Sex, Violence, Drugs and other naughty things

[Tonguez]

I once used a cult leader modeled on the worst excesses of the Giles de Sade as a bad guy so hinting at his perverse activities were included. The same campaign featured a monstary in which one of the Brothers was molesting the neophytes (and thus allowing access to demons).

There was also this time at varsity when um yeah myself and a former girlfriend decided to seduce a dragon! - mmm she had a wonderful imagination that girl

Drugs happen - Red Leaf, Manticore spike, Mandrake. A friend of mine used the smuggling of narcotics as a plot point in his game

Violence - often. IMC All Barbarians are cannibals andso blodd frenzies are required!

 

[Grunk]

My campaign is evil/chaotic. The PCs act as villains while the heroes are NPCs (and annoying dogooders at that). Of course, there are also a lot of vile NPCs that the PCs interact with as well.

Sex: try to avoid this for the same reason mentioned above...no elf porn...a few times it's been relevant to plot though, i.e. PCs were escorting a crimelords daughter through the forest and she was kidnapped by Satyrs...well you know how they can be

Drugs: not really an issue IMC. guess i didn't give it enough thought, although the PCs do regularly get sloshed...at times to their disadvantage

violence: i'm very graphic in my descriptions esp. because i have an assassin and a rouge as PCs. The players themselves tend to describe their actions in very violent ways too.

that said...my players are all mature adults and enjoy these themes. overall i'd put us at an R ocassionally dipping into NC-17

 

[the Jester]

Well, I guess my campaign flinches at nothing.

Language-- we swear an awful lot, in game and out.

Drugs-- I'm a fan of fantasy drugs. Blackroot grass, Old Tobey, dzur, many others. They're in the background of the world. Some pcs have tried them; some plots have been built around them.

Sex-- It's there. We don't usually go into too much detail, but (for instance) there have been humorous instances with pcs and trolls or whales or whatever. Strange, forbidden rituals that seduce the town's maiden, a god of necrophilia and cowardice, all sorts of crazy things. It comes up, but we usually gloss over the details.

Violence-- Yeah, we've got that too. Lots of gore. Sometimes the detail is extravegant; sometimes it's just "you hit."

 

[Sejs]

Sex: when it pops up, details are glossed over and the encounter gets boiled down to a sentance or two.

Drugs: not counting alcohol and pipeweed, which are more or less universal, yeah drugs show up where they'd be appropriate.

Violence: common, but that's the nature of the game. An injury may get a few words description now and then ("the gnoll's javelin lances into your thigh for 5 damage"), a particularly show-stopping crit may get a sentance, particularly if dramatically appropriate. The goal being to keep a balance between the flow of combat, and to keep it from degenerating into just 'hit for 4. miss. miss. magic missle for 9. hit for 7. miss'.

Cussing: like sailors, except for folks that are all proper and such.

 

[Shemeska]

Sex: It's there and there's moments that I cannot under any rationale include in my storyhour (in this case both from sex and extraordinary violence at the same time). We don't tone it down, but it only pops up as it applies to the characters (ie picking on a PC and an NPC who got married, a Tanar'ri brothel being moved in next door to the building the PCs owned because they PO'd my namesake in Sigil, etc)

Drugs: It's there but I don't focus on it really.

Violence: As it applies, but I don't intentionally go out of my way to make things more bloody or gross. However with the game focused so often on the lower planes there are moments that have been incredibly bloody/grotesque but it's always fit the moment and made a particular point. One moment, both from the combination of violence and blindsiding emotional cruelty, made my players cry OOC. It's reserved for when it will make the most impact for character development/plot otherwise it may be glossed over some.

Language: I don't tone down the language in the game or at the table, but oddly enough we don't use foul language all that often.

 

[Turanil]

How much 'adult content' do you use in your games? Is there a place you can draw the line?

