Quote from: Haffrung;796869Some gamers are: divorced, bald, widows, triplets, lactose intolerant, elderly, obese, musically gifted, or terrified of spiders. Are D&D adventures that don't feature NPCs who have those traits 'deliberately excluding them?'

and actually size of npcs does get described in game settings.....  There are widowers in various villages in games.... npcs can have kids sometimes.... However the default sexuality is heterosexuality.... and LGBT pcs are absent.  Sexuality is a major part of someone's personality... and whilst I find going bald depressing.... my sexuality is far more a part of who I am than my hair loss.  To compare the 2 is simply disingenuous/ flawed.

Quote from: BenTheFerg;796859(& there was a big debate about the over-representation of succubi and underrep of incubi I seem to remember on rpgnet - reflecting stereotypes about women's sexuality)

Since succubi actually ARE "male stereotype of female sexuality" given actual demonic form, that is an incredibly stupid criticism even by rpgnet's low low standards. Succubi only exist as a concept because celibate Christian Monks had accidental... discharges... in the night, and had to blame something!

But no, succubi & incubi now have to be fully rounded autonomous individuals with their own hopes and dreams (Americans seem to really love 'dreams'). To me that really misses the point.

Quote from: CRKrueger;796802Ok, the sword Irabeth (the female half-orc bi/homosexual paladin) uses is Radiance, a +2 cold iron longsword which becomes a +5 holy cold iron longsword in the hands of a paladin.

This is NOT the sword she unloads.

The sword she sells is a +1 evil outsider bane longsword.

This mistake has been made before and indeed did rouse debate on the subject on Paizo's own site because a lot of people cried foul on that one, thinking she sold Radiance for the potion, which a lot of people claimed would trigger a fall from paladinhood.  Apparently Irabeth also sold it to someone who she thought would put it to good use.

So...the situation is different then originally described.

But, to answer the real question of the OP: No.  Aside from "the paragraph" under character creation, WotC has shown no evidence of following in Paizo's footsteps of inclusion of individuals who appear at a much higher rate then in this world (aside from everything non-human of course).

If it is the actual situation, my whole assessment of this case is totally changed : no problemo since it is not the tool that the patron deity gave you to fulfill your paladin oath. And if the transaction helps the paladin's spouse and put the sword in goog hands, that the way of thinking I would expect from a paladin !

Quote from: Bren;796862And as for avoiding the White Hat syndrome, the gay spy thinks that stroppy servants should be beaten. Because* he thinks beating makes them better servants and keeps them in their place. He's a noble after all. He just happens to like-like other guys. That doesn't mean he thinks a servant is equal to a gentleman.

See, that's awesome.

Quote from: Bren;796862* And because people back then did beat their servants. In The Three Musketeers D'Artagnan is having trouble with his new valet, Planchet. His friends (the other three heroes of the story) advise young D'Artagnan to beat Planchet. He promptly does so. And Planchet immediately becomes a better and more loyal to his master.

I came across a review of the Three Musketeers where the reviewer expressed her hatred for the book and for all of its characters. They weren't at all the heroic champions she expected them to be, and who had filtered down into the pop culture pap they are today. And she was right- they aren't likable. But they are interesting, believable, clever, funny, and passionate.

Quote from: Will;796865I've sometimes considered running a fantasy game where elves pretty much had 21st century western etiquette, beliefs, and attitudes.
And the humans had medieval etiquete, beliefs, and attitudes.

'My Lord Iscliath, ... the messenger has returned from the human kingdom.'
"And?"
'We are awaiting the healers.'
"... Wait, what?"
'She was raped repeatedly and there's not much left of her face. We're trying regeneration potions.'
"What the fucking fuck? Ok, screw this, mount up the siege treants."

You seem to have a rather odd notion of 'medieval etiquette'.

Quote from: S'mon;796875Since succubi actually ARE "male stereotype of female sexuality" given actual demonic form, that is an incredibly stupid criticism even by rpgnet's low low standards. Succubi only exist as a concept because celibate Christian Monks had accidental... discharges... in the night, and had to blame something!

But no, succubi & incubi now have to be fully rounded autonomous individuals with their own hopes and dreams (Americans seem to really love 'dreams'). To me that really misses the point.

Thanks for the complement.  You misunderstand me.

I was referring to a debate on rpgnet (your fav place) in which it was pointed out that most of the sex demons (yes, who are stereotypes of lust) were female succubi - and that the male incubi were under-represented.... which was argued (I believe correctly) to be sexist.

