How do you handle homosexuality and transgenderism in your campaigns?

[DM Under The Bridge]

Totes McScrotes wrote:

The Alkenstarian wrote:

Deadmanwalking wrote:

Well, obviously. But being LGBT specifically doesn't inherently have to be one of the things they're prejudiced against. No society is perfect but the degree and nature of that imperfection can vary widely.

Agreed. Absolutely. I'm simply saying that since the world isn't a nice and benevolent place, there are certainly areas where LGBT people would be treated worse than in other places :)

Sometimes the cultural attitudes are an offshoot of factors influencing the cultures on deeper levels. Compare/contrast aggressive, violent chimpanzees with their close relatives the "free love" bonobos.

Or the warring tribes of the Middle East (traditional Judaism and Islam explicitly forbidding same-sex relations by scripture - though they did occur - and promoting sex for conception only in areas where resources were scarce) vs. the culture of the Trobriand Islands, where resources were plentiful.

Again, this is just one barometric where what's "good" and "bad" by modern standards doesn't translate well into the game world. The priesthoods of Lamashtu or Zon-Kuthon may be downright gay-friendly but that doesn't make them pleasant people.

Evil lesbians of Lamashtu or the secret gay society of Zon-kuthon. Oh my...

[Albatoonoe]

I tend to run Golarion, and I assume that they are much more accepting of gender and sexuality than real life. It just makes sense, considering that there are incredibly powerful queer deities. I don't see societies guided by such deities developing many hang ups on gender and sexuality.

When I'm playing, I frequently play bisexual characters. Sometimes gay. Never straight.

[DM Under The Bridge]

JDPhipps wrote:

I don't, really? Not purposefully, but I rarely play in or run games in which a character's sexuality is a factor. I throw in the occasional LGBT character, but often its really a situation of "does it matter, in this specific scenario, whether or not that man likes men?" Occasionally, the answer is yes. Usually, the answer is no. One of the main NPCs of my home game is homosexual, but the group has no idea; they may never find out, but he was more fleshed out as a character, and I realized it made sense.

In a homebrew game I'm running on the forums, one of my players is a Calistrian priestess, and as such these things come up more frequently. In our Skulls and Shackles game at college, we ALSO have a Calistrian priestess. In those situations, I make characters that are affected in various ways by those attributes.

If you want a mission/quest that includes homosexuals you could have a save Antinous on behalf of the emperor Hadrian type situation. There could be all sorts of intrigue, maybe Antinous was kidnapped as leverage against the emperor/king/high-priest?

Save him and as the campaign goes on they see more and more statues of Antinous cropping up with plaques honoring the pcs. May make the players smile and help them see that their successes have consequences.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/hadrian-the-gay-emperor-7 69442.html

As an aside on the Calistrians, yeah I have fond memories of a ninja character waging a war against them. They can be extremely bad news and deserve a lot of d6s in the neck, but again there are a lot of plots that easily work with Calistrians.

[Albatoonoe]

BigNorseWolf wrote:

I would think that Lamashtu would be gay unfriendly because you're not going to make the next generation of monsters that way.

Unless she has a spell to let people have monsters that way. Which .. yeah I'm stopping my brain there.

I don't know. She seems like the kind of goddess that scoffs at a challenge. To quote Jeff Goldblum, "Life, uh, finds a way."

[Kthulhu]

I've thought about using Frank N. Furter as a NPC and possible bad guy.

[MMCJawa]

Aranna wrote:

Trans wouldn't exist in the same way as the real world... first magic can remake you in your preferred gender, and second the player can select their preferred gender right from character creation.

Yes and no. There are things like potions of sex shift, but I assume the price makes it outside the reach of a vast majority of potential customers, and it's probably specialized enough to not be a widespread formula created and kept in stock by a lot of potion makers. So it might be an option really only for nobles (which has some parallels in real life).

So you could get some sort of weird economic class thing going on, with either class (poor versus rich)
looking down on members of the other, based on differences in how trans people are viewed/assisted.

Also...you would have a hell of a motive for a transperson from an impoverished background to become an adventurer. To build up enough cash to get the potion they need/want.

[MMCJawa]

BigNorseWolf wrote:

I would think that Lamashtu would be gay unfriendly because you're not going to make the next generation of monsters that way.

Unless she has a spell to let people have monsters that way. Which .. yeah I'm stopping my brain there.

I believe there is some in canon examples of unwanted(?) male pregnancy caused by Rovagug and Lamashtu...

