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The Book of Erotic Fantasy or Why Sourcebook Writers Should Not Be Allowed To Talk About Sex (NSFW)
So I recently received several sourcebooks in the mail. Distressingly enough, this book was at the top of the heap. Since I have a cold and cannot do much, I decided to prop it open.
Oh boy. The first few pages have a lovely illustration of a male bound in chains attached to his nipples. This should tell you all you need to know about the book, and should adequately explain my emotional state while reading this travesty.
Just a few excerpts:
Despite their reputation as curmudgeons, dwarves can make love for up to a day.
You'd think they'd be less grumpy if this was the case.
Elves are all bisexual and polyamorous and love casual sex
OK, I am stepping in now.
Elves (at least Tolkien Elves) are supposed to be beautiful in an otherworldly and unattainable sense. This trend of sexually objectifying elves (Read any of the Drow sourcebooks and you'll see what I'm talking about), I feel, detracts from that. Sexualizing them makes them more concrete and, in a sense, "binds" them to this world. And that just doesn't sit right with me, for the aforementioned sense of otherworldliness I think they all deserve.
Gnomes all love group sex with either gender. Even better if it involves toys!
This is just plain fucking gross. I did not need to know that about a race of wrinkled old pygmies, thank you. Fittingly, it is accompanied by a horrendously bad illustration of a topless gnome woman.
Satyrs
How About Now?
I...just...Goodbye.
A tantrist (basically sex wizard) recovers his or her spell slots by having sex.
This is highly impractical for several reasons. What if the tantrist is separated from the group? What if no party member will willingly have sex with the tantrist? What if the person who the tantrist has sex with gets killed/Plane Shifted? On top of that, who in their right mind would willingly have sex with a spellcaster?
Sexual Prostitutes can heal others by having sex for at least twenty minutes.
So let me get this straight. You expect two adventurers to stop and have sex in the middle of a combat situation to get healed. For twenty minutes. In a combat situation.
Fiendish Seed
Material Component: A rotted seed covered in sexual fluid.
I can imagine how awkward looking for this in a magic shop would be.
"Oh hey,I was just wondering if you had any seeds immersed entirely in semen here. I want to cast Fiendish Seed and my wife already made preparations for the demon-baby shower."
Unseen Lover
An unseen lover is a variation of the unseen servant spell. It creates an invisible, mindless force that performs sexual acts on verbal command from the caster. The unseen lover is generally shapeless, although it can be commanded to take a vague form similar to a male or female humanoid, with normal-size physical features.
I should laugh or feel sad, but right now? I'm just pissed. I've worked very hard to subvert the "wizards are all nerdy losers with zero understanding of sex" image, but this? This just proves that what every drunken fighter or smelly barbarian has ever said about us is undeniably true. To whatever loser scribed this spell, I say fuck you. Fuck you for undoing what we spellcasters have been working towards for centuries (or decades in elven years).
Gah, just...This makes Drow of the Underdark look as raunchy as The Very Hungry Caterpillar. This is completely embarrassing and one of the biggest reasons why D&D players are stereotyped as pornography-addicted nerdy virgins. Fuck you, whoever wrote this. Fuck you.
Comments
Time for Mordenkainen's invisible girlfriend, said the mage to himself, before breaking down sobbing.
Stephen King did the whole "Invisible sex creature" thing first. Granted, that was essentially an invisible succubus, rather than an invisible sex slave.
I'm not sure I entirely understand this thread. Were you expecting something called The Book of Erotic Fantasy to be well-written?
eelektross gonna eelOh, lawdy, this is hilarious. Then suddenly:
>magical equivalent of sex toys
>toys for boys is sad and icky
Not sure how much of it is honest sentiment, but it's a silly double standard.
That was kind of the point with the Drow. They're super-evil nepotistic libertines. The sex might be the least horrifying thing about them.
Gotta say man, this paragraph is nerdier than anything I would be able to find in the Tome of Eldritch Smut. Really not seeing the problem with the unseen lover spell. It's just a fancy sex toy basically. I mean using a tool or just masturbation to get off when horny isn't really reflective of the interpersonal sex life of the person in general.
good job
As a joke, White Wolf did a supplement for Exalted titled 'Scroll of Swallowed Darkness', bolstering their already-pretty-raunchy setting (which, mind you, already had a regent who barely bothers to hide that he masturbates regularly to what amounts to sexy parts of the Bible, and a martial art style centered around bondage).
Some material include descriptions of various superhuman bondage houses, a martial art based on smothering intercourse, noted skilled and twisted prostitutes, spells that summon sex toys and demonic harems, and a magical quicksilver artifact that allows you to have sex with things that aren't your species and was created with the express purpose of fucking a mountain.
Good stuff.
I wasn't being serious, dude. I thought everyone could tell when I started using "elven years" to measure time.
I certainly wasn't expecting it to turn up in the mail along with seven other sourcebooks.
Yyyeah, the Drow always reeked of nerd fantasy to me.
Sorry. I've never seen you tell a joke. I just take everything you say at face value.
Even the Ferrothorn thread?
I assumed it was complaining about movesets and typing or something.
And while the magic sex toy thing isn't as gross as, say, satyr rape or gnome nipples, just...how are you going to use it? Why waste a perfectly good spell slot on it?
