#rpg but its gay

[rielzero]

Baldur’s Gate and why Europeans should do all our RPGs

Europeans aren’t shy of fruity stuff, but one thing that’s really annoyed me out of fantasy and rpg games, is that at times you feel like you can’t customize your character’s sexuality. I want to be able to play a gay dude and capable of rejecting the women, its really peeving when a character flirts with me and I have no way of saying no thank you I’m not into you.

Or that I can’t romance the men, that too. Like this is a fantasy world?? Lemme have my good time. Most game publishers are too shy, them AAA game studios can’t have our satanic fun time. Nope everything has to be boring, and romance stale. LET SOME HOT DUDE FLIRT WITH MY TWINK CHARACTER. PLEASE. EAT ME UP IN THEIR EYES.

Ugh and so much bad writing too, like sometimes its just too easy.

I’m so fucking hyped for this game that I can finally just play a character that's gay as hell. Thanks game. I cannot stop thinking about you and it ain’t 3rd of august yet. LET ME HAVE MY VAMPIRE BOYFRIEND PLEASE.

No more puritan or crap stale badly written romance, give me the good shit that AAA’s won’t do.

Friendly reminder that Straight-Locking is a thing in games, and it happens. https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Straight-Locking

I am going to be so gay in baldur’s gate 3.

THANK YOU LARIAN

ALSO MORE FRUITY VAMPIRES IN FUTURE TITLES PLS

give me

EVERYTHING

IM HUNGRY

[alphaketoglutaricacid]

Shed your skin and come back to us

[emilostingender]

Nice argument, but I cast fist 😎

[toonydarling]

^click for better quality^

it's been a while, so have a buddycups page as a treat

(@sonkaphobia and i updated their designs a bit)

[noddynods]

I doodl

No way is that oc art

Graphic representation of what happened the day I changed my layout from Dimentio to Dreambert

I have developed a passion for drawing Antasma in pretty dresses

I heard your little gay boy talk Dreambert /ref

And finally you can have this doodle i didn't plan on making as a bonus

[ruby2stardust]

I have to gush real quick it is in my very being to infodump this right now.

So this is Crosscode, and if you haven't played it you should right now because it is one of the best RPGs ever made, heck it is one of my favorite games of all time easily.

I played it a few months ago and it really just was everything to me. I love these characters, I love the soundtrack and the gameplay is so, so much fun! The combat is fast paced, fun and difficult. I love the Zelda style dungeons that cap off each area. I love that they took the setting of a game within a game and actually made it interesting by focusing the story around how players and developers interact with the world they created! I love the just, everything! The story is a bit slow but honestly that is such a tiny little complaint in what is otherwise a sea of positive things I could say about this amazing wonderful little gem. I played it to nearly 100% completion and adored every second and I have considered a second playthrough since the moment I finished.

I don't even know how to describe it because I am genuinely welling up. Just going back and listening to the title theme I am almost crying tears of joy. I am already so nostalgic for this and I only finished it two months ago I just love it so so so much. I always thought about if I would make a video game and what it would look like. Crosscode is that game made reality. It is that dream game I considered making just so it would exist. I am so happy that it is a thing and that I got to experience it as a player.

Please, PLEASE give this game a shot if you like action RPGs. It really is one of the best out there and so much more than I could possibly ever describe.

[samarecharm]

Random question about the “they should make persona for people who like good games” post. Do people think the persona series is that bad? I know they aren’t perfect but I wouldn’t call them bad games.

I had a wholeass essay written out before i realized im too tired to make it sound coherent. AND my only experience is p 4 and 5, so my opinion on it means jack shit. All i can say is that the most recent titles suffer from bad writing. (And repetitive gameplay, but thats a different issue). Be it poorly written characters and dialogue, or poorly written interactions and plot, it is hard to take some of the stuff in the more recent games at face value. One could argue that that just means the game is subpar, not necessarily bad, but thats subjective; bad means different things to different people. And i say this as someone who thinks this game is Not the best but still found it incredibly engaging and entertaining.

[jaidenalemni]

Legends of Astravia

Given the birdsite reckoning, I'll do a small introduction of my game for Tumblr!

I'm working on Legends of Astravia--a dramatic JRPG set in a world of magic. It features an overworld of Zelda-like dungeons filled with puzzles and an exciting turnless battle system.

