How do I handle it? I usually prefer 2 d20's and a d4 myself but YMMV.

jh

Ludlov Thadwin of Sevenpiecks said:

Well, the uninitiated will only take that sterotype seriously if the roleplayers themselves do. If we can laugh at it and it's apparent absurdity and inaccuracy, then others will most likely do the same.

Im my group half of my players are going steady with their girlfriend or fiance. None of their girlfriends attend to the game, its our own free space, or gentlemens club if you like. A place to get away from everything including your girlfriend. Not that they haven`t been asked to join the table, but they haven`t shown any interest or where fine having their own girl-night.

And most can play when they want. Although saturday is not a popular day to have a warhammer session (from the girlfriends perspective). But we usually agree to play on saturdays mostly because people than are well-rested from a hard week of working. We don`t play every saturday so it works fine for their better halves as well.

But sadly it wasn`t always like this. In fact I miss my old buddy. who now are married with 3 children, and cannot never ever play in a regular game. His wife despise the nerd in him. She used to harrass him by making a lot of phone calls during the game, telling him to come home, using all kinds of excuses to get him to leave the game. Like the kid is sick (which he wasn`t), and so. In the end he stoped showing up. But we have pact, whenever my old buddy have time, we would be there ready with a game, just for him. last year we played Necromunda when his wife was spending her weekend at her parents. we switched time by playing at the table and baby-sitting his kids. We and his kids had a great weekend.

Mal Reynolds said:

Sounded like a person one would not want to be with, dysfunctional.

Good that you are there for support.

KjetilKverndokken said:

No kiddin'

If I ever were to marry, I'd include a "no harassing me while playing RPG's with my friends" clause in a prenuptual agreement or something similar. After all, you're supposed to give and take in a marriage, and both parties will eventually need some alone time to spend with their friends outside of the home.

A reasonable wife wouldn't have a problem taking care of the kids perhaps once or twice a month as long as that favor is being repaid by the husband in equal measure, but some spouses just don't seem to get that.

Personally I'd rather die alone and childless when im old than ever getting suckered into an oppressive marriage, because I've seen how those marriages can turn out, where the spouses don't have any life outside of the marriage and if anyone of them were to try, the other spouse just try to pull them back in and I can tell you, it's not pretty. Most of them end up in ugly divorce affairs.

So if anyone consider marriage, make sure that your potential spouse accept you for who you are and what you need. Not just "tolerate" what you are and need, but ACCEPT it. Otherwise chances are really high that you'll either have to break up with your spouse, or break up with your friends and that doesn't sound very healthy at all in my opinion.

Good grief! That sounds almost like my friend's girlfriend! She'll call and pester him every half an hour while we guys are playing games etc. She also has a habit of dragging my friend everywhere she goes solely for moral support. My friend hate it too, but is too much of a coward to say no.

And that, curious bystanders, is why I'm scared of having a girlfriend.

Back on topic.....

I have never experience a player wanting to include love and romance yet (they are too busy being broke and surviving to notice anyone), but if they want to then I'll think about making love and romance a plot point somehow. It might even affect the characters in a more horrible way than seeing a daemon. I've heard of a story of two characters who are lovers in game, and one accidentally kill the other while in combat (somehow). The player of the surviving lover insist she gain insanity points because of the horror of being directly responsible for the significant other's death, and was driven insane by it.

Awesome roleplaying.

Sex on the other hand I don't think have much purposes. If I have to, then it's the fading out technique. The point is, they have done it. We don't want to know HOW they did it (that reminds me of IKEA erotica *shudder*). However, I'm quite convince there are people out there who enjoy 'telephone sex'-ing to a point that they forget they're in a roleplaying group (eg. mostly guys who think with their groin to a sad extent). In that case, you might want them to reconsider their priority.

You guys totally need to do what I did, marry a gamer!!! IT solves all problems

Sinister said:

Im sure it does. The trick is to find one that you actually like first. While being a gamer herself would be a big plus with me, it's not really a guaranteed match made in heaven just because she play the same kind of games like I do.

