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elfsThe other day, as I was looking through an acquaintance's library, I came across the Open Gaming License book, The Book of Erotic Fantasy, which is intended as a rule add-on to Dungeons & Dragons, D20 edition. There was a bit of a kerfluffle after the book started circulating and Wizards of the Coast amended the rules of their public license to prevent works from circulating that were obscene, pornographic, or contrary to community decency.
They needn't have bothered. The book isn't really worthy of the attention.
There are two sections of the book worth attention: the spells section and the monsters section. The monsters are interesting and, if a bit predictable, still contain a lot of sparks for interesting campaigns. You'll have to work to create the scenarios suggested for many of the monsters, but they're still worth it. The spells are clever and intriguing.
On the other hand, the characters, feats and skills section of the book suggest a complete paucity of creativity. The three standard classes offered are "Imagist" (an illusionist who works primarily with beauty), "Kundalist," (a kind of sex monk), and "Tantrist," (a mage who uses sex to raise power). The whole theif/bard/rogue end of the business, with prostitutes, courteasans, and so forth is ignored, and if you're gonna run a city campaign those would be great roles to play. The feats and skills sections are weak, and suggest an unfortunate tendency to try and impress modern "altie" sexuality on the Dungeons & Dragons world. Piercing and tattooing were not always sexual, and were not always associated with alternative sexuality, but they are in this book.
There's an okay section in the beginning in which the writers try to be adult about the whole thing. For the most part they succeed, but they were preaching to a critical member of the choir when I read it. I couldn't help but hear the sniggering in the background.
It probably doesn't help that the illustrations are, for the most part, photographs, many of them digitally edited for special effects, and many of them straight-up nudes. Not the sort of book you can read in public.
All in all, this book isn't a great addition to either the D&D collection of books, or to the further understanding of human sexuality. Most of the rules are the sorts of things a good gamemaster could come up with on their own, the creative effort is somewhat pauce, and the sexuality much more modern than is appropriate. I think the book succeeds mostly in its final page, where Phil Foglio pretty much makes the same case that I did: good players and game masters will handle sex the way they handle any strange encounter, and the existing rules are sufficient to the game. This book was not required, and it does little to further the genre.
They needn't have bothered. The book isn't really worthy of the attention.
There are two sections of the book worth attention: the spells section and the monsters section. The monsters are interesting and, if a bit predictable, still contain a lot of sparks for interesting campaigns. You'll have to work to create the scenarios suggested for many of the monsters, but they're still worth it. The spells are clever and intriguing.
On the other hand, the characters, feats and skills section of the book suggest a complete paucity of creativity. The three standard classes offered are "Imagist" (an illusionist who works primarily with beauty), "Kundalist," (a kind of sex monk), and "Tantrist," (a mage who uses sex to raise power). The whole theif/bard/rogue end of the business, with prostitutes, courteasans, and so forth is ignored, and if you're gonna run a city campaign those would be great roles to play. The feats and skills sections are weak, and suggest an unfortunate tendency to try and impress modern "altie" sexuality on the Dungeons & Dragons world. Piercing and tattooing were not always sexual, and were not always associated with alternative sexuality, but they are in this book.
There's an okay section in the beginning in which the writers try to be adult about the whole thing. For the most part they succeed, but they were preaching to a critical member of the choir when I read it. I couldn't help but hear the sniggering in the background.
It probably doesn't help that the illustrations are, for the most part, photographs, many of them digitally edited for special effects, and many of them straight-up nudes. Not the sort of book you can read in public.
All in all, this book isn't a great addition to either the D&D collection of books, or to the further understanding of human sexuality. Most of the rules are the sorts of things a good gamemaster could come up with on their own, the creative effort is somewhat pauce, and the sexuality much more modern than is appropriate. I think the book succeeds mostly in its final page, where Phil Foglio pretty much makes the same case that I did: good players and game masters will handle sex the way they handle any strange encounter, and the existing rules are sufficient to the game. This book was not required, and it does little to further the genre.
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Date: 2009-04-13 04:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-04-13 05:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-04-13 08:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-04-14 01:57 pm (UTC)Or the Wandering Bravoshi Sellsword with the harem.
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Date: 2009-04-13 08:14 pm (UTC)Then again, we did lots of Role Playing, and less Roll Playing, so we didn't need lots of rules to make things do what we wanted.
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Date: 2009-04-14 01:37 am (UTC)Yeah, but it has been done, and better...
Date: 2009-04-14 03:53 am (UTC)I am willing to accept that I am biased towards GURPS, but still, if you really want to have serious sex in your game (sex with out the snickering) then GURPS SEX would be the book I would recommend and not the D20 version.
Just my opinion...
MPK