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So, now that I've got a good discussion going on people and characters of an alternative bent... I'm thinking it might be good to see how others deal with things of an adult bent. Obviously, I'd like this post and all responses to adhere to the policies of the boards. I know that might not be easy while talking about the sorts of things that might be discussed, but I'm absolutely positive that if any group of people can, it's the people on these boards.
So, with that said. How do you fine folks deal with the more adult things that happen in games? By which I mean: Sex (sexuality is mentioned elsethread), drugs, long-term relationships, short-term relationships, inter-PC relationships, abuse (I'm not going to use the r*** word here, it's a bit close to the edge), etc. Obviously there's a lot of room for the scope of this discussion, and I've had my share of experiences in gaming.
To give an example:
Hildebraun (whom I am certain most are tired of hearing about) during her time during the playthrough of The Wizard's Amulet, had a bit of a run in with the BBEG. He ordered her brutalized, tortured and defiled. And it just made her stronger in her faith. And she, unlike almost any other Dwarf on the planet, gets along well with any Orc who's not trying to kill her on sight.
When I was younger, we essentially created our own Book of Erotic Fantasy. In my recent table top games, we have kept things PG13 for the most part. I recently found an adult role playing board where this sort of thing is commonplace. I am only involved in one game there presently, and it has not crossed past the PG13 line yet.
The lady I am playing with is interested in non-consensual scenes, so I intend to introduce that into the game (I am GMing), but I want it to feel more organic than forcing it. I was about to go there, but my villain flubbed his rolls and the tables were quickly turned.
I have touched somewhat on sexism. The game is set in the late 1980's and the heroine is currently in Cuba. Still well within PG13, though.
having a enchantment focused sorcerer/cleric of Calistria in our Second Darkness game, many times sex came up - particularly later in the game...along with drugs. She's slept with two members of the party.
spoiler is if you aren't playing or haven't yet played PF #16, Endless Night.
even later in the AP, I think the end of #17, a memory of darkness. It's a spoiler if you haven't gone through the encounter with the winter council:
I don't think rape has ever came up, though.
Also, playing this character has gotten on my nerves a bit. I'm trying to get the rest of the party on par with my character development and get past the sex part. Being men, it's hard for them. It was fun while it lasted, but Calistria is not just about sex.
I'm trying to get the rest of the party on par with my character development...
Oh…sorry. You were being serious.
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I think truly adult-oriented roleplaying, that is to say consisting of sexually-charged events and situations patently R-rated and higher, is simply too difficult.
When used as backstory or as points of character development, adult themes often work quite well, especially with darker games. When a group actually tries to graphically roleplay a sexual encounter, I believe most players are simply too uncomfortable, and the ones who seem at ease are too creepy for everyone else.
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I think truly adult-oriented roleplaying, that is to say consisting of sexually-charged events and situations patently R-rated and higher, is simply too difficult.
When used as backstory or as points of character development, adult themes often work quite well, especially with darker games. When a group actually tries to graphically roleplay a sexual encounter, I believe most players are simply too uncomfortable, and the ones who seem at ease are too creepy for everyone else.
And for the most part, I agree.
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I also agree. When dealing with a group some things will work better for some than others, and you really have to keep it mostly in line with the acceptibility of the most closed member of the group. You want to avoid offending or making anyone too uncomfortable.
However, if the group is capable of dealing with certain situations of an adult nature and you as GM are comfortable applying those to your game, go right ahead. Personally, I haven't had too much sexually charged, R***ist, or drug-abuses in my games. I prefer to talk with my players and keep them in line with the general expectations of the group and sometimes ask if the group would like darker, more emotional, or passion-charged games. This rarely happens, but every once and a while the group will want something more in this vein.
Typically, like CourtFool, we keep things PG13.
Most of sexual encounters is implied, even in notes.
as for character development, there is only so much drow sadism one calistrian can handle. She's had (non-magical) nightmares since.
The worst sexual scenes I've come across while gaming were actually written in the Rise of the Runelords modules themselves:
Another walk-in, this time on an immensely fat ogre woman getting it on with a human zombie. VERY eww.
