Listen to this episode here.
In this final episode hosted by Sharang and Alex, perhaps their climactic episode, they are turning up the heat on sex mechanics all the way to physical contact, both as a way to simulate sex acts through other kinds of physical touch... and through actual sex acts being used as game mechanics.
This stuff is fascinating, I think much more broadly applicable than you might believe at first blush, and I think also very obviously under discussed in the way that all things sex and sexuality are under discussed. Let's get into it.
Further Reading
The Sleepover by Kat Jones & Julia B. Ellingboe
This interview by Lizzie Stark with Emma Wieslander, who created Ars Amandi for the 2001 larp Between Heaven and Sea
A Place to Fuck Each Other by Avery Alder
Kirigami Dominatrix Display Simulator by Aura Belle
Praise the Hawkmoth King by sage the anagogue
Vice & Violence by Scalli
ORKFUCK by SympatheticSapphic
Sapphicworld by Darling Demon Games
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Transcript
Sam: Hello and welcome to another episode of Dice Exploder. Each week we take a tabletop mechanic and properly screw its brains out. My name is Sam Dewald, and this is episode four of our Dice Exploder mini series on love, sex, and romance.
In this final episode, hosted by Sharang and Alex, perhaps their climactic episode, they are turning up the heat on sex mechanics all the way to physical contact, both as a way to simulate sex acts through other kinds of physical touch, touching each other's arms or what have you, and through actual sex acts being used as game mechanics.
I think this stuff is fascinating. I think much more broadly applicable to design than you might believe at first blush, and I think also very obviously under-discussed in the way that all things sex and sexuality get under-discussed, at least in the culture that I come from.
And I'm gonna leave more details to Alex and Sharang, but there is one more thing I wanted to mention as they close out their time here on the show. While trying to track down all the games Alex and Sharang have talked about throughout the past four episodes, so I can link to them in the show notes, many of those games that I know were widely available just a few weeks ago are already hard, if not impossible, to find links to after being delisted from itch.io. In July, some conservative groups pressured the payment processors that itch uses to ban wide swaths of sexual content from their site. Now, here we are just days later and we can already see how the precarious history of this hobby is being degraded further.
by that delisting, I'm glad to have been able to do at least a little work here to help preserve and talk about some more of it. for more about that news, I highly recommend digging into 4 0 4 media's coverage of what happened
And generally speaking, maybe just go outta your way to support some of the people making art like the kind we've been talking about here on the show in this series.
Alright, shaking off that more dour note. Thanks to everyone who supports Stice Exploder on Patreon and let's get into it. Here one last time our Alex Roberts and Sharang Biswas with physical touch.
Alex: Welcome everyone. Back to our very special miniseries here on, on the award nominated Dice Exploder
Sharang: And hopefully award-winning by
Alex: Probably award-winning. If you think about it. Uh, I'm Alex Roberts. I'm here to start the last episode of our series about sex and sexuality and uh, role playing games. who is this here with me?
Sharang: I am Sharun Biwa. And we are excited to have done four full episodes all about romance, sexuality, and of course, as Alex reminded me this morning, this is still kind of an intro, right?
These four episodes,
there's so much to discover, there's so much going on that we probably have no idea about. So yeah, a four episode intro to the world of sexuality, romance, and human intimacy in games. I mean, to be fair, I do teach a class on this, which is way more than four hours, so,
you
Alex: It makes sense, right? Yeah.
Sharang: But yeah. Um, So what is the episode about today, ally?
Alex: Well, after talking about quantification and verbalization and objects and symbols, this episode is all about human touch. The idea of the body.
Sharang: and as a starting point for this, we're using a quote from VE Mehal who's a late 19th, early 20th century Russian theater maker and, and thinker. And he had this technique of theater that he called embodiment, I think it's called Embodiment. And he uh, there's a quote he has that I like using, which is quote, if the tip of the nose works, the whole body works, the idea that actors will feel things and be able to translate emotional truth if they're bodily doing things.
And this idea is kind of the basis for all of larp, right? That we are physically enacting things in order to feel certain sensations and emotions that allow us to be immersed within the story and in the emotional truth of the story. Right?
Alex: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Exactly.
Sharang: and this idea obviously comes up when we talk about like games and verbs in general.
We've talked about this earlier, but today we're going to use this idea to focus more on human touch, this idea of touching another human and what that conveys. And I think for our spotlight mechanic. We're going to think about this mechanic that's very famous in the LRP world called Ars Amandi, and we'll describe that more in a little bit.
But keep in mind that we're talking about Ars Amandi because kind of talks about a number of, it brings together a number of different things we've thought of to in today's episode and for other things.
But let's start by talking about human touch and games slightly more generally. You had a really good example for us.
