relatively) small percentage of non-royal people (the largest estimate has been that about 1 in 10 people are homosexual), in a time when non-royal people were generally politically insignificant.

If you're arguing that 1 in 10 people is homosexual, that implies that 1 in 10 of royalty is homosexual. Your argument that tombowing's request is unreasonable because it's asking you "[to] provide evidence of a case where something from medieval times didn't cause any political drama, but was somehow noteworthy enough for the facts of it to have been passed down to us in tact from medieval times" is fallacious, unless you're prepared to argue that the prevalence of homosexuality was different among royalty than among commoners, i.e. the records are being kept on the wrong subpopulation. Is that your argument?