Sex in Games and Campaign Building

[Endless_Helix]

My experience with Sex in role playing has been mostly kept to the bedroom, but in terms of design-space in a world, yeah it's about as basic as it gets. You need to think about how your world views sex because for most races, it's the way they reproduce (except for the odd few who manage it asexually or through advanced magic/technology). I've never run any campaigns that would have been particularly complemented by sex; I've actually found it more useful as a gag prop, more than anything. Granted most of the people I played with at the time were adolescent males, but it seemed to always end up as "Oh you're sleeping with that hooker? Roll a fort save to not catch the crotch rot," kind of joke.

One thing that does need to happen more in settings that are refulgent with species is interracial sex, and the results, half-breeds. Traditional DnD seems to think that humans only really breed with elves and orcs. Or they seem to think that anything can and should breed together (Oh Forgotten Realms...) and your players end up some half giant, half dragon, half golem, half troll, half vampire, half elemental, half elf, half drow genetic nightmares made flesh. I also think how well you as a storyteller handle sex should be a deciding factor how much is present in your story.

How sex relates to politics is well documented, although it seems to fade a bit as you get to more modern political systems (Well, beyond good PR). However, it is a very powerful tool to be used to set up very interesting situations in games or in stories. A prince is searching for a princess to marry and holds a grand ball to meet all the potential girls. Perhaps the players/characters are escorting a princess, and assassins attack, revealing a conspiracy that intended to meet, using said ball as cover, to depose the prince. Perhaps a jealous ex is hunting down his object of obsession and the characters get involved when 'great big huge tracts of land' come into play.

As a player, you can have a lot of fun with sex in the game, particularly if you're playing a shapeshifter. A friend of mine in an eberron game used to play a changeling barbarian who would use her bust and form as a way to get bonuses on diplomacy checks. It actually took our gnomish wizard a few sessions to realize what our comrade was doing, although he did enjoy the view both before and after the revelation.

[Nomadic]

Offscreen ...LOL...I, being the Non-imitation, DO-NOT-TRY-THIS-AT-HOME, Internaltional-Class pervert that I am, am now imagining RPGs with sex scenes being played 'onscreen'.

Imagine a Venn diagram, with two circles labeled "people LC plays RPGs with" and "people who LC is comfortable having explicit sexychat with". Also imagine that the two circles do not overlap. Actually, they are nowhere near each other; they are cowering, confused and apprehensive, in opposite corners of the paper, intermittently trading furtive and suspicious glances.

Holy hell I've never laughed so hard before LC

[Seraph]

I won't make absolutes, but I can't think of a case in which absenting sex completely from a setting makes it more realistic.

From what I've read on the Umbril over at the Wiki, there is plenty of information about Umbril sexaulity.  Being a fungal people it is clear that they do not have sex in the traditional sense, but that the difference is noted at all, & that the means of reproduction is presented at all covers the what I feel to be necessary.

[Nomadic]

I won't make absolutes, but I can't think of a case in which absenting sex completely from a setting makes it more realistic.

From what I've read on the Umbril over at the Wiki, there is plenty of information about Umbril sexaulity.  Being a fungal people it is clear that they do not have sex in the traditional sense, but that the difference is noted at all, & that the means of reproduction is presented at all covers the what I feel to be necessary.

Saying umbril have sexuality is a bit like saying lettuce has taste ;)

[Seraph]

I won't make absolutes, but I can't think of a case in which absenting sex completely from a setting makes it more realistic.

From what I've read on the Umbril over at the Wiki, there is plenty of information about Umbril sexaulity.  Being a fungal people it is clear that they do not have sex in the traditional sense, but that the difference is noted at all, & that the means of reproduction is presented at all covers the what I feel to be necessary.

Saying umbril have sexuality is a bit like saying lettuce has taste ;)

They have a kind of sexuality, even if it's an abstract and removed kind of sexuality.  And even if it bears little resemblance to human sexuality.  

But even if you were to assert that they were completely non-sexual (I would not) it would still be engaging the subject of sex by pointing out the distinct lack of recognizable sexuality.  If the fact that they reproduce without contact is peculiar, then that is still involving the concept of sex in the setting, even if there is no "act" per se that would qualify as sex.