I will include anything I deem useful to create the relevant mood in the game. I once ran an "evil city of thieves" campaign where the characters were assassins, evil cultists, and what not. As such, sex, drugs, violence, etc. was heavily featured. However, we were all male players of the same age (above 30). I would not run a campaign like this with a female player, or a young player. Then, even if I don't have any problem in describing sex, drugs, violence, etc., I draw the line somewhere: no rape, no stuff of sacrificing souls to demons, and nothing involving children. Children may appear as little crooks or unfortunate slaves in a mine, but nothing else.

 

[Buttercup]

Sex: Right now one of the PCs is having a romance with the owner of a tavern. When they spend time together, it usually just gets described as "fade to the fireplace" and we move on. Just last session the PCs started on a sub-plot that involves a nasty NPC who is a rapist. They found one of his victims in a holding pen for slaves. I didn't go into any detail about what he did to her, but everybody gets it. I have used other NPCs who are sexually violent in the past, and I'll do so again, I'm sure. For me, that sort of thing just seems like a natural outgrowth of a certain kind of evil.

Violence: I describe the spattering of blood and guts from time to time. If one of them disembowels the enemy, that isn't clean or pretty, and I don't shy away from saying so. And if they wander back into an inn without cleaning up, the barwench is likely to insist the PCs clean the gore off their armor and take a bath before she'll serve 'em.

Drugs: I've used drug addiction to good effect on a number of occaisions. In a past campagin, the lizard people were being captured and enslaved, then addicted to a drug that made them happy in their servitude. The PCs found and destroyed the largest plantation of the addictive plant.

In my present campaign, the priestesses of the Sea Goddess are notoriously flaky and stoned. They use extracts of various sea plants as part of their religious rituals. These extracts have both sedative and hallucinogenic properties, so the priestesses are vague and unreliable even at their best. Except for the warrior priestesses who act as temple guards and demon slayers--these women have somehow learned to metabolize the extracts and still maintain their edge.

If my players were underage, I'd not use sex and drugs, and probably tone town the violence a bit. But we're all adults so it doesn't seem like a big deal to me.

 

[reanjr]

Sex: Doesn't really come up. Not adverse to it, but I've never seen it play a role.

Violence: I'm not big on the action by action combat description, so I just describe deaths. Like the greataxe biting through the clavicle sending a gout of blood for a short second as the character works at twisting the axe from the wound as the orc's body falls lifeless. It's not too common as we play with a Wound/Vitality system so outright death in combat is pretty rare.

Drugs: One of the characters in my current campaign is addicted to a mildly hallucinagenic snorting powder (can also be mixed with tea for milder effect) that gives him insight into various things. Basically, while he is under the influence, I'll describe things to him a bit differently, drawing attention to something important. He now snorts the stuff pretty much once every other waking hour. Since he's an elf, he's up for 20 hours a day, so that's about 10 bumps. Most other characters in the party have at least tried it (though one had his drink spiked - he didn't intentionally take it). I believe one is just about addicted to it.

I would like to point out the the main addict in the party CHOSE to become an addict. I had rolled for his addiction, but never even had to tell him about it since he started taking it on his own once he saw the effects.

In another campaign, Roland, my halfling bard was fond of smoking halfling weed (as was his traveling companion Mantera, another halfling). He eventually retired from adventuring (after a close call) and purchased land to create a plantation.

In that same campaign, the party ended up drug pushing for a short while to earn cash (not my idea).

 

[reanjr]

Thinking a bit more, I also get quite a few comments along the lines of "OK... that's kind of disturbing..."

 

[Berandor]

No cussing, except in character (and then no f-words or the like)

Sex is glossed over.

Drugs are used sparingly (alcohol, of course, gets its due, and we have a smoking parlor where you smoke waterpipes).

Violence, on the other hand... we have "cool" violence, and I sometimes up the ante with graphical, disgusting details to show a particularly nasty part of combat (killing ork babies, feeding unconscious skulks to a mimic, something like that).