Sex, Sexuality And RPGs

Aside from a joke here and there (And a D20 book I haven’t read) the issue of gender and sexuality in role playing games has not been addressed. What, for example, is life like for a gay male drow? Consider that men are second class citizens in drow society. The average male drow wants at least to marry power. A gay man is stuck loving another second class citizen.

A lesbian drow, however, would almost certainly try to marry her way up the ladder. She would also tend to view male drow with even more scorn than usual. Imagine, what if a whole city began to view male drow this way- a city where males have almost no rights and are viewed only as useful for breeding. How would the men try to revolt? What new gods would they seek?

We’re told (Complete Book Of Elves among other places) that light elves have no distinction between the sexes. They have no separate pronouns for male and female. Their chief deity is often depicted as a hermaphrodite. Based on all this, I conclude that all light elves are actually bisexual. If there is no distinction between he and she in anything else in elf life, why a distinction in romance/sex? If I’m right, heterosexuality and homosexuality are viewed as equal disorders in elven society.

‘I heard Torlon Moon only seeks women as romantic partners’
‘That is odd. I wonder why.’

What of other cultures? Why wouldn’t a nation worshiping the Olympians have the Greeks view of sex and sexuality- The men holding the power, taking male lovers, and viewing women as necessary only for bearing children? Think of the constant conflict between the gods and goddesses over the status of women. In our world, the effects of a prayer to Artemis are open to debate. In D&D, the effect depends on the level of the cleric praying. What about the Vikings? I’ve read that men wanting to be clerics of Freya were required to dress and live as women- and to take a woman’s role in sex.

What if somebody doesn’t approve of another’s sexuality? In our world there are no ‘cures’. But in a world of magic and potions, this is not so. A carefully worded wish spell can fix almost any problem. Upset that your son is gay? Find an accommodating spellcaster.

In our world, the transgender have it very rough. While hormone treatments and surgery can solve some problems, others remain. In a world of wish spells and girdles of gender reversal, these problems disappear. Let’s take the example of Hypothetica. Hypothetica is a woman with a problem. She was born with the body of a man. In our world, Hypothetica would be required to take years of counseling before a doctor will consent to hormone replacement therapy and years more before getting consent for an orchiectomy and vaginoplasty. Even after that, Hypothetica remains dependent on hormone treatments, cannot bear children, and has many problems with her legal status. But, what if Hypothetica was born in the lands of Dungeons And Dragons? After the appropriate spell or magic item is used, no one would deny that Hypothetica is a woman. She needs no hormone treatments, having her own female reproductive system. No court would now deny that she is a woman.

What if such magic items are rare? Then imagine the anguish of a character who finds themselves trapped in the wrong body. Reincarnation spells have a habit of placing a soul in the wrong species. But what about the wrong gender? Interestingly the comic series Camelot 3000 had sir Tristan reincarnated as a woman. How does a character cope when his love returns as a man?

But what about high magic worlds, where the population gets about on flying carpets and magical objects are commonplace? The populace could change gender and orientation at will. Imagine a world where your father decides he’s bored being a man and becomes a woman for the week? Imagine a world in which any friend is a potential mate. Imagine the possibilities.

WOD
Note, I know only of the Old WOD

Much of what I said holds true for other games.The Life sphere can alter your body from one sex to another. Mind and Spirit magicks can change your orientation. The Technocracy would tend to favor heterosexuality (as does Pentex- see Freak Legion). What about the traditions?

What about the Garou tribes? They would have good reason to place a high value on heterosexuality. They need all the Garou and kinfolk they can get. The pressure would be on for everybody to produce children.

Cyberpunk, Shadowrun

In a world of cybernetic implants and cloned organs, a full sex change is no problem. A full vat grown reproductive system is just a matter of NuYen.

In the original Baldur’s Gate, there were various cursed items implemented. Almost all of them had a resale value of 0 GP. The one exception was the Girdle of Masculinity/Femininity, which did have resale value, presumably because it’s very useful to the right customer.

Then again, though, who’s to say that the Girdle would solve any problem? It reverses gender, but it never says that it’s just a physical change. Maybe it would turn a man trapped in a woman’s body into a woman trapped in a man’s body. The description of the item does state that it doesn’t affect orientation, but even that’s ambiguous: Does that mean that it would turn a man who’s attracted to women into a woman who’s attracted to women, or does it mean that it would turn a heterosexual man into a heterosexual woman?

Rereading the girdle of masculinity/femininity entry, it is a bit unclear. However, the immediate mention of using a wish spell to reverse things makes me think that you retain the same mind.

First, love really isn’t something portrayed as common in drow soceity. Things suck for gay male drow, yes, but their inability or lack of desire to sexually perform for their female mistresses is one of 117 reasons why they might get randomly killed today. In drow soceity, it sucks for the lower classes because they are executed, it sucks for the middle classes because they are assassinated, and it sucks for the upper classes because they are murdered.

