Article on Same Sex Romance in RPG at Slate.msn.com
Posted Friday, April 9, 2004 - 13:43 CET by chevalier

Slate.msn.com have posted an article on same sex romance in computer games, especially RPG and most notably the Temple of Elemental Evil. After a brief summary of same sex romance opportunities in games, they move on to men playing attractive female characters, effeminate male NPCs and straight players facing unwanted same sex courtship.

How's this for virtual reality? Even as President Bush tries to squash gay marriage with the Constitution, same-sex unions are beginning to crop up in video games. Recently, Atari released The Temple of Elemental Evil, a computer game based with nerdish precision on the actual dice-and-paper Dungeons & Dragons rules. It has the requisite elf magic and fighting orcs—but it also has a gay wedding, as Matthew D. Barton described in his (rather stunned) online review of the game. Barton brought his scrappy band of adventurers into a town where they met a slave character named Bertram. He explained that if Barton could defeat Bertram's master in battle, Bertram would repay him by marrying one of the male members of his group. Barton duly won Bertram's freedom and watched as two male characters were cheerfully wed.

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