@FairyGodfeather
I never realized they were synonyms of each other.
I always viewed sexual preference to be who you were attracted to (if you liked men, women, or neither etc.).
While, orientation was who yourself viewed your own sexual identity (if you were viewed yourself as male or female, or neither, etc.).
That would be gender identity. I know, it gets complicated, but that’s people for you. There are glossaries if you need a reference. I’ve learned a whole set of new terms just since I started hanging out on these forums - just to name one person, @FairyGodFeather is like, on the cutting edge of which things are horrible to say and why.
I like a challenge, so I’m always up to figure out how to say something in the way that I want without using a word with some unintentional linguistic baggage that subtly makes the world worse.
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I think people who are bi tend to have a strong preference one way or another, in part because sexuality-based subcultures tend to stick together. I’m happily married to a man (I’m a woman) and have to make a conscious effort to “keep” my male and/or single and/or gay friends. I’ve still lost several. I’ve also heard of a few times when gay icons married someone of the opposite gender and their gay fans felt personally betrayed.
Since I’m monogamous, I’m straight in practice. I’m also rarely attracted to women, and the hassles that go with a gay relationship (how will others cope? Is she even gay? Do we want to go through so much more hassle to have kids?) are easily enough to put me off - unless my husband dropped dead and I met the right woman, I guess.
But it’s easier to pick a gender and stick with it unless you are really serious about someone.
So what I’m saying is that I always thought loads of people were bi. Apart from anything else, being bi is easy to deny to yourself (and to not bother sharing with people that don’t want to know).
But I get annoyed when I can’t play a gay female in a game. Because being able to indulge that side of myself is part of why I love IF. Also being able to be more attractive, fitter, richer, etc 
Homosexual Male preferably though I’m straight in practice like Felicity.
I always want to play as the gender i am, but even a game who preslected my same gender. It sometimes its suited so stereotypically, that it feels insulting.
I always like the choice even though i end up chooseing the same one everytime. Feeling a netural between the two is usually done with humor, instead of a certin state of mind.
Both sexual orientation and gender identity are really complicated things, I think. I’m torn between saying “no, I really do think games should provide as many options as possible” and then just wondering if maybe male/female/non-binary isn’t the way to go after all.
I mean, it would be a really sophisticated game that made any hay of the difference between, say, being genderqueer and being agender. Are these different things? Heck yes. Do I imagine them making a big difference in a CoG? Probably not. But on the other hand, I think it’s really important to be able to go into a game, as a person of one of many nuanced non-binary identities, and say “yes, this is a character like me, I am represented.” Even if it turns out you don’t want to play a character like you.
So I guess I’d prefer as many options as possible, but I do recognize that there are feasibility issues when it comes to really long lists of possibilities.
But you know, I’m not categorically against games that fix the gender of the protagonist. I just think that plenty of them exist already, particularly if the protagonist in question is a cis-dude. Like, that’s been done. Cisgendered men are everywhere in media, especially if they’re also white and heterosexual. Does that mean that every story that features such a man as its protagonist is a game I won’t like? Of course not. It just means that I think writers who reasonably can go the extra mile for the sake of representation probably should.
I suppose most of that has already been said in one form or another by others in this thread.
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I agree! If I see that a game is gender locked I just don’t buy it. I agree with you as well that it would be excellent to see some non-binary options for gender selection which I haven’t seen yet. MC-sexual doesn’t bother me if done well. By which I mean the difference in sexuality shouldn’t fundamentally alter the NPC’s personality/character.
However Mary Sue/Marty Stu are used to describe characters with no flaws. Universally loved, Perfect looks, Perfect life (finances, good family, ect.), nothing ever goes wrong and even their antagonist is secretly in love with them or crazy out right.
Mary Sues are examples of singular qualities/stereotypes vs. just escapist material.
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I believe there are a couple CoG’s with gender selection. I kind of actually like when you play as, say, a gay female, but there is a male who wants to romance with you. I especially love to tell him “no” 
I don’t get Mary Sues. I mean, sure, it’s great to be perfect, but how do you create conflict around such a character? Like, every character needs an antagonist, and people who hate him/her.
The character’s perception of “perfection” may not align with another’s … perfection is all about perception, no?
