How do you handle homosexuality in your campaigns?


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RPG Superstar 2011 Top 16

Thanks Jessica and Ambrosia.

To follow up with that: I think you make an interesting point on race v culture. And maybe that's where some of my roadblocks lie. As far as I understand history and our great cultural stories, it's clear that the "LGBTQ race" has existed for millennia. However, from as far as I am aware and from the cultural stories that I read (and these stories are fundamentally what I'm trying to recreate when I run my games), there was no "LGBTQ culture".

Meaning, that to varying degrees, throughout history&stories gays were mostly closeted. And the modern concept of "openly gay" or "gay pride" (not to mention the medical breakthrough of post-op transsexuality) did not exist in any form.

Now the gist I've picked up is that only having closeted gays is discriminatory and tantamount to racism against the LGBTQ community. (Because the need to have a closet implies a largely discriminatory setting.) But I'm having trouble figuring out how to write openly LGBTQ characters into my world and have it many any sense, and to be appropriate. Hence my Latino analogy.

Or am I mistaken, and "closeted only" is a fair goal in all of this?

Sovereign Court

LGBTQ aren't a race. They're people. Just like you and me. Only their boys like boys and their girls like girls. Or both. Or boys want to be girls and vice versa. Or they are.

As long as you understand that whom they choose to sleep with and spend their lives with doesn't affect you in ANY meaningful way, everything is fine.

Also, you can add oppression of the "sexually different" in your world if you want. I don't. Unless there are some kids who mock the local gay blacksmith that he likes boys.

Point being, you're making a fantasy world. There is absolutely no need to make it exactly as our medieval world. Because it isn't. Change what you think needs changing. That is why imagination is there for.

RPG Superstar 2011 Top 16

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My use of the term "LGBTQ race" was only to help make a contrasting point and help in my response to Jessica's post. It's not how I conceptualize the situation otherwise.

You indicate that I should "change what I think needs changing" and that would be "nothing; heteronormativity has served me well up through now", which I have been told by some well-reasoned points is wrong, which is why I am here.

And you hit one of points on the head when you said "doesn't affect you in ANY meaningful way". It clearly does affect me (or rather, my NPCs): if I am a king and a grandfather, and my come-of-age son is gay, and he decides not to take a wife, then that will break our dynasty. So I have every incentive, as a king looking to continue my dynasty's hold on the throne, to force my son to "take one for the team" and place familial duty over personal choice. Which is the beginning and essence of LGBTQ discrimination and closeting.

Since I see "duty over freedom" as an assumed component of most all cultural stories that I read (King Arthur, Thousand Arabian Nights, Viking Sagas, etc), and these stories are fundamentally what I'm retelling at my table, I seem to be at an impasse. One that I can't see a way across myself. So rather than give up and remain strictly heteronormative, I'm asking for help from those offering it.

Liberty's Edge

Erik, uhh, excuse me if I've got you wrong, but I don't really understand what the issue is.

Right there, your example with the king's grandson being gay, but being pressured to take a wife? Sounds like interesting storytelling to me. Which side is morally right, which side will the PCs support? There are potentially even solutions that benefit both sides (encouraging the grandson to take a... hmm, male equivalent of 'mistress', or perhaps some kind of magical solution to male x male progeny).

Isn't that exactly the kind of thing you want to do?

RPG Superstar 2011 Top 16

Hi Alice. As an isolated event, being showcased for its uniqueness, is this interesting and acceptable to drive a plot around? Yes, that sounds very interesting.

But the purpose of the majority of the NPCs in my game are not to headline plotpoints. They're just backup and part of the setting material, and are not supposed to be stealing the show. And if my quota is that I'm supposed to make 10% of my NPC population LGBTQ, then this model becomes unsustainable. I either need to closet them all (and be done with it), or have them all be openly LGBTQ (and be done with it). I'm trying to be inclusive and include side flavor, not move it into the center stage and take over from the story I'm trying to tell.

Sovereign Court

Or have them, like i said, be people. Going to extremes will do you no good.


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Erik Freund wrote:

Hi Alice. As an isolated event, being showcased for its uniqueness, is this interesting and acceptable to drive a plot around? Yes, that sounds very interesting.

But the purpose of the majority of the NPCs in my game are not to headline plotpoints. They're just backup and part of the setting material, and are not supposed to be stealing the show. And if my quota is that I'm supposed to make 10% of my NPC population LGBTQ, then this model becomes unsustainable. I either need to closet them all (and be done with it), or have them all be openly LGBTQ (and be done with it). I'm trying to be inclusive and include side flavor, not move it into the center stage and take over from the story I'm trying to tell.

Of course, for most NPCs other than the king's heir, it's much less important.

Spinster aunts and bachelor uncles. They often can provide much help raising nieces and nephews and can be helped by them in old age.

