Homosexuality in your games

[Leviatham]

Please, tell us where in our real world is there a place in which if you're gay you're just nothing out of the ordinary! I know a lot of people who'd love to move there.

Brighton, UK. It's not perfect (nowhere is) but it's pretty darn close!

The very fact that it becomes an issue in your games is pretty proof positive that it is still out of the ordinary, a "big deal" in our real world. There may well be places and groups for which is isn't an issue. But, as a culture, the place in our real world you describe doesn't exist.

Does is the point. It isn't! It only becomes an issue when I bring things onto the table to play in the game.

When we're socialising it never, ever is an issue. We joke and discuss gender, sexuality, relationships, etc. We even talk about it openly at work and I have only had one problem with a manager in one company. That a-hole did say things like "Paco, I know you're gay, but can you make that art direction look more manly?". But other than that? nop... it really isn't an issue.

But then, to be honest, I think my group wouldn't be big on anyone making a major in-game issue of their character's sexual desires. There is one romance between two PCs in my game, but it is really a *romance* - about emotion, not about sex. It helps that the setting is Victorian, so that holding hands is about as torrid as it will get, publicly.

And that is something that no one makes jokes about. It's perfectly accepted as normal. Which is fine, btw.

I don't know of folks are as hypocritical as you make it out to be. I find a lot of folks around here aren't big on people playing cross-gender. Not because of any hang-ups, though, but just because most folks do it so badly.

Oh no. Unaware and hypocritical are two different things. If anyone tell me in my face "I just haven't thought of playing a character" while thinking "I feel uncomfortable facing that situation" is hypocritical.

The void of thought about the subject doesn't equate to hypocrisy. But let's not deny either that there is a lack of awareness.

 

[ComradeGnull]

Admittedly, my character was very, very camp (because I didn't want my friends to know if he was male or female. To this day they don't know), but, suddenly, I couldn't use words like "swallow", or "shaft" or "erected". You can imagine what happened with I threw my spear at an orc at some point and asked if my spear had penetrated the enemy's armour. I'm still reminded of that and my friend now asks his children (15 and 13) to leave the room when we're playing.

It didn't matter that I wanted to have some kick ass character who would get enraged or gain goddess favour when he's been betrayed by a friend, or higher powers of controlling people over fighting. Nop!

In fact I was very happy with Andi died because the banter was getting so out of hand I really wasn't looking forward to play him anymore. The fact that it didn't matter how many orcs I killed and how well I did for the party, what was left behind was the mockery.

This is a little odd to me. Someone makes a camp character- a style I primarily associate with double-entendre comedies from the 70's- and then is surprised when the most memorable thing about the character is that a lot of sexual innuendos were made? Would the response have been the same if the character had been less of a stereotype? Wouldn't a female player playing a ditzy sex kitten or a straight male playing a half-wit Fabio type have created a character mostly memorable for the jokes made about them rather than the other qualities of the character?

And homosexuality gets largely ignored in world creation too. There don't seem to be any consequences to homosexuality in word creation. Rarely do you find a court with two kings. Or with a king and a prince-consort. Or a queen and a princess-consort.

There are a couple things I can think of here. One is the 'real medieval societies were sexist' argument that has been discussed before. RPG settings often ignore gender and identity dynamics (other than occasional species-based racism, like Dwarfs not trusting Half-orcs) simply because these things aren't terribly fun to play out, and these games are primarily about entertainment. Real social issues are hard problems that touch people in deeply personal ways rather than light entertainment, which is what most people are looking for at the gaming table. As you (I think) mentioned later, it can be very uncomfortable to realistically portray a character that has attitudes that you find repugnant (like racism, sexism, homophobia), and if someone is subject to those difficulties in their real life, they likely have no interest experiencing them while playing a game.

Secondly, published game settings are created by commercial companies who have PR and other issues to deal with. RPGs are still considered primarily a product for kids and young adults, and parents are very sensitive to any inclusion of sexual content in them. Products aimed at older players (like some of the White Wolf stuff) tends to be more open about sexual orientation both because it's aimed at older players, and because most of it is set in the modern world where non-het identities are much more normal than we think they were in the 13th Century. Since the Satanic panic debacle of the early 80's, game publishers have been very cautious about including anything that might offend religious or personal sensitivities, and sexuality- particularly homosexuality- is high on that list in American culture.

