Listen to this episode here.
Alex Roberts and Sharang Biswas are back for round two, this time with “roll to seduce,” that classic action so many people try and even succeed at taking across any number of games. If I roll high enough on my persuasion check, surely the dragon will fuck me instead of killing us, right? In some games, yes! Right indeed!
This is such a weird dynamic, but clearly so appealing to so many people, and today Alex and Sharang get into the why and how of it all. That leads to all kinds of places, but in particular the seductive choice to quantify sex and romance, but put a number to all these ephemeral and scary ideas about sex and romance, presumably so we might better understand them or be able to avoid dealing with how potentially embarrassing and messy they can be.
Further Reading
The Book of Erotic Fantasy by Gwendolyn F.M. Kestrel and Duncan Scott
Love and Sex in the 9th World by by Shanna Germain
Strixhaven: A Curriculum of Chaos
Alex Roberts on Dice Exploder discussing Kagematsu
Fog of Love by Jacob Jaskov
Bluebeard’s Bride by Whitney “Strix” Beltran, Marissa Kelly, & Sarah Richardson
Socials
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Our logo was designed by sporgory, our ad music is Lilypads by Travis Tessmer, and our theme song is Sunset Bridge by Purely Grey.
Join the Dice Exploder Discord to talk about the show!
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Transcript
Sam: Hello and welcome to another episode of Dice Splitter. Each week we take a tabletop mechanic and make out with it in the alley outside the restaurant. My name is Sam Dun Wald, And this is episode two of our Dice Exploder summer series on love, sex, and Romance, and RPGs. Alex Roberts and Shar Bsis are back for round two this time with role to seduce that classic action so many people try to take and even succeed at taking across any number of games. If I rule high enough on my persuasion check, surely the dragon will want to fuck me instead of killing us. Right? In some games. Yes. Right. Indeed.
This is such a weird dynamic, but clearly, so appealing to so many people, and today Alex and Sharon get into the why and how of it all. That leads to, that leads to all kinds of places, but in particular the seductive choice for designers to quantify sex and romance, to put a number on all these ephemeral and scary ideas about sex and romance, presumably so we might better understand them or be able to avoid dealing with how potentially embarrassing and messy they can be,
even as that ends up having some strange knock-on effects. couple of plugs here for our hosts. Before we get into it, you can find everything Alex at Hello alex roberts.card.co. That's card with two Rs. You can also support her on Patreon and you can buy Star Cross love letters and expansion of the original Star Cross out now on Itch and elsewhere.
You can find Sang on Blue Sky and you can order his new novella. The iron below remembers A gay PS fantasy book about horny superheroes, archeologists, and Mecca out now. Thanks to everyone who supports Dice Exploder on Patreon, and let's get into it. Here are Alex and Sha with Roll to Seduce.
Alex: Hello everyone. Welcome back to our very special miniseries here on Dice Exploder. I am Alex Roberts.
Sharang: and Sharang Biswas. And of course, we want to give special thanks to Sam for allowing us to host this without his supervision.
Alex: Thank you, Sam. We'll be good.
Sharang: So today's episode, we're actually gonna start off with a quote. This is by Paolo Pedercini, who is a very famous game design scholar and designer. And in his talk video games and the spirit of capitalism, he says quote
From the eyes of a computing machine, everything is mathematically defined and susceptible to rational calculation. Not only time or money, but also natural resources, love, anger, fate, dissent. There's nothing that hasn't been formalized in a game, has not been turned into a variable.
Alex: Oh, thank you for that very dramatic reading of Pedercini.
Sharang: I like, I like coding dramatically. And so that brings us to today's topic, which is
Alex: quantification representing sex and romance in games via numbers.
Sharang: and I think the really interesting thing about this is that most RPGs don't have a mechanism for this yet. Players and GMs often want a mechanism for this. And so very often GMs just go through their tools and see, okay we're gonna have to roll dice. So roll to seduce. In this way. So our spotlight mechanic today is actually a unusual one. It's not a mechanic from one game. It is the mechanic to role to seduce.
And in, in D&D it might be making a persuasion charisma role. In vampire masqueraded might be making a manipulation role, right? Like all kinds of games have different methods for this, right?
Alex: Mm-hmm. And some do explicitly have the seduction roll or the version of this Inc. Kamatsu is to get the role in the hay affection. Right? Is something you can only do when you have a certain this score or that score.
