I would be interested in hearing your thoughts on the subject, but I agree. That’s a topic best moved to another thread.
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Ditto to Bagelthief. It’s a form of non-binary expression. There are tons of nonbinary expressions which I will be the first to admit can be difficult to write especially in something like a pick your path. And it’s impossible to include them all but having a middle ground option that allows you to be feminine or masculine as desired in each situation is really nice.
It think its only irritating when if you choose a gender your then stuck with that gender’s expected responses to things. Like choosing a girl and in every greeting scene you have to curtsey instead of having the option to bow or do something typically masculine because your playing a girl y’know?
I don’t buy gender locked games simply because I don’t enjoy playing them as much as I do more ambiguous pick your paths. an easy way to skip over the issue of gender entirely is to simply have the narrator address the reader with “you” statements.
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That’s why mary sues are looked down on. You can’t make a believable story around a perfect person. Mary sues never change and never learn anything because they already knew what was right, they are already perfect ect.
I had just signed up and didn’t realize how old the thread was. My bad
Its fine, but you’re not really supposed to post in threads that have been dead for over two weeks. The exception is that its ok to post if the original poster brings it back.
@Prof_Chaos And this is another time I have to give the don’t moderate the forums if you’re not a moderator speech. It goes something like this:
##DONT MODERATE THE FORUMS IF YOU’RE NOT A MODERATOR.
Okay, that out of the way, @Ink there’s not problem with necromancy, except for WIPs.
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thank you for clarifying that @Reaperoa
I wasn’t really trying to. I’ve seen threads locked because of this and was more or less trying to let them know. I’ve seen plenty of people mention forum rules who weren’t moderators and this is the first time I have done so, but if this is an issue fine, I will stop.
Back when I was actively writing, I too felt ambitious enough to try and include as many as possible. But one thing that felt very clunky to me was; how do you handle childbirth when there’s no good way of asking which parts you’ve got. Like, do you have a womb or testicles or neither, or both, or do you have them but they don’t work etc.
I realize that even with binary genders, sometimes the parts don’t work but we would probably just assume they worked, so hmm. It’s sort of a lose-lose situation. Some would prefer not to be reminded, and others would be offended over it being presumed.
Also, the more choices you have, the more you break up the flow. Like if they choose non-binary, then it would probably be a good idea to offer them the option to pick their preferred pronouns, and then you need to take an even bigger detour from the story. And even if they prefer those pronouns, will the world at large really refer to them as such? It’s really hard to bake such things into the flow unless you build the whole world around being accomodating and unquestioning and perhaps even prescient.
This adds into the preexisting problem with building your character, which in itself can be a clunky and sometimes hard to bake thing, like picking eye and hair colors etc. Usually the whole building part is the most boring part, before you get to any of the action. So yeah, quite a conumdrum.
Usually I don’t play games to re-experience the struggles I do in everyday life. Just sayin’.
There’s a careful, dangerous line between “realistic” and “uncomfortable”.
Having a person misgender you based on actions or clothing, and you correct them, and they accept that, is fine, and most non-binary folk I know, while a lot of them including myself being dysphoric, will still answer “yes, I have a womb” or “yes, I have a penis” or “yes, I am intersex and have…” so long as the game respects their identity outside of that.
But it’s true that you can’t please everyone. Some people get terribly offended when asked, especially if by another person and not, say, a medical form or something. Some people feel uncomfortable no matter what’s mentioned about their hoo-hahs.[quote=“MutonElite, post:111, topic:7050”]
non-binary, then it would probably be a good idea to offer them the option to pick their preferred pronouns, and then you need to take an even bigger detour from the story.
[/quote]
A detour from the story how? As far as I’m concerned, minus the abuse, being non-binary trans is not the sole purpose of my life.
Make your own character is hard to bake, especially in a world that is linear and does not rely on the imagination of the player outside given choices, eg. The Elder Scrolls.
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Well there can be something empowering in having a similar world but given a chance to set things right as you see them as well, so there’s that.
