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It's quite regressive for a 2020s game based in a genre where we can and do roleplay with pronouns that weren't assigned to us or our characters. At the *VERY LEAST* we should be able to opt for they/them pronouns in case the pronouns we do go by aren't listed (or kept to the other sex for ease of programming).

There are other features that I feel are missing, but that's for other threads.

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How would you like that portrayed in game? The only place gender reference shows up is when other people reference us while talking to others, and that happens only very rarely. The extreme vast majority of the time, saving only two or three examples, it happens coming from individuals who only just met us, or who haven't met us at all, and who generally do not know us in the slightest.

At the risk of wading into something I have no intention of engaging further with, I would personally find it extremely immersion-breaking and jarring to have every individual in the world automatically psychically know our character's reference preference on first sight... in fact it's a deeply unhelpful and unhealthy trope that has been happening, where people act, assume and roleplay as though non-binary identifying individuals are somehow magically visible as such from a hundred feet away; we're not. People don't know that; it's not visible. So when the bandit sees me trying to sneak explosives into their base, and sees my distinctly female physical body, that bandit will point and shout "stop her!". They won't stop to ask my reference preference, and they won't know it automatically either. That's okay; I wouldn't expect them to. It would be unfair of me to expect them to.

The only place where this could realistically come up would be for companions and camp followers, and even then, it can only come up when they are talking to someone else about us - an extreme, extreme rarity. We can suppose, yes, that if it's important to the character, that they will inform their camp followers and allies of it in the grey off-camera space of camping and travelling together... so after a short while travelling together, they might be marked to use your preference from a list of three (male, female, unknown/neutral), since each would require a rerecording. You might hear those references three times in the course of your entire game; that will certainly be worth it to some, I'm not denying that... but it would be an exceptionally minor impact on the game, for what would be a lot of extra work with the flagging and code base and choice ui design and line recording.

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" Political correctness is a path that many consider... madness. "
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Whatever might still occur in our real world that just gives me shivers or cringe, I hope that Fae'run stays Fae'run.
And that the Forgotten Realms stay the Forgotten Realms.

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I'd like it portrayed as simply as having they/them pronouns spoken out in instances where the player's referred to as she/her or he/him. You said so yourself that other characters don't know us, so by default, they should just use what everyone uses for someone they don't know: they/them. People use it all the time without having to put any effort in.

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Originally Posted by EnzeruAnimeFan
I'd like it portrayed as simply as having they/them pronouns spoken out in instances where the player's referred to as she/her or he/him. You said so yourself that other characters don't know us, so by default, they should just use what everyone uses for someone they don't know: they/them. People use it all the time without having to put any effort in.

I am sorry, I am very much for tolerance and political correctness, but I travel a lot for work (I spend 150 - 200 days a year in countries all around the world), and nowhere/never has somebody used they/them to address me.

Is this something people in some areas in the USA do?

Because in the places I have been last year (Quebec, Canada; Buenos Aires, Argentinia; Vienna, Austria; Lyon, France; Gislaved, Sweden; Orizaba, Mexico), I didn't meet a person who addressed me with the pornouns they/them or wanted to be addressed this way.

I don't want to mock you or in any way offend you, I am just curious and this is a genuine question.

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Originally Posted by JustAnotherBaldu
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" Political correctness is a path that many consider... madness. " [...]

Whatever might still occur in our real world that just gives me shivers or cringe, I hope that Fae'run stays Fae'run.
And that the Forgotten Realms stay the Forgotten Realms.

Not very helpful. Whatever I feel about the subject matter it isn't an invitation to discuss real-world politics, so please don't.


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Originally Posted by daMichi
Originally Posted by EnzeruAnimeFan
I'd like it portrayed as simply as having they/them pronouns spoken out in instances where the player's referred to as she/her or he/him. You said so yourself that other characters don't know us, so by default, they should just use what everyone uses for someone they don't know: they/them. People use it all the time without having to put any effort in.

I am sorry, I am very much for tolerance and political correctness, but I travel a lot for work (I spend 150 - 200 days a year in countries all around the world), and nowhere/never has somebody used they/them to address me.

Is this something people in some areas in the USA do?

Because in the places I have been last year (Quebec, Canada; Buenos Aires, Argentinia; Vienna, Austria; Lyon, France; Gislaved, Sweden; Orizaba, Mexico), I didn't meet a person who addressed me with the pornouns they/them or wanted to be addressed this way.

I don't want to mock you or in any way offend you, I am just curious and this is a genuine question.


I couldn't agree with you more I live on the east coast in the US and never have I been addressed as they/them it's always been he/him/his and I prefer it that way since I am a straight male. Now don't get me wrong here I'm not trying to start anything or offend anyone I'm just not into the whole politically correctness thing. And you have to remember the time line of the game as well.

Last edited by DragonMaster69; 12/01/21 07:25 AM.
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It's primarily something that you find in internet culture, not in the real face-to-face flesh and blood world.