Alex: Yeah, I think probably one of the first games I played that was using touch in an interesting way is Shelter by Noah Williamson. You can find it in one of the indie mixtape collections and in you and I role playing games for
Sharang: In which I think both of us have games in that,
Alex: I don't, you might, I would believe that, yeah. Yeah.
Lucian Khan edited,
um.
Sharang: a game called Hex Ed in there, which it's not about sex ed, sadly. It's about
Alex: Oh,
well now I'm, now I've lost interest. Um, So Shelter is a game. It's like one gm, one player, and it's about a pilgrim going on this long journey to search for their lost love. And you come up with, you know, the various fantastical landscapes that they travel through.
But there is one GM and something really essential to this game is the idea that the gm who's playing all the MPCs, the world around them right, is the responsive player to the, the player player, conveys all of that physically and not just verbally. And so you're encouraged to like, I think the examples they use are like, you know, when there's a light rain, you can kind of let your fingertips dapple on their body.
It's a game that suggests playing it in an embrace or like in lying down together sitting close. So it's really interesting 'cause it doesn't have a specific, like this represents that it's just like opening this side of the GM role to be physical and to be intimate in that way, in this sort of enthusiastic, consenting way.
Sharang: Yeah, and I think. Shelter straddles the line between tt RPG and lrp. Right. Because it isn't, I would say, a full on LRP as one thinks of lrp, but it again does involve using the body. And here, it's interesting, right? Because it, unlike a lrp, it doesn't involve you doing actions with your body the way you would in the story. It's very different, right? The rain doesn't actually feel like that, but we're using those fingertip things to create the feeling of that rain, to create the a resonance around what rain might feel like and and sound like. Right?
Alex: Like a physical narration rather than a physical enactment. Right?
Sharang: And I think we might be able to divide today's examples that we have into these two sort of camps, right?
Sort of abstract ones that the physical action activates certain parts of your brain that is poetic, right? Which, which makes associations with like fingers gently running down your shoulders to rain and let's fuck right? Which is a thing in some games, and we, we will, we will talk about
Alex: That's definitely the scale we're going down, but I want you to talk about a couple of Kat Jones games
that are extremely relevant to this.
Sharang: Right. So Kat Jones disclaimer is a friend of both mine and Alex Roberts. I'm actually quite close with Ka Kat Jones. She is a very talented sociologist and game designer. And they have two games. In the collection Honey and Hot Wax that we've mentioned before in this mini series, and The first game is a game called You Inside Us where one of you plays like a astronaut. Not necessarily an astronaut, but to make it simple, an astronaut and one of you plays an alien parasite that goes inside the astronaut's body and starts living with him, with them and start talking to 'em and communicating with them, right?
And this game suggests a lot of sexuality doesn't necessarily mean you have to be super, super sexual, but it, it very heavily imply that there's a lot of sexuality. I mean, going inside another human, like already
very
Alex: Yeah. Okay. Yeah. We
get it? Mm-hmm.
Sharang: and you play the game holding hands and then a similar to Shelter, doing things to each other to convey sensations.
And one of the ideas of that the game asked is what do sensations that feel a certain way to a human feel like the alien? The example is, can the act of eating tomato soup. For the human feel, for example, like a sexy act for the alien? And in the game, you as a human character might then do a certain act, physical act to the body of your coplay to emulate. Like what is the warmth of the tomato soup feel like going in your body, right?
So these kinds of things suggest a sensual sexuality. Usually so the game doesn't have to necessarily do that, right?
So the game again, uses this kind of freeform touching this poetic touch to convey different emotions, different affect, different sensations.
But then Kat Jones has another game in the same collection they, that they co-wrote called the Sleepover, which is very sweet, not very sexy game at all. It's about young teenagers, like 13, 12 years old at summer camp, simply discussing what they know about sex. They're like, oh my, I caught my sister making out. Do you, have you, ever made out with someone? I've watched, have you ever looked at a porn Meg? Oh, right. And like discussing that. Right.
And this game has an a, has a seven minutes in heaven mechanic, which is like if you don't know, it's a very western slash American game that is mythologized in a way that teens play it where teens go into a closet and you shut the door and then you have seven minutes to do whatever you want with each other.
And the idea is teens often like make out, right? We don't actually have a lot of data. I think about whether this has played a lot or what
Alex: Yeah. Or what, what people are actually doing when the door closes.
Sharang: But in folklore it's played a lot. And then kids, like teens make out in the, in the closet. And Kat Jones and her co-designer, I think it's Will Morningstar have this great mechanic where you play thumb wars.
