How do you feel about nudity in RPG books?

[Umbran]

It isn't pornographic but it has some hints of nudity in it and arguably the nudity makes the image work.

Well, here's a major point - humans are strange beasts, such that "hints of nudity" and actual nudity are qualitatively different things.

 

[Umbran]

Well I use vector software, so there are no pixels until I export the image to bitmap format.

Which is a technicality aside from the actual point.

Consider that I create hundreds of maps each year.

And you figure my point about "rehearsal" didn't apply?

Come on, dude.

 

[gamerprinter]

And you figure my point about "rehearsal" didn't apply?

Come on, dude.

You may consider that rehearsal if you like, I don't. I consider every map usable in games and a final product on its own. I can't help it that every map I make is an improvement to the previous. Unlike theater, my "rehearsals" aren't practice sessions without an audience, every map gets used as a final "product" and is potentially sellable. I don't do sketches (not even when hand-drawing). Anything I start will be completed (and most likely in that same day).

If you're trying to state that everything we do (everything) is practice for doing it tomorrow, then I suppose everything we do is a rehearsal. In that very general way, perhaps what you're saying is true, but I don't consider any map as a rehearsal. I consider each map a "final performance". I may never again make a map that has specifics that will ever be repeated in another map. Every map is it's own project and how I present the details aren't necessarily compared to any previously created map (or map to follow). Almost in every case, every map is a test to do something new - new technique or application.

With every map, I can almost say, I've never done this before.

 

[Hand of Evil]

I have no problem with it but it seems to be a phobia in our times and culture (U.S.A.) and because of that, I think you have to be careful of your audience. Ask yourself, can this effect be accomplished with non-nude figures.

 

[UselessTriviaMan]

Damn. I don't think I wanted to learn that Black Tokyo even existed.

No mature gaming group would ever even entertain the possibility of playing a game like that. (And I'll go ahead and clarify - "mature" and "over the age of eighteen" are not the same thing.) Role playing games are social activities, and NO ONE wants to act out hentai scenes. That's a majorly scary level of creepiness that would not only get you kicked out of my game, but out of my social circles entirely. I'd want to steer wayyy clear of a person who thinks this is okay behavior. Seriously.

As for the brownie goddess image? Totally appropriate, as long as it's tastefully done.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I have no problem with it but it seems to be a phobia in our times and culture (U.S.A.) and because of that, I think you have to be careful of your audience. Ask yourself, can this effect be accomplished with non-nude figures.

I think it is important to consider your audience, but as I said earlier, there are now so many different factions with their own lines in the sand, I kind of reached the point where I just stopped worrying about it. My main concern is if people will understand what we are trying to do (so do they get that some of this art may not be 100% literal representation of what is going on in the setting) and developing a sense of what the overall landscape is on this issue (is it something where 90% of people aggressively object, or is it 20% or 5%).

 

[Bedrockgames]

Well, here's a major point - humans are strange beasts, such that "hints of nudity" and actual nudity are qualitatively different things.

It was just an example. There are also images that use stark nudity to good effect I think.

 

[Balesir]

While I admire your optimism here, can you think of anything less essential regarding a person's sexuality than the mere mechanical measurements of attraction? How can we possibly say that's meaningful exploration of the theme?

I think we may be in agreement that exploration of the experience, much less the sensations of attraction and sexual encounters cannot be the theme of play if that play is not to become simply a means of self gratification or something way more personal than the term "game" usually represents. That is why the mechanics and attributes come in; it is somewhat akin to realistic combat. Some folk like to explore a sort of wierd "glorious bashing" surrogate for fighting that is anything but realistic, but generally all that is required of game combat is the outcome - the story, rather than the experience (which is what I mean is sought when I say "exploration" is the theme of play). After all, the experience of getting a ruptured spleen is one that few people genuinely want to explore... in the same way, sexual experience is best explored outside the RPG context, as I see it.

Nevertheless, the exploration of how attraction and sexual congress affect other interactions - business, politics or just everyday life, "soap opera" style - is a common topic of examination in diverse media and could, I think, work well in RPGs if the supporting systems to "abstract" the erotic bit were sufficiently strong.