Well if it is a alternate version of unseen servant it is probably a level 1 or 2 spell. Either just keep it there on the off day since chances are you will be slinging around higher level spells more or just scroll it. I mean the chumps who want to suffer through vancian casting at least get scribe scroll out of the deal of being unfun to play*.
*unless you love playing the game - guess what the GM will throw at us today, and keep the boring general use spells handy.
Presumably you queue it up at the inn or something.
It's a 2nd-level spell, yes.
^ I don't think using magical sex toys in public is accepted in most societies.
Not in Amn anyway...
Sexual elements are actually quite common in ritual magic from various cultures, and it would be quite easy to tastefully work those elements into a role-playing format were the source writer to expend a little effort and do some research. Consider how blood and semen are often key elements in amulets, or how interlinked eroticism and meditation are in many Sufi, Hindu and Tibetan texts (albeit in very different ways). These can be approached intriguingly and with tact, and could add a lot to a game if used carefully.
The key problem is, I think, that most RPG source writers are neither acquainted with such traditions nor terribly familiar with writing about sexuality in a thoughtful, in-depth manner. Sex does not come up a lot in that format, so writing about it with subtlety simply isn't a necessary skill; likewise, when crafting a Tolkien-derived fantasy world, a working knowledge of hoodoo tradition or tantric philosophy is just not going to be useful 98% of the time. But when it is... well, that's the result.
Yeah, a whole shitload of tribal rituals and mythological rivalries gravitated around fertility as a theme.
I mean, look at Egypt. One of their main myths is a contest between rival princes trying to get jizz in each other's body.
Preeeetty much. There's generally speaking a right way to broach it, but the sort of thing you see in OP's book and FATAL is more of the clueless "YAAAAY SEX" variety.
Indeed. Also:
Egypt really was the master of "no homo" when it came to myths and rituals. Despite condemning homosexuality as degrading and "feminising," the sheer degree of emphasis on virility and bodily fluids is just stunning.
To be fair, being degrading was the whole point in that particular one, seeing how it was a test of asserting superiority.
There was also that part where a god created the world by choking the chicken, if I remember correctly, proving that Japan has no monopoly on weirdness.
Only weaboos think Japan has a monopoly on weirdness.
D&D's elves being near-carbon copies of Tolkien's elves is usually one of the big things detractors cry about.
D&D elves are superficially carbon copies of Tolkien elves, but Tolkien elves are basically sanitised Nordic elves. It's kind of a weird concept to confer, so if you'll allow me to indulge in some Weeabooism:
The Japanese have a few different words that tend to be translated into English as "monster", and they're interesting in their native context because they have very different connotations. One is "youkai" and another is "kaiju", and they actually refer to pretty different things. A youkai is a less a monster and more a spiritual being; they can be monstrous, but what defines them is how unclear their relationship to the corporeal world is. Western creatures of folklore like elves, traditional undead, Nordic and Christian dragons, demons, angels and whatnot would probably be considered to be youkai by a Japanese folklorist. A kaiju is a monster in physical form, and while it can have spiritual elements, its definitive element is its brute monstrousness. Mid 20th century monster cinema like Godzilla pretty much popularised the term. A kaiju is pretty much entirely corporeal and consistent, measurable by science and whatnot. Modern fantasy dragons are probably the most common example of that concept in a Western sense.
Using those terms as points of reference can be a pretty useful tool for separating out types of mythological creatures and their meanings. For instance, medieval Western monsters have an overwhelming tendency to be "youkai" -- spiritual creatures. In Classical Antiquity, however, there's a greater emphasis on monstrous entities of the natural world -- "kaiju".
I really really hope that wasn't too Weeaboo because I kind of feel like I'm in for a framed paddling.
In any case, D&D removed the spiritual elements inherent to Tolkien's elves and made them much more human. While they have stuff like magic and religion, those things are external to them rather than a part of them, as in folklore or Tolkien's Middle-earth. Their "youkai" element was removed, but nor are they suddenly "kaiju" -- just differently human. D&D elves are an attempt to harp off Tolkien without any actual understanding of the folklore itself. I think that's a common problem with a lot of modern fantasy -- the feedback loop the originates and refreshes with D&D, without paying heed to the diversity and nuance of actual folklore.
As for the actual topic, I suppose I wouldn't expect TTRPG rulebook writers to put out work of much quality that deals with sex. That's totally coming from a stereotype, but to be fair, not many (or any?) games of any sort have really dealt with the subject matter very well. While we're comparing historical notes, one fun thing about medieval monasteries was all the buggering, apparently. Preventing people from having sex, it turns out, is really difficult, so monasteries had a big "problem" with homosexuality. Nunneries did, too, except that the whole nun thing was commonly temporary for noblewomen who sometimes did it as a kind of rite of passage. Medieval Christianity did not really know what to do about genitals, I guess. The really fun counterpoint is how sexualised medieval culture as a whole could be at times, which makes sense when you consider that the institution of marriage as a common thing was pretty new, and that the dominant kingdoms were coming from a recent tribal cultural background. Many tribes were herders rather than farmers, placing them closer to the hunter-gatherer part of the social and economic spectrums.
So the "Selling of the sexual favors of the nuns" was a real thing?