First: this isn't meant to be a prurient invitation for adolescent humor. It that's your first inclination, please go elsewhere now and don't bother reading any further.
Second: this isn't intended to turn into an invitation to group hot-chat (that's what messenger is for).
Third: This isn't scientific, or whatever you want to call it. I wanted to see what sort of atmosphere people prefer to have at their table. I'm hoping it will encourage MATURE discourse on the role of sex in Shadowrun.

Let's be clear: from the very earliest days, Shadowrun (and in fact, all cyberpunk genres) have an EXTREMELY strong sexual thread, sometimes as a background, others adna major element, and at times clearly and boldly at the forefront. I recall the (CP2020?) euphamisms/slang of "Input" (Boyfriend) and "Output" (Girlfriend). One of the primary contacts available in the main book is ALWAYS a "joygirl" or the male equivalent. I personally believe sex pervades the environment of most cyberpunk milieus because when it gets to the point at which it is often depicted, it represents (to most Westerners) the dinal descent into immorality and loss of civilization.

So part of my question has to do with the "background count" in your games. An example would be breaking into a room and finding a guy being... attended to by a pair of females of clearly negotiable virtue, literally with his pants about his ankles. Then there's the active use of contacts in and encounters with the the rather fleshy industries of sex, from porn sim stars to producers, to low rent street walkers and their pimps. Stop for just a moment, and think about it: does it actually pervade your descriptions and perceptions of the 6^th World? Is it there more than you really thought it would be? Or are you really playing in a antiseptic version (or location) of the world where that's not an issue?

The other part of my question has more to do with the cross-table character interaction. A good team can become very close, over time. There are plenty of stories of fraternization among team members... especially since the 6^th World shadow community and profession are fiercely more gender balanced than the actual demographics of wider gamerdom where males vastly outnumber females. Do your male gender-bending players act the slut with anything male (and/or female) that moves? Are they vestal virgins, protective of their virtue and their male player's potentially delicate sensibilities at having to role-play a meaningful romantic relationship across the table from another man? Do the actual female players see the game as an opportunity to live out a lifestyle and indulge in behaviors in-character that would bring them shame and misfortune in the real world? Or are they beset upon by the slobbering male characters in some sort of attempt to make up for real life failings?

It's a serious set of questions, and it's a serious topic. If I have offended anybody, I apologise in advance. I'd like to see a serious discussion. Wish us luck!

Sexual scenes do happen in games I play/run, but are (usually) off-scene.

While I do not want to play a porno, I have no preference beyond that, so sexual scenes would not bother me, & one of my characters is actually very sexually themed. However, I believe it makes at least one of the other players uncomfortable, so is generally avoided.

I recently finished a 3-year arc in a DnD game, retiring all the characters. In that game, we had two VERY intense inter-personal relationships we wanted to do something with, but a couple of the players, one in particular, weren't up to it, so we tried to keep it all off-camera. The result was a child of one pair, which led to some rather interesting plot points. The two female characters wound up as something like adoptive sisters, and the "girl talk" that happened in chat all got logged and cleaned up as dialogue, which the GM read with much delight, but again, it was not shared generally with everybody. It was that particular group which brought the original post and survey to my mind in the first place. Our current Shadowrun group is composed of many of the same players, but we made a concious choice to be a LOT more selective to whom we offered berths at our table.

This is one area of the game that comes up relatively often in my games, mostly because all of the players can conjure up images to fit the scene and everyone is comfortable with the situation.

I tend to play along the darker aspects of the sex and use it for a shock/horror factor in-game. I find this interesting as my more experienced role-players can separate their characters morality from their own very well, and have the character opposed to something that doesn't really phase them.

On the subject of cross-character interaction, my players are all men but there are 3 female characters in the current game. One of the male characters has been attempting to hit onto a female character and another is actively shy around the girls because he doesn't really know how to deal with them.

Aside from this the characters tend to stick to a more stereotypical ideals when it comes to personal interaction, all are heterosexual and so far appear to stick to their own meta-type, or elves (something about elves, obviously)

I also have one player, the face, who pretty much hits on all (non-player)women that he has any contact with. The interesting part of this is that he plans for his character to become quite machiavellian about the whole thing over the course of a few months, seeing these women less as people that he can talk to while progressing to his goal and more as tools to extract information from.

