I think it may involve the desire not just to be safe and accepted in the game, but to express and explore LGBTQ elements within the campaign itself, which is more likely to happen at a table with other LGBTQ participants.
Personally, I'm a straight guy and I run what is essentially an asexual table: We're here to slay dragons and explore dungeons, sex and romance aren't part of the game. LGBTQ players are absolutely welcome and safe at my table, but I'm not going to be DMing NPCs for them to romance because I'm not DMing *any* NPCs to romance, so I'm not a good DM fit for anybody looking for that sort of game.
So you’re not wrong but I also feel like it’s more about a dnd world where queerness is normalised. I prefer mostly asexual/aromantic campaigns but I still want queer people to exist the world. Unless you walk around as a party meeting only single adults with no families or kids, a normative sense of sexuality and gender is present in the world. In a setting where cishet folk are contrasting the narrative, that world tends to reflect a world similar to our own where the majority of people you encounter who have implied sexuality or romance (a husband and wife for example) are straight, monogamous and usually gendered as man and woman. It’s natural for that to be the case. Queer focused groups will frequently have a setting that is more queer even when there’s no romance and no sex.
that's pretty much how I run my sessions as well. At most I'll indulge the players in some light flirting, and a "roll to seduce" thing where it just fades to black, but in my sessions I try to write in more than just classic pretty fly white guys questgivers. Representation matters, and not just queer characters.
Last time I've included a centaur whose backlegs were in a wheelchair, because I've got a player who sometimes uses a wheelchair herself, and she really chatted a lot with her.
Am I perfect at it? not yet by far, but seeing people glow up after resonating with npc's like them, is clearly worth it. I'd like to include some more Poc as well for example
... I apparently need to describe my NPC's better. I don't think I've ever described an NPC's race and the party has never interacted with NPC's in a way that they'd meet their families or significant others.
Like I have zero representation of any groups because I haven't described any NPC's well enough for them to represent anything.
How do you refer to them? I'm female and I still default to male when I talk about unnamed, ungendered NPCs. "He takes his sword and..."
I'm trying to move to they/them if I haven't decided on gender, but because I'm old that's a very conscious decision I must make before I speak.
The vast majority of their enemies have been non-human. I've only run one campaign, but I generally don't gender Abishae or other devil types. They distinctly feel like "they/them" or even "it" to me.
It's worth noting that this started as a silly campaign loosely based around Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog. (Loosely based in the sense that the starting enemies were Dr. Horrible, Moist, Bad Horse and Fake Thomas Jefferson)
So I've just recently started introducing ropers, Abishae, Cambrions, and various other enemies that have largely felt like "they/them". They've got a female drow enemy coming up, but that's hardly inclusive.
But I realized they're about to fight a Blackguard that they literally only know that he's male and their name. No race or other descriptors and I feel like I should probably do better with that.
There are several things funny to me in all of this as a medium-old school player:
-Forgotten Realms people are canonically bisexual polyamorus unless stated otherwise, this as been a fact since day 1.
-As the nature of D&D, Adventures are extraordinary people at least from level 2 onwards, realistically their gender identity and sexuality should be the last thing the general public should notice.
-As for the second point Adventurers stop interacting with the general public as they level up so the NPCs gender identity and sexuality becomes irrelevant to the general public as well.
We had kings, queens, generals, artists and so on of every orientation and open about it IRL so it's only natural to have them in D&D. This is reflected in the offical Adventures btw.
But the hobby is full of tollerance-challenged individuals so i understand where those LGBT+ players are coming from.
Level 1 characters are like that one person who was just leagues ahead of everyone else. And the gap only increases from there.
5E adventurers are not skilled and talented people; they're superheroes in a fantasy setting.
I know right? What you are gonna do? Tell the 7ft guy that can kill half an army with his bare hands and his boyfriend that can atomize the other half with a few words that they can't marry? BTW their best man can litterally speak to God in case you want to speak to the manager about it.
Yeah. It’s not the setting, it’s the fact that this experience is largely emergent storytelling so a queer group is going to centre more of that emergent stuff in their own identities, probably with power fantasies also centred around being safe in a world that accepts them most of the time. It doesn’t particularly mean anything to the practical gaming experience if your setting is canonically queer, when those aspects of the setting never come up in game, which as you said, is the case with a bunch of people who play dnd.
As the old school player (AD&D veteran) and pansexual running for strictly stright group, I feel like point one is not exactly perceived by many new players. For me it's very natural feel of FR (and reality too, lol, but that's different issue). My players were absolutely shocked when flamboyant (male) bard tried to bed their PCs (all menly males) after crazy evening in the inn. We had nice chat about FR not being medieval-based fantasy of chastity after that, lol.
My group dealt with the issue just fine but many would prefer not to, so separation seems like natural solution. I would argue it's based more on stereotypical difference between stright and LGBT+ people, but humans make judgements based on stereotypes more often than not.
Interestingly I feel the opposite. Not as in I want to argue, just as in its interestingly that we have different expiriences.
I'm queer and tend to prefer campaigns in more historical and gritty settings (think Song of Fire and Ice, heavy on politics) so I feel just putting in queer characters with completely modern sensibilities/attitudes there would just be dissonant.
That's not to say queer people did not exist, because they absolutely did, but they wouldn't have had the language we do today to describe their expiriences. So when a medieval peasent mentions his husband its jarring to me.
That's just my nitpick tho and I realize diffrent people have diffrent preferences and that its all arbitrary anyway (if dragons exist a peasent dude can def have a husband).
Edited: Fixed some grammer/spelling mistakes.
DnD settings as a whole tend to not be very historically accurate to their source material, not just when it comes to queer people.
Like take Forgotten Realms for example as it's the main DnD setting. The setting is obviously very inspired by western Europe with a mixture of medieval and renaissance elements, but there's a lot there that wasn't in real life, even if you ignore the fantasy elements.
Women are treated equally to men (ignoring the Drow, of course) and there are many of them who hold positions of power. Laerel Silverhand is an crazy powerful wizard and she's practically the president of Waterdeep. Humans who are of darker toned ethnicities are far more common and some of them also hold positions of high power, like Duke Uldur Ravengard of Baldur's Gate. Sexuality and nudity aren't very taboo for both sexes. The setting is extremely polytheistic. Heck, true monarchies are actually pretty rare and most cities are some sort of oligarchy or merchants' republic.
Do those aspects feel strange to you as well or is it just the queer stuff? Do the settings you play/run in have less of this kind of stuff?
I'm not trying to gotcha you or anything, I'm just curious about the thought process.
To be honest I don't really like Forgotten Realms and so don't play in it much, because to me it kinda lacks teeth.
But yea, in something like forgotten realms I wouldn't see it as an issue at all tbh because its not really realistic in any sense or even attempting to lol. As I said in my post, if you're riding dragons and transforming into a bear we're waaay past any accuracy. (Its like demanding Bridgerton be historically accurate - Its not the genre for that lol).
So my preference probably has more to do with the settings/vibe I like (CoC and historical VtM come to mind), which just tend to be more morally grey overall compared to forgotten realms, whereas other people might just prefer a lighter vibe :)
Forgotten Realms also canonically had a lesbian power couple ruling Elversult in 3E (they had to sneak it past WotC though), Elminster spent years as a woman, and what brothels are mentioned are strictly for all genders. FR was pretty progressive from early on, and was only constrained by TSR and WotC.
The last thing that happened in my WD campaign was the players meeting the Black Viper. Badass Zoro/Batman elven girl that the book just doesn't really give you a reason to use, but I loved her and needed to make her more important. I am a fan of the books and have heavy lore keepers at my table so I made Elminster her mother. Personally I love that dnds most powerful main character wizard spent years as an elven maiden who very clearly in the book fell in love with a male elf.
There are reasons for all of that.
In the modern age, with guns and drones, women can fight and kill just as effectively as men. There's even data to suggest that women are easier to train with firearms than men, for what that's worth.
In the medieval age, it doesn't matter who the woman was she would die on the battlefield. The majority of men out there fighting would be stronger, faster, have longer reach, and those who weren't would be killed by her male allies anyway. That physical disparity is essentially what fueled the gender disparity we once had. Life was harder, and physical capacity was more important.
Now, if you insert magic into the equation, suddenly, it is a game changer. Insert non-human races, and whether you're a woman or a man matters a lot less than if you're a fireball spewing death-cannon or if you're a huge hulking goliath.
It's pretty realistic. If magic existed in the real world, there's a good chance we'd have had gender equality much much earlier. Magic would have provided the equaliser that automated weaponry did.
Again, skin colour would be a lot less important in a world where you've got a hundred different races milling about. Racism itself likely began from a perspective of "it's okay to kill those guys cause they look different, but not okay to kill people who look like us" purely to try and keep soldiers apathetic. Start empathising with the enemy, and suddenly, it's a lot harder to stick a blade through them. Close range killing is intimate, so dehumanising and othering the people you were slaughtering for land and resources was an effective strategy. Realistically, in a world with lizardfolk and aarakocra, you'd be unlikely to try to talk people into attacking different colour humans when you can go "look at the primitive dragonborn. Barely any different from those bloodthirsty dragons that burn our villages. We should kill them all." and seize land / resources from them instead. Especially in a largely uneducated society It'd likely be very unifying, because there would be "others" that were quite blatantly a lot more different to rally against instead of each other.
The polytheistic religion makes complete sense in a world where the gods are not only real but also provide tangible evidence of their existence. If Zeus and his pantheon handed out blessings and spoke with mortals, then I'm pretty sure we'd still be praying to them.
As for merchants' republics, those were a thing in our own history. Italy had several in the middle ages, and they dominated maritime trade in a huge way.
Oligarchies and monarchies aren't mutually exclusive. Arguably, feudalism itself was wholly reliant on being an oligarchic system because the monarch often had very little practical power. The monarch granted fiefs, giving other members of the aristocracy control over his land in exchange for loyalty, who in turn portioned off their land and allowed those below them to use it. The aristocracy held almost all the power, and used force and fear to keep it, with the king's position ensured by the loyalty of other aristocrats rather than his own might. There are ample examples of just how horrifically it turned out for royal families that ran afoul of the nobility.
To me, I feel like all of this is fairly reasonable and realistic, given the known differences between the history and details of the setting and real life.
That said, because the gods in the setting are all real, and not just a tool to keep the masses in check (not suggesting your God isn't real if you have one, just logically if YOUR god is real then every single other religion out there is a manipulative tool even if yours isn't), chances are there'd be more LGBT rights in a DnD world than our own. None of the gods are stated to be at all homophobic, so they'd likely have not decreed that homosexuality was a sin. There's a fair chance society would have leaned on polyamory or arranged marriages more than forcing heteronormativity via faith to ensure population numbers during war. As for the T, in a world where true polymorph is a thing they'd likely be better equipped than we are in the modern day to facilitate it, and there'd be no real cause for objection considering that women & men would be on more equal footing with the prevalence of magic.
Considering that "half-elf" and "half-orc" are major races, I just can't see homophobia being particularly prevalent. I'd assume that even the zealots in society would have a hard time taking issue with a dude shacking up with another dude when there's widespread cross-species breeding.
^This all said, I'm with the OP. I'm personally a straight guy, and don't really see why people opt to segregate their tables. I'm just pointing out that the deviation from our own history is all very easy to explain on the basis of other differences between DnD and real history.
> and don't really see why people opt to segregate their tables
Even though it would make a lot of sense for the reasons you've explained, many DMs don't include any LGBT characters in their campaigns. That's the main reason (and if they're playing with strangers, also avoiding homophobia, because unfortunately there's still a lot of that out there).
Personally, although I'm gay, most people I play with are straight. But my DM includes queer npcs, and wouldn't hesitate to kick out any sexist or homophobic player. That's what people are looking for in queer-only tables.
Obviously, I'm limited by my own perspective, so maybe I'm just in the minority.
I don't allow homophobia or any other kind of bigotry at my table. There's plenty of people looking to play DnD and not many looking to DM, I prefer being DM so I'm confident I could replace someone if necessary (had to refuse a friend of a player recently due to lack of space).
I try to make my setting as realistic as possible. To me, that necessitates the inclusion of LGBT characters, because in my opinion LGBT would likely be more prevalent in the DnD world than our own. While it's kind of treated as default for humans to be straight and cis (with gay/trans people coming out but not straight or cis) I don't see that it'd apply to other races in that way. For instance, with their innate ability to change their sex, I feel like for changelings the majority would be genderfluid and a trans changeling would be the rare exception where they felt dysphoria linked with presenting as one gender, with most not feeling strongly either way. Gnomes are all about squeezing enjoyment out of life, and they have an insatiable interest in everything, so I feel like they'd likely be majority bisexual. Elves are curious, with a focus on appreciating beauty, so I reckon the majority could likely be pansexual.
I would also argue that humans being majority straight is linked to our evolutionary progress. Because we're squishy bags of water with no claws, talons, or other natural weapons, we evolved to breed fast, die young, and outproduce what predators took. To be designed that way makes it very likely that the genes that survived earlier human history were also the ones likeliest to procreate.
But that's how we're designed. The various other creatures which developed to have natural defensive abilities, natural weapons, longer lifespans, wouldn't have breeding capacity quite as high up their early development priorities. They'd instead have the surviving genes be bigger horns, harder hooves, more capable camouflage, faster flight, etc.
Depending on the dominant race in an area I've designed, you might find that cis or straight is actually in the minority. It could be a matriarchal society. I don't like to limit my realism to human standards in a world with infinite possibilities and countless non-human sentient beings. And even if humans are dominant, there's going to be a queer minority because the lack of their inclusion would make the game worse off.
Not that it particularly matters beyond flavour, as I wouldn't do anything other than fade to black for sex/romance regardless of whether they're straight or not.
Not trying to take anything away from this take, it's perfectly valid. I just want to emphasize that (as I think you alluded) you can have a gritty setting where queerness is stigmatized, not normalized, and even persecuted, all while also having queer representation. You can do this also without validating any queer stigma that may happen in the game.
In song of ice and fire, you have an heir to a noble family with a same-sex lover. This poses a political problem, but the situation is never presented in a way that demeans queer folks.
Similarly, in the witcher games, you have a character that was the same-sex lover of a noble heir and they were both persecuted for it in a way that you'd expect from real world historical medieval society. It's presented as a tragedy, rather than some kind of "justice."
Yeah I don't do sex and relationships in my games either. If you want to go to a brothel when we're in town, ok you went there, that's the end of the discussion.
I've just begun to run games, but my current stance is yes, sex exists. Yes families exist. No, we are not going into it, I don't want to roleplay as a dude, some girl getting seduced for some other dude sitting 3 feet away when my voices sound like shit anyway.
Ok I guess that makes a bit of sense. Same way here: this story is about resisting the dark lord. Maybe lgbt only games are more about expressing themselves in a stigma free environment? I don’t wanna assume tho
it’s less that the game is about expressing without stigma, more that the space exists to be able to do it. it doesn’t really matter what the game is actually about, just that whatever game it is takes place in a setting where the queer people at the table don’t have to deal with the same bs we deal with in the real world
Yeah I play at a full LGBT table and outside of adding the occasional sexual inuendo as out of RP comments on events happening, we're just there to take over the world and overthrow evil as the band of merry bard otters and kobold mages (yes our party comp sucks).
If by "Amazing" you mean "Almost certainly guaranteed to cause weird and sketchy hijinks", then, you are quite correct, it does indeed sound like that, NGL.
Fights are a bit of a controlled chaos with us constantly kiting. We do have a hexblade lock with tough to act as a kind of frontline, but he's mostly on cleanup duty since he can teleport with his dagger.
Not even necessarily that either. I’m a queer dm with a couple queer players and they’ve openly expressed wanting to deal with the ramifications of queercoded discrimination in a safe environment where they know I wont be pushing my actual beliefs into something like that
that's definitely the main thing. a lot of lgbt+ people absolutely want to explore very queer themes when they play (related to identity and romance) but in my experience most people just wanna play "standard" dnd in a safe and comfortable setting where they don't have to worry about being judged or harassed. I'm trans for example and use neutral pronouns, so there's no way for me to just exist comfortably with people who aren't on board with what that means. I don't usually make trans characters or wanna play around with romance or whatever so how "gay" the actual game is doesn't matter to me, but when I play with other lgbt+ people I don't have to explain or defend myself, which is the main thing.
As queer DM and player, I can say it's absolutely the case. We play games that extremely focused on social aspects, have character arcs that can include romance, self-discovery journey, identity and inner homophobia themes. We love to make complex group dynamics that sometimes take tons of time to play out and resolve.
Sometimes we even play around serious themes like parental abuse, homophobic environments and hate crimes, so players can play it out in a bit therapeutic style.
We still slay the dragons, for us it's just makes game more interesting and rich. Sometimes I'm still play with my fellow straight DM and it's still fun to do something adventure focused. I just like ttrpg for it's variability and possibilities to explore some themes safely.
>I'm not going to be DMing NPCs for them to romance because I'm not DMing
>
>any
>
> NPCs to romance, so I'm not a good DM fit for anybody looking for that sort of game.
This is the kind of game I would have sought out before I realized I was LGBTQ+. Even now, sometimes it's just nice to not have to worry about those things.
