Quote from: markfitz;875940Here's another thought about erotic content in gaming: are women more into it?

In my experience, yes.  Historically, about a third of my players have been women (over sixty, by this point), and I've never had a campaign that didn't have at least one female player.  

As long as they feel as if romance/eroticism isn't a vehicle for other players to try to get into their pants -- that being an important caveat -- many do want those styles of play.  Looking over my records, a little over half of the female PCs were involved in marriages or hookups (about 50:50).

Quite aside from that such themes are more acceptable in our culture to women than to men, I expect a factor is also the number of male players who are afraid that such interactions with NPCs run by male GMs carries a whiff of homosexuality around them.  I wonder, offhand, if female GMs could report more interest in their own campaigns.

I think it's pretty hard to generalise: people are people. One half of my current group are women: two of those are heavily motivated by ass kicking and looting anything that's not nailed down; the other one loves looting and finding creative solutions to emergent problems (potentially including the kicking of asses*) (*her current character is inspired by Prince George from Blackadder the Third, so she's terribly enthusiastic about most things, but maybe not terribly good at them). None of my current players seems to be interested in introducing erotic elements to the game.

Quote from: Gwarh;875910No I was referring to anal beads... ;-)

Yes it was a type-o. I meant Beheading.

That's nasty, I guess....

Thanks for confirming. I suspected it was a typo, since the dictionaries I checked didn't suggest anything that made sense. I just couldn't guess what - to me, beheading is part of combat.

Quote from: Gwarh;875915No that was not my intention. That is I did not intend to imply only Villains get to have sex scenes. It was just a proximity/formatting thing.

Cool! Just wanted to make that clear, because it's the Internet, and you seem fine, but it's not like I know you, right?

QuoteI'm totally fine dealing with evil Villains, but role-playing a graphic and in-depth  torture scene creeps to close to sadism imo. I much prefer the vs. the more cartoonish "put him on the rack!" sort of goreless torture.

My players probably wish I'd go for either of these approaches...but no:p. Instead, I've read books on actual questioning techniques, and I use police techniques when it's a reasonably sane villain:D.
Arguably, worked even on the player who is a RL cop. Though it was "hidden interrogation", and he didn't reveal anything of much value.
When the villain isn't likely to know these, I usually keep in mind the approach "if you start to actually hurt someone, you've lost". Psychological pressure, now, that's a different thing.

QuoteAgain it's due to the sadism connotations of the Former vs the Latter. To me it's like the "Saw' movies. For my taste it's just torture porn which I find distasteful and repellent.

I like Supernatural Horror far more than Serial Killer Torture Horror. But that's my tastes not what is right or wrong as another commenter said.

Yeah, I said it, too - de gustibus non est disputandum is a very good Roman proverb.

Quote from: markfitz;875940Here's another thought about erotic content in gaming: are women more into it?

Notably, all four of the women are pretty new to RPGs, so don't have preconceptions about how it's supposed to go. We were playing Beyond the Wall, admittedly, which is heavy on establishing grounded characters with relationships with each other and NPCs in their home village. Here we had several mentions of sex and relationships during character generation (which is very interactive and rather great in that game) including one character who was established as being in a lesbian love triangle, and another whose Entertainer background manifested itself as performing bawdy erotic puppet shows! And this was before we even started playing!

Note that I'm not talking about playing out sex scenes on camera. I'm not sure they wanted to go that far. But it's interesting to me that women who were RPG newbies were interested in bringing sex and love into the game from the start. Funnily enough, the one male player's character was completely asexual. Or, as some would call it, a regular D&D character ...

Well, I'd say yes, by pure numbers.
But note how they're all new players, they're a majority (and so can count on social backing to stop any unwanted advances, which Ravenswing pointed correctly are a factor that prevents romance).
And they're probably going by examples in other media, where love triangles are normal.

Quote from: Omega;876121From experience. Yes. Surprisingly more than expected. For all the online bitching and decrying of "sexist!". At the table women can and will get into some of the raunchiest encounters given a chance. And if not given a chance they may go out and make said chance. Ive about never seen at the table any male players get into even a fourth of the crazy stuff the female ones have.

Id lay good odds though on others having the exact opposite experience.

If anyone has the exact opposite experience, it's not me;). This is a post I might have written.
Now, there are some male players that buck the trend, myself included. There are some female players that are totally not interested in romance, either. But the majority are.

Interestingly, it's exponentially more likely that a new player might be interested in romance - unless he or she already has an idea of "how RPGs are played". But those that start at my table (well into the double digits at this point)? Yeah, there's a greater share of male players who are interested in romance. Now, the female players still outnumber them, but not by that much.
I'm not trying to explain this trend, just sharing my observations. But it's very much a trend to me.

Quote from: Ravenswing;876128In my experience, yes.  Historically, about a third of my players have been women (over sixty, by this point), and I've never had a campaign that didn't have at least one female player.  

As long as they feel as if romance/eroticism isn't a vehicle for other players to try to get into their pants -- that being an important caveat -- many do want those styles of play.  Looking over my records, a little over half of the female PCs were involved in marriages or hookups (about 50:50).