All in all its quite an interesting bunch

hi hi

It can be awful uncomfortable when your friend, who you are 100% not attracted to in any way shape or form, is sitting right there roleplaying the other side of the encounter. I think it is worth pointing out the relationship between sex and violence, that more abstract concept of arousal in a psychological sense. Even if a GM or player is made uncomfortable by a certain violent act (we house ruled in "horror" karma to go in the same category as humor and drama for this reason) there are a lot more rules for mechanically dealing with violence.

Also, I think there is an issue with where each person draws their motivation from. When I'm roleplaying a character, whether as a player or an GM, I try to put myself in that character's shoes as much as possible. Usually I can usually conjure up some kind of abstract emotion that evokes a certain mindset.

For example, I might draw on some abstract feelings of despair and self doubt that I might have felt when I was panicking about finals back in my schooling days in order to empathize with how a squatter might react while being interrogated by a group of uncaring professionals and is in danger of losing his hush money.

But emotions that have to do with sex are inevitably more personal. Placing it in the abstract usually involves an NPC who is a complete sociopath, who has an abstracted sense of the emotion already, in which case the expectation is set for horrifying brutality. When it comes to attempting to roleplay genuine romance and intimacy though, I typically have to say "I'm not going to roleplay this out, you'll have you use your imagination," then make some kind of social roll.

The level of graphicness isn't itself an issue, rather it is the nature of the interaction. It is a lot easier to describe a scene or setting that involves these elements then it is to interact it with a friend. When I make a character, I usually include backstory elements that give my character an easy out from having to get involved in those themes.

I chose R Rated. My tabletop gaming group is composed for 5 guys and 1 gal, with 2 Het, 2 Bi, and 2 Gay. (Yeah, we have all the genders and possible crossmatches covered...) At the table, the interactions carry that weight, which means we see hetero and homosexual relationships (both male and female). The majority of those relationships are handled off-camera or with PC/NPC relationships, but it does come on camera at times.

As the GM, I have the grit always in the background, but it becomes stronger by circumstance. When the job takes the team into a bunraku parlor, the sex comes straight on and that's that. Likewise, if the team is passing through Oude Centraal or another red light district. Other times, the description fades almost to nothingness, as in certain corporate enclaves.

Key moments that my players remember: (spoilered for content)
I chose these two moments because they are at drastically different ends of the spectrum.

As far as the sexuality of characters, each of them has drawn their own lines, based on both the player's approach and the character's attitude. We've had the whole range described in the OP. I think the willingness to interact and discuss sex openly between the players OOC has a huge impact on the IC interactions. There were a few players who joined our group for a brief period (weeks to months) and they could never understand where the lines were drawn between IC and OOC, or between the relationships of the players to each other. (All the members of our regular group have known each other for between 3 and 20 years.) Because these new players weren't as comfortable, they generally steered clear of the sex topic and as a group, we adjusted our approach to accomodate.

For the most part, I've seen sad attempts by male players to hit on female players using their characters as a very thin guise. It hurts me physically to watch this. Of course, its been a while. The last group I was in was very mature about things, but I think we glossed over much of the sex. It was just a background thing. I had the team meet in a live fantasy type brothel, and I felt like I may have pushed the envelope. Its truly a much more sensitive topic than the violence. I guess we had some sexual tension in the group, and a few Polyamorous people mixed in with monogamous people.

Honestly, it comes up but not as often as it probably should.

It does feature but usually any of the real action goes on behind closed doors. A lot of the more sexual elements are inferred but never directly described.

- J.

PG. Though occasionally a reference has come up that's been more explicit.
I have no objections to having an NC-17 game (I had one over yahoo chat once, but the GM and I eventually had a falling out due to other issues), but honestly, it'd feel weird doing it with people I've gone to school with.

And I have been involved in a conversation about bondage gear with one of them. Very very weird.
Edit: actually it was between him and this other gal, and a few other people I didn't really know. I was sorta sitting in the corner.

Edit 2: spoiler'd for content

As a work of interactive fiction I am quite content for Shadowrun to include believable sexual content. I've played just about every combination of gender and sexual orientation, I've probably made a few up as I went along.

My distinct preference is for it to occur off camera. Particularly in table-top games sexual interactions between PC's and other PC's or NPC's has always been coloured by the sexual dynamic and power games of the actual members of the group. I don't know anyone that is a good enough role-player not to let RL bleed through. It has always made me uncomfortable and it spoils the purity of the role-playing experience.

