Quote from: Battlemaster on July 04, 2022, 03:44:45 PM
All this yapyap about that Satine 'gamer personality/influencer/WTFE' (Honestly never heard of her till very recently, but I'm not into the big D or WW) and the fact she's mostly famous for doing porn and claiming she's big into gaming just got me to wondering about PCs who are partly or mostly 'sex workers'. (Prostitutes would be an acceptable term, but 'whore' in really negative, I reserve that for corrupt politicians mostly.)

I'm sure WW has gone there,  but find it unlikely DnD has.  Still, I wondered what games have had sex worker character types available and how they dealt with them.  Just gamer curiousity. I could see some traveller games at least hinting at it.

As I think on it I see that sex workers could have potential. Fuedal Japan had geisha spies and assassins, after all. In occupied France more than a few Nazis were hustled off to hell by a 'poisoned tart.'

Nah, I don't think I'd play one, in fact I know I wouldnt. But all this yipyap about a 'gamer personality ' who seems to be mostly known for fucking for money just started buzzing around in my synapses until I had to ask about it to shut it up.

I can't bring myself to look but I have this feeling someone will post a link to a WW game called 'Whore, the spreading' or something... 

Good god, rule 34 gets everything, doesn't it?

I believe Call of Cthulhu had prostitute as a career in one addition.

Rune Quest has sacred prostitutes which is a playable route.

I want to say you can be a Scorpion clan geisha in Legend of the Five

I believe WFRP 2nd edition had courtesan and camp follower careers which alluded to additional activites these careers might engage in.

While there would be edge scenarios where it might be interesting I think most examples of sex work wouldn't really fit that well into most rpg games as a player characters.

Quote from: jeff37923 on July 07, 2022, 11:21:20 AM
Playing a sex worker is similar to playing a merchant trader in any game, the sex work or trading is only a plot vehicle to connect adventures and adventuring.

Which connects to the point I was making earlier, in that the whole point of plot vehicles is that they're not themselves the interesting and unique "on stage" parts of the plot. Just as hunting for blood in Vampire becomes a hoop you have to jump through to get to the "real" action, the mundane "work" part of the job is a hoop you acknowledge passing through to get to the plot for which the job is a McGuffin.

One major difficulty for using sex work as a plot vehicle of this type for PCs comes in for those players (myself being one of them, and there may be others here) who don't view prostitution as a morally neutral or harmless business, and find it disruptive (i.e. either offensive or plausibility-breaking or both) to try to depict it as if it were. I don't want to digress into an argument about that position, as I recognize others will disagree and that's not the point of the thread, but I think it's important to recognize that this clash exists and that sometimes it's better avoided than digressed into.

Quote from: Visitor Q on July 07, 2022, 01:39:49 PM

I believe Call of Cthulhu had prostitute as a career in one addition.

"Careers" in CoC are simply pre-packaged skill choices - no matter what the edition is. Normally you are simply free to choose a number of skills that define your character once you have decided who he/she/they/pressF1/ctrl+alt+del is. For a prostitute in 7E "Art/Craft" covers... er... that thing, then you can add Charm, Psychology, Fast Talk and so on, according to how you see your character (maybe "Other Language: French" if she... uhm... served in France during WWI, or how to use a gun, or whatever the character history could suggest).

Dragon Magazine introduced a Geisha character class for Oriental Adventures, which could multi-class with Ninja. In my OA game, we had one player who ran a Geisha-Ninja. (Please spare me the rant that Geisha weren't sex workers, etc.)

ACKS has the Priestess of Ianna (goddess of love & war), one of the templates of which is a Sacred Courtesan. It also has the Priestess of Nasga (goddess of beauty & pain), effectively a clerical dominatrix. Sacred courtesans appear in Capital of the Borderlands' city of Cyfaraun. In a few hundred sessions I've never really seen anybody have problems with it. My players will scream at each other over whether or not it's lawful to execute kobold babies, but they take for given that an ancient Rome-type setting has sex workers and temple prostitutes and so on.

Outside of tabletop, the MMORPG Star Wars: Galaxies had Dancers who performed in cantinas for tips. The dance was definitely modeled after exotic dance and the dancers were generally quite scantily clad. Ostensibly you had to visit the cantina to burn off Battle Fatigue over time. In practice, a number of the dancers made tips from sexting. The system was eventually dismantled, presumably for that reason...

Quote from: jeff37923 on July 04, 2022, 08:37:54 PM

Quote from: Battlemaster on July 04, 2022, 08:16:48 PM
I've played a limited number of rpg fields, I don't get the 'hot new thing everyone gets' because I like what I like, not what 'everyone' likes.  I don't go for games that are based on shock for shocks sake.

It was interesting to see how many games at least touched on this topic.  It's been mentioned in a few wh40k products, a major character had a close companion who was a former prostitute. Oddly enough they loved each other despite the face he and she could never do it.

In another story there was a prostitute who turned out to be a genestealer hybrid. If you know shit about 40k you know that was a real ''EEEEYYYYYYEEEEEEEWWWWW!!! '' moment.

Out if curiousiy I looked at jeffy's reply, which confirmed my wisdom is not reading his shitposts, but was slightly surprised to see traveller games had them. I like traveller as an idea and a setting, not in love with the oldd school rules.

Nice to know that I am living rent free inside your head.....

Your statement, "Oddly enough they loved each other despite the face he and she could never do it." tells me that you don't know the difference between eros and philia. Not surprising, really. Just another example of your shallow thinking.

Late to this. subject. But this is nothing new.

And as was ruthlessly pointed out in the last SJW screeching about the "courtesan" table in the AD&D DMG. These morons cant even tell what the fuck these examples really were as they were not refferencing prostitutes more often than not. But of course fake outrage is what these cultists excell at.