Just go to any gamer/geek-store on a busy day and check out some of the personalities there. While I do consider the geeks to often possess quite a few admirable qualities that simply comes with being a geek, some of them can be EXTREMELY abrasive (check out the competetive Magic: The Gathering scene sometime and you'll know exactly what im talking about).

Anyhow, back on topic...

Varnias Tybalt said:

LoL too true.

I didn't pick her up in game store thank god.

My girlfriend is no hardcore gamer or anything but she is a fantasy fan and she has played Descent with me and enjoyed it. She's interested in trying Warhammer 3rd edition as well, so I'm lucky in that respect.

Still, it's true that roleplay night is generally considered "guys night" among my friends. Which is a healthy, good thing IMO.

Perhaps this topic should have its own thread:)

Anyway, back on topic: besides sexual forms of love, there are other kinds of love that can be introduced in a roleplaying game to give much more depth to a character. In our Star Wars game last night, the young Jedi in the group saw his mentor dying before his very eyes. He has since grown quieter and quieter, other party members start worrying about him. That's love too. And it may be even more helpful to game immersion than romance subplots.

Well, my wife plays in the group which I GM, and sex is a topic.

Especially with the male members in the group, giving them sex is a way to push them into a direction the GM wants. You do not play it out, of course (the system is lacking skills of this particular trade), but giving a macho character (and which fighter class character isn't?) a girl hanging on his lips ("ooh, you really fought Chaos Warriors, really? You are a man, aren't you") puts a smile on the players face and is generally good for the mood in the group. My female PC (who happens to be my wife) often uses her Charm Skill to get some information out of male NPCs, and if the information is really important, she 's willing to go even farther. In the game, of course!

So, sex is one of the most important things in real life (comes right after food and shelter). Why should it be different in WFRP (or any other RPGs)?

PzVIE said:

Point well made, if you can make it work. If it works in your group, great, I say. Nevertheless, I don't think going to the toilet, which is a fairly essential part of life as well, needs to be of particular importance in an RPG. Although you could use it...

PzVIE said:

irl

food

shelter

sex

ic

killing things

taking stuff

???

fwiw, last night I had to try to ic seduce one of my players using an NPC who happened to have the same name as my wife who was in the next room. That didn't work too well.

@ Ludlov Thadwin of Sevenpiecks: Touche

@monkeylite: I will choose my NPC names wisely for the next sessions - thanks for the tip

I try not to mess with sex and romance too much on my sessions.

I learned on my own skin how some people, even those that you know for a very long time can react (sometimes very emotionally) to such situations.

I was a player back then, and we were playing an independent system made by my friends.

I was playing an orc, and one of the female players (current wife of the player that reacted so rapidly) way playing an elf.

In the named system elf females had period very rarely, but when they had.. well, you had to chain them to the walls (any of You have a female cat? then you know how it goes).

Problem was we were in the middle of the sea on a small ship, when she got her period..

Everything was good, we closed her in a small cabin. I was the one that was ment to bring her food (since as an orc I was the most ugly one).

I won't get into the details, but lets say, there was a very interesting situation, and tension rised quickly (the friend that played elf roleplayed it fantastically).

Unfortunately just as we were supposed to go further (in game of course) her boyfriend freaked out. We had to break the session.

GM was so mad, that he wanted to exclude the player from our group at first (we were playing for years together).

Anyway session was ruined, and we stopped messing with sex and romance in our scenarios too much.

Funny how we are able to handle murder, theft and other crimes in our games- or at least take them for granted, but don't seem able to deal with sex as an issue. My group consists of a 50/50 m/f split, some play characters of their own sex, some not, regardless, sex sometimes occurs either as a function of plot or as a function of character. We have a laugh with it generally, although it can be something that adds to a game as a serious encounter. I know it might offend some people, but sometimes I add issues relating to warcrimes which can include **** aswell. It adds gravity to a session and galvanises the PCs yet further. Try that for grim and indeed dark.