As you say, though, somewhat off topic. To answer the original question, though, nudity as such wouldn't bother me at all, but then I don't have young kids. North America seems to be way more sensitive about nudity than folk I meet over here in Europe, but even that I suspect might be heavily related to proximity to the "religious right" (in geographical, not just political terms, that is).

 

[Celebrim]

I think we may be in agreement that exploration of the experience, much less the sensations of attraction and sexual encounters cannot be the theme of play if that play is not to become simply a means of self gratification or something way more personal than the term "game" usually represents. That is why the mechanics and attributes come in; it is somewhat akin to realistic combat.

I agree that the comparison to realistic combat is apt, but I don't take that comparison the direction you do. Not only is the actual experience of a ruptured spleen something most players want to avoid, but many - if not most - seem to also want to avoid dwelling on the imagined experience of a ruptured spleen. Indeed, any graphic fetishizing of inflicting violence on persons and exploring that would probably strike a great many posters as being at least as problematic and disturbing as intense fascination with sexual matters at the gaming table. This tends to be doubly true because the two things often seem to go hand in hand. I note for example a general lack of complex rules for inflicting torture or having torture inflicted on you in most mainstream games. I think this is true for two reasons pertinent to the subject, first, that most games don't want to suggest that exploring being tortured or inflicting torture is a routine aspect of play to be played out even in the abstract. And second, that most game systems tend to want to avoid abrogation of player free will as a routine aspect of play.

GMs forcing players into sexual situations and particular sexual outcomes, or players forcing other players, because the rules say so is something that I'd think most people would want to avoid however abstractly we resolve the situation.

Nevertheless, the exploration of how attraction and sexual congress affect other interactions - business, politics or just everyday life, "soap opera" style - is a common topic of examination in diverse media and could, I think, work well in RPGs if the supporting systems to "abstract" the erotic bit were sufficiently strong.

I'm at a complete loss to imagine what sort of mechanics you are suggesting here, and without something concrete in mind, I can't really judge where your are going with this thought. What mechanics do you need that aren't just special applications of more general social mechanics? Many systems already allow characters to have a special 'attractive' benefit that smooth some aspect of social interaction with potential romantic or erotic partners, as a nod to the fact that being attractive tends to affect other sorts of interactions.

I tend to be of the opinion that detailed mechanical process resolution of social situations is an anathema to good role playing. I've written essays as to why in the past I ought to dig up, but the basic idea is that since violent combat cannot be played out at the table, it is made more cinematic and more concrete by increasing detail in the rules (provided they don't slow play down too much). Conversely, social interactions - actual conversations, for example - are made less concrete and less easy to imagine when we add increasing detail to the rules because you can actually do them at the table. Assuming we regard sex in a similar category to graphic violence as something we prefer to not having acted out at the table, your extra rules won't make the thing more abstract but rather less so.

What part of the process of romance or sexuality do you feel the need to get more concrete details regarding via rules because you feel they are missing from your gaming?

Nudity per se doesn't bother me at all - it's usage I approve of in art like the Sistene Chapel or Schindler's List to name a couple that immediately come to mind. I've got no real problem with locker rooms or doctor's offices. I've got two kids. I used to go caving, and a certain clinical attitude regarding the human body is sometimes required in mixed groups that would be immodest and inappropriate in other settings. But the fact that I usually see nudity coming along as a marker of a raft of other attitudes I find problematic does bother me, and generally it's presence in gaming material (and elsewhere) has not been marker of maturity and health but rather much more often the converse. Whether it means I'm sensitive or not, I find it's touching on subject matter that requires a deft artistic touch whether we mean it as marker of primitiveness, poverty, innocence, exploitation, shame, helplessness, motherhood, or eroticism or some complicated mixture of all that.

Still, I can think of worse things to be accused of than sensitivity. Surely if censure is due to any group, it would be with regard to their lack of sensitivity and attention to nuance, rather than their abundance of it.

 

[nomotog]

I wonder how people are picturing the mechanics around sex working? Like have people thought about it and what mechanical form it would take? As a whole social play tends to play out completely different then most other forms of interaction. Like it's often very detailed and concrete compared to other elements.