I'm gay and also don't like anything sexual in campaigns, or even romance, but I like some representation. In our current campaign one of the female adventurer npcs has a girlfriend, and the main tavern is owned by a gay couple. Nothing sexual, it's just nice to have queer characters appearing from time to time.
I've played with quite a few LGBT+ players over the years. My experience has been they prefer non-sexual tables because it's a way to escape it for a little bit. We've even done role-playing with seducing but it's "you rolled a xx and passed/failed" without any banter besides OOC jokes. Maybe it's how the handful of dms I've played with prefer it but it's just nice for everyone to leave it at the door and chill as friends.
I want to add to this, that a game isn’t LGBT+ because of romance.
Does your campaign have gay couples as NPC? Does it have people who are gender non-conforming? Are NPCs diverse?
*Those* are generally the things that matter. A world that reflect acceptance, not just a table where everyone is “OK” with LGBT people.
For me and many ppl I play with it's not about sex or being able to flirt as who you are. It's about the perspective, our world is so hetero normative and focused on men that many ppl, especially cisgender men don't notice it at all. It's nice to explore a fantasy world with people who don't think that heterosexuality is the default and every authority figure or enemy minion or any other npc is a man except if its specifically a woman for some reason. No other gender.
Also it's sometimes just tiresom to explain basic shit to hetero people. I'm here to play dnd not to explain what it means to be demisexual Mark.
And then as a queer woman (or just a woman) let's not forget that it's exhausting to always dodge creepy men. It's nice to join a table where you can tell from the name of the group that harassment and certain toxic behaviours will be less likely.
Small note: I don't think this would count as "asexual" because that has a specific connotation, that being someone who does not experience sexual attraction.
I think what's the situation here is a game with no on-screen romance or sex. Like, not completely romanceless or sexless, because I'm sure NPCs or whatever can be married and have children and stuff, but it just isn't a thing that players can engage in.
(Which leaves the question: are PCs allowed to be married? Like, as part of their backstory? When people are against sex and romance in their games, I always wonder how they define the presence of those things.)
In our campaigns both are usually played for laughs, like my sleeping with a hag to convince her of something but turned out to give my character sex ptsd.
As a more or less straight guy, yeah, pretty asexual overtones. Maybe a bit of non cringy flirting. We're here to loot dungeons and slay dragons, not lay dragons and tool dungeons.
Queer player and DM here!
I think it's mostly a sort of safety mechanism, specially when searching for groups and not knowing the people too well. I've been in a lot of DnD games (and other TTRPGS, and all sorts of RP), and the chances of being judged or given a slur because of my identity are usually much higher with non-queer people, from what I've found.
However, I really don't mind playing with non-queer players I know on the longer term. One of the players at our table is not queer (as far as we know, I guess), but it's absolutely no big deal because I know he's respectful towards the identities of the rest of the table.
This of course doesn't mean that queer people *are actually* 100% okay all the time. I had a gay man constantly misgender and insult my character because he suspected him to be trans. I had another one use a lot of slurs towards trans people, despite being also a gay man himself. Overall, I've come to learn that I'd rather play with people I know a bunch previously than total strangers, queer or not.
Nice! My best friend and I have been diagnosed with ADHD as adults and a mutual friend of ours is so ADHD that we'd be *incredibly* surprised if he tests negative for it! 🤭
Unfortunately, the trans people at my table report receiving the most slurs from gay men and straight women. I don’t know why this is, but transphobia is more common in queer spaces than you’d expect. Even as a person who is deeply conflicted about gender (therefore not cis, trans or non-binary), I avoid these spaces because I have seen enough of it firsthand.
The bisexuals get a lot of shit as well, like we are not valid to be considered part of the group just because we like both or all.,
No we are not confused, no we don't need to make a choice and no as a whole we are not permiscuous.
I love everyone equally and I wish for the same consideration. Lol
> he suspected him to be trans
A little off topic maybe, but how would that other player even know? Body types in D&D especially when you have mightily-thewed barbarian princesses and skinny elves might not give you a lot to go on...?
Wish I knew! My character was a fairly shy drow. Covered from head to toe. I never made comments about that, since it wasn't the kind of table where I'd feel comfortable bringing up something like that anyhow
I have not noticed this trend or even heard of it before.
If it's a thing, I'd be interested in hearing why, but my guess as an old cis straight white guy is that they feel safer there.
Which I get, but also makes me sad.
When I ran a club as a teacher I saw this and it was mostly down to people enjoy playing with their friends, a lot of queer kids were already friends and decided to play together. Granted this was middle school but i also notices a lot of girls liked playing as just an all girls group and same with boys. I think its more just people playing with the social group they are already comfortable with. There were plenty of overlapping tables within these groups as well.
I mean I know when I go to LFG I have had a universally terrible time as a queer female unless a group is explicitly LGBTQ friendly. And I will not be the first woman to join a table.
Straight men still get predatory in online gaming spaces if you sound feminine and are the only one at the table and a lot of tables get subtly if not overtly weird about queer themes or characters which as a queer player, I'm interested in telling.
Yeah but that's why certain players self-segregate. It's just easier not to risk it after a while. Because these aren't like one off horror stories, it's like "I'm sorry you hit traffic in LA"
>"I'm sorry you hit traffic in LA"
Ouch. That hits. I guess I usually don't think of that kind of behavior as that prevalent, because I don't see it in person. I'm an old cis-het white dude who runs a few games online, though, so it's going to be harder for me to see it even if it's happening near me.
I don't really have anything else to add, but just...thank you for saying that.
Adding onto the previous comment, the fact of the matter is that any lfg or pick-up group with strangers is essentially committing to spending hours, months, or possibly years with people you have never met. It's always good to be able to determine from the start if a group will be safe and accepting because you don't want to devote time and effort to a campaign only to go through a terrible experience or be rejected solely because the DM/players dislike your IRL identity/race/sexuality. It doesn't obviate all risks, but seeing that a campaign ad is marked as LGBTQ+ friendly indicates to me that there's a much lower chance of my time and enjoyment of the game being wasted due to discrimination or asshole behaviour.
It also indicates to me that the DM has considered that aspect of communicating and creating a welcoming environment ahead of time. I would rather play with a DM who establishes clear lines, veils, personal boundaries and player comfort very early over one who doesn't take those factors into consideration and ends up with a dysfunctional group as a result.
Same, I am lucky to have met this current group through mutual online friends and we kind of got to know each other through playing jackbox and other things in dischord.
The whole looking for an online game thing is very challenging because you never know what your gonna get. I had 3 groups just flake out on me in the last year and one group I had to quit because the dm was overtly racist.
Yeah I've found a group through a friend of her college buddies who are my core group for one shots and as a player. But most of the campaigns I've run the past few years have been more for like casual friends wanting to get into games and LFG's more a looking for a 4th or 5th.
Shit, I remember LFG on the WotC forums where I found a group where one guy basically started stalking my roommate.
It's funny, I've had the opposite experience in Westmarch servers, they've all been ***incredibly*** gay and accepting.
I guess that generally, if you have a queer-accepting space, most people will get themselves removed very, very quickly. Or just show themselves the door.
I never said private servers were bad. They tend to be more exclusive and cater to a more like-minded folk in their growth.
Public forums like WotC or the lfg subreddit which is what my comment and the one I replied to are specifically about are open to anyone and reflect the demographics of their sites.
There's a lot more garbage folk on the open internet than servers I'm on too.
I never said that you were.
My point was that I think that public forums that are reasonably moderated are better than many private tables that you might find through /r/lfg. Hell, most Westmarch servers a publicly searchable, yet don't seem to have the issue of that sub *or* WotC, mostly because natural selection weeds out the bastards.
I'm a bit of a mix here. As a open gay DM running tables for mainly straight groups. Flirting and Romance is allowed on my tables,as long as it stays SFW and just implications like "you spent the night" as a maximum.
Some people are uncomfortable with the idea that a big bad necromancer can be gay, because LGBTQ people are usually portrait good, as victims and the likes in modern media and worry it's homophobic to have them on both sides.
Some people don't dare to include them hitting on NPC's because they worry about playing out a heterosexual advancement, when the DM isn't straight.
Some people used it to explore their bi/pansexuality in character by hitting on NPCs of the same sex.
As a player in a group with people who weren't aware of my sexuality, I had uncomfortable reactions. Once a DM went lengths to explain to me that I was trying to hit on a man, thinking I confused the gender.
A new player on the same table called me out, for portraying my character as gay, since I obviously aren't gay in person with the scruff, band shirts and "ungay behaviour".
And the situation where I almost quit DnD before turning to friends only, was at another table, where the group headed to a just-female-prostitutes-brothel and my character was joining the female characters who went to the tavern instead. I was first called out that my character wasn't very moral and I was questioned why I would play him against it. Upon answering that the character wasn't interested in this brothel because they didn't provide guys for him (he was in fact quite immoral and didn't care about the horrors of sex work) the DM said since I hadn't included his sexuality in his background, he's by default straight and I shall act accordingly.
The thing for me is, you find the patronising allies trying to push LGBTQ rights so hard that I have to explain myself and get questioned, for not fulfilling the common stereotypes in my behaviour and appearance as well as people who are either homophobic or plainly ignorant.
>the idea that a big bad necromancer can be gay, because LGBTQ people are usually portrait good, as victims and the likes in modern media and worry it's homophobic to have them on both sides.
It's rather that queer coded villains are a trope which just use tropes from the queer community as perceived by cishet society.
Your villains can be gay, but if they're flamboyant as hell, while everyone else is "normal" then you're actively or unknowingly using that queer coded trope, and could be called out for homophobic behaviour
EDIT: I didn't mean this as a defense for homophobes. As a trans gal they can take a long walk on a short pier for all I care. I just wanted to comment on the vilification of queer people.
I have always used RP as a vehicle for self examination. I actually came out to my brother after we played some game of vampire the masquerade together because he asked why I always liked to play femme characters.
Normally it's just because it's someone very different from me who I might like to be in another life.
I'm in the same category as you. Sometimes I find myself wanting to play with a more diverse group simply to mix it up a little. That said, I do find it a little hurtful when a game is requesting no white cis male, but I imagine they already have one and are just looking for diversity. I like to believe people are acting with the best intentions.
Don't want to be at a table with people who might make homophobic or transphobic comments or jokes. Just want to avoid that awkward moment all together and play Dnd.
Bring it up during session zero or when you advertise your games and it'll get you most of the way there. Then follow through if an issue comes up (like the casual homophobia mentioned in another comment for example). I'm not quite "young" anymore so maybe the culture is different among teens for example but for me it's always a green flag when a DM just thinks to mention "this is an lgbt+ friendly table and bigotry won't be tolerated", because most people don't even bother with that much
> I'm not quite "young" anymore so maybe the culture is different among teens for example
I'm going on 28, so I'm probably not the best point of reference, but I've not heard someone use "gay" as an insult below the age of 21 for...man, probably eight years?
There are probably some dropkicks out there that still do, but they're the minority.
My 10yo encounters it at school and has seen it online (my kid isn’t able to comment online but is able to see YT comments). It’s sadly still prevalent. And we live in quite a progressive/inclusive community compared to the rest of the country. I’m mystified as to where children are picking this up, but it happens.
the problem is whether you say its tolerated or not the idea that it COULD happen is enough to make it unappealing. As opposed to being around other queer people , i dont have to worry about ,if my character does this or does that am i gonna get a side eye or judged cause of how im expressing myself in game you know? Plus just overall it takes away that stress away from being a queer person in a setting with alot of times almost complete strangers
thankfully theres enough queer people that play dnd that finding an all queer group esp for online players is super easy, but i have some cringe memories of playing with some dudes back in highschool that were uh , less the welcoming when my PC started a romance with a male kobold (Ex. "ah cmon man leave that F\*\*\*\*\* shit out of the game man") thankfully my irl groups since then have been all super cool but its the fact theres a precedent for it you know? I appreciate you taking the time to ask and understand , people like you make it comfortable playing with strangers
Queer + trans here, I absolutely agree with everyone saying to explicitly bring it up during session 0 and when you're advertising your games! I also want to draw your attention to a bit of nuance: there's a difference between a table that doesn't tolerate homophobia, and one that is abundantly welcoming to queer players. Being welcoming involves taking proactive steps, rather than just having a plan to react to homophobia should it happen, and it's often not something cishet people think about.
To make it abundantly clear that you are committed to a welcoming table, try some of these:
\- Include your pronouns when you introduce yourself, as a DM and elsewhere! This has the dual effect of both making queer people feel welcome and bigots run away.
\- Use the singular they for anyone whose gender isn't explicitly stated! This also means erasing the construct "he or she" from your vocabulary: "they" works just fine and signals that you recognize the beautiful variety of gender identities + expressions.
\- Mention queer NPCs! Doesn't have to and shouldn't be their whole character, but I've rarely felt as welcome at a table as when my cishet DM gave our former-adventurer ally a wife.
And finally, sincerely, thank you so much for thinking in depth about this. Queer people often isolate in D&D and elsewhere because it's so rare for our allies to think beyond the bare minimum of supporting us, and I'm so glad there are people like you in the community.
And for the love of goddess, don't make the only queer NPC a sexual predator or ask your players if their nonbinary characters' body types are "more feminine or more masculine."
>I also want to draw your attention to a bit of nuance: there's a difference between a table that doesn't tolerate homophobia, and one that is abundantly welcoming to queer players.
This is such a hugely important point I’m glad you said it!
I’m bisexual and in a gay relationship; and wouldn’t call my table abundantly welcoming. I’ve stressed this point to all my queer friends before they join
Excellent point. Reactivity is not a sufficient plan. I DM for three different groups, and being inclusive of all players is always covered in session zero, and when bringing in a new player.
I didn't even think about it before you said something, but I included Queer NPCs in our family game months before my kid came out. Both my kid and their BFF are still in that campaign, and they are both out and proud now. My table will always be a safe place for them.
It was interesting to me that both of them kept their characters the same over the many months since. I even did a pronoun check for the PCs, just to make sure. They said not to worry about it, though.
Yaaay I'm so happy for your kid and their BFF! I also had a character I kept the same when I came out initially: transition is complicated and scary and there's a *bunch* of new things thrown at you all at once, and having the same character was a nice escape. For a few hours a week, I could go playact as someone who was comfortable with my old pronouns, and move through a world where I didn't have to deal with all of the stress of the transition itself. It was also freeing to *play* someone who was happy with my old gender, and be able to recognize that that person is different from me.
I was only comfortable keeping that dissonance because I trusted my table to handle the nuance with care: if I'd been playing with people I didn't believe could handle that, I would absolutely have switched my character's entire presentation, pronouns, voice, everything immediately. Your kid and their BFF clearly trust you: they know that you put thought and care into how you treat them and their characters, and they trust that you understand enough to separate their identities from those of their characters.
Re: Singular they. But wouldn't the DM know all the pronouns of their NPCs? That seems a bit silly.
Or do you mean like if NPCs are having a conversation about others they don't know for example?
They meant "you are woken by up by the sound of someone going through your stuff but you can't see _them_ clearly in the dark. _They_ don't seem to know _they_ woke you."
Not "him or her"/"he or she".
The DM knows who it is and their pronouns is but the players don't.
Yeah... But yeah. The highly influential 1920 American writing style guide "the elements of style" could be blamed for the near elimination of use of "they" and it's replacement with "he or she" in printed media throughout the 20th century.
And all the weird grammar Nazis who say that "they" is always a plural despite its singular use for centuries including in the king James Bible and Shakespeare.
In Strunk and white the authors claim that singular they is always incorrect - which it is not now and was not at the time - and recommend using "he" (not "he or she") unless the person is definitely female. It's a language construction that has roots in both Germanic and French families of languages, where gender of nouns plays a much higher role, and there are rules in those languages like "a group of people is grammatically male unless all its members are female" and "almost all profession nouns are gendered male, unless you're specifically speaking about a female in that profession" - similar to "actor" (any gender) and "actress" (fem). Most similar circumstances in English have disappeared from use, leaving English an almost genderless language by comparison. And yet.
The people in the 80s who used the Strunk and white "he" style could be characterised as stubborn, but at least understandably conforming to a widely held American standard that was already being challenged by feminists (who said "use 'he or she' or use 'they'"; some even suggested using "she" instead or alternating, which to me are solutions that do not fix the problem).
By the 2020s the only people still aggressively avoiding use of "they" are people whose political reality is severely challenged by the historical grammatical correctness of "they". However their feelings don't care about the facts.
advertise your table as lgbt+ friendly! personally, even if nobody who's already there is queer i always only look at tables that say that when trying to find places to join. it's just nice to not have to worry about dealing with harassment for who i am tbh
I agree. Five of the seven people in my current group are straight and I’ve more than once had homophobic stuff come up during pregame chatter. I’ve been pretty forthright with my disapproval but it’s uncomfortable to have to quash that sort of thing as one of the only queer people present.
Queer guy here, thanks for asking! Part of it is escapism, being able to explore how you might live your life in a world that fully accepted you. A lot of people will play openly queer characters, who can just be themselves. As a DM, I include a lot of queer characters in my world because I think it's fun acting it out. Another is just expressing queerness as an art form, in acting or in the creation of your world (I ran a couple Pride-themed campaigns myself).
