Quote from: One Horse Town;505416Well, i guess we come back to the unanswered question. Where in the PA genre is 'sex moves' a trope?

Rincewind suggested Zombie Strippers. Then again, i don't think that 1 movie is a trend, let alone a trope.

Where's your emulation then?

A Boy and His Doggystyle by Harlan Ellison

Quote from: misterguignol;505417A Boy and His Doggystyle by Harlan Ellison

Epic.

Canticle for Hefnerowitz. Bad one, I know - trying to find a 28 weeks later poster's parody, featuring a woman and that odd thingie you put a kid in when you take it out for a walk.

Relationships and sex in a world where your options are limited is definitely a driving force behind some subplots in The Walking Dead.

Also, to play devil's advocate a bit (since I haven't played the game so I don't know how the moves work in practice) I wouldn't say it's a human resource (aside from the ability to procreate), so much as it is a basic human need.  Plus, when there's a lot of tribalism, your options are limited, and people are just trying to survive, who you fuck and how that affects your relationship becomes a lot more important.

And would any of you consider all the T&A in GoT to be "skeevy?"  I don't see anyone complaining about that, or Boardwalk Empire, or The Walking Dead, or whatever else is currently playing on TV?

Boardwalk Empire is all about fade to black, and there's only 1 explicit scene that either blows your mind, or feels like a cheap trick. And BE is in no frigging way about sex.

As for sex scenes and SoIaF.....it's well known that they range from laughable through creepy to not terrible in Martin's writing. If you want to see how NOT to do sex scenes, read SoIaF - I like those series, but seriously, Martin needs a cold shower permanently installed over his head. Sex scenes are definitely SoIaF's weakest link. Also - it's again not really about sex.

Walking Dead...let me put it this way. Issue 6 of Polish series (each issue is 5 American issues, so those'd be 26 - 30 issues), can be summarised in this way:

Prisoners getting shot blah blah blah Sex sex blah blah blah sex blah blah blah sex blah blah blah blah sex sex blah blah blah blah blah punching the rapist murderer blah blah blah WE ARE THE WALKING DEAD.

And I really wish I was exaggerating. You can thank me for saving your time later.

I dunno about TV show, but Walking Dead the comic was mostly a boring exercise in boring writing, where sex was the only interesting thing happening in a whole set of issues, with good art. The only saving grace is the trip to that creepy town run by Governor and resulting storyline.

So in other words - if you base your work on sex, you best be

a) porn director
b) Marquis de Sade
c) Musician
d) Really good artist
e) Have a really good idea

Or you will fail.

This really reminds me of this tune

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzfo4txaQJA

Quote from: Peregrin;505423Relationships and sex in a world where your options are limited is definitely a driving force behind some subplots in The Walking Dead.

Also, to play devil's advocate a bit (since I haven't played the game so I don't know how the moves work in practice) I wouldn't say it's a human resource (aside from the ability to procreate), so much as it is a basic human need.  Plus, when there's a lot of tribalism, your options are limited, and people are just trying to survive, who you fuck and how that affects your relationship becomes a lot more important.

And would any of you consider all the T&A in GoT to be "skeevy?"  I don't see anyone complaining about that, or Boardwalk Empire, or The Walking Dead, or whatever else is currently playing on TV?

That's all very nice, but my argument was based on two_fishes statement that the game fitted what he called the site's definition of emulation.

As an emulation of genre, i say it fails miserably.

Like much of the author's work, it seems to be titillation dressed in meaningful clothes. Something i know that you've decried in the past.

A lot of people seem really upset about the fact that sex is a part of AW's rules.

The game also includes rules for inflicting violence, intimidating people, pyschic powers, doing crazy stunts while driving, and so on.

Why is people having sex so particularly provoking? Is it because most RPGs don't talk about it? Is it because we're all pretty cool with describing violence or social conflict between characters, but not sex or romance?

Genre emulation. Keep up.

Quote from: One Horse Town;505426Like most of the author's work, it seems to be titillation dressed in meaningful clothes.

And it isn't even titillating. It's exactly as titillating as "4th fighter level. Time to take Weapon Specialization."

It reduces sex to boring game-speke. Just another way to powergame or min/max. (CharOp? Was that the new, trendy phrase I heard?)

That's gotta be a crime against sex itself. Sex should be sexy. (Not rape, not perversion, but sex.) Otherwise, what's the point?

Boring, trite, trivial, meaningless, "+1 to hit now, because I like boned her really well" sex.

Yeah, that's not any kind of accomplishment. If I was one of those hip young geeks, I'd say it was Made of Fail.

Quote from: Daddy Warpig;505432Yeah, that's not any kind of accomplishment. If I was one of those hip young geeks, I'd say it was Made of Fail.

Yep.

Quote from: One Horse Town;505431Genre emulation. Keep up.

In fact, let's take a quick look at the better works of the genre. I probably miss a fair bit of what I read/saw, but I am darn tired.

Books.

The Boy and his Dog - the boy chooses his dog over possible lay. Also the vast dehumanising of sex in the novel.

The Postman - Gordon Krantz bangs a girl whose husband's sterile at the beginning of the novel. No further lays as he's too busy fixing humanity instead.

No Truce with Kings - Son-in-law of main character fantasises about time with his wife, but it does not include sex - he just misses his wife. No sweet action in the novella.

