Articles · Setting Building · Game Mastering
On LGBT Characters
I had someone ask me, recently, why I not only allowed such characters in my campaign, but didn't seem to care that anyone wanted to do so. Parts of my response seemed worth sharing.
* It is not my bloody job as a GM to dictate to any player the gender and sexual preference of a character. Period. Full stop.
* It is my job to provide - and portray - the NPCs with whom the PCs interact. These will be male or female, straight or gay, romantically interested or not, as circumstances dictate.
* Screw the squick factor. If a PC wants to murder someone else, do I go all squeamish on him and tell him he can't do it? If he wants to torture someone else, do I go all squeamish on him and tell him he can't do it? Beatings, theft, torture, racism, genocide, slavery, sacrilege, arson, drug use, maiming, murder retail or wholesale, I can set the table for all of it. Torch a village, desecrate a temple, debauch virgins, kick puppies, slit throats, most of us are cool with all of that, but almost uniquely, tabletop gamers draw the line on portraying male-on-male romance? Screw that.
I was born and raised in an area so vanilla and conformist that I was all of five years old before I saw my first black person in the flesh, which led (as you can well imagine) to an embarrassing incident; most everyone in my neighborhood were Irish Catholics. Growing up in the 1960s, the worst thing you could be was a 'faggot,' except if you were a 'Commie faggot' instead. Doesn't matter that we had no clear idea what that entailed ... just that it was wicked and evil and we were indoctrinated to be reflexively against it, whatever the heck it was.
What happened? I grew up. I got to know black people. I got to know gay people. I even got to know Communists. Hell, I married a socialist whose father was gay, and my wife and I got a boffo full body massage each from a dear old gay male friend of mine who visited a couple weeks ago. Somehow I managed to survive, for an hour and a half with a gay guy oiling me up, with my masculinity intact.
And my masculinity is likewise intact when I play a gay NPC. Or a female NPC having a relationship with a male PC. Or a female NPC having a relationship with a female PC. Whatever. Nor am I threatened or outraged that (for example) Paizo, in a couple of works with a couple hundred NPCs, almost all hetero, dared to put in four explicitly gay NPCs.
Because I'm not six years old any more.
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This is worth a Like, and I agree with the sentiment.
This feels like it should be a discussion, not a sub. I agree with the concept, though.
The only thing I object to is when players try to rape other players. I don't condone that kind of behaviour.
Any kind of intraparty treachery and backstabbing, come to think about it.
Other than that you are spot on.
3.5/5 Male insecurity of male homosexuals is going to be the last hurtle our sociaty needs to jump over. I am secure enough in my self identity to say I'm still a little squemish around efemenate men. It's not really the gay thing I have a problem with. Just can't wrap my head around if your attracted to men,and you don't want Charles Bronson, you want Rue Paul.Makes me scratch my head.
Hell, I'm still squeamish around effeminate men, and I've marched in Gay Pride parades in front of the drag queens. But I think that's my upbringing talking, and what I was socialized to think. All we can be expected to do is control how we act or treat other folks.
Racism, cultural clashes, male or female homosexuality, marrying of your own free will. Lots of hurdles left, depending on where you live.
I'd be lying if I didn't acknowledge that walking alone in the darkest streets of some housing projects in NYC doesn't give me the creeps. I'd rather be fighting off Manchester hooligans all by my lonesome.
Nor would I be comfortable walking butt naked through a gay pool party.
I don't project those feelings onto a roleplaying setting. In rpgs I don't care if your character is a blue Martian gay shokushu goukan lover.
I agree with you, worth a vote