Stats on couples in PF adventures are clearly needed.
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Okay, I can put down all the flags that this thread's title raised, I think you've presented a reasonable point in a reasonable way.
This is an interesting observation. My groups don't tell to pursue many romances during a campaign, and when they do it tends to be inter-PC. We have seen an increase in romance in Kingmaker, though, which makes sense for the plot. We've seen two romances, both heterosexual between a female PC and a male NPC. One NPC was from the adventure, one the GM invented. I suspect Kingmaker may be above average in this regard as the campaign takes years in-game and so relationships are more likely. Come to think of it, the GM may have swapped preference on the NPC from the book for all I know.
What are your thoughts between a proactive representation of LGBTIQ persons and providing options for any romance in an adventure path?
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"It couldn't hurt to include more non-evil, single men or non-dead straight couples, is all."
I thought of one! :D In RoTRL Sheriff Belor Hemlock is in a heterosexual,non-evil, non-dead relationship with Kaye Tesarani, madam of the Pixie's Kitten. That's practically normal. :D
Not all the LGBcetera relationships are sweetness & light either, Queen Ileosa/Sabina Merrin is pretty dysfunctional. I think I agree with your point though; in particular more married couples with children would be nice.
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Two things:
1. Paizo doesn't state the sexuality of, well, basically anyone. We only know about current (and occasionally past) relationships, and can thus infer some things, but far from everything. So, any problem in terms of love interests pretty much can't be sexuality-based...ie the problem in Reign of Winter isn't that there are no straight male love interests, it's that there are no male love interests period. Or at least so I'd assume based on those APs I've read (haven't read that one yet). Which, while potentially an oversight is not, I think, true of most of the other Adventure Paths.
2. Couples aren't actually especially common in APs. They're much more common in setting books, which if you go through you'll find quite a number of more conventional couples. Indeed, the Sandpoint Paladin/Playwright couple in Sandpoint fall under that banner in many ways, given that it's from the Sandpoint article, not the actual adventure (and that article also includes 4 'straight' couples, including the one mentioned above with the Madam and the Sherriff, for the record).
And thinking about 'straight' couples in APs I think there's also the Heidmarchs. They play a role in Shattered Star, right?
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Yes, it's best to fully read through that first post (we can haz paragraphs please? It helps break up the monotony of text and makes things easier to read!) to get a better understanding of what's being said.
I think seeing some healthy heterosexual (or even bisexual-with-opposite-sex) relationships with the NPCS might be a good thing. That said, I wonder if Paizo defaults toward showing more non-heteronorm relationships with the NPCs as they expect most players to run with male-female relationships?
(That said, one of my groups has an asexual male Orc and a halfling nun for half the group, and the one known straight character chases after more prostitutes than the Iconic Fighter Character! And my other group has a lesbian pair (with half the pair being an NPC), an asexual female half-elf, and a male character who is straight but has had no romantic options for now. So really, I suspect the people drawn to roleplaying games these days tend NOT to be heteronorm for the most part!)
If I recall, the different parts of the adventure path were written by different authors at the same time. I think they both decided to just throw one in without telling each other.
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In the Wrath of the Righteous, there are 2 homosexual couples with Irabeth/Anevia and Sosiel/Aron. So 4/8 of the NPCs that are flagged as important allies to the party are homosexual couples. Of the other 4, only 1 is mentioned as having any existing relationship (Aravashnial), but he got dumped not long before the AP. In the "not in an active and happy homosexual relationship" is also Arushalae, who we can safely conclude is bisexual. So the NPC makeup of the 8 NPCs that are expected to be close to the party is 4 homosexual, 1 straight, 1 bisexual, and 2 completely GM-determinant. Only 3 NPC-NPC relationships are mentioned, 2 homosexual relationships within the ally pool, and 1 heterosexual relationship that was over before the AP began.
In the Half-Dead City, 2 of the 4 NPCs listed in the back are in a homosexual relationship with each other.