Canticle for Leibowitz - in a way of behaviour truly unprecedented for Catholic monks, no sex in the book. Even from non - monk characters.

Works of P. K. Dick - guess what? Little or none sex when it comes to true post - apocalyptic works of his. DADOES isn't really post - apo but closer to cyberpunk, but even there the only sex scene serves a purpose of really showing that Deckard, after all, is human, and the supposedly "human" android is the least human of them all.

Movies:

Waterworld - a mandatory movie sex scene. Let's remember  though how well that movie was critically acclaimed.

Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Living Dead - guess whut, no sex, and the series only went downhill from there.

The Road - no sex.


Video Games.

Fallout & Fallout 2 - if I remember, you could get a shotgun wedding in one. Fallout 2 also had the infamous Porn Star thing in New Reno, which was (surprise surprise) why quite a lot of people despised New Reno. It was pretty awesome imo, even if pornstar thing was a bit stupid.

Fallout 3 - no sex.

Wasteland - no sex.

Quote from: Peregrin;505423And would any of you consider all the T&A in GoT to be "skeevy?"

Skeevy is this:

• We're sitting down to a game of D&D, and the new guy makes an otherwise interesting druid character and announces, at the end of char create, how much his druid loves his animal companion. I mean actually loves his animal companion.

Skeevy.

• Modern day "Call of Duty"-style game. Guy makes a sniper. 1st day in-country, he has his character go trolling for "underage prostitutes".

Skeevy.

(Both of these are hypotheticals, BTW.)

The pointless and bizarre insertion of sexual matters into an RPG's mechanics, where it makes no sense thematically or mechanically. The creation of mechanics for sex, and only sex, and nothing else but sex (sophomoric laugh), to no good purpose.

So pointless, that all the game's defenders repeatedly stress how it's easily ignored, only invoked for the mechanical benefits, and other "it really has nothing to do with the game" caveats.

If it has nothing to do with the game, why is it there? Oh, yeah. Prurient interest.

That is, skeeve. It's skeevy.

Quote from: BWA;505429Why is people having sex so particularly provoking?

Well, you recited all the Bohemian talking points, almost in exact numeric order.

What you didn't hit was the rest of the thread, where the real reasons (some) people object were listed.

Hint: They had nothing to do with your culturally condescending list. It has everything to do with sex-mechanics being a really stupid idea, from a game design standpoint.

As for sexuality in RPGs - I am more then open to the topic, and I make it no secret that I am a rather decadent bastard actually - but it doesn't mean I must tolerate foolishly transgressive material. I played once one half of the Jayne & Cersei twin - style duo in an intrigue DnD game - there was no explicit RPing, just a suggestion of such a backstory. The other player was a friend of mine, so I trusted her not to go overboard too. There was a certain epic storyline in that too, as my character was dying of consumption, and using his sister also as a source of life's energy (he was a necromancer), but it was a long and funny campaign. It fitted the setting, since we were playing in Sembia, which I find rather highly decadent.

In my ToC game, I allowed one of the players to play homosexual character, as I though the treatment of homosexuals in 30s England'd make an interesting side story. As it turned out, the player was joking - but I still took the idea, and made the son of one of heroes' gay. With a homosexual son and wife that hates him, you can expect the character prefers facing Mythos monstrocities while he chases for rare books around the London, rather then sit at home .

I can't wait when his son comes back from Oxford with a "special friend".

Quote• We're sitting down to a game of D&D, and the new guy makes an otherwise interesting druid character and announces, at the end of char create, how much his druid loves his animal companion. I mean actually loves his animal companion.

I swear this is like the only reason why anyone could wish to play a druid in D&D

Badum - tish.

Quote from: One Horse Town;505431Genre emulation. Keep up.

Except I never said genre emulation. That's something you're adding. There are plenty of elements in AW that don't fit neatly into the post-apoc genre, like the psychic maelstrom. What I said was:

Quote from: two_fishes;505092my understanding of AW, from talking to the GM who ran the game I played in is that it has a lot of advice and methods for running a situational game, where you set up characters with built-in conflicting goals, and limited resources, and you play it out, with the GM following the players' lead and responding to their actions. That sounds pretty typical of other games by V. Baker, like Dogs in the Vineyard or In a Wicked Age. It has also struck me as very similar to the style that is touted at this site as "emulation".

Which sounds to me an awful lot like this:

Quote from: RPGPundit;380632With a game that is about Emulation, however, where you suppose that NPCs as much as PCs have their own identities and personalities, that you are emulating a living world, then the answer to this kind of dilemma is obvious: you just keep emulating the world and see what happens.

Um, fuck.

Let's get back to genre emulation, or lack of.

Quote from: Daddy Warpig;505436Hint: They had nothing to do with your culturally condescending list. It has everything to do with sex-mechanics being a really stupid idea, from a game design standpoint.

It's hard to believe that the fact that it's SEX is completely irrelevant. Encumbrance rules were always a pretty bad game rule, but people rarely get worked up over them.

Sex is pretty rare in RPGs. In fact, looking at my game shelf, AW is the sole game that mentions sex. A few games touch on romance and/or physical beauty, but nothing anywhere close to AW's take on the subject.

So I can see why people are uncomfortable with it. I was, the first time I heard about it.

For those of you objecting to the inclusion of these particular rules, have you read or played the game? Because I think context matters.