One of the reasons I love Paizo and some of its writers so much is that they don't shy away from more adult stuff. The RotRL things other people felt was out-there is typical for most of my games, some of my games handle things you can't legally show in the US even in animation, and a few of my games have rules for graphic blow-by-blow contests that have nothing to do with hit points.
On the other hand, we rate games in advance, and talk about our comfort level regularly. I have run one rated G game (which no one ever died, ever, no matter what, and sex was never even hinted at), and have nearly as many PG-13 games going on as NC-17+++ games. The important thing is to make sure everyone is confortable with a given level of strong subject matter BEFORE you introduce it to a campaign.
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Well, some things seem needlessly gross in some Paizo adventures... namely Hook Mountain Masacre. Thanks Nick Logue! I'll be having nightmares the rest of my life! AGGGG!
wow, quitting the AP as a result of an icky sexual encounter. A bit drastic, isn't it?
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wow, quitting the AP as a result of an icky sexual encounter. A bit drastic, isn't it?
My group wasn't comfortable with it, and they wanted something that didn't gross them out as much. They were already leary of the gory encounters that appeared in Skinsaw, so it sort of became the last straw. The incest was the part that grossed them out, not the sex.
Taboo things like incest, rape, and self-scarification/mutilation would be on the outs with my group pretty quick. I'd be willing to explore such in a campaign if not taken to an uncomfortable level.
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My group wasn't comfortable with it, and they wanted something that didn't gross them out as much. They were already leary of the gory encounters that appeared in Skinsaw, so it sort of became the last straw. The incest was the part that grossed them out, not the sex.
I'm not trying to sharpshoot you, buy why didn't you just edit and change that section?
Creative Director
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Now and then the Sandpoint game that I run for folks here every other Thursday night edges into adult fare, in fact. I'm looking forward to seeing how Tim handles events of the most recent game in his writeup on the Campaign Journal thread, in fact... should be interesting to see through a paladin's eyes what they stumbled into in the troglodyte lair...
That said... we do tend to skew adventures toward the PG-13/R rating border quite often. My take is that there are a LOT of gamers who play more mature games, and that the timidity of other publishers is leaving these gamers unserved; certainly whenever we did a horror or gritty adventure back in the Dungeon days, we ALWAYS got a lot of positive feedback. We do hear the folks who think that those adventures were TOO gross, though, and as a result we've settled more firmly into the PG-13 niche as a baseline, but now and then themes in our products will indeed skirt the more mature edge of things.
You know your group better than us, though, and by all means you should change or avoid playing adventures or encounters that cross the line for your group. We'll generally try to keep from crossing that line as we go... but sometimes the story we want to tell requires us to get our hands dirty.
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I'm not trying to sharpshoot you, buy why didn't you just edit and change that section?My group wasn't comfortable with it, and they wanted something that didn't gross them out as much. They were already leary of the gory encounters that appeared in Skinsaw, so it sort of became the last straw. The incest was the part that grossed them out, not the sex.
At the time, it seemed more movie-like. Even the description at the begining of the adventure described it as like The Hills Have Eyes or the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. I thought, "we will get past it", but it touched notes too quickly. I wish I had changed it, in retrospect, but it was too late by that point.
We switched to Star Wars Saga for a while, then eventually back to Pathfinder. People still seemed a little shaky about it when we started CotCT a few months ago, but I assured them I wouldn't let something like that creep in again.
Edit: I have two groups I play with, one group is an adult group with several children amongst the players who've become used to family-oriented fare and a second group with mixed age members that include some of those said children. They like to keep it clean regardless of which group is running at the time.
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Creative Director
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It the time, it seemed more movie-like. Even the description at the begining of the adventure described it as like The Hills Have Eyes or the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. I thought, "we will get past it", but it touched notes too quickly. I wish I had changed it, in retrospect, but it was too late by that point.
We switched to Star Wars Saga for a while, then eventually back to Pathfinder. People still seemed a little shaky about it when we started CotCT a few months ago, but I assured them I wouldn't let something like that creep in again.
With a movie or novel, observing something vile or violent or gross is not as immersive. In a game, especially an RPG where the vile or violence or grossness is affecting your character, it hits a bit harder, I've found. Knowing you and your group's limits is important.
