An example of sex and relationship as themes in an rpg

[whswhs]

Over in the cross-gender roleplaying thread, we've gotten onto the topic of "I do/don't want to roleplay that sort of thing." So I've been thinking about how sexual and romantic relationships appear in my campaigns, and especially in one of my current ones, Manse. And since it keeps coming into my mind, I'm going to write about it, in a separate thread to avoid cluttering up the previous thread.

This is a campaign in a high fantasy setting; the way the game works owes things to Ars Magica and Exalted, but the rules system is Big Eyes Small Mouth. Each player has four characters: a senior noble, an adolescent/young adult noble, a soldier, and a servant.

The characters are involved in the following relationships:

The head of the House of Light is married (wife an npc) and has two or three children;

A nobleman in the House of Life is in a group marriage with all three fertile women of that house, but his true love is a young male servant who works for him in the castle greenhouse;

A nobleman in the House of Truth is secretly the lover of the Lady of the House (an npc) but is attracted to the adolescent heir of the Lady, who has an adolescent passion for him and has not figured out that he's her mother's lover;

An adolescent male from the House of Life is looking for a possible wife, and he and a daughter of the House of Darkness are starting to be interested in each other, but both he and the adolescent heir of the House of Light went to the servants' ball, in disguise, and walked out with two of the women servants (one an npc working in the laundry; one a pc working as a distillery tech for the House of Glass);

The second in command of the Wilderness Squad has been encouraged to court the daughter of the head of the House of Light, and has met her father, but not the young woman herself as yet;

Another male soldier in the Wilderness Squad is frantically reaffirming his heterosexuality after an encounter with one of the Fair Folk out in the Wild Wood;

A female soldier in the Wilderness Squad, a girl in her teens, has fallen in love with a daughter of the House of Life.

Now, in some of those relationships, the sex is the whole point. In others, it's an aspect of an emotional relationship. After long experience, I tend to ask for dice rolls in the former case (not least because the critical failures can be so amusing!) and fade to black in the latter. My players tend to enjoy the bawdy comedy of physical relationships, the character-driven comedy of misunderstandings in courtship, and also the puzzle of who's going to pair up with whom in a social milieu where there aren't that many choices of wife or husband.

And none of this has much to do with the sex of the players. For example, both the nobleman and the young male servant are played by women. The one male player (out of four) is the least involved in the sexual and romantic themes. It's at least possible that the fact that three out of four players are women has something to do with the strong emphasis on this sort of thematic material . . . but it's of interest to the women in question to play both sides.

[ross_winn]

Your game seems amazingly intricate from a romance perspective. I have had groups who felt that while romantic situations were fine, romance per se was very uncomfortable. Ron Edwards has a great little discussion of lines and veils in Sex & Sorcery -- and I would be interested in how graphic the in-game depictions are.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by ross_winn

Your game seems amazingly intricate from a romance perspective. I have had groups who felt that while romantic situations were fine, romance per se was very uncomfortable. Ron Edwards has a great little discussion of lines and veils in Sex & Sorcery -- and I would be interested in how graphic the in-game depictions are.

Over the past twenty-odd campaigns, I've run quite a few that included sexual content—at a rough estimate, present in sixteen and a major element in seven of those, of which Manse is one. My experience has been that explicit details—"to do what, and with what, and to whom," as a classic limerick puts it—work against a romantic atmosphere. That sort of content can produce a variety of game effects—bawdy humor, or profit-focused professionalism, or coldly clinical or legal description suitable for criminal investigations or outright horror—or simple focus on opportunistic pursuit of random physical pleasure, though that can be handled just as well at low resolution—but if you want Passion or Affection or Commitment, go to soft focus.

I've followed that guideline in Manse, by and large. So, for example, the storyline about the nobleman and the young servant has not been explicit, and neither has the storyline about the girl soldier and her noble girlfriend. On the other hand, the sequence about the two young noblemen going to the servants' ball and picking up women was quite detailed, including the roll to find out if the one young nobleman was good for a second round or not. (And that was a sequence involving two PCs.)

My players, as I've said on a different thread, have quite broad tolerances for this sort of thing. So far as romance goes, all three of my current campaigns have subplots about who's going to pair up with whom. So far as sex goes, no one seems to have a problem with having it established in game that A coupled with B, or with having the dice rolled to find out how much they enjoyed it. We've had quite a few memorable scenes ranging from character-driven comedy to psychological horror—both of those turning on the anatomical details.

As to why my players find this sort of thing not just acceptable but, seemingly, enjoyable—I'm not sure I know. I'm more perplexed at the evidence that a lot of gamers don't. What's the problem with roleplaying this sort of thing?

[quarkstomper]

My wife, Lute, has come to expect me to provide romantic foils for her characters, especially in the solo games we run after the kids are in bed.

In our current private game, a pulp-era space opera, she plays an intrepid reporter who has had romantic dalliances with a number of characters including a Martian general and a Mongol warlord. At the moment she seems to have settled down a bit and has become engaged to a Doc Savage-type adventurer.

Lute's character in our other game has a more complex situation. Our regular weekly game is an Infinite Worlds campaign. Her character comes from a world where women are dominant in society. I gave her a uptight by-the-book male superior as an NPC to bounce off of and she had great fun needling him. They had a nice, bickering relationship that developed into something more serious. So serious that her character wound up pregnant.