So if, if, if Alex and my characters are doing the seven minutes in heaven game, and if we want to make out, we in real life would play thumb wars and the thumb wars. Is used to represent the awkward fumbling that teens who've never had romantic experience have while trying to make out with each other for the first time. Right?
So here, unlike this, the first two example, which is very freeform poetic associations of what different body sensations can be, here kat and her co-designer give us specific do this physicality to create this physical affect, which I think is really cool.
It's, it's related a bit to StarCrafts. We talked about last episode, right? Where the trepidation you feel about putting and pulling bricks, mirrors the trepidation of the game. But here we have this physical touch involved where the awkwardness, I might feel playing thumb wars with you mirrors the awkwardness of this awkward, lemme do awkward again. This, first make out kind of thing, fumbling, make out kind of thing. Right? Uh,
so I, I really like these games in, in Honey and hot wax.
Alex: Mm. Mm-hmm. And I think, the thumb war is really interesting 'cause it sort of starts to, like the first two games we talked about are very like, poetic, expressive via touch. This one starts to point to something more specific. Like, it's still symbolic, but it has like a direction that it's trying to sort of point your mind in.
And then do we wanna talk about Ars Amandi
Sharang: yeah. So that's a spotlight mechanic. Mainly because it's very famous and it, it kind of is at this. it's at the middle of the two poles of ideas we wanna talk about. Right. So why don't you tell us a bit about Ars Armandi.
Alex: So Ars Armandi was created by Emma Welander in 2001 for a very specific LARP called Between Heaven and Sea which is based on an Ursula Le Guin novel about this. Anyway, go look it up. But the point is she specifically wanted to make an encoded this is how our characters will have sex in this game when they have sex.
And there's a great interview that she did with Lizzie Stark where she really talks about feeling this desire to make really specific physical mechanics that were sort of the equivalent of boffer LARPing. Right. The thing that allows you to both, you know, be safe and protected, but also to feel the thrill and to feel the sense of risk and to feel like , I mean, we can talk about the intimacy of combat another day, but she was like, what's the equivalent of that?
And this mechanic was really meant for this one game. And there are absolutely Nordic LARPers who if you go onto their forums and start talking to them will be like. It's not meant as a general, it is for this very contextual whatever. But it's so cool and so good and so useful and so fun that it has been used in tons of other contexts.
So for example, I played it in J Li's game Mermaid, which is like a retelling of the Little Mermaid myth. And what it consists of is your hands can touch the other person's hands and arms and possibly up to the shoulder as you two, as the two players kind of negotiate and you gotta look in each other's eyes. Nobody talks about the looking in each other's eyes part, but Emma Welander will tell you that's where the good stuff happens.
And so it is another mechanic that is halfway between something very specific and representational and something that's totally kind of abstract and expressive. 'cause you get to touch each other's hands and look into each other's eyes however you want.
And so even in the course of this one game, I played like, you know, a sex scene between two people who have been friends for 10 years and they're finally connecting in this way, like you can see the way that they would touch each other and the intensity of it and how they're doing it, the speed and placement of movements has this totally different flavor than like,
you know, I, I, I got to have this scene where both of us were feeling rejected and neither of us were with the person we actually wanted to be with, and just kind of found each other on the beach sort of thing. And so it was this very, like, it was a very sad scene in a lot of ways. And it was great to be able to represent that touch of these sort of like really quick and kind and, you know, and the, the eye contact is very like mixed and like not very direct and infrequent. And so anyway, and then.
Sharang: so the listeners know, Alex is miming a lot of
Alex: I'm, I'm miming. This is for my hands, touching my own wrists. This is for the audience.
So, and then you can also see how like this very tender, delicate, gentle, you know scene gets to look very different than like a super wild, exciting, you know, hookup after a club kind of scene. So it's very expressive. It's something that is there's a great workshop for it, and again, maybe we can have a link to there's a couple of videos of the Armond workshop and honestly, whether or not you ever use it in your game, just the workshop of like learning and practicing it with your other players, I think does so much to put people in a, in the right head space for like a really interesting character driven, emotionally expressive lrp.
So yeah, created for this one specific thing, but it really hits this nice balance between specific and kind of representative and abstract. Because nothing stands one-to-one with any particular sex act, but you can get the feel and the vibe of the interaction.
So that's our, that's Ars Armandi.
Sharang: Yeah. And I love how that literally straddles the various continua that we're talking about today. Right? It is neither fully figure out what you wanna do, nor is it fully regimented. This physical thing means this, right? It's in the middle, like you are doing arm touching only. And then within that space you're doing poetic interpretation of that.
And it's neither just like thumb wars meaning sex, so a very distant abstract action. But neither is it we are now completely having sex, right? Because it is somewhat sensual. Me touching your bare arms. Oh, it doesn't have to be bare, right? But me touching your arms in these ways can feel very sexy, right? Or can feel very romantic, intimate, sensual, all those kinds of things, right?