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With a movie or novel, observing something vile or violent or gross is not as immersive. In a game, especially an RPG where the vile or violence or grossness is affecting your character, it hits a bit harder, I've found. Knowing you and your group's limits is important.
I was able to find that limit pretty quickly there, and have adjusted our future gameplay as a result. It was really my fault running it that way without due consideration. I apologized to my group, they were cool but decided we should try something else.
So far, they've been really happy with CotCT. The events of Seven Days are just enough to get them motivated and immersed without over-description. Mr. Schneider found the perfect groove in this adventure, it seems, and I don't have to adjust much... especially since I am running this adventure with a 15 year old who attends with his 40-something father. Its really not much of a challenge to find that comfort-zone unless you're with a brand new group.
I've had the opposite problem, though. Player's who want too much adult situation and begin ruining it for others as well. I don't like to tell my player's what to do, but this guy crossed the line in some ways. He's since calmed his *antics*, and is much more in-line with the group. We still game with him to this day, so I think we were lucky that he was willing to be flexible. That's really the key.
In my experience sexual encounters always seemed to take a more humorous track than anything else. It's hard to keep a straight face when you're trying to talk sexy (in character!) to fat guy wearing a "Han Shot First" t-shirt.
But if you want to read some really far out material, old "Black Dog" stuff from White Wolf is it. I have never in my life had a gag reflex until I read "Clan Book: Bali".
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Here in Brazil we feel more at easy with sexual content and still don´t do it often. Roleplaying it is quite boring. What we like to do it´s roleplaying consequences: pregnancy, disease, love, responsability, broken hearts and friendships.
As a matter of fact in my current campaing (RotR with the Iconics) we have :
- A Valeros with a very active sex life.
- A Seoni quite frightened that she would have problems giving birth someday because the places she have been.
- A very upset Meirisiel because she only fall for the bad guys.
- A male version of Kyra (named Kyron) that thinks his party is more trouble than its worth.
We joke a lot about some women Valeros slept is actually Niska Mvasti in disguise, but beside that its only the campaing background. We know the characters are doing those things in their free time, but only talk about it when it have relevancy to the story.
We joke a lot about some women Valeros slept is actually Niska Mvasti in disguise, but beside that its only the campaing background. We know the characters are doing those things in their free time, but only talk about it when it have relevancy to the story.
That's how it is usually in our games. We don't do "talk sexy" to other players.
If I hit on another player (who I am comfortable with and know won't freak out), I'll pass a note saying "Shri hits on you and flaunts seductively, how do you react?" The response may be "upstairs?" or "acts uncomfortable," the last particularly if flirting with the paladin, and that's it.
It's actually never come up in my games beyond "He and she share a room for the night, cut to next morning", and even that is rare. The Savage Tide game I'm running, with the hints as to the level of Vanthus's depravities, is easily the closest we've ever gotten to having that sort of thing as part of a storyline.
When I was 12-13, my first DM, who was my best friend, liked to get into adult stuff a bit, but after the first few times he realized I wasn't entirely comfortable. I wasn't objecting, as it wasn't that bad, but he realized that it wasn't what I was into and stopped. I've always roleplayed other parts of the adult thing though, the relationships, pregnancy, emotional response, cheating, etc. Sex, between players or a player and GM, now is something that once the two people get to the "taking off the clothes" stage becomes implied.
I've never really shy'd away from having the PC's witness some rather vile things though, as the depths of the depravity of an individual (BBEG or otherwise) isn't really apparent enough otherwise. I really want my players to HATE these people, or at least be disgusted by them.
Keep in mind though that this is a group of players that have for the most part seen the old John Waters films and loved them.
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I have a fairly twisted imagination, but I know my players and what they enjoy. I once went too far in a game (where a hag used orphans as slaves, I believe). The players gladly killed the hag, but afterwards one of the players approached me and told me he wasn't comfortable with the idea of defenceless children being used like that.
I've never put children in that position again (I've had them captured, caged and threatened to be eaten etc... but nothing that explicitly stated that the children were actually abused). Even my CotCT campaign's opening was more like something from Oliver Twist than a third world sweatshop.
