Sex & Romance in Role-Playing Games

PCs should be getting laid. If fiction is any guide, the three universal motivators are love/lust, greed, and revenge. They are human urges so basic that when presented in fiction they need no further justification. This is what people do and have been doing at least as long as we’ve been writing about it. Sex and violence are just good story-fodder.

The thing is, this tends not to be the case in RPGs. Yeah, we get plenty of money and violence, but where’s the sex? Where’s the romance? I’ve always wanted to find a way to encourage fictional romance at the table, but the problem seems three-fold. The first issue is that games very rarely touch the subject. When it does come up, it’s often in some form of generational play, concerning the joining of families or creation of offspring. This is more logistics management than romance. PbtA games buck this trend slightly, with Apocalypse World having moves based on sex: “When you sleep with someone, take +1hx with them”etc. This at least brings the thing into active play, rather than a background strategic element. Still, it’s... lacking. In my experience, even the sex Moves aren’t enough to pique a player’s interest unless it offers some kind of strong strategic advantage.

The second problem is that players, out of character, do not care if their PC gets laid. Players are goal-driven creatures. They want to win. They want to earn points, they want to beat the mission, they want to accomplish their goals. For the player, there is no real temptation to divert time and energy into a romantic interest that does not bring them closer to said goals. Compounding this, we’ve sort of trained players to want the exact opposite. If you do get romantically involved with an NPC, you’re just asking the GM to take it as leverage to use against you. Combine all this with the lack of mechanical attention paid to the topic and even those players who might be interested in romantic story elements may not be aware it’s even a valid option. After all, games communicate what they are interested in by the rules they choose to include.

So what do we do with this?

Sex and romance are a pretty hardcore set of biological drives for most humans, at least at some point in their lives. They are a unique area of focus that is difficult to sublimate just by focusing on other areas of development. They are such powerful drivers that we often do very dumb things in the pursuit thereof, eschewing our more rational priorities for even a fleeting glimpse of that rush (or release.) This is such a powerful factor in most of our lives  that as an audience, we don’t even balk when fictional characters risk upending their entire lives because they were lonely or the bartender was cute. Many of us have been there, man. 

In general, the way you get PCs to act like real people is by making the mechanical incentives of the game mirror the physical or psychological incentives the PC would have in-character. You are never going to get a player to really care about their PCs level of comfort or discomfort, or worry about the quality of their sleep. However, if you mechanically reward them for being exceptionally well-rested or start punishing them for getting shitty sleep on a bad mattress, the interests of player and PC align. Suddenly, the PC will be very concerned about the quality of their mattress and a good night’s sleep.

If we want players to be tempted to actively court romance or be tempted to make dumb decisions concerning their gender of choice, then we need to creative incentives for the players to do so. Getting this right, however, requires a few things:

• It needs to be a discrete subsystem, the very existence thereof drawing attention to the fact that this is a valid thing to explore in play.
• It needs to be built in such a way that it can be accessed or ignored at the player’s preference, without having to specifically build your character around taking advantage of it. This is ultimately why relegating the concept to a drive or trait doesn’t quite work. It’s fine for the P/PC who is specifically set out to do that thing, But for anyone else it may as well not exist.
• The rewards must be unique enough that you can’t get them from other systems in the game and compelling enough to tempt goal-oriented players into making trouble for themselves to do so. This is even more important when you remember the liability potential of tying yourself to an NPC.
• And ideally, we’d want it to (wherever possible) integrate into other areas of the game and plug into/make use of the existing mechanics so that it feels a natural extension of play. Accessibility is key.

You may have noticed above that I said three-fold problem and only listed two. The third and perhaps largest issue comes from the topic itself. Simply put, people have baggage. For a lot of people, sex is a significantly greater taboo than violence. The same group that will happily engage in fictional sword-fights and describe a disebowelment in gratuitous detail will get squirmy at even vague descriptions of physical intimacy. Even someone who is otherwise very comfortable with the topic of sex and their own sexuality may not be terribly interested in role-playing the details thereof with and in front of their friends at the table or watching said friends do the same. Unless, you know, you’re into that.

Existing RPGs haven't done themselves many favors. When people think of the topic, they often think about things like FATAL where the its inclusion is about simulating the act itself. Add to this the above issues of social-squick and potential prior bad experiences due to either group immaturity or deliberate bad actors and it's easy to see where this can lead to uncomfortable territory. Further add in the lack of representation of the topic in RPGs and it creates a culture where sex and romance are neither a normal part of expected RP experience, no one people know how to explore in a safe, productive fashion. No one wants to end up on r/rpghorrorstories.