So, looking at the past 7 books of AP without reading any supplemental material, it seems like at least recently, in AP-provided NPC-NPC relationships, homosexual relationships are far outnumbering heterosexual relationships. I considered combing through all the APs post-Skull and Shackles to do a tally of NPCs in active relationships mentioned in the NPC sections, but decided not to as I may end up as a player in one of them Shattered Star/Reign of Winter.
As Deadmanwalking pointed out, couples are more commonly identified in the setting books/articles rather than the actual AP. So while the "important to AP" group of NPCs may seem to have a disproportionate number of homosexual relationships, factoring in the setting books may make it seem less disproportionate.
I think seeing some healthy heterosexual (or even bisexual-with-opposite-sex) relationships with the NPCS might be a good thing. That said, I wonder if Paizo defaults toward showing more non-heteronorm relationships with the NPCs as they expect most players to run with male-female relationships?
That was my thought too. However, if they do use that default, I think they may need to be a bit careful with application of that default, lest the underlying message of "non-heteronorm relationships are OK in Golarion" become overstated and preachy. The message is good, but over-emphasis of it could annoy people who just want to play a game.
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I suspect the people drawn to roleplaying games these days tend NOT to be heteronorm for the most part!)
Probably more than in the general population, but not the majority of RPGers, no. I've played in a lot of different RPG groups in London and I'd guess somewhere between 1/10 and 1/5 of players not heterosexual, including new players.
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In general, over representation of minority groups is never a bad thing. They're so under represented in most media, be it books, TV, movies or games that having them over represented in one subject isn't even really gonna make much difference. It's actually kinda cool to see a situation where it's so normal. As a bi guy it certainly helps me feel less like an outsider.
Well, less like one with wings and horns and cloven feet anyway.
Saying that, no, it couldn't hurt to have more straight relationships which don't end in murder. And possibly more unusual ones that do. Honestly, I'd like to see Paizo have more relationship stuff in there books, but I know it's not everyone's cup of tea. I like the social interactions, often more than unleashing cataclysmic energies that render foes down to a fine mist of particles...although that bit's pretty fun too.
Not to get too in-depth into developmental psychology, but people are generally (more or less) bi-sexual; socialization and individual tastes play a heavy role in what is considered "acceptable" (more so than anything "hard-wired"). Just looking at historical accounts (i.e., Greek and other soldiers) or even more modern cases (prisons, late 19th-/early 20th-century society, etc.), where the genders are highly segregated, the conclusion is that most people are fine with doing "what feels good." Perhaps "omni-sexual" would be a better term; especially considering some of the things you can find in the dark corners of the Internet. :-/
Cultural and societal hang-ups have less of an impact than some think.
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Not to get too in-depth into developmental psychology, but people are generally (more or less) bi-sexual;
Umm, no offense, but I would have to seriously dispute that assertion with pretty much every modern study on the prevalence of various sexual orientations, and with our current understanding of the origins of sexual orientation hard-wiring in the brain.
It appears to be entirely of biological origin, with social factors having little to no influence whatsoever in your sexual orientation.
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All I'm going to say is female PCs looking for interesting het-romance with a non-evil NPC might want to roll up an adherent of Shelyn in Shattered Star.
That said, I don't think LGBT couple are too common, though I'd always like to see couples in general pop up more often. More NPC relationships period, really. :)
Not to get too in-depth into developmental psychology, but people are generally (more or less) bi-sexual;Umm, no offense, but I would have to seriously dispute that assertion with pretty much every modern study on the prevalence of various sexual orientations, and with our current understanding of the origins of sexual orientation hard-wiring in the brain.
It appears to be entirely of biological origin, with social factors having little to no influence whatsoever in your sexual orientation.
Due to reproductive imperatives, we are predisposed (statistically) for a hetero-sexual preference. However, bi-sexual (or, as mentioned "omni-sexual") tendencies are pretty heavy factors; hence the "more or less."
Did anybody mention the Love Pentagon in Burnt Offerings with Tsuto, Nualia, Ripnugget, and those two mercenaries? Four potential pairings, all of them straight!
Then again, only one of those pairings is realized when the adventure begins, one of them is too squicky to contemplate, and they're all varying degrees of unhealthy.
