Sex, Sexuality, and Sexual Attitudes

[Draksila]

I have a fascination with personal relationships and romance in real life; it's kind of a defining interest of mine and has led to many years of being the counselor and advice-giver to my friends and acquaintances. As such, the theme comes up in my games. I will note, however, that the themes in my games are usually built around what I think will keep the party's attention; if I'm playing with a kick-down-the-door team, I don't bother with trying to make the NPCs vibrant and realistic. So to answer the question of whether or not sex comes up in my games? Yes and no.

I've had PCs have long-term relationships that ended in tragedy or trailed off into happily ever afters. I've had arranged marriages, passionate marriages, and the somewhat tragic 'elven fling with a human' in which the shorter-lived lover is left holding the bag. We've done murder mysteries revolving around passion turning to hate, I've used gothic villains that turned to dark deeds in the name of love (some redeemable, some not, and some turned out not to actually be villains). We've had a halfling prostitute in one of our campaigns who met the wrong John and had to live the nightmare of killing the father of her unborn twins who were prophecied to be messiahs (it was a really weird campaign). And those are just the D&D examples; add in Call of Cthulhu, Shadowrun, Deadlands, and Champions and I could go on all day.

In contrast, we've had campaigns where the mention of sex or love has been relegated to 'while the mage is making his potions, I'll be in the whorehouse.'

As far as sexuality goes, I honestly don't see it as a big deal. For the most part my players have tended to play what they are, where that subject is concerned, and I admit that the trend has caused a bias in my stories toward straight relationships. Still, I've never specifically barred the subject of alternate sexualities; I just go where the players are most likely to follow the trail to adventure.

 

[Ace]

Sex doesn't show up much in my fantasy game but I assume the whole spectrum is out there rannging from "no desire outside of procreation to anything goes."

As a general rule the only universal taboos are rape, necrophillia, beatiality and pedophillia. Any charcters engaging in them will get a players a booting. Also I don't very have graphic anything for NPC's. An occasional "sheep pimp" joke is a far as it goes.

One squicktastic element I've glossed over is slavery -- slavery is common in the game and legal in many place Its clear that people buy would slaves for concubines but I just "close the curtains" on it

I'll note that since, a there is cheap univeral birth control and b, many religions in the world are based on Wicca or have powerful mother godgess figures women have unusually high levels of sexual freedom in most places. This lets my female players (who often seem to want romance and sex in game) have more fun and makes for an interesting game world.

In most places the old "harlot/whore" shamefest is non existant-- its just sex and its just a job

 

[Desdichado]

I got carried away once as a GM with inventing all new sexual mores for a fantasy culture that went through a period of intense socialization of sexuality as a reaction to a great natural catastrophe. Basically, the birthing and raising of children was seen as a duty by this culture during their time of hardship, and a ruling council decided who was to breed with whom to provide the best offspring necessary to survive the results. The need for the custom had vanished, but this culture still practiced marriage only hesitantly, and upper class women could still be expected to be coupled, at least once in their life, with a hand-chosen sire who was supposed to provide excellent children with her. Upper class men could be expected to do this perhaps slighly more frequently. Otherwise, the bearing of children was seen as a personal choice, completely unrelated to marriage; no official marriage existed.

Anyway, I could go on, but at the end of the day I felt like I had gotten carried away trying to come up with unusual sexual mores for this culture and that it wasn't adding anything to the setting and was actually potentially taking away from it as players got distracted by the weirdness of it all. So I dropped it.

Nowadays, I just assume that sexual practices are more or less as they are in our own culture. Few PCs care about them other than as the occasional joke, although I do have one character who is a riff off of Don Juan, and who has an astronomical Diplomacy skill. He ends up having a lot of sex with NPCs, and I try to turn it into a plot point as often as possible. He's neither discrete nor possessed of much common sense in regards to whom he sleeps with, so it's a GM's dream; PCs that invite trouble all over the place. I have another character; a female half-orc, who's also highly intrigued by the possibilities of being a real sex pot. Of course, she's totally unattractive and scary to everyone she comes on to, but that makes for a good, long-running in-joke.

 

[SHARK]

As a general rule the only universal taboos are rape, necrophillia, beatiality and pedophillia. Any charcters engaging in them will get a players a booting. Also I don't very have graphic anything for NPC's. An occasional "sheep pimp" joke is a far as it goes.

One squicktastic element I've glossed over is slavery --slavery is common in the game and legal in many places. It's clear that people buy would slaves for concubines but I just "close the curtains" on it

I'll note that since, a there is cheap univeral birth control and b, many religions in the world are based on Wicca or have powerful mother goddess figures women have unusually high levels of sexual freedom in most places. This lets my female players (who often seem to want romance and sex in game) have more fun and makes for an interesting game world.

Greetings!

Hey there Ace! (Emphasis added is mine); Indeed, I have never had players that sought to engage in rape, necrophillia, beastiality, or pedophilia. Certainly, I would boot them in a blink if they did! That would definitely be a "What the EFF!" moment.

With such pervasive slavery, yeah, concubinage is a definite reality. My players have often been immediately conscious of that reality for NPC's and such they have encountered that were slaves. Whenever any female NPC's in particular have been rescued or freed from slavery--the women and men alike in my campaigns have been interested especially in their welfare and recovery. And, I might add, that both the women and men have made inquiries of occasionally different angles or motivations--the men have often typically been concerned with the details of the NPC's experiences for purposes of personally exacting swift revenge, or for details in gaining support for prosecution through the law in some kind of noble court. The women have also done this for the same reasons as well--but the women have also often prodded, inspired, or insisted that the NPC share with them all of these various details so they can share, bond, etc together. I guess its a particular aspect or quality of women's compassion and sensitivity. They definitely seek the whole bonding experience with such female NPC's.

