mathaetaes: "realistic fantasy setting" is a bit of an oxymoron. Somehow a world with elves, dwarves, giants, ogres, and trans-dimensional githyanki is "realistic", but gay people... well that's just not realistic? What's the percentage of people in medieval times who identified as elvish? What was the rate of people who could cast spells?

The "PC agenda" conspiracy theory is worn out. There's no big conspiracy to push political correctness down peoples' throats. It turns out that a large portion of the population identifies as something other than a straight male, those people want to see characters that represent themselves, and those people have money. The trend in video games to allow people to define their own gender, and have non-straight relationships just opens the world up to players who want to enjoy the game in a different way than you do.

tkosh: The vast majority of the population is hetero and make babies and if it wasn't that way the species would die. If you can't deal with that, that is your problem.

J Lo: - Knowing the exact percentage of gay characters would involve sitting down with a pen, pad, and calculator; speaking to every character and cycling through every dialogue option to get a definitive answer on their sexuality. This is a very bizarre, very specific, and very time consuming task - which I'm not doing. Good luck finding someone who will.

J Lo: - The game doesn't let you harass trans characters by mis-gendering them, and you don't get mis-gendered yourself. Including trans characters for this purpose is just sadistic.

J Lo: The point of adding a non-binary option is to be more welcoming.

J Lo: It would be like playing someone with dark skin and getting a barrage of racial slurs everywhere you go. Nobody would want to choose that option, making the inclusion a moot gesture.

Time4Tea: I know, long post. TL;DR: I am all for introducing more LGBT characters into video games. There is no reason at all why they shouldn't be present and represented. But, in my opinion, it should be done in such a way that also balances player freedom and respect for internal consistency, especially for a fictional setting that has been firmly established over the course of 40-odd years.

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Ok, first off, let me clarify that I have no problem whatsoever with options being given to the player to create and play as an LGBT character. It totally makes sense that LGBT characters should exist in the Forgotten Realms and if the player wants to play as such a character, that is totally fine with me. I never said anywhere that I have an issue with that, so if that is what you have inferred, you have greatly misinterpreted me.

My possible concerns (based on reviews I have seen) relate to incorporaton of neopronouns and NPC demographics, and their possible impacts on player freedom and internal consistency of the Forgotten Realms setting. I will clarify what I mean by those, starting with NPC demographics.Time4Tea: Here, you seem to be confusing realism with internal consistency. Of course, a fictional setting doesn't have to be 'realistic', but that doesn't mean that just because it is fictional that 'anything goes'. There is a concept called internal consistency - even a fictional world needs to have a set of rules and expectations that govern what can and can't happen in that setting. That concept is closely related to believeability and immersion, which are things that many CRPG gamers greatly value in an RPG. It is also a major factor that distinguishes different fantasy settings from each other. The internal consistency of the Forgotten Realms setting has been very well established over the course of some 40 years, and part of that internal consistency is that the Sword Coast region of Faerun is intended to be closely modeled on a medieval European fantasy (more specifically Western and Central Europe). Therefore, part of the established internal consistency is that the demographics and culture in the Sword Coast region (especially of the human population) should somewhat closely approximate what would expected for medieval Europe. If I walked into a village and all the kids were riding skateboards and wearing New York Knicks baseball caps, that would clearly violate the internal consistency and break immersion (note that my pointing out that fact would obviously not imply that I hate kids riding skateboards).

So, my concern around the proportion of LGBT characters in BG3 (again, coming from my seeing reviews saying that "half of the NPCs are gay") is that, if it really is that high, then it may be 'demographically skewing' to a point where it would not be a good fit for a region that is supposed to be modeled after medieval Europe. In a different region of Faerun over in the South-East somewhere - maybe the culture there is more liberal/open and so a higher proportion of LGBT characters might make more sense. Or I could get behind there being a higher percentage of bisexual characters in the overground elven population, since they are supposed to be different to humans and it would make sense for them to have different cultural values to what would be expected from medieval European humans.

