Sexuality and NPCs

Game Development Writing and Content
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I, personally I’m against set sexuality. I’m very pro-player-sexual and I spent a chunk of time explaining the difference between player-sexual and a Bug in BG3 lol (yeah a bug which took Larian forever to reveal, was the reason behind making every male romance super horny for male mc, so homophobia come say hello…of course)

In real life, there is no such thing as player-sexual. But in real life, we live mundane lives. Everyone has their jobs and hobbies, and nobody here spends hours saving a princess or battling dragons and throwing spells at bills right?

Why limit the illusion then?

When a player sees a roaster of characters that are supposed to be a romance, do you think they know who they are going to like?

Nope. They don’t know, they haven’t met any of them.

The characters stand to attention waiting to be picked, all of them unknown.

Then come the author, saying: Here, this character is gay! Go for it!

Don’t tell me who is gay! Let me explore them naturally, say hello become interested in them, and find out on my own who I like.

All player-sexual does is give me 3 romances instead of one.

When a story is poorly written, accept it. Danielle Steel didn’t write it, that is why it sucks.

When I write, I focus on making the characters human. Give them needs, desires, and faults.

That’s what advances the story.

Books, games, and other media are mediums where our imagination goes to roam, expand, explore, and be filled with wonders.

Expand, don’t limit.

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It’s not so much limiting the illusion as staying true to the character as you imagine them. IFs usually love to pretend otherwise, but sexuality will have an effect on one’s life experiences, regardless of whether the society your characters live in is accepting or not. A gay man will tell a different tale than a bi woman, or than an ace straight man. You’d lose on a lot of nuance by just writing it out like that.

The idea that you should make all of your ROs playersexual just so the reader can pick and taste them like an eat-all-you-want buffet is so bizarre to me. It’s like turning your game into some glorified dating sim—which, if that’s what you’re going for, go ahead! Hells, romance is popular for a reason. But otherwise, you might want to reconsider whether it truly feels right for your story or whether you’re doing it because you believe you ‘need’ to.

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I do agree.

Player sexual is my preference because i may not like someone over another. Happened.

These worlds in choice stories are my escape from my life.

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It depends on the setting. In the world where no one cares what sex you prefer making everyone bisexual (I really dislike the word playersexual) would make sense and would not detract from the story in no way.

And even in the world that’s not… my sexuality isn’t something I’ve chosen by my own will, and thus it affects my life in very, very limited amounts mainly focused on “hey, that one is pretty”.

I don’t believe that we should limit experience, life and entire human person to their sexuality or let it affect the character in any way. For me that’s a surefire way to stereotypes that keep plaguing videogame romances when they try to insert set sexuality - just look at Dragon Age. Straight men are all knights in shining armour or noble demons, straight women are dainty princesses or ladies with very noble ideas about dating, bisexual people have trauma and usually have bad pasts with their former lovers, gay people still fall into bisexual mold… The only time Bioware ever managed to break at least some of their romance stereotypes is when they made everyone bi in DA2.

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I didn’t imply it’s all-encompasing, nor I ever mentioned relying on stereotypes. Bioware has no bearing on my post.

I merely balk at the implication that sexuality is something that easily discardable rather than yet another quality shaping the character, such as their personality flaws or social standing.

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But all of the influence orientation has on people’s character is highly societal. If society the work is set in doesn’t have the same conditions we do, what’s exactly different in the experience of, say, a gay knight and bisexual knight in Faerun that is defined by their orientation alone?

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All fiction is in the end rooted in reality. We live in society ™

We can imagine what the world would be like if the society was different or just assume, but we don’t know for sure bisexual genderfluid society would be free of any gender and sexuality differences. But this is fiction and it exists for your amusement - it can be sanitized of any tribalism.

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But aside from the gender they identify as and the gender of their partners, what exactly makes sexuality define parts of human character? I genuinely don’t get it. I’m bisexual, yeah, but what exactly does that define in the character and life experiences? There’s nothing unique about liking all genders, there’s a bunch of people who do the same and are nothing like me.

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Your life experience as a closeted bisexual is and will be different to the life experience of a straight person. It might not be unique and it might not matter to you but it can matter to other people.
I can’t go into detail and try to answer “What can change the nature of a man?” or argue about how we define character as a concept, that would derail this thread. Either way, I don’t believe a person’s character is separate from their life experiences.
It can be when you are making a fictional character but people don’t come fully formed, and that’s something to keep in mind.

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“Yet another” seems to have shifted into “an essential,” though – and while that may be true in real life, I don’t think it’s true of fiction. Lots of things would have plausibly shaped a character’s life experiences; but unless an author writes out their character backgrounds with the obsessive attention to detail of JRR Tolkien coming up with a new Elvish dialect, the author won’t even know all those things, let alone throw them all up on the page in the name of nuance.

As an author, I feel I can stay true to a whole bunch of pretty vivid characters as I imagine them–vivid in their motivations, histories, habits, quirks, arcs–while letting the reader co-author some of the optional aspects alongside me. Not all readers are ready to go on that journey; like I said upthread, “A whole lot of readers don’t/can’t let go of the metafictional knowledge that they picked the character’s gender, and it colors their experience.” Some resist the coauthoring idea entirely – they only want to control the things their in-game character could control, and being asked to make decisions about other aspects of the world breaks their immersion.

All that just confirms that you can’t write for everyone.

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The gay knight in the all-men army may have had an army boyfriend while his straight colleagues laughed about with each other, so his perception of traditional brotherhood will be vastly different.

The bisexual knight may have had a reckless one-night-stand and fathered a child he now has to pay alimony for, while also wishing to move on with the bright young man he met on the road one day.

