Sex in Gaming: What the Fuck is the Point of Fucking?
So a number of years ago I was invited to join a game of Apocalypse World for playtesting by a friend. He didn't explain much to me, other than it was a dark, sexy game set in the Post-Apocalyptic world. So I showed up, grabbed a playbook (the Battlebabe) and started playing. I didn't even notice there was a sex move. I didn't like the game and I never thought of it again. It was a one shot, so no big deal.
A year or so later, another friend invited me to play Apocalypse World, a sexy, gritty game of the post apocalyptic future. And I thought it sounded familiar, but whatever, I'd go. So I show up, and it's this weird little game I had played before, but slightly different. I grab the Battlebabe again, circle some things, and notice a special move. Special. It was a way of saying sex move. And I'm sure I stared at it for a bit, annoyed that my special wasn't all that special, and continued to play. There wasn't any sex in that game. There wasn't any intimacy. I honestly didn't "get it" or the system and just walked away going meh.
That was a campaign. Years later and more PbtA games than I can count, and more sex in games that I know what to do with, I've come full circle in my thoughts on sex, intimacy, and specials in games. Why is there sex is gaming? And why now are we getting sexy games?
Back when I was first gaming, it was perfectly normal, as the woman in the group, to get hit on a lot. My solution to this was to jump on it instead of fight it, and form intimate, adult relationships in character with other characters. I would ask people "hey, wanna be my boyfriend? or husband?" and most dudes would say yes. Problem solved. My character belonged to someone and the sexual harassment pretty much stopped.
I've always inserted sex into my games. There could be a long discussion on voyeurism and the tendency of trauma victims to sexualize things, but I'd rather think that my sex-positive childhood prepared me for sex-positive gaming and life. Gaming is about fantasy fulfillment and story telling. A part of many game fantasies is the sex part. Do the wenches, rape the girl, rape the female character who's not willing, hit on all the women, etc.. I mean, there are great consensual experiences too, but not during the first years of my gaming career.
When the D&D Guide to Carnal Knowledge came out, everyone had a hoot. From rules on sex to reproduction and the odds on half-something babies, the book was obviously addressing some phenomenon happening in gaming culture. Obviously sex was happening and we needed some rules for it in Dungeons and Dragons.
But in a world of fantasy fulfillment, why weren't there rules and discussions around sex in gaming? Why was it always gross and kinda rapey and tropey? Why did I feel the need to glom onto men in gaming to avoid the rape tropes and issues? Why weren't gamers having healthy discussions on sex and gaming?
Apocalypse World is the first time I saw a sex move. Monsterhearts is where I saw the next one. Urban Shadows, the one after that, each with their own incarnation of how things worked. These games specifically addressed sex as part of the fiction. I think this is what made them "sexy" games instead of just normal games even though they are just RPGs. They were the first games I encountered that really delved into the idea of PC on PC sex and action, and rewarded players for this experience.
Now, when mechanics are in a game, the game is saying "this is something interesting in this fiction you get to play with and we're going to facilitate that." If you don't think that about mechanics, you don't get why mechanics exist. So let's talk about this briefly so we're all on the same page. If you have a game that has a thing you can roll for turning someone on, like in Monsterhearts, the game is facilitating you being a hot mother fucker and flirting. If you have a game that has a move like "seize by force" and "go aggro" that game is facilitating you kicking ass and taking names. If it has a move for investigate or poke around, it facilitates mystery solving. So depending on what mechanics a game offers, depends on what the game is encouraging you to explore.
So a game that has sex moves (or whatever you want to call them) is saying "this is part of the game and you should totally go fuck each other." Buried Without Ceremony released a game called A Place To Fuck Each Other. Avery McDaldno, of Buried Without Ceremony, is also the author of Monsterhearts and no stranger to intimate, sexy games. Julia Bond Ellingboe wrote Tales of the Fisherman's Wife based on the iconic art piece. Ron Edwards wrote S/Lay w/Me.
