. With the inclusiveness commandment of August, there will be no anti-homosexuality groups/factions or independents, or burnings of LGBT, because that could offend someone, even if it creates suitable villains for the pcs to fight against. PC is here to stay in that regard.
Think how they think, grasp their politics and you can get a good idea as to what will not be coming. Some things they won't touch with a ten foot pole.
I would be horribly disappointed if the best enemy trait they can throw against me is LGBT. If I am going to fight someone they better be a criminal doing horrible acts. I have zero interest in seeing a villain who is defined by being LGBT as their main trait.
I fear just the opposite. IE that they WILL portray religion as being a witch burning, inquisition type thing full of corruption.
They are more likely to portray religion as a corrupt villain than anything. It will be a corrupt religious leader we wind up fighting and I will have to deal with a bunch of anti-religious comments.
Hopefully they don't give ANY side ammunition to use in their ANTI campaign.
With the inclusiveness commandment of August, there will be no anti-homosexuality groups/factions or independents, or burnings of LGBT, because that could offend someone, even if it creates suitable villains for the pcs to fight against. PC is here to stay in that regard.
Think how they think, grasp their politics and you can get a good idea as to what will not be coming. Some things they won't touch with a ten foot pole.
What's with the fixation on August? You've mentioned this in a few posts.
Is this because of the trans character in Wrath of the Righteous? If so, keep in mind that the prior two adventure paths had also trans NPCs in them. This is nothing new at this point. If it's about LGBT characters in general, they've been in their products pretty much from the beginning of the setting, from what I understand.
I fear just the opposite. IE that they WILL portray religion as being a witch burning, inquisition type thing full of corruption.
They are more likely to portray religion as a corrupt villain than anything. It will be a corrupt religious leader we wind up fighting and I will have to deal with a bunch of anti-religious comments.
Hopefully they don't give ANY side ammunition to use in their ANTI campaign.
They're putting out a hardcover about the gods of Golarion next year. That would seem to indicate that they're not going to relegate religion in the setting to villainy, witch burning, corruption or what have you. (Or at least, no more so than they do anything else.)
well...the basic difference as noted by others, between history or even book fantasy settings not run in a DnD, and Golarion, is the real existence of gods of empirical alignment. So any good cleric that tries to, say burn homosexuals at the stake, is going to be bereft of spells. If it gets bad enough, the diety might even send heralds or outsiders in to yell at them. Given the influence of divine power in Golarion. The same goes for sexism. And this goes back quite a ways...the Empyreal Lords were popular in Varisia as far back as thousands of years ago
Really, the only evil gods in Pathfinder that are openly worshipped in any major Inner Sea nation are Zon Kuthon and Asmodeus. Zon Kuthon doesn't seem like a god that would care who your partner is, so as long as your sex is as sadomasochistic as possible he is cool. Asmodeus is definitely for misogyny, but his worshippers don't seem like the type that would judge a person harshly based on sexual orientation, as long as you were not the submissive person in the relationship.
Slavery does exist in Golarion, but at least some of the campaign gods seem to be more ambivalent about that. Personally...I would expect that we would see more in the way of Anti-slavery crusades, but the more militant good gods seem to have their hands full in Lastwall and the Worldwound for now.
To be honest, I actually would like to see an evil outsider associated with this sort of persecution, since we seem to have a demon associated with about every other form of vice and persecution. But then some people...might get a bit prickly about that.
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I was rather confused by the mention of August myself, KSF, seeing as the post I've quoted below is from the first page of this thread, five years ago.
Is it really necesary to have everything on earth f%# friendly? Sexual orientation is something that has no business being incorporated into an rpg.... if you feel the need for such perversion you could add it yourself.
I don't hold anything personally against the gay community like some people do, but i for one am sick of it being shoved into the face of the world through the popular media.Nobody really cares to see that, and a certain level of decency that once seemed to exist is rapidly fading away.Keep it to yourselves.Without getting too riled up by your post...
Yes. It is necessary. Just as it's necessary to move beyond having every PC and NPC in the game be white. And why it's important to show women in positions of power (be they bad like Queen Ileosa or good like Mayor Kendra or whatever.) It's called diversity, and it's a Good Thing. If diversity isn't something that you're interested in, Paizo products might not be for you.
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I'm pretty sure the "inclusiveness commandment" he's talking about is James Jacobs saying that they are not going to stop putting LGBT characters in the products, and that he gives contributors this note: 'LGBT characters exist in Golarion, please include them'. Why he's so focused on August, I don't know, because James has said the same thing for the last five years... Just this time it is specifically about "T" and that's something 3.5L doesn't think belongs in Golarion.
I'm pretty sure the "inclusiveness commandment" he's talking about is James Jacobs saying that they are not going to stop putting LGBT characters in the products, and that he gives contributors this note: 'LGBT characters exist in Golarion, please include them'. Why he's so focused on August, I don't know, because James has said the same thing for the last five years... Just this time it is specifically about "T" and that's something 3.5L doesn't think belongs in Golarion.