It’s easy to jump to ‘prejudice’ when talking about sexuality affecting people, or even all-encompasing things. But the meat of the matter often lies in the smaller, everyday occurrences that may seem mundane to us.

EDIT:

Agreed. It may be glaringly obvious from my posts that I place authorial freedom higher than player freedom, specially regarding how much the MC is able to influence NPC identities and such.

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Well, that’s not how this author sees it. :slight_smile: From my perspective, I’m still 100% free to tell the story I want to tell, even when I share agency with the reader–indeed, I’m writing IF because there isn’t a single fixed story I want to tell, but a narrative landscape I want to explore along with the reader. That landscape includes some characters whose sex, gender, and orientation are a core part of who they are, and some for whom those things can vary without compromising my vision for the characters.

In general, I doubt that too many authors’ freedom has been compromised on this issue – there’s a host of games out there, both CoG and HG, with fixed-gender or fixed-orientation ROs, and (for authors who might be weathervaning on which way is most popular) ample evidence in these forum discussions of an audience for either approach. The recent kerfuffle over Golden Rose wasn’t about Ana being forced to go along with genre norms of playersexuality; if anything, the strongest external pressure she faced was from the share of the audience that valued fixed-orientation ROs.

I recognize that writing playersexual characters puts a constraint on some players’ freedom: freedom from choices that break their immersion and go against their aesthetic preferences for the fiction they read. Of course writing characters this way expands other players’ freedom. An author should be free to run with their own preferences, while being aware that nothing they do will satisfy everyone.

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Regret.

Yes, I know belief is the canon ‘right’ answer, but I prefer regret.

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One day I might write a straight character but I am not sure how.

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The more I write IF, the more I try to make my stories a collaboration with those interested enough to give me feedback.

I curate the story I am telling, but when possible, I allow specific details to be collaborated on by my testers/readers.

With that in mind, the reactions that my readers have to my characters in the main story plots and beats are going to impact the romance arcs. The reason, this is the way it is, is simple: These folks are taking the time and investing in my story. They deserve to be rewarded where I can reward them.

My characters (including the MC) are not blank slates, so I want to be able to allow as much customization as I can, where I can for my readers.

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Two things regarding this statement:

  1. Ana wanted a discussion, what occurred was not an unasked for pressure campaign by one side or the other.
  2. the pressure she felt was not about orientation alone, but also representation. As a matter of fact, it was more about representation than orientation.
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Both points are 100% true and worth emphasizing. :slight_smile: Thanks, @Eiwynn.

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It is an illusion actually, to believe you have to limit one orientation for them to be authentic like that.

I don’t write Harem stories, or games for that matter (Still fiddling with the idea). I write stories, and when I write my character it is almost like making someone portrait.

If I were to make a game, my approach wouldn’t change. Because here the issue seems to be a perspective one. Writing them player-sexual doesn’t take anything from said character. That’s the illusion you seem to have.

It is also not about me ‘needing’ them to be player sexual, it is just my way of writing them. I believe when you write characters, you need to write them as real as possible. Make them human, relatable, with flaws, make them suffer, make them great, make them fall, and so on. This means sexuality is part of that, but every facet of said character is important not just one thing.

I don’t let their skin color stand out, or their American accent if they have one stand out more. Why would I make their orientation, the one thing that stands out like a sore thumb?

I see and walk among a lot of humans on a daily basis, and not one of them has their orientation flying above their heads. They are just people, tired humans, like a hive of ants going about their normal daily routine. Unless someone tells you their preference, we all look randomly generated and very unknown until you talk to us. We could be anything.

That’s my belief, as someone who writes. I don’t do it so I can have a harem. I do it because I believe in this way of writing and actually it is how I write. Getting 3 romances instead of one because of orientation lock is a bonus.

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I’ve gone around feeling various different ways about this subject over the years and I’ve currently settled on feeling that there isn’t really one correct way of handling it because there’s so much complexity and context to be aware of.

There are some things I don’t care for so much, but then there are other perspectives even in those situations. For example, I’m not keen when people of a particular orientation are presented in an objectionably stereotypical way (but sometimes people who fit those stereotypes exist, and people within the demographic shown can enjoy writing and reading them), or having a wildly unbalanced cast of romanceable characters (but I feel much less strongly about this if a game is majority gay or lesbian romances).

Something which I think has not been touched upon much here, at least in recent discussions, is that what feels very good for me is seeing queer characters who aren’t romanceable, whether or not they exist in a cis/allo/heteronormative setting or not. This means that if the PC or their romance partner are queer, they aren’t the only ones around. I’ve played games in which I was in an M/M romance, say, or I was playing a nonbinary character, and it was a fantasy setting in which no one was homophobic or transphobic towards my character/partner, but it felt lonely being the only ones who were openly queer/non-cis. And it didn’t feel as though that loneliness was an intended part of the story. (This is something I’ve fallen into myself at times.)

Not every queer character is happy announcing their personal details immediately, and not everyone is in or wants a romantic relationship where it’s obvious at a glance, so I’m not saying there’s any one-size-fits-all approach, but when writing in a setting without homophobic prejudice it’s easy to casually mention that someone has two mothers, or that Mr Green the shopkeeper and his husband are on vacation this week and demonstrate that aspect of the setting. Obviously there are additional nuances when it comes to portraying intolerant societies, but I’d argue that when writing in those settings it’s even more valuable to consider the kinds of queer communities or subcultures that exist when living under such conditions. (And to consider what queer-specific joy or connection can be had, even if fraught/fleeting, as well as isolation/misery.)

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extremely good point.

As a queer person, I always, always notice when background/side relationships are explicitly queer.

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