[Oliver, Plucky Galtan Boy]

Is that why no one will tell me who my Mama was?

[Milo v3]

It simply has never come up in my campaigns so far.

[Digitalelf]

Kthulhu wrote:

I've thought about using Frank N. Furter as a NPC and possible bad guy.

Madness... Takes it's toll.

[JDPhipps]

DM Under The Bridge wrote:

JDPhipps wrote:

I don't, really? Not purposefully, but I rarely play in or run games in which a character's sexuality is a factor. I throw in the occasional LGBT character, but often its really a situation of "does it matter, in this specific scenario, whether or not that man likes men?" Occasionally, the answer is yes. Usually, the answer is no. One of the main NPCs of my home game is homosexual, but the group has no idea; they may never find out, but he was more fleshed out as a character, and I realized it made sense.

In a homebrew game I'm running on the forums, one of my players is a Calistrian priestess, and as such these things come up more frequently. In our Skulls and Shackles game at college, we ALSO have a Calistrian priestess. In those situations, I make characters that are affected in various ways by those attributes.

If you want a mission/quest that includes homosexuals you could have a save Antinous on behalf of the emperor Hadrian type situation. There could be all sorts of intrigue, maybe Antinous was kidnapped as leverage against the emperor/king/high-priest?

Save him and as the campaign goes on they see more and more statues of Antinous cropping up with plaques honoring the pcs. May make the players smile and help them see that their successes have consequences.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/hadrian-the-gay-emperor-7 69442.html

As an aside on the Calistrians, yeah I have fond memories of a ninja character waging a war against them. They can be extremely bad news and deserve a lot of d6s in the neck, but again there are a lot of plots that easily work with Calistrians.

Both my Calistrians seem to be less... unsavory than some that I've seen played, but it does mean that the game ends up having interplay when it comes to gender/sexuality issues. The only time its even kind of come up in my home game was when the players ended up in a Drow city, and most people refused to speak to anyone but the party's one female. In that game, which is a homebrew setting and story, they haven't had to delve into that kind of thing. On the run from an evil cult and all.

[knightnday]

In general it has as much or little weight as anything else in my games. When world building I will usually have notes on how the various kingdoms/race/whatever handles the topic, but other than that it isn't made the center of the campaign nor swept under the rug.

The only time it really became a big thing was a game I ran with a number of LBGT players who were interested in crusading against a government that was not friendly to the cause. It started getting a bit too uncomfortable as things went along, as they started bleeding real life issues into the game and fighting among themselves. We had to wrap up after that.

[Jaelithe]

I run a quasi-historical campaign set in mid-to-late twelfth century Northern Europe and the Mediterranean basin. Homosexuality and transgenderism are a presence therein, even as they were in our own historical reality. (Rumor has it, for example, that Richard I ["Couer de Lion"] may well have been homosexual or bisexual, though one of the current prevailing theories—one I think most likely—is that he was, for all intents and purposes, aresexual ["in love with war" {to coin a neologism}], and not much if at all interested in women or men.) I'm not desirous, however, of watching players push their real world socio-political agenda by attempting to force my hand in running an openly gay or transgender character during this era. It's fairly obvious that in most cases such an attitude would rapidly become problematic. Anyone has the right to create a character and portray him, her or it however he or she wishes, within reason. I just don't think, to use an absurdly extreme example, climbing a minaret in Almohad North Africa and championing gay, bi or transgender rights at the top of one's lungs is likely to end well. On the other hand, quietly portraying a character who lives as he or she would wish in defiance of social and religious convention? That's stuff of which stories are made.

[thejeff]

Jaelithe wrote:

I run a quasi-historical campaign set in mid-to-late twelfth century Northern Europe and the Mediterranean basin. Homosexuality and transgenderism are a presence therein, even as they were in our own historical reality. (Rumor has it, for example, that Richard I ["Couer de Lion"] may well have been homosexual or bisexual, though one of the current prevailing theories—one I think most likely—is that he was, for all intents and purposes, aresexual ["in love with war" {to coin a neologism}], and not much if at all interested in women or men.) I'm not desirous, however, of watching players push their real world socio-political agenda by attempting to force my hand in running an openly gay or transgender character during this era. It's fairly obvious that in most cases such an attitude would rapidly become problematic. Anyone has the right to create a character and portray him, her or it however he or she wishes, within reason. I just don't think, to use an absurdly extreme example, climbing a minaret in Almohad North Africa and championing gay, bi or transgender rights at the top of one's lungs is likely to end well. On the other hand, quietly portraying a character who lives as he or she would wish in defiance of social and religious convention? That's stuff of which stories are made.

