Yudhishthira’s Dice

1) Yes, to all of them. And almost all of them happen in pretty much every game I play. I haven’t had any of them in the oneshots of Dogs I played with Dave C or Matt Wilson — but even that is probably going to change. Heck, even the Spirit of the Century oneshot I played in Cali ended up having elements of sexuality in the game, and it was a pulp pickup game.

2) Lots of love and romance happens on screen. Sexuality happens on screen most of the time. The sex depends on the group. With my most core group sex happens on screen sometime, though not usually at any length. When I play one-on-one with Mo, otoh, we get the dirty on.

3) Probably Unbreakable, which Mo runs for me. The game is all about sex and gender roles and the way that sex, love, and power all blur together to mess us up. In a full group game I’m going to say probably Suryamaya, an Exalted game with my core group that had constant issues of sexuality, pregnancy, promiscuity, and reproduction that ran with only a couple of hitches. (”You fucked death cunt!” being the most notable of those.)

4) Playing a female character in an online WoD game. She was supposed to be a sexy, independent woman (a Hermetic Mage, even) and ended up fending off 4 attempted rapes in the first day I played her. I quit the character, and the MUSH, in disgust the next day.

5) Veils, usually. Most of my groups don’t have a lot of lines — going there is almost always okay, though some things (child rape, for example) do well to have a warning before hand. We usually keep it in bounds by controlling what we show and don’t show, rather than by what we do and don’t do.

In the old days, when I played with other 20 year old boys primarily, we did bluebooking for the romance stuff. Writing it by yourself and then handing it off to someone else to take away and write more to was easier than being all romantic while looking at each other’s greasy faces.

6b) A doesn’t apply. For b, the answer is probably not. Now, I don’t need explicit and, for example, when playing with my brothers and father would just as soon avoid it. But not having any romance, true love, something in th game? Honestly, I just can’t imagine doing it for more than a one shot and enjoying it deeply.

7) Oh hell yes. When I play with Mo alone, as I’ve said, the whole tenor and tone of the game changes. Sex is often explicit, graphic, and makes up the majority of some scenes. OTOH, when I play with my core group sex happens a lot, but is rarely on screen for more than a few minutes. Playing with my family or strangers puts it down another level — which is probably one of the reasons I don’t play with either group so much anymore.

It is worth noting, however, that when I played Trollbabe with Z we had some sex and romance in the game. Nothing explicit on screen, but we did narrate out the seduction, the falling in love, and then the results the day after. Trollbabe’s mode of narration and goal setting actually made it so there wasn’t so much as an uncomfortable moment, despite the fact that such a thing would have been taboo in a game we were playing more traditionally.

1) Yes. Every time it goes well.

2) On. /Sophisticated/ graphicness!

3) Every time it leads to the real thing.

4) When someone crosses (discovers) unknown boundaries

5) Safe word, when she can remember it.

6b) Actually, yes.=.

7) Without a doubt. What’s a medium? Very likely the soft impact any rules as used.

Fang Langford

1) Usually a small number of people in the group. Currently, two characters in my group have intimacy-related things going on.

2) Onscreen; my group does little to no bluebooking.

3-4) Nothing’s really stood out as being especially good or bad.

5) OOC discussion as well as an emphasis on player-initiated action.

6a) Though it comes up, I’ll use this part to remark that I wish it came up more often. I think part of the problem is that characters don’t have well-developed reference points with which to develop a basis for intimacy. The narrative stream of conventional romance and sexual desire is easy, but connecting that to the experience of being another person is a challenge.

6b) Sure.

7) Group? Yeah. The player who goes for intimacy in game has a temperament suited for it. My other players are very private people who have in some cases only settled into relationships they’re in their late 20s/early 30s and in some cases, weren’r exactly thrilled with their dating beforehand. My games often include pretty powerful emotions, so these people are guarded about it. If it was somehow given another level of filtration through blogging or something that might change. Rules-wise, I think game systems that suggested social actions might help nudge people to being more adventurous.