Then in our most recent storyline, I introduced a new NPC, a British sorceror from a Revolutionary War Era timeline. I intended him to be a recurring villain, but she developed an interest in him. The sorceror was handsome, suave, and powerful; much more attractive than her first love interest. I had the group capture the sorceror instead of killing him off -- as I said, I intended him to be a recurring character -- and decided to have Infinity recruit him. And her character is given the assignment of training the sorceror.

So a nice little triangle has developed. Lute has decided that in her characrter's culture, powerful women frequently have their own harems. The sorceror, a worldly rake with a secret agenda, has no problem with this. His rival, the first guy, does.

This could be interesting. I intend for the sorceror to remain a villain. He may be working with the heroes for the moment, but his main loyalties lie with the Cabal and he will bite back eventually. I have sometimes re-written BBEGs to be more heroic because Lute thought they were too sexy to kill, but this fellow is a machieavellian schemer. He will romance her, but will not let sentiment get in the way of his goals.

Will her first love come to her aid when the sorceror betrays her...?

[ziresta]

I don't understand NOT having a campaign without sexual and romantic themes. Even when I'm running a Basic D&D module, I expect some character to at least flirt with another one. Sex and love are part of human nature, and I'd assume elf/dwarf/Klingon/whatever nature too.

In an actual, full-fledged campaign, romantic entanglements are always part of the backstories for important NPCs, because it seems to me that they are as shaping an influence as what battles they were in and who they've met.

Maybe the reason some people have a problem with such things is that they approach roleplaying from a completely different perspective? Maybe they don't see their characters as "real" enough to fall in love or get laid?

[Christian]

Well, in the campaigns I run it depends on genre and players if romanticism and sex show up. In my current SR campaign I made the decision to use a lower amount of violence then typical for the genre, but an higher degree of sexual content. Reason being that most of the players (including me) prefer a less violent surrounding. Except for one, who... well he is one of those kind of players that somehow manages to use ANY tool in the crudest way. Or as one of my players put it "it seems as if only the character has social skills at all".

So what does this have to do with sex? Well, given that this player also has some serious "powerplay issues" one nice way to keep his characters from ruining the whole play for the others is to keep them busy. If he doesn't leave the bed (or kitchen, or whatever) he can't do stupid things, right? ;)
So well, till his current char died (rest in pieces oh you extremely stupid one... don't ask how he died, I'm just glad I didn't GM it ^^), he had one former orc prostitute as significant other, and one exotic SURGE kitsune style prostitute as regular bed partner. Add to that the odd opportunity, and this char was... well lets say it wasn't completely enough to keep him out of trouble ;).

What i do have to admit is, that I ain't going into explicit detail during our common gaming sessions. Its fine for him and me to to describe the scene with some short but interessting words and thats it.

The char of one of the female players of this group (my co-GM) has a relationship with my char, and she prefers to be more explicit. So we "export" those inplay times out of the general gaming sessions into chat based solo plays. Would be realy boring for the other players to listen how our two chars buy a new motorcycle for her, or teach him driving, or have some relationship relevant physical activities...

Its always up to the players (including the GM) to decide whats the right "style" of their campaign. And if some players want "more" then what is ok for others, why not play GM-PC or PC-PC "solo" sessions? it works for me.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Christian

Its always up to the players (including the GM) to decide whats the right "style" of their campaign. And if some players want "more" then what is ok for others, why not play GM-PC or PC-PC "solo" sessions? it works for me.

That's one way to do it. But I've never done it that way. Instead I run the explicit scene, in the presence of all the players, and expect them to deal with it. I won't force a player to play out such a scene if they prefer not to, but I don't censor what other players can play out.

Of course, these days, I put the explicitness level on the campaign description in the prospectus, so that a player who signs up for a campaign with graphic sex knows what they're getting into. As far as I know, none of my players has ever turned down a campaign on that basis. But I don't think any of them has ever turned down a G-rated campaign as such, either.

[zogo]

My campaigns genrally have sexual content with the level of explicitness varying. When I was running Nobilis with a group of pretty nasty powers things were pretty explicit (including the times they turned an commercial airline ride into an orgy).

In my current Angel game while there have been plenty of hookups I have actually described things as they would appear on US Television sheets just below a woman's collarbone and all.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by zogo

My campaigns genrally have sexual content with the level of explicitness varying. When I was running Nobilis with a group of pretty nasty powers things were pretty explicit (including the times they turned an commercial airline ride into an orgy).

In my current Angel game while there have been plenty of hookups I have actually described things as they would appear on US Television sheets just below a woman's collarbone and all.

I use that as well in some campaigns, as a stylistic bit. When I ran a campaign based on Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged I based it on the way sex was shown in classic Hollywood films, from the era when Rand was working in Hollywood as a scriptwriter.

[Qoltar]

...wait...a minute....


A campaign based on ATLAS SHRUGGED?? That sounds really cool. I would love to have been a player in that one.

I one time based a whole alien race's philosophical outlook on that of Ayn Rand's. It was amusing ...seeing the player's reactions.

- E.W. Charlton