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Loy and Latricia Rezbin are also a straight couple who exist in Kingmaker. A human and an elf, and one of the cutest couples ever (he's kind of a country-boy hick, and she's kind of a badass ranger).
*she was
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In my gut, I see it more as a function of trying to make the NPC's memorable. Memorable NPC's usually have a quirk or a trouble that haunts them, making them more 'real' than the generic people. One of the quickest and easiest quirks to add to an NPC is something uncommon, and as insensitive as it sounds, same sex relationships are uncommon (bt common and rare) IRL, and transitively in Golarion.
A few NPC examples:
-Carrion Crown-
Father Grimburrow: a walking deathbed
An entire circus of Freaks
A Lawyer with a crippling stutter
-Skull & Shackles-
A dwarf who's last name is literally "Cusswell"
A mentally handicapped strong arm thug, facial deformations away from being Sloth
All of these guys stick out in my mind, years after I ran them, as memorable NPC's because of their uncommon quirks. Now, that's not to say that Paizo's conscious decision to actively include same sex relationships is a simple design choice to make memorable NPC's, but I still think that the uncommon-ness of it is a contributing factor to making compelling NPC's.
Will the Azaz-Khelru relationship in Half-Dead City cause them to stick out in my mind in two or three years? Maybe, maybe not.
In my gut, I see it more as a function of trying to make the NPC's memorable.
That's an interesting point, Archmagi1, and I believe there's some truth to it, although Paizo's creative team members have also acknowledged they have a progressive social agenda in mind too.
The only problem with the approach you describe is diminishing returns. If every second NPC has a crippling stutter, then that trait fades into the background fairly quickly. So maybe the writers' ultimate goal involves making same-sex relationships seem typical, not "quirky."
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By the end of Book 2 of WotR, I was beginning to feel like the homosexual relationships were forced for that AP.
I agree, Skeld. I personally have no strong feelings about other people's sexual orientations. What people do with whom is their business, so long as its consensual. Whatever.
But I couldn't help but roll my eyes a little as I read through WotR. Commendable effort, but a little heavy-handed.
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At first I didn't even realize the second couple were a gay male couple. I thought one of those two was a girl (can't remember which one).
When (if) I run this, I may very well switch the sex of one of these two, as the whole "protecting my boyfriend/girlfriend from his/her habit" works nicely, while at the same time avoiding muddying the water with multiple homosexual relationships. (Or for that matter having them be close friends of the same gender without sex being involved.)
Hmmm, haven't noticed a ton, but then haven't played a ton of the AP's. I did note that the male heterosexuals were rather distasteful in Council of Theives, so much so that the group I play with (all players are female) almost had a violent revolt at one point (in actual Real life, as in, kicking me out and running a more Women friendly game).
They had female options if one wanted to romance, I think those seem more available overall in AP's (is that correct), at least from indications in CoT, however, if it's an indication of what the other APs are like, perhaps they seem to forget that the occasional woman plays RPGs as well.
I was told CoT was an aberration and other APs are more women friendly, but if they aren't including the romance options for female players, are the other APs a little hostile towards women players?
I was going to run KM next, but could not get hardcopies of the first two parts and was told overall it would be better to run those first, so got second darkness instead (just recently) to try to run that instead.
However, (after taking into consideration what actually is available in hardcopy) what AP IS most female friendly in terms of female gamers?
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Speaking as a straight female gamer, I've found the APs to be frustrating. The female NPCs are all attractive and intriguing (even those who aren't described as particularly sexy in the text get sexy art because fantasy artists like drawing sexy women), while the male NPCs are often explicitly called out as middle-aged or unattractive, in a not-very-subtle attempt to not be competition to the (presumably male) PCs for the hot chicks. Jade Regent is the one exception, in providing an attractive and available male NPC for romance.
I own every Paizo AP from RotRL to WotR and was definitely made to feel like I was not the target audience. It's one of the factors that led to me cancelling my AP subscription last month.
