Gay and Bisexual Superheroes

[Kristopher]

Re: Gay and Bisexual Superheroes

 

To be fair. it was supposed to be fairly "realistic" so there wasn't any miracle unstable molecule lack material so almost anything he did wear was shredded, burst into flame, etc at full speed. But he went nude pretty much all the time.

 

Fer cryin out loud! Get that man some asbestos shorts!

 

 

 

(For those who don't know, IIRC, asbestos used in such a manner isn't a cancer risk...it's not in the form of microscopic fibers that can be inhaled.)

[OddHat]

Re: Gay and Bisexual Superheroes

 

Fer cryin out loud! Get that man some asbestos shorts!

 

 

 

(For those who don't know, IIRC, asbestos used in such a manner isn't a cancer risk...it's not in the form of microscopic fibers that can be inhaled.)

 

Good lord, think of the chafing!

[Kristopher]

Re: Gay and Bisexual Superheroes

 

Good lord, think of the chafing!

 

If he's running so fast his clothes burn off, but he survives it unscathed, I don't think he needs to worry about steel wool shorts, let alone asbestos.

[Whitewings]

Re: Gay and Bisexual Superheroes

 

If he's running so fast his clothes burn off' date=' but he survives it unscathed, I don't think he needs to worry about [i']steel wool[/i] shorts, let alone asbestos.

It wasn't his attire that got on people's nerves; it was his attitude. He didn't even try to explain that it was a combination of personal choice and functional necessity; he just verbally attacked anyone who had a problem with his lack of attire, to the point where even my character, an alien with no concept of modesty and a dislike of clothing, thought he needed to put something on. Or at least be less annoying about not putting something on.

[Doug McCrae]

Re: Gay and Bisexual Superheroes

 

Patriot never realized his supermodel girlfriend' date=' Nadja Poulos, was also his stealthy and sword-wielding teammate Spirit Ninja. His player Dan K. did, of course, but we had a lot of fun with it over the years. [/quote']That's a really cool idea. Y'know, I think it would've been even cooler if you had kept it secret from Dan with the GM playing Nadja as if she were an NPC, while you just play Spirit Ninja and make out she has no secret ID. Do a big reveal a few sessions later.

[keithcurtis]

Re: Gay and Bisexual Superheroes

 

We've had one PC, straight male, play a gay male. I think that's it.

As for NPCs, I've used plenty. I'd say 5-10% of my NPC roster is gay or bi or has had some non-mainstream history or experience.

 

Keith "vive la difference" Curtis

[Blue]

Re: Gay and Bisexual Superheroes

 

It's never come up with the villains, because they're all business. None of the hero PCs in the current campaign are gay. There's one NPC (Lucretia) who in the course of her many undercover activities has had to sleep with people of either sex to secure her cover.

 

In a previous camapaing, the central PC was a bixesual female. At that point I'd made an NPC hero whose sexuality I'd never given any thought to until the Hero kept pointing out things she did, thinking I had made a lesbian NPC (not the case). So I figured what the hell; can't have one gay hero in a vacuum.

 

But the only characters to whom I give any real thought about their sexuality is more a matter of "Do they have sex" rather than "With whom do they...", because it rarely comes up.

 

If I felt a need to add this element to my current campaign, there's at least one character that could be gay, although at this time I've no reason to make that a part of the story.

[Lightray]

It wasn't his attire that got on people's nerves; it was his attitude. He didn't even try to explain that it was a combination of personal choice and functional necessity; he just verbally attacked anyone who had a problem with his lack of attire' date=' to the point where even my character, an alien with no concept of modesty and a dislike of clothing, thought he needed to put something on. Or at least be less annoying about not putting something on.[/quote']

Hee. My players tend to gloss over the sex lives of their characters, so I'm just assuming they're mostly straight; some of us have been scarred by persons trying to project their sexual fantasies into the game, so we're gun-shy as it were.

 

However. When I restarted our Champions game with FREd after a 15 year hiatus, I handed out characters to choose from. One of the players took Aegis, a flying brick who he decided wore "traditional" Classical Greek (Spartan) attire.

