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2021-04-24, 12:14 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Jul 2016
Re: Gender and sexuality diversity in RPG settings
Seeing as how I literally just referred to that already existing, I fail to see your point. The op very much wanted a much more in depth statement. It is that which I am referring to.
I can't think of many people who would have an issue with that. I can't think of many who would have an issue with a couple such characters. I can think of MANYwho would have problems with the original thesis of having in depth sexual content of any kind in their core rulebooks. It is to that I refer.
So "you can play any gender in any way you want" is fine. "The females of Goridorth 7 have a complex social structure and wear different garb for different occasions. The ceremonial robe depicted here is worn to different major social functions. When meeting a member of the nobility, the female ceremonial garb is red. The sash is decorated with the emblem of the visited lord, unless the visiter is of equal or higher rank in which case her own emblem will adorn the sash. Other major events include..." is best left for a setting supplement because we really don't need it.
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2021-04-24, 12:44 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Aug 2009
Re: Gender and sexuality diversity in RPG settings
Hm, are D&D novels really meant to be setting source material?
I see the relationship more along the lines of novelizations of video games or fanfiction: works inspired by the sources, but not sources themselves.
Dragonlance was a novel series before it was a game setting.
For Eberron I remember a quote from Keith Baker, the creator of Eberron, that his novels should not be considered canon. Edit: here's the article in question: /eberron-continued-what-is-canon/
As for the Forgotten Realms: well, yeah. The failure of accurately representing the settings magic is just that: a failure.
My usual recommendation for a Forgotten Realms novel that actually feels true to the source material is Murder in Cormyr. It's a neat fantasy crime story so it's worth checking out anywayLast edited by Zombimode; 2021-04-24 at 03:34 AM.
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2021-04-24, 01:18 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Jun 2019
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2021-04-24, 02:15 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Feb 2015
Re: Gender and sexuality diversity in RPG settings
OK, in Germany, aside from D&D, the somewhat larger fantasy systems are TDE and Splittermond. Both written for one world each with rules and setting intertwined. Both have several continents and many nations, one has even subsettings for other time period or some closed of miniplanes.
Do all those different people, cultures and countries get described gender roles ? Yes, they do. Do i find a portion of that in the rulebooks instead of dedicated setting supplements ? Sure, i do. Because the core rulebooks are never meant to be for a universal RPG.
For example, if your setting has amazons and you provide an amazon class and amazon abilities, you would usually have a small blurb about what an amazon is directly in your character creation rules. Because, why not ? That is stuff that the player contemplating to play an amazon needs. And if your system has lizard people that switch from female to male with age and are playable you would likely include that in the character creation blurb about them as well.
And it is not particularly uncommon for core rule books of systems with a fixed setting to have a setting overview part so new players have a rough idea what they are getting into and can properly roleplay their characters accordingly. And you likely will find gender stuff there as well. Usually some default most common thing and then all the important variations for all the larger regions. It won't go into detail, but if the biggest neighbor of the most common starter area is a matriarchy, it will likely get mentioned in the core rulebook.Last edited by Satinavian; 2021-04-24 at 02:20 AM.
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2021-04-24, 07:51 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Mar 2015
Re: Gender and sexuality diversity in RPG settings
Yeah that's kind of the point, you missed non-binary. (Although apparently its not in the one you were quoting so maybe they missed it?)
I also feel you haven't quite understood they type of information I'm looking for. To switch to the dress example "Fancy clothing exists" is not enough information. The exact stylings and stitching patterns of fancy clothing is excessive. But I wouldn't mind seeing a picture of some people in fancy clothing so I roughly know what it is and maybe how much fancy clothing costs.
Sure, but in the adaptation process they changed the magic system. I'm not even getting to the why here (or whether that was a good idea or not) just simply pointing out that they did. So not all D&D settings use the same magic system. If you want to go deeper than that maybe we should break off into a different thread.
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2021-04-24, 09:46 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Jul 2016
Re: Gender and sexuality diversity in RPG settings
It's entirely possible you and I are envisioning very different things. The op seemed to imply he wanted far larger amounts than what you are stating. Small blurbs denoting what a class or race is and why it may be restricted to a particular gender is one thing. But that's not the impression I get from others as to what they are looking for.
It seems to me they want serious, in depth gender discussion and layout inside the core rules, at least that is how it appears. And, particularly on this topic especially on an international scale is something game producers will avoid at all costs.
Define "non-binary" because I mentioned earlier a tentacle monster who reproduces using discarded shark teeth. D&D has plant creatures you can play as which are both male and female and reproduce with themselves. They have slime monsters which reproduce by splitting. They have warforged which don't reproduce at all. Pathfinder has a race which states no one literaly knows how they come into being.
So how much more non-binary do you need?