Worth noting that in addition to White Wolf being a little more open about sexuality and gender, there is a whole class of products that I have seen over the years- primarily either self-published or turned out by smaller houses- that were explicitly about sexual topics, and which dealt very openly with homosexuality, transexuality, etc. It's just that sexuality in general is outside the range of what most people include in their games, except for a specific sub-set of the genre that tends to focus primarily on that aspect of play.

You can find adult-only PbP games, for instance, that are primarily focused on sexual fantasy for people who are specifically interested in exploring that aspect of playing a character. However, the fraction of the (already small) RPG playing population that is interested in 'in character' play to that degree and also specifically interested in exploring issues of gender and sexuality through roleplay is much smaller. That type of content is compelling to some people, but not, I think, to a big swathe of the population, just as movies that quietly explore issues of gender and sexuality are nowhere near as popular as movies where something explodes, and then something else explodes.

I wrote a much longer reply that covered much the points as Janx, but this pair of sentences pretty much sums it up for my experience.

Romance, sex, sexuality, and love RARELY show up in our games. It's not that we don't want gay characters in our games (I can recall one gay male PC and one gay male NPC). It's just that a character's sexuality (hell, even gender identity for that matter) isn't important to what we do: kill orcs and take gold and save the world from evil.

This reflects my experience too. I've never given much thought to my PC's sexual orientation- I expect I would default to straight because I am too, but a lot of the character concepts I've played are pretty asexual (since I have no interest in considering the sexual preferences of goblins and gnomes). Given the sorts of situations that my PC's have typically experienced, I don't see them reacting to situations any differently depending on their gender orientation.

Frankly, outside of sexual situations, I wouldn't know how to portray a character as gay in typical RPG situations without falling back into stereotypes and camp. When I think about conversations and activities that I do with my gay friends that are somehow 'different' from what would go on with straight friends, it focuses on things like domestic arrangements (which adventurers never really seem to have, family dynamics (which is another huge area of human life typically ignored in-game- seems like 4 out of every 5 PC's are orphans) and discussions about gay marriage-type topics that emerge from our societies legal framework (which falls under the 'not actually that fun to include in a game' category).

 

[Umbran]

And what stops you from envisioning a gay character? That is my point. Why do you have no problem feeling familiar with a female character but you don't feel as familiar with a gay one?

Females are (slightly over) half the population. Estimates place homosexuality down around 10%. The females are generally visually obvious, while the homosexuals are not. Your typical person, therefore, probably has more known exposure to the opposite gender than to homosexuals.

So, there's your unawareness, right there. We should not ascribe to personal bias that which can be explained by simple lack of available information.

 

[Umbran]

Does is the point. It isn't! It only becomes an issue when I bring things onto the table to play in the game.

With respect, that it gets treated differently at the table than heterosexuality strongly suggests that the people view it differently, however intelligent they may be about it in other discussion.

 

[Janx]

Sounds like a pretty sensible quote to me!

Sometimes I say things of value. Othertimes I must balance the scale.

Sorry, but that excuse of "it's just humanity" I can't accept. That implies that I have just to sit down and take it because, hey, that's just humanity. And also implies that anyone and everyone would have to put up with other unpleasantness and idiocy because it's just humanity.

Sorry, but that's not good enough.

That's not an excuse. I'm saying it's a great big universe and you are not.

I'm explaining that you are not the majority, and that as stated from the first quote, not all of us are as nice as we should be. You will have to put up with it, because your alternatives are slow moving to change minds or rapidly ending in gunfire when you go postal against the forces of jerkiness.

I have described Humanity. How you handle interactions with it, now forearmed is your problem. To rage against it is like yelling at the storm, you can not simply change its nature, and thus it is better to be like bamboo, which bends with the wind, and then straightens after it is passed.

And what is the point. Why is it another to sit through another player trying to gay up an NPC? Why does it have to weigh differently than doing it in a straight NPC?



Overall we don't care. We're used to it.

I covered that too by throwing you a bone that I acknowledge that while I don't want to watch a gay sex scene, gay people don't want to watch straight scenes. There was a counterpoint in my statement and you missed it.

And that once again shows the unawareness of gay issues and relationships. Being gay is not just about sex. It's about attractions, motivations, desires and the way to face and grow within those. One doesn't have to have sex to be gay.

Uh, yeah. Not gay. Not caring. I don't want gay kids getting beat up on playgrounds. Or not being able to get married because of somebody else's restrictions. This is because one is being mean, and the other is violating a philosophical law tenet where before approving a law, you shuffle the categories of people that you might belong to. If you might be assigned a category that the law would make life suck for, then you have a bad law.