[Kindling]

I've never really encountered sex in an RPG, but I think this has more to do with the sort of stories that I tend to game than any kind of aversion (although of course, as others have said, roleplaying sexual situations could easily become very awkward and should be handled with care if it isn't "faded to black" completely) in other words we find ourselves worrying far too much about fighting werewolves, dodging bullets, appeasing angry demons, infiltrating Hell, and so forth, to even think about sex - or even any kind of sexual theme, for that matter.

However, I do have a strange relationship with the sexual in novels. On the one hand I think that obviously, in many narratives, sexual themes are very important, and how characters view sexuality (both their own and in general) can be a very telling way of showing who they really are. On the other, I have never read what seemed to me to be a well-written sex scene, and I think this is because it's very difficult to do. The best I've seen is when rather than a sex "scene" the author has simply mentioned that the act is happening, perhaps with a few vague descriptions. In Bruce Sterling's "The Artificial Kid" I seem to remember he does this with a phrase along the lines of "we made love like gods in the sand"
This brief evocation of the sexual act is fine, but I find that when more graphic detail is employed I find it hard not to simply read it as the author penning their own fantasies - fine in a specifically erotic novel, but something that seems, to me at least, jarringly out of place in a work of any other genre.
Also, when authors do go into sex in this way, the writing tends to be horrendously samey. In so many of these scenes words such as full, eager, quivering, et cetera et cetera, seem to be overused to the point of almost hilarious cliché - even by otherwise inventive and talented writers.

I suppose this, then, would translate itself into my opinion of how sex should be handled should it ever come up in-game. Anything too graphic would seem not only awkward because of the people I usually game with, but also too much a jarring genre-hop from the usual action-fantasy to suddenly something far more erotic. I recognise that Conan had his moments of lust (quite a lot of them, in fact), so perhaps it is a part of the sword and sorcery genre, but even so, Howard never really went further than describing the girl's curves and lack of clothing and then maybe a passionate kiss and/or embrace.
I think if sex did happen in-game, I would want it to be handled in the following kind of way...
Player: I follow him into his tent.
GM: Okay. You have a very satisfying night together. Now, what's everyone else doing?

As for sexuality in setting design... well, it's something I've touched on briefly twice before, but never gone into huge detail with. The first time was with Reth Jaleract's Uélae, who were hermaphroditic, and the second was with the extremely powerful Whores' Guild in Knife's Edge. Both times, however, I never really went into much detail - perhaps simply because I felt in-depth studies of the sexuality of the situations might not be too relevant, because of such themes never really coming up in my gaming experience, or perhaps I was influenced by my literary tastes into a habit of briefly touching on the subject and then leaving the rest to the reader's imagination.
Either way, I think it means that it's not really an integral part of setting design for me, although I don't think it would turn me off completely if it came up as a major theme in a setting I was reading as long as it was tastefully implemented.
I think that while people who have posted in this thread are right that it is necessary to address sexual issues when building a fully-realised imaginary society, building a fully-realised imaginary society has never been my aim. Instead, my purpose with setting design is to create and to a degree populate an imaginary place or set of places in which adventures can occur - something that I think can overlap with the more detailed culture-crafting but can definitely exist without it.

[Steerpike]

On the subject of sex in novels, I very much agree that it's difficult to incorporate.  Some of the better sex scenes I've read were in A Song of Ice and Fire, though the quality varied.  The most explicitly erotic ones were probably the least well written; the best well written were those that tended to avoid graphic explicitness [spoiler](Jon/Ygrette)[/spoiler] and those that weren't intended to be erotic at all, but served other, extremely important plot purposes: [spoiler]I'm thinking in particular of any of the scenes with Tyrion and Shae, or Theon's scenes with the captain's daughter, or even the bizarre sex scene in the Sept with Jaime and Cersei (where her "moon's blood" is on her and Jaime literally "wipes himself on the altar"... so yeah).[/spoiler]  Those sex scenes were all extremely important to the story being told and the characters of the story - as important as the graphically described battles, feasts, and other events of the series.  Not only that, but in those scenes the discomfort of reading about sex works for rather than against the scene.

