The Book of Erotic Fantasy - Where did it go wrong?

[HeavenShallBurn]

Hmmm, as has been stated, one of the faults is that fetish holds dominance (sometimes literally...) over normal sexuality in the depictions. It did not seem to be a book about erotica, it seemed to be a book about kink. (One is using a feather, the other is using a chicken)

I agree it could have still dealt with kink & fetishes while reducing it to a small sub-chapter or the occasional sidebar. As it was there was really too much and it affected the voice of the book as a whole. They also got too mechanic heavy when the most useful part of the book was the fluff regarding how various types of creatures dealt with sexuality. The spells were also kind of odd in that they were trying too hard to add combat uses to a sort of magic that should probably have been left more utility and background in nature. Should have been more spells that did things like determine paternity/affect hereditary traits of offspring/determine if the other character really loves them/etc.

 

[Klaus]

The BoEF missed the mark. It could really hit it by covering stuff like what is found in fantasy romance novels, like so:

http://www.edsmermaidpage.com/images/seatreasur.jpg

 

[WanderingMonster]

The BoEF missed the mark. It could really hit it by covering stuff like what is found in fantasy romance novels, like so:

http://www.edsmermaidpage.com/images/seatreasur.jpg

Teenage Mermaid Nympho Trollops. Eros on the half-shell.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

By the way, does anybody still remember the online project "Guide to Uncarnal Knowledge" (not sure if that was the exact name)? I can't find it any more, so it might be a dead project?

Or does nobody want to admit that he looked at it.
It went a little... further then the BOEF. There were actual game mechanics for sex. I think that might serve as an example for stuff we don't really need. In our typical 4-6 player group with males of 20-35 (total guess on the age), I suppose nobody really wants to roll for that. And nobody wants to spend character resources on sex if that means giving up on the combat side.

 

[Aus_Snow]

http://www.netbook-of-uck.net/online.htm

That would be the one you were thinking of?

 

[The Eternal GM]

I will cite the art as bad certainly.

But honestly I feel the writing was poor too. It seemed to be a unique mix of juvenile and dryly academic... Which is an achievement I guess. But the overall tone just irritated me from the introduction to wherever the heck I got to before giving up.

It was an ugly book and it was badly written, which means it isn't going to endear itself to me unless the material covered is awesome. Which it wasn't.

The magic was... Laughable. I get it, this is D&D, the spell system is sorta stratified... But sexual magic really ought to be something a bit more than screwing with peoples sex drives and identity 1-9. C'mon guys, there's lots of ways to go here, and you took the most dreary option possible? Try and track down Kult's passion magic material sometime... A decade+ earlier, briefer and still better.

Sexual magic items? I guess it continues my problem with D&D as a whole, I hate dumb magic items. I hate 'minor' magic items that just happen to be around, and I especially hate it when they just wander into eye-rolling tasteless stupidity.

No, honestly I can find little to recommend this book even as a curiosity. It covers an area of rules I don't need covered. Not because sex doesn't come up in games I play or run, but because I don't need pages of poorly applied numbers to work it out.

Pregnant character in D&D? Then she stays away from bloody dungeons! As soon as she bloody well knows she's got a sprog... I don't see game validity in 'surprise pregnancy', and even if I was going to use STD rules or the like it wouldn't be in classic D&D...

Vampire? Game of Thrones? Sure. Relationships, sexuality and the repercussions of them have room for a few rules perhaps. D&D? Ugh... It's a bit of a stretch to say that BoEF was doing anything other than give teenage boys something to giggle over.

EDIT: Wow, I can't believe I just had to edit my post because it thought I was using a racial slur... That's a first here.

 

[Fenes]

The rules were a bit too prominent. More fluff would have been better, and the art could be better as well (especially in light of today's 3D programs, but the book was written in 2000 or 2001 I believe).

What really gets on my nerves though is the sheer size of the PDF. It's over 150 MB I think, and it is a pain to read or even flip through since it slows down to a crawl/lags terribly even on very good computers with 2 GB ram and dual core processors. That was very, very sloppy work.

We're running a game where sex comes up often, but the actual act is handled "off screen", and the rest often in an abstract way (After perform and bluff checks: "You impress the Duke with tales from your adventures, and your skill at dancing, and manage to seduce him. After an hour of flirting at the party you two retire to his bedroom for more. Do you want to persuade him to give you the ring you seek as a gift, or simply wait until he falls asleep and then steal it?")

There are situations where we go into more details, but even that stays "clean" ("Ok, you had some fun with the kinky drow in her "chamber of fun". Flip a coin, you've got a 50% chance that you're tied up right at the moment the baron's men storm inside to arrest you for questioning regarding the fate of the baron's missing heirloom").

Personally, sex is such a driving force for many people (see all the sex scandals in politics), I do think there's a lot of stuff that can be used in a RPG, as plot hooks, character background, campaign background etc. Most does not need any rules other than "use bluff for seducing" and similar stuff though.

 

[The Eternal GM]

I think using sex in games is fine. Sensible and well-adjusted adults allowing and all that... I just don't think it needs a huge book to cover it (by the way, I'd say the same about many aspects of games that publishers feel the need to get on the shelves too!) especially one that really doesn't do service to the topic.

Romance, relationships, rivalries and torrid scandal... Not covered. So the bit that I'm sure some folks might like essays, advice or rules gets nothing. While a load of stuff that you're really gonna just hand wave, ignore or plan out with the players gets huge swathes of rules?

And people can't see my argument against open license for 4th Edition? It boggles the mind is what it does.

 

[Klaus]

I think using sex in games is fine. Sensible and well-adjusted adults allowing and all that... I just don't think it needs a huge book to cover it (by the way, I'd say the same about many aspects of games that publishers feel the need to get on the shelves too!) especially one that really doesn't do service to the topic.

Romance, relationships, rivalries and torrid scandal... Not covered. So the bit that I'm sure some folks might like essays, advice or rules gets nothing. While a load of stuff that you're really gonna just hand wave, ignore or plan out with the players gets huge swathes of rules?

And people can't see my argument against open license for 4th Edition? It boggles the mind is what it does.

That's where I say the BoEF missed the mark. It could be a guidebook to creating campaigns focused more on the "romance novels" side of D&D, with betrayals, intrigue, seduction, etc, and instead became a poorly-photoshopped essay on S&M.

 

[Fenes]

Leaving rules out makes it easy to publish material about romance, seduction, betrayals and similar topics for RPgs without a license.