Making sure you're treated well and fairly as a human being is of my interest. The details of the issues you face because of your nature are of no more consequence to me than whether the house wife down the block ever gets over her middle-child syndrome.

I am not seeing it as anti-gay. If someone tells me "I don't want gay characters in my campaign" that's anti-gay. To be told "I've just never considered it" that's not anti-gay. That simply reflects unawareness, which is understandable.

it could be anti-gay. Or it could be that like the typical un-enlightened response thinking that you're going to play a joke PC that tries to bugger every male NPC.

Or it could be that he's uncomfortable with doing romance or sex in the game, and assumes that by declaring your gayness, you specifically want to play out such encounters, where everybody else's hetero-sexuality was assumed and ignored and thus effectively non-existant.

Or it could be that he really doesn't approve of homosexuality. That happens. There are also people who don't approve of eating meat. And it's a real issue for them to be around those who do because they see it as not just a preference, but wrong to do.

Now to throw the bone back in your court, just what non-sex gay-stuff do you think you're going to roleplay out in somebody's generic RPG campaign that's equivalent to what the straight players do? Here's the issues you said that might be reflected that you said: "attractions, motivations, desires and the way to face and grow within "

We (and I mean the presumed majority of gamers we), don't do that emotional stuff with straight PCs. That kind of equivalent thing ain't going on at most tables for straight people. What makes you so special that the GM has to make special content for your gay issues, when in general, there's no content for hetero-sexual issues.

Most of the monsters and NPCs don't care if you have a penis or vagina, let alone which one you prefer. As such, there's not a lot of "Special Episide of Blossom" going on.

Most people aren't role-playing out gender issues or sexual issues. Therefore, gay-issues have a right to the same lack of attention.

And note, if there's a group that does or want to focus on that stuff, that's fine. But realize that most people probably don't, and that's where you might be getting resistance from.

 

[Leviatham]

This is a little odd to me. Someone makes a camp character- a style I primarily associate with double-entendre comedies from the 70's- and then is surprised when the most memorable thing about the character is that a lot of sexual innuendos were made? Would the response have been the same if the character had been less of a stereotype? Wouldn't a female player playing a ditzy sex kitten or a straight male playing a half-wit Fabio type have created a character mostly memorable for the jokes made about them rather than the other qualities of the character?

I am not surprised that the mockery is left behind. I am surprised (disappointed) that that is all there is left behind.

Also, the issue wasn't that there were sexual innuendos. They do exist from our "straight" characters. The issue is that even when I, not my character, asked a genuine question, it provoked a much more exaggerated response than when I have said similar things playing straight or asexual characters.

There are a couple things I can think of here. One is the 'real medieval societies were sexist' argument that has been discussed before. RPG settings often ignore gender and identity dynamics (other than occasional species-based racism, like Dwarfs not trusting Half-orcs) simply because these things aren't terribly fun to play out, and these games are primarily about entertainment. Real social issues are hard problems that touch people in deeply personal ways rather than light entertainment, which is what most people are looking for at the gaming table. As you (I think) mentioned later, it can be very uncomfortable to realistically portray a character that has attitudes that you find repugnant (like racism, sexism, homophobia), and if someone is subject to those difficulties in their real life, they likely have no interest experiencing them while playing a game.

Medieval societies, sure. But I'm not talking just about medieval societies or fantasy based games. Homosexuality and general sexual identity, including female, would have a much more relevant role in a game of Victoriana or Call of Cthulhu than in D&D.

Also, do you know of any game based on ancient Greece that is true to the homosexual aspects of that society? If so, I'd be very interested in hearing about it.

As to being hard problems... My friends and I just finished a Trail of Cthulhu adventure I wrote and is based in my home-town, in south Spain. My friends decided to go the "imperial attitude" way and started to treat the locals almost as monkeys. Needless to say they found out what it was to be a foreigner in a churlish town in southern Spain. For us it was just a matter of being true to the time.

For me playing a gay character open new possibilities. Like having gay contacts in a gay club in the 1920s. Being able to blackmail someone or discover "dirty secrets". Experience different motivations and reasons to want my fellow player's characters to survive...