As far as sex goes, I have a couple of players who enjoy delving into that area. Usually once someone declares they want to "make a move" I transfer to a different scene leaving things to the imagination. (Once had a player (female) "interrogate" to Changeling pros in a brothel, she was very specific as to who each of the pros would look like). I meanwhile moved the scene over to the more uptight (and violent) character talking to the brothel's owner, and watch as he became uncomfortable getting shamelessly hit on by a woman twice his age. In the end they both got different bits of information. I'd rather not talk dirty to my friends during game time if I can avoid it. We're close, but I'd rather not have an insight into that aspect of my players' psyches. Lest the scars never heal...
I really don't want to think about going further than implied "I sleep in your tent tonight" or "I flirt with you."
Our second darkness group is comfortable with sex in general, going TMI for my taste sometimes, but most of the other groups I've played in would be incredibly uncomfortable.
You really have to judge the people you are playing with. If sex and fetishes is a topic out of game, it's probably o.k. in game. If you don't even know if the other players have a girlfriend, then it's probably best to keep sex out of the game.
I did want to say, except for the bugbear and mammy scenes in Runelords, our games have stayed PG-13.
I would be incredibly uncomfortable with R or NC17 with anyone but my boyfriend, who is most often my DM. (Though I DM him in Council of Thieves)
Neither myself or most of the people I have gamed with have a problem with adult or horror themes in gaming, but we normally keep that stuff in games where it is meant to be, like in the World of Darkness or Call of Cthulhu. When playing D&D games it may creep in a little bit, but we prefer to keep our fantasy gaming to the lighter, high fantasy side of things.
Adult themes come up fairly often in the games I play, though when I DM I don't present them nearly as often. I like to present the game with enough gray-area that if the players choose to take it that direction, it can go there, but I'm not going to force it on anyone. I have a few players who go down the most depraved roads of the mind every chance they get, so there's not a lot for me to do aside from simply having the NPCs react accordingly.
For example, in one game I played in, this player(drawing from real-life experience I'd imagine) made a complicated network of drug-dealing, and had a regular income from it. He often times carried around samples of his "product", and would purposely try to get potential new customers hooked during our group's downtime in towns. Honestly, it's pretty impressive. Sometimes our games looked more like a medieval version of "New Jack City"; it's all done in complete seriousness.
Sex doesn't come up nearly as often, but when it does, we let the player fill in the details quietly to themselves. We will role-play everything leading up to the event itself, and from that point allow the player to imagine the rest. This is a real sensitive area for some folks, so we don't describe details of intercourse itself; it's very apparent what's going on and simply leave it as "to each their own..."
That being said, we have incorporated the after-effects of sex very often. 2 guys I gamed with once even had a kid; 1 played as a female half-fiend, the other was a powerful warlord. They played out that the half0fiend wanted the child of a such a powerful mortal, for the sake of land, power, and legacy. It had nothing to do with love, or even the act of sex really. Another player I played with was a half-dragon, one of the last of his kind in that setting, and made it his goal to try and create as many offspring as he could, and each town we visited he attempted to leave his own legacy.
Overall, I feel that there's a line of decency each DM has in their game, and once you cross the PG-13 zone, it starts getting serious and less fun for some folks. Something I've noticed personally, is that once you start getting really explicit, players worry that maybe too much of themselves gets put out on the table as their "character", and some people just aren't comfortable with their secret interests and fetishes being revealed to their friends like that. You sometimes wonder how much of this behavior is the character, and how much of it is the player? These kinds of things can make for uncomfortable gaming sessions.
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As a female gamer that pretty much only plays female characters, I find that I have to create quite asexual characters 99% of the time to keep the game from becoming uncomfortable for me. If I create a normal female character with normal attitudes toward sex, she's pretty much immediately assumed to be a slut and it's open season on her. That's just not fun to play for more 2 minutes every couple of sessions. Heck, I've played characters that are cold and uninterested and still have problems.
I have to know a group really well before I allow my character to let down her hair, and even then it's caused problems, because my character that actually had a relationship with an NPC must now be willing to whore herself out to any male humanoid the party comes across in order to gain favors for the party.
::sigh::
It ends up feeling like every time I try to create a character that's not an ice princess, I get punished for it. So I pretty much stopped trying.