1) Yes. In most every game since about a year or so back.

2) It varies, but mostly on screen. I don’t think that details or graphicness plays into it as much as hte spur of the moment and the right feel for the scene.

3) I remember a HQ/Exalted game quite fondly where the romantic tension between two dragon-bloods drove a couple sessions to heights before nver reached by me in roleplaying.

4) Perhaps a Polaris game where a Knight’s siter was raped in front of his eyes by the fucking asshole Taurus, who we all shared as a Fate aspect. It was a very powerful scene for me (I played a Moon in the scene) and it was in the middle of a conflict; the Heart player had every possibility to stop it but obviously didn’t know what to do. Poor guy. I guess we crossed a line there.

5) Veils I’d say. Nowadays I play with so many new people that I’m never sure of where lines are drawn and sometimes I guess it veers off into No one gets hurt-territory.

6b) It’s one of the big things I get out of my gaming today so I wouldn’t want to leave it completely for a longer stretch of time.

7) Yeah, I think it does. It’s mostly small groups and that makes it easier to address these themes I feel. Lately most rule systems we’ve played brings a lot of it to the surface as well (TSOY, The Mountain Witch).

1)Love/romance/sex happen regularly in our games. Probably every game I can think of going back over the years has had all of the above. Sometimes it’s the focus, sometimes it’s not; sometimes it’s easy, sometimes it’s complicated.

2)Hm. I’d say it depends more on the player. Some of our players are very graphic, others are not. We seem to leave it up to the player to decide if it’s a fade-to-black or a blow-by-blow (yes, I pun on purpose). We have had play stop because we had different ideas about what was happening. I once felt my character was being forced into something I didn’t think was even going on, but once we cleared up the misunderstanding of the action, all was ok.

3) Best experience with love/sex/romance in a game - Playing characters falling in love when I was. Very easy to find my motivation!

4) Worst experience with love/sex/romance in a game - Grusome over-sharing by a high-school guy friend who was clearly reading Penthouse Letters for some of his descriptions. }shudder{ I’ve never dealt personally with the ‘now your character gets raped’ thing, thank goodness. Unless you count the above misunderstanding, which was, technically, a seduction spell that was totally fitting for the demon NPC in question, and my character got to smack her in the nose with a rolled up newspaper. Very satisfying scene, once we sorted out what was going on.

5)Lines (stated beforehand if needed, or at the moment we see the line - ‘Hey, that’s too much for me’), usually having to do with ‘no minors’, veils as above. Bluebooking? Havn’t done it per se, but we occasionally have meta-sessions where we work out what happens in third person instead of fully in character. I think we’re more of an I-Won’t-Abandon-You group - we just ran through a patch of really horrible relationships in our Sorcerer game, and we all held in, even when it was painful to watch. Others in the group might disagree. *shrug*

6)a)I’m comfortable with love/sex/romance in games the same way I am with violence in games- if it makes sense, great! If it’s just there to say ‘oh, look, sex!’ or ‘oh, look, violence!’, I think that’s just shoddy. b)No, I’d rather not play in a game where l/s/r was never part of the picture. That’d be…weird.

7)Of *course* the group makes a difference! We’re a married couple and three of our most sexy friends, two of whom are married to non-members. We’re all plenty sexual people, and sometimes it’s a double-entendre sling-fest. Depending on the game, of course. We play face-to-face, which is more intimate by proximity and seating. We usually have some yummy snack and tea as well, so it’s got a sensual element going on even before we game. The levels of l/s/r change with what we’re playing - the current ‘vaudevillians in 1900’s Paris’ drift of Mountain Witch has plenty of sexiness - the Sign In Stranger game, not quite as much. DitV was more on the love side, as we had a Dog who fell in love.

1) Yes to all of them, fairly often, although different players are interested in different things. I tend to be a real sucker for romantic plotlines, while other folks are more interested in using (in character) sex and seduction to achieve their (in character) goals.