Alex: yeah. A hundred percent.
Sharang: yeah. So, Today's spotlight mechanic is less everything. It's more because it's, it's like the median,
Alex: Yeah. The, the center. Yeah. And, I should note that this technique has a lot of like descendants, right? Other specific sex mechanics that have been created for other LARPs. And I know a little bit about them, but not enough to go off. And they're just not as well documented as ars amandi.
So again, if you, if you start talking to Nordic ples, they'll be like, oh yeah, we also do this thing where you put your hand on top of the body part and then the person interacts with the hand. And or, you know, we do this like stage kissing thing and you put your hands on the back. Like there's lots more specific ones. But
Sharang: and and small s will always make their own. Like when I played Beat Generation, there was a modification where you just hold hands and you wriggle hands together, you know, things like that. But that's also maybe why another reason it's a good spotlight mechanic because it's very adaptable.
Right. Just doing a, a lot, a thing about like touching hand, touching another body part, a specific body part in a, in various way. Like I can imagine, I don't know if we're playing a game, but. Aliens that don't see, like there might be a mechanic where I put my hands over your face, so your eyes in some way and sexually rub your face. I don't know. Right.
So it's very it's very thought provoking. It's very rich for designers to, to mine thoughts out of.
But then we go from these abstract non-representational physical things to more representational physical things, right?
So there are many LARPs where especially this is very popular in the Nordic traditions, where if you are representing sex between two characters, you simulate it like you have your clothes on, or you have some s have a rule that you must have your bottom underwear on, for example. And you like dry hump each other, right?
So on the one hand, if your thought is that this brings the most realism and doing the most realistic act is the most immersive, if you think that's the case, that this is a mechanic you might want to use, right?
But I don't think that's always the case in love, right? I don't think it's always true that the more realistic something feels, the more immersive you are in the game. Right?
Alex: Yeah, totally. And there's a lot of like beauty in the design and in the abstraction, like LRP is always an abstraction, right? We're not just literally doing things. We are in some way representing them. And that can be more mechanized or more sort of what they used to call it 360 immersion or like realism or whatever.
And yeah, there's lots of, dry humping is pretty popular. It's used in officially or unofficially in a lot of systems. But also there's some interesting critiques where people are like, well, that's not a representation of sex. That's, that is sex though, right? Like to lots of people. That is a sex act.
And so it's like. Like, you know, I've, I've literally read forum threads where people are like, you can't just say, oh, our sex mechanic is fellatio. Like, you have to give me something that is not sex if you're trying to represent something.
Sharang: Which is interesting, right, because when I was at house of Craving. I reached out thinking about this idea of so house, okay. I've spoken about before. I spoke about it at a separate episode with Sam and I mentioned it earlier in the series. I won't go through it all over again. But it has this mechanic of like dry humping stuff. It's very, very, very representational simulationist that way.
But I did notice this tension between why am I here in this larp for each player, right? Some people are there because they're like, I want to play this larp about messed up sexuality, and some people are there because I want to do simulated sex acts with people.
I don't think either of those impulses are bad impulses, right?
Alex: totally
Sharang: People should be allowed to do simulated sex people if they want to. The tension came because not everyone had the same expectations.
So if I come to me, like, I'm really keen on deep character exploration about what messed up, fucked up sexual relations are, or I came in here to this lau because I want to fool around with lots of people and rub against them a lot. and if, if these two humans meet, they might be a clash of expectations. Right.
And that's similar to what Alex is saying, that some LARPers don't want this act that feels too sexual because they want to focus on other parts of larp and they don't want actual sexuality to get into that. Right?
Alex: Mm.
Sharang: I don't think either of these are wrong or right or whatever, but I think these are, these are intentional design choice a lot of designers have to make and then communicate what, what is happening in the lot so that people can come in with their expectations and things, right?
Like this is what's gonna happen. Doing abstract sex act may allow you to immerse in certain emotional qualities more, at least for some people, right? Or if you have, if you have, partner boundaries with your partner and things like that, right? Doing these abstract things allow you to play these larps, to play romance, sexuality, intimacy in these LOBs without breaking those boundaries.
Or it could just be that maybe, and I don't think anything wrong with this, you can't just dry hump someone you're not actually attracted to. Right? That that isn't a fun thing for you, right? You might be able to do ars armandi with man who you're not attracted to. And, and obviously in a lot of you don't know if you're gonna be attracted to people.
There's actually a lot of thought behind romance and bodies and larp. Like what happens if you are role playing someone who you are role playing a romance, but you're not actually into them. There's a lot of talk about trans players feeling excluded because people are perceiving them as different genders. There's scholarship about this, right?