As a female gamer that pretty much only plays female characters, I find that I have to create quite asexual characters 99% of the time to keep the game from becoming uncomfortable for me. If I create a normal female character with normal attitudes toward sex, she's pretty much immediately assumed to be a slut and it's open season on her. That's just not fun to play for more 2 minutes every couple of sessions. Heck, I've played characters that are cold and uninterested and still have problems.
I have to know a group really well before I allow my character to let down her hair, and even then it's caused problems, because my character that actually had a relationship with an NPC must now be willing to whore herself out to any male humanoid the party comes across in order to gain favors for the party.
::sigh::
It ends up feeling like every time I try to create a character that's not an ice princess, I get punished for it. So I pretty much stopped trying.
That's unfortunate. Luckily I play with multiple female players and this isn't a problem. The male players may joke around once in a while, but nothing is ever expected of the females, and they joke around right back. I can remember way back in the first group I ever gamed in it got kind of childish, but since I started gaming with real-life women, it hasn't been an issue. Sounds like you should say something to them.
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Now and then the Sandpoint game that I run for folks here every other Thursday night edges into adult fare, in fact. I'm looking forward to seeing how Tim handles events of the most recent game in his writeup on the Campaign Journal thread, in fact... should be interesting to see through a paladin's eyes what they stumbled into in the troglodyte lair...
Is this something we can all read??? If so, can someone provide a link?
Thanks!
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For me it depends a lot on the group. I have ran and played in very adult games. I would say NC-17 to even MA rated if they was a movie, in a couple of scenes just shy of get a X rating. I personally have no problem with it, but I tend to defer to the lowest in our groups taste for such things.
Mostly in the groups i play in we tend towards what would be a rated R rating anymore. Mostly cause we have one player that is just not that heavy into RPing he is there more for hack and slash release and one player that is just flat immature and taking it to mature would just result in a lot of childish behavior and comments by him.
My tables both tend to be very violent and gritty, but more PG-13 when sex is considered. Even our players who are married couples tend to play characters who are not romantically involved.
My wife and I, however, played through about a year and a half of our campaign as an elven male and female who were friends as children and then ran off to adventure despite the wishes of her noble father. We slowly began to incorporate the romantic ties as our characters began to develop as a couple.
Our DM worked in concert with us, without the rest of the group knowing. Untill our group finally returned with an ancient elven artifact that contained the collected knowledge of thousands of long dead elves. The artifact then posessed my wife's character, basically turning her into an oracle for the knowledge contained within it. (She had begun to put in alot of hours at work and decided to retire her character)
Periodically her personality will turn up, but she is now considered the recepticle of all this knowledge and is kept under guard at all times, thus insuring that we will probably never be able to have a normal relationship, or any real relationship at all ever again. This story was really just a great example of DM'ing and we had a great time playing through it, as sad as it was for our characters.
Might be a bit tame compared to some, but it made for a great tragic love story.
One of the reasons I love Paizo and some of its writers so much is that they don't shy away from more adult stuff.Completely agree with that and this is honestly what first hooked me on paizo and now I buy all their stuff.
I'll add my +1 to that :)
My games run along a similar vein - they're a baseline 'R' rating with forays into more mature areas when the story or player interest calls for it.
Nobody in my group is squeamish about violence and gore, so I was able to play up those things in Skinsaw Murders (and now in Hook Mountain) without upsetting anybody. On the other hand, my sweety is the only person with any interest in the sexual side of things in this game, so we just 'sidebar' that stuff between our normal game sessions.
Your Friendly Neighborhood Dalesman
"Bringing Big D**n Justice to the Bad Guys Since 1369 DR"
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Jess is the problem that the PC's constantly hit on your character or is it that they push you to do "information gathering" using your PC's feminine charms?
PCs constantly hit on my character, player comments/jokes/propositions about my character, expectations that my character is now willing to sleep with anything for pretty much any reason, expectations that my character has to sleep with their character because they have a good charisma score - and constant in and out of game complaints when I don't want the character to.
A joke, a comment, ribbing, a good laugh - fine. But if it continues for most of the game, I mostly get tired of it and want to leave.