Secondly, published game settings are created by commercial companies who have PR and other issues to deal with. RPGs are still considered primarily a product for kids and young adults, and parents are very sensitive to any inclusion of sexual content in them. Products aimed at older players (like some of the White Wolf stuff) tends to be more open about sexual orientation both because it's aimed at older players, and because most of it is set in the modern world where non-het identities are much more normal than we think they were in the 13th Century. Since the Satanic panic debacle of the early 80's, game publishers have been very cautious about including anything that might offend religious or personal sensitivities, and sexuality- particularly homosexuality- is high on that list in American culture.

And I think you hit a good point there. However we are back into the sexual aspect of it and that is limiting homosexuality a lot. As I said earlier, you don't have to have sex to be gay.

Worth noting that in addition to White Wolf being a little more open about sexuality and gender, there is a whole class of products that I have seen over the years- primarily either self-published or turned out by smaller houses- that were explicitly about sexual topics, and which dealt very openly with homosexuality, transexuality, etc. It's just that sexuality in general is outside the range of what most people include in their games, except for a specific sub-set of the genre that tends to focus primarily on that aspect of play.

Which is fair enough. Although I think that any game should be able to accommodate gay characters, I don't think it should be compulsory either.

You can find adult-only PbP games, for instance, that are primarily focused on sexual fantasy for people who are specifically interested in exploring that aspect of playing a character. However, the fraction of the (already small) RPG playing population that is interested in 'in character' play to that degree and also specifically interested in exploring issues of gender and sexuality through roleplay is much smaller. That type of content is compelling to some people, but not, I think, to a big swathe of the population, just as movies that quietly explore issues of gender and sexuality are nowhere near as popular as movies where something explodes, and then something else explodes.

I could have gone with that until you mentioned cinema and made me wonder if it would have the same effect. In two words: Brokeback Mountain.

Frankly, outside of sexual situations, I wouldn't know how to portray a character as gay in typical RPG situations without falling back into stereotypes and camp. When I think about conversations and activities that I do with my gay friends that are somehow 'different' from what would go on with straight friends, it focuses on things like domestic arrangements (which adventurers never really seem to have, family dynamics (which is another huge area of human life typically ignored in-game- seems like 4 out of every 5 PC's are orphans) and discussions about gay marriage-type topics that emerge from our societies legal framework (which falls under the 'not actually that fun to include in a game' category).

Which leads me to my previous point of unawareness. Is not that you'd have a problem playing a gay character, is that you wouldn't know what's different about them.

 

[Leviatham]

With respect, that it gets treated differently at the table than heterosexuality strongly suggests that the people view it differently, however intelligent they may be about it in other discussion.

I won't argue with that.

But that picks my curiosity as to why it comes afloat to obviously at the table but is not so apparent outside...

 

[Desdichado]

And what stops you from envisioning a gay character? That is my point. Why do you have no problem feeling familiar with a female character but you don't feel as familiar with a gay one?

The same reason I don't envision spellcasting characters. I just don't prefer them.

Self-perception is very, very deceptive.

I know FIFY's are not en vogue at ENW, but you really need a qualifier or caveat in there. It can be. It isn't necessarily. It's a bit insulting and presume a priori that nobody can possibly be self-aware.

 

[delericho]

Sexuality of any sort barely gets a mention at my table. I'll very occasionally hint or mention that a given character is gay, but it's never remarked upon - I don't know if that's because my players don't pick up on it, or just don't care.

When it comes to race, sex, and sexual orientation, I use what I call the "Battlestar Galactica" model - these things just are, and nobody cares. In fact, the question "can a woman be President" doesn't even get asked, because it's so obvious. And you can replace 'woman' with 'black man/woman' or 'gay man/woman' in the above - it just makes no difference.

 

[gamerprinter]

In my home games, sex is seldom broached as a topic or activity, beyond a given person's gender. One of my players ran a noble born character once, and part of his personae was playing the cad around female NPCs with open promiscuity. But that was one character in a dozen years of playing (in our current group), so aside from that single incident, the subject doesn't really come up in game.

I've considered what I might or might not include into the Kaidan setting, such as real world samurai being homosexual to a degree, or that kabuki actors are really male prostitutes, whose stage shows attract clients. These are both true in Japanese society. However, as explained above, my developments have been like my own groups gaming practices - we never really broach the topic of hetero or homosexuality.

Thus far I'm not inclined to include the homosexual aspects of Japanese society. I'm not trying completely transfer all concepts of Japanese society to Kaidan, rather just enough for fluff detail and immersion in the setting - I don't think it will necessarily help the setting to include this.

I'm not saying that it would hurt the setting, just that it's a non-issue - as sexual activity is not a presented goal to be described in the setting.