Quite aside from that such themes are more acceptable in our culture to women than to men, I expect a factor is also the number of male players who are afraid that such interactions with NPCs run by male GMs carries a whiff of homosexuality around them.  I wonder, offhand, if female GMs could report more interest in their own campaigns.

I agree with your caveat.
Also, my wife is a female (obviously) GM, so I'm going to ask her about your question when she gets home;).

Amusingly, I also had a totally new male player who asked me "are you hitting on me"?
I answered "fuck no, I'm not into men! But the NPC is female, and she is into men - and you took an Appearance advantage. I will roleplay her reaction to that, and don't worry, I'm not going to start liking you after the game!"
Then the guy relaxed, and actually accepted to go out with the NPC. And that brought them to new adventures, of course - she was using him to get back to her lover, who wasn't thrilled at the news. That was resolved fast, but then they got new employment opportunities out of it, IIRC.
So romance and adventure aren't opposed in my games. Just as they weren't for John Carter, or the Arthurian knights, or the mythic heroes, I might add;)!

Quote from: Bren;874833The net intensifies fads.

And creates weird subcultures so specialized that they couldn't really exist without a worldwide communication/networking system.

Quote from: yosemitemike;875112It's an eye watering smell.  If you had encountered one, you would know.  I don't remember ever encountering on either but my family has always had cats.  If you had encountered someone who smelled like that, you would remember it.

Yeah, I have had cats several times (I currently have two) and it should be noted that it takes a serious level of failing to properly care for cats (or a very serious level of not keeping even the most basic level of home cleanliness) for a person to smell like cat urine.  Obviously, most cat owners don't.  Even slightly messy cat owners don't, or slightly neglectful cat owners.  You have to be seriously fucked up.

Quote from: Nexus;875135I always assumed "Catpiss man" was a colloquialism for someone with very bad hygiene and powerful offensive body odor not that they all literally smelled like cat urine?

It is meant in a more broad sense, yes, but that term originated from a story someone told about a specific guy who smelled like catpiss.

I always preferred the term Lawncrapper; though that one was not invented from any literal case of a person shitting on people's lawns.

Quote from: Omega;876121From experience. Yes. Surprisingly more than expected. For all the online bitching and decrying of "sexist!". At the table women can and will get into some of the raunchiest encounters given a chance. And if not given a chance they may go out and make said chance. Ive about never seen at the table any male players get into even a fourth of the crazy stuff the female ones have.

Id lay good odds though on others having the exact opposite experience.

The only player I know who has shown more than a passing interest in erotic elements in the game is a dude.

I have never noticed any group differences in preferences or play styles between male and female gamers.
I would expect such differences to show up in broader fields, like reading habits and the book marketplace. And indeed, sex differences do show up in reading habits.
But it may be that RPG hobbyists are such a small selection of people that talking about sex related differences in the hobby is like talking about sex related differences among fancy rat breeders.
Or maybe my experience signifies nothing. The sample group is laughably small and I don't really give a shit about abstractions like " male gamers" or " female gamers."

Quote from: Gormenghast;876479The sample group is laughably small and I don't really give a shit about abstractions like " male gamers" or " female gamers."

Good point. There are very few gamers who have so many players in their regular circle that there is any need for the simplification of categorizing them by gender. When considering my players I find it far more useful to treat each player as an individual rather than lumping together as elements in some set.

A lot of the "why do we tolerate violence in RPGs but not sex?" queries come from people who fail to see that while violence seems bad, it's contextually acceptable in the fiction we create, and is evocative of emotions and experiences of empowerment and success in ways that are all but impossible to engage with in real life without being arrested or shot.

Sex, on the other hand, is something you can engage with in real life if you put some effort in to it, and sinking that effort into a simulation seems downright weird*....plus if the sex starts to interpose with violence then it gets even more uncomfortable. It's not like there aren't groups out there that could get in to that, but it requires the right mix of compatriots. As it happens, more people (who are in to RPGs, anyway) can grokk violence as escapism but recognize that RPGs as a medium are not a good medium for sexual escapism. And in this day of the internet age, if you are somehow prohibited from actually seeking out a partner for such acts, you can readily find much better venues online. So....yeah....the idea that RPGs happen to be good mediums for violent escapism, at least better than for sex, makes sense. And those who seek the latter can (and probably will) find like-minded folk but as it happens, it's going to be a minority, because most people who get into that actually want real sex, or as close to it as they can get, not living vicariously through their barbarian elf. But Rule 34 says the latter does exist, so more power to them.




