More of Sex in Games
Cazyle's Wemic Site has a great 7-part article on sex in games (although you can safely skip part five, which is pretty strongly focus on furry / herm / 'taur fandom, and brevity takes over a bit at the end -- go back and rewrite those longer, dude!) Follow the links! Cayzle reads widely from a lot of different online RPG sources, and there's some really good stuff behind the little blue underlines.
10 Comments:
Dude. Wemic sexuallity? What the fuck you pointing me to? The links on the first, sixth & seventh are useful though.
I don't know though. I wonder about sex, romance and love in gaming. Those are issues I deal with and explore in real life so I don't see a real place for them in my games as issues. I don't need to detach from those issues like I do for something I would explore, like child abuse, paranoia, fighting for something you don't believe in, or mental illness.
I found the Wemic sexuality article a really excellent example of alternate sexuality in fantasy worlds, a bit like the stuff that Ron was touching on in his Al'kzarn (or however you spell it) setting in Sex and Sorcery. Having fantasy creatures with wierd sexual patterns is great fodder for getting us to think about our own sexuality, and a great example of sexual exploration that we can't do in real life (humans are not creatures with a heat cycle for reproduction, so we can really only get into that sort of thing via fantasy.)
I'm beginning to reach the conclusion that we explore issues in games totally differently from each other. If I'm *not* exploring my real life issues, I'm totally disinterested. I play to create attachment to issues.
yrs--
--Ben
Ben,
Humans are totally creatures with heat cycles. It ain't cat's meowing into the wind, but trust me. Women so have cycles of heat. Big time.
It looks like we have different angles on the matter. I explore my personal issues in real life. If I am exploring sexuality or romance or love, it is with the wife. I'm not interested in exploring that shit with my bro Kevin or anyone esle for that matter. I could care less about someone elses desire to fuck around with that issue cause to me it is a personal thing you can only come to terms with on your own through actual experience.
The way I look at it, if it is a part of my life, I've hit that shit already or I am hitting it or it is coming in the near future. It is why I never, ever fuck around with drug addiction. Been there. Done that. Not interested in exploring what I have experienced first hand.
Uhm, Keith. Speaking strictly biologically, humans are in heat all the time. Now, there are definitely fluctuations in level of sexual desire and arousal, especially for women but also for men, but nowhere near the intensity of most other mammals. We certainly aren't lions. I don't see any human women running in cycles of "2 years of celibacy, sex dozens of times a day for a short period, followed by another two years of celibacy." Hence, alien sexuality.
yrs--
--Ben
You haven't met my wife. Ovulation time rolls around I get less sleep than normal...
Though this brings up the question, why the fuck would I want to explore alien reproduction cycles? Maybe this is why I felt Sex and Sorcery were the weakest of Ron's books?
Check out Barlowe's Guide to Extraterrestrials. It's a catalogue of various sci fi critters from books; sort of an imagniary Audubon guide. He goes into the sexuality of creatures when the information exists. The Polarians are of particular interest to me.
Of course, I'm into sex in RPGs if it's interesting. But I think the reason so many people aren't is because of some fairly obvious reasons: sex is really personal and is an inherently vulnerable position. Note that the violence in most games is impersonal and, of course, is less likely to have long-term effects on the character. Then, of course, is the issue of sexuality and the general discomfort we have in our society with it (not that it's alone in this).
Now, what's interesting to me about sex - both fictionally and otherwise - is that it's powerful and makes me/a character vulnerable. It's about trust, between partners, players, and characters. That makes it a profound personal experience and a great way to bring disaster on the heads of your characters (that being the point of every character trait, in my opinion).
Keith, getting 35% hornier once a month is more of a vestigial heat cycle than a real one. It's like noting that humans have tails, too.
I've never really confronted drug addiction in a game, probably because it's a problem I've never had and therefore one I don't really know how to model. I've tried writing decent addiction rules before (using the One Ring as an example) and it always comes up hollow.
But that doesn't mean that if I knew more about it, even abstractly, I wouldn't consider it an interesting avenue of exploration.
You've said before that was really scares you isn't Horror From Beyond, but people clashing about human stuff. Conspiracy of Shadows is about Horror From Beyond forcing humans to do Human Stuff. Why don't you want to have sex - one of the most human parts of Human Stuff - in that mix?
J-
I was just trying to point out that the heat cycle ain't all that alien is all. It doesn't make the notion of exploring wemic sexuality any more appealing to me...
I want to have sex in the mix, but I just don't see RPGs as capable of properly exploring the issue. Sex can be and is everything that it means to be human rolled into one single act. How the fuck do you do that justice in an RPG?
Keith -- I'm having a little trouble following your argument. I was like "Here is a link to a good article about sex in fantasy games." You're like "Why did you link that article? I don't like fantasy game sex." I'm like "what? So don't read it! I told you what it was!"
yrs--
--Ben
Wow! Thanks for the link and comments! Yeah, my blogging has taken a bit of a hit lately with the birth of my daughter. When I get a chance I'll revisit some of this. I especially have more to say about gender language in game rules.
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