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I would venture to say that it's not the Adventure Path material itself that's "female friendly," but how it's run and who it's played with that makes it more approachable. Searching out for a "more female friendly AP" sets up an expectation that somehow women gamers have different likes and dislikes than others, and makes an assumption about what exactly "female friendly" is. Please don't do either of these things—it continues the damaging stereotype that somehow women need to be treated differently. Stop thinking about players as a gender, and instead as a person. Ask them what they want to play—don't assume. Ask your players what they want to avoid. Ask them what play style they're looking for. Don't assume.
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Oh. Good. It's this thread again.
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Speaking as a straight female gamer, I've found the APs to be frustrating. The female NPCs are all attractive and intriguing (even those who aren't described as particularly sexy in the text get sexy art because fantasy artists like drawing sexy women), while the male NPCs are often explicitly called out as middle-aged or unattractive, in a not-very-subtle attempt to not be competition to the (presumably male) PCs for the hot chicks. Jade Regent is the one exception, in providing an attractive and available male NPC for romance.
I own every Paizo AP from RotRL to WotR and was definitely made to feel like I was not the target audience. It's one of the factors that led to me cancelling my AP subscription last month.
From what I've seen and what's been hinted, Mummy's Mask seems to be leaning in the other direction. I could be wrong, but I think it's going to be well worth checking out for that kind of support.
Speaking as a straight female gamer, I've found the APs to be frustrating. The female NPCs are all attractive and intriguing (even those who aren't described as particularly sexy in the text get sexy art because fantasy artists like drawing sexy women), while the male NPCs are often explicitly called out as middle-aged or unattractive, in a not-very-subtle attempt to not be competition to the (presumably male) PCs for the hot chicks. Jade Regent is the one exception, in providing an attractive and available male NPC for romance.
I own every Paizo AP from RotRL to WotR and was definitely made to feel like I was not the target audience. It's one of the factors that led to me cancelling my AP subscription last month.
That's good to know. I also just bought the entire AP for Jade Regent also.
They were quite vocal that though they put up with CoT, they didn't want something like that...again.
Up to that point was looking at S&S, but after that, and skimming it, decided against that.
Sounds like Jade Regent may be a good choice.
I do have a subscription for MM, so hopefully that will have more female oriented interests?
All I know was CoT did NOT cut it. There has been some slight interest in regards to CC, but I think that has to do with the Vampire fascination a few of them have currently.
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Oh. Good. It's this thread again.
This.
If all the NPCs in relationships were straight, no one currently complaining would be complaining that it was unrealistic for no LGBT couples to exist.
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Oh. Good. It's this thread again.This.
If all the NPCs in relationships were straight, no one currently complaining would be complaining that it was unrealistic for no LGBT couples to exist.
Except, what Joana is saying - with a small handful of exceptions - is also true.
Speaking as a straight female gamer, I've found the APs to be frustrating. The female NPCs are all attractive and intriguing (even those who aren't described as particularly sexy in the text get sexy art because fantasy artists like drawing sexy women), while the male NPCs are often explicitly called out as middle-aged or unattractive, in a not-very-subtle attempt to not be competition to the (presumably male) PCs for the hot chicks.
... but this is a huge thread derail.
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Speaking as a straight female gamer, I've found the APs to be frustrating. The female NPCs are all attractive and intriguing (even those who aren't described as particularly sexy in the text get sexy art because fantasy artists like drawing sexy women), while the male NPCs are often explicitly called out as middle-aged or unattractive, in a not-very-subtle attempt to not be competition to the (presumably male) PCs for the hot chicks. Jade Regent is the one exception, in providing an attractive and available male NPC for romance.
I own every Paizo AP from RotRL to WotR and was definitely made to feel like I was not the target audience. It's one of the factors that led to me cancelling my AP subscription last month.
Yep, I think that's a problem. It tends to be a problem in general with stuff written by straight male writers - 'romance option' = 'hot chicks', whether those characters are straight or gay. To a lesser extent it's also a problem for other players playing straight female PCs; where straight male & gay female PCs get a buffet of attractive options, straight female PCs face slim pickings and a lot of NPC competition! I noticed this running Rise of the Runelords and Curse of the Crimson Throne. In my homebrew 4e game I made the conscious decision to include a potential romantic interest straight male NPC, which worked out very well - he married one of the female PCs last night. :)
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Yep. Also Oleg and Svetlana in Kingmaker.