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2021-04-24, 09:48 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Gender and sexuality diversity in RPG settings
I have a LOT of Homebrew!
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2021-04-24, 10:04 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Jul 2016
Re: Gender and sexuality diversity in RPG settings
Which is covered in "you can play male or female however you want." This covers "gender confused teenager," it covers "tran," it covers gay. It covers anything you want.
If you were after that, this thread wouldn't exist, because it literally already exists. And that is why I am sure I am correct in you wanting far more than the industry is willing, or can possibly, give.
If you want full, in depth review of every world setting with special attention given to the lgbtq community in each world, that is what you are going to have to do yourself. It is counter-productive for any major publisher to take on as it alienates nearly 75% of the world's population.
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2021-04-24, 10:09 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Jul 2014
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Re: Gender and sexuality diversity in RPG settings
Why would giving notice to LGBTQ+ communities alienate 75% of the world? Speaking as a straight, cisgender individual myself, I'm glad to see queerness in RPGs, because more representation and diversity is a good thing.
And no, male or female however you want is NOT non-binary. Non-binary is non-binary, and yes, there's nothing stopping you from playing a non-binary individual, it'd be nice to have them mentioned in the books.
What's wrong with adding more representation? What's wrong with diversity? What's wrong with accepting people?I have a LOT of Homebrew!
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2021-04-24, 10:10 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Mar 2015
Re: Gender and sexuality diversity in RPG settings
Different people want different things and that's OK. For that matter I want different things from different systems, the world is a wonderful varied place and so is gaming. So why limit myself.
Define "non-binary"
Intersex is sort of the same thing for the sexes, but there is the added wrinkle you can just have different chromosomal patterns and I don't know that fits into the model. If I ever meet someone like that I'll ask them.
* I'm not entirely sure what the rate on "usually" is but real-life humans definitely fall within it. In fact they kind of define it.
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2021-04-24, 10:39 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Jul 2016
Re: Gender and sexuality diversity in RPG settings
Not the 75% I am talking about. I am not allowed to talk further on that 75% on this forum. Read into that what you will. This line cannot be further discussed without breaking forum rules, and I feel it will butt up against numerous forum regulations. I will suggest to the mods this thread be closed since it has reached that point.
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2021-04-24, 10:42 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Gender and sexuality diversity in RPG settings
I have a LOT of Homebrew!
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Spoiler: Individual Avatar Pics
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2021-04-24, 10:44 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Jul 2016
Re: Gender and sexuality diversity in RPG settings
Not political. Religion.
Edit: And it doesn't seem to be individuals that are the problem. We see plenty of lgbtq in modern media. Well written ones too. I loved Sera in Dragon Age: Inquisition.
But individual characters can be viewed as an exception rather than a rule. This seems to be the line in the sand. So, like I said, if it's what you want you have to do it yourself.Last edited by Calthropstu; 2021-04-24 at 10:49 AM.
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2021-04-24, 11:03 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Gender and sexuality diversity in RPG settings
I have a LOT of Homebrew!
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2021-04-24, 11:20 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Jul 2016
Re: Gender and sexuality diversity in RPG settings
At no point in this discussion have I mentioned my own beliefs in this thread, excepting that I think this is a bad idea.
As I stated in my previous post, we have butted up against the wall that is the forum rules. That particular argument must go unstated.
I have no authority on the matter. What you believe to be good or bad is irrelevant unless you intend to do something about it. I doubt it will be well recieved, but I could be wrong. Whatever the case, unless you have the ear of someone important in a major rpg publisher or intend to make one, this discussion is fairly irrelevant.
If you do intend to do something, good luck.
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2021-04-24, 12:31 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Jun 2019
Re: Gender and sexuality diversity in RPG settings
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2021-04-24, 01:35 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Gender and sexuality diversity in RPG settings
Last edited by Peelee; 2021-04-24 at 03:57 PM.
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2021-04-24, 05:07 PM (ISO 8601)
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I have a LOT of Homebrew!
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2021-04-24, 05:15 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Sep 2014
Re: Gender and sexuality diversity in RPG settings
Major publishers are already doing this. Most Powered by the Apocalypse games allow people to fill in the broad spectrum of gender presentation and sexuality as a matter of course, with no discussion on how it might upset people because the people who would be upset by things like that probably ought to be upset. It's already happening. The culture has shifted, you are wrong.
And there's tons of other games out there that cater to this sort of thing even more broadly. People can look at Dream Askew/Dream Apart or any number of the Belonging Outside Belonging games or Thirsty Sword Lesbians or Kissing Capes. Buried without Ceremony has a game all about burgeoning lesbian relationships whose name I can post here. The market is dang well saturated with games dealing with an exclusively being about gender and sexuality.Last edited by Razade; 2021-04-24 at 05:18 PM.