This is something fairly recent though, and a lot of people don’t understand it even today, so if you have a game set in the old west or medieval ages, odds are the character themselves wouldn’t know what to identify as other than a sensation of being uncomfortable as they are. Especially given that some going through this today may not be sure themselves. And since life´s a journey, depending on when we enter into the character’s life, their answer may be different as well.
Sometimes a realistic setting is what we want to write about, but still want to be inclusive. And if the world itself is not welcoming, having one or a few characters break that mold would make them all the more likable for the player I think. Not saying that’s the only route, but if one wants a crapsack world, that could be ‘a’ route.
It’s good to know that posing such questions may not be totally out of the question. That just leaves how to do it in a smooth way other than blurting do you have X attached to your body? 
Although I suppose it would be the only way that’s not in some way ambigious.
Something like;
choice
-I go by xhe, xer
-I go by zhe, zher
-None of these are right, let me enter something.
How embarrasing… I seem to have forgotten how to code in CS… Well it has been a while. Anyways, to me, anything that requires going into details with a choice constitutes as a detour early on in the game. Especially when and if I havent been able to fit it into something like a believable mental dialogue or event taking place. I dunno, just something I struggled with when I was writing.
And yeah, in elder scrolls, you don’t really get that problem since you’ve got the character generation, you’ve got something to look at besides text, and there’s usually pregenerated character templates for those who wish to skip it as well.
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I wouldn’t be surprised if this has already been said, but it’s the only thing I can think of to contribute to this current conversation.
There’s a benefit in making a game about transsexual people targeted at people who aren’t transsexual. Most people have no idea what transsexual people go through and generally don’t ever have a reason to even think about it.
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So I am reading this thread while working on a gender-locked CS game, and I have a related question:
If the MC’s binary gender is fixed, does allowing the player to choose whether the MC is cis or trans contribute anything to the player experience?
I have several reasons for gender-locking the MC in my WIP. One of them is that the setting and concept I want to work with are of the sort in which gender really matters. It isn’t cosmetic. Another gender would mean another story.
I have been assuming that a cis/trans option would have little appeal. For one thing, a trans MC might be a stretch given the premodern setting. For another, I figured many players probably wouldn’t care. A woman is a woman, right? If, say, a trans woman player wanted to play an avatar of herself in a typical CS game, wouldn’t she just select the female option without caring that cis/trans wasn’t specified? (Any trans men or women here, feel free to correct me.)
I didn’t think much about this at all until one of the nonplayer characters I was developing turned out to be trans herself. Again, this isn’t cosmetic. Making her cis instead of trans would weaken the character. But I suspect I would have to put a lot of work into making a meaningful option to play a trans character, and have it go beyond MC cosmetics.
Everything is dependent on your writing; do it well and the contribution will be high, do it poorly and it will detract from the story.
- Writing a story from one definite point of view is fine, so I’m okay with not choosing my main character’s gender.
As a general rule I’m more receptive to games where initial customisation is simple or nonexistent.
Give me any character of any sex/ethnicity/sexuality/gender identity. Call them whatever you want. Give them perfect hair or a horrifying skin condition. I’ll go with it. What’s important (if it’s that type of game, of course) is to let me inhabit the character afterwards and run with whatever initial parameters I was given. Guenevere is a perfect example of this: you’re locked into an existing character, and yet you have unequalled (IMO) freedom to sculpt your MC in ways that I consider more substantial - that is, in terms of personality and interaction with the world.
In videogames, I love customising my MC to bits. I sometimes spend hours on RPG character creation screens. In text games, however, I feel the opposite. The more options I see to begin with (sex, name, orientation, background, etc. etc.), the more wary I am. In some cases, I just find it tedious. Makes my character feel like an empty collection of traits rather than a person.
Also, and this is obviously a matter of personal taste, I particularly dislike being asked to customise NPCs. It makes it difficult for me to connect with the characters as people when I’ve essentially been asked to program them like golems with no life of their own. I also generally dislike NPCs that are written to cater (transparently) to whichever options the player has initially chosen - whether it be a “pansexual” companion (programmed to swing for whichever gender/orientation the player picks), or whatever.