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Necromancer spotted 
Do the options in Choice of Dragon count as nonbinary? The choice presented there was to be male, female, or gender-nonspecific. I haven’t played many of the recent COG titles (I should play more of the recent COG titles), but that’s how the early ones tried to avoid being exclusive.
: '(
I’m male, but i don’t mind playing a female MC. What matters to me most is the quality of the story.
I much prefer games where I can pick my characters gender. If a game is gender locked to male, then it’s much less likely that I’ll get into it but not impossible.
I can appreciate the idea that gender locking the main character lets the story be written for specific experience and there have been a few points in different games where I felt certain parts of the game would ring more true for a male character over a female (bullying in school mostly) but while I appreciate that, it doesn’t change the fact I will be less likely to be interested in the game.
For romance options, I like to be able to pick my sexual orientation and for the romance options to either change gender to match or be player sexual because as much as our sexual orientation is a large and key part of us, ROs are characters in a story and I don’t feel making them playersexual over any other set definition is something that just won’t suit the rest of their ‘character’.
Yup! 
Even though it’s not specifically non-binary, it’s still a viable and nice option for those who are!
Unfortunately “non-binary attracted to non-binaries” for me is a very sad minority…
(Oops sorry for double posting! Something messed up with the quoting!)
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True but a good one! I admit it is something I didn’t consider in my answer though.
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Most of the time, unless one is particularly clever with it, such options serve only to dull the story that can be written. If you can pick between a character being male or female, then the character’s sex will of necessity have a fairly minor impact on the story, limited to a different branch here or there. (For a quasi-exception, I think of Broadsides, in which sex still had no real difference in the story, but the game world shifted so that it still meant something within it).
If more options than those two are added, then you’re further flattening the impact into the purely cosmetic. I think of Tin Star, which had the choice to be essentially neuter, by identifying yourself only as “Doc” or “Marshal,” with no gender attached at all. Accommodating this meant that the impact was reduced to no more than what people would call you.
Personally, I feel I’d rather have a stronger story with a protagonist of fixed gender (or fixed gender role, again with reference to Broadsides) than to have a choice with no impact.
While in a game with no romances, it doesn’t really matter to me whether the MC is male or female, once you bring romances into the mix that tends to have an effect as I have no interest in male RO’s. So I suppose orientation is more important to me than gender, as I will play either a straight male or a gay female. On the rare occasions I do play a straight female, I’m forced to shift my reference from the female MC to the male RO for the romance aspects, which while doable, generally isn’t as satisfying as I have no patience for the bad boys, the fake alpha males, and the brooders that are so popular in fiction written for the fairer sex.
As an example, I find Gueneviere to be a fun story, and I don’t mind playing a female Guen, but I always romance Morgana, and I find both Arthur and Lancelot to be too unrealistically cooperative with her desires to have any interest in going through the motions of having my Guen fall for either of them. As a male reading a story about a female protagonist, it’s blatantly obvious that this is primarily a fantasy story where realism is set aside so that the gal gets to have her cake and eat it at the same time. And for that reason Guen will never be one of my favorites. And that’s perfectly ok. There are already plenty of stories that are the other way around, and there are plenty of other people who absolutely love Guen and will find her story inspiring. In fact I recommended Guen to a a female friend who I knew would love it just the other day.
If women are the fairer sex, and therefore men are the unfair sex, does that make non-binary people True Neutral?
(i know what fairer means in this context really, but i couldn’t not say it hehe)
Also: the idea of some women preferring “bad boys” is actually fascinating, psychologically speaking! I would blab all about it and the social and subconscious mental reasoning behind it but that would be rather off topic for me to do so, lmao
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I personally prefer being given the option for the MC and RO’s gender since kind of the point of roleplaying is to play a role foreign to me. However I can understand that for games that rely strictly on historical verisimilitude, it can be very dicey to allow female characters in a setting where such an occurrence would be very irregular. If the MC is the exception then its not so bad but since RO’s tend to be badasses themselves if not movers and shakers then it can be very incongruous. Another exception is if your (hopefully well-researched) historical/political thriller has a protagonist that specifically must be either gender. If you are a priest, a spy from the Vatican getting dirt on the Anti-Pope, it would be really hard to be anything but male. If its a story about miko fighting demons during the late sengoku era, you would have to be female.