I just figure it’s another variant of prefering a given hair color or body type. I also figure the socialization of elven sexuality is very permissive of “Well, normally I prefer women, but he’s cute. I think I’ll see if he’s interested.”, and does less categorization and more “People like who they like.”

Of course, my interpretation of D&D elves is not exactly standard to any published setting (namely, the vast majority of them are basically hippie stoners enjoying a very labor-intensive life, who resolve problems usually by going to ground, hiding, and waiting for the problem to die of old age).

Well, in D&D, rigid socialization of gender roles lasts until someone with class levels declares otherwise. Declaring that an arbitrary gender (since there aren’t statistically significant differences between human men and women in D&D) can’t be adventurers is a good way to either halve your adventuring population and get your culture eroded by wandering monsters at best, or have Red Sonja team up with Jeanne d’Arc and start a civil war at worst.

Again, my campaign is such that pretty much that every culture everywhere has adventurer-friendly social norms. Since everywhere in the Prime has monsters, everywhere that has people needs people to fight the monsters. So, most cultures have a class or caste of people who gear up with local weapons and local magic, form small bands, and adventure; it’s relatively easy to get accepted as the local cultural equivalent if you have the chops and can deal with the local wildlife.

In D&D, at least, there is a core spell that lets you swap gender (Alter Self). It’s second level. There’s also a non-spell but theoretically-researchable Minor Alter Self effect that’s first level and lets you designate “…the new form’s minor physical qualities (such as hair color, hair texture, and skin color) within the normal ranges for a creature of that kind. The new form’s significant physical qualities (such as height, weight, and gender) are also under your control, but they must fall within the norms for the new form’s kind.”

Adventurers aren’t a good metric to measure any society by, though. Most D&D societies would consider a female adventurer crazy, but then, they’d also consider a male adventurer crazy. The wiser or more experienced members of the society might recognize the need for adventurers, in the abstract, but they’ll still probably think that it’s a fool’s errand for anyone to specifically choose.

Yes, but it’s a relatively short duration, so you could use it for brief experiments, but not for an actual lifestyle change. And it’s self-only, so even those brief experiments are only available to arcane spellcasters of at least 3rd or 4th level, a very small segment of the population. The very rich or those who have befriended spellcasters could get the same effect from Polymorph, but now we’re talking about a 4th-level spell, much harder to come by.

On the other hand, there’s also a race (one of the standard races in the Eberron setting) called changelings who have an Alter Self-like minor shapechanging ability as a racial trait. They can therefore take a male or female form as they prefer for as long as they want. I’m not even certain that they actually have a physical gender in their natural form (the books probably say, but I don’t have any of those books).

Drow society doesn’t have marriage (or love, or friendship, or trust). Females simply take males whenever they please, and the males may not refuse. I imagine that it’s not unheard of for a female to get some males to put on a male-on-male show for her. Either way, a male’s orientation isn’t taken into consideration. Females do sleep with females, but it’s hard to tell lust from social climbing or asserting dominance.

I’m in the middle of reading Ascendancy of the Last, but as of before the Lady Penitent trilogy, most renegade drow turn to Eilistraee. Her followers are still matriarchal, but they’re the good guys, so they’re not nearly as harsh. Many do fall in love, and recent converts at least only take males with their consent. Many male renegades turn instead to Vhaeraun, whose church is evil but very masculist. I expect that most Vhaeraunites’ attitudes toward sex parallels those of radical feminists in the real world (complete with misconceptions and expectations people have about said attitudes).

Looking beyond the drow, it’s worth noting that (as far as I’ve seen) homophobia is nonexistent in the Forgotten Realms setting. Homosexuality isn’t portrayed very often, but nobody finds it objectionable or noteworthy.

There is greater gender equality in the Realms than one would expect; often comparable to or perhaps even greater than most real-world western countries. Without the baggage of real world religions, most people are also quite liberal about casual sex.

Given how many dangerous females there are running around, it’s an example of natural selection in action. :smiley:

Or to put it more seriously, women in fantasy RPGs tend to be more powerful and aggressive than in real life pre-industrial societies. Both on a personal level, and quite often on an organizational level ( more matriarchies, female warrior societies, female dominated religions with miltary/political power, etc ). It’s rather like what brought about increase equality for women in the real world, except that you’re more likely to get smacked with a mace than a lawsuit.

Cure disease spells probably help too. And there are likely birth control spells/potions too, whether or not the official rules mention them.

Roy Greenhilt, hero of the D&D-based webcomic Order of the Stick, was conceived when his parents’ protective spell failed.

People are probably just glad you’re attracted to the right species.

I think I actually read about the specific herbal equivalents for birth control in at least one game setting—I forget specifics, though, but I think they were official/canon.