I am not against succubi... (there was that ridiculous criticism of Monte Cook for having one in his Numenara setting).... it is rather that I expect there to be a roughly equal number of sexploitative incubi and succubi in such a setting.... otherwise one runs the risk of reinforcing the stereotype that women are either sexy whores or demure mothers/ wives etc.... a stereotype which has been around since at least the birth of Christianity.

Quote from: Haffrung;796869Some gamers are: divorced, bald, widows, triplets, lactose intolerant, elderly, obese, musically gifted, or terrified of spiders. Are D&D adventures that don't feature NPCs who have those traits 'deliberately excluding them?'

Divorced, bald, widows, elderly, obese, musically gifted, and terrified of spiders. I've seen all of those. Some come up pretty frequently in fact. I've also seen widowers and twins with regularity. Triplets...not sure if I've seen triplets...but then natural triplets (sans fertility treatments) are somewhere in the 1/8000 range; so not too unreasonable to never see an important NPC who is a triplet. Lactose intolerance often wouldn't be noticed. Most PCs drink wine, beer, or the hard stuff not milk and who notices whether or not someone decides to pass on the cheese? I guess if you are hanging out with a bunch of kumiss drinking, yogurt eating nomands it could come up. I suppose that could be a problem in Prax or the Horse Nomad lands in Glorantha.

Quote from: Spinachcat;796867I've played RPG campaigns with gay dudes so its been natural in those campaigns for there to be gay NPCs. I'm a bastard, so in Planescape, I had a gay smoke mephit who wouldn't stop with the innuendo and kept treating the male PCs as man meat.

But I've not included (for whatever reason) gay NPCs in campaigns where we did not have gay players or gay PCs. Out of sight, out of mind? It certainly wasn't a statement about the setting.

I had gay & lesbian NPCs in my FR campaign, back when all the players were straight. It seemed to fit the setting. But I certainly would never have had them harrass the PCs - that would NOT fit the setting. In FR only the Evil guys do that sort of thing.

Actually, I think I have never had an NPC sexually harrass a PC, ever, in any tabletop campaign I've ever run (online games tend to work differently -more like collaborative fiction 'storygames' I guess).  It seems like a breach of GMing etiquette to me. Might depend a bit on genre expectations, eg more acceptable as part of the horror of a horror RPG than in a D&D style empowerment-fantasy game.

Quote from: Haffrung;796877See, that's awesome.

Thanks. I liked it.

QuoteI came across a review of the Three Musketeers where the reviewer expressed her hatred for the book and for all of its characters. They weren't at all the heroic champions she expected them to be, and who had filtered down into the pop culture pap they are today. And she was right- they aren't likable. But they are interesting, believable, clever, funny, and passionate.

I think Dumas intended them to be likeable to their audience though. Which shows that mores change. EDIT: And some editions bowdlerize D'Artagnan's revenge rape of Milady.

Similarly, whether or not one believes Homer intended his heroes in the Illiad to be likeable, they were a heroic model to the Greeks. So presumably admirable if not outright likeable.

Quote from: BenTheFerg;796868Yeah. A made-up figure.  When I have time I may try and go through my APs from Paizo and count em up - by year....but this is unlikely.

The realities of our sexist world find women only owning 1% of the world's wealth  - source Wall Street Journal  -quoting the UN http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2011/09/18/new-facts-on-the-gender-gap-from-the-world-bank/ in 2011.

All being equal, 52% population = women, thus they should own 52% wealth and have 52% of positions of power.

I sincerely believe that this is nowhere near the case in Paizo products.... Yes, they are better represented in Paizo products than in mediaeval Europe, but heck - this is meant to be a game we are playing, and a fantasy one at that!  Thus, why does this bother you? Moreover you see female empowerment when it doesn't really exist still in gaming... yes it is improving.... what is wrong with women having power?!!

You seem like a bit of a dick. Go away and do your counting before you start your rant. I'm running Curse of the Crimson Throne and it's well over 65% there, but some of the other APs seem more 50-50. Looks like about two thirds overall - and James Jacobs has said that making over half the authority-position NPCs female is a deliberate policy of his, for political reasons. So I doubt any honest count will show much different.

Quote from: Haffrung;796869Some gamers are: divorced, bald, widows, triplets, lactose intolerant, elderly, obese, musically gifted, or terrified of spiders. Are D&D adventures that don't feature NPCs who have those traits 'deliberately excluding them?'

They're certainly 'guilty of Erasure' of the obese and elderly. I bet there are more fat people than gay people in the Paizo offices, but when it comes to Adventure Path NPCs, they sure don't Look Like America in that respect at least.