*Because after all the payoff for sex is not found in sitting around a table of guys explaining how your barbarian elf dude totally banged that princess. And if it is, then you have bigger problems than figuring out how to get the other guys at the table to listen to your exploits

Like I've said before this entire hobby boils down to adults playing Let's Pretend so its pretty damn weird to most people to begin with. If some enjoy including romantic, erotic or sexual elements in their play, that's up to them. And, its doesn't mean they have emotional, mental or sexual problems. Erotica is fun. Some people write it for fun. Sex and sexuality are elements of a character's personality and their world. For those that value that kind of immersion, exploring them makes the character feel more complete and real. There are many reasons why you might include these elements.,

And yeah, vicarious pleasure is one of them. Just like I enjoy imaging I'm a barbarian warlord hacking down monsters I might enjoy being James Bond seducing the sexy Russian femme fatale. I'm not more likely to actually kill an orc than I am to bed an Elvish princess but both might pleasant to imagine. And make for a fun time and entertaining "story".

At least that's how I feel about it.

Edit; my initial response was needlessly hostile. My apologies,.

Quote from: Bren;876494Good point. There are very few gamers who have so many players in their regular circle that there is any need for the simplification of categorizing them by gender. When considering my players I find it far more useful to treat each player as an individual rather than lumping together as elements in some set.

Right, Bren. That's just what I was driving at with the comment.

Not that I am suggesting that anyone else should not discuss his ideas about sex related differences among gamers. Not at all. That's not my place.

Quote from: markfitz;875940Here's another thought about erotic content in gaming: are women more into it? My last campaign had an all male table, and there was no mention of sex or erotic content on behalf of any of the players, either in set up or in play, despite there being opportunities. The game started in a villainous cut throat dive where there were exotic dancers on stage. Characters ignored them except as background. Later, they were in a clothing-light native village and after impressing the locals in various ways there was a feast during which it was implied that some of the tribeswomen would be rather free with their favours, and there was no interest in actually playing any of that out apart from to mention that one of the characters, who spoke the language and had critted his rolls for interaction and participating in a dancing ritual had woken up in the arms of two of the locals. Again, totally glossed over.
Contrast that with the set up for a new campaign. Here we had four female players and one male. Notably, all four of the women are pretty new to RPGs, so don't have preconceptions about how it's supposed to go. We were playing Beyond the Wall, admittedly, which is heavy on establishing grounded characters with relationships with each other and NPCs in their home village. Here we had several mentions of sex and relationships during character generation (which is very interactive and rather great in that game) including one character who was established as being in a lesbian love triangle, and another whose Entertainer background manifested itself as performing bawdy erotic puppet shows! And this was before we even started playing!

Note that I'm not talking about playing out sex scenes on camera. I'm not sure they wanted to go that far. But it's interesting to me that women who were RPG newbies were interested in bringing sex and love into the game from the start. Funnily enough, the one male player's character was completely asexual. Or, as some would call it, a regular D&D character ...

Reportedly, Vampire: The Masquerade brought allot of women into the hobby and that's is a game with allot of erotic and sexual connotations, subtext and outright material.

Quote from: RPGPundit;876446Yeah, I have had cats several times (I currently have two) and it should be noted that it takes a serious level of failing to properly care for cats (or a very serious level of not keeping even the most basic level of home cleanliness) for a person to smell like cat urine.  Obviously, most cat owners don't.  Even slightly messy cat owners don't, or slightly neglectful cat owners.  You have to be seriously fucked up.

This is correct. I've seen some serious levels of personal neglect. I was thinking of calling animal control on a few because it was ghastly.

I didn't because usually: a) the cats looked otherwise healthy amid the flotsam, b) those animals seemed to be the last good things left in their lives, and c) I really didn't want to get entangled with crazy anymore than necessary.

And then there's the hoarders... It's best just smile, nod, and then to run. They need more help and intervention than your mere acquaintence can ever hope to give. And people with so much time on their hands to not clean can get mighty vindictive when you threaten their precious. Run kids, run!

Quote from: RPGPundit;876447It is meant in a more broad sense, yes, but that term originated from a story someone told about a specific guy who smelled like catpiss.

I always preferred the term Lawncrapper; though that one was not invented from any literal case of a person shitting on people's lawns.

*sigh* ... you speak too soon. I told you, I've lived through nightmares. Those things are very real.

In fact there's a famous/notorious case of a mentally ill homeless woman by (iirc) 8th and Market in SF. Sweet as can be, walks to the street corner each dawn to lay a deuce. The local corner bagel shop tried to help her learn to use the store bathroom, but so far it's been no use.

Remember, we in California lived with the aftermath of Reagan closing most of the mental health hospitals and throwing them out into the street. And further we've caught several other cities and states bussing their homeless to SF and LA with one-way tickets so as to not have to deal with any hard cases. Along with my colorful stay in Saudi, this was my childhood.

There are people who up and go crazy and go crap on your lawns. See: the Joy of Meth.

There's also people who go crap in store aisle and dressing rooms. And it's not always the children who couldn't hold it. Retail in America is a special layer of hell.

Quote from: Opaopajr;876575*sigh* ... you speak too soon. I told you, I've lived through nightmares. Those things are very real.

In fact there's a famous/notorious case of a mentally ill homeless woman by (iirc) 8th and Market in SF. Sweet as can be, walks to the street corner each dawn to lay a deuce. The local corner bagel shop tried to help her learn to use the store bathroom, but so far it's been no use.

On the plus side, its healthy to be so regular.