Um, and so, there is a lot to be said about like, should we be very simulationist in dry humping and should we not, right?
But an interesting thing, a side comment, I wasn't entirely sure where to organize this in our discussion today, but just a loving, which we talked about last time using the phallus and, and using representational stuff has a really interesting mechanic, as an aside, where after you're done with a sex scene, you stand back to back with the other players, player or players, that you have the sex scene with. And you say the first thing that's going through your character's head right after the sex scene.
Now obviously the saying part is really powerful, but the physicality of this is also quite powerful, right? Because you are standing back to back, so you are touching each other. You're mimicking closeness or mimicking you, you are literally close. You're mimicking intimacy, but also you are not looking at each other when saying these things. Right?
Alex, you just mentioned this idea of, in our samand, looking into each other's eyes is where the quote, good stuff happens, end quote. So not looking into each other's eyes and confessing these things, which could be wildly different, I could, going through my head could be, oh my God, I had such a lovely time with this man. I wanna see him again. And Alex was going through your head, could be like, yes. I revenge fucked the person who may, who's had sex with my ex-boyfriend. Yes. Now I feel good. Right. And not looking into his eyes can be very, very powerful like that. Right.
Alex: Yeah. There's obviously something interesting and intense that's happening as you turn back to back. Like that is a kind of physical act that, I mean, it also is this like clear sign, like, okay, this scene is over now, and we're kind of like returning to the game where we're like exiting this thing.
But yeah, I don't know. I wanna think, because you're right, when you're looking into each other's eyes, something is happening in the nervous system. And yeah, I, I wish to think more or know more about what happens when two people are standing back to back. What does the nervous system make of that?
Sharang: Yeah, maybe we should make more games without people standing back to back, alex.
Alex: Oh my gosh. Maybe let's do just more and more abstractions.
Sharang: More. so then the next level going from like this sort of simulation is logically games that literally ask you to perform sex act, to have sexual contact with the other players, right?
Alex: And maybe like a quick side note that this happens in games all, I don't wanna say all the time, but it happens in games whether or not you tell people do. Like I've absolutely heard stories from like people doing buffer LARPs, which are like sort of medieval combat things, weekend long in the woods that feel a bit more D&D ish in aesthetic, but you're like running around and doing simulated combat. Like I've absolutely have heard of people just having in character sex at those things. And they should. That sounds amazing. That sounds super hot.
Sharang: And because we know that people have sex using role play. Like this is a common,
Alex: Sexual role play. Yeah,
Sharang: This is not an uncommon sexual act, right? I have done this many times. I've done all kinds of scenes. The first time I did it properly with someone, I got so into the scene, the guy had to like remind me, Hey, are we gonna have sex or not?
Because we were doing,
Alex: because you're
Sharang: were doing, we were doing frat bro role play. And
Alex: Mm. Mm-hmm.
Sharang: into this character who's like a claw. I love
Alex: Mm.
Sharang: like physical, like books and stories about. Closeted characters coming out, like it just appeals to me a lot. So I really got into this character. Then my, my, partner the dude I was looking up with had to like, nudge me, like, are, are we gonna have
Alex: Is this gonna become sex at some point? And, And, this makes me wonder, many people have told me stories of, yeah, we played star crossed, and then we, I, we immediately had sex. And like now I'm wondering at what point did they stop playing Star Cross? Like were they still in character when they were boning? And if so, does that count as part of the game? Where, Ooh, ooh, ooh. Fruitful.
Sharang: And that was the driving impulse that started Lucian and me talking about Honey and Hot Wax Anth aanothology. I mean, we started with. Let's think about game that involves sex acts. Then as we talked, we expanded the idea to games about sex in different ways. We start with what happens to narrative, to character, to story, to this permeable membrane between the ma between the ludic space in game diegesis and the real world, right?
Talk about gallio and find different like frames of play. This idea of this, this, the magic circle, like penetrating this magic circle. Like what happens when you start having sex? Uh, Have we changed relationship? All kinds of things, right?
And so we thought, Alex and I thought it would be really good to bring in two of the games from the book that ask you to have sex. Sex, right? The first one is uh, Lucian Khan's In the Clefts of the Rock, where you play as, let's say, let's say you're four players.
Each of you plays a surreal landscape and you define what you are, you are a field of rocks made of jade dripping honey, for example. You could be, or you can be something like I'm a desert, whatever. And you are explore and exploring these landscapes.
So to explore the landscapes you as the landscape will tell me certain verbs that I'm allowed to do onto certain parts of your body.
