Gay PCs or NPCs

[Pseudonym]

Just to be mature and realistic about this topic, I have a question, Can a transsexual male and transsexual female could make a couple? I know it's confusing and awkward.

I know one couple that consists of a transsexual male and transsexual female. They've been together for years, so yes, it can work out.

 

[MavrickWeirdo]

In one game I was playing a (born male) changeling cleric of the traveler (chaotic-trickster god). If the campaign had not ended, then at some point my PC would have started flirting with the male paladin PC, but only to annoy him.

 

[Shemeska]

I'm just curious here; this was sparked by a conversation I had just recently. Without editorialising homosexuality itself, has anybody here had a gay or bisexual PC in their game, or a gay or bi NPC? I'm just curious to see how common it is. It's never actually happened in my game - not for any particular reason, I'd like to stress; it just hasn't.

I've had almost all the gay male PCs in my campaigns played by straight female players, and the one player who happens to actually be bisexual, he has only played straight male or female PCs.

I've played NPCs of all stripes, it doesn't bother me one way or the other to RP a bi or gay male or female character, I can just 'get' better and portray a straight male or bi/gay female character more easily simply because of my own ooc preference in partner.

Sexuality rarely matters though, and I've had some NPC fiends that don't have a distinct or a fixed gender, and they'll use this as a weapon in many ways. I've had my namesake show up at social functions with eye candy of either, or both genders, perched on her arm as escorts and dinner dates etc. Tanar'ri can shift gender if they wish to, simply through enough concentration, and yugoloths tend to be either hermaphrodites or able to shapechange at will. Thus for many fiends, it doesn't honestly matter in many cases, and their ideas of preference might not conform to the mortal ideas of sexuality in the context of two distinct genders. Life thus gets more complex.

Fiend to PC - 'Shall I be X gender for our dinner meeting? Or shall I surprize you?'

Such can happen, and they might swap gender just to keep you off balance. Show up as a dashinging dressed male one meeting, then as a gown wearing female the next, but very obviously being the same person. Gender and sexuality in my fiends tend to transcend mortal ideas of fixed biology and distinct sexual dichotomy. Baatezu come the closest to mortals since they have distinct male and female genders, and remain in a fixed gender. But I haven't had to deal with Baatezu sexuality before, just some instances with 'loths (one PC got romantically involved with an arcanaloth, and another PC did much later on, but it was more business with pleasure on the side, and no feelings involved) and some instances involving a Tanar'ri brothel and its alu-fiend owner who moved in next door to the PCs.

 

[fusangite]

NPCs I create are sometimes gay, but rarely do the PCs ever know one way or another, because most of the time they don't care. They just want the information they need from the NPCs, or they want to kill them and take their stuff. That's D&D.

This sort of statement would be why you enjoy the level of respect you do in the industry. This isn't just D&D correct; it's anthropologically correct. We know Alcuin, Charlemagne's most important civil servant, was gay. But we don't care because being gay did not constitute the meaningful identity category it does today. And, in part, because people in 9th century Francia has better things to worry about.

 

[Umbra]

I'm gay but I've only played two gay characters. One was open about it; the other kept the information concealed although my reactions were suitably 'colored'. The other (straight) players knew there was something different about him. They just couldn't figure out what it was.

I've also played in a game with six other gay men. Out of some fourteen characters that have been played, only one was gay. Go figure!

As a DM I've had gay NPC's but no-one has ever discovered their sexuality. As Monte said, the information was irrelevant.

 

[S'mon]

Some of my female Fighters would be classed as bisexual or lesbian in 21st century Western society I guess. Doesn't really make sense in a medieval paradigm though.

 

[S'mon]

I think in a straight group, gay men often play feminine straight female NPCs - not Lara Croft macho type PCs, those are played by straight men.

 

[Stormrunner]

My groups have generally been in their 30s or so, and not afraid of sexuality (though actual character copulation has remained off-screen).

I'm bi, and so is Stormrunner. Stormy's preferences have impacted the plot a few times (such as when she seduced a mermaid who had been intended as a Charm-weilding impediment to the PCs). An earlier PC of mine, Snakey the lizard-woman, was basically "straight" by human standards - she did end up in a seven-way marriage (4 males, 3 females) but that was normal for her culture.

In the CyFurPunk campaign I ran a few years ago (Shadowrun-type setting, the PCs were all "jennies" - genetically-engineered animal-people) there were a number of gay characters. Boingo and Lirip (kangaroo and otter respectively) were a flamingly-gay punk couple (rainbow-dyed fur, multiple piercings, etc.) who ended up being oft-recurring NPCs. One of the main recurring villains was Gypsy, a lesbian Doberman enforcer for the local Mob, who kept getting more and more obsessed with killing the PCs as they kept messing up her plans. (There was also a gay horse among the lesser enforcers, but the PCs put a bullet through his skull without discovering his orientation).
Among the PCs, there was a gay fox (the party's Fixer) played by a gay player (his RL partner played a straight PC, a Unicorn whose maxed-out charisma resulted in him being propositioned by just about every NPC he met), and a bi female otter (the party techie, played by a female player) who was extremely lecherous and would bed anything just for kicks (very useful in the plot hooks department, her multiple partners effectively became multiple sources of info for the party).

 

[Psion]

Though on occassion sexuality and romance comes up in the game, only one time can I recall a campaign relevant situation where homosexual orientation of an NPC was important enough to bring up -- and that was a Fantasy Hero game.

For my typical game, I find bringing up sexuality outside of the occasional succubus is an invitation to typical male sex-joke off-topicness. Well, I guess the succubus really isn't an exception, but its sort of hard to avoid the topic in that case.

 

[fusangite]

Some of my female Fighters would be classed as bisexual or lesbian in 21st century Western society I guess. Doesn't really make sense in a medieval paradigm though.

Thanks for recognizing this. As I suggested in my post above, homosexuality of course existed in that period but did not function as an identity category.