In general I find it less annoying, less stressful and more enjoyable to play icy, mean, absolutely innocently pure or hopelessly ugly characters because then I don't have to deal with that in game every single session. This is worse with a new group of mostly strangers, of course. I don't even dare have an interesting back story then. But groups I've played enjoyably with for over a year will degenerate into weeks of unenjoyable play over a single episode.
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One of the reasons I love Paizo and some of its writers so much is that they don't shy away from more adult stuff.Completely agree with that and this is honestly what first hooked me on paizo and now I buy all their stuff.I'll add my +1 to that :)
My games run along a similar vein - they're a baseline 'R' rating with forays into more mature areas when the story or player interest calls for it.
Nobody in my group is squeamish about violence and gore, so I was able to play up those things in Skinsaw Murders (and now in Hook Mountain) without upsetting anybody. On the other hand, my sweety is the only person with any interest in the sexual side of things in this game, so we just 'sidebar' that stuff between our normal game sessions.
Your Friendly Neighborhood Dalesman
"Bringing Big D**n Justice to the Bad Guys Since 1369 DR"
Ok yeah i admit one on one with my BF of the time i have skipped across the XXX rated line. But I didn't count those as they didn't happen with others around. :)
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I add adult themes often -- but only to get my Players to hate or fear or be disturbed.
So, the common example, one of my Players ran a young Bard who spent his down time with girls -- I think I made him roll an STD check once, no biggie.
Later, in the PCs' HQ village he got himself a regular, a pretty blonde, I said -- that's it. She became just another reason for the NPCs to love the PCs and vice/versa. PCs got 20 - 50% discount on ALL supplies, free food and lodging, occassional info -- great Homebase..
A session or two later the PCs found out she was pregnant, so, a little more drama but nothing big.
When the PCs found out the villagers were all missing (arrive at an empty village -- think "And Madness Follows" -- there was considerably more fear, lots of NPC friends and the now very pregnant blonde.
When the PCs meet a BBEG "lieutenant" in his lair and find the girl I finally showed the Bard PC (and others) an illustration of her -- from Complete Arcane, the Alientist. No, she's not pregnant in that picture.
That freaked them out.
Also, from "The Whispering Cairn," I made the Land boy's story much more "adult".
When he tells his story in the Cairn he uses his childlike voice:
My family moved to Diamond Lake because Dad went broke in the town we were from. Here we were still poor and Balabar Smenk forced Dad into really hard work.
Dad got sick from the mines and died.
Then Mom and my sister, she was 12, had to work at night at some dirty place to help the miners after they were done working. My sister hated it and cried, sometimes Mom did, too.
I told Mom that I could work too to help pay off Balabar Smenk, that I was old enough, but she didn't want me to and made me promise I wouldn't follow them to work at night.
When my sister's tummy starting getting fat, Balabar Smenk said I'd have to work instead, that lots of the miners wanted me to work and Mom got really scared.
So I ran away to hide from Balabar Smenk and that's when I fell in the Cairn and died.
You guys have to get my bones and the bones of my family -- my sister died after her belly was done getting big and Mom died because she climbed up on top of the tall building and accidently fell off after my sister died -- anyway, you guys have to get our bones and go to our old town and give us a proper buriel. Then I'll let you pass -- I'm a ghost now and don't have to let you pass until you do what I say -- then my family can all rest.
So, yeah, my Players hated Smenk from here on out.
Unfortunately the only time I get to game with my wife is the game I am running, and it's tough to pull off in-game romance without pushing other players out of the spotlight and turning it into our bedroom behavior with an audience... The one game I got to play in along side her, our characters were pretty removed from each other. I was a militant Duskblade mage-hunter, and she was a Killoren druid, destroyer of all things civilized, in an Age of Worms campaign. We had a hard enough time agreeing on what to do in adventures, let alone get romantic. That campaign didn't give much downtime to really get to know each other either.
Yeah, the adult content in Hook Mountain is what helped make it good and not another junk d20 adventure.
Our group doesn't mind adult content and has relationships with NPCs. Heck, the current group is in Riddleport, some of their best friends are hookers (the rest of the group teases the poor celibate priest of Gozreh...). Limits: if sex happens we "skip over that part", and none of the players have ever been comfortable RP'ing a romance between two PCs.