That brings me to your next quote that I highlighted for emphasis--the women I have played with over the years and currently, as well--are primarily responsible for my development of such campaign details, rules, and so on. Previously, or often only when playing with men in the past, I suppose I was like most typical men--other than occasionally joking about sex or referring to sex, sexuality, sexual behaviour, sexual desires, and so on in a generally rough or brief manner. However, with the women--that just simply would not do! They relentlessly questioned me and prodded me about the various details of characters they encountered--they want to know as much as possible about every sexual nuance of their girlfriends; of their sisters and female relatives; of their girlfriends' lovers; and especially so of their own lovers, boyfriends, and so on.

And yeah--it's definitely changed the dynamics of my campaigns. For years now, since I am so accustomed to it, I often readily provide such details and nuances to all of the male players in the game as well. Obviously, some of them have been more than content with only the very basics--though several have responded in similar fashion to the women. I'm genuinely sensitive and thoughtful towards all of my players preferences and styles. Overall, though, all of my players--and especially the women--really seem to enjoy a much greater detailed system or approach to sex, sexuality, relationships, and so on. It's expanded my campaigns in lots of different ways of detail, story arcs, plots, and lots of fun.

In many ways, not merely focusing on particular details of sex itself--but of the relationship details, sexual styles and attitudes, desires, and so on--has created relationships in the campaign of greater depth and verissimillitude, which have then amazed me in all the different plots and motivations that have developed from all of that. The nice thing too, is that such quests, plots and relationships organically develop their own kind of goals, with deeper, much more visceral motivations for the characters involved.

So, largely in response to the relentless desires of the women in the campaign, I've had to develop all of this stuff about sex, romance, sexual attitudes, relationships, families, children, and so on!

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

 

[Mallus]

Has Sex been influential in some way in your campaigns?

Two PC's in our current 4e campaign are defined, in part, by their sexual issues, which is two more than usual in our campaigns. In both cases sexuality is treated rather lightly, it's a characterization tool for characters living in a world of pulp literature.

The first is a decadent young libertine of a human wizard who was involved in an incestuous relationship with his sister until the point she was kidnapped by air-pirates. The player has a lot of fun doling out creepy, obsessive bon mots that never quite descend into complete vulgarity. It's in no way a serious exploration of the topic of incest --obviously-- but it is great characterization and the his story provides a strong future plot hook.

I plan on DM'ing the rescue adventure (we rotate between 3 DM's), but I'm leaving the aftermath to someone else...

The second is my character, a Dragonborn paladin whose marking ability involves using his semen (I admit the idea came from reading online arguments over how, exactly the paladin marking ability worked). He's a knight in shining armor reimagined as a repulsive sci-fi alien. There's nothing sexual about his 'mark', it's just a racial combat technique that grew out a reproductive adaptation (certain compounds in their semen meant to sicken females who approached males other than the marker). The act isn't described in detail, just him passing his axe-blade under his tail and --discreetly-- ejaculating onto it.

He's also something of an accidental pornographer. He thinks of himself as a poet, but thanks to cultural differences over the appropriateness of describing reproductive acts, most of what he writes is kinda blue, such as the 'highly eroticized labor propaganda' he was writing for a group of goblin union activists (the phrase has become a running joke in the campaign).

Not exactly a serious treatment of sex, psychology, and culture, but amusing nonetheless.

 

[Umbran]

An interesting question for consideration here - how much of what we might talk about here is about the sex and sexuality, and how much of it is about gender roles?

I ask because I think a great deal of the meaningful bits can be addressed in a game that has little to no explicit sex - gender roles in a society come into play in day-to-day interaction, and in romance, without having to necessarily have anything beyond the PG-13 rating in-game...

 

[Achan hiArusa]

Most of the time I go with the Teenagers from Outer Space maxim: "Sex is not Funny. Sexual Frustration, now that's funny."

Really, it doesn't tend to come up much when I run, except in White Wolf games. But, its like how I treat magic items, you don't get it without some work. And all action happens off stage. I have gotten irriatated though at promisicious players because it saps time away from play.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

An interesting question for consideration here - how much of what we might talk about here is about the sex and sexuality, and how much of it is about gender roles?

I ask because I think a great deal of the meaningful bits can be addressed in a game that has little to no explicit sex - gender roles in a society come into play in day-to-day interaction, and in romance, without having to necessarily have anything beyond the PG-13 rating in-game...

While the majority of FRPG games and campaigns tend to take a modern idealistic approach to the M/F divide- anyone can do anything if they've got the skill- I've played in several campaigns in which that was rolled back a little bit...

Not quite back to only men may be warriors and adventurers type sexism- that REALLY only penalizes people- but the inclusion of persons, institutions and even societies (even the main society) that take at least a patriarchal approach to how they treat women...kind of like the USA in the 40's and 50's.

IOW:

1) Your female paladin may get catcalls and belittling comments directed her way when she walks into a building in full armor and weapon except by people who have actually seen her in action...

2) A female party leader may be ignored- at least temporarily- in favor of an obvious male leader type.

3) Merchants giving "pretty little missy" a worse deal than male counterparts.

And so forth.

Believe it or not, it was still fun because it gave the PC something to react against- a dramatic wall to push away from. Where the Ranger has his Favored enemy, the Female Adventurer has society as a "foe."

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

Urbis is strongly based on the society of the Victorian Age/Age of Industrialization. That is to say, sex is something not discussed in public and everybody pretends nothing untoward is going on - while in private a lot more is going on than anyone is willing to admit. This club is a good example...