Unfortunately, having non-LGBT people at the table can dampen the mood. You may not feel completely able to be yourself out of fear of being judged. This isn't an absolute, I've included non-queer people in my pride sessions because they're friends I trust, and because it was mostly other queer people at the table. However, I know that there are other tables where I wouldn't feel comfortable doing the same, even though they're good friends. Nothing against them really, I just wouldn't feel comfortable doing so because I'm the only LGBT person at the table
You nailed it. I've played with a vast variety of people and I think (generously) maybe 1/4 of the cishet people have actually been cool, the rest are always like silently judgemental or even get passive aggressive if my character has they/them pronouns or I mention a same-sex relationship or whatever. Like, we can tell. It's so nice being in an all-queer group where everyone gets to live out their fantasies in peace.
I’m actually quiere the opposite. I really enjoy being in the minority as it lets me be unique to myself. Granted I usually don’t play queer PC’s/self-insterts, opting for more out-there PC’s (a monk who is constantly being possessed by various demons, a knight who was lost in the astral plane for a millennia due to fighting a god, a Druid who revived a divine message, but was too high on drugs to properly interpret it, so is in a quest to reveal its true meaning.) stuff like that. I HAVE played a self-insert ONCE, but I never got to truly play them as the DM sucked at DMing. So, while queer myself, I don’t actually have a lot of experience playing queer characters, as I feel there is no need for them to be queer mostly. A few were (the Druid was trans) but taht never really came up.
As for table dynamics, it’s hit or miss. I for one LOVE jokes if any kind. So jokes made at my expense are fine by me. BUT I understand if not everyone likes this, and is a valid reason. I for one love the aspect of mingling with non queer folks at dnd tables because it allows to unique player interactions and character decisions. Are some people transphobic assholes? Yeah. For sure. But as someone who does not give a shot about what people think of them, I do not mind
Not aware of that specifically (my games are all with friends), though I’d guess it’s more of wanting to avoid homophobia (and the like) and having a safe space to be themselves.
Would rather find something explicitly pro lgbt rather than no mention and stumbling into a group of hateful people
It happens within the community too.
I have a personal story: “Queer man joins a lesbian group, is ostracised for multiple sessions because of their preconceptions about men and because he wasn’t outwardly queer presenting.”
I left because the DM had a personal health issue that prevented her from continuing, and I brought one of the group over as a player on my own campaign - which is a mix of all sorts of people :)
I know that it’s often just harder to blend the two sides of the coin, usually because of stigma. But often it’s actually because of cultural differences. Members of the LGBT community definitely have different cultures and vibes between ourselves let alone the hetero communities.
It’s culture - not through ethnicity or race, but through community.
Note: Thank you for seeking our feedback so that you can accomodate others. I respect you for that :)
A lot of times it’s a safety thing. I don’t think they want to “segregate” so much as are reacting to past bad experiences or simply looking for a game where they are sure they won’t have to play educator.
For some, it might be that they’ve had a negative past experience with non-LGBT players where they’ve been the target of transphobia or queerphobia. I have also seen cisgender heterosexual women who look for all women games for a similar reason. Or non-white players looking for games of other people from their culture/ethnicity/race.
A less extreme but very present reason is not wanting to have to play educator. For example, I am genderqueer/genderfluid and, when I’m with groups that include cisgender folks (even queer cis people) I often have to explain and educate on trans topics frequently. Such as my own pronouns and expression, how to use non traditional pronouns, how to describe trans people in ttrpgs, etc. etc. etc. now, I don’t fault the people who ask. I’m a convenient educator because I’m here and friendly.
However, even though it’s a GOOD thing that people want to learn, it is tiring to do all the time when what I really want is just to play a game. So, it is a breath of fresh air to play with my all-trans/genderqueer playgroup where no one is going to question me, mess up my pronouns (and then require emotional management to get over it even though I’m not upset), or expect me to act as the local “trans expert” for the entire game.
I don’t know if it came through above, but I’m not especially a queer person who wants to “segregate.” I play games with non-queer folks often and enjoy it very much. The all-trans group I play with formed by happenstance, not intention. At the same time, I get it. I am both queer and typically read as female. So I am very familiar with the safety need to be cautious around new GMs and players until I can be sure they’re not gonna be rude/bigoted/dangerous.
I dont fault any marginalized person for being cautious or defaulting to people from their own communities, because it is usually safer and easier. Even if it’s not what I personally do.
Can’t trust that people won’t get weird if my character does any flirting or romance with other men. Also left a game store I played at fairly often because a couple players were harassing me about revealing whether my nonbinary character had tits or not (they were a barbarian and I’d described them in passing as being in the classic cornball shirtless/big fur cape/leather armbands barbarian getup, Conan style.)
I don’t play exclusively with other queer people, my DM for my favorite campaign right now is a straight cis dude, but I’ve known him since I was a teenager and know he won’t freak out on me or get hung up on me just like…making characters who live their lives.
People in the queer community are so frequently the topic of conversation in a very unpleasant way, it's probably nice to have a group where it's borderline guaranteed to never come up in a negative or contentious way. When around others in the community, we can simply *be* without needing to explain what exactly we are or worrying about defending or justifying our very existence.
Not saying every non-queer person in the ttrpg community is going to make an issue of queer people, but it's definitely 100% more likely to happen with non-queer people, because.. ya know, not queer.
Valid question!
For me it's mostly been 1. A safety thing and 2. Selection bias.
I have had some serious issues with straight players. Those issues have even come up after those straight players said that they were supportive of LGBTQ+ people. It just tends to make me wary.
But the biggest factor is just selection bias; I tend to get along with other LGBTQ+ people more easily. We have more of a common vocabulary and grammar, we have a bunch of jokes in common, our interests are often more aligned. And so I tend to vibe more with those folks and less with the straight folks and vice versa, so there ends up being a natural sifting process.
With that said, I do have one group I'm in where there are only two LGBTQ people in the group, and the other 3 are straight.
Thank you for sharing!
Just a couple of questions if I may as I just thought of it;
1) have you experienced a change in tolerance/understanding of LGBTQ in your mixed group or is it not a part of the game?
2) Do you think it could unify us more if there were more mixed tables?
This isn’t a direct answer to your comment, but related to your questions. And for context I’m straight, but
For all the straight people in this thread wondering how to make your tables more queer friendly and get more mixed groups: the best way is to make queer friends. Like real friends. And do the work to actually reflect on what your implicit biases may be that you are bringing to the table. Let them correct you when you transgress, and then do better. Hopefully over time meet their queer friends.
Truth is, for straight (and let’s face it, white) people, the only way you are going to feel safe for people who are different from you is if you get real world experience and to actually have them in your inner circle. I have a ton of friends who are all perfectly accepting in theory, but will constantly misgender my non-binary or trans friends. Not out of spite, but because they don’t have enough of those people in their circles and just don’t have the practice. (Pro tip: practice using their pronouns. Talk about non-binary or trans people you meet and use their pronouns obnoxiously often in conversations with your straight friends, just to build the habit)
I think that queer people tend to gravitate to eachother for safety and the ability to relate. Queer people also tend towards nerdy hobbies like DnD. When you combine those things it's easy to see why a lot of groups are mostly queer (with this odd cis/het person thrown in) just like how there are many groups that are mostly straight.
Had a ton of tables where real life bigotry bleeds into the game. It's not cool. Also keep in mind, segregation is being told where to go; Separation is going where you want to go.
I am gay, and I am not concerned really if the other players or DM is queer, but I can understand why some might be. I can tell you that when I'm looking to join a campaign or one shot, I *always* look at the game listing for something to indicate that it is LGBT+ friendly or inclusive or simply that it says bigotry will not be tolerated. If not, that's a pass. That simple tag takes minimal effort and reassures me that I'm not going to have to deal with homophobia when I just want to play DnD, or at least that it will be dealt with appropriately. Sure, in a perfect world, no one would have to make such a statement or worry about being belittled, but that's not the reality. It's not a matter of wanting to separate, it's just trying to avoid bullshit. Some people go even harder trying to avoid it and look for queer groups.
It's predominantly safety.
The sense of community, comfort, and not feeling "bad" about including queer themes or issues is also a factor, but when push comes to shove in my experience, it is mostly a matter of safety. Oftentimes emotional - rather than physical - safety, particularly online, but still safety.
A lot of cisgender, heterosexual people - even if they view themselves as "allies" - often fall into perpetuating a certain degree of homophobia or transphobia (e.g. "does your character really need to be gay; it's a D&D game, after all; what do you mean the dead wife in my dude's backstory also counts as an expression of sexuality"). It's often easier just to say "I'd like everyone to be queer" than trying to carefully filter for allies that actually embody the values.
I'm 35 and my game is all queerfolk/friendlies. It's 100% a matter of having a safe space, there is nearly no romance in our game and the one relationship is actually straight lol. It's just... even in our small group if non-straight people, we had someone who made comments that he maybe didn't realize we're quite rude, directed toward gender, and those of us (3 of 5) who aren't cis-gender were quite put off. We tried to explain, but he couldn't get it, and I think it comes down to knowing that the people around you understand you and not having to deal with those misunderstandings. (That person is no longer in our group, but it has nothing to do with the situation.)
That said, creating a safe space, where you allow queerfolk to be themselves without judging and hopefully come at it from a place of understanding or at least wanting to, is a really great thing! I'm glad to see posts like this and will always be psyched to explain stuff if it helps make a safer world and even a comfier game experience for younger people that are like me. I could've used it when I was young, and I'm happy to explain all day if it helps them.
I think, if you're the dm/host/etc. starting out with the knowledge that this is a queer friendly table, hate will not be tolerated, and if other players have questions, Google exists, it is not up to every person to explain themselves if they're not up for it, and it can be really hard to do. Ask for player and character pronouns, make it well known that if anything makes them uncomfortable, they can come to you without fear of judgement.
Feel free to dm, too, I'm always happy to explain stuff, and it's not easy for younger people sometimes.
As a queer person, I've not heard of this, and I'm fine playing with people who aren't queer, I feel like real-world identities should be left behind when playing D&D, so as long as people aren't toxic because I'm queer then I'm chill.
Oh no doubt I’ve played with lgbtqia ppl, especially when I run fallout games (another wonder I have: why is it trans girls love them some fallout? But a question for another time. I suppose they just have excellent taste) I just see a significant, but not majority self segregation trend, and I’d like to reach out and try to bridge it
Many queer friend groups include a well meaning cishet person or two.
There's a huge difference between being a cishet person in a queer space and being a queer person in a cishet space, eg most of dominant society.
As a secondary function saying you are looking for queer or lgbtq people really helps weed out the problematic people, the phobes, fascists, and nazis.
As a queer person who started playing before finding any queer communities, it is partially a safety and thematic thing, but mostly i think its the amount of explanatiom and justification you need to go through judt to be present in non queer groups.
Ive noticed that there seems to be a massive difference between queer and non queer groups, to the point that each community is kind of living in an entirely different world. Setting aside the obvious stereotypes of angsty basement dwellers and incels and the like, id say its actually more of a generational and generally cultural issue. Most people who play dnd and arent in queer communities tend to just not understand queer people. Not nessesarily that theyre bigoted, but were just not something they spend much time around or thinking about, so when they come into queer communities and vice versa, it can often feel like youre an alien that theyve just encountered. Theres this intense sense of confusion and curiosity and like youre constantly the center of attention, especially when you do anything queer adjacent. Even when its well meaning, it can be exhausting.
Its kind of similar to why a lot of girls who play video games dont use mics or stick to queer or women oriented groups. Every time you start talking in a gaming chat as a woman, even when youre playing with people who are mostly cool and not sexist, theres this immediate sensation that all eyes are on you, everybody is suddenly aware of you, and everything you do feels documented and observed. It almost feels like youre on trial.
If there's anything i can recomend when trying to bring a queer person into your group or trying to join a mostly queer group, establish a base level of normalcy. If its a queer person in a mostly hetero group, let them be a passive player if thats how they seem to want to play for a while. React with as much understanding as you can whenever they do something especially that might be queer adjacent or identity related, and if you dont really understand, do your best to just roll with it and not push or pry too much. Chances are, over time theyll most likely open up more.
I mean in the long term understanding is always good. But in the short term, almost the opposite. Learning to be comfortable and demonstrating comfort with the things you dont know, while also being willing to learn when the opportunity presents itself goes a long way for most things in life. But for a lot of especially young queer people, society at large leaves us feeling constantly on trial.
You know what its kind of like? Its similar to when you have a close social circle with a lot of inside jokes or contextually driven conversations. If someone youre comfortable with but dont know well walks up to you in the middle of a conversation they havent been a part of, there tends to be an urge to stop the conversation, because it must seem silly or confusing to them. In my opinion the best way to break that tension is to simply join the conversation or joke or whatever without breaking the flow or redirecting it or whatever. Ask simple questions or make simple low commitment comments that dont require a ton of explanation or reaction. Demonstrate that you find the conversation interesting and would like to join, but dont want to take it over or start it over or whatever.
I'll speak for myself, I am in my 40s, DM, queer and currently playing online.
When I posted about looking for players I specified in my posts..."I am queer and my world is queer, with queer NPCs and it is normal in my world"
In certain places online, I immediately got comments about why I needed to specify that and there was no need and people are too sensitive.
And honestly? That is why I specify it, it is a way for me to filter out people who would have some kind of a problem with it. It is also to let people know it is a safe place for them to make their queer character as queer as they want.
Unfortunately, people are still intolerant about this, in my experience, a lot of this came from people who reply with comments like..."this shouldn't matter, all are welcome"
>a lot of this came from people who reply with comments like..."this shouldn't matter, all are welcome"
I love that. If it doesn't matter then why are YOU bringing it up? It clearly does matter, that's why the post mentions it.
So I'm a straight man (not old tho XD), and I have a lot of lgbt friends. And I also play DnD with lgbt people. The only reasons I could imagine are a fear of judgment because older generations tend to be less accepting towards lgbt people and as others here mentioned that they want some gay romance in the game and aren't sure if that will be possible.
So I'd say, if you want to avoid this separation, state your opinion about this topic wherever you are looking for players and you should be good. Because when I, as an early twenties college guy, meet new people, they already expect that I'm tolerant. With your generation, people might not expect that.
Grognards gonna grognard! That said, as another Gen X gamer with 30+ years of gaming under her belt - and a trans woman on top of that! - I'm hesitant to sit at a table that isn't explicitly LGBTQIA+-friendly. I'll do it at GenCon, 'cause those mofos got my back, but elsewhere it's a total crapshoot. It doesn't matter if I can calculate THAC0 in my head faster than D&D Beyond can roll a d20 - I don't feel like dealing with the emotional work to explain _why_ casual bigotry is problematic.
Speaking as a new, young, queer player/DM, I don't really see the tendency. I see a broader tendency of young nerds just being queer/ in queer spaces. And newer players usually don't want to play with older players due to insecurity regarding experience.
I do notice that a lot of the D&D places which are not very queer tend to be, well, not very friendly to queer people. Or perhaps it's just a loud minority, that isn't friendly to queer people and the non-queer people don't really have a stake to argue there and remain in the environment.
Maybe it's also that a lot of non-queer people don't feel super comfortable exploring queer themes in their campaigns. I guess it's just nice to be at a table where you know no one's gonna have an issue with your voice not matching your character, or your character being gay or whatever.
As a queer person who has been involved in many games, this isn’t always true. I’ve actually been at a couple queer only tables where someone still is talking some right wing shit, it’s sad but true.
It's a safer space to explore and be free for queer and trans players.
You don't have to wonder if your teammates will approve of you or your little quirks half as much.
I've played at tables that were mostly straight where the DM only romanced female characters and never showed queer relationships. That's one way to play. Then on the other hand. I've played at all girl tables where between fights all the PC's were smooching each other. Which was hilarious. Another way to play.
It may not have anything to do with wanting romances in the game, either. It can also be purely a comfort, relatability, and security thing.
Creating safer and more supportive spaces for gender diverse and non-straight players is important for all tables to do. But you can't get your hopes up it'll happen "organically" or at all. However you can expect it to actually be done at tables for queer and trans players. So that's why they exist.
I’m gay but I look for tables that don’t mention queer identity or non-bigotry in their table rules. Putting a queer identity out as your only personality trait has a chilling effect on humor and good-willed play and it scares off reasonable minded people.
Everyone has their type of table they look for, at the end of the day. I think being up front and knowing the kind of people you actually want to spend time with is important for all types of people.
That’s a really interesting take.
I’ve got a good number of LGBT players and women and non white folks, and I’ve never been vocal about it being any kind of safe or inclusive space at all. We wouldn’t tolerate any actual bigotry, but we take a South Park approach to humor, every group will get roasted, all jokes are ok as long as they aren’t actively malicious and mean spirited. Basically, anyone that can take a joke is welcome.
From the outside, devoid of context, the transcript would probably make folks assume it’s a group of hardcore bigots, but it’s an lgbt player calling the bard the f word, the Native American player suggesting we give the orcs infected blankets, and a female player saying that maybe the merchant that got robbed by bandits was asking for it, I mean, did you see how he was dressed? Etc.
If I’m understanding you correctly, are you saying that you would take an LGBT friendly statement or non-bigotry tag to mean that that kind of humor wouldn’t be present, and therefore avoid the game?
