Gender and sexuality diversity in RPG settings

[Talakeal]

Trans women are women, cis women are women. If the status as cis or trans of either group is irrelevant, you'd just say "woman". If a trans woman and a cis woman drove to the supermarket, bought some groceries, and went home, then "the two women went to the store to buy food" is all the info you need. Much in the same way you wouldn't need to throw in any other traits of the two women (you could use cis and trans to distinguish them, I guess, but that wouldn't tell you much).

Yeah, which is how I feel it would tend to come across.

IMO, transition would simply be an event which occurred in one's past. A very important and life changing event, but still something that is in the past. And if I am writing up an NPC, I am generally not going to include that sort of information unless it is directly relevant to who they are now.

And, coincidentally, as most NPCs who get writeups are villains, trying to do something like that would almost certainly lead to all sorts of transphobic trans=evil associations.

Firstly; remember there are nonbinary folk, who can't simply disappear via medical transition either way. ;)

Secondly, being trans is more than a medical procedure. Every trans person has to think carefully about their gender identity and what makes them feel comfortable (far from an end point, medical intervention is just an event in a process that may never end).

I've told this story here before, but in a recent D&D game, the DM OK'd a trans character. I mentioned this to a friend, and she said "why wouldn't you just play a cis woman?". On the basis of why I'd want problems from my own life in the game. Thing is (aside from the fact the DM promised not to make transphobia a significant thing), this came from a (well meaning) assumption that the ideal of womanhood is cis womanhood, and that's what I aspire to. Why wouldn't I want to be represented in a literal representation of myself in the campaign setting? While my womanhood will always be different to that of a cis woman, there are many different ways woman are women (and men are men, and ways people twist, bent, or break the gender binary), and mind is just as good as the rest without being invalidated.

The same applies to representation in media. You could certainly create a setting where trans people are moot (whether or not that's realistic), but if your aim is to represent the experiences of trans people positively (that is to say, trans representation), you need to try harder.

Yeah, trans covers a wide spectrum, and its full of gatekeeping. Not sure if I want to derail this thread (and potentially risk its closure) by going much deeper than that.

That said, I feel that most identities are cultural constructs which, while they have weight and meaning in our world, wouldn't really apply to a fantasy world, and I feel like trying to explore a lot of these concepts in a fantasy world would be like wanting to, say, play a Frenchman to explore one's French background in a Forgotten Realms campaign set on Toril..

Also, remember that the features humans generally consider attractive correlate pretty well with "young, fit and healthy". And that correlates reasonably with "Likely to succeed at adventuring" so maybe don't stress too much about pretty adventurers. OTOH, experienced adventurers will still be fit but will be older. Don't forget about older women.

Some people would disagree. Youtuber Lindybeige once criticized RPG art by saying something along the lines of (sorry I can't find the original clip) "Ah yes, of course, young attractive people are the most likely people to be out fighting. Oh wait, my mistake, I meant the LEAST likely people. No wait, I got that wrong again, I meant the SECOND least likely people, the least likely people to go into combat would, of course, be babies."

I would agree to an extent, although I would imagine in real life adventurers would be rendered pretty unattractive due to the accumulation of injuries. Of course, magical healing might take care of that, and in a realistic setting where it didn't they would probably be pretty close to crippled due to injury and mental trauma after only a few years of adventuring anyway.

Yeah thats great and all, just don't expect every player to like those societies, or not destroy them in their own quest to make a better world.

Which is a very good thing, as long as the players recognize that they are probably going to have to commit genocide along the way.

In that case, it will depend on how long the alchemy has been around, and how much alchemy in general is stigmatized.

For most people, they'll treat others as whatever they are, physically. Or as what they're presenting as, if they're "pre-transition" and passing effectively. There will still be some awkwardness if the "passing" is revealed to be deceptive, though if the notion of sex changes with alchemy is normalized, then it will likely be treated, at worst, as "well, it's just a matter of time."

One thing to consider is that, if there ARE gender-based roles such as primogenitor, there would be pressure for families in the nobility to ensure a "proper mix" of sexes in their children. The oldest is male. Period. (Or female, if they inherit.) And if something happens to the oldest, and the next-oldest is female, she's expected to transition, unless she has a younger brother to inherit (and even then, there's some tension to make a choice if she's not yet married). Similarly, younger sons who are problematic for inheritance will be turned into girls (or younger daughters into boys, if girls inherit) so they can be married off. It might be that they don't do the transitioning thing unless and until a marriage decision is made, but they will not let birth biology get in the way of a treaty.

To this end, it's quite possible that cross-dressing is common amongst the nobility, especially the children and youths, as they cross-train them in both sets of roles and duties. A proposed marriage between a younger son and an inheriting son might have the younger son not take the potion yet, but still dress in dresses and be expected to act the feminine part up until the betrothal is finalized, at which point the potion is taken and she is a woman. Heck, if a second-born child is already married to a man, but he isn't in line to inherit and she suddenly becomes the heir due to accident befalling her older brother, it might be expected that she and her husband BOTH switch roles and sexes.

So in a sense, this actually could lead to MORE gender dysphoria for socio-political purposes, if the people in question have a personal preference/identity they hold to that clashes with that which their position in society demands.

Yeah, a transhumanist body-horror dystopia is definitely a very real thing. I don't really think it fits well for my game though, at least for society as large.

Yeah, just referring to some pcs with gender neutral pronouns, maybe even as a default, and also have some male npcs mention husbands, and female npcs mentioning wives, and I think that's pretty much the basics.. Funnily enough this happened in the published adventure rotfm where an npc mentioned their husband and I hadn't noticed it on my first reading, felt kinda cool and also definetly not forced.
(although it did provoke some surprised reactions from a party whom I thought wouldn't care but oh well.)

Yeah, that happens all the time in game. Not so much in the setting writeup though.

I could make some statements about fiction in general but for systems... what is there to say? I mean the difference between male and female isn't worth encoding in a system nor do I think the difference between cis- and trans- really is either. Maybe with a life-path character generation system it could come up but other than that its up to the player to decide if and how it effects the character mechanically. I suppose there is the setting section could say something but unless there is a particular point being made (which gets into the heavy handed message) why spend words on it?

It always strange to me that the end point of all of so many of these things people seem to always put forward "complete erasure" as the solution. Its not a matter of better or worse its just people aren't the same as each other.

I am absolutely only talking about the game's fluff, not the crutch.

Not quite sure what you mean about the second paragraph, as "complete erasure" seems to be what you are advocating for; unless you are simply commenting on the fact that people assume that if they don't see something it must not exist.