Sexuality in your games.

[Oryan77]

how you would react or feel.

I've never understood the point on bringing attention to homosexuality in a game other than to have an agenda and push your own opinions on people. If a DM told me, "it's common for there to be gay couples in this world" and he's pointing out to me every session that I see gay couples...I would take this as the DM trying to teach me that it's ok for people to be gay in real life.

I am concerned about it being a distraction.

If being a gay NPC/PC has a role in the game, then by all means have his sexuality play a part in the session. I don't think that would be a distraction at all. Maybe it's to add character and personality to the individual. I can think of lots of great ideas for a gay NPC to add flavor to a game (not in an insulting or silly way). But just to push the point on the group that "there's gay people in this world" leads me to believe that I'm being preached to.

My goal wouldn't be to distract players, but rather more strongly immerse them in a fictional world.

If an NPC is gay simply so you can say there's gay men/woman in your game, why bother? If you aren't trying to push a view on someone, what is the point of bringing attention to this subject matter in the game if there's no purpose? Why do you think the world will be more "alive"? Do you have actual ideas to immerse gay related situation into a session to add flavor, or is this just a general point that you want the party to be aware of in your world?

Last year I ran a scenario where a ventriloquist Bard was telling jokes on stage in a tavern with his wooden puppet. He had a PC participate on stage. There was no point in this other than to make the players laugh & to make the world come alive. It worked GREAT!

But I didn't tell them every session that they see comedians here and there and that this section of town is known for having lots of comedians. My opinion, making general observations doesn't bring the world alive. If you want something in the game, it needs to be used and there needs to be a reason it's being used. Otherwise, I'd think you have an agenda.

 

[Agback]

I am interested in hearing about the experiences of others in the community. Have you DMed or played in any games in which there were gay / bi-sexual NPC's or PC's? If so, did it distract the group or cause unnecessary problems?

Yep. Apart from realistic contemporary and SF games that have had a light sprinkling of gay and lesbian charcters in them, and apart from teh fact taht one of my friends is gay and usually plays gay characters, my non-European non-Mediaeval fantasy setting Gehennum has a set of sexual mores modelled on those of Ancient Greece, including conventionalised loving relationships between young men and adolescent protegés and a number of military units based on the Sacred Band of Thebes. This causes a bit of embarrassment to young straight players when they first encounter the setting, and I probably wouldn't invite a homophobe or yong teenager to play. Otherwise there are no problems. Even socially conservative (by Australian standards) players in their young twenties seem to be okay with charcters in such relationships so long as their characters are the older partners and their NPC eromenoi are good-looking and have prestigious social connections.

 

[Philotomy Jurament]

I'm of the same opinion as Oryan77.

 

[Agback]

I've never understood the point on bringing attention to homosexuality in a game other than to have an agenda and push your own opinions on people. If a DM told me, "it's common for there to be gay couples in this world" and he's pointing out to me every session that I see gay couples...I would take this as the DM trying to teach me that it's ok for people to be gay in real life.

Well, I don't think that that is what I am doing with my game, because I would be preaching to the converted. My gaming group (not the present one, but the one I had in Canberra with which I developed my most successful settings) includes gay and bi players, and the straight majority are all, as far as I know, quuite okay with gays so long as they don't get TMI.

What I think I am doing when I present a setting with different sexual mores than my own society's is the same as when I have significantly non-human members of society, different marriage structures, different inheritance laws, different political arrangements etc.: playing with ideas. Making worlds and societies that are as interesting as ours, but not like ours.

 

[Graf]

World design is in your head (and notes) so it doesn’t really matter what you put there. Presentation (and knowing the players) is key.

So if the players need to secretly contact a minor court functionary and you’ve decided that x has one of these pillow friend relationships (and not an open one) then the important thing is to just present it as part of the world.

I.e. “One of your contacts informs you that he’s heard the courtier frequently stays with an up and coming playwright at the playwright’s apartments. He travels heavily cloaked and alone to and from the apartments.”
The important information is that this is a way to contact the courtier away from prying eyes; what the courtier is doing there isn’t discussed.

The player’s will, through their character behavior, signal the degree of interest.
Players who are uncomfortable with the whole thing will just try to approach the courtier on the street. Groups that aren’t squeamish about the subject might try to get in with the playwright to have an easier method of access.

As you’ve indicated making a bit statement about how gay people are called “pillow friends” and common in the world, etc. etc. isn’t the way to go particularly.