Does that make any sense?

Sexual interactions in-game are almost always either strongly influenced by the RL group dynamic or are painfully, cartoon fake.

I'd classify our game as NC-17. Sex comes up often, but never graphic - usually fade to black, or "And you spend some times in bed not sleeping".

Maybe this is a comment on our times, but the players I have encountered for the most part are better at role-playing violent encounters than sexual ones.

A notable exception was a SR game I GMed some years ago when, very naturally in the story, a male PC and a female PC got it on together. The male was played by a buddy, the female by my wife. He was taken aback and a little stilted in his acting, but he gave it the old college try. She was good. Really good. Uncomfortably good. The rest of the players had a great time watching her, watching me, watching her watch me watch her.

In the group I'm playing in, it is there, out in the open, by NPCs; mainly it has to do with where the characters are-- the part of town where there will be a hooker out back of the bar going at it when the group's sammie stakes out the back door, or the guy the group is tailing has sex with a contact in a motel. The GM doesn't do a blow-by-blow, but it would take a person more jaded (and perhaps less midwestern rural) than myself to just overlook it.

Little chance of relations between the characters, though-- all male and straight. The investigator type with a little magic gave the mage a great out the second game when the mage ran right into an ambush, making like a somewhat exaggerated, openly gay lover... and the mage so not picking up on the hint.

So, anyway, it is there, can't gloss over or ignore it. Not something that'll ruin my experience personally. Makes me think twice about running a female character, though, as I'd really have to think about how NPCs would react, and how she would respond. Probably a very healthy mental exercise for me, and worth a few strange looks from across the table due to cross-play.

Reminds me that in one D&D game that lasted two years running (Worlds' Largest Dungeon is large) we did have a female player (one of the very few at our table) and there did come a point when her character and another PC were off screen for a while. I believe the two of them were dating at the time, but in any case, when asked about what they were doing he replied, "Oh, we had sex. We've been down in this dungeon, a really long time." She corroborated; it was a lie, but a lie we had to believe (though I've forgotten what they really did).

We are R usually. most of us are married, we have two married couples and can be pretty realistic. adult themes happen asa they happen in real life. Shadowrunners can deal with the seemier side of life, especially if dealing with lots of entertainment types well, there's a reason the phrase is "sex, drugs, rock & roll."

I try to minimise splitting of the party. It divides attention and leads to people sitting around doing nothing. Of course, if they tried something as a team, that would be different. But it hasn't come up yet.

In my game, we've got a 14 year old and two others who have the maturity of low teens. We did have a RL nympho female who's character was a female with a mild sexual addiction (IRL she is inheriting a country club/bar, so she had to start taking over), and one of the other mature players is much the same.

The last player is also fairly mature. We had this one scene where he (human sniper) got plastered at a strip club that catered to orks/trolls and one of the other players payed the troll stripper "Yvonne" to "take him home for the night and film it." He ended up going steady with her, and for some reason, whenever something goes bad, he's always at her place. And he rolls for this stuff (IE: On evens, I'm with Yvonne. Odds I'm home). We joke around because his character has 7 Edge and Lucky.

Just last week, the other nympho character was asked to gather some "clean" metas for the vampire to bleed/energy drain. She went bar hopping and asked some guys if they "wanted to go back to her place for some fun, and bring some friends." She was dressed in her BDSM outfit, so she got 5 guys to come. She bound them and gagged them, all sexy like, and then just shoved them into a locked room to wait on the Infected.

Could have done that better. Ever heard of furniture bondage? (I have forgotten what it's really called)
I am unfortunately unable to locate an example, but the one I have seen was a gal strapped up in a latex outfit and posed in such a way that she served as a functional chair. Her legs were the back, her butt the seat, and she lay on her back in a pedestal of some kind.

Anyway, she could have strapped them up like that, it would have been a real kink the whole time. At least until the vampire showed up.

There's a difference. An important one. Especially when he goes through the process described in my signature..