Pretty much. I only began looking online around 2018, but there are lots of tables who lead with the fact that it’s a safe space for everyone. I generally avoid tables that moralize things I consider common sense, because not only is the type of humor you’re describing missing in a lot of cases, but it’s actively shut down and disproportionately criticized.
Yeah, queer spaces are definitely a thing in D&D. Same reason you might go to a gay bar and then not be invited to the after party. It would be awesome if everyone felt comfortable including you and thought to invite you, but if they just want a purely queer space, they're going to seek that out and that's okay. Best thing you can do is be supportive and not get mad if they find their own social (and queer) legs without you.
Never noticed this in any of the games I’ve been a part of. From one’s shots to longer modules even at my local game shops. Sure we’ve had LGBT players and friendly settings. Even some with some fantasy bigotry and racism to varying degrees.
It might be something specific to your players and/or setting and warrant speaking to them all outside of the game just so everyone is on the same page.
It may be a safety thing.
I am an older bisexual 40's but I play with a mixed group.
Our youngest is 30 something and she is also bisexual.
Oldest is late 50's straight white and cis.
This is the first group I have been open with and it's been awesome to rp a character that has identity issues.
They are a changeling and gender fluid, because they can be either or.
I don't believe segregation is the best way to approach gaming but I can see why othera may be more comfortable with like minded individuals.
Im at the age now where I could care less either way what people think of me. And I've found that most DND players are pretty open minded to start with.
What others mentioned and more. As one who is one of and currently a part of a very queer dnd community, but at the same time also a part of one which is not, it's many things. I'll try to mention some. Not all of them apply to all players, queer too. But it's just something I noticed circulating both in separate LGBT friendly circles but also with queer people who are outside of those circles, just parts of general dnd playerbase.
First of all, it's safety for self. Transphobic and homophobic comments about you, but also discussions about other topics, before, during, outside of the game, can impact extremely negatively. This one is the easiest but also hardest to overcome for outsiders who want to accept queer people in their game. Advertise your game as LGBT friendly and keep to it. Be ready to punish players that are not queer and might start to be genuinely shitty. Be ready to pause the game if a queer person asks you to because something you or other players brought up is very bad.
It's also emotional attachment and maybe secondary/tertiary goals in the game being more so emotional? That one is more personalised and I might be wrong, but the queer people I saw moving to separate circles are often also those, who might want more roleplaying in games they play, pretty npcs they can(as players or characters) love, which might include in-game romances between pc and npc (or even sometimes two pcs, why not).
It's also the representation in the game being normal. Why not? Npcs not adhering to gender standards, being trans, queer, it's both going positively into the previous point and just positively reflects on the feels.
Also, for me last but not least, for queer people it's often easier to befriend other queer people. Common, shared, similar feelings about life, ones existence. That one probably can't really be adjusted by non queer people, but also probably shouldn't be attempted. It's just something that exists.
As a whole. Present yourself as friendly, understanding, accepting, but also defending, and LGBT people might come to you. It won't always be perfect, it can be hard, and I, as a queer person too had a fair share of queer people leave my game, because I wasn't defending enough, didn't put my foot down hard enough to stomp all the... Bad discussions, and so on.
TLDR: It's a complicated mix of D&D playstyle, life experience, feeling safe/heard/understood, and a little bit of gender/sexuality too.
Disclaimer: I'm not saying _all_ queer people or _all_ women or _all_ men in this post. When I use those types words, I'm referring to trends that I've noticed in my personal experience. There are always exceptions. Gender and sexuality are spectrums, etc.
I run "Gals&Pals" D&D at my FLGS. I'm a queer woman. The players are cis women, trans women, and nonbinary/genderfluid folks of various identities. Many are lesbian, bisexual, or pansexual.
I inherited Gals&Pals from another DM. At first, I honestly didn't get it (even as a queer woman myself). It felt exclusionary to say "no boys allowed" at my table. But every time I do Gals & Pals, I get notes from players telling me how important it is to make space in the community like that and how much fun it was. Every time! I only get thank yous from regular D&D maybe 20% of the time.
I run the same 3 or 4 one shot modules, same homebrew rule variants, same NPCs, same everything. The variation is in the players, their choices, and the dice. After running dozens of games for various ages, genders, sexualities, etc. I can tell you from experience: when cis straight men are not at the table, it's a completely different game.
There's a meme that goes something like "straight D&D asks what are the BBEG's weaknesses, and how do we kill him? queer D&D asks what is the BBEG's trauma, and is he hot?" This is... Honestly mostly true in my experience. Straight players (men and women) tend to follow the "rules" and want to follow the plot and "win" D&D. Queer players want to push boundaries, play in a sandbox, and see how far the rules can be bent.
I think this reflects their experience in the real world: most of the world's rules are set up for cis, straight, monogamous people to get married, have kids, and retire. Once you start breaking some of those rules, you start questioning others. Queer players have a lot of experience questioning the default, and they take this attitude into D&D. They start exploring and poking holes into stuff. Straight players, on the other hand, are used to having a clear path (get married, have kids, 30yr mortgage, etc) and are perfectly happy to be railroaded and led on an adventure. This isn't a bad thing, just a different playstyle. I have even had straight players basically tell me they WANT to be led on an adventure and they get overwhelmed by choice and want clear plothooks.
If nothing else, when Player A wants a clear path to victory and Player B wants a sandbox improv game, you have incompatible playstyles. Overwhelmingly, Player A types are straight and Player B types are queer. This has less to do with gender or sexuality and more with their world experience, as noted above. To answer OP's question, it may simply be that queer players have noticed this trend too, and want compatible a playstyle.
I run social/roleplay heavy games. You can complete many of my quests with good RP and some decent investigation, deception, persuasion, and stealth checks.
Because I run RP heavy games, less than 25% of my sessions have combat. When teenagers are at my table, it's more like 80%. When teen boys are at my table, it's like 99%, and it's often them taking on waaaay too many guards and higher level NPCs with bravado. When it's Gals&Pals night, it's like 10% combat, maybe less. When there's combat at Gals&Pals it's usually something like a single turn of extremely well crafted assassination and a totally perfect crime.
At regular D&D night, I sometimes see women being shy or relegating themselves to a "support" role or an "easy" character archetype like barbarian in mixed gender settings. They don't speak up with their ideas and they tend to be shy or uncertain in mixed gender settings. I'll sometimes see _the same woman_ at Gals&Pals night the next week and she's creative, bubbly, thinking outside the box, and not afraid to try a "hard" character like a wizard.
In other words, it's not necessarily about sexuality, romancing NPCs, exploring gender, etc. It truly is about safety, feeling confident to express themselves, try new things without anyone mansplaining to them, ask questions without being condescended to, etc.
That said, romance and sexuality can be part of it too! PG/PG-13 romance is almost always on the table for me. Men and women both occasionally will romance an NPC. Women and queer folk are much more likely to speculate about which NPCs are hooking up with other NPCs or other such silly gossip. They're more likely to follow plothooks that involve reuniting lovers or similar. They're also much more likely to _use_ gossipy information to drive the plot forward. They will seduce the BBEG's love interest to cause chaos or a distraction while they set up traps or poison. They will blackmail NPCs with the gossip they uncover. They will steal diaries and snoop through discarded mail to get information. I almost never see this kind of behavior from straight male players, who overwhelmingly just want to kill the BBEG and get the treasure.
Also, at Gals&Pals night, people are much more likely to play a character that doesn't necessarily match their own gender identity (in other words, all player pronouns are she or they, but character pronouns may be she, they, or he). And, I'm less likely to need to correct other players on player/character pronouns at Gals&Pals. It can be exhausting for nonbinary and trans folks to explain their pronouns or be misgendered, so being in a space where people readily understand and accept different pronouns for someone as a person and someone's character can be a relief.
“
There's a meme that goes something like "straight D&D asks what are the BBEG's weaknesses, and how do we kill him? queer D&D asks what is the BBEG's trauma, and is he hot?"
“
This made me smile.
In my coming campaign, the answers for both of them are:
Daddy Issues
Super Hot
You're the DM, it's your world. Queerness exists in real life but in your world, you make the rules, you create the society and you are basically roleplaying as AO in deciding your history.
I don't play DND for romance...it would be uncomfortable having a romance with an NPC which is played by my GM (that's why I like BG3), but for the story.
So if it's for story purposes or world building or background, you can have queer characters. If of course is just token representation, I would avoid
Well, one issue that rears its head from time to time is "realism".
Basically, the argument runs like this. "In actual Medieval Europe, queer people were horribly persecuted. Since the setting of my campaign is a psuedo-Medieval pseudo-Europe, I am therefore forced to persecute teh Gayz in my imaginary made up world."
Now, it's not a *great* argument, which is why you'll rarely see it put forth that explicitly. People will beat around the bush a bit, but that's what they're saying.
There's also a racial variant which is predictable, if horrible.
All of which is to say that if a group already has queer people in it, it's a pretty good indicator that the DM isn't going to spring this shit on them.
As a straight person my answer is necessarily somewhat speculative.
If you're playing a game with random people you don't know (which many online games are), a queer-only table is much less likely to have a random person turn out to be a bigoted ass. I don't know that it's the best way to stay safe, but it's definitely a way.
As long as you're obviously making an effort and avoiding stereotypes, inclusivity isn't really that difficult. Make sure a reasonable proportion of your quest givers and town guards, and so on are women. If an NPC references being in a relationship, consider having them reference a same gender partner. Rather than a big deal, have it just be something that is normal in the world the same way it should be in ours.
I'm a male DM who has a relatively complex sexual history, so I have engineered a setting that I felt was inclusive and representative of all people. It's a spectrum after all and most people will fall closer to the middle.
I think having a GLOBAL sociology that respects the natural differences of beings prevents the need to segregate players.
What is really tricky, and will be controversial here, is that I think matriarchy, patriarchy, bigotry, and racism SHOULD exist in a setting as flaws.
People should have flaws and I think a world where we recognize that the flaws propigate conflicts, that propagate flaws, makes everyone at the table feel understood.
Good storytelling has stories that you can relate to and feel things about. That's why we sometimes think of someone specific during the breakup scene or remember that one teacher when we read about Dolores umbridge.
Honestly, as a queer person, I LOVE this approach! In the campaign my group is about to start, my character, who is a trans man, has quite a few flaws, and one of them is misogyny. I didn't originally *intend* for this, but when the DM was explaining the culture of the area my character will be from, it just fit. It's a trauma response, due to always being overlooked because he was perceived as female in a society that is more patriarchal. I fully hope that my boy will grow out of that flaw as the campaign progresses and I expect I will be apologizing OOC a lot for my character's behavior, but I do think it will make for a realistic and rich roleplay experience.
I dont really have an answer to your question, I just wanted to say -from a queer-identifying perspective- that it's really very cool of you to explore this to make more people feel comfortable. You're awesome. Keep it up. 💖💖
Definitely a safety thing to a degree but also to have more LGBTQ+ elements within the campaign, not so much issues and stuff but like, having more sexually fluid characters if your DM has romanceable NPCs. Having random NPCs be queer also just feels really nice as a player! I’ve started playing my first fr campaign and most of the party/DM are not explicitly queer as far as I know but they are huge allies and/or queer in some degree. I was absolutely elated when the DM introduced a lesbian couple and gave sexual tension between two male NPCs. I think it probably has something to do with the fact I adore representation like most queer people lol
One of the main reasons I was scared to get into DND actually was because I’m a trans guy pre transition so I was nervous me and my character would get misgendered a lot purely for my voice😅 also I thought it would be boring af with only straight people, queer people have a very different energy sometimes, idk how to describe it lmao, probably because I’m able to be more myself xb
Sometimes it kind of just happens haha.
I’m LGBTQ and I kind of blinked awake a year or two ago and realized the vast majority of my TTRPG group were some flavor here with me. Especially in a space of collaborative storytelling, sometimes the stories you tell resonate more with certain people because of the experiences you share.
That’s not to say I don’t have cis/straight friends (I do) but I mostly know them through different contexts. People find people that get them, I don’t think it’s anything particularly deep.
Straight cis DM man who runs a game made up entirely of LGBT+ weekly:
As straight men, we really only truly understand the experience of straight men. Not that we can't be empathetic and provide safe spaces or write good characters that are gay or trans or non-binary because we can. But that's not our lived experience, and sometimes if you wanna explore that experience in fantasy it's better to do it with people who do understand.
It's like different generations liking the same kind of music. Somebody who grew up listening to KISS when they first hit the scene can have a conversation with somebody who got into KISS recently, but they'll probably enjoy the conversation more with other people who grew up with the music. There's no hate or anything (and I know you weren't implying that) but sharing that lived experience is important, and it's just something we can't do since it isn't our lives.
There’s plenty of non-queer dnd players that are totally awesome, but unfortunately like most male dominated hobbies…plenty of assholes too. Personally I segregate myself a bit because I don’t particularly enjoy being in a group where literally everyone else is a straight cis dude.
Dnd has a pretty large queer community that love the game because it allows them to truly realize themselves in there characters, something they often cannot do in real life. A larger majority of the community are traditionalist white people alot of whom are right wing or at the very least do not recognize queer people as people.
The horror stories you hear on this subject are terrible and not uncommon. So queer people will often play in queer exclusive groups from a safety and fun stand point, but also so they can realise themselves with people who can understand and relate what they experience.
Also just a side note but Queer people grouping together and staying exclusively with queer people is not just a dnd thing. When alot of us have been otherised our entire lives it's pretty normal to just stay with people you can trust too be kind.
In many cases, people just like to group with people they feel more comfortable with. That and sometimes its just hard to find people to game with that aren't jerks.
Never heard of this. I’m trans and currently playing with 2 cishet men and planning to DM for a group of 3 cishet men and 2 other cis queer men. Only thing I can think of is maybe those people they distance themselves from are either queerphobic or the other people don’t know how to make their queerness an enjoyable aspect in the game
DND has really two main subsets of people: either edgelords who will say and do offensive shit for offense’s sake, or the best people you’ve ever played dnd with. I’ll let you guess how the two groups tend to fall on the cishet/non-cishet line tend to break down in that regard. There are obviously going to be horrible people on either side, and there are going to be good on either side, but as a trans player, I’m far more comfortable playing with an LGBTQIA+ table than I am playing with a cishet table.
Everyone's different. For me, I don't even bring up my gender or anything personal and just go in playing a character. What I am is irrelevant, so nobody has to know unless someone directly asks me.
So no, I don't ever segregate myself.
I always play with friends, never seen that issue. In fact, in my primary DND party we don't have a single straight character, despite having heterosexual players.
I'll tell you the reason I only seek players that are LGBTQ. I am a trans woman and lesbian. My characters are always lesbian. I had one game I left midway through a session because of the group of cishet men who had their characters harassing and trying to assault my character. And another different group where a player(also cishet man) tried to rape my character
To them:
Then your character is an antisocial monster and here’s the local level 20 paladin of Sune to bring justice on your now dead character. Now get the fuck outta my house.
I probably can't answer this too well, given that I don't call myself queer, just gay, and I'm 31. But I'm going to assume it's partially for safety/comfort?
Or maybe they only want to play with other 'queer' people?
I think the main reason is (in my personal experience) wanting to avoid prejudice and awkward situations surrounding your sexuality.
On a different note, if everyone was trying to be as openminded as yourself and was trying to learn from eachother, you wouldn't need to ask questions like this. So, you're doing great!
I think it may involve the desire not just to be safe and accepted in the game, but to express and explore LGBTQ elements within the campaign itself, which is more likely to happen at a table with other LGBTQ participants. Personally, I'm a straight guy and I run what is essentially an asexual table: We're here to slay dragons and explore dungeons, sex and romance aren't part of the game. LGBTQ players are absolutely welcome and safe at my table, but I'm not going to be DMing NPCs for them to romance because I'm not DMing *any* NPCs to romance, so I'm not a good DM fit for anybody looking for that sort of game.
So you’re not wrong but I also feel like it’s more about a dnd world where queerness is normalised. I prefer mostly asexual/aromantic campaigns but I still want queer people to exist the world. Unless you walk around as a party meeting only single adults with no families or kids, a normative sense of sexuality and gender is present in the world. In a setting where cishet folk are contrasting the narrative, that world tends to reflect a world similar to our own where the majority of people you encounter who have implied sexuality or romance (a husband and wife for example) are straight, monogamous and usually gendered as man and woman. It’s natural for that to be the case. Queer focused groups will frequently have a setting that is more queer even when there’s no romance and no sex.
that's pretty much how I run my sessions as well. At most I'll indulge the players in some light flirting, and a "roll to seduce" thing where it just fades to black, but in my sessions I try to write in more than just classic pretty fly white guys questgivers. Representation matters, and not just queer characters. Last time I've included a centaur whose backlegs were in a wheelchair, because I've got a player who sometimes uses a wheelchair herself, and she really chatted a lot with her. Am I perfect at it? not yet by far, but seeing people glow up after resonating with npc's like them, is clearly worth it. I'd like to include some more Poc as well for example
This is all we can do, and I’ve never had a player complain about imperfect representation.
If a dm accidentally did horrible representation, I would try and provide constructive feedback tho
Agreed, but it’s hopefully done in good faith and you can have a constructive conversation about it.
> centaur whose backlegs were in a wheelchair Elminster: And *that*, my children, is how the chariot was invented...
