Quote from: Ghostmaker on July 05, 2022, 08:29:11 AM
In my opinion, wanting to play a sex worker is running right up to the line of 'magical realm' fetish bullshit.

Uh... Only if you wanted to get into that squicky detail and most normal human beings wouldn't want to.

AD&D 1e included sex workers in some of their random tables (don't recall which book had them, but I've seen people post them a bunch of times). I'm pretty sure "courtesans" got mentioned in a couple of 2e supplements, including the Complete Ninja's Handbook, which I'm sure it mentioned Geishas, including a Courtesan ninja kit, IIRC. May have come up in other books I can't remember now.

I've sort of gone there a few times, but don't think I ever played a dedicated prostitute character (may have made a few courtesan types at various points, but never got around playing them), more like slutty PCs with implicit sex work periods in their backstories before their adventuring days.

Quote from: Rob Necronomicon on July 05, 2022, 09:08:56 AM

Quote from: Ghostmaker on July 05, 2022, 08:29:11 AM
In my opinion, wanting to play a sex worker is running right up to the line of 'magical realm' fetish bullshit.

Uh... Only if you wanted to get into that squicky detail and most normal human beings wouldn't want to.

First time on the Internet?

In all seriousness,  playing that sort of profession, even sans squick detail, makes my eyebrows rise as a GM. As a background, I could tolerate it if it was something in the character's past, but as a 'current gig'? Yeah, my antennae start twitching.

Probably handle the details with a few rolls. Maybe a seduction skill roll vs targets willpower roll. Bonus if she'd been briefed on his tastes.

As to how long, maybe more rolls, possibly a physical roll for the target to determine how long he lasts.

Honestly, hiring sex workers to seduce people happens all the time. The kgb did it with female and male agents. Ask Clayton Lonetree among others. It is a tested method in real life.

As to gaming, i'm not big on it, but again after looking up that satine woman and seeing a sex worker get into the gaming biz (personally i wouldn't bet she knows her dex from her wis) it just made me curious.

Even before AD&D, Judges Guild drifted into this area of play around 1975 or so. My memory may be faulty, but I think...
(1) The CSIO had tables for random whore creation. Hair color, body dimensions, that sort of thing.
(2) I think one of the old JG magazines had a "houri" class or some such. I'd have to hunt for details.

The Dragon issue #3 article Notes on Women & Magic outlining experimental rules for female PC classes, much of which of which focused on seduction abilities. Also, White Dwarf #13 had the Houri class.

In some ways any Dune RPG would have something like this, as the Bene Gesserit did a lot of gene manipulation and characters like Lady Jessica were "bound concubines." It wouldn't surprise me at all if Traveller had something of the sort, as a lot of folks used Traveller to play Dune campaigns back in the day.

During D&D 3E there were a number of third party supplements that introduced (no pun intended) sex of every kind into D&D. The ones I remind were "The Book of Erotic Fantasy" (which I have and it is quite good), "The Book of Unlawful Carnal Knowledge", "Encyclopaedia Arcane: Nymphology" and "The Quintessential Temptress". I haven't read the other books so I can't comment, but at the time they didn't make a big splash.

One thing that "The Book of Erotic Fantasy" does right from the very beginning is asking "What is the rating of your campaign? G, PG, PG 13, R or XXX?" and then proceeds to give examples of what you can or can't do regarding love and sex. I guess that you can have a PG 13 sex worker as long as the sex happens "between scenes".

Truth is, in a campaign 13 years long, I had two characters having sex with NPCs (implicit) and a character falling in love with a NPC (it was a female player playing a male elf, and she declared that her character had fallen in love with a female NPC played by me - so wokeist should be happy ) In my experience, it is amazing how my players never cared about such things (I had a tragic love story in GURPS Cyberpunk - tragic because two characters fell in love and both were killed the very next session while trying to help each other during a re-enactment of the opening of "Escape from New York"). Of course other groups mileage may vary.

Quote from: Battlemaster on July 05, 2022, 11:06:40 AM
Probably handle the details with a few rolls. Maybe a seduction skill roll vs targets willpower roll. Bonus if she'd been briefed on his tastes.

As to how long, maybe more rolls, possibly a physical roll for the target to determine how long he lasts.

Honestly, hiring sex workers to seduce people happens all the time. The kgb did it with female and male agents. Ask Clayton Lonetree among others. It is a tested method in real life.

As to gaming, i'm not big on it, but again after looking up that satine woman and seeing a sex worker get into the gaming biz (personally i wouldn't bet she knows her dex from her wis) it just made me curious.

You don't role-play with people, do you?

You don't handle the details with a few rolls. If the player wants seduction, let them role-play the seduction. Roll to succeed or fail modified by the role-play. If it moves into physical intimacy, then just fade to black. As GM, you are in control and can say "NO!" to someone trying to push their erotic fantasy into your game.

Quote from: Ghostmaker on July 05, 2022, 11:05:41 AM
In all seriousness,  playing that sort of profession, even sans squick detail, makes my eyebrows rise as a GM. As a background, I could tolerate it if it was something in the character's past, but as a 'current gig'? Yeah, my antennae start twitching.

Hm... Yeah, actually sounds like you might not be playing with very mature people in that case.

