Talking About Sex In RPGs

I’ve reviewed books about sex in RPGs before, and I’m pretty sure this is going to disqualify me from potential employment. Every workplace is already engaging in social network digging as a normal part of the employment process, and somebody dedicated to the job is going to find out I review books called things like The Quintessential Temptress. Also that I watch cartoons. I’m studying toward an English degree and all the jobs I could probably get with it are now closed to me. I am going to starve in the future why didn’t I just go to parties like normal people–

A lot of books (relative to how many RPG sex books there actually exist anyway) seem to claim by way of self-compliment, that they’re “better than the Book of Erotic Fantasy.” This is kinda cute when you think about it. It’s also rather depressing, because no, none of these books have actually done it better. If the Book of Erotic Fantasy had a less atrocious cover I would go as far as to say it’s about the best someone writing a D20 book about sex could’ve done, considering the circumstances. What are the contenders? Black Tokyo? Godawful. FATAL? Jesus Christ. Encyclopedia Arcane gets a pass because try as I might I can remember nothing in it, but venturing a guess, it’s probably terrible also. I’ve already given Quintessential Temptress more words than it deserves to get, which is already playing into the hands of its author anyway.

Sure, Book of Erotic Fantasy had magical dildos. This is unfortunately what you get when you bring in Camp D20 into your book about roleplay sex. Looking at it as a historical artifact it’s pretty safe to say this is about what could be expected out of the project. It takes some principled stances a lot of other books don’t, like outright refusing to engage in pornified rape and torture fantasies. It tries to philosophize on how the abjectly terrible D20 alignment system would parse sexual interaction. It tries to imagine what kind of magical spells would be invented by culture that is using magic for sex. It exceeded my abysmally low expectations. Not bad. I’m pretty sure it hasn’t been surpassed.

I’d like to think we can do better than that, but I’ve been proven wrong so many times. How can we do better? I didn’t think it would be this hard to try to give dignity to this subject, but given that that’s already pretty hard for the authors of these books, what I’m going to propose might be wild. But what you have to do with this book, is to shrink back from talking about sex like it’s either a cheevo you can get in Call of Duty if you score a killstreak with akimbo tire irons or a kooky easter egg you can find by futzing around in a Portal game and propelling yourself in such a way you fall between rendering layers.

Stop writing books for this guy:

That’s hard to do, I know. Unfortunately, the set of “total creepers” overlaps greatly with two key sets – the set of “people who want to write books about sex in RPGs” and the set of “people who want to buy books about sex in RPGs.” The vast majority of people who would even think about books like this are dudes with neckbeards who want to exult in the fictional glory of their elven bard and all the barmaids he has banged in between depopulating caves. The one or two people who’d buy a serious book on sexuality in a fictional universe could probably write it themselves, and then never sell it. Because seriously, y’all, they’re spying on you. Right now, some intern is looking at your facebook and all those drunk pictures you took five years ago at the keg party. They’re still there because you forgot to delete them and you will never get a job now.

Tone is the most important thing. You don’t want your book about sex to be humorous. You don’t need to make it clinical, either. Everybody knows how the parts align. What you need to do is to make it human. Talk about romance, sex, society as a whole. Talk about it with dignity, not like it’s humor every one of your bros is totally gonna get. Let’s say you want to invite Camp D20 into your books. Talk about things like marriage and reproductive futurity in a society based off of the dung ages of humanity. Why is contractual marriage so important, particularly among the landed? Because you need a little schmuck to hand your land off to, and there’s only one IKEA-approved way of getting that. What does this mean for the social dynamics of the setting? “Dennis, you’re not talking about sex anymore! Where are my gnome gyrodildos? None of this is sexy barmaid time!”

Talk about egalitarianism. We want our RPGs to allow anybody, be they women, homosexuals, etc, to rampage into caves and loot volcano lairs because the player wants that character to be that way. How do we make our settings that way? Two things to talk about – a) how do we grow a little fictional universe with different sexual ideas, and then b) how do we include the potential for characters of all genders and sexual compasses while including the challenges of repressive sexual ideas? Believe it or not settings can still suck and need heroes even if they are egalitarian and we also don’t have to make the enemy Bigotland if egalitarian ideas are the norm. And exceptional women and homosexuals have always existed even in the most horrifically backward societies, and have managed to engage their gender and sexuality no matter how much pain and conflict they risked while doing so. It was a powerful part of them. Both are ideas we want to discuss and expand. The absolute most important thing here is not to let this book become a little boy treehouse, which is how all the others have failed.

Even more than that, devote a section of your book about getting comfortable with the idea that even Munchkiller The 23rd, scourge of 19 unnamed cave dwellings, has some sort of emotional life, and how to stop ignoring it. Courtship and companionship should be talked about. Adventurers tend to have very limited social contact, so the connections they do gain are likely to be powerful and alluring for them. I would find that a good read. How to tackle this kind of stuff as an RPG group should be definitely be a part of it. Most RPG groups will tell you to screw off and then go post on /tg/ about what a weeaboo katana-wielding elf doofus you are the second you propose romance in an RPG. They too think it means “banging barmaids” and hop to the conclusion that preventing any sort of amorous interaction between two folk is necessary for the game to work. How do you explore these themes without having to replace your entire group or fear mutiny?

(Though this knowledge won’t help me when I’m starving oh god why does society judge me so–)

Is this book ever gonna happen? If it already has, I’d be surprised. It is unlikely to happen, I think.

While I personally don’t support completely ignoring romance like it will immediately destroy your campaign when introduced, I also know why people do that. I personally think that getting a good book on not just sex, but overall romance, sexuality and social interaction in fantasy universes would be really interesting. I try to think about this sort of stuff while writing my setting and thinking about campaigns and about characters and games. I don’t explicitly write it mostly because despite my ideas, I doubt I would do well, and I know it would be received fairly poorly. Most people who read this article will ask “can I get 25 adventure hooks out of this to use for my next D&D campaign about caves” and I would probably tell them “no” and so we will forward to the conclusion that this book is useless to produce. I’d hope somebody would try though.

Anyway if anyone out there is looking to hire the guy who wrote about how he unironically enjoyed reading Kampfer for a few chapters (I will stick to more refined manga about transgender lesbian antics, thank you very much) (you can find this, google it) he is available and soon to have an English degree. But you won’t because nobody will.

I will never have a job oh dear god how will I eat–