 

First time he flew, Force and Dragon Lady looked up... and had a talk with Aegis about underwear. Force tried the "chafing" argument, but Aegis was invulnerable. Dragon Lady just made it a command: put on some pants.

 

Come to think, we do know that Force is straight - he envied Aegis' costume as a way to "get all the girls" and is the only character with a DNPC girlfriend. Hasn't really come up, otherwise.

[st barbara]

Re: Gay and Bisexual Superheroes

 

Hmm "St Barbara" is bisexual (and a former nude model) but it has never come up in our games so the only use I had out of it was to get a few points as a "disadvantage". My other Champions characters (mostly in short lived campaigns) were male and straight, and again sex never came up.

[caris]

Re: Gay and Bisexual Superheroes

 

I know that I'm probably being a little touchy here, but there seems to be an undercurrent with some of the posts, that you can not have a gay character without having "X" rated scenes in your games. A same sex relationship in the game does not have to be any more explicit than an opposite sex relationship.

 

Now, I can understand if you don't want to bring it into the game, because you don't want to deal with the host of other issues in your game that are tied to the issue, like the morality of the relationship or society's reaction to that kind of relationship.

 

For the record, I've played everything except lesbians, but have no pretty much moved to playing gay males or males not really interested in sex. My primary Champions character is a bi-sexual with a marked prefences for other males.

[Trebuchet]

Re: Gay and Bisexual Superheroes

 

That's a really cool idea. Y'know' date=' I think it would've been even cooler if you had kept it secret from Dan with the GM playing Nadja as if she were an NPC, while you just play Spirit Ninja and make out she has no secret ID. Do a big reveal a few sessions later.[/quote']Actually, Dan didn't find out for a couple of game sessions. Spirit Ninja's initial mission was to join the Sentinels; she used her penetration past headquarter's sophisticated computerized defenses to establish her bona fides as a ninja. I wish we could've pulled it off a bit longer, but it rapidly became impossible to hide. Still, he was a good sport about it and always played as if Patriot was totally clueless.

 

Somebody told me recently that Dan is still playing Patriot in that same campaign. If that's true then he'd have to have over 500 or maybe even 1000 XP. (I started playing Spirit Ninja in 1986.)

[Badger]

Re: Gay and Bisexual Superheroes

 

Sex doesnt come up much (at least explicitly). Personally I only go with straight male characters. As I am a straight male. It would be too hard for me to know how to act out my character as a female or gay.

 

 

Course from one campaign it would have been interesting tension. To have a gay character, as one of the characters was an ex-Green Beret and kind of supermacho. With his personality he would have had some definite issues with being in the same group as a character like that. I could see some derogatory comments coming in (in character)

[Publius]

Re: Gay and Bisexual Superheroes

 

As a GM I have played just about everything as an NPC. My players aren't really very sex oriented during play, but we have had an assortment of gay NPCs that brings the subject up. There haven't been any problems or issues that have come up whatsoever.

 

One of the NPCs that my players deal with is a Metahuman named Tox. He is gay, and the one area that they know they can find him is at one of the gay clubs in their home city. The players made their pilgrimage there in the last adventure to get some information. Most of the folks I know who are gay fit into every sort of category, so the people they encounter at the bar/club range from Xandir clones to macho looking and acting types and everything in between. I usually sneak other NPCs into the crowd there that they have met in previous adventures, these NPCs have an interesting assortment of responses to the players being there.

 

The best thing of course is when the PC Minuteman comes into these places in full costume. The character is completely oblivious (actually it is more correct to say that he acts oblivious) and simply enjoys being the center of attention (signing autographs, dancing when asked et al.). Some of the other characters are a little more reserved but no one has a problem with it at all.

 

In the spirit of this I think that perhaps my next PC in Hero (I am talking with some of my players about running something in the next few sessions) will be gay. Why not? I have not played a gay player character yet to my recollection (but I haven't played much lately anyway) and it might be an interesting dynamic in the game.