(Though I’d hate to be the poor bastard who only relied on those, and then got struck down by some dread new STD that just crawled out of a jungle, somewhere. I gotta figure that an incurable STD from a fantasy setting would end up turning you into a monster or something, to boot.)

Another thought about women’s equality; I’d expect that healing magic, even the minor magic a village priest(ess) would have access to would drastically lower infant mortality. With lower infant mortality, women would have far less of a need to be pregnant all the time. Which in turn would enable women to compete on a much more level playing field.

The only magical birth control I remember is a potion that renders the imbiber infertile for six months. Like most magic potions, it’s easily affordable by adventurers but too expensive for commoners. Cure disease spells or potions aren’t necessarily free either. Maybe undercover worshipers of Talona have as much unprotected sex as possible with as many people as possible to spread the clap.

I don’t think it’s been established whether any Realms religions proscribe birth control, or whether affordable birth control exists. Some deities whose portfolios include fertility and the like would probably be opposed to it.

And yeah, sorceresses and priestesses make it relatively difficult for an oppressive patriarchy to establish itself.

Changelings take whichever gender they prefer at the moment. Their “normal” physiology is a matter of personal preference. But a “male” changeling is able to completely transform into a “female” changeling, complete with the appropriate and fully-functional plumbing, and vice versa. The changeling can become pregnant while in female form, but while pregnant is unable to take a male form (doing so would immediately terminate the pregnancy, so I imagine the ability to do so was naturally deselected, though since changelings are the result of crossbreeding between humans and doppelgangers, I suppose the deselection was accomplished during the doppelgangers’ evolution, and the trait was inherited by changelings). Changelings may also take a completely neuter form.

Elves: it seems to me that bisexuality would be a desirable trait in a race that is immortal or at least extremely long-lived; unrestricted reproduction would eventually result in major overpopulation problems. So most elven families I’ve see portrayed, at least in D&D novels, typically produce a single child (the main exception being royal families, where more children are necessary to help increase the likelihood there will be a surviving heir should the king/queen be killed). So, get married, produce a single offspring, and then turn to same-sex partners for sexual gratification.

As for drow … there was an episode in the webcomic, Yet Another Fantasy Gamer Comic, (site doesn’t seem to want to load at the moment, so I can’t link to the specific strip) in which the various elven races, including the drow, are having a meeting. There is one male drow, Wolf, who is one of the royal guards. A pair of male “light” elves are taunting him about coming from a matriarchal society, suggesting that he must be effeminate, gay, or at least “whipped”, and eventually one asks him how he obtained such a lofty position as “Royal Guard”. He gets an evil grin on his face and shuts them up with, “I slept my way into this job.” :smiley:

Ah, here it is: Yet Another Fantasy Gamer Comic has moved

(remembered the details wrong, but had the basic idea)

I’m glad this thread isn’t about sex, sexuality and rocket-propelled grenades. Because that’s crossing that fine line between kinky and perverted.

Most of what I know about D&D comes from reading Order of the Stick (I was a GURPS man) but I’ll note that homophobia is so rare in that strip that even Miko Miyazaki, who was one of the most judgemental characters in all of fiction, had no problem with a gay couple.

…or they might just not be interested in having sex all the time. Shocking concept for a human, I know, but it’s just as plausible as bisexuality as a trait to prevent overpopulation.

That reminds me of a section of Out of the Silent Planet where Ransom is discussing sex (in suitably roundabout phrasing) with his Malacandran guide. The latter explains that the getting of children is indeed a great pleasure among his kind, not only the business itself but all of the build-up, but he genuinely doesn’t understand why a Thulcandran would want to do it again and again. “What? Would he want to eat his dinner all day or sleep after he had slept?”

A whole lot of animals, after all (possibly even “most”), couldn’t care two hoots about it except for a few days a year when the female is in oestrus.

To bring up another line of RPGs, all the White Wolf games I’m aware of include quite a bit of discussion regarding the mores of gender. sex and sexuality among relevant cultures and societies. It’s actually a little creepy how hard they try to be comprehensive but at least they’re equal opportunity horndogs :slight_smile:

Yeah, I have an issue of White Wolf with an article on Garou sexuality.

Re Casual Sex

I thought about this and came to the conclusion that in the real world virginity is likely prized for the certainty that somebody is disease free, and so a father can be sure that any children a woman bears are his.

As mentioned, cure disease spells and the increased effectiveness of herbalism can ensure that somebody is disease free. And doubtless divinatory spells exist to determine who a child’s father is.

However, I’m sure some deities still prize virginity, and the blood of virgins has got to be useful for a few spells.

BTW

One of the few mentions of sexual practices I can find in canon TSR material is in The Complete Book Of Necromancers. Here, the writers mention that the adherents of some of the cults described in the book practice necrophilia.

If you think about it, that and the occasional virgin sacrifice would only serve to increase casual sex.