Essentially, you know your friends, so you should know a bit about what they are willing to accept within a game, after all, it's just pretend isn't it? For the record, as GM I have acted out many Halfling harlots being rumped by sweaty Dwarf mercenarys in my time, generally being roleplayed by one of my aging male friends. It's their wives I feel sorry for...

PzVIE said:

Your wife is okay with you giving the members of your gaming group sex?!

I'm totally kidding and you made a good point, but taken out of context made for a good laugh for me (and my wife).

I think one has to be very careful with a "tool" like these in game. I know that back in the day, when I ran a lot of horror games (oh, the nineties), I used the "abusive parent" archetype... a lot. It got to the point that every time my players ran across an NPC's parent, especially if they liked said NPC, they would assume they were a necromancer and try to kill them. Point being, if you keep going to one well, it may dry up.

LordPasty said:

Point being, if you keep going to one well, it may dry up.

Well said!

PzVIE said:

And sometimes it utterly sadistic and bordering on being unwise to steer a character in that direction.

I remember this one time when me and my friends played this awesome swedish RPG called "Noir", and I played an emotionally distant hitman who was suffering from quite a few neuroses regarding sex. Anyway, the situation was that he had contracted some sort of supernatural disorder (a sort of "taint" if you will) that basically comes out of people in that world when their inner emotional darkness takes the overhand of things.

He and a few of his motely crew of associates (the other player characters) were currently on the run from both the police, the state security service and also quite a few criminal elements known to be dangerous people. We had also been involved in a serious firefight and needed a discreet place to rest and think of what to do next. Also my player character had recently run out of painkillers (which he had developed a serious addiction to, since he suffer from migraines due o being shot in the head when he was younger) and was in a particulary foul mood because of that.

The closest place to hide out proved to be a sleazy hotel/bordello (what are the odds of that?), the receptionist asked all of us if we wanted "company" in our rooms and my character declined saying that he just wanted the doorkeys and went off to his room to go to bed. This time one of the other player characters did something really stupid and managed to convince the recpetionist that my character was just being grumpy and that he'd most likely want some "company" later on during the night and asked her to "take care of it".

The result is that he's so exhausted that he forgot to lock the door behind him and he basically dozed off immediately (chronic migraine, coupled with having been shot earlier in the evening and not having slept for almost an entire day would cause even the best to get a little drowzy). The next thing I know my character wakes up with two prostitutes in bed, one of them are still "going at it" on top of him. Now, for some people that might actually have been considered a pleasant surprise, but this character simply has too many bad childhood memories and is severely disturbed and all of that came flooding back to him that instant coupled with a throbbing pain in his head. He blacks out for a moment, and when he comes to, all the lightbulbs, not just in his room but in the entire building, have burned out and shattered, a black ichor is running down from his eyes and lips, the room is covered in a light film coating of frost and the two prostiutes sit huddled at one corner in a catatonic state, quivering uncontrollably and frothing slightly.

Suffice to say that all of us had to find someplace else to crash that night. Though as a player I have to say that the incident proved to be an exciting one, but for my character I think it was a bit harsh to be subjected to. But then again, I guess the other player character responsible thought he just did my character a favor.

Good times. I really miss that game (we got a little too involved with Dark Heresy and Rogue Trader after playing it and just haven't gotten any inspiration for Noir since).

P.S I know it might sound strange for a person to go to sleep after having been shot just a few hours before, but that's perfectly reasonable in that game. Consider the movie (or graphic novel) Sin City by Frank Miller, where characters frequently get shot by firearms without suffering much in the way of long term injuries. It's sort of the same thing in Noir, where injuries are always "instant" but if they don't prove to be enough to kill you during that particular encounter, then the damage won't "stick" but rather be considered unimportant for the rest of the story. It's actually quite cool when a game strives to be narrative, reasonable and fun rather than being ultra realistic all the time.

Varnias Tybalt said:

That was so cool.

Varnias Tybalt said:

I couldn't agree more.

I mean, the LAST thing that you want is a GM who's heavily inspired by FATAL, the RPG from the crappiest part of hell.

In that misogynistic and puerile setting, players have to specify the "circumference" of their character's... um... naughty bits. Amongst other extreme details.