[zornwil]

Re: Gay and Bisexual Superheroes

 

In general NPCs' sexuality doesn't come up much at all and so the only sexuality really seen much of is the PCs, and that is quite muted. Heck, one of the PCs is asexual probably (he's not interested in men or women, and has turned out to be an insubstantial alien in his base form, questionable if he'd even have what we call a sexual attraction among his own people), one is a decidedly non-human form but has a "girlfriend" (we don't really know their genders except to say they seem to be of two differentiated genders) now of his own type, one is a robot and asexual, and the other two are heterosexual, one with wife/family, the other with a boyfriend. Of the heterosexual ones, btw, both are with supers.

 

In the prior campaign sexuality didn't come up much but Nightshade (the boyfriend to one of the PCs in the current campaign) was developing a relationship with Yindel (as in Dark Knight Returns) and another it did come up a good bit with because he was a horn-dog (much like the real life player back then!) and he had a relationship with Sue Storm, which led to no end of "interesting" situations with the Fantastic Four (Johnny Torch publicly attacked him!). Oh, and one of the PCs, while heterosexual, lacked a penis and so turned away from any active relationships.

 

But I digress, as to gay characters, as stated, it just doesn't come up much with NPCs either way. In the former campaign there was Looie, a Chinese gay man who ran a restaurant in Chinatown in NYC, had a slight attraction to one of the Outsiders (the PC group, I believe it was to the same horn-dog mentioned above, Dr. Time), the restaurant was frequented by supers. Looie wasn't campy but was out of the closet and IIRC decidedly non-macho although I don't recall playing him as effeminate at all, the PCs didn't know he was gay until he hit on one of them.

 

Oh, wait, I'm forgetting one of my mainstay NPC superheroines, the Red Amazon, who was based on the Red Dyke from Flaming Carrot (I don't like to be politically correct but having her walk around as "the Red Dyke' just seemed way too much). She's a Russian hero, a devout communist, and a very out of the closet lesbian. She is rather "manly" (a bit rough) in her mannerisms in many ways, but that has more to do with her military bearing and her long career of being a tough warrior. She's effeminate in terms of she prefers her hair long and "girlie" and does not want to appear at all as a man, and she has a charm that I've modelled somewhat after the Russian woman from Hogan's Heroes. Though she will hit on pretty much any young attractive woman, she was hitting on Willow (as in from Buffy the Vampire Slayer) as she accompanied the PCs on a trip where they ran into her. (PS - though her rather extreme forwardness with Willow was fueled by drinking a LOT of vodka, it takes a lot her being a high-CON mutant and all)

[Trebuchet]

Re: Gay and Bisexual Superheroes

 

Jeez, Zorn, you make our campaign seem so... staid.

 

 

Break out the leather thongs and whips! We're gonna have some sexuality around here! Yeah, I mean you, hero! Of course you're an exhibitionist; you wear spandex, don't you?

[zornwil]

Re: Gay and Bisexual Superheroes

 

Jeez, Zorn, you make our campaign seem so... staid.

 

 

Break out the leather thongs and whips! We're gonna have some sexuality around here! Yeah, I mean you, hero! Of course you're an exhibitionist; you wear spandex, don't you?

Out of some 10 years of campaigning, that's all I've got!

 

And we're not busily abusing ourselves (I saw your other post...).

[Katherine]

Re: Gay and Bisexual Superheroes

 

My character Pinnacle is openly bisexual and currently dating a woman. I try not to play it up and just handle it like any other romantic subplot.

 

The Midnighter clone in the game I run, Ebon Avenger, is gay but he comes across as asexual since most of his energy is directed towards cracking skulls.

[Trebuchet]

Re: Gay and Bisexual Superheroes

 

Out of some 10 years of campaigning, that's all I've got!

 

And we're not busily abusing ourselves (I saw your other post...).

Heh. Way back around 1990 I played Zl'f briefly (She only earned 12 XP) in another campaign under her original name, Flash Dancer. When Ben P., our GM, created evil twins of all of our characters her evil twin was called Flesh Dancer, who wore only a leather thong and carried a cat o' nine tails instead of a baton.

[BcAugust]

Re: Gay and Bisexual Superheroes

 

Interestingly, one of my heros, Princess Cyrande, is culturally bixsexual, but personally hetrosexual. Not much has come up in play about it, then again, not much has come up in play about her culture, yet.