And most fantasy worlds aren't as harsh as the real one is. All the monsters and other adventuring type risks aside, they don't usually seem so poised on the edge of starvation. Agriculture isn't quite as subsistence level. Even a minimal amount of magic - even just basic knowledge derived from magic (or the gods) can make a huge difference in things like disease and crop yield. Life not being quite so hard (when your village isn't being burnt down by a dragon) gives a bit more leeway for not everyone pairing up and making babies constantly.

Liberty's Edge

Erik: Probably the rest of the 10% comes from the hundreds of thousands of undescribed commoners walking around the streets, the thousands of scarcely-mentioned craftsmen and women or merchants the PCs might only briefly interact with, and the hundreds of noble families that make up all the aristocracy. It's not about being closeted - it's that it's never been particularly relevant to the story.

An occasional important NPC is queer (such as in the case of your king's grandson). Most of the rest of the time, it just never comes up. Maybe you chuck in a lesbian couple running the orphanage or something, if it becomes relevant. The fact that you have occasional appearances is basically enough to say "These people exist in this world!". You don't need to explicitly specify when one character is queer or not (much like you probably don't explicitly specify when one background NPC is of a given race or gender unless it becomes relevant).

EDIT: thejeff's response makes me wonder if the issue is about historicity and/or the need for everyone to breed.


Erik Freund wrote:
And the modern concept of "openly gay" or "gay pride" (not to mention the medical breakthrough of post-op transsexuality) did not exist in any form.

Transgender people existed before sexual reassignment surgery. Also: magic. Magic exists in the setting. You don't need surgical procedures if you can just have a spell cast instead.

In general, magic really wrecks havoc with a lot of the assumptions that get brought up for why same-sex sexual behavior would be marginalized. This is especially the case for things like the king's grandson example, where the characters in question have the wealth and power that they should have access to magic. The queen needs to produce an heir but her lover is a woman? Alter self for a night solves that problem.


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Interestingly enough, in certain cultures, transgender people were considered especially blessed of the gods and often served as tribal shamans. They have always held an important place in certain societies, valued for their connection to the sacred and their abundant creativity.


Erik,

I’m sorry if I’m being dense, but is the difficulty that you prefer the settings of your games to draw more closely on historical medieval and earlier cultures, and you’re running into problems with how LGBTQ people might fit into them? I’m not sure, but I think some of the issues you’re grappling with are interrelated and, frankly, are already implied by some of the other baseline assumptions that many games make to be welcoming to people wanting to play a range of characters, based on my naïve misunderstanding of historical realities, at least.

For example, why should primogeniture be such a thing in a fantasy setting? If one child turns out to be disinclined to reproduce, why not just skip ahead to the next in line, or promote a niece/nephew to the position of heir? The only motivation I can imagine is the disagreeable business of anxieties over paternity, which, to say nothing of magical solutions (divination) - depending on the setting and system you’re using - should probably be less of an issue if your game is more friendly to female characters than historical patriarchal societies. Why does the king or queen’s heir need to be this specific child? You could ring all sorts of changes on inheritance while keeping things more or less close to Western pseudo-medieval fantasy, such as with matrilineal systems through sisters’ sons, possibly only kicking in when there isn’t a “suitable” child of the reigning monarch available. Additional refinements can allow princesses inheriting and so on, all while conveying the idea that the usual thing is for the firstborn to inherit in more or less the fairy tale way we might expect, and that an uncooperative heir causes dynastic difficulties.

While I’ve been writing this, thejeff seems to have put it more elegantly and without dragging in intersectionality. Basically, just how forgiving is the fantasy world, and, for that matter, our own? Maybe I’m far too ingenuous for my own good, but would more open exclusive homosexuality really doom early societies in either the fantasy or real world? Malthus, and all that, to say nothing of cultural pressures that might have lingering effects even in a more liberal fantasy world, like still desperately trying for a son after a series of daughters. If, in your game, any of those could in principle inherit, even if the preference would be for a particular child, and if they would be expected to take care of their parents in any case, I’m not sure homosexuality would pose more of a difficulty. Families make do.
Other possibilities include the question of who feeds Rome, offers the bread and circuses. If I recall the calendar correctly, about a third of it has one festival or another going on, which means not everyone is going to be working, and still the empire rattles along, at least as long as there are barbarians to oppress. More medievally, Jacquart and Thomasset (? I think? Forgive me, the precise reference eludes me, though I could dig it up, if you would like.) have even suggested that The Art of Courtly Love was also a manual for non-procreative sex, and whether or not their interpretation is correct, if it is at least conceivable, how scandalous aristocratic proclivities (adulterous or not, and so on) might have been may be more complicated than we normally think, which can be incorporated into your game. Ultimately, although you would have to talk to people that would know more about all of this than I do, I’m sure there are several ways for you to be more historical while also allowing for more openly LGBTQ characters.

Is that sort of what you’re looking for? If so, I encourage your efforts to have your historical cake and eat it too, in your games, and only hope I haven’t tried everyone’s patience with a wall of text. :)


There seems to be an interesting contrast between people who wish to embrace historicity, with all its foibles and flaws, and those who prefer a better world. Either take has its appeal.