Its heaviest influences are Golden Sun, FF7 and Chrono Trigger.

I recently redid the character art myself, hoping to go for something a bit more personalized. I'll hopefully have some more interesting screenshots, art process, and updates in the future!

I've been working on the game for a few years now. It's a bit overscoped, but I'm having a lot of fun making it.

Feel free to ask me any questions about the game on this blog! Otherwise, there's a slightly outdated demo available on itch.io and Steam if you'd like to try it out.

[pickedpiper]

Is it any coincidence that OFF released in pride month? 🤨

[syekick-powers]

honestly. being real. ive looked into a lot of various indie ttrpgs that haven't spoken to me, and i end up just coming back to D&D over and over. and i think i finally fully understand why that is.

D&D is very heavy on rules for what can happen in combat, but fairly light on rules for when it comes to story structure and roleplay. as a result, roleplay scenes feel a bit more natural and flowing, with the only mechanical aspect being the occasional skill check for like, intimidation / deception / persuasion / etc. but then, unlike the roleplay, the things that can be achieved in combat are pretty strictly regulated. this is fun for how i like to roleplay, as someone who used to do a lot of freeform RP--the problem with freeform RP style combat sometimes is that if you're RPing combat with someone who gets really wound up about making their characters always win, it can be really fucking hard to counteract the shit they have their characters pull out of their back pocket. having a VERY clearly defined and strict set of rules for specifically combat makes it so that when combat DOES happen, people can't just Say Shit about what they have their characters do--they have a limited character framework to work in and a limited set of tools that they can work with, and enjoyable combats come from using those tools in that framework creatively, effectively, and excitingly. this makes combat feel like it has genuine stakes, and when done right can be very intense and exciting. and then when you do actual like, character interaction and story building? there's just not a lot of strictly defined rules for what can and can't be done in those realms, both for a player and the DM. there aren't any constraints on the structure of the narrative that the DM presents, which means it's fairly easy to rip out the pre-packaged D&D lore, re-fluff a few things that heavily reference that lore, and just homebrew your own story structure and lore and world and characters and pantheons and the like.

my problem with a lot of indie TTRPGs is that a lot of them are married to either a very specific story structure that the system mandates that you follow, or a very specific pre-made world that the system is mechanically built to form around, and that level of pre-determination doesn't interest me either as a player OR as a GM. like these are fundamental rules in these systems that would gut it if you tore them out and replaced them with something else, which means that if you tried to go against those premade structures/settings, you would basically have to homebrew the entire goddamn thing from scratch anyway. D&D's relative rules-heaviness of combat and rules-lightness of roleplay makes it easier for D&D to provide me the kinds of stories that i actually want to participate in, even if people insist it's not as "flexible" as many people think it is. like. yes. don't run a regency romance game in D&D, obviously. but if ur running a high fantasy type of game focused on adventuring, D&D can be adapted pretty well to a homebrew setting and world with minimal effort.

and tbh, i really think that's why it has the cultural dominance that it does, and why i personally keep engaging with it as a ttrpg even as people yell from all sides to play something else. "just do freeform RP!" ive done freeform RP. it's good for character building and dialogue and intrigue and sex but it fucking sucks when characters have to fight. i fucking hate it when im trying to RP fighting in freeform RP and whatever person im fighting against just keeps fucking kicking my ass no matter what i have my character do because my RP partner is so invested in forcing me to lose or give up that they just pull whatever the hell they can think of out of their back pocket to beat my character into submission. at least with an incredibly well-defined set of rules for how combat works, your opponents are also working in a limited framework with limited tools, so even if they do fucking kick your ass, it doesn't feel completely stupid and arbitrary, and since opponents' attacks are governed by dice rolls almost as much as players' attacks are, the amount of arbitrariness in the combat is not wholly stacked against you unless you're fighting against something that's WAY out of your party's league--and even then, those creatures and people are still going to be bound by their dice rolls as much as you are, they might just have better bonuses and/or fewer penalties to make things a bit more favorable for them. that horrifying fucking monster you're fighting may have an insane bonus to attack, but it could still roll a critical fail when it tries to attack you, just as much as you might roll a critical fail to attack it in turn. everyone operates under the same rules and will have similar limitations placed on them by those rules, and participants have much less leeway to make their characters' combat prowess be whatever the hell they want whenever anything even mildly threatening happens.

