Gender and sexuality diversity in RPG settings

[Saint-Just]

Its a last resort if being a trickster-teacher doesn't work out, because just speechifying at them directly doesn't work on people. if were being realistic making big speeches and telling people directly what is moral will just make them more resistant and make your think your just an unreasonable moral crusader/twee and thus defy you anyways. therefore the best way to get people to change without measures is often in ways that require cleverness and changing other factors- things that you might not always have time for in a fantasy game where there might be some other evil lurking about/threatening things, and having the guile and intelligence for such work in the first place is already quite lucky and requires some social focus which my character might not have. leading people to the right answer without directly telling them so that they won't resist those answers is delicate work. and again I don't plan on killing civilians.

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not all of us view playing in settings as taking a tour of suffering we can look at without being able to change much outside of what the GM's wants us to focus on. and if your putting that stuff into fantasy full of fantastic abilities and classes that capable of combat and being badass over others, don't be surprised when violence is what is resorted to.

you want to play out that social change realistically with player involvement you better make sure up front from the start that its a political intrigue game, make sure that a complete noncombat character with social skills is not only a viable character concept, but one of the more optimal ones and that no greater evil or dungeon-crawling is involved at all, because your asking for something that requires total focus of concept, and if there is anything greater than that politics at work the only choice will be to start taking shortcuts to make sure both evils are defeated, lesser and greater. because there is always the chance the lesser evil will be corrupted by the greater one anyways. there is a universe that has both such greater evils and such politics, its called Wh40k, and the people there take violent shortcuts with the politics within to make sure they can deal with the threats from without which are always more pressing.

I mean the realistic (self-consistent) answer is that you can't cure the society's ills in your off-time. Not even by killing people (though it may be marginally more likely to succeed). As far as not killing civilians it seems that people owning slaves, people oppressing people for having different religion/physical features/partners, and corrupt jerks who hoard wealth are more likely to be civilians.

As far as Wh40k goes I think that violent shortcuts are usually presented in two ways. Either it is a grim necessity ensuring survival, "Men must die so that Man endures", or it is darker option of "you'll learn to love the taste of this boot" (Imperium are not the good guys, after all). Where each individual instance falls is up to debate. This does not help your cause because even theoretically the fact that some means are allowable in extreme circumstances (survival) does not mean they are allowable for each and every good cause. You also can change a lot of things outside of what the GM's wants you to focus on, without being able to change anything you want. There are a lot of things which cannot be done or reliably done.

IMO a character who is focused on creating beauty is nowhere guaranteed to create a most beautiful artwork in history (even if it is a long campaign and player sinks some resources into making the character a good artist). If you would expect for the artist character to do this then maybe a social-oriented character should be able to reform the society; we just hold different ideas about power and effect of "average" PCs. But if you will not say that about the artist character then you are one expecting success of character's schemes to depend on how good or desirable or enlightened their goals are. And with character who is not socially oriented you will likely have either no result at all or aforementioned military dictatorship if they are good at applying their violence (all in the name of freedom from oppression, of course).

I hope these things haven't been said better by someone else already, but I don't think that the changes you suggest would necessarily lead to a society where trans or queer identities kind of even out and fade in the background, as there is more to gender and sexual identity than the single issues of transition and discrimination.

I think at this point the question becomes, how does your setting's conception of gender identity and expression change once the means to affirm that identity and the freedom to express it are more easily achieved? Are men and women still tied down to the signifiers of beard, blue, trousers and make up, pink, skirt, or is an amalgam of all those forms of expression more widespread (and are there new ones)? Are different pronouns and inclusive language more widespread? Non binary and gender-fluid people will still exist, and more people will be out probably.

It seems to me if you do want a more inclusive society, then you need to think about the history of that society and work a way for your trans characters' identities to be not only present and tolerated/permitted, but widespread and celebrated in how they differ as well as how they're the same as more rigid conceptions of gender.

I would love to see more unconventional gender signifiers, especially given how things were different IRL in different times and places (manly man kissing each other on the mouth, societies where openly crying is seen as a sign of sincerity or humility), but in fantasy I think some norms (which need not to be gendered) are expected or it all ends up looking like a ren fair instead of an actual society (ren fair fantasy is acceptable but not my default assumption for a setting).

As far as celebrated vs acknowledged I do not think it universally holds true. In the XIXth century and earlier literature a lot of time was spent on people struggling with class divisions and while class divisions remain the particular elements has disappeared, particularly the importance of (formal) nobility. A lot of those stories will not work if background changes to the late XXth century. Struggles of "commoners" who may have education, manners, money to achieve recognition; struggles of aristos to keep up appearances even if they know it's suicidal in the long term - they doesn't quite translate.

Yet I still find it a better reason than what most murderhobo PC's attack people for: gold or exp. Whether its ironic or not has no bearing on anything. Imminent disasters require action. If there is no other way to get rid of the problem- which in a fantasy setting with nobility will be the ONLY way given the lack of social mobility- that is the only path forward if they refuse to be persuaded. Do you comment on the irony of killing bandits trying to kill you as well?

You view e.g. corrupt jerks hoarding wealth as imminent disaster allowing non-judicial killings? Or because there is an outside disaster waiting to happen you can shape the society by non-judicial killings (and without that threat you'd be more careful with your means)?