Celebrity Appearances while Roleplaying with my Partner

Role playing games has been a major hobby of mine ever since I first had my chance encounter on a school bus that ended in a fiery end.  Mind you, I am not referring to those atrocities they call MMORPGs which while I do accept are Massively Multiplayer Online gamers, they are not actual role playing games.  Role playing games are about crafting stories interactively with a set of players that shape the ongoing story and move the plot further.  MMORPGs are all about repeatable grinding instances where your "quests" don't really change the game world at all, since later on they can be repeated either with a different group, or done again by another group in their own way.  Yes I know I'm being geek elitist again (sort of like how I refuse to see those existing Toycons, Otakons, et al as real conventions since they are actually just over-glorified tiangges made to look fandom-related thanks to the overwhelming presence of cosplayers) but considering how much I love and respect my hobbies, I have to hold them up well with higher standards.

As I mentioned in my other blog, gaming has thankfully been rich and present in my life.  My partner has broken his gaming geek hymen and enjoys the hobby a lot!  In return, I have been doing my best to keep the game much more entertaining for him and one of the ways I do so is by making sure he has a hot supporting character present for him to interact with.  This has of course amused him (and at some times gotten him "pikon") at the fact that I make sure these characters one way or another try to flirt with him.  I'm sure that many of you would agree that if you were given a chance to interact with these characters' you would relish the chance to do "anything you want" with them.

The first game my partner ever got to play in was a Vampire: the Requiem game which had elements of Hunter: the Vigil as part of its narrative.  Being Rocky's first game, I sort of thought he'd be able to connect with the game more by playing a character closer to his personality.  Playing a gay comic store owner in the game allowed him the familiar comfort of being surrounded by geeky surroundings.

In this game, I had an unexpected character show up, supposedly in a desperate bid to catch up on the latest comics he had long missed, but later on attempt to seduce him.  It was revealed later in the game that some demon had possessed his body to use it as a tool to win Rocky's character over to his side and win the war against Heaven.    The character was:

If this man walked up to you, and asked you to do whatever you want with him
in exchange for your soul, what would you say?

The second time I gave Rocky a celebrity npc was when we were playing Changeling: The Lost.  In this game, I had his character have an ex-boyfriend who was still deeply enamored by him.


Unfortunately, Rocky's character had long moved on and the poor guy pined over a long ended passionate affair.  If you were in his shoes, would you have turned this guy down?

And yes, there WAS a scene just like this.

The third time a celebrity npc appeared was when we were playing AEON Trinity, a science fiction game where Rocky was playing a hacker who happened upon a government secret Acceptable Intelligence program.  The program was hungry for information and sought to understand human nature.  At one point, the program assumed a 3d solid light projection and asked Rocky to help him understand the biological impulses of sexual arousal.  Rocky opted to delay the session for another time (well, the world was on the verge of an alien invasion, so I guess he had a good reason to).  I wonder though how many of you out there would have done the same to him:

"Can you teach me what it means to get 'off?' "

Currently, we are playing Weapon of the Gods.  This game is pretty much like Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon and Hero having a baby with Final Fantasy 7.  Gravity defying action, epic romances and incredible feats of martial arts dot the game.  Rocky plays the Dragon Minister who has fallen from the Emperor's good grace and in his travels to redeem himself, he has gained a young man seeking to prove himself.  I decided to give a certain celebrity another chance and be part of the game.  This time, his presentation was filled with double meaning statements ("How swift thy sword sifu.  Perhaps you can one day let me hold it and teach me to use it to your satisfaction?")   So far, the unspoken bromance hasn't gone overboard, but the players are all loving the subtle flirtation going on.

See, he CAN defy gravity.

Finally, we are going through a dark gem of a game called the Giovanni Chronicles, which is part of the Dark Ages Vampire line.  Here Rocky's character was among a group of people who were invited to a banquet by some nobleman, only later to learn that they have been drawn into a conspiracy of monsters and death.  I have yet to include a celebrity npc in this game, since the game does need a heavy dose of drama and emotional impact.  Such an npc might make the game feel less serious.  However, if I do ever add such a personality, I already have a short list of actors to choose from.  I wonder which one though would you guys think would be best:

Wearing ONLY this.

At least he'd have a bigger role than he did in Riverworld.

Guiltily, he ALREADY has appeared in another game.
But that was for another player.

Hmmm but he's already dressed for the second book of the game!

Ah so many choices.... who to pick I wonder.

P.S.
To those who thought this was about a different kind of roleplaying... my apologies.
Whether or not that happens between me and my partner is between us alone to know.  At least for now.

Does Being Gay (or Female) Matter in a RPG?

One of my biggest hobbies is role playing games.  Now I don't mean those kind of role playing couples get into while in bed doing the doggy dance.  I mean the kind one plays with the use of interestingly shaped dice, interactive storytelling, pencils, paper sheets and character concepts.  I have been a gamer for many years and I noticed that while some games totally ignore the relevance of having a male or female character, other games love utilizing it as an in-game mechanic.

Gamer partners are easy to please.  Just buy them a nice new set of dice
for a present when you run out of ideas. 

