D&D 5E Do you allow adult situations in your games?

[Nebulous]

Actually I've read novels in FR that would put Westeros to shame, I've read FR novels, with attempted sexual assaults, drow rape revenge brothels, childern being tortured by relatives, alot of brothels, incest, magical mutalation, genitial mutilation, executions, childern being turned into abominations yet retaining something of the innocent child to them, sadomasicstisic Shadar-Kai, oppressive Drow Matericarcies, a Goddess of Pain, a Goddess of Brothels, horrifying forms of undead that make zombies, vampires, seem like saturday morning cartoons, battles the come off as violence porn, soul death, attempted infanticide (leading to the infant being crippled), violent rape, enchantment magic based rape, demonic and devilish worship, achololism, severe drug abuse of various sorts, Lovecraftian horror, genocide, murder, war, war crimes, LGTB issues, men's issues, women's issues, slavery, poverty, crime, horrifying hells of various forms, the slow brutal and disgusting mutalation and torture of Elminster is very graphic terms, assassinations, sex, nudity, orgies, slaughtered families, damnation and I'm sure I'm missing something.

Even during FRs most innocent days during the TSR days, stuff got through.

That's right, The Crystal Shard had all that. Drizzt was such a perv.

 

[Grainger]

For me, NPC's torturing one another is fine to generalize, but I need to know how dark my player has gone in his torture, it has important ramifications on how the rest of the party will view him if they were present, how NPC's will react and if he can even maintain his alignment. Torture is pretty broad, did he tie a guy to a chair and punch him around a bit, or did he strap him to a table and pull finger nails, there's a big big difference there. If the party isn't present, I will generally give the rest of the players a smoke break and quickly go through it with him, so their opinions aren't altered and affect the character's relationships with out of game personal feelings.

Fair points!

 

[Grainger]

Actually I've read novels in FR that would put Westeros to shame, I've read FR novels, with attempted sexual assaults, drow rape revenge brothels, childern being tortured by relatives, alot of brothels, incest, magical mutalation, genitial mutilation, executions, childern being turned into abominations yet retaining something of the innocent child to them, sadomasicstisic Shadar-Kai, oppressive Drow Matericarcies, a Goddess of Pain, a Goddess of Brothels, horrifying forms of undead that make zombies, vampires, seem like saturday morning cartoons, battles the come off as violence porn, soul death, attempted infanticide (leading to the infant being crippled), violent rape, enchantment magic based rape, demonic and devilish worship, achololism, severe drug abuse of various sorts, Lovecraftian horror, genocide, murder, war, war crimes, LGTB issues, men's issues, women's issues, slavery, poverty, crime, horrifying hells of various forms, the slow brutal and disgusting mutalation and torture of Elminster is very graphic terms, assassinations, sex, nudity, orgies, slaughtered families, damnation and I'm sure I'm missing something.

Even during FRs most innocent days during the TSR days, stuff got through.

I shall give those a miss then.

 

[Grainger]

However, If I was involved in a game where a PC was running around raping people, or going into lurid detail about some weird sex scene, I wouldn't stand for it. Subjecting other people to your weird fetish is a good way to get smacked across the face.

Yeah, I was subjected to something of this nature in a game many years ago. Can't ever unhear that!

To be fair, if people want to do this sort of thing in RPGs, that's fine, but they need to be aware that not all of the other players want to hear their... stuff. Therefore, it's always a good idea to explain/discuss the style at the start of a campaign, or when players join. Not just "no sex please" or "anything goes" or whatever, but you can cover a few things like how magic-rich the campaign is, treasure levels, levelling speed, etc., just to manage expectations, make sure everyone's happy with this, and get a feel for if this is going to be an issue down the line.

 

[Grainger]

We don't have any children around so we cuss and are crude if we want to be. I usually don't add "adult" stuff, although I have from time to time, such as half-demon/drow brothels where the females are impregnated in chambers to birth demon children. That particular arc was very adult, but it was short lived. Romance is usually not something i find enjoyable in a D&D game.

Ah, you old romantic, you.