Yeah, I thought it might be Jacobs' statement as well, but as everyone's been pointing out, what he stated there was not a new statement. (And in the recent post it was implied that what he was saying was not particularly new within the company as well.)
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I'm pretty sure the "inclusiveness commandment" he's talking about is James Jacobs saying that they are not going to stop putting LGBT characters in the products, and that he gives contributors this note: 'LGBT characters exist in Golarion, please include them'. Why he's so focused on August, I don't know, because James has said the same thing for the last five years... Just this time it is specifically about "T" and that's something 3.5L doesn't think belongs in Golarion.Yeah, I thought it might be Jacobs' statement as well, but as everyone's been pointing out, what he stated there was not a new statement. (And in the recent post it was implied that what he was saying was not particularly new within the company as well.)
I thought Filario Grantslem was kind of a clumsy attempt, but at least they were TRYING. And they've gotten better from there (I also really liked the barbarian - evil alignment and everything, no NPC in the Codex had a "better" alignment than Neutral anyway except for the Paladins (many of whom were jerk butts despite being lawful good) and the Iconic pregens).
I thought Filario Grantslem was kind of a clumsy attempt, but at least they were TRYING. And they've gotten better from there
Completely agree. Miss Feathers could probably be considered an early, well-intentioned, clumsy attempt as well. (Bioware seems to be following a similar course, from clumsy to less clumsy, with Dragon Age, if what I've seen of the trans character in their recent comics is any indication.)
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I thought Filario Grantslem was kind of a clumsy attempt, but at least they were TRYING. And they've gotten better from thereCompletely agree. Miss Feathers could probably be considered an early, well-intentioned, clumsy attempt as well. (Bioware seems to be following a similar course, from clumsy to less clumsy, with Dragon Age, if what I've seen of the trans character in their recent comics is any indication.)
Conversely, the halfling from the NPC Codex (whose name I can't remember because I don't have the book in front of me at the moment) is kind of exciting for me because her situation shows that there are nonmagical as well as magical transitions in Golarion, and - like in our world - people transition according to the resources available to them, as much as anything else.
You know what would float my boat? A male human LG paladin who is bisexual. Take that, haters!
How about a male goblin LG paladin who is polymorphously perverse?
[Bats eyelashes]
What I was getting at is adding those factions even if they are small makes Golarion more realistic. Think of how Shards of the Heavens had the White Light Collective.
They were a small faction and only really active in a very tiny region of the World. BUT in that world they were a brilliant early level adversary for PCs from the surrounding areas. Basically they were representative of the Knights of the Golden Cross(Small Sub-Order* of the Knights Templar).
Their only purpose was to give GMs a good basic adversary for PCs in that part of the world. In this case it was Levels 1-10 for the entire order.
NOTE: Knightly Sub-Orders of that type are more of Regiments/Battalions/Companies/etc inside the order. In this case even the cruelest of the Templar disliked them because they refused to use the main symbol and went against the Main tenants of the main order by refusing to aid any woman and hunted anyone they thought was unholy.
One must also remember that these orders can easily be written out. Like in SotH they had a side-bar with an alternate history explanation that the order had already been destroyed by the PCs time period.
You know what would float my boat? A male human LG paladin who is bisexual. Take that, haters!That would be.....completely normal and unremarkable. Also it would be highly unlikely to ever come up in a game. Unless there was a specific plot hook involving, say, someone being kidnapped from his formerly happy poly household and how both his male and female partners react to that. Now it makes sense that you would have reason to know that he is bisexual. Otherwise, probably not so much, unless you are close enough to the character that he would talk about his personal life rather than the usual logistics of killing monsters and taking their stuff. Or whatever the campaign is about.
If the setting doesn't happen to need to show him having more than one partner, it might be a dubious sell to overtly show at all. The point is inclusion, not "Let's make this game a banner advertisement for LGBT!" Inclusivity has to be secondary to good storytelling, or it's ham-handed at best.
I wish it were completely normal and unremarkable. If you can find an example of this in print, anywhere, in any book on Earth, I'll be impressed.
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I said my character was homosexual so that the GM's Succubus couldn't seduce him.
"You never said he was gay during the entire campaign!"
"YOU NEVER ASKED"
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Don't ask, don't spell.
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You know what would float my boat? A male human LG paladin who is bisexual. Take that, haters!
We may well have had one. The thing is, though, the bios for most characters don't talk about their orientations -- they just talk about with whom the characters are in relationships. So the only way you'd find out if a particular character is bi is if something happened along the lines of Character is in relationship, ex shows up, ex is of different gender than current partner.
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You know what would float my boat? A male human LG paladin who is bisexual. Take that, haters!
My bisexual male human LG Lymnieris worshipper isn't a paladin, but is a cleric. And a prostitute...
That's....close..ish? Right?
(my tiefling paladin probably is bisexual, but he'd have to come to grips with his issues over sex period before he even realized it. Angst)
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You know what would float my boat? A male human LG paladin who is bisexual. Take that, haters!
