Sex wasn’t a big issue in early role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons. These games were mostly dominated by themes of violence and heroism. Sex, lust, desire, and love weren’t a big part of the conversation.
A New Kind of Game
Tabletop roleplaying games have evolved, and erotic themes are front and center in a few special titles.
The whole movement began in the early Aughts with The Book of Erotic Fantasy, the huge guide to erotic roleplaying. It focused in on sex in role-playing games, imagining erotica fantasies as part of a central theme in the work.
The book looked at ways players can bring sex into different fantasy worlds and RPG games, and suggested rules for how it is done.
The book introduces sex-focused sorcerers, wizards and monks, and includes rules for everything from how sex takes place between characters to a guide for determining how hot a character is.
Play These At Home
Since that groundbreaking RPG guide, a crop of more current games are putting erotic content front and center in their gameplay.
- Numenera: A Kickstarter project set one billion years from now on Earth. The creators released a guide to love and sex for this science fiction world and it includes rules for how desire and consent work and even outlines magic sex toys.
- Pathfinder: This fantasy RPG includes a guide on how to deal with characters’ sexuality. The supplement also includes queer and trans character details.
- Apocalypse World: Relationships and shared history help players survive in this award-winning RPG from 2010 set in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. The guidebook includes directions for what happens when characters have sex and how game play evolves based on this action.
- Under My Skin: A roleplaying game centered on passion and relationships. Players come together for lustful encounters and deal with secret desires, fidelity and jealousy as they learn the real meaning of love.
The Afterglow
Most recently, the RPG Monsterhearts (based on the Apocalypse World system) includes love triangles and power dynamics. Gameplay takes place in a high school full of monsters with characters inspired by Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Twilight, and The Craft.
The game’s creator, Avery Mcdaldno told Vice about her goal when making the game:
“The game pushes a queer agenda. There’s a two-page spread dedicated to talking about the importance of queering your monster stories, but furthermore, queer themes pervade the mechanics of the game … It’s about coming to terms with the way that sex intersects with power.”