Taboos in Gaming - Sex Part 2

So why go through the hassle of navigating the pitfalls of peoples' comfort levels and interpersonal politics to include sexuality in your games? From a mechanics standpoint, sexuality adds very little for most systems. There are exceptions of course; D&D 3.5 has a few feats that require players to abstain from sex to gain benefits, but I don't know of anything else.

However, it can add a great deal to the story of your game; in the way of party tension and subplots within your game.

Romantic interests, with NPCs, give the players a time to a location that they otherwise might not have. They have a reason to visit or defend a place. If the party is stagnating or stalling between plot points, attacking a place where the character has a loved one. Having a love one turn on the party member (either willfully or not) creates drama that the character would need to resolve.  If the campaign carries on long enough, the birth of a child can serve as an even greater motivator.

Between the players, a romance can create amazing opportunities for role play. A couple will fight that much harder to protect each other. If one is kidnapped, then the other will have a great deal of motivation to free them at all costs. Sacrifices made to protect the partner become nobler and greater, in every respect. Suddenly the fighter staying behind to hold the advancing monsters, at the cost of their own life, while their spouse flees, becomes a meaningful death for the PCs that the players will remember for a long time.

Add in a 3rd PC to create a love triangle (remember, in game only) creates tension and drama within the party that can self-perpetuate stories and plot hooks on. That type of relationship can drive players to explore sides of their characters that they might not have otherwise, from betrayal and revenge through to redemption.

So clearly, sexuality and romance can add a lot to your story; however, it takes the entire group to buy into it and be ok with it and it also presupposes a level of maturity within the group that may be lacking. If that's the case, wait a few years and give it another go. I'll leave you with a personal gaming story about sex in a game gone horribly wrong.

In a game of Shadowrun (cyberpunk set in a world rife with corporate espionage) you play what are called runners who do mostly illegal things (corporate espionage, security work, etc). Since you tend to live on the seedier side of things, the people who hire you also run to the shady. During one game, we were hired to steal something and were given a "signing bonus" of prostitutes for the evening. (It later turns out that they fed the employer information about us to use against us if things went south).

Everyone kinda shrugged and went with it, no one made a big deal about it since it fit within the morality of the game and our characters. Except for Manny. Manny had apparently invested a good deal of points into a skill he created called Kama Sutra Mastery. (Shadowrun allows you to create your own knowledge skills). He proudly proclaimed that he would throw her down on the table (we were at a nightclub in game) and do her there and would use his skills to please her.

This brought the entire table to a screeching halt. We all stared at him in shock as he counted out dice to roll and made a show of rolling them. Of course, fate being what it was he failed the skill check. We thought that this was the end of it and we could move on and try to forget. He then proclaims that the result was completely unacceptable and proceeded to spend a finite resource to re-roll all of his failures in an attempt to succeed. This brought us from shock to horror and moderate disgust.

So, I suppose the lesson from this before you bring up the idea with your players, make sure they are mature enough to handle it and then work to find out their comfort zones. Many a successful campaign and game have been run without including sex, so don't feel like you have to; but handled correctly it can bring a great deal of depth to the game that would have otherwise not been there.