[lochroma]

when i get off work im immediately getting that gayass unicorn overlord game sorry </3

[chaoticmannamedoliver]

"Its just a rug"

I figured out dialogs >:]

[pinkeoni]

And now, for no reason in particular, in no way related to anything on my blog at all, here is a long ramble about sexuality in Fallout: New Vegas and Fallout: 4

So in Fallout: New Vegas there is the option to control your characters sexuality, something that was fairly revolutionary at the time the game came out in 2011. The perks Black Widow and Lady Killer allow +10% damage along with unique dialogue options for the opposite sex, and Cherchez la Femme and Confirmed Bachelor offer the same bonus but for the same sex. The player has to option to chose one or both of these perks, and they both become available fairly early in gameplay. I usually pick both perks for the added damage bonus, although since Fallout is for an intents and purposes a roleplaying game, I like to imagine that my player character is a lesbian and is only flirting with men in order to get ahead.

Along with the fact that you can make your character gay, bisexual, or what have you, there are also a few gay characters within the game. The companions Arcade Ganon and Veronica are a gay man and lesbian respectively. There are a few other NPCs that have dialogue acknowledging their queerness.

The one thing that I wish that NV did have was the ability to romance companions. Imagine me, with my ancient HP laptop burning my lap, exhausting every one of Veronica's dialogue options trying to see if I can date her but to no avail. You can actually flirt with Ganon if you are a male character with the Confirmed Bachelor perk, although the interaction does not go farther than that. You can have sex with same sex prostitutes, but there's no cutscene. If I pay 300 caps for some hanky panky, then I wanna see it!

So when I found out that you could romance companions in Fallout: 4, I was beyond excited.

In F:4 you can romance most companions regardless of gender, effectively making any of the romancable companion bisexual by default. You can also romance any number of companions at the same time, meaning you could have one big bisexual polyamorous relationship if you wanted to (the companions cannot date each other and are all connected to you, but the choice to have multiple partners is still there.

Bisexual polyamory sounds very progressive, and I don't think that that shouldn't be acknowledged, but even without the romance options, NV feels like the gayer game.

The thing about the romance options in 4 is that it doesn't seem to address identity. All of these characters are bisexual by default, but (as far I have seen from reviews and from my own experience playing) the characters don't ever acknowledge queerness as an identity. If I'm a female player character romancing a female companion, there isn't any dialogue acknowledging the fact that we are both women (in fact from what I've read, the dialogue is the same regardless if you are a man or woman, with only the pronouns being changed). Furthermore, the perks that you can choose that controls the characters sexuality are not there. Black Widow and Lady Killer are still there, although their same-sex counterpart perks are not available.

What I like about the perks in NV is the fact that player identity is not only something that has to be imagined behind the screen, but it becomes a facet within the game that influences the game and is acknowledged. Not only with sexuality, but gender is a factor in the role play as well. There are a few characters who acknowledge through dialogue that my character is a woman.

In 4 you are given a backstory as a spouse in an opposite-sex marriage with a new baby, superimposed into a heterosexual relationship right off the bat. This is opposed to NV where you play as a glorified mail carrier with amnesia that you can project a backstory onto. In 4 the game starts off with your spouse essentially being literally "fridged" (no literally, they die inside of a cryochamber) and your baby is kidnapped which triggers the main plot of the game. I guess this could be subversive if the player character is a woman, but that's only the player chooses to be a woman. Context clues points to the game assuming that the player is a man, what with the male player character voicing the opening narration of the game, along with being the defaulted gender option in the character creation screen. I think that choosing to play as a woman creates a much more compelling narrative, although the game never acknowledges this so it's mostly up to the player to infer this narrative themselves. (Again, gender is only brought up through pronouns) I would say that maybe the game is trying to offer commentary on the nuclear family household, although the problem doesn't rely on the family itself but the war and outsiders are the ones who destroyed it while the family itself was perfectly healthy.

