Yes, the options for roleplay in D&D can be as varied as our imagination allows... But honestly, in all the games I've participated in, the intimate connection between player characters, if there was any roleplay, it was only in a "roll of the dice" format, no one ever verbally describes anything. There can be some jokes, like the party mage throws a silence spell on the door, or in the morning a character comes down the stairs to the common room of the tavern, sings a romantic song, throws a 1, gets a terrible yell, everyone feels bad about it, but he feels good, and he is chaotic-evil and he feels even better about it. This can be interesting for character motivation, especially in evil parties with internecine intrigue when two people start leading the game against the leader of the group, and in good parties for extra character enlivening, roleplay embellishment. The DM can take advantage of this to create a situation like kidnapping, etc.
But in BG3 in terms of sexualization is clearly not to blame the fans of D&D, they have nothing to do with it. A recent lecture by the romance feature lead Baudelaire Welch lifted the veil of mystery as to who this is all for. Quote:
«So, take the bear scene from Baldur's Gate 3. Why did it make such an impact? This is what it meant to me while I was involved with pitching it.
Look, this was not in the depths of my subconscious when I was pitching it. A sort of shit-eating grin was on my face when I was pitching it. But this is what it culturally means to me. It feels like a watershed moment in gaming history, where the fanfiction community felt like we were not a subculture within a fandom, but the majority audience that the game was catering to.
just in perhaps one scene or, you know, in a series of scenes, but still the majority audience. Players in the fan fiction communities had been joking for years post-Early Access about the different degenerate things they wanted to do with Druid Daddy Holson, and we gave them an incredibly silly scene which takes an identity moniker from the gay community literally. The gay bear becomes the gay bear.
And we gave them something which feels like it's from the tradition of CrackFic and present it as if it's a mainstream game feature. And then you feel like all the time you spent horny queer shitposting with your friends in your Discord is validated. It is real. It is a wonderful way of engaging with the game. It's seen. And how many other games on this sort of scale have made you feel that way?»
Time of the cited quote: 15.10
Judging by this lecture, it's for the " shitposters from Discord" and fanfiction audience.
