Generally not interested unless a) it's the lure of a trap and tastefully done (like The Frost-Giant's Daughter) or b) it's jokey at the inn in town and happens off screen ("my guy has twenty beers and tries to hook up with the wench," resolved as "did/didn't happen" by a d6 roll). I have zero interest in everyone at the table suffering some pervert's detailed sexual fantasies. Jerk off on your own time, creep.

I generally fall back on the "fade to black" technique simply because the group I have prefers it that way. I don't have anything against describing such scenes, but we don't find them particularly fun so they mostly get skipped. I make exceptions to that rule when the sex is important, such as has happened in games like Cthulhu. There the sex scenes can often be disturbing more often than erotic, so it would do them a disservice to hand-wave them away.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;870797Some players in Tekumel went full-on "I sticked it in her mouf and she went oog," and I found it somewhere between banal and annoying.

'Puerile,' is how I'd put it, or maybe, '12-year old's humor.' I'm not offended by it, but I don't really see why grown adults find something like that humorous.

Quote from: yosemitemike;870806Good erotica is actually very hard to write.  

Very much so, and I have little interest in doing so with my gaming group.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;870843I kinda feel a hobby that already has enough negative stereotypes hanging off of it and its practitioners can ill-afford the "mouthbreathing fatso creepers getting each other off with fifth rate Playboy prose in a dank basement" stereotype (which I believe RPGs have mostly avoided to date).

All "nerd" activities have a slight touch of that stereotype that they have to avoid. OSR maybe more or less so, I'm not sure.

Quote from: Chainsaw;870856or b) it's jokey at the inn in town and happens off screen ("my guy has twenty beers and tries to hook up with the wench,"

That's about where I would draw the line

QuoteI have zero interest in everyone at the table suffering some pervert's detailed sexual fantasies.

It's kind of like going to the strip club with your friends--I understand some people do so, but I don't get the appeal.

I don't mind it being in a supplement, but it wouldn't play a major part in the game.

Setting is the setting. Period.  Bad things happen, good things happen.  Some of those are of a sexual nature.

When PCs get around to having sex, I've never had a player really want to get into details, even in a "Sword and Sorcery We Just Struck it Rich and Are Partying in the most Decadent City in the World." scenario.  The most graphic would be something like "Is Activity-X on the menu at this brothel?" type of thing, but even that is relatively rare.

Graphic "Carcosa-like" depictions have cropped up, usually being a major reason to take out NPCs.  For example, finding a spellbook or ritual notes that tell the PCs just how crazy and evil the bad guy is.  

Or doing a Shadowrun against a Yakuza Bunraku (meat puppet) parlor and finding out kidnapped young teens are part of the stable (at which point a simple datasteal turned into Full.Tactical.Response that got the PCs in an Organized Crime shitstorm of epic proportions as they tried to stay alive by maneuvering between two different Yak clans, Mafia, Lone Star, Corrupt Lone Star and Mitsuhama.

At their own tables, people can LARP Poison'd for all I care, as long as they're not hurting anyone who doesn't want to be there.

What do I think of the "Old School" tendency to have brothels in towns, succubi art without nipple covers, and the dreaded Prostitute Table?  It's accurate and fits the setting. Good stuff.

What do I think of the titillating aspect of Desborough's products or the photoshopped pornstar cover art of that one company I can't think of now?  Whatever.  If that company had good art, I might have wasted money on it, as it is, that kind of art serves as a "don't buy me" flag.  Desborough's stuff isn't tricking anybody, you buy it because you want to, so more power to you.

What do I think of the faux-outrage horseshit like the type surrounding the Savage Worlds Sci-fi book?  I think some people need to get laid more.

Quote from: CRKrueger;870877What do I think of the faux-outrage horseshit like the type surrounding the Savage Worlds Sci-fi book?  I think some people need to get laid more.

What product was that?

My group has always gone with the innuendo then fade to black approach. Whatever works for whatever group though, more graphic descriptions just aren't my thing.

As to the more sordid things present in works like Carcosa, nope ain't happening at my table. I enjoy the idea of Carcosa but I feel like being too graphic about such horrific things is off somehow. Now my settings tend to run a bit dark and horrible things happen but these are implied and inferred more often than not.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;870880What product was that?

Here's the original art (on the right).  The problem is the ass crack and large breast.


The original cover was going to cover up the ass crack with the logo.


Not enough, so now she's had breast reduction surgery, and no longer has an  armored suit (I guess the easier to make her put her arms behind her to cover her ass.)


Obviously, the top picture turns all men into sexual predators and women into abject slaves, while the bottom picture promotes whateverthefuckwhocares.

Like I said, some people need to just get laid more often by whatever type of plumbing fixture they prefer.

Quote from: Chainsaw;870856Generally not interested unless a) it's the lure of a trap and tastefully done (like The Frost-Giant's Daughter) or b) it's jokey at the inn in town and happens off screen ("my guy has twenty beers and tries to hook up with the wench," resolved as "did/didn't happen" by a d6 roll). I have zero interest in everyone at the table suffering some pervert's detailed sexual fantasies. Jerk off on your own time, creep.

This.

I don't sit around with my friends and talk about erotic stuff out of game, and have no interest in doing so in game.  It all can be implied without showcasing it with table time.

I have had games with eroticism involved. Both as a character and a GM.

However, not all of my games have included it.