The thing is, all of this latter point is a red herring. Most of the discomfort (and prior bad experience) comes from the idea of playing out sex-scenes at the table.  As ludicrously amusing as it might be to develop a God of War-style sex mini-game out of Full Contest (how else would you know who won?), that's not only unnecessary, it misses the point. The reason that sex and romance are valuable as a story element is through the exploration of character motivations and the relationship dynamics it creates. While the gratuitous nudity is good for HBO's ratings, the physical act of sex is not where the drama lies. From a dramatic standpoint, it's all about the lead up and the consequences to the relationships involved.

From a game standpoint, the purpose of such a system would be both to demonstrate sex and romance as a legitimate are of play and encourage PCs to behave in ways that feel more natural to reality and fiction. In so doing, it helps close the gap between the kinds of stories that S&S generates and the kinds of stories S&S seeks to emulate. 

Creating such a system would be a delicate balance. To feel legitimate, the system would require enough structure and guidance that it was teaching players the right way to use these elements in a story and explore them safely through play. That will include a necessary emphasis on the relationships themselves, in and out of character, and handling the subject matter in a way that's comfortable for everyone involved. Such as keeping the actual climactic details safely veiled and off-screen.

I don’t have more specifics, yet, but it does occur to me that this is a very close cousin to the social conflict topics I’m currently developing. One could easily plug into or effect the other. It’s thus worth a bit of consideration, as I’m solidifying the latter. It’s also a very, very big element in the kind of fiction that S&S seeks to emulate. How many Scoundrel-esq characters practically live out of a brothel?

At this stage, I’m seeking input. Any thoughts, questions, ideas, or suggestions? Have you seen sex/romance used as a part of play at the table? How did it go? How do you feel about the topic and its inclusion? Is this an area of development that interests you, or something you’d prefer left to HBO?

Simple Bards for Lamentations of the Flame Princess (Or Other Old School Fantasy Games)

The bard is an interesting character concept. On the one hand, it's got a definite style and flair of its own. On the other, there's a number of nagging issues that make it a poor fit for a game with classes centered around the Big Four (Fighter, Cleric, Magic-User, and Thief).

• Main draw is that it does a little bit of everything, which isn't quite as bad for the magic-user and fighter, but sucks for the thief - especially since "skill guy" is the specialist's shtick in LotFP. 
• Magical Music as a class feature is either something you either love, or despise.
• As I wrote once before, creating a class whose abilities are social in nature is weird in a game without strict social mechanics. 

So what can we do?  After some thinking, the first decision I made was to remove the idea of bard as a class entirely. Instead, we add another skill to the specialist's repertoire, making it another possibility to mix and match with rather than a separate class that has significant overlap with specialists anyway.

Inspire: through impassioned speeches, battle music, or a booming voice of command, you can affect the hearts and minds of those around you. On a success, you can add the number rolled as a modifier on a reaction roll. On a failure, you roll 3d6 instead of 2d6 and drop the highest die.

If used in battle, you can use your action to play music, orate, or command in order to aid your allies. The number rolled can be applied to one of the following, at your discretion: attack rolls, damage, armor class, saving throws, or morale checks. This will apply to all intelligent allies within earshot capable of understanding your message. If a roll of 6 would result in a failure, roll a second d6. If the second roll is also a 6, it forces all allied NPCs to make an immediate morale check. 

Alternatively, you can choose to try to demoralize your opponents instead, applying the number rolled as a negative modifier to your opponent's attack rolls, damage, armor class, saving throws, or morale checks. This will apply to all intelligent enemies within earshot capable of understanding the message. If a roll of 6 would result in a failure, roll a second d6. If the second roll is also a d6, your attempt has the opposite effect instead giving a +d3 attack bonus to any enemy that would have been affected.

Either effect consumes the character's whole action and remains in affect until the character's next action. If the character is attacked, silenced, or otherwise prevented from communicating with their intended audience, the effects cease immediately.

Not only does that make "bard" a potential variant of the specialist without adding an additional class, but with the lateral advancement rules, it could also be a nice way to work on a fighter character who is a warlord/commander type. More traditional bards can also attempt to either multi-class with a magic-user to gain spells, or make use of the arcana skill to represent their dabbling.