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2021-04-25, 12:42 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Jul 2017
Re: Gender and sexuality diversity in RPG settings
To tie this back to the question that kicked off the thread, though. Lots of marginalized identities in our world are defined, at least in part, by the friction they encounter from the rest of society. Mulan having to pass herself as a boy in order to enter the military makes no sense in a fully egalitarian society, and trans people in a setting with easy fleshcrafting and no transphobia will have a lot more in common with real world cis people than real world trans people. Publishers should absolutely leave space for players to play things with only token amounts of friction. But some of that friction will be expected by players to help define their characters, and going too open and utopian with settings can undermine that.
Also, certain concepts can simply not exist and that's okay. A computer hacker makes no sense in a setting where computers don't regularly appear. Similarly, if dwarves in my setting reproduce by carving new dwarves out of stone and then praying to Moradin for a soul, gender and sexuality as we know them probably don't apply to them. Pair bonding makes little sense when you don't need exactly one man and one woman to produce a baby, and gender as we know it is radically different when you don't need to build reproductive anatomy into the dwarven body plan. Telling someone that gay dwarves or trans dwarves don't make any sense isn't about trying to remove options from players, so much as it's about following through on the logic of the world.
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2021-04-25, 03:53 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Feb 2007
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Re: Gender and sexuality diversity in RPG settings
I had some points on the first point at the beginning of the thread.
To cut a long story short, there's a lot of issues that affect trans people, even in a setting where the medical side of transition is easy and not stigmatised.
We have stories of people coming to terms with all sorts of things that aren't stigmatised after all (growing up, learning a trade, painting a really nice picture, etc).Last edited by BisectedBrioche; 2021-04-25 at 04:01 AM.
Hi, I'm back, I guess. ^_^I cosplay and stream LPs of single player games on Twitch! Mon, Wed & Fri; currently playing: Nier: Replicant (Mon/Wed) and The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons (Thurs or Fri)
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2021-04-25, 08:33 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Mar 2015
Re: Gender and sexuality diversity in RPG settings
Just one final note, that is how that thread got started. Someone was looking for advice on how to do it themselves. So they know and they are doing that. Which doesn't excuse everyone else from being exclusionary either but things will start moving without everyone coming on board.
I did actually see that, not with dwarves made from stone but a different genderless race where one of the members was significantly more gendered than their fellows. Which then leads to the question of "is that transgendered?". It feels like it is some variety of queer but it might not have an exact title beyond that because most of the terms were meant to apply to humans.
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2021-04-25, 08:56 AM (ISO 8601)
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- May 2016
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Re: Gender and sexuality diversity in RPG settings
If someone made a setting where several different species had LGBTQ+ individuals and most of their cultures dealt with it in a positive manner, but a few didn't, because just like reality, sometimes there are issues with people tolerating or accepting each other... would that be considered a good or bad setting (because of the few cultures that didn't deal with it in a positive manner)?
If someone made a setting where one species out of many just did not have LGBTQ+ members by nature, and the rest of them did... would that be considered a good or bad setting? Would that single species being the exception be considered "erasure" or just another aspect of one species?
(This is less to demand an answer than it is to provoke thought.)Last edited by Max_Killjoy; 2021-04-25 at 08:57 AM.
It is one thing to suspend your disbelief. It is another thing entirely to hang it by the neck until dead.
Verisimilitude -- n, the appearance or semblance of truth, likelihood, or probability.
The concern is not realism in speculative fiction, but rather the sense that a setting or story could be real, fostered by internal consistency and coherence.
The Worldbuilding Forum -- where realities are born.
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2021-04-25, 09:19 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Apr 2009
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- Germany
Re: Gender and sexuality diversity in RPG settings
Would a setting where some people commit murder be a bad setting?
Settings are supposed to be a stage to tell interesting stories. If they are perfect happy utopias where everyone is completely happy, then there's no story.We are not standing on the shoulders of giants, but on very tall tower of other dwarves.
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2021-04-25, 09:21 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Aug 2012
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Re: Gender and sexuality diversity in RPG settings
To take a stab at answering, I think that the first example would be a good setting - some cultures aren’t welcoming to LGBTQ+ peoples, which can be a good point of conflict for the players to explore. However, it’s important for this not to be universal, because if that message is repeated enough to players the message may transform from ‘your character is not accepted in this culture’ to ‘you, the player, are not accepted at this table’. It’s important that it not look like a thesis delivered by the GM.
The second example I would take as a bad piece of the setting - a culture can be stridently against LGBTQ+ people and expression, but unless there is absolutely no individuality amongst people within that culture, you’re going for get people who don’t fall into the ‘straight and cis’ category. Saying ‘there are no queer people in this culture by nature’ doesn’t scan for me, because humans (and humanoids) aren’t a monolithic hivemind - there’s no way to stop LGBTQ+ people from existing, only ways to suppress the expression of their identities.
