I don’t play tabletop RPGs, but I do roleplay in Second Life Gor during my free time. And there is sexual roleplay in Second Life Gor. I was writing an article in which I compared Out Of Character and In Character comments to people sitting around a table, the OOC is them relating to one another as friends playing a game, the IC is what their characters do in the game.
And it occurred to me then that sexual RP would probably be incredibly clumsy and embarrassing for tabletop gamers, that it’s the anonymity of Second Life that makes sexual RP possible there. People sitting around next to each other would have a whole different experience. But since I don’t do tabletop RP I don’t KNOW if that’s the case … it might be even more fun than anonymous sexual RP.
So I thought I’d ask. What say you, tabletop gamers?
Romantic entanglements with my current party involve the PC saying, “I’m spending time with X tonight”, and the GM saying, “OK, you do that,” and moving on to the next player. We’ve never seen the need to go into a blow-by-blow account - after all, grappling rules are notoriously complicated.
I’ve seen it get a bit descriptive, but generally it was just something that you said you did and that was it.
I had one character get surprised by bad guys who crashed a party the PCs were at while getting it on. There was some description of what had happened and what they were doing when the door burst open. Of course, the woman he was getting it on with was with the bad guys and had basically set my character up.
Some players in a previous group did some interaction via email between sessions, and apparently some pretty explicit things happened. It depended heavily on the people involved. As I was almost completely excluded from this interaction with the group, I don’t really have a lot of details.
It kinda depends on the overall tone of your group, among other things.
I had a priestess of Eros (I think) who got up to some mischief. But I ended up not continuing in that campaign because, simply, nothing happened. It was all role-play but no plot. I wanted to kill some monsters, dammit!
In another game my centuries-old sorceress finally re-consummated her relationship with her long-lost love. Nothing was said explicitly; the (female) GM just said we went for a walk on the beach at night and were gone for quite a while, and when I returned my hair was a mess and my dress was covered in sand. I kind of made the connection on my own.
I wonder too, if there is a certain amount of wish-fulfillment going on? Like if you’re not getting enough “romance” in real life, you’re going to look for it (and potentially expect it) elsewhere.
I think that as long as people are comfortable with it, and the players are of an age/maturity level to handle it, it should be okay.
Have to make sure it doesn’t completely derail the adventure, though.
Yeah, there’s a similar convention in Second Life Gor called “Fade to black” for people who don’t like to do sexual RP but whose characters get in sexual situations. The scene is set up, they “fade to black” as in the movies and then the RP continues as if the scene had explicitly occurred. They also have a convention called “used her muchly” which is pretty much the same thing except they’re using a term that the author of the Gor novels used to do the equivalent of a fade to black.
There are at least two sex-related sourcebooks for D&D: The Book of Erotic Fantasy and the Book of Unlawful Carnal Knowledge. The former is somewhat serious and the latter is somewhat silly.
In the games I’ve played in, it’s never been an issue. At its most explicit it’s been a “fade to black” thing.
EDIT: And there are some incredibly gross and puerile games out there. The most famous is probably F.A.T.A.L., where you have to calculate your character’s penis size and anal circumference, for instance.
I had a few campaigns that were one-on-one with a very good friend… we got pretty damned explicit. (The friendship later added some benefits, heh.) Generally speaking, though, it’s like old movies–the characters kiss, the screen fades to black, and we cut to the next morning.
Same here. In most of the RPG groups / campaigns (primarily D&D and Star Wars) I’ve been in, there’s been some level of romantic entanglements – sometimes between two PCs, sometimes between a PC and an NPC. But, the camera always pans to the fireplace, as it were.
Though, it’s how I started up with my first girlfriend – her character was flirting with mine in-game, but that was, in actuality, a way for her to flirt with me without her then-boyfriend (who was also playing in the group) being tipped off.
Romantic shit tends to get glossed over in more action-oriented RPGs that we play, like D&D. There was one memorable night that one player spent seducing a woman that they suspected was behind a string of disappearances, only to discover that she was a hag in disguise and he was the one being seduced. Laughs were had. Anyway, if they had wound up actually having sex (ugh…) it just would have been a fade-to-black kind of scenario.
In my dungeons, a character can always get laid and/or intoxicated if their alignment won’t interfere with it. Both are no-no’s for a paladin, e.g.
I may be out to kill, mutilate, and/or humilate the party, but they always have a chance to party.
However, there can be dangers associated with sex. One group got the Ogre Clap.
Once you’ve got past all the misc modifiers, like size or natural weapons, it’s pretty straight forward, and just a matter of getting in there and doing some damage.
Ah, it’s as I thought then. Not much sexual RP in tabletop play, and when sexual situations come up, fade to black is used, because the other person is right there at the table with you.
It was interesting to hear LawMonkey and** kenobi 65** talking about in-game flirtations leading to RL sexual relationships. That happens in SL Gor too, a lot, actually. Some have complained that submissives use SL Gor as a matchmaking service rather than playing it like a game.
I have an issue of White Wolf magazine with an article discussing what sex is like among various Garou tribes.
IME D&D generally tried to avoid sex, while Vamp The Masquerade and other White Wolf products dealt with it head on.
OTTOMH I haven’t been involved in rpg sex with another player. I have been involved with NPCs. There is usually something of a fade to black. There’s just no perceived need for certain details. It isn’t just sex. For example, when you order food in an inn you don’t get a formal review of the stuff, just a general sense of its quality.
I’d think it might be easier in Second Life, considering you don’t have to see the other players and they aren’t your goonie 14 year old friends in high school.
I would’ve also mentioned FATAL. The sourcebook is an… interesting read. Might be a fun game to play, if you want to break your wrist from so much rolling.
Although didn’t VtM mostly deal with it by saying, “You’re dead. You have no blood flow in your genitals. Deal with it.” Blooddrinking was more of a replacement.
Except, don’t V:tM vampires explicitly have blood flow to any part of their body they want, and are thus still quite capable of getting it on (in fact, more capable than mortals)?
