Profile: Matt Hydeman on gay gamers

While there have been countless articles done on "woman in roleplaying" and "Christians in roleplaying", one thing I haven't seen much coverage of is gaming from a gay perspective. I sat down with Matt Hydeman, a Marshal with the Southern Arizona Gamers Association (SAGA) and asked him about being a gay gamer.

Berin Kinsman: As always, I'll start with obvious interview questions: When did you start roleplaying, how did you get started, and what was the first game you played?

Matt Hydeman: It was around 1981 or 1982.  The very first roleplaying game I played was D&D 1st Edition, but mine wasn't the "Red Box", instead it was a purple box that contained the GM's Manual, the Player's Guide, one adventure that I want to say was simply titled "Dungeon of Doom" (though I may be completely off) and those plastic dice that  one had to use the enclosed crayon on, grinding the wax into the numerals so one could read them.  I still have those dice, even today...though I'm not quite sure where they are in my apartment.

BK: Those dice were hard to color sometimes. I broke a d20 once, gripping it too hard while I colored in the numbers.

MH: I just tried to "color" the sides of the dice; my sister, Laura, exasperated by me not getting any wax into the "engravings" on the dice, snatched them out of my hands, grabbed the crayon and rather savagely jammed the black wax into the engravings on all the dice and then dropped them on the table.  I didn't even get the geek privilege to "set up" my very first set of dice!

BK: I never saw the "Purple box" set. What was in it?

MH: I think the "Purple Box" was a special collection of D&D stuff for those companies that had boys and girls shilling wrapping paper and greeting cards door to door.  I did that for a while when I was 9 or 10 and it was completely miserable; I think the game was the only thing I had enough points to buy and then I gave up the whole "traveling saleskid" routine!

BK: I've never heard of anyone breaking in roleplaying quite that way before. That's actually pretty cool. did it succeed in getting you into D&D?

MH: I dabbled in D&D briefly at that point, but any games I played were poorly run and nobody really seemed to know what was supposed to happen, even if one read the books.  It  wasn't until 1986 that I stepped into the role of GM for the James Bond 007 game -- at that point, already three years old and on its last legs.  There was a lot of off and on flirtations with roleplaying for me until I got to be a junior in high school.

BK: What happened when you were a junior in high school?

MH: I bought the "rebooted" edition of Chill that Mayfair Games had put out and immediately it "clicked" for me.  I bought some of the other Chill sourcebooks, but with the exception of the starter adventure, I wrote all the adventures the Envoys [the PCs] went on.  That was also the first time that I saw a gaming company setting up their vision of what the Chill "universe" would have ahead of it, down the road.  Knowing that Mayfair was slated to release new material that would deal with the destruction of SAVE [the secret occult organization that the Envoys were affiliated with] and its aftermath, I started laying the groundwork in my adventures so that I could hint at the disaster about to befall SAVE.  Sufficed to say my players were very intrigued by what was to come!
    
Sadly, I never got to see any of the post-SAVE Chill material; I think Mayfair decided Chill was a lost cause and canceled the whole RPG.
I'm not sure why; horror has a thousand different ways you can go, but if people weren't buying, I suppose I can understand Mayfair's decision.

One thing I -am- proud of during my tenure as a "Chillmaster" -- I made a United States Marine scream in terror after one particularly frightening encounter!  Small pleasures....

After graduating high school, I stopped roleplaying for several years, but by graduate school, I did live-action roleplaying; that was my first encounter with White Wolf and Vampire: The Masquerade.  I was the only player to retain the same character in the 2.5 years that we  LARPed and I recently reprised the character at the Vampire LARP put on at the 2008 RinCon here in Tucson.  I don't know if my character's survival meant I was clever, or just very lucky!

 
BK: There's been a lot written about women in roleplaying, but I don't think I've ever seen any coverage of gay gamers. Or have I missed something?

MH: I think the whole "gay gamer" concept is pretty niche.  Not that it's unimportant, but it seems to me that in matters of roleplaying, the idea of gender seems to be more important to people than sexual orientation.  It's "how many guys are playing 'X' game versus how many women?"

Have you missed something?  Well, perhaps so, but I admit my lack of knowledge as to who in the industry is a "big name" who could or does comment on the whole "gay gamers"  idea.  I know there are LBGT folk who write for various companies (Wizards of the Coast, White Wolf, etc.), but I personally don't know one person who "carries the banner"  talking about gay gamers.