Sharang: Or in Monster Hearts that we talked about last time, there's explicitly a turn someone on role using the
Alex: yes. That's a
Sharang: there seems right. There seems to be Sometimes it exists, but often it doesn't. But players seem to always want to can I seduce this person? Can I turn this person on? Can I hit on this person? I need to roll to find out? Right.
Alex: Mm-hmm. Which is why we'll also be talking about the Book of Erotic Fantasy in this
Sharang: That will come up you. If you haven't heard of it, it is entirely free on archive.org. It is infamous slash famous, depending on your outlook in the RPG world. It's a D&D supplement for three point fifth edition
Alex: it's worth a read.
Sharang: So this actually brings us this idea of what is this urge to quantify, right? Like, why do we want to model these things quantitatively? Because obviously they can be handled very, very subjectively. Right? But when we play role playing games, a role playing game is simplifying complex systems into manageable systems very, very often. Right? And I honestly believe this is one of the reasons we like to quantify. It's this idea of simplification, right?
A combat scene is very complicated, and yet we simplify in a role playing game to make it work. A negotiation scene is very complicated, but in, in the fate system, for example, there are rules for social conflict and negotiation and, and, and, and social.
There's a social stress track, right?
Alex: and even, when it comes to things like commerce, like the whole concept of there being like gold or gold points or credits or whatever, like, the concept of having like a numerical, objectively valuable currency is not universal in the world, but you can see the appeal of it in a role playing game because it's just like this armor is worth this many pieces of gold, right? And we can also talk about relinquishing subjectivity and what happens when we're in more of a barter oriented thing.
Sharang: right. And, and, and so games, because there's a simulationist bent, we're not gonna go into GNS theory. do not
worry. Um, if you don't know what that is, you can look it up. But there is this simulation to urge, right? We want to be like, how does the armor help me? How does the magic feather help me? Right?
So there's this urge. And so we want to simplify our complicated systems, and so we want to be able to simplify well. Actual romance is complicated and human feelings are messy, but in our game, we want the fantasy of loving someone, of sleeping with someone, of having a, a intimate, tender moment with someone. So can we simplify it? Right? So that is, that is one urge.
Another urge, I think is simply to understand, right? We quantify mathematically, scientists quantify things to figure out what it is, like, how it does things, right?
Alex: Mm-hmm.
Sharang: And to bring it to games a bit. I also extend the idea of understanding to, to be observing, right? Like we can observe in many people's minds, a game thing doesn't happen unless there is a change in numbers, right? Like,
Alex: Yeah. Yeah. It makes visible,
Sharang: Yes. Unless there is a mechanic to record it in some way. And even if the mechanic is kind of, abs more is less numerical, like write it down on your character sheet, that still is concretizing or rationalizing it. Right?
I like the idea of rationalism. Alex you have a quote about rationalism that Paolo Pedercini had, which I think is a really good foundation point for us to think about this.
Alex: Yeah, let's make sure we understand what rationalization is. So Pedercini sums it up like in sociology, rationalization refers to a process of replacement of traditions, customs, and emotions, as motivators of human conduct in favor of quantification and calculation. The notion was introduced at the turn of the 20th century by Max Weber in his influential book, the Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.
If computer games in their immense variety have anything in common, that may be their compulsion for efficiency and control. So Pedercini saying that computer games quote are the aesthetic form of rationalization. So when we're talking about rationalization, we mean this specific sociological process that has to do with replacing subjective things with quote unquote, you know, arguably objective things, right? With calculable things.
Sharang: And per talk about video games, but in the year, ano Domini 2025. Video games and tabletop games are so cross pollinating that to restrict studies to one of them is I think, a little bit of a futile exercise, right? Obviously if we're talking about shader graphics programming Sure.
But if we're talking about larger patterns, it is, I think it important to look holistically at, at games to look at tabletop games analog, let say, because LARPs didn't exist and video games. So, so I think, tino's arguments apply to role playing games in many ways as well, right?
So we talk about this idea of simplifying, we talk about the understanding, we talk about the also predicting, right? We quantify things that we can know how to behave and, and, and what can happen next, right? So I think these ideas of. Simplifying, understanding and predicting can be a really good way to analyze how quantification works in our role playing games.
So which, which of the pillars would you like to start with, Alex?
