bi/gay characters in The Temple of Elemental Evil
Just a historical bit of information that I thought would be interesting to share. The Temple of Elemental Evil video game was published in 2003, just a year after Icewind Dale 2. Ten years before Dorn and Hexxat were introduced in BG2:EE, the Temple of Elemental Evil already had bi and gay characters.
One of them is a barmaid named Lodriss. You can flirt with her if your character is male or female. If she likes you (and if your charisma is high enough and you succeed at a diplomacy check), she invites you to go for a walk along the docks with her. Otherwise she'll tell you to back off, and if the conversation goes really sour, there will be a huge tavern brawl. Here's how the conversation went when I flirted with her with one of my female characters:
The other character is a male pirate called Bertram. You can't flirt with him if your character is female, he just doesn't care. You can flirt with him if you have a male character talk to him. You won't get very far though, since he says that his boss will not approve (his boss is a pirate lord, and Bertram is afraid of him). You can then try to convince his boss (or intimidate him, or fight him). Or you can just tell Bertram that you're not interested in him.
One of them is a barmaid named Lodriss. You can flirt with her if your character is male or female. If she likes you (and if your charisma is high enough and you succeed at a diplomacy check), she invites you to go for a walk along the docks with her. Otherwise she'll tell you to back off, and if the conversation goes really sour, there will be a huge tavern brawl. Here's how the conversation went when I flirted with her with one of my female characters:
The other character is a male pirate called Bertram. You can't flirt with him if your character is female, he just doesn't care. You can flirt with him if you have a male character talk to him. You won't get very far though, since he says that his boss will not approve (his boss is a pirate lord, and Bertram is afraid of him). You can then try to convince his boss (or intimidate him, or fight him). Or you can just tell Bertram that you're not interested in him.
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Not surprised that there is a gay pirate though. Mate came from the word matelage, a legal union between two men on a ship. It came from the French I think, sailors tended to have intimate relationships with other sailors. It had gotten so prevalent that the queen of France even shipped prostitutes to Tortuga to try to dissuade them from their homosexual unions. It didn’t work. They would take advantage of the prostitutes then go back to their mate, most often they would share the prostitute and move on. In so many ways these unions didn’t fit into the religious beliefs at the time and the English most particularly were opposed, so... many, many sailors left their navy’s and became pirates. I think there was also an officer/non-officer relationship problem that took them from their country’s service, rank not being a big issue for a pirate. Anyway, unions like this were accepted as legally binding and were expected to be acknowledged in the case of one of the partners death, the surviving partner was to be his beneficiary in every way.
Many native american tribes belived in two-spirit people long before they knew of the existance of white man. They were rare and considered a blessing to the tribe. They were expected to live the life of their presenting gender including going to war for a female at birth who could only live as a man, or being the householder or wife for a male at birth who could only live as a woman. Samoan people have long accepted trans people, unfortunately they seem not to accept gay people, not sure how new that is.
Where would we be now if not for those that came long ago? Leonardo Da Vinci, Michelango and the list goes on and on. Salvador Dali? Alexander the Great? My grandfather complained to my grandmother that I would grow up like his brother, did she want that for me? I never met him but he was decorated with the purple heart and silver star in WWII, I wonder how awful he could have been? Sad that this american hero was beaten to death in Virginia in th 60s because of his sexual preference.
No, not in anyway new. Not any newer than bigotry, or hatred at any rate, wonder how far back they go and why people are not more worried about that?
We could have definitely done without Hoover, but your point stands for the rest.
ToEE was, and still is, an awesome game, for many different reasons. I think it's on par with the Infinity Engine games. Would love to see an Enhanced Edition of it.
Very sorry for derailing your thread.
TToEE is really worth it. I sound like a salesperson now, but it's a great game. I got it to run on Linux (Ubuntu LTS 18.04, to be more precise) using a Windows emulator (WINE), which is what I use for playing the Infinity Engine games as well. Icewind Dale 2 was the one that really gave me problems as far as the installation and execution goes, it was super glitchy, I had to edit the emulator's registry in order to make it run smoothly. I agree with you about the linear path, I much prefer the more open worlds of the Baldur's Gate saga. But IWD2 does have some really cool stuff, like the implementation of 3rd edition rules, which, generally speaking, have a lot more positives than negatives. For example, I like the fact that character classes are no longer restricted by race (my party has a Dwarf Druid, I roleplay him as being a sort of cave-sage, knowledgeable of of the many types of fungi, plants and creatures that dwell underground).
No problem, and no apologies necessary : )
And the few mods available are all top quality and really add to the game. Especially the prestige classes.
If you haven't tried it out yet, you should.
Regarding mods, there's also a total conversion for ToEE called The Keep on the Borderlands, based on Gygax's module by the same name from 1979. I haven't tried modding ToEE myself, but it's something I've been meaning to get into.
And you can get swallowed by a giant frog! You don't see that in many video games...