 

[shilsen]

My Eberron game includes gay and bisexual NPCs, but since most of the PCs don't try or want to have sexual relations with anyone, it really hasn't come up in play. I've commented in passing to my players on the fact that in a world with fairly common members of society that can actually change gender (changelings), sexuality and gender is viewed with less rigidity than in our world.

 

[RangerWickett]

I run a modern game and I live in Atlanta, so homosexuality is not a taboo topic. So far the only sexuality in the game, though, has been a heterosexual romance.

None of the players are gay, so we don't think about it much, the same way that none of the players play Asian characters since they're not Asian. They default to being the same way they personally are, and only make differences when they consciously choose to.

 

[Shemeska]

It usually doesn't come up in the game as a major thing, and when it does, it gets handled with realism and class regardless of the orientation that happens to be involved. I neither make light of or gloss over the sexuality of a PC or NPC regardless of what they happen to be.

I've had a rather open hetero relationship between one male PC (Clueless) and a female eladrin (who was a member of the Sensates). I had a long term hetero relationship between a male PC (Tristol) and a female NPC (Nisha). I had an instance with a Tanar'ri brothel that was pretty much anything goes, but it was alluded to or glossed over, and was never really visited by the PCs (it was put next to an establishment owned by the PCs to try to drive them into selling their property). I had a hetero relationship (rather... complex...) between a male fiend and a female guardinal celestial PC. And some others in there, mostly hetero.

I also had a decidedly bisexual and gender ambiguous yugoloth named Nerath the Maruader. He/she/it was normally male in public, but tended to oftentimes embrace the natural default of his species to be dual gendered. This resulted in awkward situations for mortals who tend to come in one of two forms and tended to be attracted to the opposite form, but this didn't prevent one PC from getting involved with him/her/it on a purely sexual level.

I've also had some allusions to gay or lesbian oriented characters, but mostly it's been straight with some bisexual characters, and it's never something the game focuses on. It simply happens, that how people are. It's just another facet of a character, but it doesn't define them any more than any other character trait does, if not less so.

Then I had one PC attempt to tap into the mind of a bound archfiend. This resulted in getting sucked into a mental construct that might as well have been physical, and some hetero but rather disturbing, overtly sexual, and extremely violent activity on both the PC and fiend's part. Suffice to say, this isn't making it into any story hour of mine. Not in detail.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

Alright, before I begin I am going to ask that this be kept mature and civil. I'm not interested in opinions on the subject, I am interested in your personal experiences or how you would react or feel.

I should also clarify what I mean by distraction. In the world such relationships would be viewed as common everyday things. People really wouldn't bat an eyelash at them. Yet, my concern is having players focus in on such NPC characters, simply based on their sexual orientation. Something like that, depending on the severity, might be considered by me as an out of character action. My goal wouldn't be to distract players, but rather more strongly immerse them in a fictional world.

In campaigns I've been in, sex is for NPCs. It's used as part of NPC motivations (eg the mayor's lover is being held hostage by villains, or the head villain is ticked that you burned down his favorite whorehouse, etc).

PCs occasionally make eyes at a "hot" NPC, make the occasional joke, might visit whores or even be married (the spouses never adventure with them). I once saw a seduction in-game that took maybe two minutes (a very charismatic character seduced a scientist) - hardly a timewaster. As far as I know, every person in my current group is straight, and all of our PCs have been straight. IME, heterosexual relationships are just not important in game and are not distracting or time consuming in any way. I don't see how homosexual relationships could be any more distracting.

We did have the occasional gay player in other groups. No distractions there.

In one vampire campaign, we had a straight player play a gay vampire. Again, no big deal. I think the character was told they found a male individual attractive once. (None of our vampire characters ever had sexual relationships in game anyway, so no big deal.) And finally, we had an amazing vampire campaign one shot run by a transgendered individual. Once again, no big deal.

I wouldn't make a big deal about gay NPCs, either. Instead of having villagers "shocked" at their "amoral behavior", you could just pass on the information that Paul is dating John.

 

[Goblyn]

For the most part, we play a light-hearted beer and pretzels game(well, usuallly its beer and pizza) where it doesn't come up much. I did use a heterosexual relationship between a new PC and an existing DMPC to tie him to the group easily. We discussed it beforehand, and it worked well.

Anything graphic was "...fade to black."