Sex!
written by Donat P. Fevre
October 3rd, 2007 · 3 Comments
Disclaimer: This post contains mature material. If you do not want to read such material, then stop reading now. If you’re a parent and see your child reading this, please exercise judgment as to whether or not this is appropriate for your child.
Face it, it’s just a part of life. Unless you’re a nun. So why is it that we (at least in the U.S.) shy away from it so much? I have no clue. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t introduce it into your D&D campaign. Besides, it can result in some very interesting moments! 
Do They Want It?
Of course, if you want to be legal and everything, all involved parties need to give their consent before in sexual acts. To be honest, you should probably do this as well with your players, though I am in no way suggesting that actual sexual acts take place in your game.
So it might be good to ask your players how much they want sex to appear in your campaign, and to what degree it should be detailed. This is probably something you should ask as part of a Pre-Campaign Survey, as it would be very easy to add in.
Using a scale of 1-5, here is what I suggest for frequency of sex appearing in your game:
- Nun
- Rarely
- Typical
- Like to Sleep Around a Bit
- Promiscuous
And using the same scale, my suggestion for magnitude of sexual detail:
- Nun
- Innuendo
- It’s obvious it happens, but no details
- Softcore - It’s there, it’s happening, but few details
- Hardcore Porn - Every single detail imaginable
I think the two questions, how often and how detailed, should be sufficient for you and your players.
Are They Jail-Bait?
Now, as with real sex, you want to be careful about anyone who may be a minor, aka Jail-Bait. Seriously, you could get into trouble running a Promiscuous, Hardcore Porn campaign with someone under 18 playing (this might vary depending on the state and/or country you’re in).
So before you even begin to introduce sex into your campaign, please make sure that all your players are of consenting age. If they’re not, then don’t bother with it. Though, if they all are, then go for it! 
Get Kinky!
Great, so now you’ve introduced sex into your campaign. And for all I know, every single player character in your campaign has lost their virginity, in some way or another. So everything is just all fine and dandy.
Well, another fact of life is that sex has its consequences as well. Not only is there pregnancy, but also diseases! Now, if we lived in a fantasy world (perhaps like those portrayed in D&D), then sure, we can all go have sex and not worry at all. But yet, even fantasy worlds have some ties to the real world. Babies do get born in fantasy worlds after all.
Fortunately, there are a couple resources for Dungeon Masters to turn to if they don’t want to make up a lot of things:
- Book of Erotic Fantasy by Gwendolyn F. M. Kestrel and Duncan Scott
- Naughty & Dice: An Adult Gamer’s Guide to Sexual Situations by Christine Morgan and Tim P. Morgan
Then there’s also the Carnal Guide, though you may have to alter some of the rules to fit the latest D&D rules.
And now, for the almighty question at the end of the post: Have you used sex in a D&D campaign before? How well did it turn out? Was it done in a joking manner, or in a more mature manner? Please leave a comment!
Topics: D&D General
I normally don’t include sexual situations in my games but for one game I ran a few years back. The characters encountered a magical brothel that only appeared in the land once every hundred years. The residents were cursed and trapped in the building, their only way out was to have sex with someone before the building disappeared in the morning. The game was entirely roleplaying and ended up being very memorable. It was a little more complicated than the description I’m giving but it worked out very well.
On your scale the game rated a 4-Softcore.
I think it’s pretty silly to have sex in a game just for the sake of it (unless it’s a sex game), to include sex in a fantasy rpg I think it needs to be a part of the story not just gratuitus.
The carnal guide is certainly an interesting read. Still, I think you’d want to be in a pretty intimate group (no pun intended) to pull it off. You don’t want to make anybody uncomfortable. I know some rare innuendo has crept into the Evil campaign, though Creepy Old Wizard is there as comic relief.
Wolfcat takes a very matter-of-fact approach to sex despite the total lack of experience. I remember Roxayn in the afterlife telling Wolfcat about some sort of circumstance bonus for maidens (which was when it became ‘established canon’ that Wolfcat is a virgin).
On a related but RL note, I recently took a geek test that asked the question, “If you had to live without one of these two things, the Internet or sex, which would you pick?” I picked one and moved on because it was a silly little online quiz, but it got me to thinking: which one? I’m still scratching my head over it. On the one hand, sex is sex, but on the other hand, there is more to the internet than porn (despite what many will tell you).
The internet’s for porn!