Necrozius said:

That game is dripping with coolness. It's just to bad that it has yet to reach an international market.

Though as you might expect from my description, the game is rated R and sometimes even NC-17 (if we're using american film ratings). But it has to be, otherwise the hardboiled Noir-feel wouldn't be there.

Necrozius said:

I just read about FATAL, and it sure seems a bit disturbing (in a bad way).

Of course, Noir has a pretty dark setting too (for instance, the draconian and oppressive laws holding their sway in that setting claims that a married man can't ever be considered to illegaly **** his spouse since intercourse is considered his marital right, among other awful things).

Misogynism, depravity, racial profiling and segregation, violent crime, drug abuse, corruption you name it and Noir has it somewhere in the setting. But it serves a purpose, the philosophy behind it is that injustice and depravity will create interesting conflicts for the characters to engage in. And that's all good, because I genuinely hate when political correctness has to sneak into artistic work and ruin everything for everyone. If it's all fictional then political incorrectness can be a good thing.

Although from FATAL I just got the feeling that most of it is included "just because" without any particular motivation for it...

hi

first thanks to all the great posts I got on this thread. When making this thread I alomst instantly regretted it. But now it I think it has turned into a rather nice thread. I was scared for a moment that people would think of me as a weirdo for posting such a sensitive post, and that FFG would censore it. But it turned out to be unfounded fear.

But I was curious to know how other gamers looked upon such a theme. I and I have got many a interesting posts. First Sex, love & romance are not a thing I am very concerned about or use a lot in my gaming, But I don`t refrain from using it either, if it suits a purpose, or fill out a character`s motivation and such. Than I use it. Everything to sell the story.

Most of the times we don`t touch the subject, being too involved in sinister plots, and mind blasting rituals, quartered fightings in stinking hell-holes. etc. etc. to even care. But then there are those lull moments before the next storm breaks loose, a quite rest at the inn, or a friendly lady`s mansion, than all sorts of interesting things can happen.

Mal Reynolds said:

Well you've gotta cut the characters some slack too. I mean, if you're being subjected to sinister plots, mind blasting rituals, quartered fightings in stinking hell-holes etc. chances are that some of them might eventually suffer from... Well, "intimacy issues".

I mean, a seasoned adventurer might find the generous cleavage of the local barwench to be a pretty sight, but even if she basically threw herself in his arms right then and there chances are that the sight might suddenly remind him of that horrifying incident a year ago when a naked Daemonette of Slaanesh (who also had a generous cleavage) gutted that seasoned adventurer's best friend and long time comrade from groin to throat with her giant crab claw and showered in his spewing blood and the steam from his dropping entrails.

Or what about that time when the altruistic adventurers stood up to their armpits in the dead and the dying in a diseased village, when they uncovered the horrifying truth about a corrupt wizard devoted to Nurgle who had released a magical plague in the sinister form of an STD on the village in question?

After a while, I wouldn't be surprised if most adventurers aren't to keen on seeking out bedpartners considering all the bad memories. Stuff like that can even drive the worst nymfomaniac to simply waste away his days in a serious drug binge rather than having to deal with any sort of intimacy.

Now THAT's something that is barely touched in most fantasy RPG's. The psychological impact on seasoned adventurers. Wouldn't you agree?

I agree.

While people suffering from stress and psychological traumas might not be able to find comfort in a warm bedpartner, other may do. But warhammer do have isanity points, but that don`t necessarily reflect the long-term psychological effect on a seasoned adventurer.

What makes you sane in a insane world? the answer will be quite different from player character to player charater, some may have a hard time with intimacy, for other the cleavage of a sauchy wench might excactly be what he needs to get his mind off the harshnes he recently suffered.

its all in the eye of the character, or so to speak. everyone one needs somehting to hold on to, a safety blanket when things come crashing down around them.

For me (as GM) its up to the player of that character how much he wants to do about his psychological condition. Sometimes we use Call of Cthulhu rules to make an interesting trauma, or a psychological condition (didn`t like the ones in wfrp2), and than make a distinction if its severe or a mild effect.