OTOH, if the one doing so is a great hero, obviously favored by Allah, just having saved the realm from the forces of evil, it might not end so badly. Not a good way to start your career though. :)

One of the drawbacks to running a quasi-historical game, at least using something like the PF system, is that you have to decide what God thinks of such things in your world. If the religion considers homosexuality sinful, as it tended to do historically to one degree or another, are they right? Is that reflected in a cleric getting or keeping his powers?

[Kobold Catgirl]

There were definitely people who skirted the boundaries. Sometimes I get the impression people cared a bit less back then—in an age of grotesque morals, life for someone caught in a "grotesque" lifestyle was pretty much a crapshoot. It helped if you were a criminal. Not the best example, since this is from the 1600s, but I think it conveys what I'm thinking about (she did hit on women while pretending to be a man, and seemed to at least get a kick out of it). Julie d'Aubigny is a later example of someone who seems to have gotten away with everything short of murder by no more than sheer audacity.

Later ages, but not much more progressive when it came to gender and orientation, so I think they're worth considering.

[strayshift]

Sappho, and the debates about her work/life are an excellent example (and far older) then there's Alexander the Great, Athens... We could go on.

[Jaelithe]

thejeff wrote:

OTOH, if the one doing so is a great hero, obviously favored by Allah, just having saved the realm from the forces of evil, it might not end so badly. Not a good way to start your career though. :)

One of the drawbacks to running a quasi-historical game, at least using something like the PF system, is that you have to decide what God thinks of such things in your world. If the religion considers homosexuality sinful, as it tended to do historically to one degree or another, are they right? Is that reflected in a cleric getting or keeping his powers?

Crying anything but the call to prayer in that situation is not likely to end well. During the time I was stationed in Turkey, a US Air Force NCO in a drunken stupor did just that, breaking into a mosque, ascending to the summit of the minaret, and doing his worst imitation of a muezzin, bad mouthing both Islam and the Ataturk, Mustafa Kemal—founder of modern Turkey and something of a Moses-George Washington amalgam to Turks—at the top of his lungs. After begging him to come down, an oskir shot him dead and he toppled to the ground. When the US commander demanded of his counterpart an explanation of what he planned to do about the soldier's actions, the Turkish general replied, "I'm going to give him a medal for showing restraint and asking the man to come down three times before shooting him, when he would have been justified in killing him immediately. He profaned Islam and the Ataturk."

Actually, I really don't have to decide for Christians in this era. As clerical celibacy for singles had long been the required (though often not the practiced) norm (since at least the late fourth century and likely earlier), it wouldn't matter if one were hetero-, homo-, bi- or transsexual: You're not having sex of any kind without it being a sin unless you're married ... and since this is a period in which marriage to someone of the same sex would likely not even be considered because of the social stigma and subsequent opprobrium, not to mention the Church's censure, it's not an issue that would reasonably arise—unless, again, some player was looking to make a sociopolitical statement that would resonate for them in the real world.

[strayshift]

Married priests? Damn that Synod of Whitby...

[thejeff]

Jaelithe wrote:

thejeff wrote:

OTOH, if the one doing so is a great hero, obviously favored by Allah, just having saved the realm from the forces of evil, it might not end so badly. Not a good way to start your career though. :)

One of the drawbacks to running a quasi-historical game, at least using something like the PF system, is that you have to decide what God thinks of such things in your world. If the religion considers homosexuality sinful, as it tended to do historically to one degree or another, are they right? Is that reflected in a cleric getting or keeping his powers?

Crying anything but the call to prayer in that situation is not likely to end well. During the time I was stationed in Turkey, a US Air Force NCO in a drunken stupor did just that, breaking into a mosque, ascending to the summit of the minaret, and doing his worst imitation of a muezzin, bad mouthing both Islam and the Ataturk, Mustafa Kemal—founder of modern Turkey and something of a Moses-George Washington amalgam to Turks—at the top of his lungs. After begging him to come down, an oskir shot him dead and he toppled to the ground. When the US commander demanded of his counterpart an explanation of what he planned to do about the soldier's actions, the Turkish general replied, "I'm going to give him a medal for showing restraint and asking the man to come down three times before shooting him, when he would have been justified in killing him immediately. He profaned Islam and the Ataturk."