The connecting thread between the two points is, I believe, ‘only a Sith deals in absolutes’ - to say that some cultures are not accepting of LGBTQ+ people is fine, because it also says that some cultures are. Variation is good. But to say that in one culture, there are no (and have never been) LGBTQ+ people, that it simply doesn’t happen, is not fine, because it denies the existence of those people. Lack of variation is bad.
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2021-04-25, 09:43 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Gender and sexuality diversity in RPG settings
I am trying to make my game / campaign setting more inclusive for various gender and sexual identities, but I don't really know how to go about it.Last edited by Mutazoia; 2021-04-25 at 09:45 AM.
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2021-04-25, 10:29 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Gender and sexuality diversity in RPG settings
Cal, I am the OP.
I am specifically referring to your comments about how a game which talks about gender queer issues is destined to be a joke game for immature people that inevitably loses money, and wondering how you can square that with said excerpt from the PHB.
I am not talking about rules for gender. To be concise, I am asking two things:
1: How to present trans issues in a world with sex changing magic (which is something D&D fails to address despite having mention of sex changing magic and people trapped in the wrong body in the same book).
2: How to present queer NPCs without it appearing to be token diversity.
For the record, this is the sum of rules about gender in my book:
Spoiler: Heart of Darkness ExcerptGender:Player’s can choose to be male, female, or anything in-between. This decision has no effect on scores or abilities.
Switch Gender
Transmutation Enchantment Difficulty:20
Switch gender changes the subject’s sex. The subject's body retains a similar appearance, albeit altered to match their new gender, and has the same scores, traits, and abilities.The subject undergoes no real mental alterations, but hormonal changes may have mild effects on the subject’s behavior.
Empowering this spell allows for the creation of hermaphroditic or androgynous forms or can assign a male or female gender to a species which normally lacks such distinctions.
As well as a few numerical differences for inhuman species with strong sexual dimorphism, primarily giant insects.
The discussion about just how much setting information should be in the core book is an interesting one, but not really what I created the thread for or what I was asking you for clarification about. For the record, this is what my book says on setting issues about gender queer characters:
Spoiler: Heart of Darkness Excerpt
Atlantis was a wholly egalitarian society, and the Imperium and most of the lands that it once controlled are relatively free of enforced gender roles, and as such few people recognize a distinction between gender and biological sex.
Likewise, alchemy and transmutation magic mean that changing one’s sex is an achievable goal for any save those from the poorest or most conservative backgrounds. As a result, intersex or gender nonconforming people are far more likely to be met with confusion or religious awe than hostility or prejudice
A surgeon skilled in the Atlantean sciences can also seamlessly change a character’s cosmetic details, including gender, although the rarity of such practitioners and the associated costs, risks, and social stigma mean it is not often undertaken lightly.Looking for feedback on Heart of Darkness, a character driven RPG of Gothic fantasy.
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2021-04-25, 10:58 AM (ISO 8601)
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- May 2013
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- Where I am
Re: Gender and sexuality diversity in RPG settings
You wanna know how Unbeatable Squirrel Girl addressed trans inclusiveness?
By not addressing it.
Koi Boi, who can talk to Koi and has all the powers of a Koi, is transmale.
We only know this because in in two issues the main characters have to change clothes on screen and Koi Boi's undergarments include a breast binder. Someone asked about it, and the author confirmed it in the letter pages, and that's it.
The word "transgender" is never uttered, there's no "very special episode" typeplot regarding it... The author of the comic felt that the best way to be trans inclusive was to treat a transgendered character as being so normal that his trans status wasn't something that the other characters commented on or paid special mind to.I also answer to Bookmark and Shadow Claw.
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2021-04-25, 11:40 AM (ISO 8601)
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- May 2016
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Re: Gender and sexuality diversity in RPG settings
Last edited by Max_Killjoy; 2021-04-25 at 11:42 AM.
It is one thing to suspend your disbelief. It is another thing entirely to hang it by the neck until dead.
Verisimilitude -- n, the appearance or semblance of truth, likelihood, or probability.
The concern is not realism in speculative fiction, but rather the sense that a setting or story could be real, fostered by internal consistency and coherence.
The Worldbuilding Forum -- where realities are born.
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2021-04-25, 11:41 AM (ISO 8601)
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- May 2016
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- The Lakes
Re: Gender and sexuality diversity in RPG settings
It is one thing to suspend your disbelief. It is another thing entirely to hang it by the neck until dead.
Verisimilitude -- n, the appearance or semblance of truth, likelihood, or probability.
The concern is not realism in speculative fiction, but rather the sense that a setting or story could be real, fostered by internal consistency and coherence.
The Worldbuilding Forum -- where realities are born.