Let's look at a different setting as an example: Cyberpunk. Night City seems to be a pretty liberal place that highly values individual expression. You want to have 60% of the NPCs there have LGBT tendencies, with customizable genitals so they can change gender at the touch of a button to suit their mood - go right ahead. That sounds like it would fit in very well with the internal consistency of Cyberpunk. So, I've got no problem with that whatsoever.

Another example of what I mean: let's say the developers decide to make 75% of the human NPCs in Baldur's Gate 3 over 80 years old, all shuffling around on walking frames. If I criticize that, on the grounds that it doesn't make sense and violates internal consistency of the setting, would that make me ageist? No, of course not. My issue is not "oh no, there's gay people in a video game ...", it is about concern for the internal consistency of the Forgotten Realms setting.Time4Tea: What you describe sounds totally fine and nowhere near the "50% of the characters in the game are gay" that I read in that review. If anything, it might even be leaning the other way. If the only overtly gay characters in the game are evil/chaotic ones, that might be playing too much into the stereotype that people with 'non-conventional' sexual preferences are somehow 'deviant'. Either way, I've got no problem with what you describe. In fact, if that's all there is, they could probably afford to put a few more LGBT characters in.

Regarding the neopronouns: my concerns there relate to the possible impact on player freedom and again, internal consistency. To give an example: let's say the PC meets an NPC in-game that insists on the PC using neopronouns to refer to them. In my opinion, the player should be given the roleplaying freedom to choose to accept that or not. Player freedom is extremely important in an RPG - in that situation, the player should be given the option to reject the NPC's demand, kick sand in their face, be a jerk, if they want to be (at the possible cost of alienating that NPC). Not giving the player the option to reject it would be tying the player's hands in an unacceptable way.

Another example: the player goes into the slums of Baldur's Gate with a goody-goody character and gets into a conversation with a thuggish black market slave trader gang boss, who doesn't like the PC and is antagonistic towards them. The PC insists to that character that they must refer to them using their preferred neopronouns. Let's imagine the slaver boss turns round and says: "Oh, of course! I would be most happy to oblige and respect your personal pronoun preferences. I would never dream otherwise!". That would pretty obviously be nonsense and a total violation of internal consistency. The most believable outcome in such a situation is that they will promptly tell the PC where they can stick their pronouns; laugh in their face and probably use it as a means to further antagonize the player.

Again, I don't know to what extent the game uses neopronouns - I have only read a review saying that the game has introduced their use. But my concern, as I've tried to illustrate with the above examples, is that, if it is true, then the context in which they are used is critically important to the immersion of the game.

mathaetaes: Internal Consistency: You seem to forget that people have been playing tabletop in the D&D world for 40 years, in whatever way they please. Some are playing queer characters who try to f*ck every NPC they encounter regardless of race or gender. Some don't.
If you're only using the world of Baldur's Gate games as your internal consistency metric: Did you go around and poll each NPC as to their sexual orientation? Most of the time it's "go fetch me this magical doohickey" and you go run the errand and that's it; just like in the real world, someone's sexual orientation doesn't play in to casual conversation. For all you know, the NPCs in BG1 could be having massive, bisexual orgies as soon as you left the screen.

Zaxares: Ehh, not really. I'd say we humans have reached the point where we're threatening to upset the world's natural balance with our overpopulation. In fact, it's entirely possible that the "increase" in non-hetero individuals is actually a natural correction within our species trying to balance itself out before we breed ourselves into oblivion.

dbartenstein: Yup, got a weirdo ranting about "wokeness" over on the Pathfinder: WOTR board....

Kohleran: Um, "Woke" Wrath of the Righteous is prevalent. They are absolutely pushing the Alphabet agenda in that game. I think anyone can see that. If they agree or disagree is to the person's choice, but it is extremely obvious that wotr is a woke work that pushes that agenda. If you care to embrace it, ignore it and pretend it isn't there, or hate it. That is you.

alcaray: Tired of you guys preaching to me.

mathaetaes: If that scares you, feel free to loudly proclaim that you'll never buy such a title because you're SO straight that you are physically incapable of playing a game that has the option. I'm sure they'll miss your $59 dearly, and they will feel terribly for making that decision as a result. Sleep soundly knowing you stuck it to the PC political agenda, and enjoy your time playing games from 1995.