The wilds of the internet, and the actual functional real world in which people live and interact with others face to face are two very different things. When you have no sense markers at all, you'll generally use an unknown or undefined reference - so in online settings, the use of neutral terms of reference is absolutely the norm, and is polite. We also do this in the real world when talking about or referencing someone that we haven't met before or don't know who isn't present, and thus whom we have no sense markers for (at least until someone else passes that information to us). When we have sense markers to inform us, however we go with them unless someone informs us otherwise or corrects us. This is perfectly fine; our brains are wired that way - that is, to take in information from our senses and create an approximation of the world around us based on that information. As more information is supplied, we refine and update that image. It's healthy, and there is nothing wrong with that. Attempts to change this practice based on internet culture only ever succeed in creating less clarity.

It is not the norm in the real world outside of the internet, and that's actually perfectly okay. There's nothing wrong with being wrong, and being corrected. It doesn't hurt anybody, and it doesn't (or shouldn't) cause upset unless it is actively done out of malice... in which case it's not the act but the intent that is harmful, and it's best not to confuse those two.

I don't think anyone wants to ruffle anyone else' feathers here; I'm sure no-one intends anything harsh or argumentative... However, I personally would find it very jarring and immersion-breaking if everyone outside of camp followers and companions, everywhere, used neutral terms of reference for your character, all the time. It would be really off-putting to me. It would be especially off-putting if they did so only based on a choice that I made for my character in character creation personally, that they have no way of knowing about.

Edit to add: To a certain extent, language does come into play here as well. Using neutral terms of reference in English suffers a mild level of potential confusion, because we have the same word usage for both undefined or unknown, as we do for a plural. Other languages, on the other hand, may handle this far easier - any language that has a single term pronoun reference that directly just means 'that person', wouldn't have this problem. French, for example, has a neuter, but its neuter is equivalent to inanimates and insentients, so it's not appropriate for neutral personal reference; other languages may have a more elegant way of phrasing that doesn't hit that hurdle. You might see this sort of thing make the transition to a real world space more easily in places where the language suites it. I only speak English, Latin, a bit of French, a bit of Japanese and Mooglish, so my knowledge isn't complete.

Last edited by Niara; 12/01/21 07:43 AM. Reason: Addendum
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@Niara You are so right and not knowing what country you are from but as for me living on the east coast of the US these days there are plenty out there getting upset at just about everything and it's nerve-wracking, too say the least.

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Is the Ogre going confirm before it makes the move to crush your skull?

Is the MC going to double check with the Drow when trying to infiltrate the Goblin camp?

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I'm almost certain this is a troll attempt, but in the event it isn't...

I've had a lot of trans and "gender non-conforming" friends in my life, and not a single one of them actually talks like this. NONE of them have ever explicitly stated their pronouns in conversation, and they ALL address people as he or she depending on how they present themselves outwardly; that is to say they all assume the other person's gender. It's very safe to say in a fantasy world besieged by magical and mythical creatures, not a single person in existence would have the time to be worrying about someone else's pronouns and how "regressive" it is to see if someone has bumps on their chest or hair on their face to determine if they're male or female.

Even ignoring real life politics, I'm fairly confident using they/them to refer to or address people in normal conversation is completely immersion breaking. They/them is used almost exclusively to refer to multiple individuals or singular individuals whose gender is unknown or unspecified. When someone sees you and can identify your sex, "they" no longer applies, and a consistent effort from NPCs to use those pronouns would completely take you out of the experience when they otherwise refer to other NPCs' gender correctly.

Last edited by Fisher; 12/01/21 09:19 AM.
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This is a touchy subject, and while I understand where people are coming from, it just feels awkward when you take into account immersion vs meta knowledge. I understand, support, and call people what they prefer to be called in real life, but in this kind of settings, most people are strangers and they do not know what you want to be called, and it may require additional resources to creating gating periodically if you need dialogue tree to make them call you a certain pronounce. Using a gender neutral pronounce would technically works, but they do not sound natural. I have not seen people use they/their under most circumstances. If they know what a person wants to be referred to as such, sure, but in general, they will not refer to you specifically as they/their. Maybe someone could convince me otherwise, but I don't see much merrit in multiple pronounce or gender netral for these dialogues on top of regular way people addressing a gender. On a side note, I find the whole gender pronounce is also very language dependent. In my native language, there is no masculine/feminine pronounce when you're referring to someone, so it's pretty interesting to see how passionate people are about it in English speaking community.

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I'm locking this thread.

As Vometia mentioned upthread, this is a forum for discussing the BG3 game. The discussion of real-life politics, however worthy or reasonable, belongs elsewhere. The responses here demonstrated that it is apparently impossible to separate RL from the game for some people.

I am locking it before it becomes toxic because experience has shown that such topics quickly descend into arguments we don't want to see on the forum.

Last edited by Sadurian; 12/01/21 09:58 AM.

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