And there Svetlana pays a huge sum as reward for some soup ingredient. High enough that all of us agreed that this soup has to have something special. Perhaps it is an aphrodisiac or some fertility brew. Since, they love each others and still have no children yet.
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... but this is a huge thread derail.
Not really. The OP states up there in the first post that the thing that drew their attention to the disparity in sexual orientation of NPCs was trying to play a character who liked men and realizing there was nothing there as written for her.
It couldn't hurt to include more non-evil, single men or non-dead straight couples, is all.
Personally, it doesn't matter to me what orientation NPC couples are; unless someone dies or they break up, they're not available to PCs as romance options anyway. Paizo APs cater to PCs who like women. A male PC who's attracted to men would have the same experience of being shut out.
... but this is a huge thread derail.Not really. The OP states up there in the first post that the thing that drew their attention to the disparity in sexual orientation of NPCs was trying to play a character who liked men and realizing there was nothing there as written for her.
It couldn't hurt to include more non-evil, single men or non-dead straight couples, is all.Personally, it doesn't matter to me what orientation NPC couples are; unless someone dies or they break up, they're not available to PCs as romance options anyway. Paizo APs cater to PCs who like women. A male PC who's attracted to men would have the same experience of being shut out.
Though we would have more of the women having no men NPC's to romance type thing, that's an excellent point as well.
For AP's that supposedly "support" the LGBT side of things, they would be remarkably sparse on support of the G side of that equation.
I had not thought about that as another thing of the focus.
Though, I think my players would be more concerned with male NPC's than most other things.
OF course, with 6 women, I'd still have to create romance options for them in many instances IF they all wanted to do the romance thing (luckily, not all of them do that, then again, it may be that there just aren't any candidates).
As another side note, I have noticed there is a difference between the women player group I play with currently and mostly guy groups I've played in previously, with more teamwork, coordination and other things...but that's another thread.
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That...actually seems like a legitimate complaint, thinking about it some more and looking through the APs I've read (Serpent's Skull, CotCT, Legacy of Fire, Second Darkness)...there really do seem to be notably fewer male potential love interests than female.
Something should probably be done about that in the future. However, since the problem isn't precisely consistent with the thread's title, perhaps someone should start a new thread and people who've read through the APs could actually do a count?
That'd be useful and more likely to be taken seriously by the people at Paizo than confusing the issue with how many of X kind of couple there are as this thread has done.
The alleged dearth of non-evil male love interests aside (which seems like a valid concern for people who want additional roleplaying opportunities, as well as pointing out the asymmetry between sexy lady NPCs and sexy gentleman NPCs -- and should indeed have its own thread), I'd like to address the original complaint:
I honestly could not care less about the representation of straight couples in Pathfinder.
First of all, as demonstrated above, APs don't actually seem that short on loving straight couples. More importantly, if I want to see heterosexual romance, I have most of the rest of the world's fiction to turn to.
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There should be more love interests for everyone, regardless of orientation. Golarion is a huge place and full of weird stuff. Everyone should be able to find healthy representations of everything imaginable.
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I can certainly see why someone would claim there are too many LGBT relationships. There do seem to be at least one of them per AP, and in some cases there are multiples of them.
Are there too many? I think it is up to the audience.
If I were to run an AP for any of the following, I would probably exclude sexual orientation altogether, or at least not draw attention to them, and not worry about relationships unless the players express that they want to pursue one.
- A group of my church friends. (Has nothing to do with religious view on homosexuality, but more to do with how they tend not to pursue relationships in game. Basically, they probably wouldn't appreciate me encouraging relationships unless they first showed interest.)
- A group consisting of married couples. (For the sake of the spouses I actually discourage PC to NPC relations. I don't need to talk romantically to a married woman while her husband in the room, even if it is pretend and everyone is okay with it. PC to PC is okay with me if the players are also married to each other.)