On the official side...
White Wolf added into their d20m GW expansions the... Sexually Transmitted PC. No. Im not joking. Its WW. Oh and a horror mistakenly named the, ahem... Ravisher. Well they claimed it was a mistake when I asked...
White Wolf again with an article in their Inphobia mag on the sex lives of werewolves. The usual village idiots have been screeching "BEASTIALITY!!!!" for decades now.
White Wolf yet again has dotted their games with mentions of characters having less than glamorous professions. Vampire in particular.

And that is not even touching on any given RPG that is freeform enough to allow pretty much any sort of profession to be simulated.

On the semi-official side...
GW way the hell back when White Dwarf was still actually a gaming magazine, introduced a courtesan type PC for AD&D. I'd have to dig it out to find the exact details. Been a while.
TSR in Dragon introduced the Geisha.
Theres a few others in gaming mags over the years. Usually around the April edition.

On the fanwork side...
Someone did for BESM a bemusing dating sim/adult oriented piece that of course BGG flipped out about.
Theres been at least two published Erotic Guides to D&D out there for 3e.
Theres at least two for gurps.
Theres others. Some serious. Some very not. None of which counts as examples because they are fan works. Of course someones going to come up with something sooner or later for any RPG if they set their minds to it. Same for some of the magazine examples. Those were fan submitted and the companies were not so puritanical as to reject it.

Doesn't BattleTech have the Majestry of Canopus minor faction who have a law that only women can rule, using the title of Majestrix.  I say this because I heard that somewhere in the lore that the Majestrix in 3025 time period is both a ruler, but also will work as a high class prostitute as a hobby, something the super liberal Canopians barely bat an eye at, or are even proud of her for being so liberal. 

I'm pretty sure that's all BS, but I did hear it.

Quote from: weirdguy564 on July 08, 2022, 10:32:01 AM
Doesn't BattleTech have the Majestry of Canopus minor faction who have a law that only women can rule, using the title of Majestrix.  I say this because I heard that somewhere in the lore that the Majestrix in 3025 time period is both a ruler, but also will work as a high class prostitute as a hobby, something the super liberal Canopians barely bat an eye at, or are even proud of her for being so liberal. 

I'm pretty sure that's all BS, but I did hear it.

Not quite. Evidently Kyalla Centrella (the Magestrix of that time period) was just a massively horny woman and it caused no end of trouble. But the Canopians as a rule are pretty libertine, and 'what happens in Canopus stays on Canopus' is pretty accurate.

Quote from: Reckall on July 07, 2022, 02:54:42 PM

Quote from: Visitor Q on July 07, 2022, 01:39:49 PM

I believe Call of Cthulhu had prostitute as a career in one addition.

"Careers" in CoC are simply pre-packaged skill choices - no matter what the edition is. Normally you are simply free to choose a number of skills that define your character once you have decided who he/she/they/pressF1/ctrl+alt+del is. For a prostitute in 7E "Art/Craft" covers... er... that thing, then you can add Charm, Psychology, Fast Talk and so on, according to how you see your character (maybe "Other Language: French" if she... uhm... served in France during WWI, or how to use a gun, or whatever the character history could suggest).

Well yeah, but that's the case for basically every Basic Roleplay system and its hybrid offshoots. OP wanted to know games which had sex workers. CoC was one. I haven't played every edition of CoC so didn't know if prostitute was in every edition.

So I like the game called Dungeons and Delvers Dice Pool Edition.  The Wizard can specialize in Illusions, like many RPGs have.  First, creating realistic looking holograms, then ones that make sound, and ultimately solid as well. 

At that point I'm sure it doesn't take a lot of imagination why a Wizard went that route.

I had a "Haughty Courtesan" NPC in my last campaign, but it was a PG-13 game.

Years ago, in my high-level campaign, the Master Thief in the group did own a brothel in Greyhawk City. He trained all of the "harlots" to be his new Thieves' Guild.

What is the Big Deal?

Back during my GURPS:TRAVELLER campaign of 2003 to 2008 I had a recurring Courtesan NPC named Violet Tsung - she  owned an Empress Marava class Far Trader that she used as a travelling base for her business. Her brother (also an NPC) was a friend to the player character group.

- Ed C.

Quote from: Koltar on July 20, 2022, 12:13:37 AM
What is the Big Deal?

Back during my GURPS:TRAVELLER campaign of 2003 to 2008 I had a recurring Courtesan NPC named Violet Tsung - she  owned an Empress Marava class Far Trader that she used as a travelling base for her business. Her brother (also an NPC) was a friend to the player character group.

- Ed C.

Star Wars D6 Galaxy Guide 6: Tramp Freighters had a washed-up holo-actress delivering cargo out of a small yacht called the Gilded Lily. Hmm...

Quote from: bromides on July 07, 2022, 10:50:25 AM
Yeah, I think that part (using sex to generate plot movement) is where the concept is kind of weird. It's more about the sex part than commerce, with sex workers expected to be a slut for plot points rather than a whore for commercial enterprise.

That misses the point with sex workers, just as RPGs often miss the point about capitalism and commerce in general. (especially modern games, which are often socialistic if not communist.) If one emphasizes the "sex" over "work", then the perspective of it gets a little confused, IMO.

Interesting that you mention capitalism. I have often toyed with the idea of a James Clavell-based game. He was always very "capitalist-friendly" and focused on trade as a major point in his books, unlike most authors who tend to be left-leaning. One issue is that every time I bring up James Clavell people think I want a "Shogun" game, when I am actually talking about "Tai-Pan" (historical) or "Noble House" (more modern).

only ever had one PC that was a 'sex worker' but that was just a cover as she was a under cover cop.

WEG star wars had the senator template.