[Arkham]

Re: Gay and Bisexual Superheroes

 

Haven't thought about it much for my NPCs.

Only one has been revealed to be bi. In my Hero games, I've

had 1 bi woman, 3 bi men, and a gay man, but the only gay PC

was played by one of the straight guys.

( And another of the straight guys, with encouragement from the

gay men, has threatened to play a more flamboyant gay character

called 'the flame' with human torch like powers. Luckily for any game

integrity I managed to talk him into saving it for a more silly

game. )

[RPMiller]

Re: Gay and Bisexual Superheroes

 

Although sexual orientation rarely comes into play in my own games as of the last several years, as I allow for relationship issues, but my players tend to not focus on that aspect. I have been running in the world of San Angelo and since Corona is a lesbian. She would be the only lesbian that I've ever run as either GM or player. I've GM'ed only one gay male npc as well. My players on the other hand have played pretty much any possible combination you can think of.

[phydaux]

Re: Gay and Bisexual Superheroes

 

The games I've run and played in have had an amazing number of bi-sexual women PCs. I used to put this down to male player fantasies

 

And that really sums it up.

 

I'm a guy, but sometimes I play female characters (in fact, most of my favorite PCs have been female). When I play a female PC, I play them smart, confident, quick-witted, hetero and VERY selective in partners.

 

I had a buddy who had a long-time female PC. He played her like a bi-sexual SLUT with no standards whatsoever.

 

As we both got older and would go looking for women together, I discovered that the kind of girls I looked for were muck like the female PCs I played - smart, confident, quick-witted, hetero. My buddy, however, never quite outgrew the "Let's try and talk her into a three-way" phase.

 

Men play women like they wish they were, and my buddy Al wished he lived in the Jerry Springer universe.

 

One time, in a Traveller game, I had a bi-sexual NPC. She was a member of an all-female Mercenary unit where the Comanding Officer had "unique" ideas about Epsrite de Corps. I played her as bi-curious, but with extreme social pressure to remain exclusivly lesbian.

 

The NPC was supposed to be a love interest for one of the (male) PCs, just like the all-female Merc unit was the PCs' professional rivials.

 

I had planned for the PCs to rescue this poor girl from her oppressive merc unit, as well as "convert" her away from her bi-sexuality (male fantasy, remember?) but unfortunitly the group I was playing with never did understand the whole idea of character development past "How do I up my Gun skill?"

 

I can't think of any other time where a PC/NPC's sexuality has even come up in game play.

[zornwil]

Re: Gay and Bisexual Superheroes

 

Not to derail, but from what I've read I think this ties to the same (broadly speaking) as hetero relations when it comes to reasonably mature games, most sexuality is off-camera and briefly discussed or alluded to, whether gay, bi, or straight. Speaking for myself but I bet it's true for others, I think we do this because we know that relationships and sexuality are a real part of life and while roleplaying heroic fiction is about the heroic aspect, we like (as in most heroic fiction, though from what I have experienced and can see this thread less so) to have a well-rounded realistic (in context) character. So we ensure that those characters do what makes sense. I think most of us do it less than in the books and movies because getting erotic or graphic in front of a bunch of casual friends, instead of being voyeuristic as we are in those media, is of course rather personal and beyond the scope of most friendships. I suppose it would be rather different if there were a group of swingers who also RPd heroic fiction.

 

I noted "mature" above. As a few comments above, I'm sure a lot of us in our teen and at least some of us (myself included) in early adult years had some rather outrageous sexual behavior mentioned in games (though again as above rarely graphically) as part of our early years' fumbling with sexual issues and the morbid fascination with it we tend to have as inexperienced young people. I am reminded of the lesbian and bisexual S&M female couple in the Boot Hill game that the PCs took off with from a bordello. That was way out there. Bear in mind we were all friends from high school days and while we were a little older than that we were still college age, and it was played for laughs. But it wasn't something that would come up now, at least not in the silly snickering way it did then!

[Blue]

Re: Gay and Bisexual Superheroes

 

...I'm sure a lot of us in our teen and at least some of us (myself included) in early adult years had some rather outrageous sexual behavior mentioned in games...

I don't know what you mean.