You would think that being a newly widowed spouse would have some impact on the romance aspect of the game, especially if you are engaging with a same sex partner after previously being with a partner of the opposite-sex. Which isn’t to say that people in heterosexual relationships can’t also be interested in the same-sex or that people in marriages can’t be engaged in a healthy open relationship, and I do like that the game includes this option at all, although (and again, this is to my knowledge) this doesn't seem to get a mention when dealing with the romance. The dead spouse only really makes an impact on the main storyline of the game, and similarly, the romance aspect doesn't seem to effect this aspect at all.

F:4 tries to have an established backstory while also trying to give the player the same freedom of role play that its had in previous games, but these two player identities just end up running parallel to each other rather than working together. You can make choices in the game that seems to contradict your backstory without it ever being addressed. This could maybe make for an interesting story, but (and once again, as much as I have played and seen) there doesn't seem to be any internal conflict between the player character's past and what they decide to do for the run of the game.

While all of the romancable companions are effectively bisexual by the nature of the gameplay, bisexuality or queerness in any capacity isn't recognized as an identity and operates more on just a cosmetic level. Not that a character would have to explicitly state that their label in order for it to be valid, but it doesn't add anything to their character in the same way that it does for Ganon and Veronica from NV. These two never say "I am a gay man" or "I am a lesbian" in that exact way but their identities have an impact on their character and how they interact with the player. Veronica in particular had a girlfriend in her past that wasn't approved of by the strictly conservative Brotherhood of Steel that she belongs to.

"So you want homophobia in your video games? This is a post-apocalyptic society, who cares about who dates who!" and to be fair sexuality in Fallout society does seem to be far more lenient in both NV and 4, which makes sense considering the context. There aren't any marriage laws, and there's even a line suggesting that the male soldiers from the fascist Caesar regime are regularly mounting each other.

But still, Veronica experiencing that bit of homophobia from her past helps queer identity feel more realized rather than just an empty gesture from game devs for a few political correctness points, and can even be found as relatable to some of it's queer players. Veronica's story is about her desperately trying to save her conservative community, but comes to realize that the only way for her to live is to leave them behind. She's heartbroken to leave her family, but recognizes that she has to prioritize herself even if they aren't going to. The Brotherhood of Steel isn't a real organization, but that's definitely a real experience. If the Fallout games aim to offer commentary on real-world politics (which it definitely aims to do) then it isn't going to succeed if it's characters don't reflect real-world experiences.

Sorry if this comes off as me railing on F:4, I actually greatly enjoy the game and have probably sunk more hours into it than NV (which is partially due to my PS4 actually being functional and the laptop I have that plays NV has been on its last legs for years now) and I do greatly enjoy the characterization of the companions, even if I wish that their queer identities made more of an impact. NV, on the other hand, is one of my favorite games of all time.

So that's my whole spiel. Doesn't have anything at all to do with anything else on my blog whatsoever. Completely unrelated.

[koko2unite]

playing baldurs gaye 3, found out I can make the guys naked, so i made them naked

[wehowlspam]

since ive been playing bg1 i've been wondering.... what is charname doing during the events of bg3 (if they dont die at the end of bg2 i guess? im not there yet lol) cos like, i picked an elf and at the start of bg1 they're 20. not 20 in elf. 20. so bg3 they'd be around 120. which is still baby for elf. but has been through so much. (also her just tackle hugging jaheira at last light inn)

[kirvia]

you know that screenshot u posted about book blurbs? would you or ur followers have any input on where that trend (describing media by elements) came from?

I was under the impression it came from tumblr, I remember early 2010s posts describing media in general like that? Makes me wonder where the tumblr ppl got that from

tbh I was also under the same impression? it was a quick and easy way for people to spread a piece of media via word of mouth within the lgbtq community, especially in the early 2010's when such content wasn't as widespread. i'm also curious if anyone knows more about it bc ppl keep blaming 'booktok' in my tags (i dont use tiktok)

whatever the new marketing tactics have originated from, i was already tired over the years of the amount of people telling me to get into something by simply stripping it down to tropes/elements as their elevator pitch 🤷‍♂️ there were a lot of things I ended up liking that I initially missed out on because nobody explained them beyond its representation and I didn't know enough about it to care to look it up.

also I'm not a huge fan of how marvel popularized the "zero spoilers" trend in recent marketing because, like, a bare explanation of what's going to happen is not going to ruin my day (it piques interest, actually.) i wonder if that has to do with anything?