;-)

 

[Drudenfusz]

For me it depends on two factors. 1st and the more important one is who is at the table, some people don't like that in their gaming, also of course if you have children at the table it would be quite inappropiate. 2nd and still important is for me the setting (which is often based on a certain genre), not every setting is has to be include such topics, look for excample at Star Wars, it trys generally to stay family friendy, and so won't include any more than is be in the movies. That said, I like the books of A Song of Ice and Fire (and also the Game of Thrones TV adaptation), and would personally not mind any of that to be in a D&D setting (probably in Dark Sun, which is already quite nasty that would fit, at least better than the other D&D settings, maybe also Ravenloft, even though I am not sure how many undead would be useful for that...)

 

[gyor]

Its not all FR novels having that in them, its spread out and in specific ones. Paul Kemp's tend to be very adult in nature, and novel about Shadar Kai primarily is very sadomasockistic such as the broken chain books, anything involving the drow tends to be very dark, the War of the Spider Queen and Homeland series in pacticular, Erin M. Evans books tend to have alot of swearing in them, both in english and Draconian, the older books tend to be less adult in nature usually, with a few exceptions. I personally perfer the more adult tone, not that I didn't enjoy many of the older books of course. WotC is less inclined towards censorship then TSR I think. Your allowed to say brothel now for example, although Erin still seems to like using the term feasthall perhaps for the sake of tradition, as well as coin lass/lad. Seriously FR has its own prostitution terminology, hell it practically has its own prostitution pantheon, and fiends.

 

[gyor]

Your porn reference actually reminds me of an adventure location I wrote up: it's a ruined temple of a deity of love/lust. The statues and frescoes were all of an amorous/erotic nature, and one of my players busted out laughing when I described a stained glass window depicting a satyr with a comically large phallus which was adorned with wreathes of flowers.

Actually to my knowledge there has not been a D&D porn parody yet sadly, but a fun movie with magic and sword fighting is Pirates! And Pirates II: Stignetii's revenege, starring pornstar Jesse Jane amoung others.

 

[DMZ2112]

The slow brutal and disgusting mutalation and torture of Elminster is very graphic terms

Just forced myself to finish Elminster in Hell because I'd enjoyed The Herald, Making of a Mage, and Elminster in Myth Drannor so much. What a train wreck. Should have trusted my gut and taken Temptation of Elminster as a warning. Fortunately Elminster's Daughter is back to Greenwood's usual excellent form.

But speaking of Elminster in these terms: that mage simply cannot keep his wand in his robes.

For my part, while I don't have a problem with nearly any kind of violence in D&D (let's call a morningstar a morningstar, the game involves a lot of murder), I try to keep things ESRB-Teen or PEGI-12. Anything more graphic just doesn't feel like D&D. I don't avoid topics, but I do avoid graphic descriptions.

I keep sex as far away from the table as possible for the same reason. I've never had a PC pursue a romantic relationship in play, and any interactions with prostitutes have been handled as a perfunctory erasing of coin from the character sheet.

...I will admit to once trolling a dungeon master with a whoring halfling pirate and his adventuring party fetish, but I am a terrible player and cannot be held accountable for my actions when removed from behind the screen.

 

[Lanefan]

I still own a copy of the BoEF, and I usually say that it is both a good book and a bad book. It's bad in the sense that most of the mechanical bits (feats, % chance of conception table, table of fantasy world STDs, and so on) aren't good.

Which to me was a colossal disappointment; I was hoping for something better than I'd already made up on my own, and didn't get it. Things it lacked (or didn't do nearly well enough):

- a comprehensive chart of what can breed with what, including monsters, deities, etc.*, and chances of conception for each combination
- a genetics chart and some guidelines to indicate how past interbreeding might affect descendants (e.g. what are the mechanical and-or fluff effects if I am 1/16 Centaur?)*
- a continuation of said genetics chart showing which racial bloodlines tend to be recessive and which are dominant
- a table for use during initial roll-up to determine whether my character is pure in its race or whether it has some odd genetics in its background (a.k.a. taints table)*
- a childbirth table giving gender chance by race, deformity chance, twins-triplets-etc. chance, stillbirth chance, etc.*
- I seem to recall they gave some guidelines on what a child's eventual core 6 stats would probably be if those of the parents were known*, but I also recall it not being very well thought through

* - these are things I've put together myself over the years, but I'd prefer something from a professional designer instead of my homebrew.

However, there's a very good section at the beginning of the book that talks about the topics of sex in RPGs, the human tendency to be humorous about sex to ease or cover discomfort, different models of marriage and divorce, and so on.

True.

Lan-"taken to the nth degree it is rather frightening how many interbreeding possibilities there are in a typical fantasy world"-efan