So the parts of the body are knees. The second round is mouth. Third round is genitles.
you will tell me what verbs you want me to do on those parts. Stroke, lick, tap, palpitate, rub, nudge, punch. Right?
And so I, let's say you are a field of rock made of jade bleeding honey. I, we will then narrate a scene where I'm explorer exploring the landscape, and I will be doing those verbs you gave me too. So I'll be like, stroking your knee or tickling your knee or slapping your mouth or whatever, right. As, as we build the story onto this landscape.
And I think it's really powerful for a reason that's less, less the focus of our talk, of our, of our, of our podcast. because I think this as a trans designer this, no, I'm not a trans designer. Lucian is a trans
Alex: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Sharang: Lucian is a designer who is a trans man. This game to me talks about what happens when we layer truth stories, narratives onto bodies, right? Like, we put stories onto body. Like we say, this body is attractive, this body is fat. This body is masculine, this body is feminine. This body is normal, right? These are truths, stories ideas we layer onto bodies. So this game forces to examine that, how we layer onto.
But also like at the end of the game, you are touching each other's genitals. So what does it mean to be touching a genitals in a game that's not sexy at all in, in narrative, right? All the other games have an element of romance, sexuality, sensuality, intimacy. This is a game about exploring landscapes, Right?
It's not meant to portray romance intimacy in that way. So what does this disco congruence do? Right? But I am, I I, have played this game where someone is literally jerking me off while describing I'm, and I'm like, oh God, you are jerking me off. And that will provoke certain
Alex: Sure. Things will
Sharang: reactions from me, but I'm also being like, yeah. And so you're climbing the castle and the stones are cold in the morning and blah, blah, blah. Right? So what what is going on there? Right.
I think Lucian game is probably, for me, one of the most thought provoking games in that collection.
Alex: Yeah, absolutely. And when we think about what that game says about sex, positioning it as an exploration, like like it's a non-linear exploration of sex. Well, it's linear, I guess in the sense that you are going from this spot to that spot to that spot. But I mean that it's not organized by sex act. It doesn't specify a sex act like it's just verbs, actions, and spaces.
And portraying the body as a landscape and the the other person as an explorer, like sets you into a particular dynamic that is not exactly equal. It's not like ars armandi where you two are both doing the exact same thing to each other, but actually creates an active and receptive partner in a way that is not super like power loaded exactly.
Um, but is like exploratory, like, has a lot of curiosity there. I mean, that says a lot about, I mean, this is really making statements about good sex, right? Good sex as being having a lot of communication involved and being an exploration and being an open-minded curiosity and interest and invitation and, ugh. I love
Sharang: the, the variety of verbs that can constitute exploration slash sex. Right. that can feel in various ways, right? Like, like I'm an s and m practitioner. I know people who are like, no, hit me as hard as you can in the balls. This is sexy for me. Right? Great. Right. So, um, nothing, the other game I'd like to talk about in that collection is disclaimer my game, right? So the echo of the unsaid again, falls under in the camp of not like
Lucian's game again has. Some controlled movement like the game tells you to do, like you define a verb, only one body part, but also that's you choose the verbs and also it does. The game doesn't have a specific intent of what each verb is supposed to convey, right?
So in in Kat's game, doing thumb wars is meant to convey awkwardness. Well, here it is meant to create exploratory.
My game, I think falls in a different sort of camp, right? So in The Echoof the Unsaid, you play very specific characters. You have names, you have ideas about your character. You play two male frat boys. The players don't have to be male or mask, but you are playing male mask frat boys who are attracted to each other, but never acknowledge it. Okay?
And you play three scenes. They're very specific scenes and in between each scene. The game asks you to do very specific sexy things with each other. So the end of the first scene, one of you gives the other hand job.
And again, if you don't have dicks, you do other kinds of manual
Alex: Hand yeah. Yeah, hand, hand job in the most inclusive
Sharang: in the most inclusive sense, in this after second scene, you give each other blow jobs in the most exclusive sense, not each other. One person gives the other because fraternity power, dynamic, all that
Alex: Yeah. Power. Mm-hmm.
Sharang: And then the third scene at the end of it you make out and then at the end of the game you stare at each other's eyes for 30 seconds. I think it's 30 seconds, a large amount of time. I like picked that.
And so the other thing is in this game it's called the echo of the unsaid because you are never allowed to talk in character about the sex acts you just did with each other. Because these sex acts you did in character. So I as frat boy one gave a hand job to frat boy two in, in character. It isn't abstract at all. But then we, as characters cannot speak. We as players obviously can, um, but we as cannot think about it because the whole idea is these, this repressed sexuality.
So here I think it's different from the other games in that the physical act. Doesn't symbolically stand for anything. It just is
Alex: It just
Sharang: right? it you are giving each other hand and in the game you are giving the hand job and you construe in the mind of your character and cannot really tell the other person what that meant to your character, right?