Quote from: S'mon;796885You seem like a bit of a dick. Go away and do your counting before you start your rant. I'm running Curse of the Crimson Throne and it's well over 65% there, but some of the other APs seem more 50-50. Looks like about two thirds overall - and James Jacobs has said that making over half the authority-position NPCs female is a deliberate policy of his, for political reasons. So I doubt any honest count will show much different.

And even if this is the case,  who cares,  other than bigots like you. There you go.  Insult me and I will eventually stoop to your level.  Congratulations.

Quote from: Will;796853On another note, one potential problem with 'inclusivity' is White Hat Syndrome.

White Hatting is a frequent problem of people who aren't very bright and desperately want to appear to be "progressive".   It often ends up creating its own kinds of erasure; e.g. every single 'native american'-type character is an ecologist with deep spiritual wisdom, gay people are always heroic and brave, etc.
On a setting-scale, these kinds of stupid efforts at inclusivity can create their own serious problems, particularly the closer you get to historical-type settings; witness, for example, the Totally-Not-Racist-CSA in Deadlands, where they abolished slavery and have black Confederate Army officers.  If we assume they did this in a hopelessly flawed attempt to be not-racist (rather than the equally plausible motive of "we think the CSA is totally cool and want to play Heroic Rebs who aren't racist slaveowners"), the end result of totally whitewashing the CSA's slavery/racism issue inadvertently comes out as way more racist than if they'd stuck to portraying something more historically accurate.

Quote from: Will;796807It sure as fuck IS erasure because if you aren't showing any GLBT folks at all, you are erasing them.

Umm, read again, I'm showing ONE soldier going off to war.  If I showed a montage of everyone in his unit, and they were all white couples, then that would be what you're claiming.  If however, I'm showing one couple, in a movie about WWI or WWII, the fact that the couple are white and married simply shows statistically the majority.  If I had a movie about a WWII soldier showing a gay couple waving goodbye, then that might make for a helluva story, but it's an incredible statistic anomaly to the point where now that is part of the story.

Showing one or two hetero couples because statistically the vast majority of couples are hetero is not political, nor is it erasure.

Quote from: Will;796807You said 'traditional' couples. DUDE.

Yeah, and I meant it without all the false offense your ilk reads into the word.  At the point in the future when homo or transgendered couples become statistically equal to hetero or cisgenered couples, then the term traditional will no longer correctly apply. As of now, it does, simply being factual, not making judgments.

Quote from: Will;796807What I read into your statement adding my own words, rewriting what you said is PRECISELY what pisses a lot of people off and what motivates some of them to go perhaps too far.

Fixed that for you.

Quote from: Will;796807Because your pat, privileged bullshit statement that 'every couple should be hetero because that's part of the genre' is, was, and always will be fucking appalling.

At some point, you might try reading what people actually write instead of what you assume they are meaning by completely rewriting what they said to fit your narrative of offense.

I DID NOT SAY 'every couple should be hetero because that's part of the genre'.  What I said was, showing someone to have a heterosexual married parents is not making a political statement or erasure.

I understand your argument.  TSR was probably operating under the common belief that putting a homosexual into place would be making an overtly sexual statement where as putting a heterosexual couple in but not talking about sex at all means there is no sexual context.  You would probably say maybe they weren't thinking about sex at all, but that by showing a heterosexual couple, even though they are in the vast majority, is still making the unconscious "privilege of the majority" decision to show the norm, thus making a sexual statement by passively reinforcing the sexual norm.

That's one of those beliefs that while technically correct is absolutely full of shit when taken to the level where every single possible minority that exists must be depicted in exact proportion or in over-representation in a method to balance out previous erasure via Affirmative Representation.

The concept your argument and belief system ignores is context.
A western taking place in Northern California in 1876 without Chinese?  Erasure.
A western taking place in Northern California in 1876 without Mosques?  Not Erasure.

A modern US city with no openly gay couples? Erasure
A quasi medieval rural village with no openly gay couples?  Not Erasure

Check your Faux-Offense.

Quote from: Will;796807As for 'in higher numbers than real life,' what, a value higher than 0?

Since Transgendered people are like .03% of the population, Paizo should have had a couple hundred iconics before a T showed up.  However, they've also made it pretty clear that Golarion has a much higher incidence of LGBT individuals then our world does, so it may be representative of Golarion, but the LGBT NPCs and characters are in higher percentage then real life.

Quote from: Will;796807Edit: Actually, query here... has WotC had any GLBT characters in mainstream stuff in a reasonable role, ever? In any numbers? (Let's leave aside the whole 'kooky creepy drow lesbian' stuff)

Not that I know of, Lesbian Stripper Ninjas is pretty much it, aside from the homoeroticism you could choose to read into Driz'zt/Entreri.

There's a huge middle between 'exact representative populations of every minority' and 'none.'