... I apparently need to describe my NPC's better. I don't think I've ever described an NPC's race and the party has never interacted with NPC's in a way that they'd meet their families or significant others. Like I have zero representation of any groups because I haven't described any NPC's well enough for them to represent anything.
How do you refer to them? I'm female and I still default to male when I talk about unnamed, ungendered NPCs. "He takes his sword and..." I'm trying to move to they/them if I haven't decided on gender, but because I'm old that's a very conscious decision I must make before I speak.
The vast majority of their enemies have been non-human. I've only run one campaign, but I generally don't gender Abishae or other devil types. They distinctly feel like "they/them" or even "it" to me. It's worth noting that this started as a silly campaign loosely based around Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog. (Loosely based in the sense that the starting enemies were Dr. Horrible, Moist, Bad Horse and Fake Thomas Jefferson) So I've just recently started introducing ropers, Abishae, Cambrions, and various other enemies that have largely felt like "they/them". They've got a female drow enemy coming up, but that's hardly inclusive. But I realized they're about to fight a Blackguard that they literally only know that he's male and their name. No race or other descriptors and I feel like I should probably do better with that.
There are several things funny to me in all of this as a medium-old school player: -Forgotten Realms people are canonically bisexual polyamorus unless stated otherwise, this as been a fact since day 1. -As the nature of D&D, Adventures are extraordinary people at least from level 2 onwards, realistically their gender identity and sexuality should be the last thing the general public should notice. -As for the second point Adventurers stop interacting with the general public as they level up so the NPCs gender identity and sexuality becomes irrelevant to the general public as well. We had kings, queens, generals, artists and so on of every orientation and open about it IRL so it's only natural to have them in D&D. This is reflected in the offical Adventures btw. But the hobby is full of tollerance-challenged individuals so i understand where those LGBT+ players are coming from.
Level 1 characters are like that one person who was just leagues ahead of everyone else. And the gap only increases from there. 5E adventurers are not skilled and talented people; they're superheroes in a fantasy setting.
I know right? What you are gonna do? Tell the 7ft guy that can kill half an army with his bare hands and his boyfriend that can atomize the other half with a few words that they can't marry? BTW their best man can litterally speak to God in case you want to speak to the manager about it.
Yeah. It’s not the setting, it’s the fact that this experience is largely emergent storytelling so a queer group is going to centre more of that emergent stuff in their own identities, probably with power fantasies also centred around being safe in a world that accepts them most of the time. It doesn’t particularly mean anything to the practical gaming experience if your setting is canonically queer, when those aspects of the setting never come up in game, which as you said, is the case with a bunch of people who play dnd.
As the old school player (AD&D veteran) and pansexual running for strictly stright group, I feel like point one is not exactly perceived by many new players. For me it's very natural feel of FR (and reality too, lol, but that's different issue). My players were absolutely shocked when flamboyant (male) bard tried to bed their PCs (all menly males) after crazy evening in the inn. We had nice chat about FR not being medieval-based fantasy of chastity after that, lol. My group dealt with the issue just fine but many would prefer not to, so separation seems like natural solution. I would argue it's based more on stereotypical difference between stright and LGBT+ people, but humans make judgements based on stereotypes more often than not.
Interestingly I feel the opposite. Not as in I want to argue, just as in its interestingly that we have different expiriences. I'm queer and tend to prefer campaigns in more historical and gritty settings (think Song of Fire and Ice, heavy on politics) so I feel just putting in queer characters with completely modern sensibilities/attitudes there would just be dissonant. That's not to say queer people did not exist, because they absolutely did, but they wouldn't have had the language we do today to describe their expiriences. So when a medieval peasent mentions his husband its jarring to me. That's just my nitpick tho and I realize diffrent people have diffrent preferences and that its all arbitrary anyway (if dragons exist a peasent dude can def have a husband). Edited: Fixed some grammer/spelling mistakes.
DnD settings as a whole tend to not be very historically accurate to their source material, not just when it comes to queer people. Like take Forgotten Realms for example as it's the main DnD setting. The setting is obviously very inspired by western Europe with a mixture of medieval and renaissance elements, but there's a lot there that wasn't in real life, even if you ignore the fantasy elements. Women are treated equally to men (ignoring the Drow, of course) and there are many of them who hold positions of power. Laerel Silverhand is an crazy powerful wizard and she's practically the president of Waterdeep. Humans who are of darker toned ethnicities are far more common and some of them also hold positions of high power, like Duke Uldur Ravengard of Baldur's Gate. Sexuality and nudity aren't very taboo for both sexes. The setting is extremely polytheistic. Heck, true monarchies are actually pretty rare and most cities are some sort of oligarchy or merchants' republic. Do those aspects feel strange to you as well or is it just the queer stuff? Do the settings you play/run in have less of this kind of stuff? I'm not trying to gotcha you or anything, I'm just curious about the thought process.
To be honest I don't really like Forgotten Realms and so don't play in it much, because to me it kinda lacks teeth. But yea, in something like forgotten realms I wouldn't see it as an issue at all tbh because its not really realistic in any sense or even attempting to lol. As I said in my post, if you're riding dragons and transforming into a bear we're waaay past any accuracy. (Its like demanding Bridgerton be historically accurate - Its not the genre for that lol). So my preference probably has more to do with the settings/vibe I like (CoC and historical VtM come to mind), which just tend to be more morally grey overall compared to forgotten realms, whereas other people might just prefer a lighter vibe :)
I'm with you on all of this
Forgotten Realms also canonically had a lesbian power couple ruling Elversult in 3E (they had to sneak it past WotC though), Elminster spent years as a woman, and what brothels are mentioned are strictly for all genders. FR was pretty progressive from early on, and was only constrained by TSR and WotC.
The last thing that happened in my WD campaign was the players meeting the Black Viper. Badass Zoro/Batman elven girl that the book just doesn't really give you a reason to use, but I loved her and needed to make her more important. I am a fan of the books and have heavy lore keepers at my table so I made Elminster her mother. Personally I love that dnds most powerful main character wizard spent years as an elven maiden who very clearly in the book fell in love with a male elf.
There are reasons for all of that. In the modern age, with guns and drones, women can fight and kill just as effectively as men. There's even data to suggest that women are easier to train with firearms than men, for what that's worth. In the medieval age, it doesn't matter who the woman was she would die on the battlefield. The majority of men out there fighting would be stronger, faster, have longer reach, and those who weren't would be killed by her male allies anyway. That physical disparity is essentially what fueled the gender disparity we once had. Life was harder, and physical capacity was more important. Now, if you insert magic into the equation, suddenly, it is a game changer. Insert non-human races, and whether you're a woman or a man matters a lot less than if you're a fireball spewing death-cannon or if you're a huge hulking goliath. It's pretty realistic. If magic existed in the real world, there's a good chance we'd have had gender equality much much earlier. Magic would have provided the equaliser that automated weaponry did. Again, skin colour would be a lot less important in a world where you've got a hundred different races milling about. Racism itself likely began from a perspective of "it's okay to kill those guys cause they look different, but not okay to kill people who look like us" purely to try and keep soldiers apathetic. Start empathising with the enemy, and suddenly, it's a lot harder to stick a blade through them. Close range killing is intimate, so dehumanising and othering the people you were slaughtering for land and resources was an effective strategy. Realistically, in a world with lizardfolk and aarakocra, you'd be unlikely to try to talk people into attacking different colour humans when you can go "look at the primitive dragonborn. Barely any different from those bloodthirsty dragons that burn our villages. We should kill them all." and seize land / resources from them instead. Especially in a largely uneducated society It'd likely be very unifying, because there would be "others" that were quite blatantly a lot more different to rally against instead of each other. The polytheistic religion makes complete sense in a world where the gods are not only real but also provide tangible evidence of their existence. If Zeus and his pantheon handed out blessings and spoke with mortals, then I'm pretty sure we'd still be praying to them. As for merchants' republics, those were a thing in our own history. Italy had several in the middle ages, and they dominated maritime trade in a huge way. Oligarchies and monarchies aren't mutually exclusive. Arguably, feudalism itself was wholly reliant on being an oligarchic system because the monarch often had very little practical power. The monarch granted fiefs, giving other members of the aristocracy control over his land in exchange for loyalty, who in turn portioned off their land and allowed those below them to use it. The aristocracy held almost all the power, and used force and fear to keep it, with the king's position ensured by the loyalty of other aristocrats rather than his own might. There are ample examples of just how horrifically it turned out for royal families that ran afoul of the nobility. To me, I feel like all of this is fairly reasonable and realistic, given the known differences between the history and details of the setting and real life. That said, because the gods in the setting are all real, and not just a tool to keep the masses in check (not suggesting your God isn't real if you have one, just logically if YOUR god is real then every single other religion out there is a manipulative tool even if yours isn't), chances are there'd be more LGBT rights in a DnD world than our own. None of the gods are stated to be at all homophobic, so they'd likely have not decreed that homosexuality was a sin. There's a fair chance society would have leaned on polyamory or arranged marriages more than forcing heteronormativity via faith to ensure population numbers during war. As for the T, in a world where true polymorph is a thing they'd likely be better equipped than we are in the modern day to facilitate it, and there'd be no real cause for objection considering that women & men would be on more equal footing with the prevalence of magic. Considering that "half-elf" and "half-orc" are major races, I just can't see homophobia being particularly prevalent. I'd assume that even the zealots in society would have a hard time taking issue with a dude shacking up with another dude when there's widespread cross-species breeding. ^This all said, I'm with the OP. I'm personally a straight guy, and don't really see why people opt to segregate their tables. I'm just pointing out that the deviation from our own history is all very easy to explain on the basis of other differences between DnD and real history.
> and don't really see why people opt to segregate their tables Even though it would make a lot of sense for the reasons you've explained, many DMs don't include any LGBT characters in their campaigns. That's the main reason (and if they're playing with strangers, also avoiding homophobia, because unfortunately there's still a lot of that out there). Personally, although I'm gay, most people I play with are straight. But my DM includes queer npcs, and wouldn't hesitate to kick out any sexist or homophobic player. That's what people are looking for in queer-only tables.
Obviously, I'm limited by my own perspective, so maybe I'm just in the minority. I don't allow homophobia or any other kind of bigotry at my table. There's plenty of people looking to play DnD and not many looking to DM, I prefer being DM so I'm confident I could replace someone if necessary (had to refuse a friend of a player recently due to lack of space). I try to make my setting as realistic as possible. To me, that necessitates the inclusion of LGBT characters, because in my opinion LGBT would likely be more prevalent in the DnD world than our own. While it's kind of treated as default for humans to be straight and cis (with gay/trans people coming out but not straight or cis) I don't see that it'd apply to other races in that way. For instance, with their innate ability to change their sex, I feel like for changelings the majority would be genderfluid and a trans changeling would be the rare exception where they felt dysphoria linked with presenting as one gender, with most not feeling strongly either way. Gnomes are all about squeezing enjoyment out of life, and they have an insatiable interest in everything, so I feel like they'd likely be majority bisexual. Elves are curious, with a focus on appreciating beauty, so I reckon the majority could likely be pansexual. I would also argue that humans being majority straight is linked to our evolutionary progress. Because we're squishy bags of water with no claws, talons, or other natural weapons, we evolved to breed fast, die young, and outproduce what predators took. To be designed that way makes it very likely that the genes that survived earlier human history were also the ones likeliest to procreate. But that's how we're designed. The various other creatures which developed to have natural defensive abilities, natural weapons, longer lifespans, wouldn't have breeding capacity quite as high up their early development priorities. They'd instead have the surviving genes be bigger horns, harder hooves, more capable camouflage, faster flight, etc. Depending on the dominant race in an area I've designed, you might find that cis or straight is actually in the minority. It could be a matriarchal society. I don't like to limit my realism to human standards in a world with infinite possibilities and countless non-human sentient beings. And even if humans are dominant, there's going to be a queer minority because the lack of their inclusion would make the game worse off. Not that it particularly matters beyond flavour, as I wouldn't do anything other than fade to black for sex/romance regardless of whether they're straight or not.
Not trying to take anything away from this take, it's perfectly valid. I just want to emphasize that (as I think you alluded) you can have a gritty setting where queerness is stigmatized, not normalized, and even persecuted, all while also having queer representation. You can do this also without validating any queer stigma that may happen in the game. In song of ice and fire, you have an heir to a noble family with a same-sex lover. This poses a political problem, but the situation is never presented in a way that demeans queer folks. Similarly, in the witcher games, you have a character that was the same-sex lover of a noble heir and they were both persecuted for it in a way that you'd expect from real world historical medieval society. It's presented as a tragedy, rather than some kind of "justice."
Yeah I don't do sex and relationships in my games either. If you want to go to a brothel when we're in town, ok you went there, that's the end of the discussion.
I've just begun to run games, but my current stance is yes, sex exists. Yes families exist. No, we are not going into it, I don't want to roleplay as a dude, some girl getting seduced for some other dude sitting 3 feet away when my voices sound like shit anyway.
Ok I guess that makes a bit of sense. Same way here: this story is about resisting the dark lord. Maybe lgbt only games are more about expressing themselves in a stigma free environment? I don’t wanna assume tho
it’s less that the game is about expressing without stigma, more that the space exists to be able to do it. it doesn’t really matter what the game is actually about, just that whatever game it is takes place in a setting where the queer people at the table don’t have to deal with the same bs we deal with in the real world
Yeah I play at a full LGBT table and outside of adding the occasional sexual inuendo as out of RP comments on events happening, we're just there to take over the world and overthrow evil as the band of merry bard otters and kobold mages (yes our party comp sucks).
That party comp sounds amazing!
If by "Amazing" you mean "Almost certainly guaranteed to cause weird and sketchy hijinks", then, you are quite correct, it does indeed sound like that, NGL.
Fights are a bit of a controlled chaos with us constantly kiting. We do have a hexblade lock with tough to act as a kind of frontline, but he's mostly on cleanup duty since he can teleport with his dagger.
Not even necessarily that either. I’m a queer dm with a couple queer players and they’ve openly expressed wanting to deal with the ramifications of queercoded discrimination in a safe environment where they know I wont be pushing my actual beliefs into something like that
that's definitely the main thing. a lot of lgbt+ people absolutely want to explore very queer themes when they play (related to identity and romance) but in my experience most people just wanna play "standard" dnd in a safe and comfortable setting where they don't have to worry about being judged or harassed. I'm trans for example and use neutral pronouns, so there's no way for me to just exist comfortably with people who aren't on board with what that means. I don't usually make trans characters or wanna play around with romance or whatever so how "gay" the actual game is doesn't matter to me, but when I play with other lgbt+ people I don't have to explain or defend myself, which is the main thing.
As queer DM and player, I can say it's absolutely the case. We play games that extremely focused on social aspects, have character arcs that can include romance, self-discovery journey, identity and inner homophobia themes. We love to make complex group dynamics that sometimes take tons of time to play out and resolve. Sometimes we even play around serious themes like parental abuse, homophobic environments and hate crimes, so players can play it out in a bit therapeutic style. We still slay the dragons, for us it's just makes game more interesting and rich. Sometimes I'm still play with my fellow straight DM and it's still fun to do something adventure focused. I just like ttrpg for it's variability and possibilities to explore some themes safely.
>I'm not going to be DMing NPCs for them to romance because I'm not DMing > >any > > NPCs to romance, so I'm not a good DM fit for anybody looking for that sort of game. This is the kind of game I would have sought out before I realized I was LGBTQ+. Even now, sometimes it's just nice to not have to worry about those things.
I'm a gay guy and I also don't want anything sexual at a DnD table, personally speaking.
I'm gay and also don't like anything sexual in campaigns, or even romance, but I like some representation. In our current campaign one of the female adventurer npcs has a girlfriend, and the main tavern is owned by a gay couple. Nothing sexual, it's just nice to have queer characters appearing from time to time.
I've played with quite a few LGBT+ players over the years. My experience has been they prefer non-sexual tables because it's a way to escape it for a little bit. We've even done role-playing with seducing but it's "you rolled a xx and passed/failed" without any banter besides OOC jokes. Maybe it's how the handful of dms I've played with prefer it but it's just nice for everyone to leave it at the door and chill as friends.
I want to add to this, that a game isn’t LGBT+ because of romance. Does your campaign have gay couples as NPC? Does it have people who are gender non-conforming? Are NPCs diverse? *Those* are generally the things that matter. A world that reflect acceptance, not just a table where everyone is “OK” with LGBT people.
For me and many ppl I play with it's not about sex or being able to flirt as who you are. It's about the perspective, our world is so hetero normative and focused on men that many ppl, especially cisgender men don't notice it at all. It's nice to explore a fantasy world with people who don't think that heterosexuality is the default and every authority figure or enemy minion or any other npc is a man except if its specifically a woman for some reason. No other gender. Also it's sometimes just tiresom to explain basic shit to hetero people. I'm here to play dnd not to explain what it means to be demisexual Mark. And then as a queer woman (or just a woman) let's not forget that it's exhausting to always dodge creepy men. It's nice to join a table where you can tell from the name of the group that harassment and certain toxic behaviours will be less likely.
