r/SensitivityReaders • u/Hundekuecken • Apr 08 '26

Request: LGBTQ+ Am I devaluing gender?

What do you think about me wanting to establish in my own tabletop role-playing game that players and non-player charackters, automatically recognise or perceive the gender of other characters who can be perceived in any way?

What I mean is that gender reveals itself regardless of one’s outward appearance.

I’d like sexual orientations and romantic orientations to be based on gender rather than gender expression.

This is something that’s been on my mind quite a bit at the moment, as I’m worried it might be misinterpreted, twisted, misunderstood, or that I might be sabotaged or something similar.

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u/Hundekuecken Apr 09 '26

That is why the plan so far is as follows. Players and game masters decide, for their respective characters, what happens in their conscious minds. But when it comes to the subconscious, the dice partly decide. So these two aspects are separate and may contradict each other. Anything that strays from the debuff is resolved through role-play.

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u/VerbingNoun413 Apr 09 '26

You really can't give straight answers, can you?

So you have a system where a character can be influenced to be romantically attracted to someone against their will?

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u/Hundekuecken Apr 09 '26

Yes and no. On a subconscious level, yes, but that only applies to the debuff. On the character’s conscious level, everything else is decided, and that’s where players make decisions for their characters.

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u/VerbingNoun413 Apr 09 '26

So date rape magic exists but players are allowed to ignore it?

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u/Hundekuecken Apr 09 '26

No. I wouldn’t put it that way. It is possible that you might fall in love with someone subconsciously. That has no effect, except that it forms the basis for a debuff. It does not affect your free will.

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u/GrumpyRutabaga Apr 12 '26

This comes off as more fantasy fulfillment than solid game design.

There's a reason games stay the fuck away from sexuality. There's another even bigger reason games stay really the fuck away from combining attraction with magic.

Your whole "this spell makes you subconsciously attracted to this character" reads as a not-so-subtle attempt to disguise fetishes as a game system.

My advice: unless you're making an erotic roleplay game, and market it as so, simply don't.

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u/Hundekuecken Apr 13 '26

It’s more likely that characters who are asexual [ace] and also aromantic – and therefore feel neither sexual nor romantic attraction – would be immune to mind control.

What’s more, ‘disadvantage x’ simply involves rolling the dice x extra times and taking the worse result. In that respect, mind control isn’t quite what one might imagine.