I have to say growing up being gay\u00a0in the 80’s was pretty tough. I mean I did it in Kentucky for God sake. Now do not get me wrong I had a few supportive friends and my sister to get me though some of the tough times. But… there was no LGBTQ friendly anything or many highly visible out people at the time. So there was no real support in society, actually there was nothing but damnation if I am to be brutally honest. At least that is how it\u00a0felt.<\/p>\n
I used, as many of you do, Role-playing games to escape real life. No I did not play female characters I had no inclination to do so. But what I did do was play\u00a0characters that were the farthest from gay. I am not sure if it was self loathing or just the fact I felt that I needed to be “normal”. As the years passed (many years) and being a person in the LGBTQ community became more “normal” I actually started embracing who I was\u00a0and started to play characters that were more like me. One of my favorite characters was in a Exalted<\/em> game where I was a bad ass warrior who happened to be in love with another man.\u00a0Who was murdered\u00a0by a evil Storyteller\u00a0(you know who you are Mike) that used him to taunt me…. \u00a0ummm sorry… I digress.<\/p>\n In 2007 when I was reading through the first book in Paizo’s adventure path Rise of the Rune Lords<\/em>\u00a0I noticed\u00a0what appeared to be a same sex couple. I thought it was just my own projection and reread it. No there it was in print\u00a0a\u00a0Cyrdak Drokkus (CN male human\u00a0bard 6) &\u00a0Sir Jasper Korvaski (LG male human paladin 3\/expert 1) and in Jaspers description it stated “Despite his best efforts, his romance\u00a0with Cyrdak Drokkus has become one of Sandpoint\u2019s\u00a0worst-kept secrets.”<\/em> so I was not projecting at all! I can tell you that this inclusion of\u00a0a same sex romance endeared me to Pathfinder.<\/p>\n Paizo did this without even a mention that it was choosing to be LGBTQ inclusive. So when I read Wesley Schneider’s blog<\/a> this morning he gave a little insight on why they did not make a big deal of it.<\/p>\n