Actually, I really don't have to decide for Christians in this era. As clerical celibacy for singles had long been the required (though often not the practiced) norm (since at least the late fourth century and likely earlier), it wouldn't matter if one were hetero-, homo-, bi- or transsexual: You're not having sex of any kind without it being a sin unless you're married ... and since this is a period in which marriage to someone of the same sex would likely not even be considered because of the social stigma and...

Well, a foreign infidel doing so certainly wouldn't go over well. A local Muslim Hero of the Realm, possibly an Imam himself, having just publicly saved the city from a djinn with the aid of miracles, announcing his homosexuality in a less blasphemous fashion, might actually provoke a change in the faith rather than just be shot out of hand.

As for the Christians, that gets to my larger point: If you're using something like PF, where clerics and other divine casters get and lose their powers from God directly, then you have to actually decide for your setting what God thinks of it. And that's going to affect the social stigma. If the Church doesn't censure it because God doesn't censure it, then it wouldn't be a problem. If the Church censures it, but in error because God doesn't, then it's a valid thing to play out - reforming the faith. If the Church and God both censure it, then that's another thing entirely.

All of this ties directly to why I'd be uncomfortable with even a quasi-historical game with nearly as much access to divine power/contact as PF has. It's too easy to poke directly into big questions and demand answers. Not just this, but plenty of things that religions has approved of that are pretty sketchy by modern standards - The Inquisition, the divine right of kings, slavery, etc, etc.
A quasi-historical game without explicit divine magic/intervention doesn't raise the questions as directly. It's much more possible to see religions as misinterpreting or falling into corruption.

[Painful Bugger]

It's as much a non-issue in my games as race, fictional prejudices aside, and its never brought up. I'm of the firm belief that any explicitly sexual topics should be avoided or lightly touched upon as it makes things at the table awkward depending on how specific people will react to it. Not everyone you'll game with can handle this with grace and maturity. If a player, me as the DM, told me that their character is gay or trans the most they will get out of me is "okay that's fine, what's your alignment. The monster is casting something." I had enough headaches with how people behaved in my games before in inappropriate manners that I just sandbag that line of thinking.

[thejeff]

Painful Bugger wrote:

It's as much a non-issue in my games as race, fictional prejudices aside, and its never brought up. I'm of the firm belief that any explicitly sexual topics should be avoided or lightly touched upon as it makes things at the table awkward depending on how specific people will react to it. Not everyone you'll game with can handle this with grace and maturity. If a player, me as the DM, told me that their character is gay or trans the most they will get out of me is "okay that's fine, what's your alignment. The monster is casting something." I had enough headaches with how people behaved in my games before in inappropriate manners that I just sandbag that line of thinking.

Do you allow characters to do things like flirt with the waitress or the princess they just rescued?

Obviously it's fine and very common to keep anything explicit out of the game or at least at "fade to black" levels, but that doesn't preclude some level of romance.

[Irontruth]

The cool thing about being modern people who are playing a fictitious quasi-historical game, is that we can change what we want to remove bigotry and prejudice, while still having a fun game.

History isn't FORCING you to include bigotry in your game. You're allowing it to exist there. I don't think including bigotry in the game world is necessarily inherently wrong, but we shouldn't couch it in terms to hide what is really going on.

I include bigotry in my games, but I'm cognizant of what I'm doing and why I'm doing it. It has to serve a purpose, otherwise I don't include it. "Historical veracity" is not a purpose by the way, at least not any more of a purpose than when the jerk at the table with the CN character says "but it's what my character would do".

[Hama]

To OP

Like it's a no big deal to some people, a terrible affront to nature to some other people. Although I make sure to point out that they are terrible bigoted bastards.

[strayshift]

Perhaps it's easier to think of this in term of identity, rather than the practise of sex, or even 'lifestyle'.

Think on this, players want a game that allow them to escape and to express their 'heroic' selves. Most of our mainstream cultural role-models for this are straight, white, male, or a male-defined stereotype of female. I would hope my game supports all the players that engage with it.

Within the game, its negotiated.

[DM Under The Bridge]

A long post, I hope those that read get something from it. I thank you for reading as it took 9 minutes to write.

As the dm they can run a game vastly different to our own current existence, where our social politics and attitudes we might have do not hold sway. I think it is one of the great potentials of roleplaying that we are not just stuck playing ourselves right now in this time or limited in playing people of late modern attitudes. Instead we can control characters in very different contexts to what we are used to. Of course we don't have to fight off goblin invasions (although that might be similar to the life of a pest control officer) but it goes far deeper than that into very different times or completely non-Earth settings.