I usually try to keep my own character out of bed as much as possible . . But there are two guys in my group . .(go figure . . )
One of them is allways playing what i'd like to call the elven whore . . trying to seduce other people(PC and NPC alike) to get what she wants without putting out AT ALL . . other guy, most of the time chasing skirts, trying to bed everything . . trying not to actually have to describe whatever happens.
We're all dudes, we're all more or less uncomfortable with that stuff . . on occassion, there are some females in the room, belonging to differing players usually . . those are somehow not so inhibited it seems . .
Our Jokes?
50% below belt-line.
10% above belt-line.
remaining 40% are about gutter-level ^^

My games often deals with mature content, not only because of sexual content.
It's a dark and gritty world, and the Shadows aren't the most welcoming and politically correct places.

But I don't graphically describe sexual situations, just like I won't describe how an open wound looks like, except if it could add something to the atmosphere. I don't remember ever doing it, I guess I could but I'd probably feel uncomfortable.

As for cross-table interaction, in one of the campaign I play in, we're very... close to each other (well at least three of us - tow female and one male - are). That's to be expected with three characters with 5+ charisma with no long-term view leaving together in a high lifestyle apartment complete with a jacuzzi and a fridge full of vodka.
My (female) character does it just for fun and pleasure. She isn't a slut, she just has no morals or social pressure holding her back. As for the other (female) character, played by a female player, I don't know her reasons (except later on, when it was getting pregnant) but I think it's along the same lines...

And then there's my completely insane and over the top Punk campaign. You can't have sex, drug and rock'n'roll without sex, right? One of the PC is a conjurer/transgendering (with a shapechange spell) pimp (played by a female player) and another had a vasectomy and then decided to get a penile implant but he didn't have enough essence left, only capacity... in a cyber arm (oh, and the penile implant is on a catapult (similar to catapult spurs), can be removed and used remotely as a drone and runs an empathy software). And the PC are currently raising cockatrixes to have them fuck Aztechnology's Boards of Directors (it's long story)... But anyway that campaign isn't supposed to be serious anyway.

A jacuzzi full of vodka? That IS high lifestyle!
(Reading comprehension go! Oh. There it went.)

I guess my games are in the majority (PG-13, mainly chosen due to the off-camera comment). My game is open to the full gamut of sexual exploration and I sometimes through in an NPC here and there that could explore that, but as none of us (all guys, 27 to 35) really care to explore the sexual side of things, it really all left off stage and assumed.

We've got a face that could easily bed 3 women a night, if he so chose, but that's really not the focus of the game. I paint pictures in the background, but as no one really cares to go there, it stays in the background...

From my perspective...

We have...
a male hacker who is overly paranoid. (mid 20s, I think)
a male runner who has done jail time and barely living above the street. (mid 30s)
a male face. (mid 20s)
a male with a child. (mid 30s)
a male former special forces who recently, in the past three years, escaped from jail. (mid 30s)

For one, none of our characters are likely to become intimate with each other. At least I'm pretty sure they're all heterosexual. Also we have a tendency to ignore gender with interactions. As far as sex in the game, of the remaining characters, I doubt most of the characters would engage in promiscuous and gratuitous sex. The face would be the most likely, but I suspect only if its necessary to achieve a goal, I may be wrong.

NC-17 in both my games, though the one I'm playing in is pushing close to X.

The rating is not for 'sex acts' though, but the actual setting and happening. Hookers and exotic entertainers are everywhere in Tampa today so you can imagine what it would be like in 2070. We don't get into extensive visual discriptions, but the street walkers are pointed out, we run into people who are indisposed, the nova-coke head comes up and offers to blow a PC for enough $ to get her next hit, in the current game two of the PCs work at a strip club, there are whore houses and B. parlors everywhere, etc.

Back when I used to GM I didn't always have sex but when there was it tended to be extreme, fetish, or psychopathic.

So, was this in-game or in real life?

hehe.

Oh SNAP!

R to X, we have a mature game and sex in all it wondrous diversity is just part of the game world.
Sometimes off camera but explicit and in your face as appropriate to player, character and story.

Interesting mix of sexualities in character and pretty relaxed about kinks.


Drew the line once however, I am not there as ref to fufill personal sexual fantasy in explicit detail for my players. That is the sole province of a real relationship in your perferred incarnation.

My team has been running fairly R to PG lately, and even prior i've never been there to ref sex scenes and while sex is present (several of the characters have joygirls as contacts or the like) and openly recognized I keep the details out of my games. This is made even more necessary by the fact that we have one member of our gaming group who is just approaching 18 and the brother of another member so we tend to avoid the awkward.

