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For instance, Kate Gray (2015) explains what the heartbreak felt like when her female avatar’s ‘boyfriend’ in the game, Dorian, came out to her. For many, his presence marked a turning point for openly and ‘legitimately’ gay digital game characters. Although this companion mage was not the first homosexual in a digital role-playing game (RPG), his introduction sparked considerable controversy on social media (Giant Bomb 2015 Grill 2014 Makuch 2014). In 2014, a non-player character called Dorian Pavus was introduced in Dragon Age: Inquisition (BioWare, 2014). I didn’t design my character to be gay, but then it’s never really a choice, and when I realized this I actually felt as if he’d come out to me, his creator. Is queerness to be found in the romance mechanic, or crunch, of RPGs, or is it part of the fluff: the setting and character descriptions? This article’s orientation is theoretical, and the main reference material here comes from RPG studies as well as queer game studies. We ask how queerness affects the options for romance, whether localised in an event or in the composition of a single character, and what kind of exploration it serves. We will look into a variety of role-playing games as research material in this study, from non-digital play – such as traditional tabletop role-playing games to live action role-play, or larp – to single-player digital RPGs. We are interested in finding out how ‘queer’ appears in the composition of role-playing games through analysing players’ explorations and performances, as well as the options for romance in these games. This article investigates various kinds of analog and digital role-playing games (RPG) from the perspective of queer romance.