Generally speaking, as a character I'm probably looking to seduce someone for a benefit OR I have concluded my character either wants the other OR would likely fall for the other. From this perspective I'm squarely in the "actor" mode - what's my motivation? :-)

As a GM I follow the players hints, desires and play. If they get "frisky" I can match the narrative at their level. I also keep an eye out on how this can further the action or adventure in some manner.

From the OSR standpoint it seems that there are an enthusiastic minority that have found a niche audience within the OSR that like metal - in your face - exploitation style material. As is true in most things, if you like it you should support it. if you don't you should pass. I hardly imagine it's going to have any significant impact on the marketability or desirability of the OSR as a whole.

I come from the "if you don't like it don't buy it" and "if you don't want to see it, turn the channel" crowd, so my opinion is slightly based on the naivete of "live and let live" which is hardly fun for the inquisition crowd. It's probably easier to just toss me in the pervert pool and dismiss any reason I may have for "secret predatory motivations" or something equally malicious.

In the end one players erotic is anothers mundane, and anothers smut, and anothers affront to life.

Really. Theres posts on the net with people decrying as sexist smut a woman in full plate armour simply because its contoured even a little to her chest. Then there was that article about Aleena from BECMI D&D.

As a DM I've never used it in play other than as a backdrop to set tone. If the PCs met a prostitute and not for info then whatever happens is offscreen.

As a player I've run into some pretty weird stuff depending on the DM. One in particular liked to really delve. But overall it doesnt show up much at all.

Quote from: RPGPundit;870792What do you think about this type of 'sleazy' play like Desborough seems to want to push?

I don't care for it much.  Implicit or fade-to-black moments are all I want in a RPG session.  It could be interesting, but in my experience just ends up played for laughs or is plain puerile.

Quote from: RPGPundit;870792Also, would your answer be any different if it was much more explicit and offensive stuff like the "rape an 11 year old virgin 11 times" stuff you see in Carcosa?

Anyone who tried that in a game I was running would be shown the door.   I don't want to put up with that kind of bullshit.  So I don't.

The problem with eroticism/sex in any RPGs, not just the OSR, is that most rewards that a character can attain are incentivized via the game rules, but sex is notably absent in this regard.

If you want a character to gain power, there's rules for acquiring XP (and gaining levels) that let you do that. If you want a character to gain riches and treasure, there are treasure tables and magic item lists that let you do that. If you want them to gain fame and influence, there's often (though not always) some sort of mechanics that let them do that (e.g. gaining a keep and followers once you reach name level).

In every case, this creates a meta-game reason for the player to have their character face danger and overcome obstacles. The reward is incentivized at the meta-game level, giving the player and their character reason to go after something.

Sex has no particular meta-reward mechanic, which creates a disconnect between what a character would likely want and what the player wants their character to do. It's one thing to cross the Mountains of Woe, fight the Demons of Despair, and brave the Fury of the Gods if you know you'll get that flaming holy avenger +6 at the end of it all. Now change that to getting to spend a night with Aphrodite, and unless that has some sort of stat bonus, then it suddenly seems a lot less worthwhile.

This isn't to say that players can't ignore the meta-reward and focus purely on the role-playing aspect, but that's far less easy to do when there's nothing for you to gain, out of character, by doing so.

There's also the issue that it can seem puerile in the extreme to incentivize sex (and of course there's issue with how you do so), but that's beside the point. Eroticism is an awkward fit for RPGs because it's a temptation that isn't really all that tempting.

I’m not familiar with the old-school erotica that Pundit cites, e.g. “James Desborough's stuff (Machinations of the Space Princess), or some of Venger Satanis' work”, “my DCC campaign logs,” and “much more explicit and offensive stuff like the "rape an 11 year old virgin 11 times" stuff you see in Carcosa?”, so I’m not sure what is being compared to what.

I’ve seen and gamed a range of activities. Sex comes up now and then. Sex always fades to black at some point. I don’t see that as being especially different than how I treat violence or torture in game. Those too fade to black, or red as the case might be. I don’t really want the results of violence depicted in every painful, organ damaging, eyeball squelching detail. Neither (I think) does anyone I play with. And descriptions of torture themselves become torturous for me to see or hear, like watching certain obligatory parts of most Mel Gibson flicks. That’s not something I enjoy in my gaming.

Quote from: Alzrius;870906This isn't to say that players can't ignore the meta-reward and focus purely on the role-playing aspect, but that's far less easy to do when there's nothing for you to gain, out of character, by doing so.

Interesting point. In my experience the incentive disconnect between PC and player applies to torture as well, maybe even more so. The pain and fear of pain that torture causes for the PC is not much of a motivator for the player to have their PC break down and talk under harsh interrogation or to scream like a school kinder because of the pain.

Quote from: TristramEvans;870820I don't think about it. People can do what they want in their games. If I want to do it in mine, and my group's down for it I will. If I don't, I won't. This whole "let's judge people for what they play pretend about" is old, tired shit.

Very tired.

Depends on the game and the group in question. I've run allot of games with erotic and sexual elements. They can add fun but they're not for everybody or every game. I try to make as clear as possible up front what level is going to occur so everyone know what they've signed on for and isn't suddenly pushed outside their comfort zone.

Things definitely tend to get more detailed in online games as opposed to face to face and women seem to be more interested in eroticism at first, IME.