These games that are giving us things to talk about sex with, whether it's the hard core fucking of Apocalypse World, or the angst and emotion ridden sex of Monsterhearts, or the physical or emotional intimacy of Urban Shadows, it says "hey, go ahead, fuck each other. Make it mean something." It's giving us permission to do what gaming has always done. It's giving us permission to make life complicated and sexy and messy and to fuck each other.
Sex is, to some, a part of intimacy and it is often a social pressure in any level of society, be it teenagers or adults or fantasy characters. Characters have attraction, needs, love, and hungers. In any game, your characters are likely to have attractions to one another. This all ties in to my post about love and gaming, but really, sex is more than that. Sex says a lot about our characters. Do they want sex? How often? With whom? What is their sexuality? Do they use sex as a coping mechanism or just for fun? Does it mean something to them? Do they use it to manipulate people a la Game of Thrones? Are they lonesome and it's a salve to sooth their internal wounds? Have they ever had sex that meant something? What do they think when someone says "I love you" after and they don't feel the same?
When your werewolf has sex in Monsterhearts, you form a spiritual bond with them. When your partner has sex with someone else, the bond breaks, and you feel it. If that isn't a recipe for drama, then nothing is. Sex means something to that werewolf, even if you don't want it to. Sex may not mean something to another person though, and drama, delicious drama, ensues.
We're playing Urban Shadows lately. A lot of it. Like five or so six games. I'll do a character round up soon. Promise. But in US you have intimacy moves. They fire off when you share a moment of physical or emotional intimacy. My friends and I (the infamous Rob and Rach) have spent a great deal of time deciding who's had sex with whom, and on some level, what that sex was like. If you remember my Mortal turned Hunter character, Robin, then you'll recognize she's in this game, as an adult. Her sex is as a way to cope with being a hunter, it stops the urges to kill supernaturals for a bit, and it makes her feel human. Rach's character, Curtis, from my Apocalypse World game, is all about sex as a fun past time and a way to connect to others. He has probably the healthiest perspective on it. Merov, from my DRYH game (that warlord who stopped a train with his face), is back as the dragon, and sees intimacy as a way to find out who his soul mates are. It's a means to an end. How he feels about it emotionally, I don't actually know.
When a sex move goes off in game, it isn't like it's a satisfying, sexual thing. It's a statement about those characters. It adds conflict, drama, and sometimes it just adds a confirmation of how they feel about each other. But because there are moves that go with these sexual moments, it also adds weight and consequence to sex. If you have sex with a hunter, they get to ask you a question and you have to be honest. The oracle will see your future. It all ties in to the narrative of the story and the story becomes better for it.
But do you role play these moments?
The actual sex part? No. I don't. It goes "Do you their moves go off?" "Yes. I think so. You?" "Yeah. For sure." And then we read the moves. There's no role playing out what's going on or making anyone uncomfortable. You're just owning that an intimate moment happened. And wanting that to impact the fiction. It only gets mention in a game if you find it interesting and it adds to the story of what's happening. It allows for moments that form characterization and intimacy, the same kind of moments we as a culture love watching in movies and television series. The intimacy part? Where you pillow talk or like say things that are important? Yes. Absolutely.
Buffy wouldn't be interesting without her moments with Angel/Spike/Riley. Xander and Anya moments. Willow and Tara moments. The 100 is great because of their intimacy moments. There are so many great moments in television that are about and function around intimacy and sex. Stories often have these elements that they glance over or don't give weight to. It's often up to the role players themselves to demand weight to these things, but because the mechanics of the game they're playing focuses on strength and dex and not intimacy.
If you want to bring in the intimate, the sex, and the relationship focus, it's up to you to either enforce that with stating what you want from the game, or from having a mechanic that functions around it. In games where there isn't a mechanic, I find sex doesn't really happen as much. My friends and I always have intimacy moves going on in our games, and in Urban Shadows, we actually have a PC Bingo card to see how many people we can get our intimacy moves go off with. When we play Don't Rest Your Head or Hillfolk, those moments don't happen. Why? There's nothing facilitating it.