So instead of the game of being about a different physical act standing in for sex and what, and you explore those stand-ins here, sex stands for other things. This tension between the two characters, the repressed desire, the societal pressure, the gender expectations, all this kind of thing.
So that's what I was trying to do with this game. I have, as you can might imagine, audience, it is hard to find people to play test this game. I have definitely had a few people playtest this game. And it has, I think, had interesting effects, the kinds of ones I want. But maybe you should play this game audience and see
Alex: Yeah. More people should play the games in the Honey and hot wax anthology of role playing games. That's an opinion that I do hold.
Sharang: right. Naomi Clark has a great bit of the intro where she talks about just reading the game is also an intellectual act, which I highly agree with, and I'm like, yes, yes, yes. But also,
Alex: f. Give it a shot. Get in there. Yeah.
Sharang: but this is a game that uses, again, specific sex acts to try and create specific effect, right? There's a reason I have making out at the end and not at the start, right? Like, what does it mean to make out for these two frat boys versus what it mean to like, give a blow job, right? Or, or a bro job as
Alex: A bro job.
Sharang: right? It's sometimes known as right. Um, Are you familiar with the term.
Alex: No. I really love that though. And again, in the most inclusive sense of the word.
Sharang: right. It's a bro job is supposed to be I
Alex: Well, it's not gay if it's your bro.
Sharang: Exactly. It's supposed to be, oh, I just need to get off. I need this sort of simulation. Can you give it to me? But it's not, no
Alex: But just like, 'cause you know,
Sharang: no homo. Right. I don't know if it's a real thing or if it's just a thing from porn though. If it's a thing from porn, it might be a real thing because of people watching
Alex: Because of the Yeah. The effect of then yeah. cinema teaches us how to desire.
Sharang: But, so this is a game that uses full on sex, but very specific ones. But then there are other game. I'm going to a a a a multi-day larp in fall called Monstrosity about, it's about like fucked up sadist vampires.
But that game is a game that, again, it, I don't think I have to repeat this, but I will. It's very well thought out. There have a lot of calibration mechanics. They have a lot of buy-in and workshop, whatever, but in that game, we can just have sex with each other in game in character. Right. And it's meant to be sort of talking about violence. They might, it might be very s and m sex. They might be a lot of consensual non-consent and things like that, right?
So. Again, you can have full on sex, but rather than being very directed to cause specific reactions like I was attempting, they are like doing that freeform route of what do different things like in the poetic way, what does this mean to you? But also in a not poetic way, in the literal way of great we are simulating me, beating you. Right.
Alex: Yeah. By beating you.
Yeah.
Sharang: literally like, like I you join the game with a partner and the person who's gonna play my partner, I know him. I have never hooked up with him. We literally have set up multiple hookup dates before the LRP
Alex: Mm.
Sharang: us get practice hooking up with each other so that we are comfortable with each other's bodies before the lRP, where we're gonna be LARPing having sex with each other and actually have sex with each other. Right.
Especially because I will be playing the role of an s and m top and he'll be playing the role of an s and m bottom. Like, and, you know, s and m dynamics can be so different between different people. Um, so we are literally practicing the sex we're gonna have sort of before the game, which is interesting.
And I, and again, the problem is I can't speak too much about this yet because I haven't played it yet. Maybe I'll ask Sam who wants to do a special episode just about this thing, with both of us in all three of us in the episode, maybe,
Alex: Yeah, we could do a, where are they now?
Sharang: right. Exactly. Exactly. That could be a fun one. But I, I wanna put this in people's radar in that this exists, right? LARPs.
Alex: is real.
Sharang: Right. And of course like we talked about sexual role play. People do all kinds of things with games and sex, like, you know, sexy dice that you roll and do things to each other.
Or like I was talking to this guy on Recon once, um, recon is a hookup app for s and m for queer men. And I talked to this guy and he was telling me how he's done things where he's, him and a bunch of other dudes rent a cabin and they do a lot of like play Super Smash Brothers and whoever loses begets to be the come dump for the night. And then whoever doesn't do this has to like I don't know, rim all the other guys or whatever, whatever, right.
So there all these other ways of introducing play into sex and these LARPs kinda are doing it from the other angle. It's play first sex. Well not be play first, but like narrative first,
Alex: Getting, yeah, getting, getting to sex through play or Right, as we're getting, getting to play via the interest. Of sex and.
'cause I think people are inventing game mechanics all the time. I mean, whenever you're topping someone, you're, you're coming up with mechanics, right? If you do this, I will do this. And you know, or when this happens, this other thing will happen. and like you said, people are doing freeform sexual role play all the time.
