Rated "R" and Rated "X" Table-Topping

I suppose you, my seated readers, are old enough for the talk about (gulp) sex and D&D. Especially right now that your mother is off at the bulk-buy store obtaining your pizza bagels and Mountain Dew for the month for a couple hours. You see when a man meets a woman, or another man, a weird couple, or a vacuum cleaner, BUT NOT an animal, there is sometimes a physical attraction between the two or more. Often this attraction can even be emulated in an RPG session or two; it's better with someone in a maid costume in the bedroom but its okay to work out things on a table-top, using dice, I mean. Sometimes it may even be better to leave things at Character Sheets and dice, if you take my meaning... nudge, nudge, wink, wink.

My excuse to do this topic John Tarnowski in his RPGPundit Presents series called "F*ck Station Aleph" where he states, I paraphrase, that he is going to do Venger Satanis's Alpha Blue right. Now he's joking, the two are friends. Plus a bit of competition between those never hurts the creative field as long as there is no Trademark or patents invovled. Both are definitely examples of , what I can only call, "Age of Consent Roleplaying" not "Family-Friendly Forever!" which gives me an excuse to go a bit about my current blog fixation with being okay with not pandering to nostalgia or kids.

But first a quick promotion before the rant. "F*ck Station Aleph"  is a part of Tarnowski's Lost Sun gonzo (sphere) fantasy setting featured as a part of weekly(?) releases under the label The RPGPundit Presents. In 30 pages, he sets up a setting that a mini-campaign can take place in an "sky island"/space station. which has devolved into a mega brothel. Keeping OSR conventions in mind, there is new equipment for the adventuring party to do some shopping. The random encounters are designed to move into a plot leaving any sordidness up to how far the players can drag the GM into the details. One definitely gets the feeling of the TV show Lex not the movie Caligula. I rate it a "Nessie" on the Smurf-To-Godzilla scale. For what the work loses in points for using "f*ck" and not just "fuck" in the title, it makes up for in its lack of pretension and not trying to be shocking. Using a DCC-like chart system, a GM can get a lot of use out this piece.

There now... As a convention GM, I keep good old fashion movie ratings in mind. Screw all at "TV Mature L S E V" mumbo-jumbo. I don't say the words "fuck," "asshole," "shit," "cock (not the bird)," or "cunt" before 9:30pm, which means everything before then,  is rated PG. I don't ever recall going PBS by referring to the nouns or verbs above in proper English before the evening either. It's usually not until after 10:15pm, I may start slipping into using "fucking" as an adjective because of tiredness.

But at 9:30, the subject matter may get sexually explicit. Cops start investigating rapes as well as murders. NPCs use phrases like "Blow job alley," "Tranny like them didn't mind the evil eye" "She was a cow" or "Cuckold lay like a cucumber" as well as using the list of swear words from above. Players are expected to be comfortable, if a little chagrined, at the dialog going on. This more often than not gets players feeling comfortable enough to get a dark and blue themselves. A PC will proclaim that they were raped by the villain of the story. PCs make passes at NPCs, sometimes other PCs, luckily only couples to date for the PC-on-PC. Closets are ducked into, and the minds' eyes all move elsewhere, as we keep things R-rated. I did go cable TV, "kind-of" X-rated one time when an investigator Lord Hemmingsway came home from a bar brawl and night in the swamp and his house-keeper, Olga, insisted that he have a bath so she could "scrub all that dirt off." I being the ref, let the cards sort the details out-- I fudged a couple draws to make the cigarette smoking scene more fun. BTW Lord Hemmingsway was played by the wife and Olga was the husband in that situation, making the scene weird yet typical at the same time.

Now while you are blushing about the details, the points here are expectations and the process of consent. Perhaps I as a GM that has experimented with deconstructing film ratings into RPG scenarios have an advantage, but roleplaying is meant to be entertaining on various levels, not just moving pieces around a board. The late evening parlor games can be quite a bit of mental stimulation if presented with openness and looking at the audience. By thinking about the context outside of the session, a GM can do material that is explicit without not focused on the "sleaze" factor. I am serious, it does work at least with horror.

To get back to "sex and D&D," Don't just make it about the visuals. I've done "romantic" RPG scenarios because I've read romance novels (to pick up chicks dammit) and just kept it 19th century. "19th Century" means "no sex scenes" in case you were wondering. The Jane Austen fans ate it up like it was pudding and and had J.D. Rob written on the title. Their daughter thought the whole was dorky and wanted to get on her cellphone, but almost everybody enjoyed the yarn.

You can't please everybody. At the same time, keep in mind what you're doing and you can do what you want.