Not to say those games don't have drama and intimacy, but that they don't have sex and a focus on what that means in the fiction. If you think sex and intimacy, like every other part of life, is important (and not all people do and that's okay) and want to bring it into your game, go out and try. Some people feel a little uncomfortable with sex moves, and that's okay too. If you're curious, find a group of like-minded folk and try it out.
Overall I think sex and intimacy provide some great experiences in RPGs. I am drawn towards games that have that mechanic and discussion about the mechanic, when it goes off and when it doesn't. An important note on sex and intimacies move: They're consensual. If someone rapes a PC in a game (and please for the love of all that is holy don't) then that isn't sex. That's rape. Sex is consensual. Intimacy is consensual.
Rape is not sex. Rape is not intimacy. And rape, active rape of a PC on an NPC or PC, has no place in gaming unless a huge conversation has happened around this and everyone is consenting and in a safe place about this. Rape is often used in games, especially fantasy games, to remove agency from female PCs and NPCs. Your sex move doesn't go off because you did the wenches. Your sex move goes off because you dig that person and are into them and you have a moment where you're into each other and things happen. If anyone at my table gets towards the rape territory or even uses it as a joke, I x-card the fuck out of that. And if they do it again, they're told to leave the table. It's unfortunate that this needs to be said, but many people have needed this reminder in the past. And often, when sex comes up, eventually sexual harassment and rape come up.
To end on a positive note rather than a rant, I will say sex and intimacy have added interesting and compelling dynamics in the games I play, just like they add cool things in the television shows and movies and anime I watch. I no longer glom onto one male pc and use that in character relationship as protection. I play around with my character's emotions, their attractions, and what love and sex look like them. It defines them, partly, just as being a cis pansexual female identifies me and influences my life and sex choices. And adds drama. Lordy does it add drama.
That was a campaign. Years later and more PbtA games than I can count, and more sex in games that I know what to do with, I've come full circle in my thoughts on sex, intimacy, and specials in games. Why is there sex is gaming? And why now are we getting sexy games?
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| That is totally me over a decade ago. |
I've always inserted sex into my games. There could be a long discussion on voyeurism and the tendency of trauma victims to sexualize things, but I'd rather think that my sex-positive childhood prepared me for sex-positive gaming and life. Gaming is about fantasy fulfillment and story telling. A part of many game fantasies is the sex part. Do the wenches, rape the girl, rape the female character who's not willing, hit on all the women, etc.. I mean, there are great consensual experiences too, but not during the first years of my gaming career.
When the D&D Guide to Carnal Knowledge came out, everyone had a hoot. From rules on sex to reproduction and the odds on half-something babies, the book was obviously addressing some phenomenon happening in gaming culture. Obviously sex was happening and we needed some rules for it in Dungeons and Dragons.
Apocalypse World is the first time I saw a sex move. Monsterhearts is where I saw the next one. Urban Shadows, the one after that, each with their own incarnation of how things worked. These games specifically addressed sex as part of the fiction. I think this is what made them "sexy" games instead of just normal games even though they are just RPGs. They were the first games I encountered that really delved into the idea of PC on PC sex and action, and rewarded players for this experience.
So a game that has sex moves (or whatever you want to call them) is saying "this is part of the game and you should totally go fuck each other." Buried Without Ceremony released a game called A Place To Fuck Each Other. Avery McDaldno, of Buried Without Ceremony, is also the author of Monsterhearts and no stranger to intimate, sexy games. Julia Bond Ellingboe wrote Tales of the Fisherman's Wife based on the iconic art piece. Ron Edwards wrote S/Lay w/Me.
These games that are giving us things to talk about sex with, whether it's the hard core fucking of Apocalypse World, or the angst and emotion ridden sex of Monsterhearts, or the physical or emotional intimacy of Urban Shadows, it says "hey, go ahead, fuck each other. Make it mean something." It's giving us permission to do what gaming has always done. It's giving us permission to make life complicated and sexy and messy and to fuck each other.
