I'd like to hear from players whose characters have been involved in same-sex relationships, and how those relationships were received from an in-character and out-of-character perspective by others in-game. Did it cause grief for you behind the scenes or were people rather accepting? Was it a source of RP fodder for people trying to scandalize your character? How difficult (if at all) was it to develop and forge onward with these characters?

I've played limited relationships of this type, between females, where there was less a capital-R gettin-married sort of thing going and more a casual fling type thing. I don't think anyone noticed, to be honest, but the theme was such that it wasn't a big deal. They didn't even walk around holding hands, though there was a bunch of hugging and stuff, and I imagine people thought that was 'just friendly'. So, little experience, but no social consequence.

It's something I'd like to experiment more with on Chiaroscuro, where there's an emphasis in two seperate cultures on avoiding pregnancy before marriage, and a somewhat patriarchal society in both cases. It seems like it might be a good (discreetly done) socially acceptable outlet. I definitely play female characters who are interested generally in female characters there, and that seems to be a little outre, but fine (yes, well, isn't that cute, whatever floats your boat hon, they say). That sort of patronising, leave-it-be response has happened only with potential stuff, though, and not when the char was faced with actual evidence of such a relationship.

Out of character, I have had no trouble as yet.

I made one character of mine bisexual... and when I met people I knew from that character on a more OOC basis, they assumed that I was either bi or a lesbian. It was accepted ingame, but out of character I was met with questions like, "So when did you know you were gay?" and statements such as, "You're a sinner!" etc. I'm not a lesbian, nor am I bisexual, so this was an interesting thing to encounter.

Just thought I'd share ^_^

I played an androgynous dragon that had relations with a spectre, does that count? Hah.

In Armageddon's world of Zlanthas, there is little to no stigma associated with gay/bisexual relationships. In such a harsh world, a '****buddy', for lack of a better term, is only that. There are no religion, moral, or social taboo's associated with same-sex relationships, and it can make for some interesting situations.

I, the player, am very straight. While I can appreciate another man being handome or, rarely, aesthetically pleasing, I just am not attracted in such a way. InGame, however, I was once pursued by another male. I played hard to get with this guy, claiming to have a female companion somewhere who would, likely as not, find this guy and confiscate his balls. It all made for some very fun storytelling, and I had a blast.

As for others having Out of Game problems with the situation, I say: Screw you. If I want to play a promiscuous, man-hungry half-elven teenager, by God I will. I think if I -did- get harassed for such a thing, I would quickly notify my Mud's immortals. They're quick to stomp on anyone like that. We have enough hatred and bigotry in the Real World. When I'm in my chosen fantasy-world, I'll reserve my hatred for elves and the occasional gith.

-WP

I've yet to attempt to RP a character of the opposite gender, so trying something like that would be quite out of my, eh, league. If I did it would be a female, even though I would screw it up quite badly. Becuz dudez r icky!

I wouldn't have any OOC problems with someone playing their character that way, although if it were deemed wrong and/or evil by IC standards my characters would likely flame away, as they tend to do with everything else.

I love playing the muscular clean-shaven bigot that picks on gay people IC, it's to kill those people too.

Warhound, you make me giggle. And I completely agree about the hatred and bigotry issue... and I think it's one of the many reasons that MUDs are so popular. I am, for one, an escapist, so... yeah.

And Delerak silly, you play the muscular clean-shaven bigot that picks on gay people OOC, too! *snicker* I jest, Delly, I jest.

And you play the bouncy, tree-hugging activist that can't keep her premature, innocent of the real world views off of mud forums, I jest Kopri... I jest.

Oo, look, we're both jokingly observant ^_^

Back to the topic at hand, I'm very interested in everyone else's experiences.

[Off-topic]

Delly - heh.

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Anyway. I'm a 100% hetero female with an artistic appreciation for sexuality and physical beauty in women. In otherwords, I can acknowledge that Michele Pfeiffer is hot, but I don't know that I'd have all that much interest in sleeping with her (bad example since I probably -would- consider it, at least).

In my gaming experiences though, I play -all- my female characters as either bi-sexual, or "open minded" when it comes to sexual preference. I do this for RP purposes - you never know when bedding down with a noble lady will get you the secret information you need for your spy-ring boss.

Only one of my characters has been a full-fledged bonafide lesbian.

Most of the time, what the player thinks about it on the other side of the computer connection is irrelevant since most of the time we "fade to black" any graphic scenes.

Once in awhile things might get roleplayed, and the only reason I would care who they are on the other side, is because I have -no- desire to roleplay sex scenes with a minor.

Other than that, I don't care if they're male or female. It isn't "me" who's having a relationship with "them" afterall. It's my character having a relationship with theirs. Anyone who can't seperate the two needs to take a break from gaming and re-visit their reasons for playing in the first place.

Excellent discussion so far. Anyone else have experiences or thoughts to share on this topic?

I play a character married to another male character in my primary MUD. There has been only rare OOC issues with this, but a handful of IC issues have cropped up. Overall, though, I have been surprised how little of a reaction it gets in the game world.

I have yet to make a non-heterosexual character in either my current MUD (Armageddon) or my previous RP MUD, though I know what to expect.

Armageddon is unusually free and loose about sexuality, really, at least in my experience. Though I haven't heard of this happening yet, it's perfectly possible to hire a prostitute for another character, so...yeah.
As in probably any other MUD, male homosexuality is much rarer than lesbianism in Armageddon, but neither are looked down on.

Back in my old RP, I once saw a male homosexual couple. Personally (OOCly) I had nothing against that, but ICly the combination of the ignorance of my character and the general theme of the game did lead me to haze them about it In-Game. OOCly, I strongly believe that they were not offended.

Anyway, playing a character with any sexual tendency or perversion is completely acceptable as long as they are being played realistically. If your character has some weird fetishes in-game, expect to receive odd looks in-game if the game theme would merit that. Roleplay MUDs are a communal effort and not anyone's personal sandbox.

Though I've never had a same-sex relationship IC or OOC, I will say that I've never seen anyone who has have any problems in Lusternia, or any IRE game. In general it seems the internet community is more progressive than the wider world, so I've rarely seen this come up at all in any online area.

P.S. Having just asked around my gay friends that play, none of them have had any problems with it or heard of anyone that has either.

I typically avoid games with cliched races that appear to be less races than organisms of a different genus and species altogether (like cat-people and bird-people and lizard-people). Always strikes me as odd that people don't treat relationships between "Catfolk and Humans" as bestiality more than interracial relationships.

As for same-sex relationships in MUDs, I've noticed as both a player and a former-administrator that the primary example seems to be lesbianism. Most of the time, it's a female character played by a male player and less of an attempt at a character who happens to be a lesbian than it is a raging-hormone-boy intent on MUDsexing.

As far as actually RPing a same-sex relationship, different people have different ideas about it. If someone's going to try such a character, they ought to do a bit of research rather than play the character based on stereotypes. That advice of course goes for any role.

Take care,

Jason

Agreed.  We frequently decry "humans in funny suits" syndrome to the playerbase.  Our most successful efforts have be to make sure different races play differently (different limb structure, skills/etc. inherent to a given race, etc.) in a mechanical sense, which seems to keep it in the forefront of player minds more.

Boy howdy, is that true.  We've had several well-executed homosexual characters, and unfortunately a hundred of the kind you've described.