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I am so glad that CoG promotes both their “house style” of inclusivity and character co-creation with the reader, and also the Hosted Games where that is not a requirement.
The originating root idea of my WIP is “genderflipped Cinderella”…and to make that work fitting the house style would require having to write multiple versions of almost every single character in the story. That would be a bummer to write, and probably also kill the entire concept.
I think there is a point where as an author you have to decide the kind of story your going to write and it’s true that not all of those stories are going to be inclusive. Childbirth/pregnancy is one example of this but I hardly think a detailed description of a character’s genitals is needed to be inclusive.
Certainly you aren’t ever going to fit every identity into every story, some in fact would require a story all their own. But just having an androgynous option is a nice concession.
As for the people who hate character design in text based games, I find that perspective interesting. For my self I actually enjoy getting to hammer out my character (probably the long time tabletop gamer in me) because as I do I’m learning about the world, or at least I should be. Character creation scenes can be boring (see the usual “before we start who are you?” scene) but they can also be used as a tool for teaching about your world (see waywalks:university, choice of the vampire) . It depends on how much work you actually put into the process.
Now about the fear of your readers not relating to non-binary characters, I think that can happen. Disconnect can happen easily it’s up to the writer to do one of two things
-
make the character convincing and teach through their experiences to give the reader a look at the character as a person rather than an alien who only highlights their strangeness
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If the character is compelling it’s easy to dig into thousands of resources (online alone) devoted to teaching and sharing about non-binary life of all kinds. I personally love books that make want to learn more.
But I think we’re missing the big picture which is:
writing about non-binary characters is a choice. No one is going to force you to do it so there’s no reason to justify why you didn’t include them. The point of mentioning their absence isn’t to shake an accusing finger at authors. It’s to inspire or to inform writers who may want to tackle this subject that readers are hungry for that kind of story . That people are still waiting to see themselves in print.
No one is ever going to make everyone happy so you should write the game how you want to. That does mean some people won’t be interested however their disinterest isn’t necessarily a reflection on your work but a reflection on the personal taste of that reader.
@BabbleYaggle I can’t speak to weather choosing between cis/trans would be important. but your logic for leaving the choice out seems valid and fits with what I’ve heard and read from trans speakers. Also there is always a good rule of thumb that if a character’s quality isn’t going to be mentioned or used beyond the first time you introduce it, it’s probably not something you needed to mention at all.
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Since this seems to be a popular topic would anyone be interested in moving to a separate thread to discuss non-binary options in COG games ? Something like how tos or maybe a place to get non-binary beta readers?
Well I just feel that ideally one shouldn’t need exclude the other. If I want the MC to be able to have children, but then if you pick a non-binary option you lose out on that whole huge section of content, that doesn’t feel very fair. Nor does it really to just assume that you’re going to adopt, although that would make it simpler and remove the need for such clumpsy questions. Of course if your MC is asexual you’re going to lose out on that content anyhow, but I feel that makes more sense after all.
That’s simplifying it a little, the amount of work needed to make it flow isn’t neccesarily proportional to the end result. And hey, maybe it comes easy to some, not to me though. The beginning was the part I rewrote the most times, and looking at it now, I would like to start all over again if I ever get back into it.
I just wanted to, for a lot of reasons. But yeah, ultimately it’s about picking the mountain you can/want to climb, not the one others want you to.
Yes, it’s true. I’ve been found out. All non-binary people can’t have children. We have no genitals. We’re [Alan Rickman voice]… ill-equipped.
Idk, cis friends. You could just maybe… focus less on the genitals and more of the emotional, taxing state of giving/preparing for birth? The sensory experience as well as emotional feeling?
There are entire, well-recieved blogs dedicated to writing sex scenes where the reader is gender-neutral for the sake of inclusion, I don’t see why their writing techniques can’t also extend to giving birth. I’m sure I could write one. Never say anything is impossible, because then it truly becomes impossible, right?
It’s also worth noting that a trans binary person is probably not going to enjoy, or feel included, by these genital-focused choices, either, not just non-binary folk. Being a woman, for example, does not automatically mean you have a womb.
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