How about characters where their sexual orientation is not important? With depth in other, more relevant areas. Such as, what have they done (not who they have done), where do their allegiances lie in the setting (making it less about them being inclusive representations) and what are their long term goals (thus moving beyond the goal of being an inclusive representation). With so much potential detail and depth, waving around the label of the bisexual paladin seems reductive. Great, can be convinced or convince themselves to have sex with pretty much anyone, and they are possibly genderfluid. And?
Not everything, or all that is new, has to be about your interest group you know? Or putting your identity in the game. Perhaps play something else other than your sex drive.
This issue is about political representation. One of the big mistakes I've seen dms pull, is to go hard with their politics and force it on to a setting. It makes the setting an uncomfortable place for those that aren't on board or very interested in the rosy presentations of one side. The last time I saw this, it was actually a series of games by a very Christian dm (so I am not just saying trans political proponents are the only issue), and it was faith heavy, paladins very superheroes, and everyone else was a bit inferior to clerics or pallies.
The best games, are where you leave your politics and your identity at the door. Roleplaying isn't just about playing you or someone similar to you, or always making sure your political group is in a world far different to our own.
You know what would float my boat? A male human LG paladin who is bisexual. Take that, haters!We may well have had one. The thing is, though, the bios for most characters don't talk about their orientations -- they just talk about with whom the characters are in relationships. So the only way you'd find out if a particular character is bi is if something happened along the lines of Character is in relationship, ex shows up, ex is of different gender than current partner.
Sounds good, excellent. Great to hear!
There are a lot more important and varied things that can go into the bios. A fully formed character isn't an orientation or list of relationships. :)
I said my character was homosexual so that the GM's Succubus couldn't seduce him.
"You never said he was gay during the entire campaign!"
"YOU NEVER ASKED"
They are a crack anti-succubus team. Who have never been seduced. :)
If no one else can help, and you can find them, maybe you can hire, the G-team!
RJGrady said a bisexual male human paladin would float his boat.
The character's bisexuality seemed the most important and emphasised factor. Ha ha!
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You know what would float my boat? A male human LG paladin who is bisexual. Take that, haters!How about characters where their sexual orientation is not important?
But my sexual orientation is important to me, so why can't it be important to characters?
There are some characters out there where it is very important to their characters, like Captain Jack Harkness *swoon*
His sexuality is core to his character just as his eye color, personality, and experiences are core to his character.
Humans are community-based creatures, and our relationships with other humans play a HUGE role in our personalities and every day lives, and our sexuality certainly plays a part in that. Playing up to differences, flaws, and traits is what builds depth in characters, and makes them so much more real and interesting than a character that shows up and has *no* relationships with other people.
Sexuality isn't the only thing that should be focused on in a character's identity, but it certainly shouldn't be ignored, either.
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A common complaint on these forums is the lack of a core half-orc iconic. (Yay for Imrijka. Did I spell that right?)
"I'd really like to see a half-orc iconic!" does not imply that the character is one-dimensional outside of their race.
"I'd really like to see a bisexual paladin!" likewise does not imply as such.
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RJGrady said a bisexual male human paladin would float his boat.
The character's bisexuality seemed the most important and emphasised factor. Ha ha!
Preeeety sure they were joking, what with the "take that, haters!" at the end. If you missed the sarcasm...
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You know what would float my boat? A male human LG paladin who is bisexual. Take that, haters!How about characters where their sexual orientation is not important? With depth in other, more relevant areas. Such as, what have they done (not who they have done), where do their allegiances lie in the setting (making it less about them being inclusive representations) and what are their long term goals (thus moving beyond the goal of being an inclusive representation). With so much potential detail and depth, waving around the label of the bisexual paladin seems reductive. Great, can be convinced or convince themselves to have sex with pretty much anyone, and they are possibly genderfluid. And?
If someone labels themselves as bisexual, is that reductive? I'm just asking, because I guess I know a lot of "characters" lacking "depth." Sometimes a label is just a label. You can call it tokenism or whatever, but if you're a hetero white male, you get tokens in everything, all the time.
The best games, are where you leave your politics and your identity at the door.
That doesn't ever happen. The thing is, if you don't take an active position, you accept the status quo. And the status quo is pretty political and it does intersect with people's identities. You know the old quip about science-fiction? "The technology of tomorrow with the politics of yesterday." There can be truth in that.
I'm not a bad gamer because I want to push my agenda in the game. Otherwise, everyone who, as you say, leaves their politics and identity behind, is also a bad gamer, because that furthers an agenda, too. If you are really serious about treating people as whole people, and exploring "depth," I think one area to start is dealing with real people as whole individuals, and not consigning people's ideas, feelings, and emotions to labels and "politics" and so forth.
So, going back to what I said. I'm not suggesting anyone put someone else through an experience they don't want. I'm just saying I, personally, would find it gratifying to see a LG paladin, straight as an arrow type, unambiguously identified as bisexual in Golarion. It would make me smile. I would enjoy it. Some people like humongous swords or sorceresses who glue on their clothes or magical lighting trains. Me? I want to see a BISEXUAL PALADIN who, in my mind, could be played by Ben Afleck without stretching himself too much. That would be awesome and great.
K, you are serious, and you have a well-thought out explanation so I stand corrected :)