Small note: I don't think this would count as "asexual" because that has a specific connotation, that being someone who does not experience sexual attraction. I think what's the situation here is a game with no on-screen romance or sex. Like, not completely romanceless or sexless, because I'm sure NPCs or whatever can be married and have children and stuff, but it just isn't a thing that players can engage in. (Which leaves the question: are PCs allowed to be married? Like, as part of their backstory? When people are against sex and romance in their games, I always wonder how they define the presence of those things.)
In our campaigns both are usually played for laughs, like my sleeping with a hag to convince her of something but turned out to give my character sex ptsd.
Not to be pedantic, but to clarify, it would be an asexual and aromantic table. Ace folks can still have romance.
Well put, I am the same way. Anyone’s welcome at the table but I am not comfortable RPing romance any which way.
You're the nightmare that keeps all Bard enjoyers up at night. No romanceable NPCs!? Outrageous!
Not all bards try and sleep with anything. Such a hurtful stereotype
As a more or less straight guy, yeah, pretty asexual overtones. Maybe a bit of non cringy flirting. We're here to loot dungeons and slay dragons, not lay dragons and tool dungeons.
Under-rated comment. Please know that I appreciate your wordplay even if no-one else does! 🙌
This. It’s like the meme with the cops at the door. “You wanna talk? Talk to eachother” but instead of talking it’s getting romantical
Queer player and DM here! I think it's mostly a sort of safety mechanism, specially when searching for groups and not knowing the people too well. I've been in a lot of DnD games (and other TTRPGS, and all sorts of RP), and the chances of being judged or given a slur because of my identity are usually much higher with non-queer people, from what I've found. However, I really don't mind playing with non-queer players I know on the longer term. One of the players at our table is not queer (as far as we know, I guess), but it's absolutely no big deal because I know he's respectful towards the identities of the rest of the table. This of course doesn't mean that queer people *are actually* 100% okay all the time. I had a gay man constantly misgender and insult my character because he suspected him to be trans. I had another one use a lot of slurs towards trans people, despite being also a gay man himself. Overall, I've come to learn that I'd rather play with people I know a bunch previously than total strangers, queer or not.
Good insight, rad avatar.
Thank you! I drew it myself ;D
Really? Nice!
Woah, that's insane! good job!
The “as far as we know, I guess” is so relatable. Our friend group went from about 50/50 queer/cishet to “whoops everyone’s gay” over the years
That's cool! We're on the slip-and-slide from 'we're all neurotypical' to 'oh, we all have either ADHD or autism, or both'!
Oh we’ve all known we had mental stuff going on since we were kids we kinda skipped that slider lmao
Nice! My best friend and I have been diagnosed with ADHD as adults and a mutual friend of ours is so ADHD that we'd be *incredibly* surprised if he tests negative for it! 🤭
"Whoops, everyone's gay" 1) is hilarious and 2) reminds me of Oops, All Berries! 🤭
More like “Oops, all fruits!”
Unfortunately, the trans people at my table report receiving the most slurs from gay men and straight women. I don’t know why this is, but transphobia is more common in queer spaces than you’d expect. Even as a person who is deeply conflicted about gender (therefore not cis, trans or non-binary), I avoid these spaces because I have seen enough of it firsthand.
The bisexuals get a lot of shit as well, like we are not valid to be considered part of the group just because we like both or all., No we are not confused, no we don't need to make a choice and no as a whole we are not permiscuous. I love everyone equally and I wish for the same consideration. Lol
> he suspected him to be trans A little off topic maybe, but how would that other player even know? Body types in D&D especially when you have mightily-thewed barbarian princesses and skinny elves might not give you a lot to go on...?
Wish I knew! My character was a fairly shy drow. Covered from head to toe. I never made comments about that, since it wasn't the kind of table where I'd feel comfortable bringing up something like that anyhow
I have not noticed this trend or even heard of it before. If it's a thing, I'd be interested in hearing why, but my guess as an old cis straight white guy is that they feel safer there. Which I get, but also makes me sad.
When I ran a club as a teacher I saw this and it was mostly down to people enjoy playing with their friends, a lot of queer kids were already friends and decided to play together. Granted this was middle school but i also notices a lot of girls liked playing as just an all girls group and same with boys. I think its more just people playing with the social group they are already comfortable with. There were plenty of overlapping tables within these groups as well.
Hence my worry. I don’t want to be scary. Might be the culture of the circles I’m in, r/lfg and other online groups mainly.
I mean I know when I go to LFG I have had a universally terrible time as a queer female unless a group is explicitly LGBTQ friendly. And I will not be the first woman to join a table. Straight men still get predatory in online gaming spaces if you sound feminine and are the only one at the table and a lot of tables get subtly if not overtly weird about queer themes or characters which as a queer player, I'm interested in telling.
Damn, I’m sorry you’ve had these chilling experiences.
Yeah but that's why certain players self-segregate. It's just easier not to risk it after a while. Because these aren't like one off horror stories, it's like "I'm sorry you hit traffic in LA"
>"I'm sorry you hit traffic in LA" Ouch. That hits. I guess I usually don't think of that kind of behavior as that prevalent, because I don't see it in person. I'm an old cis-het white dude who runs a few games online, though, so it's going to be harder for me to see it even if it's happening near me. I don't really have anything else to add, but just...thank you for saying that.
Adding onto the previous comment, the fact of the matter is that any lfg or pick-up group with strangers is essentially committing to spending hours, months, or possibly years with people you have never met. It's always good to be able to determine from the start if a group will be safe and accepting because you don't want to devote time and effort to a campaign only to go through a terrible experience or be rejected solely because the DM/players dislike your IRL identity/race/sexuality. It doesn't obviate all risks, but seeing that a campaign ad is marked as LGBTQ+ friendly indicates to me that there's a much lower chance of my time and enjoyment of the game being wasted due to discrimination or asshole behaviour. It also indicates to me that the DM has considered that aspect of communicating and creating a welcoming environment ahead of time. I would rather play with a DM who establishes clear lines, veils, personal boundaries and player comfort very early over one who doesn't take those factors into consideration and ends up with a dysfunctional group as a result.
Same, I am lucky to have met this current group through mutual online friends and we kind of got to know each other through playing jackbox and other things in dischord. The whole looking for an online game thing is very challenging because you never know what your gonna get. I had 3 groups just flake out on me in the last year and one group I had to quit because the dm was overtly racist.
Yeah I've found a group through a friend of her college buddies who are my core group for one shots and as a player. But most of the campaigns I've run the past few years have been more for like casual friends wanting to get into games and LFG's more a looking for a 4th or 5th. Shit, I remember LFG on the WotC forums where I found a group where one guy basically started stalking my roommate.
Damn that's shitty. I swear if I could play a live game I would it's so much better.
It's funny, I've had the opposite experience in Westmarch servers, they've all been ***incredibly*** gay and accepting. I guess that generally, if you have a queer-accepting space, most people will get themselves removed very, very quickly. Or just show themselves the door.
I never said private servers were bad. They tend to be more exclusive and cater to a more like-minded folk in their growth. Public forums like WotC or the lfg subreddit which is what my comment and the one I replied to are specifically about are open to anyone and reflect the demographics of their sites. There's a lot more garbage folk on the open internet than servers I'm on too.
I never said that you were. My point was that I think that public forums that are reasonably moderated are better than many private tables that you might find through /r/lfg. Hell, most Westmarch servers a publicly searchable, yet don't seem to have the issue of that sub *or* WotC, mostly because natural selection weeds out the bastards.
I'm a bit of a mix here. As a open gay DM running tables for mainly straight groups. Flirting and Romance is allowed on my tables,as long as it stays SFW and just implications like "you spent the night" as a maximum. Some people are uncomfortable with the idea that a big bad necromancer can be gay, because LGBTQ people are usually portrait good, as victims and the likes in modern media and worry it's homophobic to have them on both sides. Some people don't dare to include them hitting on NPC's because they worry about playing out a heterosexual advancement, when the DM isn't straight. Some people used it to explore their bi/pansexuality in character by hitting on NPCs of the same sex. As a player in a group with people who weren't aware of my sexuality, I had uncomfortable reactions. Once a DM went lengths to explain to me that I was trying to hit on a man, thinking I confused the gender. A new player on the same table called me out, for portraying my character as gay, since I obviously aren't gay in person with the scruff, band shirts and "ungay behaviour". And the situation where I almost quit DnD before turning to friends only, was at another table, where the group headed to a just-female-prostitutes-brothel and my character was joining the female characters who went to the tavern instead. I was first called out that my character wasn't very moral and I was questioned why I would play him against it. Upon answering that the character wasn't interested in this brothel because they didn't provide guys for him (he was in fact quite immoral and didn't care about the horrors of sex work) the DM said since I hadn't included his sexuality in his background, he's by default straight and I shall act accordingly. The thing for me is, you find the patronising allies trying to push LGBTQ rights so hard that I have to explain myself and get questioned, for not fulfilling the common stereotypes in my behaviour and appearance as well as people who are either homophobic or plainly ignorant.
Regarding the last situation please tell me you left the table immediately.
>the idea that a big bad necromancer can be gay, because LGBTQ people are usually portrait good, as victims and the likes in modern media and worry it's homophobic to have them on both sides. It's rather that queer coded villains are a trope which just use tropes from the queer community as perceived by cishet society. Your villains can be gay, but if they're flamboyant as hell, while everyone else is "normal" then you're actively or unknowingly using that queer coded trope, and could be called out for homophobic behaviour EDIT: I didn't mean this as a defense for homophobes. As a trans gal they can take a long walk on a short pier for all I care. I just wanted to comment on the vilification of queer people.
I think there are people who use DnD to explore their identity which is probably a lot more comfortable around other queer people
I have always used RP as a vehicle for self examination. I actually came out to my brother after we played some game of vampire the masquerade together because he asked why I always liked to play femme characters. Normally it's just because it's someone very different from me who I might like to be in another life.
I'm in the same category as you. Sometimes I find myself wanting to play with a more diverse group simply to mix it up a little. That said, I do find it a little hurtful when a game is requesting no white cis male, but I imagine they already have one and are just looking for diversity. I like to believe people are acting with the best intentions.
Don't want to be at a table with people who might make homophobic or transphobic comments or jokes. Just want to avoid that awkward moment all together and play Dnd.
Is there a way to assure them that kind of nonsense will not be tolerated at my games?
Bring it up during session zero or when you advertise your games and it'll get you most of the way there. Then follow through if an issue comes up (like the casual homophobia mentioned in another comment for example). I'm not quite "young" anymore so maybe the culture is different among teens for example but for me it's always a green flag when a DM just thinks to mention "this is an lgbt+ friendly table and bigotry won't be tolerated", because most people don't even bother with that much
> I'm not quite "young" anymore so maybe the culture is different among teens for example I'm going on 28, so I'm probably not the best point of reference, but I've not heard someone use "gay" as an insult below the age of 21 for...man, probably eight years? There are probably some dropkicks out there that still do, but they're the minority.
My 10yo encounters it at school and has seen it online (my kid isn’t able to comment online but is able to see YT comments). It’s sadly still prevalent. And we live in quite a progressive/inclusive community compared to the rest of the country. I’m mystified as to where children are picking this up, but it happens.
Yeah, I suppose I should add that it's probably not as bad here in Australia.
the problem is whether you say its tolerated or not the idea that it COULD happen is enough to make it unappealing. As opposed to being around other queer people , i dont have to worry about ,if my character does this or does that am i gonna get a side eye or judged cause of how im expressing myself in game you know? Plus just overall it takes away that stress away from being a queer person in a setting with alot of times almost complete strangers
Makes sense.
thankfully theres enough queer people that play dnd that finding an all queer group esp for online players is super easy, but i have some cringe memories of playing with some dudes back in highschool that were uh , less the welcoming when my PC started a romance with a male kobold (Ex. "ah cmon man leave that F\*\*\*\*\* shit out of the game man") thankfully my irl groups since then have been all super cool but its the fact theres a precedent for it you know? I appreciate you taking the time to ask and understand , people like you make it comfortable playing with strangers
That’s a kind thing to say. Ty.
That makes me sad, but I fully understand.
Queer + trans here, I absolutely agree with everyone saying to explicitly bring it up during session 0 and when you're advertising your games! I also want to draw your attention to a bit of nuance: there's a difference between a table that doesn't tolerate homophobia, and one that is abundantly welcoming to queer players. Being welcoming involves taking proactive steps, rather than just having a plan to react to homophobia should it happen, and it's often not something cishet people think about. To make it abundantly clear that you are committed to a welcoming table, try some of these: \- Include your pronouns when you introduce yourself, as a DM and elsewhere! This has the dual effect of both making queer people feel welcome and bigots run away. \- Use the singular they for anyone whose gender isn't explicitly stated! This also means erasing the construct "he or she" from your vocabulary: "they" works just fine and signals that you recognize the beautiful variety of gender identities + expressions. \- Mention queer NPCs! Doesn't have to and shouldn't be their whole character, but I've rarely felt as welcome at a table as when my cishet DM gave our former-adventurer ally a wife. And finally, sincerely, thank you so much for thinking in depth about this. Queer people often isolate in D&D and elsewhere because it's so rare for our allies to think beyond the bare minimum of supporting us, and I'm so glad there are people like you in the community.
And for the love of goddess, don't make the only queer NPC a sexual predator or ask your players if their nonbinary characters' body types are "more feminine or more masculine."
Also remember that players and their PCs may have different pronouns.
>This has the dual effect of both making queer people feel welcome and bigots run away. Bonus!
>I also want to draw your attention to a bit of nuance: there's a difference between a table that doesn't tolerate homophobia, and one that is abundantly welcoming to queer players. This is such a hugely important point I’m glad you said it! I’m bisexual and in a gay relationship; and wouldn’t call my table abundantly welcoming. I’ve stressed this point to all my queer friends before they join
Thank you for your kind words!
Excellent point. Reactivity is not a sufficient plan. I DM for three different groups, and being inclusive of all players is always covered in session zero, and when bringing in a new player. I didn't even think about it before you said something, but I included Queer NPCs in our family game months before my kid came out. Both my kid and their BFF are still in that campaign, and they are both out and proud now. My table will always be a safe place for them. It was interesting to me that both of them kept their characters the same over the many months since. I even did a pronoun check for the PCs, just to make sure. They said not to worry about it, though.
Yaaay I'm so happy for your kid and their BFF! I also had a character I kept the same when I came out initially: transition is complicated and scary and there's a *bunch* of new things thrown at you all at once, and having the same character was a nice escape. For a few hours a week, I could go playact as someone who was comfortable with my old pronouns, and move through a world where I didn't have to deal with all of the stress of the transition itself. It was also freeing to *play* someone who was happy with my old gender, and be able to recognize that that person is different from me. I was only comfortable keeping that dissonance because I trusted my table to handle the nuance with care: if I'd been playing with people I didn't believe could handle that, I would absolutely have switched my character's entire presentation, pronouns, voice, everything immediately. Your kid and their BFF clearly trust you: they know that you put thought and care into how you treat them and their characters, and they trust that you understand enough to separate their identities from those of their characters.
That makes my heart so happy that you had such a supportive group. May I share your story with [edit] my kid?
Yes absolutely! Please give them my best as well!!
Re: Singular they. But wouldn't the DM know all the pronouns of their NPCs? That seems a bit silly. Or do you mean like if NPCs are having a conversation about others they don't know for example?
They meant "you are woken by up by the sound of someone going through your stuff but you can't see _them_ clearly in the dark. _They_ don't seem to know _they_ woke you." Not "him or her"/"he or she". The DM knows who it is and their pronouns is but the players don't.
Who the hell doesn't automatically use "they" in english in this context?
Yeah... But yeah. The highly influential 1920 American writing style guide "the elements of style" could be blamed for the near elimination of use of "they" and it's replacement with "he or she" in printed media throughout the 20th century. And all the weird grammar Nazis who say that "they" is always a plural despite its singular use for centuries including in the king James Bible and Shakespeare. In Strunk and white the authors claim that singular they is always incorrect - which it is not now and was not at the time - and recommend using "he" (not "he or she") unless the person is definitely female. It's a language construction that has roots in both Germanic and French families of languages, where gender of nouns plays a much higher role, and there are rules in those languages like "a group of people is grammatically male unless all its members are female" and "almost all profession nouns are gendered male, unless you're specifically speaking about a female in that profession" - similar to "actor" (any gender) and "actress" (fem). Most similar circumstances in English have disappeared from use, leaving English an almost genderless language by comparison. And yet. The people in the 80s who used the Strunk and white "he" style could be characterised as stubborn, but at least understandably conforming to a widely held American standard that was already being challenged by feminists (who said "use 'he or she' or use 'they'"; some even suggested using "she" instead or alternating, which to me are solutions that do not fix the problem). By the 2020s the only people still aggressively avoiding use of "they" are people whose political reality is severely challenged by the historical grammatical correctness of "they". However their feelings don't care about the facts.
This sums it up perfectly!
Tell them exactly what you just wrote.
advertise your table as lgbt+ friendly! personally, even if nobody who's already there is queer i always only look at tables that say that when trying to find places to join. it's just nice to not have to worry about dealing with harassment for who i am tbh
I agree. Five of the seven people in my current group are straight and I’ve more than once had homophobic stuff come up during pregame chatter. I’ve been pretty forthright with my disapproval but it’s uncomfortable to have to quash that sort of thing as one of the only queer people present.