Also not a bad depiction of sex, IMO, is in the Culture novels by Iain M Banks.  Sex isn't described particularly explicitly but is kind of omnipresent; Banks adopts a rather frank, matter-of-fact approach to sex which perfectly mirrors his characters' casual relationship with it.  The sex is also always full of humor, which is very refreshing.

What bugs me more is sex in movies.  I hate that weird blurring thing they do so often in movies, where you can't really tell what body part you're looking at.  Parodied here.  One of the worst examples I can think of is in the movie Desperado - a movie in which the scene of extreme graphic violence are lovingly and lingeringly shot with a lot of innovative shots, humor, and excellent pacing... and then we get a scene with freaking  Antonio Banderas and Selma Hayek and it's all vague skin and blur *eyeroll.*

[Nomadic]

I won't make absolutes, but I can't think of a case in which absenting sex completely from a setting makes it more realistic.

From what I've read on the Umbril over at the Wiki, there is plenty of information about Umbril sexaulity.  Being a fungal people it is clear that they do not have sex in the traditional sense, but that the difference is noted at all, & that the means of reproduction is presented at all covers the what I feel to be necessary.

Saying umbril have sexuality is a bit like saying lettuce has taste ;)

They have a kind of sexuality, even if it's an abstract and removed kind of sexuality.  And even if it bears little resemblance to human sexuality.  

But even if you were to assert that they were completely non-sexual (I would not) it would still be engaging the subject of sex by pointing out the distinct lack of recognizable sexuality.  If the fact that they reproduce without contact is peculiar, then that is still involving the concept of sex in the setting, even if there is no "act" per se that would qualify as sex.

Again that's like arguing that lettuce has taste. The point I'm trying to make is that there are plenty of games to be played that never touch the subject, and they aren't one iota less real for the lack. The short stint I had as an Umbril never even touched it and that was an exceptionally immersive and real game. Just goes to show you that it's the quality of the DM, not the content of the setting that makes it realistic.

[Seraph]

I won't make absolutes, but I can't think of a case in which absenting sex completely from a setting makes it more realistic.

From what I've read on the Umbril over at the Wiki, there is plenty of information about Umbril sexaulity.  Being a fungal people it is clear that they do not have sex in the traditional sense, but that the difference is noted at all, & that the means of reproduction is presented at all covers the what I feel to be necessary.

Saying umbril have sexuality is a bit like saying lettuce has taste ;)

They have a kind of sexuality, even if it's an abstract and removed kind of sexuality.  And even if it bears little resemblance to human sexuality.  

But even if you were to assert that they were completely non-sexual (I would not) it would still be engaging the subject of sex by pointing out the distinct lack of recognizable sexuality.  If the fact that they reproduce without contact is peculiar, then that is still involving the concept of sex in the setting, even if there is no "act" per se that would qualify as sex.

Again that's like arguing that lettuce has taste. The point I'm trying to make is that there are plenty of games to be played that never touch the subject, and they aren't one iota less real for the lack. The short stint I had as an Umbril never even touched it and that was an exceptionally immersive and real game. Just goes to show you that it's the quality of the DM, not the content of the setting that makes it realistic.

Of course games on an individual basis can lack any mention of sex and be none the less realistic for it.  In reference to specific games, I was merely interested in preferences.  In WORLDS, however, I think at least a passing reference to mating/marriage/courtship should be made.  I suppose something I'm trying to get at is that if for a particular race/culture one or all of these do not exist, then that is totally OK, but it's important that they be SAID to not exist.  It's about defining SOMETHING in that general area of human experience.  I say "human" experience because I am referring to us as human beings playing games.  I think there should be something in an aspect of the game that either connects with that human experience, or consciously rejects it.  It's passive "leaving it out" or "not talking about it" that I think makes for something lacking.

[Nomadic]

It's passive "leaving it out" or "not talking about it" that I think makes for something lacking.

And that's where I disagree. I think it can add depth, but not including it doesn't at all give me the feeling that a game is lacking anything.

[LordVreeg]

It's passive "leaving it out" or "not talking about it" that I think makes for something lacking.

You know, my immediate realsit-GM side was all set to go off on this, but on further review and thought, I am going to back off.  Let me tell you why.