When your werewolf has sex in Monsterhearts, you form a spiritual bond with them. When your partner has sex with someone else, the bond breaks, and you feel it. If that isn't a recipe for drama, then nothing is. Sex means something to that werewolf, even if you don't want it to. Sex may not mean something to another person though, and drama, delicious drama, ensues.
We're playing Urban Shadows lately. A lot of it. Like five or so six games. I'll do a character round up soon. Promise. But in US you have intimacy moves. They fire off when you share a moment of physical or emotional intimacy. My friends and I (the infamous Rob and Rach) have spent a great deal of time deciding who's had sex with whom, and on some level, what that sex was like. If you remember my Mortal turned Hunter character, Robin, then you'll recognize she's in this game, as an adult. Her sex is as a way to cope with being a hunter, it stops the urges to kill supernaturals for a bit, and it makes her feel human. Rach's character, Curtis, from my Apocalypse World game, is all about sex as a fun past time and a way to connect to others. He has probably the healthiest perspective on it. Merov, from my DRYH game (that warlord who stopped a train with his face), is back as the dragon, and sees intimacy as a way to find out who his soul mates are. It's a means to an end. How he feels about it emotionally, I don't actually know.
When a sex move goes off in game, it isn't like it's a satisfying, sexual thing. It's a statement about those characters. It adds conflict, drama, and sometimes it just adds a confirmation of how they feel about each other. But because there are moves that go with these sexual moments, it also adds weight and consequence to sex. If you have sex with a hunter, they get to ask you a question and you have to be honest. The oracle will see your future. It all ties in to the narrative of the story and the story becomes better for it.
But do you role play these moments?
The actual sex part? No. I don't. It goes "Do you their moves go off?" "Yes. I think so. You?" "Yeah. For sure." And then we read the moves. There's no role playing out what's going on or making anyone uncomfortable. You're just owning that an intimate moment happened. And wanting that to impact the fiction. It only gets mention in a game if you find it interesting and it adds to the story of what's happening. It allows for moments that form characterization and intimacy, the same kind of moments we as a culture love watching in movies and television series. The intimacy part? Where you pillow talk or like say things that are important? Yes. Absolutely.
If you want to bring in the intimate, the sex, and the relationship focus, it's up to you to either enforce that with stating what you want from the game, or from having a mechanic that functions around it. In games where there isn't a mechanic, I find sex doesn't really happen as much. My friends and I always have intimacy moves going on in our games, and in Urban Shadows, we actually have a PC Bingo card to see how many people we can get our intimacy moves go off with. When we play Don't Rest Your Head or Hillfolk, those moments don't happen. Why? There's nothing facilitating it.
Overall I think sex and intimacy provide some great experiences in RPGs. I am drawn towards games that have that mechanic and discussion about the mechanic, when it goes off and when it doesn't. An important note on sex and intimacies move: They're consensual. If someone rapes a PC in a game (and please for the love of all that is holy don't) then that isn't sex. That's rape. Sex is consensual. Intimacy is consensual.
Rape is not sex. Rape is not intimacy. And rape, active rape of a PC on an NPC or PC, has no place in gaming unless a huge conversation has happened around this and everyone is consenting and in a safe place about this. Rape is often used in games, especially fantasy games, to remove agency from female PCs and NPCs. Your sex move doesn't go off because you did the wenches. Your sex move goes off because you dig that person and are into them and you have a moment where you're into each other and things happen. If anyone at my table gets towards the rape territory or even uses it as a joke, I x-card the fuck out of that. And if they do it again, they're told to leave the table. It's unfortunate that this needs to be said, but many people have needed this reminder in the past. And often, when sex comes up, eventually sexual harassment and rape come up.
To end on a positive note rather than a rant, I will say sex and intimacy have added interesting and compelling dynamics in the games I play, just like they add cool things in the television shows and movies and anime I watch. I no longer glom onto one male pc and use that in character relationship as protection. I play around with my character's emotions, their attractions, and what love and sex look like them. It defines them, partly, just as being a cis pansexual female identifies me and influences my life and sex choices. And adds drama. Lordy does it add drama.
And on that note, gamers, happy in-game fucking!