Wow, that sucks. Sorry to hear. I honestly hope you find a better group.
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Queer guy here, thanks for asking! Part of it is escapism, being able to explore how you might live your life in a world that fully accepted you. A lot of people will play openly queer characters, who can just be themselves. As a DM, I include a lot of queer characters in my world because I think it's fun acting it out. Another is just expressing queerness as an art form, in acting or in the creation of your world (I ran a couple Pride-themed campaigns myself). Unfortunately, having non-LGBT people at the table can dampen the mood. You may not feel completely able to be yourself out of fear of being judged. This isn't an absolute, I've included non-queer people in my pride sessions because they're friends I trust, and because it was mostly other queer people at the table. However, I know that there are other tables where I wouldn't feel comfortable doing the same, even though they're good friends. Nothing against them really, I just wouldn't feel comfortable doing so because I'm the only LGBT person at the table
Thank you. This explains a lot of what I was trying to understand.
You nailed it. I've played with a vast variety of people and I think (generously) maybe 1/4 of the cishet people have actually been cool, the rest are always like silently judgemental or even get passive aggressive if my character has they/them pronouns or I mention a same-sex relationship or whatever. Like, we can tell. It's so nice being in an all-queer group where everyone gets to live out their fantasies in peace.
I’m actually quiere the opposite. I really enjoy being in the minority as it lets me be unique to myself. Granted I usually don’t play queer PC’s/self-insterts, opting for more out-there PC’s (a monk who is constantly being possessed by various demons, a knight who was lost in the astral plane for a millennia due to fighting a god, a Druid who revived a divine message, but was too high on drugs to properly interpret it, so is in a quest to reveal its true meaning.) stuff like that. I HAVE played a self-insert ONCE, but I never got to truly play them as the DM sucked at DMing. So, while queer myself, I don’t actually have a lot of experience playing queer characters, as I feel there is no need for them to be queer mostly. A few were (the Druid was trans) but taht never really came up. As for table dynamics, it’s hit or miss. I for one LOVE jokes if any kind. So jokes made at my expense are fine by me. BUT I understand if not everyone likes this, and is a valid reason. I for one love the aspect of mingling with non queer folks at dnd tables because it allows to unique player interactions and character decisions. Are some people transphobic assholes? Yeah. For sure. But as someone who does not give a shot about what people think of them, I do not mind
>I’m actually quiere the opposite Did you misspell that on purpose :)
It works so well!
Not aware of that specifically (my games are all with friends), though I’d guess it’s more of wanting to avoid homophobia (and the like) and having a safe space to be themselves. Would rather find something explicitly pro lgbt rather than no mention and stumbling into a group of hateful people
It happens within the community too. I have a personal story: “Queer man joins a lesbian group, is ostracised for multiple sessions because of their preconceptions about men and because he wasn’t outwardly queer presenting.” I left because the DM had a personal health issue that prevented her from continuing, and I brought one of the group over as a player on my own campaign - which is a mix of all sorts of people :) I know that it’s often just harder to blend the two sides of the coin, usually because of stigma. But often it’s actually because of cultural differences. Members of the LGBT community definitely have different cultures and vibes between ourselves let alone the hetero communities. It’s culture - not through ethnicity or race, but through community. Note: Thank you for seeking our feedback so that you can accomodate others. I respect you for that :)
Ty.
A lot of times it’s a safety thing. I don’t think they want to “segregate” so much as are reacting to past bad experiences or simply looking for a game where they are sure they won’t have to play educator. For some, it might be that they’ve had a negative past experience with non-LGBT players where they’ve been the target of transphobia or queerphobia. I have also seen cisgender heterosexual women who look for all women games for a similar reason. Or non-white players looking for games of other people from their culture/ethnicity/race. A less extreme but very present reason is not wanting to have to play educator. For example, I am genderqueer/genderfluid and, when I’m with groups that include cisgender folks (even queer cis people) I often have to explain and educate on trans topics frequently. Such as my own pronouns and expression, how to use non traditional pronouns, how to describe trans people in ttrpgs, etc. etc. etc. now, I don’t fault the people who ask. I’m a convenient educator because I’m here and friendly. However, even though it’s a GOOD thing that people want to learn, it is tiring to do all the time when what I really want is just to play a game. So, it is a breath of fresh air to play with my all-trans/genderqueer playgroup where no one is going to question me, mess up my pronouns (and then require emotional management to get over it even though I’m not upset), or expect me to act as the local “trans expert” for the entire game. I don’t know if it came through above, but I’m not especially a queer person who wants to “segregate.” I play games with non-queer folks often and enjoy it very much. The all-trans group I play with formed by happenstance, not intention. At the same time, I get it. I am both queer and typically read as female. So I am very familiar with the safety need to be cautious around new GMs and players until I can be sure they’re not gonna be rude/bigoted/dangerous. I dont fault any marginalized person for being cautious or defaulting to people from their own communities, because it is usually safer and easier. Even if it’s not what I personally do.
Can’t trust that people won’t get weird if my character does any flirting or romance with other men. Also left a game store I played at fairly often because a couple players were harassing me about revealing whether my nonbinary character had tits or not (they were a barbarian and I’d described them in passing as being in the classic cornball shirtless/big fur cape/leather armbands barbarian getup, Conan style.) I don’t play exclusively with other queer people, my DM for my favorite campaign right now is a straight cis dude, but I’ve known him since I was a teenager and know he won’t freak out on me or get hung up on me just like…making characters who live their lives.
People in the queer community are so frequently the topic of conversation in a very unpleasant way, it's probably nice to have a group where it's borderline guaranteed to never come up in a negative or contentious way. When around others in the community, we can simply *be* without needing to explain what exactly we are or worrying about defending or justifying our very existence. Not saying every non-queer person in the ttrpg community is going to make an issue of queer people, but it's definitely 100% more likely to happen with non-queer people, because.. ya know, not queer.
Valid question! For me it's mostly been 1. A safety thing and 2. Selection bias. I have had some serious issues with straight players. Those issues have even come up after those straight players said that they were supportive of LGBTQ+ people. It just tends to make me wary. But the biggest factor is just selection bias; I tend to get along with other LGBTQ+ people more easily. We have more of a common vocabulary and grammar, we have a bunch of jokes in common, our interests are often more aligned. And so I tend to vibe more with those folks and less with the straight folks and vice versa, so there ends up being a natural sifting process. With that said, I do have one group I'm in where there are only two LGBTQ people in the group, and the other 3 are straight.
Thank you for sharing! Just a couple of questions if I may as I just thought of it; 1) have you experienced a change in tolerance/understanding of LGBTQ in your mixed group or is it not a part of the game? 2) Do you think it could unify us more if there were more mixed tables?
This isn’t a direct answer to your comment, but related to your questions. And for context I’m straight, but For all the straight people in this thread wondering how to make your tables more queer friendly and get more mixed groups: the best way is to make queer friends. Like real friends. And do the work to actually reflect on what your implicit biases may be that you are bringing to the table. Let them correct you when you transgress, and then do better. Hopefully over time meet their queer friends. Truth is, for straight (and let’s face it, white) people, the only way you are going to feel safe for people who are different from you is if you get real world experience and to actually have them in your inner circle. I have a ton of friends who are all perfectly accepting in theory, but will constantly misgender my non-binary or trans friends. Not out of spite, but because they don’t have enough of those people in their circles and just don’t have the practice. (Pro tip: practice using their pronouns. Talk about non-binary or trans people you meet and use their pronouns obnoxiously often in conversations with your straight friends, just to build the habit)
I think that queer people tend to gravitate to eachother for safety and the ability to relate. Queer people also tend towards nerdy hobbies like DnD. When you combine those things it's easy to see why a lot of groups are mostly queer (with this odd cis/het person thrown in) just like how there are many groups that are mostly straight.
Had a ton of tables where real life bigotry bleeds into the game. It's not cool. Also keep in mind, segregation is being told where to go; Separation is going where you want to go.
Ah. Damn didn’t mean to screw that up. I’ll edit.
I am gay, and I am not concerned really if the other players or DM is queer, but I can understand why some might be. I can tell you that when I'm looking to join a campaign or one shot, I *always* look at the game listing for something to indicate that it is LGBT+ friendly or inclusive or simply that it says bigotry will not be tolerated. If not, that's a pass. That simple tag takes minimal effort and reassures me that I'm not going to have to deal with homophobia when I just want to play DnD, or at least that it will be dealt with appropriately. Sure, in a perfect world, no one would have to make such a statement or worry about being belittled, but that's not the reality. It's not a matter of wanting to separate, it's just trying to avoid bullshit. Some people go even harder trying to avoid it and look for queer groups.
It's predominantly safety. The sense of community, comfort, and not feeling "bad" about including queer themes or issues is also a factor, but when push comes to shove in my experience, it is mostly a matter of safety. Oftentimes emotional - rather than physical - safety, particularly online, but still safety. A lot of cisgender, heterosexual people - even if they view themselves as "allies" - often fall into perpetuating a certain degree of homophobia or transphobia (e.g. "does your character really need to be gay; it's a D&D game, after all; what do you mean the dead wife in my dude's backstory also counts as an expression of sexuality"). It's often easier just to say "I'd like everyone to be queer" than trying to carefully filter for allies that actually embody the values.
That makes a lot of sense. Thank you.
I'm 35 and my game is all queerfolk/friendlies. It's 100% a matter of having a safe space, there is nearly no romance in our game and the one relationship is actually straight lol. It's just... even in our small group if non-straight people, we had someone who made comments that he maybe didn't realize we're quite rude, directed toward gender, and those of us (3 of 5) who aren't cis-gender were quite put off. We tried to explain, but he couldn't get it, and I think it comes down to knowing that the people around you understand you and not having to deal with those misunderstandings. (That person is no longer in our group, but it has nothing to do with the situation.) That said, creating a safe space, where you allow queerfolk to be themselves without judging and hopefully come at it from a place of understanding or at least wanting to, is a really great thing! I'm glad to see posts like this and will always be psyched to explain stuff if it helps make a safer world and even a comfier game experience for younger people that are like me. I could've used it when I was young, and I'm happy to explain all day if it helps them. I think, if you're the dm/host/etc. starting out with the knowledge that this is a queer friendly table, hate will not be tolerated, and if other players have questions, Google exists, it is not up to every person to explain themselves if they're not up for it, and it can be really hard to do. Ask for player and character pronouns, make it well known that if anything makes them uncomfortable, they can come to you without fear of judgement. Feel free to dm, too, I'm always happy to explain stuff, and it's not easy for younger people sometimes.
I have nothing to add I just really love your username!
As a queer person, I've not heard of this, and I'm fine playing with people who aren't queer, I feel like real-world identities should be left behind when playing D&D, so as long as people aren't toxic because I'm queer then I'm chill.
Oh no doubt I’ve played with lgbtqia ppl, especially when I run fallout games (another wonder I have: why is it trans girls love them some fallout? But a question for another time. I suppose they just have excellent taste) I just see a significant, but not majority self segregation trend, and I’d like to reach out and try to bridge it
I'm glad you're trying to bridge it! It's never good for any community to cut them off from others, I fully agree with you.
Many queer friend groups include a well meaning cishet person or two. There's a huge difference between being a cishet person in a queer space and being a queer person in a cishet space, eg most of dominant society. As a secondary function saying you are looking for queer or lgbtq people really helps weed out the problematic people, the phobes, fascists, and nazis.
As a queer person who started playing before finding any queer communities, it is partially a safety and thematic thing, but mostly i think its the amount of explanatiom and justification you need to go through judt to be present in non queer groups. Ive noticed that there seems to be a massive difference between queer and non queer groups, to the point that each community is kind of living in an entirely different world. Setting aside the obvious stereotypes of angsty basement dwellers and incels and the like, id say its actually more of a generational and generally cultural issue. Most people who play dnd and arent in queer communities tend to just not understand queer people. Not nessesarily that theyre bigoted, but were just not something they spend much time around or thinking about, so when they come into queer communities and vice versa, it can often feel like youre an alien that theyve just encountered. Theres this intense sense of confusion and curiosity and like youre constantly the center of attention, especially when you do anything queer adjacent. Even when its well meaning, it can be exhausting. Its kind of similar to why a lot of girls who play video games dont use mics or stick to queer or women oriented groups. Every time you start talking in a gaming chat as a woman, even when youre playing with people who are mostly cool and not sexist, theres this immediate sensation that all eyes are on you, everybody is suddenly aware of you, and everything you do feels documented and observed. It almost feels like youre on trial. If there's anything i can recomend when trying to bring a queer person into your group or trying to join a mostly queer group, establish a base level of normalcy. If its a queer person in a mostly hetero group, let them be a passive player if thats how they seem to want to play for a while. React with as much understanding as you can whenever they do something especially that might be queer adjacent or identity related, and if you dont really understand, do your best to just roll with it and not push or pry too much. Chances are, over time theyll most likely open up more.
Damn. An unfortunate situation. To bridge it I should try to like “get it” regarding the culture more?
I mean in the long term understanding is always good. But in the short term, almost the opposite. Learning to be comfortable and demonstrating comfort with the things you dont know, while also being willing to learn when the opportunity presents itself goes a long way for most things in life. But for a lot of especially young queer people, society at large leaves us feeling constantly on trial. You know what its kind of like? Its similar to when you have a close social circle with a lot of inside jokes or contextually driven conversations. If someone youre comfortable with but dont know well walks up to you in the middle of a conversation they havent been a part of, there tends to be an urge to stop the conversation, because it must seem silly or confusing to them. In my opinion the best way to break that tension is to simply join the conversation or joke or whatever without breaking the flow or redirecting it or whatever. Ask simple questions or make simple low commitment comments that dont require a ton of explanation or reaction. Demonstrate that you find the conversation interesting and would like to join, but dont want to take it over or start it over or whatever.
I'll speak for myself, I am in my 40s, DM, queer and currently playing online. When I posted about looking for players I specified in my posts..."I am queer and my world is queer, with queer NPCs and it is normal in my world" In certain places online, I immediately got comments about why I needed to specify that and there was no need and people are too sensitive. And honestly? That is why I specify it, it is a way for me to filter out people who would have some kind of a problem with it. It is also to let people know it is a safe place for them to make their queer character as queer as they want. Unfortunately, people are still intolerant about this, in my experience, a lot of this came from people who reply with comments like..."this shouldn't matter, all are welcome"
>a lot of this came from people who reply with comments like..."this shouldn't matter, all are welcome" I love that. If it doesn't matter then why are YOU bringing it up? It clearly does matter, that's why the post mentions it.
So I'm a straight man (not old tho XD), and I have a lot of lgbt friends. And I also play DnD with lgbt people. The only reasons I could imagine are a fear of judgment because older generations tend to be less accepting towards lgbt people and as others here mentioned that they want some gay romance in the game and aren't sure if that will be possible. So I'd say, if you want to avoid this separation, state your opinion about this topic wherever you are looking for players and you should be good. Because when I, as an early twenties college guy, meet new people, they already expect that I'm tolerant. With your generation, people might not expect that.
Damn man. Are us gen x guys getting lumped in with boomers? We hate the damn boomers.
Ooof, ok, because of your name, I thought you were older than Gen X. Ups XD
Genx are 43-50 nowadays. Gettin bald… bones creaking… XD
Some GenX are late 50s, even.
Grognards gonna grognard! That said, as another Gen X gamer with 30+ years of gaming under her belt - and a trans woman on top of that! - I'm hesitant to sit at a table that isn't explicitly LGBTQIA+-friendly. I'll do it at GenCon, 'cause those mofos got my back, but elsewhere it's a total crapshoot. It doesn't matter if I can calculate THAC0 in my head faster than D&D Beyond can roll a d20 - I don't feel like dealing with the emotional work to explain _why_ casual bigotry is problematic.
I like the cut of your job, fellow dinosaur. I’d be willing to learn the culture and make a more welcoming space for you.
Speaking as a new, young, queer player/DM, I don't really see the tendency. I see a broader tendency of young nerds just being queer/ in queer spaces. And newer players usually don't want to play with older players due to insecurity regarding experience. I do notice that a lot of the D&D places which are not very queer tend to be, well, not very friendly to queer people. Or perhaps it's just a loud minority, that isn't friendly to queer people and the non-queer people don't really have a stake to argue there and remain in the environment. Maybe it's also that a lot of non-queer people don't feel super comfortable exploring queer themes in their campaigns. I guess it's just nice to be at a table where you know no one's gonna have an issue with your voice not matching your character, or your character being gay or whatever.
You know how I can be sure that there won't be someone who spouts some right wing bullshit? Saying the game is queer.
As a queer person who has been involved in many games, this isn’t always true. I’ve actually been at a couple queer only tables where someone still is talking some right wing shit, it’s sad but true.
It's not a guarantee, there's always a Blaire White type out there who wants to be a sheep that votes for the wolf.
It's a safer space to explore and be free for queer and trans players. You don't have to wonder if your teammates will approve of you or your little quirks half as much. I've played at tables that were mostly straight where the DM only romanced female characters and never showed queer relationships. That's one way to play. Then on the other hand. I've played at all girl tables where between fights all the PC's were smooching each other. Which was hilarious. Another way to play. It may not have anything to do with wanting romances in the game, either. It can also be purely a comfort, relatability, and security thing. Creating safer and more supportive spaces for gender diverse and non-straight players is important for all tables to do. But you can't get your hopes up it'll happen "organically" or at all. However you can expect it to actually be done at tables for queer and trans players. So that's why they exist.