But in general cranking the adult level up to hard R has been happy for us. One, it's hard to get motivated by fake evil any more (we're all in our 30's)... We're jaded from the average level of adult theme in movies, TV, comics, etc. The gaming being PG all the time pretty much comes across as lame. Showing a little more of the grotesquerie that people are quite capable of in real life helps inspire actual righteous wrath on the part of the players. It also helps make subtle differences between people who are just enemies because they happen to be on the other side of some business deal, and those who are true amoral demented freaks. PCs can be convinced to let the former class live from time to time, which makes for good plotlines. "He was ripping people off, but it's not like he had screaming zombies in cages for his amusement..."
Two, with sex particularly, it's a motivator for PCs to engage with NPCs and form realistic relationships with them. I'm a big simulation fan so the usual "I ignore NPCs when it suits me, they don't have souls" thing bothers me. Actually caring about NPCs means plot hooks, moral quandaries, personal values besides raw min-maxing... If they have to put out a little, it's a small price to pay! :-)
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Thanks.
It was very effective. The Players really understood the flavor of Diamond Lake through that and, of course, really hated Balabar Smenk.
Also, when the PCs fight Filge, I made Filge's "bodyguards" the Land family skeletons. Two adult, one preteen, girl sized and one fetus sized.
It made for a really disturbing encounter, not just knowing the bones & souls of the enemy and having to give them a proper burial but knowing the circumstances around their death -- knowing the preteen size skeleton was a little girl forced into prostitition who died giving birth.
Yeah, it was effective.
I've been in campaigns where adult content has been understood to be included from the get go, and others where it would completely inappropriate. I think as long as you and your players all understand what you're getting into, there's nothing wrong with it, but if that's not the vibe of the campaign, then there's no need to try and shoe-horn it in.
I just thought I'd write in with a dissenting opinion.
I consider the more mature themes in some Golarion books to be a minus, not a plus. This is because I'd like to be able to read them anywhere at any time, even when my kids are around. As it is, I'm afraid they might be attracted by the full-color art, and ask me to read the books aloud. And my kids are often around during play sessions as well, so speaking these things in a game is out of the question.
I don't usually censor violence (with some major exceptions,) but sex is a problem for me. I have found nothing wrong with the old "GameMastery" modules I read, (although I understand that "Carnival of Tears" was borderline, which is one reason I never got that one,) so I trust that, when I get around to reading "Flight of the Red Raven" and "Crypt of the Everflame," I'll be able to read them in the presence of my children. But a few lines here and there of the Pathfinder Chronicles have made me hide them from my kids, so when I get around to reading the Guide to Darkmoon Vale, I'll be restricted as to where and when I can read it. Of course, the APs are beyond any question. The very first time I sat down to read one (Burnt Offerings) I read that line about "calling her a slut and a whore." Like I said, mature themes are a minus.
Post Monster Strikes Again!
grumble...
Ya know, I had something to contribute but now I don't feel like retyping the whole thing. Maybe later.
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Okay, it's been said before, but it bears repeating. In fact, everyone keep repeating this, until it's burned into your brain:
Control-A, Control-C.
Control-A, Control-C.
Control-A, Control-C.
It could save your sanity, or at least your posts. It's saved mine. Really, it's just like when you're typing, say, an MS Word document. Every now and then, you hit Control-S. It's just a habit you have to learn.
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Sex(and other adult themes) has not made much of an appearance in the games I have participated(I suspect the DM for RotRL glossed over some details since there were two younger players), except for three times.
1) In an RL game, a quaraphon(now known as Blue) attacked the party. After subduing it, it started to flirt with our half-dragon wizard/druid. Jokes are made for weeks, and then Kitty(the half-dragon) lays eggs. Both conception and birth were ignored. The whole thing has been pretty much forgotten now, since we have an evil goddess, a godling(just now breaking through the power binding), and a "fake god" to deal with.
2)In my PbP "The Prisoner's Vacation", you of the wornfully accused PC's had to expalin what rape was to a PC that had never been off the island, and didn't know what a lot of things from civilization were. The players involved handled it well in my opinion.
3) We had to get information from a house of ill repute in an Oriental Adventures game. We suspected there was an illegal weapons trade(dealing with stolen weapon of course), and once we learned that there was, we stormed the brothel.