And particularly like people who do online role play and the whole world of erotic role play, which is its own like of online erotic role play, which is its own like 18 part series, right? That someone who knows a lot more than me could do. Like those folks are using D&D and other systems and are like, Hey, come play D&D with me and we'll use the mechanics a little bit. But they will be oriented around your character having an extremely sexually charged
Sharang: Right.
Alex: and I love that.
Sharang: so let's move on to obviously, like Alex mentioned, this is a intro, sort of four part series. Is there ever gonna be a comprehensive thing? Probably not, because art is always changing and, and, and, renewing and, things. There are so many games that we haven't talked about. Right.
Alex: Yeah, there's a lot of games that have been very influential on me that I don't think have gotten a mention.
Obviously Avery Alder's A Place to Fuck Each Other is It's about queer women trying to hook up and or move in and as a three player game, and I highly recommend it.
Everything by Aura Belle. Kigami Dominatrix Display Simulator is like a game where you tear up paper in a representation of dominating another person it, it defies explanation. You just gotta check it out.
And as we've both been, I think, alluding to many times, like there is so much new stuff that we have not played or read or even probably know about.
Sharang: New games, like praise the Hawkmoth King of vi Well, vice and Violence isn't that new, but you know, newer to us um, sapphic world, you mentioned orc fuck, these are all gonna, Alex and I haven't got a chance to play.
Problem with being a game professional is, oh my God, there's so many games when we get to playing them versus also making them versus also thinking and writing about them versus also teaching them.
Alex: Uhhuh. We just will both, I think, want to recognize that, that like we have probably not mentioned your favorite sexiest game and God, I feel like I barely even talked about paranoia, the sexiest game ever made. Anyway, that's a discussion for another day.
so that's great. Like please keep, keep learning and tell us and at us, and.
Sharang: And to conclude, thus, our four-part series. Um, I'm gonna read an excerpt of a poem by Sam Sacks called Heavy Petting. I don't know if this poem, I've never seen a written version of this. I've only seen a performed version of this, so, alex and I literally like, listened to it and transcribed it. Um, So I'm gonna read an excerpt out for us. It's called Heavy Petting and it's a rollercoaster of a poem, but I'm gonna read one of the emotions in the poem. There are many different emotions in the poem. So quote.
Why not let the throat name each new act that happens to it? The vocal chords a constant chorus of naming an invention. The phrase dry humping makes me want to gag when I speak it. I think it's the vowel sounds, the umps. The umping to ump. Gag, though, is a great word. It sounds exactly how it happens. An action choked outta the body or down into it vibrating on desires, thin, repulsive wire.
Alex: Ooh, I love it.
Sharang: Um,
So think about that poem and how physicality of sex and symbolism of sex and talking about sex and using, props, thin, repulsive wires of all kinds of things that we've talked about in these four episodes. Please keep the conversation going. I know Sam has a very active discord for Dice Exploder. Alex and I are both on Blue Sky. Talk to us and with that let's give our closing
Alex: Absolutely. So I'm Hello Alex Roberts on Blue Sky I'm Hello Alex Roberts on my Patreon I have a bunch of projects that might be of interest if you're interested in sexy role playing games. I would actually say for the Queen is a game that is about desire. Star crossed, we've talked about a ton and Star crossed also has a new supplement called Love Letters that teaches you to play Star crossed in a variety of different settings. also. As a solo journaling game and as a three player game and as an online game
Sharang: And I am Sharang Biswas. You can find me on Blue Sky at Sharang Biswas. You also check out my h io, which is astro lingus.itch.io. I'll plug my book again, The Iron Below Remembers, On my eight you can find a, a collection of erotica called Tome of Dark Delights, except that it's erotica themed on the Dungeon Dragons character classes. And they also have a small game mechanic at the end of each to put into your game if you like.
And of course, both of us worked on honey and hot wax and anthology of erotic art games published by Pelgrane Press.
So with that,
thank you so much Sam, for letting us take over your podcast for a bit.
Alex: Definitely do Sam's homework or you will be punished. Okay, bye everybody. Thanks again to Alex and Sha so much for being here for this series. My homework for you today is to go read or play at least one game, mentioned by Alex or Sha at some point in this series, and think about how does that game make you feel, both as you read it, and then again as you play it, and then again.
Sam: As you debrief with whoever you played it with, then if you like, come back and share with the class. Alex and Sharon May be gone next week, but I'll be back myself with two more episodes on sex and romance. Our logo is designed by Spore. Our theme song is Sunset Bridge by Purely Gray. And our ad music is Lily Pads by my boy Travis Tesser. And thanks to you for listening. I will see you next time. I.