I support Jaelithe and his position that in running games located in a historical setting the beliefs will be of that time and place, and not of 2015 wherever and however we find ourselves now, and will not include certain groups that are active today.

Some will not like this, the attempt to be and play quite authentically (or even just partially authentically) in settings that are not familiar and everyday in attitudes and social politics. I am glad there are games that offer something different to our norm, and that is also what I try to bring in my many games. If there are problems with acceptance then words such as "this isn't the world we are used to" can help players to understand they aren't confined to the familiar but they also aren't located in the familiar (one of my players was struggling to play a medieval Japanese fisherman turned bandit robbing people along the silk road, but they learned how to make it work and developed a character straight out of the old story Water Margin).

One of the problems I find with transgender npcs being put into many games is if the setting is pre-modern and in that it is pre-anomie and pre the questioning of gender norms, roles and identity their inclusion, even as minorities, makes very little sense. If you are running a pre-modern setting anything close to being historical then including transgenders in significant numbers sounds like historical revisionism (my group of today was there!). Of course to get around this you can make your own setting where we see transgenders far earlier in modernity, or even in pre-modernity. Then Jaelithe is absolutely right and what we see is an example of a push of "their real world socio-political agenda" to get their people in places and times when they did not exist.

I found paizo creating and placing a trans orc into one of their adventure paths to be very odd. Orcs are short-lived, focused upon reproduction and there has been no indication of gender dysphoria in orcs previously. Orcs are so hetero they hurt countries with their numbers. The trans orc came across as tokenism, but one in which didn't fit with the setting that has been presented, but I suspect it will fit with the changing setting into which Golarion is becoming. One can deny there is an agenda, but paizo have been very clear in what they want to represent and add in the future (and they certainly defended placing the trans orc even though it did not fit with orcs as they had been presented).

People will change and run the settings in the way that they want to run them, but not every group of people or identity is going to be in every setting or game. Trans especially do not fit into certain historical settings and thus they don't fit into many historically located games. Some have said that it doesn't come up. If it isn't there then it is unlikely to come up. Thank you.

[Tormsskull]

DM Under The Bridge wrote:

One can deny there is an agenda, but paizo have been very clear in what they want to represent and add in the future (and they certainly defended placing the trans orc even though it did not fit with orcs as they had been presented).

I'm not familiar with this exact case, but yes, it is pretty clear that Paizo has an agenda on these type of issues. As the default setting for their game, I think that's a good thing. Designing the default campaign world to include examples of people from real life is great - all potential players should be able to find people like them in the fantasy world.

[Kobold Catgirl]

Obviously, there's an agenda: Paizo wants to write a setting where all minorities are represented, and has built their setting's traditions around this, and is willing to put aside some realism to make it work. I'm not sure why "agenda" would be a positive or negative quality. It's just what Paizo's chosen to do.

[captain yesterday]

musical torture interlude

[Kalindlara]

Kobold Cleaver wrote:

Obviously, there's an agenda: Paizo wants to write a setting where all minorities are represented, and has built their setting's traditions around this, and is willing to put aside some realism to make it work. I'm not sure why "agenda" would be a positive or negative quality. It's just what Paizo's chosen to do.

The word "agenda" often seems to imply that it's a deviation from something; e.g., there wouldn't be all these POC/LGBT/etc. in my fantasy world if not for their agenda.

What's often forgotten is that excluding these things involves an agenda as well.

[thegreenpartygamer]

I'd like to discuss the agenda for the Green Party if you don't mind.

It's ah, it's a robust agenda, um, many sweeping changes, lessee... we're.. gonna clean up Washington!... I think.

To be honest I just started and this is the furthest I've gotten, so......

[Jaelithe]

Kalindlara wrote:

Kobold Cleaver wrote:

Obviously, there's an agenda: Paizo wants to write a setting where all minorities are represented, and has built their setting's traditions around this, and is willing to put aside some realism to make it work. I'm not sure why "agenda" would be a positive or negative quality. It's just what Paizo's chosen to do.

The word "agenda" often seems to imply that it's a deviation from something; e.g., there wouldn't be all these POC/LGBT/etc. in my fantasy world if not for their agenda.

What's often forgotten is that excluding these things involves an agenda as well.

No, it doesn't in the least. Not including something does not imply exclusion, but could have to do with it not occurring to you, it not being appropriate in context, or other reasons that haven't occurred to us. It does not have to mean, "Mua ha ha, let's keep those people out." Posts in this thread are all the evidence one needs of that.