Majestic Mummers & Malcontents: The Marvelous Mountebank

I remember having a few old copies of Dragon magazine back in the day and reading an article Gygax in which Gygax wrote about his thoughts on a second edition of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, particularly classes he would like to see included and class options he would like to see expanded. Gygax was, of course, pushed out of TSR long before the actual second edition came out. Whatever would have been, we have only his notes. Some of these ideas actually came to pass - barbarian and thief acrobat made their way into Unearthed Arcana - but the one that always really stuck out in my imagination

THIEF — Mountebank: This sub-class of thief specializes in deception, sleight of hand, persuasion, and a bit of illusion. These factors, together with speed, are what the mountebank relies upon. However, disguise and theatrics also provide valuable tools of the trade to this class, so that one might never know one has been had by this class.

- Character Classes to Consider, by Gary Gygax. Dragon Magazine no. 65

Professional charlatan and huckster, snake-oil salesman, and confidence man extraordinaire. What's not to love?

So if we were going to home-brew this class, how would we do it? I've seen various ideas floated over the years, but honestly they have all rubbed me the wrong way. The common thread of contention is that these classes all seem to be based on making the Mountebank an illusionist wizard, who happens to have picked up a thief skill or two. They aren't wrong. The article seems like Gygax may have had that in mind. I'm just not a fan.

I had this problem in 3.5 as well, with the Assassin PrC. In my mind, an assassin is an extremely  disturbingly skilled stealth operative who has made murder into an art-form. What I actually got was instead a rogue whose major advantage was that he began to learn stealth-oriented spells.

It's a matter of personal taste, but I like my mundanes mundane. I would rather believe that my assassin was just that good that he could pull off mind-boggling feats of precision and stealth than "He used Greater Invisibility and then cast True Strike." It subjectively feels less impressive, and the more people you have who can cast spells, the less special magic-users are. Besides, If I want to go that route, I could have just played a wizard in the first place.

If I am going to have a Mountebank that fits my tastes, I don't want him to be a discount Illusionist. Besides, that goes against type. If anything, a Mountebank would be a stage magician using prestidigitation to pretend to be an actual wizard. That sounds awesome.

So what can he do? Clearly sneaking around is a thing, so Hide and Move Silently, sure. The Disguise ability from the AD&D1e assassin would fit nicely. Picking Pockets and Sleight of Hand are a must. But how do we deal with the core of the class?

I actually argued in one of my John Wick articles that the problem with social mechanics is that if you don't include them as a thing that you can invest your character in (read: some kind of skills or traits) then you essentially preclude players from making archetypes based on that character. A character who would have, in another system, focused exclusively on social-skills is without them mechanically just mediocre. Such is the problem we have with the mountebank.

 One of the best and worst features of OSR games, and particularly B/x, is the free form way that it handles role-playing and social situations through the Reaction Roll. Essentially, when encountering random, intelligent monsters or NPCs, the DM can either decide the other party's attitude in accordance with the situation, or he can roll 2d6 on a chart to find out, ranging from immediately attacking to hostility, uncertainty, or even friendliness. Some editions of the game give you a Charisma modifier that can be applied, making high-CHA characters more likely to start with better reactions than low-CHA characters. After this is determined though, there's no more rolling, no skill checks, nothing. You just role-play. If the PCs can talk their way out of the situation, or maneuver it to their favor, awesome. Otherwise, events play out in time with the narrative.

The problem this creates for the Mountebank is that they are essentially a class built around a social archetype. One could give them the same ability AD&D2e gave the bard (essentially giving them a chance to adjust that reaction roll up or down by one category if they succeed), but that alone is a poor basis for Mountebank as a stand-alone class.

Other options I've seen floated around included various "they can talk someone into something and it counts as a Charm Person spell" kind of solutions - which is better, but not perfect, or my favorite - Snake Oil Salesman: they can make fake potions and pass them off as real, with randomized effects. So you could make a Heal potion that actually may heal your party member, but also has a small chance of poisoning them. This is also very, very cool and flavorful, but then we've gone from Poor Man's Illusionist to Poor Man's Alchemist, and without some major effect, we remain Poor Man's Bard.

At it's heart, the dilemma is simple: I want to make a class that is essentially all about social prowess and fast-talk, but simultaneously don't want to give them a "roll to win RP" ability as that means the class most based on social encounters mechanically relies on RP the least.

I fear as though my goals are at cross-purposes. I will have to think more on the subject for now.

Until then,