BK: Why do you think there's so little coverage?

MH: Maybe that's just because in the whole scheme of things, it really doesn't matter -- gamers are gamers, no matter who you happen to be in bed with. Or as I said before,  maybe it's just so niche that one just exhausts what you can put the "gay spin" on after a short time.

BK: Straight men playing female characters is looked on as kind of weird and creepy. Women in general play female characters, but when they do play men there doesn't seem to be  a stigma. Straight people of either gender seem to always to play straight characters. Have you noticed any trends among gay gamers in terms of player character gender or orientation?

MH: Well, I think my perspective on this is going to be slightly skewed, only because I've actively chosen to play female characters for various RPG and interactive fiction games from time to time for over 15 years now.  My choice in doing so has nothing to do with me being an openly gay male; it's more about me making a creative decision.  For  example, when I joined the MCU: Gotham game (using Primetime Adventures - BK) that Thomas Deeny (President of SAGA) was running, there was only one female character in the game  to something like 3-4 male characters.  It seemed wildly unbalanced, so I thought in bringing in another female character, it would even things out a little bit.

I know I got a couple of looks from the other gamers when I proposed my character concept for MCU. "What??  This guy's going to play a woman in this game?" But by the time we  reached the game's "season finale," it wasn't even an issue.  I was playing a bitchy, deceptive Internal Affairs detective who happened to be a female. But to specifically answer your question, I haven't noticed any trends among gay gamers regarding gender or orientation. I think most people play their own gender unless  there's a compelling reason not to.  And I don't think a character's orientation comes into play unless the game requires it to be so.

BK: One of the things female gamers have written about extensively is the level of sexism that can be present. I think that was more true in the early days of the hobby, but it  obviously still exists. Has being gay ever been an issue within the gaming circles you've played with?

MH: I agree that there's still an air of sexism about the gaming world, which is unfortunate.  It's enough that when someone asks what you like to do in your spare time and you  tell them you're a gamer -- almost immediately they tend to think about the stereotypes that some mainstream media put out; you're a virgin, you're overweight, you're socially inept and oh, isn't it great that you can pretend to be someone else in another time and place because certainly you're never going to be that great in real life?
   
But if the person asking you is a gamer, it's totally different, because gamers understand other gamers.  They may not know the game you're playing, but they understand what it  really means to be a gamer.

I think I've been blessed in my gaming "career". I've always interacted with people who didn't care that I was gay, or if they did, it wasn't something they brought up at the  table or to my face.  I don't hide my sexual orientation, but I also don't make it the focus of everything I do. I'm just this guy who you might find out is gay or you might  never know.

BK: I know that other communities (Christians, feminists, academia) have people with strong opinions on how roleplaying fits in, or doesn't fit in, with their values and culture. Are there any active opinions toward roleplaying in the gay community, pro or con?

MH: Well, from my personal experience, when you talk about "roleplaying" in the gay community, you're not talking about D&D or Primetime Adventures. 98% of the time you're  talking about sexual roles -- coach/athlete, boss/employee and so on.  So I have to make sure I'm clear about just what type of "roleplaying" I'm talking about when I'm chatting  with another gay guy, lest he misunderstand me.

When I explain that I am a gamer and participate in roleplaying games, there has sometimes been a sense of "disapproval" from other gay men.  Not all of them, of course; my ex  and I actually game together in several RPGs, so he certainly understands. But you get gay men who just don't understand it, same as one might get from straight people.  I think  there are just people out there, regardless of orientation, who can't allow themselves to be anyone but themselves.  They're so set in their ways as the person they are that  when you suggest there's a game where you get to be someone else in another time and place...they just can't fathom that!

I suppose I've been blessed not to have academics clucking their disapproval at me, but I have had folks with strong religious convictions tell me that I'm wrong to be  roleplaying; that it's "sinful" and not what God wants me to do in my life.  Seriously?  God's worried that I decided to play a rogue in a fantasy game for a year?  What about global warming?  What about starving children?  Wow.

BK: Thanks for taking the time to talk with me.

MH: You're very welcome. Talking to you, I realize that I have made an impact, in my own way to gaming.