Paizo's policy of inclusiveness is in its way both laudable and a prudent manifestation of political correctness and business savvy, considering its primary marketing demographic. I tend to doubt that we'd see as much of this were it conclusively proven to hurt sales. It's a business, after all.

[Kalindlara]

Jaelithe wrote:

Kalindlara wrote:

Kobold Cleaver wrote:

Obviously, there's an agenda: Paizo wants to write a setting where all minorities are represented, and has built their setting's traditions around this, and is willing to put aside some realism to make it work. I'm not sure why "agenda" would be a positive or negative quality. It's just what Paizo's chosen to do.

The word "agenda" often seems to imply that it's a deviation from something; e.g., there wouldn't be all these POC/LGBT/etc. in my fantasy world if not for their agenda.

What's often forgotten is that excluding these things involves an agenda as well.

No, it doesn't in the least. Not including something does not imply exclusion, but could have to do with it not occurring to you, it not being appropriate in context, or other reasons that haven't occurred to us. It does not have to mean, "Mua ha ha, let's keep those people out." Posts in this thread are all the evidence one needs of that.

Paizo's policy of inclusiveness is in its way both laudable and a prudent manifestation of political correctness and business savvy, considering its primary marketing demographic. I tend to doubt that we'd see as much of this were it conclusively proven to hurt sales. It's a business, after all.

But it's still an agenda - which, despite your assumptions, doesn't have to mean bigotry. "Historical accuracy", for example, is an agenda. The exception is if it really, seriously, didn't occur to the creator; in this day and age, it's hard to believe anyone running a Pathfinder campaign is really ignorant of the existence of LGBT people.

As for their policy, you can assume a purely fiscal motivation if you'd like. The passion with which many of the staff argue for inclusion suggests a deeper commitment to me, but since neither of us work there, it's hard for either of us to speak definitively.

[KenderKin]

Never come up.

of course a great many social issues and real life concerns never come up in games.

I think slavers, slaves, slavery has been in a few games. But generally a paucity of sexual themes.

[thejeff]

Jaelithe wrote:

Kalindlara wrote:

Kobold Cleaver wrote:

Obviously, there's an agenda: Paizo wants to write a setting where all minorities are represented, and has built their setting's traditions around this, and is willing to put aside some realism to make it work. I'm not sure why "agenda" would be a positive or negative quality. It's just what Paizo's chosen to do.

The word "agenda" often seems to imply that it's a deviation from something; e.g., there wouldn't be all these POC/LGBT/etc. in my fantasy world if not for their agenda.

What's often forgotten is that excluding these things involves an agenda as well.

No, it doesn't in the least. Not including something does not imply exclusion, but could have to do with it not occurring to you, it not being appropriate in context, or other reasons that haven't occurred to us. It does not have to mean, "Mua ha ha, let's keep those people out." Posts in this thread are all the evidence one needs of that.

Paizo's policy of inclusiveness is in its way both laudable and a prudent manifestation of political correctness and business savvy, considering its primary marketing demographic. I tend to doubt that we'd see as much of this were it conclusively proven to hurt sales. It's a business, after all.

"Agenda" is a loaded term. It's probably best to leave it out.

It is quite possible that someone is not including LGBT people because it hasn't occurred to them. That goes away once they start talking about it. As for them not being appropriate in context - there have been LGBT people throughout human history. However quasi-historical your setting it, it makes sense to have them in it. It might also make sense to have them be closeted and persecuted, but that's your call.
It gets more complicated when you have divine powers bestowing power upon the worthy - then you have to decide whether the attitudes of the day qualify as worthy in the eyes of that divine power. And not just LGBT people or those who persecute them, but also those who support slavery or torture or the inquisition or serfdom or sexism or racism or all the other horrors of the past that religious authorities of the day often stood behind.

[thejeff]

Kalindlara wrote:

Jaelithe wrote:

Paizo's policy of inclusiveness is in its way both laudable and a prudent manifestation of political correctness and business savvy, considering its primary marketing demographic. I tend to doubt that we'd see as much of this were it conclusively proven to hurt sales. It's a business, after all.

As for their policy, you can assume a purely fiscal motivation if you'd like. The passion with which many of the staff argue for inclusion suggests a deeper commitment to me, but since neither of us work there, it's hard for either of us to speak definitively.

Well, I doubt it's a purely fiscal motivation. OTOH, if it was shown to seriously hurt sales, I doubt they'd be pushing it as far as they have.

Early steps were fairly tentative and as they've met a positive response they've expanded.

I don't blame them for that at all. It's a business and it does no one any good to outrun their customers.