Though some purists decry story games as, "Not Real RPGS", and so partially marginalize the influence of other literay forms in their games, I still believe that a good campaign is like a good story, Book or movie format, your choice.
Some of the best fantasy novels and best-loved narratives managed to get by without Sex.  

Another very important disticntion...Sex is not Romance.  Sex is not Love.  Sex is not relationship.  So these factors can still be very present in-game, while avoiding the steamy side.  Nor does a good author or GM need sex to make a relationship more important.  
IN that same vein, Sexuality is diffrent from Sex.  You can play a rake without roleplaying buying the KY and studded leather codpiece.  

A third notation.   The rating of your game and the adult content level has a lot to do with your players.  Don't expect to run a gritty, morally-ambiguious, adult-level game with a new group of players.  Confidence in your adjudication and familiarity with each other is huge.
Be careful of Rape, especially with underage PCs and NPCs.  I'm coming right out and saying this.  My Igbar group has three female players, as well as spouses who show up.  One of my recurring and important NPCs is Salimar 'Earthward' Samria-daughter.  She was kidnapped as a baby, and held on the House of Earth for 2 years of in-game time...but time passes differently there, so by thre time her father and mother (Palimar and Samria) rescued her, she was just turning 14, and had spent her whole life away from her family (something Samria has never forgiven Palimar for).  She was somewhat wild, therefor, and was actually in the PC oupost of the Old grey Legion when it was overrun by the Antroo Vampyre and his new minions, the Firehazers.  I never got graphic, but the rape of Salimar by the Antroo Vampyre was an extrmemly energizing and cryatalizing moment for the New Legion PCs when they learned of it.  It was used to explain some of the nature of Vampyres and the level of brutality of that particular Vampyre.  

[SDragon]

[spoiler=This one time in a game of Vampire...]There was a Gangrel (bestial vampire clan) PC that was hunting down this one female human, with the intent of raping her, then feeding on her. Unfortunately for both of them, he found out that she was bleeding, which drove him into an uncontrollable frenzy; her death was vicious and gruesome, ultimately leaving too little blood to feed on.[/spoiler]

Note that, while no sexual act took place, the subject wasn't shied away from, and the conclusion of that particular event was the direct result of an unexpected sexual detail.

I see the issue of sex in games and world design as a matter of personal choice. I don't shy away from it by any means, but I see no real reason to simply toss it in. I haven't mentioned sex in either Fiendspawn or Xiluh, but-- as has been mentioned-- I haven't mentioned restrooms in those settings, either. In games, if you want to avoid the issue at all costs, then that's your choice. If you want to make Vreeg look even more chaste than a catholic nun, then knock yourself out.

The major line for me, is when that one overly-greasy new guy starts asking irrelevant questions about the sexuality of each and every young female NPC, and seems to enjoy any given answer just a little too much. Of course, then it's not so much sex in games that's the issue, but player maturity, and the need to separate in-game sex from real sex. Fortunately, I've never run into this before, but I've heard more than enough stories of it happening.

[Kindling]

I think Vreeg's made an excellent point about the distinction between romance/relationships and sex. More often than not, the part of that continuum which is most relevant for the story is the former, and while I would tend towards the actual sex being merely implied or played out "off screen," I think relationship issues and romantic situations could easily be included into gameplay as (potentially very important) plot points and character-developing situations.

[Elemental_Elf]

My group's first inside joke concerned itself with a "Fine Donkey" (that my low strength Elf purchased as a pack mule) and how the lonely adventures would find solace in its comfort...  

So, sex has never really been a problem in my group... There have been incidents that have crossed a line (i.e. the literal rape of an entire Tiefling village) but things like that don't occur often. As a DM I have the policy of 'what happens in the game has consequences' thus on the rare occasions that truly despicable things occur, I make it a point to punitively punish the characters. Kingdoms have laws and those who enforce the laws will go to the ends of the earth to punish those who flagrantly break the law. I am not above executing PCs in very violent and gruesome ways.

[LordVreeg]

Speaking to the biological aftereffects...
Anyone else out there have any pregnancies?  STDs?  What are the % of crossbreeds?