It led me to wonder, is it good or bad when role playing games ignore gender and sex in a game?
Role playing games have always allowed me to explore character concepts which I probably would never have the chance to (or in some cases, never morally or logically be inclined to doing) in real life.  My first actual proper rpg character was a female Paladin named Shel Downwind (I use such disclaimers because my very first game was some elven ranger on a volcano) who had a ring of regeneration and eventually was pivotal in saving the Realms from the Avatar Wars in our gaming group.   Later on, I would find myself playing  an insane Malkavian vampire named Gabriel who believed that if one stared at a dying man's eyes at the moment he expired, one would glimpse the soul and know true beauty.  Crazy scary stuff eh?  More concepts  came and went and ultimately, I've played characters who were male, female, alien, transsexual, straight, gay, closeted, homophobic, religious, insane, militaristic, compassionate, devoted, crazed and more.  The point was, role playing games allowed me to explore a lot of these things in the safety of my own home without ever  actually illegally performing such things.

My friend Mara is wondering when I last shaved as I try to explain to her in brief the system for
White Wolf Gaming Studios' Scion.

The role playing game community, years back, seemed neck deep in straight guys alone.  For me, it wasn't until the rise of popularity of Anne Rice novels and the emergence of White Wolf's World of Darkness that gay gamers as well as gay characters started to become more visible.  And while most gaming books still retain the straight-male-geek demographic as their target market, some like White Wolf have attempted to sound more gender savvy (like in White Wolf books, the pronoun "she" is used instead of "he").   Later companies tried to reflect an awareness of such a shift in their books by adding disclaimers that the pronoun "he" was merely used for simplicity sake and not intended to mean only males were expected to play the game.

They should have made this scene last for half an hour.

Clearly there was an attempt to be much more gender sensitive in some ways.  I wondered however, if this sensitivity extended as well to the actual game itself?  Did being straight, gay, male or female matter in a rpg?

Decided to post this rather than the expected Dragon Age image.

White Wolf Gaming Studios, creators of games such as Vampire: The Masquerade, Vampire: the Requiem, and Exalted, approached sex and gender as something vital only depending on the setting of the game.  For example, in their Dark Ages using their old World of Darkness line, playing a woman meant having the flaw (Second Class Citizen) which was to reflect how during the period, women were seen to have less rights and freedoms than men.  In their Exalted line, on the other hand, there are merits to reflect being fertile or not since in that game, certain character types can bear interesting children if mixed and matched.  A recent book even used numerous movie and tv tropes as the basis for outlandish (and possibly offensive) merits available only to those who are playing a woman.

Crazy = Straight Jacket.

Dungeons and Dragons on the other hand once tried to reflect the differences between men and women by setting different "ranges" for how a man or a woman's Strength can start at.  There were also differences in their typical "starting ages" as well as "maximum old ages".   So yes, there was a time in Dungeons and Dragons when all female characters could never be stronger than male characters, even if both rolled 18 for Strength in their initial character creation.

DC Heroes (and for those who are familiar with the many variations, here I am choosing to view the MEGS version) doesn't care if the character you create is male or female.  And thankfully, this nicely is reflected in how the comics do have characters of immense strength or ability, regardless of gender.

Alex Ross, you rule.

Houses of the Blooded nicely reflects the importance of romance and drama in a character concept but like DC Heroes seems to have little care of whether or not a character is male or female.  The game nicely shows you how the creative flow of a game isn't supposed to be in the hands of the game master/storyteller alone.

This book is barely $5 for the PDF.   Trust me, it is worth every single penny.
I'm just happy a friend found a copy of the physical book in a booksale here in Manila.

It was in Weapon of the Gods that I felt a nice balance of setting reflective systems with the freedom to play women who are or can be stronger than men.  Weapon of the Gods allowed one to purchase Lores that expanded one's background or ongoing destiny in the game, and among them were the options to purchase Homosexuality, being a woman and the like.  Such purchases then opened the options to buy other setting enhancing things such as how homosexual men can use a special martial art to shift their chi to masculine or feminine, or how women can have a Lore that allows them to carry a child to term and yet remain fit and capable of active martial arts combat.  The game nicely reflected the fact that role playing games might cater to players who will predominantly want to play male roles, but still had enough system crunch to interest players who wanted to explore gay and/or feminine roles.  Sadly, EOS press, which publishes the game, seems to no longer be online.

A pity it is no longer in print.

I wonder though if there are games out there that nicely cater to players who want to truly explore games where being male, female, homosexual or heterosexual, matter.  The irony however is the more you try to make such things "matter" the greater the chance you end up looking like you're being predisposed or biased towards one or the other.

Me running FIGHT! where non-gamers are invited to roll three green dice in hopes of besting my roll.  The hearts on my chest were reminiscent of the Life Meter in Zelda games.  I'd lose a heart for each dice roll lower than theirs.  Ultimately, this was me trying to make people have fun even without computers.

But since role playing games are all about exploring character concepts and creating stories, I would love to see or hear about gaming systems where players are encouraged to try concepts that might be very distant from who they are or what they typically play.    It might help people see role playing games as more than just the lonely straight sexless geek guy's hobby, and make them realize a lot of us gamers actually get much more sex than you average straight non-gamers than you think!