LGBTQ+ Rights Worldwide

I don't know about reviews, but I know the expansion is being trashed by some very vocal elements of gaming simply for the inclusion of a trans character. These same people who make jokes about "SJ Ws" being easily triggered are going around being Mad Online™ about us existing in games.

Yeah, hypocrites exist - though I doubt they're actually a majority.

Assholes aside, I'd really like to know more about the context of your interaction with the character in question: Is that a conversion that takes place at some point after you recruited him - is that even a character that can join your group? Or is it really a case of "NPC who tells you about her identity out of the blue"?

Because the latter really sounds a bit ham-fisted. :/

I don't even think the character is recruitable. In fact I think that conversation is the only bit of content involving her in the game.

I may have stumbled across part of the issue, I belive there may be a joke about "the thing that we're banned from talking about" in the game, that's going to have set a lot of people off, there's a reason that we, the place that discusses Israel and Palestine with civility, have the topic banned.

So she basically just exists to tell you about her identity? Great. Just great.

Also, it seems like at least some of the backlash actually came from transgender players as this article points out:

edited 5th Apr '16 1:16:13 PM by DrunkenNordmann

So they added a transgender character for the sake of adding one and managed to piss off everyone?

Yes.

I've seen a lot of trans people respond positively to the inclusion of this character. And remember that this is a fantasy world, it's not realistic to begin with.

There are bad reviews for technical issues, but it's clear that a lot of them are specifically about having SJW issues "rammed down the throats" of players. There are also player options for LGB romances too, by the way, that were introduced with the game's Updated Re Release a couple of years ago. These also did not go down well with the same people. For example, one recruitable female NPC can only enter into relationships with female NP Cs, and is explicitly lesbian.

Contrast the critic score on, say, Metacritic with the user score.

It's also the case that the game's official forums do not tolerate homophobia. A few posts of the "Please remove this character as I don't want my daughter exposed to such filth" have been deleted and the users banned for it. Which has caused such posts to become something of a meme among the banned users.

Things is you do get differences between critic and consumer scores for reasons tied to other things, look at the Mad Max game, though going by the steam reviews that may not be the case.

I don't for a moment doubt that there are assholes being assholes, but they shouldn't be being given extra prominence by the press, they certainly shouldn't be having the press imbed their videos in articles.

edited 5th Apr '16 3:03:18 PM by Silasw

I've seen people arguing against the inclusion of such characters without properly contextualizing them as treating them like Unicorns, a fantasy creature.

Like adding a transgender character for the sake off adding one and treat it like a rare creature that is only defined by being trasngender.

Which the main argument is that if you want to add a minority character you shouldn't write it as wearing his minority status as an identity but as a character that happens to belong to a minority and has more to show than being a check box item of things you're supposed to have in your work.

edited 5th Apr '16 4:17:30 PM by AngelusNox

That. I've seen the writing of the game being criticised as very heavy-handed (in more than just one aspect). It doesn't help that the author clearly stated that she doesn't care if her writing feels forced to people.

A game that (shockingly) handled such a topic fairly well was, in my opinion, Borderlands 2. There was a story character who was homosexual, but it was just part of who he was. He wasn't "the gay character".

edited 5th Apr '16 3:19:36 PM by DrunkenNordmann

Here is what the original creator of the Forgotten Realms setting in which BG takes place has to say about this controversy

I have learnt that there's typically no such thing as "this side is 100% right, this side is 100% wrong".

It seems to be the way Paizo went in their Wrath of the Righteous campaign. In a setting where gay and interracial (in the D&D sense, not just the ethnic sense) marriage openly exists, one character is keeping it a secret that she is transgender (using magic instead of surgery). It's not something our characters have learned yet (and they may never learn it, it doesn't seem relevant to the scenario for now), even though we know that character for some time (I shouldn't even know it).

Regarding the Baldur's Gate thing, something to keep in mind is that this item exists in game.

While I can't say if the dialogue in question refers to it or not, if it doesn't, well...

a.... gag item? and the description is rather funny

The sad part being it was originally intended as a bit of gag item, back when it was first introduced in D&D. (Says a lot, doesn't it?) But no, it physically and permanently (unless you have the right magic cast on you) transforms you into the opposite sex, which means that in theory anyone who was transgender would want one of these.

And that's not getting into the details of polymorph spells, which theoretically allow people to change gender at if they can find a wizard to cast it on them. Really, D&D based works are not very well suited for exploring transgender issues, because of the magical work-arounds.

well it's not meant to be realistic... this is a setting with werewolves, vampires, shit that can turn you into just about anything, I would think transgender issues are quite low of their in universe priorities list when werewolves are attacking your village

If Exalted can have a transgender signature character, D&D can at least explore the topic a little.

edited 6th Apr '16 11:07:15 AM by Elfive

D&D can't really explore the issues surrounding the multiple surgeries and procedures (that come with some risk) and years of therapy that actually come with changing gender in the real world. That can never be compared to paying a wizard a few hundred gold pieces to zap you with a spell and poof, you're done.

Sure, you can talk about the social stigma, but that's as far as you can go. And characters being stigmatized for something (like Fantastic Racism) is honestly a concept that has been done to death in D&D related media. (Thank you Drizz't Do'urden and all the clones that followed you.) As unfortunate as it sounds, you're more likely to generate an eye-roll among people who have been following these universes, even if it's about something, like being transgender, that the works haven't talked about before.

It is for the same reason why it is a bit complicated to explore racism between ethnicities of the same race when you're fighting Orcs, Trolls, Lizard people and those bloody pointy eared snobs. Fantastic

Fantasy worlds don't have the same constrains our does. It would make a lot more sense to make plots about transgender characters involving some good explanation.

Like someone who is part of a Proud Warrior Race or society that has a borderline contempt towards women or is very patriarchal and women don't have much power, but is a transgernder person who wants to change his sex and has to deal with the repercussions of doing so.

Or someone who doesn't have the those constrains and needs to craft a potion or find a wizard willing to cast a spell that is strong enough to be permanent instead of temporary. Or that person is afraid that something wrong goes wrong during the spell and wants to be sure things will go alright.

Which would have to also explore other issues like we currently treat sex and gender, but it doesn't have the same real life analogues and constrains the transgender people have to go through.

edited 6th Apr '16 12:53:46 PM by AngelusNox

I have not played the game, but I read this article, and I might as well post about it here while the palm shape disappears from my forehead.

From what I gathered, the characters happens to talk about being transgender in the first conversation you have with her, which is basically "RPG NPC 101". I seem to remember the creators of BG to be "Bioware", the same company that gave you a game where every alien on the Citadel was really happy to talk about its race when you asked about it.

And also, the same company who already had a character named Krem. But I assume that Krem got rather spared by the stupid haters of the 'net because he was in a game where more prominent characters were gay. Also, because the morons might have noticed that they are superbly ignored by BW who casually includes LGBT characters in its games, and decided to try and bully targets that might actually be intimidated or hurt by their idiocy. I assume, at least.

Just to clarify, it's not Bioware who created this expansion pack. It's officially licensed but a company called Beamdog holds the licence and created the game. In general the principle applies though, you're right - NP Cs will typically be far more direct with who they are and what they want in games than such people ever would be in real life. Highly-Visible Ninja applies to pretty much all rogues in the game for example.

Stands to reason really that traits such as gender would also become pretty apparent early, even though that would not happen IRL.