- A group of high school or middle school student. (For my own legal safety I discourage relationships. The last thing I need is a parent getting the wrong idea about what I did or didn't do with their child.)
If I was running an AP for any of the following groups I would probably keep the sexual orientations as they are expressed and encourage relationships.
- A group of college students.
- A group of modern "progressive" types. (Kind of describes the group I currently play with.)
- A group that has more than one player asking for relationship opportunities.
Just like all of Paizo's products, I view APs not as a road map that can't be altered, but as a tool box I can customize. If I don't need something for a group or game I exclude it. Most of the time, orientation isn't something I need, or it doesn't appear to drive the overall story, and as a result it is often ignored. Your experience may be different.
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There should be more love interests for everyone, regardless of orientation. Golarion is a huge place and full of weird stuff. Everyone should be able to find healthy representations of everything imaginable.
In that case, why aren't there lots of hot kobold/goblin NPCs for our monstrous PCs to get with? Could this all be the fiendish work of one James Jacobs?
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There should be more love interests for everyone, regardless of orientation. Golarion is a huge place and full of weird stuff. Everyone should be able to find healthy representations of everything imaginable.
I love already established couples for this.
It's so much easier to make three when you already have two.
Actually, there was a straight relationship in Reign of Winter - the male witch at the end of Snows of Summer, and his lover at the end of The Shackled Hut. And she is determined to kill off the party because of what they cost her - her lover. It's kind of sweet actually. Even if the PCs are responsible for killing off that relationship! ^^;;
Celestine8, there is also Sylgja and Finngarth in Shackled Hut which is a straight couple that could end well or tragically depending on PC actions.
Not spelled out explicitly as a romance option there is also the faun the party is expected to rescue.
There's a couple of unnamed male bandits in Stolen Land (Kingmaker #1) who are dead by the time the PCs find them (the ones with the treasure map to a treasure cache). They are spelled out as being lovers. So there's another counter example of a non-hetero couple that meets a terrible fate.
I can certainly see why someone would claim there are too many LGBT relationships. There do seem to be at least one of them per AP, and in some cases there are multiples of them.
Are there too many? I think it is up to the audience.
If I were to run an AP for any of the following, I would probably exclude sexual orientation altogether, or at least not draw attention to them, and not worry about relationships unless the players express that they want to pursue one.
In such a case, would you exclude references to two hetero NPCs in a relationship? E.g. Svetlana and Oleg from Kingmaker. They're clearly in a loving relationship, indicating their sexual orientations are within a certain subset of all possible orientations, with one vastly more probable than the others. You can't say they're married without "calling attention to their orientation".
Well, of course you don't. If you exclude homosexual relationships of the same type, though, because you feel your players (or their parents) won't like it if you note in passing that Oleg is married to Sven, you're doing so because of their homophobia, or at least your perception of thwir homophobia.
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Would I exclude mentioning married couples? Actually I probably wouldn't, though I tend to recognize even homosexual marriages in these cases. Too bad there aren't any that I have come across in an AP. Would I exclude mentioning who is dating/courting/sleeping with who? Yes, even if it was hetero. The reason is because with certain audiences romantic relationships are not important and just clutter what they want to focus on. For example, a group of roll-players wouldn't care about nearly any detail in an NPCs backstory, as they are only concerned with winning the next encounter. There are, and can be other reasons, but that is biggest one to me.
There are exceptions to rules. If I felt it would move a story plot along, or that it would enrich a game for some reason, I would bring it up. For the case of Oleg and Svetlana, who I adored roleplaying as a GM, it was very important to the story and development of certain quests, and if they weren't married I would still use the relationship because of its importance. In the same AP there is an NPC who is married and also having an affair. The marriage was used as a huge motivation for certain plot points in my game, but the affair could be dropped and not even brought up.
In Rise of the Runelords, many or all of the relationships in Sandpoint can be flat out ignored or changed, even a couple of the marriages. There is an exception when dealing with certain bbegs, but once out of the second book relationships don't play a major part of the plot.