Quote from: Rob Necronomicon on July 05, 2022, 11:49:58 AM

Quote from: Ghostmaker on July 05, 2022, 11:05:41 AM
In all seriousness,  playing that sort of profession, even sans squick detail, makes my eyebrows rise as a GM. As a background, I could tolerate it if it was something in the character's past, but as a 'current gig'? Yeah, my antennae start twitching.

Hm... Yeah, actually sounds like you might not be playing with very mature people in that case.

Or maybe I'm just naturally suspicious.

Quote from: Ghostmaker on July 05, 2022, 12:15:54 PM

Quote from: Rob Necronomicon on July 05, 2022, 11:49:58 AM

Quote from: Ghostmaker on July 05, 2022, 11:05:41 AM
In all seriousness,  playing that sort of profession, even sans squick detail, makes my eyebrows rise as a GM. As a background, I could tolerate it if it was something in the character's past, but as a 'current gig'? Yeah, my antennae start twitching.

Hm... Yeah, actually sounds like you might not be playing with very mature people in that case.

Or maybe I'm just naturally suspicious.

Admittedly, there is a type of player encountered in public play whose enjoyment comes from pissing everyone at the table off. In cases where they become sexually creepy with their character , you just kick them out of the game right then and there. No problem.

I'd suggest one problem with playing a character who engages in sex work is the same problem of playing any character with job or time commitments not immediately relevant to the adventuring situation: letting anything unimportant pull time and focus away from the PCs and their adventure is ultimately a net negative.

I've cited this before, but a parallel example for me was always the process of blood hunting for vampires in Vampire, in any iteration thereof. Unless you could figure out a way to make a specific hunt involve things critical to the adventure, the basic titillation factor (and that applies to more dimensions than the merely prurient here) of that situation always dropped off very rapidly with repetition, to the point where after no more than a few sessions the players simply wanted a few dice rolls to settle how many Blood Points they had to work with and call it quits. Playing a character still actively working as some kind of sex-service professional (as opposed to having gotten out of the Life to go adventuring) strikes me as likely to wind up in the same situation.

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on July 05, 2022, 07:46:52 PM
I'd suggest one problem with playing a character who engages in sex work is the same problem of playing any character with job or time commitments not immediately relevant to the adventuring situation: letting anything unimportant pull time and focus away from the PCs and their adventure is ultimately a net negative.

I've cited this before, but a parallel example for me was always the process of blood hunting for vampires in Vampire, in any iteration thereof. Unless you could figure out a way to make a specific hunt involve things critical to the adventure, the basic titillation factor (and that applies to more dimensions than the merely prurient here) of that situation always dropped off very rapidly with repetition, to the point where after no more than a few sessions the players simply wanted a few dice rolls to settle how many Blood Points they had to work with and call it quits. Playing a character still actively working as some kind of sex-service professional (as opposed to having gotten out of the Life to go adventuring) strikes me as likely to wind up in the same situation.

Difference is that sex work has a lot more potential of being being featured or being relevant to an adventure than almost any boring ass day job. Sex worker PCs could use the sex work angle to approach certain NPCs, gather information or their work could lead to adventure hooks and such. Granted, being a sex worker might have fuck to the with a GM's campaign, or the GM might not be willing or able to work the sex work angle into every adventure, but it's probably more likely and easier to do than working in being a store clerk or a lawyer, etc.

Other professions might also have adventuring potential too, though, like being a soldier or agent, which you could build an entire campaign around. Your character could also have a tech repairman gig on the side if they're the tech guy in a modern setting, etc. Some jobs are easier to work into an adventuring life than others, and sex worker probably ranks higher than most. But it can get tedious to bring up the character's job every time, unless the campaign is based around it somehow (which is probably easier for soldiers or agent types than other jobs).

Quote from: Ghostmaker on July 05, 2022, 12:15:54 PM

Quote from: Rob Necronomicon on July 05, 2022, 11:49:58 AM

Quote from: Ghostmaker on July 05, 2022, 11:05:41 AM
In all seriousness,  playing that sort of profession, even sans squick detail, makes my eyebrows rise as a GM. As a background, I could tolerate it if it was something in the character's past, but as a 'current gig'? Yeah, my antennae start twitching.

Hm... Yeah, actually sounds like you might not be playing with very mature people in that case.

Or maybe I'm just naturally suspicious.

I can't blame you, producer of spirits. It is a bit off the usual path.

The Dark Eye has a prostitute profession that you can play. But, then again, it's a German rpg.

The original Deadlands has "Saloon Girl" as one of its ten archetypes, which the description makes clear means sex work. I think the old west setting makes it pretty easy to integrate such characters, who fit the genre and the background. I haven't seen it used in actual Deadlands play, though.

Basic Cyberpunk doesn't have sex worker among its options (despite lots of other low-class criminal options), but there was a setting module for George Alec Effinger's novel "When Gravity Fails" which was co-written by Effinger himself. In it, the main sample adventure has three pre-made PCs who are all sex workers in Cairo caught in a complex mystery.

On the fantasy side, there are a number of games that have lifepath options for PCs rather than assuming that they are "adventurers" with no other professional career. Warhammer Fantasy has a lot of low-class career paths down to Rat Catcher, but doesn't include sex work. However, Burning Wheel has "prostitute" among its list of two hundred or so lifepath options.