2) Romance and love happen on screen fairly often. Sex usually happens off, or is described very sketchily. On one memorable occasion, my husband put it this way: “And I’m going to cut there, since running sex scenes isn’t my foreplay. Er, forte.”

3) Oy, it’s hard to pick. Like I said, I’m a sucker for romance, so any plotline that involves a state of perpetual longing and frustrated desire is the one for me.

4) Well, I once played in a con game where someone said: “I roll to disbelieve the blowjob.” That was pretty bad, but at least it was funny.

5) Most of the groups I play with have known each other for a long time now, so there’s already a lot of trust going on, and we usually just kind of know where to draw the line. If there’s a problem (although I can’t remember any along the lines of love/sex/romance at all in recent history), it’s easy enough for us to break out of the game and talk it over.

6a) Well, if I wanted to play in a game with more explicit sex, I’d pretty much have to find another group. Back in college the games I played in had a ton of that sort of thing, so I know it’s not something I personally shy away from, but it is something that our group as a whole doesn’t really care for.

6b) Well, sure, probably. I mean, I’ve played in games where romance and sex just didn’t really come up and it was fine. I guess it depends on the situation, but as long as there were other things I found entertaining it wouldn’t be a problem.

7) Sure. As I said earlier, the group as a whole (and I’m kind of talking about an extended group of people, here; we have a pretty large pool of gamers who all kind of comingle and play in each other’s games depending on scheduling and what type of game it is and stuff) enjoys (to varying degrees) playing with love/romance/sex, but shies away from explicit sex scenes. There’s no real rule to it, just years of experience that demonstrate that fact.

As for medium, I pretty much only play face to face (and suck at online play!), so I can’t really comment, although I will note that I’m just as comfortable playing flirting, seduction, whatever in a LARP as I am in a tabletop game.

And as for rules, I prefer direct personal experience to any of the various frameworks mentioned. For me it really just takes time to get to know and trust people.

1) It varies depending on my gaming group. I think there needs to be a majority of people interested or it is a little uncomfortable. My Vinland/Buffy/Amber group is fairly romance-heavy (i.e. the average session will feature some sort of romance subplot), but my Harn group is light on it (i.e. only a small fraction had romance, though our James Bond 007 game had fairly regular casual sex).

2) Romance happens on-screen generally, though sex is purely off-screen.

3) My best experience was probably the long-standing romance of Dot and Max — the Slayer and witch in our three-year Buffy campaign. Season One had a long period of tension as Max mooned over Dot who was oblivious, but then they got together. Season Two they deepened and then they conceived a child together by sorcerous means. Season Three the baby was born and was the center of an apocalyptic prophecy.

4) I’ve never had any traumatic experiences that come to mind. My worst experience was probably a romance that wasn’t acknowledged. For example, I was uncomfortable at points in the GenCon game I played in, “Reservoir Witch” (a scenario based on Reservoir Dogs using The Mountain Witch system). There was also the Ripper Game, where my PC Rook had fallen in love with an NPC but it didn’t go anywhere. Weeks later I found out that everyone else assumed he was just lusting after her body when to him it was serious. I think the issue there was that on a meta-level the GM and other players didn’t take an interest in it.

5) For techniques, we play out romantic banter as in-character dialogue. Then physical stuff is generally described alluded to and then fade to black. There is some out-of-character discussion generally outside of the game where we talk about romances, where they are heading and what players are interested in. Rather than pre-established lines, people will give feedback about how thins are going. For example, a player once asked that a jealousy issue with a PC/NPC romance be dropped, and I did so.

6a) In games where there isn’t much love/sex, what would make me comfortable doing it is more people taking an interest in that side of lay.

6b) I don’t have love/sex in all my games, and I’m happy playing in a game in which the subject never came up — but only if there were good in-game reasons. I have been mildly troubled by games where there are PCs with normal lives who never consider getting in a relationship.

7) Regarding group composition, I do find that my all-male groups tend to have trouble dealing with relationships in depth, though sex still comes up. The medium also seems to influence — in practice my larp and online play have had more romance/sex in them. The rules used doesn’t seem to influence.