How do other races play into this? If you're going for historicity, but still using non-human races, do they share all the same prejudices? Race, gender, sexual preference, etc? Even class structures.
Does it even make sense to talk about historicity when considering sexism in dwarvish culture, for example?

Does it make a difference if those races are assumed to live mostly separately or they commonly live in the same countries and towns?


Jaelithe wrote:
There seems to be an interesting contrast between people who wish to embrace historicity, with all its foibles and flaws, and those who prefer a better world. Either take has its appeal.

Personally, I tend to aim for various, usually high, fantasy genres in my fantasy gaming. Reading fantasy is what led me to gaming in the first place after all.

D&D/PF always seemed better suited to epic fantasy than to more "realistic" grim and gritty sub-genres. There are other games that might handle those better.

Realistic medieval fiction has never been a great interest of mine, so I've never really had much desire to game in that kind of setting. I've occasionally thought about running something, but I don't think I could pull it off. I'd want to go too far with it. Wouldn't want to use PF to start with, stick with something with a much lower power curve. And I'd want to actually emphasize the class and sex restrictions, since there isn't much point otherwise. Most players would just get themselves killed off or at least outlawed far too fast. Unless playing as nobility and thus part of the oppressive power structure. Which I doubt would go over well, unless I whitewashed it or they didn't take it seriously, which again would defeat the purpose.


To be absolutely frank, thejeff ... I think you're underestimating your ability to pull it off.

I read historical fiction chronically, nigh constantly. We all gravitate to what interests us, after all.

As to how I handle other races ... I allow myself to be guided by the traditional mythological perspectives espoused in the applicable literature, but don't feel entirely bound by it.

You're quite right: Issues like elven mores and dwarven prejudices must be to an extent created by the GM. I enjoy the challenge of doing so when it becomes applicable.

And now, Mr. Sandman's gonna bring me a dream. My fever and chills are gettin' to me.

Good night, all.


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I am always Amused (yes capital A Amused!) how this is such a thing for some people.

Like it can't simply exist without being a huge big blow out deal. There is no way that it can simply be there in the background just like everything else in a campaign until it's relevant.

It's almost like the only way they think it can be included is if somehow it's in your face louder than life and constant.

Which just strikes me as incredibly insanely weird -- heterosexuality never takes that huge of a place in my campaigns, why should homosexuality? Yeah occasionally it pops up, but it's an every adventure, every encounter thing.


Wait, what? You mean I'm not supposed to roll before each encounter to check "compatbility"? Wow, that's going to save me a lot of time in he future, what with all lose tables and cross reference charts, whew


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More rambling thoughts:

Did people have these problems with ethnicity at one point?

Was there a point when someone asked, "How do I include Asians and Blacks in my campaign?"

Or said, "I can't include those in my campaign because..."

Or, "I don't like to mix politics with my relaxation."

Is it the same way people encounter different religions feel? If I had someone at my table that lived in the same world I do would they be at a loss over the fact that the fantasy world I weave for them doesn't have their actual god(s) in it?

Perhaps if I played with a libertarian or a communist, or a capitalist would I have the same issues if there were charities in the game or corporations, or governments that control (or do not control) the means of production?

I mean I really don't get it and I find it worrisome. Are other people's fantasies and imaginations so far beyond my own that in their little worlds they can't phantom someone just existing in them?

Is my own imagination so weak that I have to rely heavily on the actual world to influence and accept my own fantasy worlds?

It is a conundrum...for who and how I'm not entirely sure, but it definitely must be a conundrum.


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Quote:
How do you handle homosexuality in your campaigns?

Tastefully*

*and often with a retro disco heavy synth sound track


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Generic Dungeon Master wrote:
Quote:
How do you handle homosexuality in your campaigns?

Tastefully*

*and often with a retro disco heavy synth sound track

How so you manage to combine "tastefully" and "a retro disco heavy synth sound track"?


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Easy. Hire Chic.

Like so.

Mmm, mmm, mmm. Tasty.


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Although, actually, there's not many synths there.

Howzabout "Hire Vince Clarke"?


Never had one come up. Then again, to be quite fair, I've played 5 years and never seen a romance evolve in character either. Heck I've barely even seen friendships with npc's.

Silver Crusade

Have you ever dealt with a hetero couple owning an inn, holding title, etc.?


|dvh| wrote:
Have you ever dealt with a hetero couple owning an inn, holding title, etc.?

nope

Silver Crusade

Out of curiosity then, are your games just dungeon crawls?


nope, they aren't. Just never met anyone who actually had a spouse in there.

Met a few npcs who had kids, but never seen anyone with a spouse of any kind.


I was going to say 'you must be playing homebrew then but then I thought about RotRL which our current party is in. We're in the 5th book and we've literally never met a married couple.

We've met people in love but theres no marriage.

We've met men with dead wives, women with (even recent) dead husbands... Single fathers... siblings with single parents...

Statistically you'd think we'd have ran into a named NPC with a living spouse but thinking back on it, you're right. Not a single one so far....

Wierd...

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