I was going to go into detail about how it varies from campaign to campaign, playing group to playing group, and then there's the graphic language and ribald joking but...

Your description for PG13 hits it, actually. After the announced "I do the barmaid! Can I do the barmaid? I do the barmaid!" and the grumbling from the distracted GM...it either happens off camera, or the PC ends up with a glowing red hand print on their face. There's no blow-by-blow at the table, because who wants to sit around listen to some other guy's awkwardly roleplayed sex scene, let alone be the GM who has to detail the NPC's responses?

Be like, "the barmaid has neurosyhillis!".

Thread: tl;dr. Two cents incoming.

I don't make an effort to show it in my games, but it's there if anyone asks. (Though I do have a porn-addicted AI character. He forgot to shut off his porn during the first meetup call; I DLed a sample clip from a porn site and blasted it at full volume in the background.) I personally consider it in poor taste to shove it in my players' faces, but it's certainly very present in the world and there if they ask for it.

On the subject of female players, and males playing females: with the exception of one session in which my lesbian player went absolutely wild with her female PC -- and that was a Star Wars SAGA game -- I have never had a female player or female character treated differently than the group treated in and out of game males. The female characters are respected as professionals, and any females in my group generally give as well as or better than they take from the men.

we just keep it under the table. Really, they need to quiet down there or I'll have to kick them.

Well, I have been away for a week plus, and coming back, I am fascinated by the responses to the OP.

First: Thank you for actually addressing the points and keeping this mature and professional.

Second: I am glad to see the diversity of ideas and implementations that various people have come up with. While the poll shows the (slight) majority of us run what I termed a "PG-13" campaign, I was really interested that the rest of it weighed SO heavily toward the "adult" side. I personally consider the 6^th World to be relatively graphic, but you don't need to shove it in the player's faces constantly to get the point across. Ok, seriously, those of you who voted "X", the number is higher than I would ever have expected both in absolute terms and percentages; You're not pulling my (our) leg, are you? And as of this post, NOBODY dumbed down the game to Rated "G", meaning we all seem to acknowledge the 6^th World's a pretty seamy and gritty place.

Seriously, it sounds like a lot of people DO take the topic seriously in their games. Now, I guess I should ask the follow-up question:

Do you have people handling sceens "off camera" but "in character" between games, say via email, chat or face to face? Put another way, those who are in that majority at PG-13, is there more going on in detail away from the table to keep from offending/squicking/distracting the rest of the group?

I've played in groups that have run the gamut over time, but frankly, I like the ones that are at least R best, because that's how I see the 6^th World. A lot of OUR "steamy" stuff happens between games in chat, simply because it's not necessary to provide a peep show to the rest of the group; We have a hard enough time gathering everybody to play as it is without wasting group time on individual scenes, be they of a graphic sexual nature or just a friendly conversation over Certified Organic^TM! Oolong^* Tea at a High Lifestyle outdoor bistro.

*Oolong does not in any way imply that Certified Organic^TM! products contain any tea leaves or byproducts thereof. For further information, visit our matrixsite at >>CertifiedOrganic.Aztechnology.Com/Teas

Sounding like a broken record here, but I use the full tool box. Kinda have too due time and distance constratains. I also firmly believe in using the best tool for the job or perhapes a better metaphor, the enitre pallate.

One on one reffing in and out of game time, email, telephone and personal. Or in a group, in or out of game time or into timeish.

Explicit details when necessary and if player comfortable with for the most intense experence, just enough info for the players imagination to do the real work for same, or suggestion and off camera to be noted and move with the pace of the story. So from the near over looked love lorn sigh to hard core hentia as needed.

Trying to give a slice of the metahuman and sixth world existence and there a very few species that dont, to use the vernacular, get jigging wi'd it.

We are sadly not an innocent group of individuals any more and wrapping our heads around different ways of seeing the world is part of the fun. So luckly the boarders I can work within are quite broad.

Although I personally tend to "Fade to Black", my Sixth World is at least Rated M that strays into X+ turf on occasion.

But then again, my players are fully aware that PvP Rape and Murder are perfectly acceptable as long as everything stays IC, and that I will personally squash anyone who takes things into the OOC arena like a bug.

My games run the gambit, but never drop below Mature and often times go right into X. The X-Rated stuff happens off-screen, but it's very much obvious and has a direct effect on the characters.