How many got their starts in rpgs?

[Larrx]

I'm really curious how many people explored same sex desires and gender identity this way. Stuff like this can start much earlier than the big explode after parents are left behind.

Is this common? Do people have stories?

Willing to share?

[Dire Moose]

I did! I actually started having gender-bending fantasies when I was in middle school. I was reading webcomics later on that just made the fantasies stronger.

I actually played my first female character in D&D 3.5 in 2008, but mainly stuck to playing female trainers in Pokémon in subsequent years. I would later start playing a female character in Pathfinder Society starting in 2014, still not really understanding that it was more than fantasy until a year later. Between then and when I officially came out, Pathfinder became a big way of figuring myself out.

[JusticeZero]

Not really, but it's where some people started having suspicions. Nobody else cared to play girl characters, and my male characters (created to keep a ratio to avoid suspicion) were caricatures.

[Delta]

Honestly, I'd kind of always known since I started seriously thinking about it that my sexual and gender identity is somewhat muddled (always knew I was bi, always was curious about being a girl but at the same time never minded being a boy either, no idea what label to slap on that so I just go with "really open-minded") and, well, pen & paper is one of the hobbies where this becomes a bit more obvious with me playing lots of female characters among other stuff.