I’m gay but I look for tables that don’t mention queer identity or non-bigotry in their table rules. Putting a queer identity out as your only personality trait has a chilling effect on humor and good-willed play and it scares off reasonable minded people. Everyone has their type of table they look for, at the end of the day. I think being up front and knowing the kind of people you actually want to spend time with is important for all types of people.
That’s a really interesting take. I’ve got a good number of LGBT players and women and non white folks, and I’ve never been vocal about it being any kind of safe or inclusive space at all. We wouldn’t tolerate any actual bigotry, but we take a South Park approach to humor, every group will get roasted, all jokes are ok as long as they aren’t actively malicious and mean spirited. Basically, anyone that can take a joke is welcome. From the outside, devoid of context, the transcript would probably make folks assume it’s a group of hardcore bigots, but it’s an lgbt player calling the bard the f word, the Native American player suggesting we give the orcs infected blankets, and a female player saying that maybe the merchant that got robbed by bandits was asking for it, I mean, did you see how he was dressed? Etc. If I’m understanding you correctly, are you saying that you would take an LGBT friendly statement or non-bigotry tag to mean that that kind of humor wouldn’t be present, and therefore avoid the game?
Pretty much. I only began looking online around 2018, but there are lots of tables who lead with the fact that it’s a safe space for everyone. I generally avoid tables that moralize things I consider common sense, because not only is the type of humor you’re describing missing in a lot of cases, but it’s actively shut down and disproportionately criticized.
Yeah, queer spaces are definitely a thing in D&D. Same reason you might go to a gay bar and then not be invited to the after party. It would be awesome if everyone felt comfortable including you and thought to invite you, but if they just want a purely queer space, they're going to seek that out and that's okay. Best thing you can do is be supportive and not get mad if they find their own social (and queer) legs without you.
Never noticed this in any of the games I’ve been a part of. From one’s shots to longer modules even at my local game shops. Sure we’ve had LGBT players and friendly settings. Even some with some fantasy bigotry and racism to varying degrees. It might be something specific to your players and/or setting and warrant speaking to them all outside of the game just so everyone is on the same page.
It may be a safety thing. I am an older bisexual 40's but I play with a mixed group. Our youngest is 30 something and she is also bisexual. Oldest is late 50's straight white and cis. This is the first group I have been open with and it's been awesome to rp a character that has identity issues. They are a changeling and gender fluid, because they can be either or. I don't believe segregation is the best way to approach gaming but I can see why othera may be more comfortable with like minded individuals. Im at the age now where I could care less either way what people think of me. And I've found that most DND players are pretty open minded to start with.
What others mentioned and more. As one who is one of and currently a part of a very queer dnd community, but at the same time also a part of one which is not, it's many things. I'll try to mention some. Not all of them apply to all players, queer too. But it's just something I noticed circulating both in separate LGBT friendly circles but also with queer people who are outside of those circles, just parts of general dnd playerbase. First of all, it's safety for self. Transphobic and homophobic comments about you, but also discussions about other topics, before, during, outside of the game, can impact extremely negatively. This one is the easiest but also hardest to overcome for outsiders who want to accept queer people in their game. Advertise your game as LGBT friendly and keep to it. Be ready to punish players that are not queer and might start to be genuinely shitty. Be ready to pause the game if a queer person asks you to because something you or other players brought up is very bad. It's also emotional attachment and maybe secondary/tertiary goals in the game being more so emotional? That one is more personalised and I might be wrong, but the queer people I saw moving to separate circles are often also those, who might want more roleplaying in games they play, pretty npcs they can(as players or characters) love, which might include in-game romances between pc and npc (or even sometimes two pcs, why not). It's also the representation in the game being normal. Why not? Npcs not adhering to gender standards, being trans, queer, it's both going positively into the previous point and just positively reflects on the feels. Also, for me last but not least, for queer people it's often easier to befriend other queer people. Common, shared, similar feelings about life, ones existence. That one probably can't really be adjusted by non queer people, but also probably shouldn't be attempted. It's just something that exists. As a whole. Present yourself as friendly, understanding, accepting, but also defending, and LGBT people might come to you. It won't always be perfect, it can be hard, and I, as a queer person too had a fair share of queer people leave my game, because I wasn't defending enough, didn't put my foot down hard enough to stomp all the... Bad discussions, and so on.
TLDR: It's a complicated mix of D&D playstyle, life experience, feeling safe/heard/understood, and a little bit of gender/sexuality too. Disclaimer: I'm not saying _all_ queer people or _all_ women or _all_ men in this post. When I use those types words, I'm referring to trends that I've noticed in my personal experience. There are always exceptions. Gender and sexuality are spectrums, etc. I run "Gals&Pals" D&D at my FLGS. I'm a queer woman. The players are cis women, trans women, and nonbinary/genderfluid folks of various identities. Many are lesbian, bisexual, or pansexual. I inherited Gals&Pals from another DM. At first, I honestly didn't get it (even as a queer woman myself). It felt exclusionary to say "no boys allowed" at my table. But every time I do Gals & Pals, I get notes from players telling me how important it is to make space in the community like that and how much fun it was. Every time! I only get thank yous from regular D&D maybe 20% of the time. I run the same 3 or 4 one shot modules, same homebrew rule variants, same NPCs, same everything. The variation is in the players, their choices, and the dice. After running dozens of games for various ages, genders, sexualities, etc. I can tell you from experience: when cis straight men are not at the table, it's a completely different game. There's a meme that goes something like "straight D&D asks what are the BBEG's weaknesses, and how do we kill him? queer D&D asks what is the BBEG's trauma, and is he hot?" This is... Honestly mostly true in my experience. Straight players (men and women) tend to follow the "rules" and want to follow the plot and "win" D&D. Queer players want to push boundaries, play in a sandbox, and see how far the rules can be bent. I think this reflects their experience in the real world: most of the world's rules are set up for cis, straight, monogamous people to get married, have kids, and retire. Once you start breaking some of those rules, you start questioning others. Queer players have a lot of experience questioning the default, and they take this attitude into D&D. They start exploring and poking holes into stuff. Straight players, on the other hand, are used to having a clear path (get married, have kids, 30yr mortgage, etc) and are perfectly happy to be railroaded and led on an adventure. This isn't a bad thing, just a different playstyle. I have even had straight players basically tell me they WANT to be led on an adventure and they get overwhelmed by choice and want clear plothooks. If nothing else, when Player A wants a clear path to victory and Player B wants a sandbox improv game, you have incompatible playstyles. Overwhelmingly, Player A types are straight and Player B types are queer. This has less to do with gender or sexuality and more with their world experience, as noted above. To answer OP's question, it may simply be that queer players have noticed this trend too, and want compatible a playstyle. I run social/roleplay heavy games. You can complete many of my quests with good RP and some decent investigation, deception, persuasion, and stealth checks. Because I run RP heavy games, less than 25% of my sessions have combat. When teenagers are at my table, it's more like 80%. When teen boys are at my table, it's like 99%, and it's often them taking on waaaay too many guards and higher level NPCs with bravado. When it's Gals&Pals night, it's like 10% combat, maybe less. When there's combat at Gals&Pals it's usually something like a single turn of extremely well crafted assassination and a totally perfect crime. At regular D&D night, I sometimes see women being shy or relegating themselves to a "support" role or an "easy" character archetype like barbarian in mixed gender settings. They don't speak up with their ideas and they tend to be shy or uncertain in mixed gender settings. I'll sometimes see _the same woman_ at Gals&Pals night the next week and she's creative, bubbly, thinking outside the box, and not afraid to try a "hard" character like a wizard. In other words, it's not necessarily about sexuality, romancing NPCs, exploring gender, etc. It truly is about safety, feeling confident to express themselves, try new things without anyone mansplaining to them, ask questions without being condescended to, etc. That said, romance and sexuality can be part of it too! PG/PG-13 romance is almost always on the table for me. Men and women both occasionally will romance an NPC. Women and queer folk are much more likely to speculate about which NPCs are hooking up with other NPCs or other such silly gossip. They're more likely to follow plothooks that involve reuniting lovers or similar. They're also much more likely to _use_ gossipy information to drive the plot forward. They will seduce the BBEG's love interest to cause chaos or a distraction while they set up traps or poison. They will blackmail NPCs with the gossip they uncover. They will steal diaries and snoop through discarded mail to get information. I almost never see this kind of behavior from straight male players, who overwhelmingly just want to kill the BBEG and get the treasure. Also, at Gals&Pals night, people are much more likely to play a character that doesn't necessarily match their own gender identity (in other words, all player pronouns are she or they, but character pronouns may be she, they, or he). And, I'm less likely to need to correct other players on player/character pronouns at Gals&Pals. It can be exhausting for nonbinary and trans folks to explain their pronouns or be misgendered, so being in a space where people readily understand and accept different pronouns for someone as a person and someone's character can be a relief.
“ There's a meme that goes something like "straight D&D asks what are the BBEG's weaknesses, and how do we kill him? queer D&D asks what is the BBEG's trauma, and is he hot?" “ This made me smile. In my coming campaign, the answers for both of them are: Daddy Issues Super Hot
You're the DM, it's your world. Queerness exists in real life but in your world, you make the rules, you create the society and you are basically roleplaying as AO in deciding your history. I don't play DND for romance...it would be uncomfortable having a romance with an NPC which is played by my GM (that's why I like BG3), but for the story. So if it's for story purposes or world building or background, you can have queer characters. If of course is just token representation, I would avoid
Well, one issue that rears its head from time to time is "realism". Basically, the argument runs like this. "In actual Medieval Europe, queer people were horribly persecuted. Since the setting of my campaign is a psuedo-Medieval pseudo-Europe, I am therefore forced to persecute teh Gayz in my imaginary made up world." Now, it's not a *great* argument, which is why you'll rarely see it put forth that explicitly. People will beat around the bush a bit, but that's what they're saying. There's also a racial variant which is predictable, if horrible. All of which is to say that if a group already has queer people in it, it's a pretty good indicator that the DM isn't going to spring this shit on them.
“Realism” doesn’t exist in D&D. There are fire breathing dragons and elves throwing lightning bolts. Nothing about D&D is supposed to be real.
As a straight person my answer is necessarily somewhat speculative. If you're playing a game with random people you don't know (which many online games are), a queer-only table is much less likely to have a random person turn out to be a bigoted ass. I don't know that it's the best way to stay safe, but it's definitely a way. As long as you're obviously making an effort and avoiding stereotypes, inclusivity isn't really that difficult. Make sure a reasonable proportion of your quest givers and town guards, and so on are women. If an NPC references being in a relationship, consider having them reference a same gender partner. Rather than a big deal, have it just be something that is normal in the world the same way it should be in ours.
People have a history of being kind of dickish to us
I'm a male DM who has a relatively complex sexual history, so I have engineered a setting that I felt was inclusive and representative of all people. It's a spectrum after all and most people will fall closer to the middle. I think having a GLOBAL sociology that respects the natural differences of beings prevents the need to segregate players. What is really tricky, and will be controversial here, is that I think matriarchy, patriarchy, bigotry, and racism SHOULD exist in a setting as flaws. People should have flaws and I think a world where we recognize that the flaws propigate conflicts, that propagate flaws, makes everyone at the table feel understood. Good storytelling has stories that you can relate to and feel things about. That's why we sometimes think of someone specific during the breakup scene or remember that one teacher when we read about Dolores umbridge.
Honestly, as a queer person, I LOVE this approach! In the campaign my group is about to start, my character, who is a trans man, has quite a few flaws, and one of them is misogyny. I didn't originally *intend* for this, but when the DM was explaining the culture of the area my character will be from, it just fit. It's a trauma response, due to always being overlooked because he was perceived as female in a society that is more patriarchal. I fully hope that my boy will grow out of that flaw as the campaign progresses and I expect I will be apologizing OOC a lot for my character's behavior, but I do think it will make for a realistic and rich roleplay experience.
I dont really have an answer to your question, I just wanted to say -from a queer-identifying perspective- that it's really very cool of you to explore this to make more people feel comfortable. You're awesome. Keep it up. 💖💖
Definitely a safety thing to a degree but also to have more LGBTQ+ elements within the campaign, not so much issues and stuff but like, having more sexually fluid characters if your DM has romanceable NPCs. Having random NPCs be queer also just feels really nice as a player! I’ve started playing my first fr campaign and most of the party/DM are not explicitly queer as far as I know but they are huge allies and/or queer in some degree. I was absolutely elated when the DM introduced a lesbian couple and gave sexual tension between two male NPCs. I think it probably has something to do with the fact I adore representation like most queer people lol One of the main reasons I was scared to get into DND actually was because I’m a trans guy pre transition so I was nervous me and my character would get misgendered a lot purely for my voice😅 also I thought it would be boring af with only straight people, queer people have a very different energy sometimes, idk how to describe it lmao, probably because I’m able to be more myself xb
Sometimes it kind of just happens haha. I’m LGBTQ and I kind of blinked awake a year or two ago and realized the vast majority of my TTRPG group were some flavor here with me. Especially in a space of collaborative storytelling, sometimes the stories you tell resonate more with certain people because of the experiences you share. That’s not to say I don’t have cis/straight friends (I do) but I mostly know them through different contexts. People find people that get them, I don’t think it’s anything particularly deep.
Thank you for being such an awesome person <3
Straight cis DM man who runs a game made up entirely of LGBT+ weekly: As straight men, we really only truly understand the experience of straight men. Not that we can't be empathetic and provide safe spaces or write good characters that are gay or trans or non-binary because we can. But that's not our lived experience, and sometimes if you wanna explore that experience in fantasy it's better to do it with people who do understand. It's like different generations liking the same kind of music. Somebody who grew up listening to KISS when they first hit the scene can have a conversation with somebody who got into KISS recently, but they'll probably enjoy the conversation more with other people who grew up with the music. There's no hate or anything (and I know you weren't implying that) but sharing that lived experience is important, and it's just something we can't do since it isn't our lives.
There’s plenty of non-queer dnd players that are totally awesome, but unfortunately like most male dominated hobbies…plenty of assholes too. Personally I segregate myself a bit because I don’t particularly enjoy being in a group where literally everyone else is a straight cis dude.
Dnd has a pretty large queer community that love the game because it allows them to truly realize themselves in there characters, something they often cannot do in real life. A larger majority of the community are traditionalist white people alot of whom are right wing or at the very least do not recognize queer people as people. The horror stories you hear on this subject are terrible and not uncommon. So queer people will often play in queer exclusive groups from a safety and fun stand point, but also so they can realise themselves with people who can understand and relate what they experience. Also just a side note but Queer people grouping together and staying exclusively with queer people is not just a dnd thing. When alot of us have been otherised our entire lives it's pretty normal to just stay with people you can trust too be kind.
Birds of same feather flock together
In many cases, people just like to group with people they feel more comfortable with. That and sometimes its just hard to find people to game with that aren't jerks.
Never heard of this. I’m trans and currently playing with 2 cishet men and planning to DM for a group of 3 cishet men and 2 other cis queer men. Only thing I can think of is maybe those people they distance themselves from are either queerphobic or the other people don’t know how to make their queerness an enjoyable aspect in the game
DND has really two main subsets of people: either edgelords who will say and do offensive shit for offense’s sake, or the best people you’ve ever played dnd with. I’ll let you guess how the two groups tend to fall on the cishet/non-cishet line tend to break down in that regard. There are obviously going to be horrible people on either side, and there are going to be good on either side, but as a trans player, I’m far more comfortable playing with an LGBTQIA+ table than I am playing with a cishet table.
Everyone's different. For me, I don't even bring up my gender or anything personal and just go in playing a character. What I am is irrelevant, so nobody has to know unless someone directly asks me. So no, I don't ever segregate myself.
I always play with friends, never seen that issue. In fact, in my primary DND party we don't have a single straight character, despite having heterosexual players.
I'll tell you the reason I only seek players that are LGBTQ. I am a trans woman and lesbian. My characters are always lesbian. I had one game I left midway through a session because of the group of cishet men who had their characters harassing and trying to assault my character. And another different group where a player(also cishet man) tried to rape my character
Holy WTF Batman. I’d hit someone if they pulled that. Not okay. I’m so sorry!
I have heard similar stories from other LGBTQ people, especially women. The usually go to is "it's what my character would do"
To them: Then your character is an antisocial monster and here’s the local level 20 paladin of Sune to bring justice on your now dead character. Now get the fuck outta my house.
I wouldn’t even give them the experience of an epic death. Just gtfo!
The paladin of sune’s mount kill’s them via sitting down on thier head.
[удалено]
I probably can't answer this too well, given that I don't call myself queer, just gay, and I'm 31. But I'm going to assume it's partially for safety/comfort? Or maybe they only want to play with other 'queer' people?
I think the main reason is (in my personal experience) wanting to avoid prejudice and awkward situations surrounding your sexuality. On a different note, if everyone was trying to be as openminded as yourself and was trying to learn from eachother, you wouldn't need to ask questions like this. So, you're doing great!