Alex: Well, let me talk about, prediction, right? 'cause we're talking about models of prediction. So we quantify things in the real world to predict them, right? I planted five seeds. I, I am gonna have it in my mind that I'm gonna have five carrots, or I'll have a more complex model. I'll know that I planted five seeds. This percentage of seeds is likely to actually grow into a carrot, right? So a more
Sharang: scales all the way up to the current humidity level and temperature or this. How likely are we to get rain? Let us understand like, I have a friend who's a meteorologist and he's like, oh yeah, you have to look at the effect of how raindrops evaporate while falling down, right?
So once we can quantify that, we can predict does the evaporative potential of raindrops increase the chance of snow tomorrow or whatever, right?
Alex: Yeah. Exactly. And so I mean, we can also talk about how simplifying understanding and predicting are kind of at odds with each other.
Sharang: And linked to each other.
Alex: Yeah, and exactly, and interdependent, so like. When we're predicting in a role playing game we're trying to say, okay, if this happens, then that will happen. And what that means when there's no computer involved, when it's a bunch of people who are maybe taking on the role of computing machines is that we're, voluntarily relinquishing subjectivity, right?
So the role to seduce is the most obvious example because instead of. Role-playing out a scene between two people and then everyone at the table kind of has to say, do we buy this as a seduction? Does this feel like this is gonna work? Everyone is going, okay, we're not gonna make those assessments. We talk about reasons why people might not want to make those kinds of assessments. And actually it's up to the numbers. It's gonna be this random number generator and this random number generator, and we're gonna add in them these known numbers. And we will let that decide.
And again, when we talk about the Book of Erotic Fantasy, we will talk about them many, many, many, like so much more complex than just role to seduce ways in which that as a text is saying, okay, here's a bunch of predictive models for many sex related things, activities, identities, all kinds of
Sharang: I think we should talk about, we keep saying
when we talk, but let's
talk
about it now. Right. So the book, erotic Fantasy, I think came out in 2003. That's the best data I could find at it's, the data's not in the book itself. It is the PDF of the book that I got from archive.org. I can't find a publication date, so I had to Google a bit and it was like 2003.
I refused to look at what AI told me, because often it's wrong. In fact, more often than not, it's wrong.
Alex: Mm-hmm.
Sharang: But I could find 2003. And it's very interesting. It's a D&D supplement for three point fifth Edition, all about sex. It's actually quite comprehensive. They go into pregnancy, romance, consent, temple, prostitution, chance of conception.
But this idea of predicting they, there is a 26 by 26 field table that tabulates how likely it is for a copulation to result in viable offspring for various species. If a cent hooks up with a dragon. Could you have viable offspring? Right. And it a which is, which is wild, right? And it's, it's not just toilet traces table.
There are footnotes that the table has, it's yes, maybe or no. Maybe these two species may successfully cross breeded, although the chance of conception is reduced by 30% from the lowest percentage parent. The resultant child will most likely be a half breeded sea chapter six Gods and Monsters, right?
Alex: Yeah. Yeah. So even when they put a word, it's actually secretly a percentage, which is 30.
Sharang: Lovely, right.
Quantification at its finest and.
It's really interesting because it's easy to make fun of the book of erotic fantasy, right? Seeing this, there's a whole thing about when you roll for sexual performance, do you perform well? If you perform well, this is the amount of money you can earn if you are a sex worker, right? There is a role for how long can you last while literally pumping in someone using a constitution check, right?
Um, So it's easy to make fun of this. But it, but I think the impulse to do this comes from what you said about prediction. We want to be able to predict things in games. We want to reduce objectivity. And we want, I think the impulse to the impulse for the impulse. Right.
The reason we wanna do that isn't necessarily like something we have to like criticize hard. Like in, in, or denigrate, I should say, right? Because wanting simple answer to what happens next is the reason, again, we play games. I don't want to have to think about the sun is in your eyes, the rain is in my face, so I can't do my sword strike. I want to be able to be like, my strength is high. I can most likely do a sword strike, right? That is the point of games.
And also, there is nothing wrong in a GM or other players being ill-equipped to decide something. Right?
Alex: Yeah.
Sharang: if you're trying to seduce me and I'm like, I don't know the mind of a crazed, psychopathic warlord.
I don't know if how effective your seduction is. Let's do the roles to seduce, right.
Alex: Yeah. And, and again that like, that relinquishment is a pleasurable thing in certain ways. Right? Right. Like we, we are deciding. What we want to decide about and what we want to kind of be left up to the numbers or left up to chance, or to also have a certain amount of uncertainty to it. Right?
There is a degree of uncertainty that we actually do want in some of these experiences.
Sharang: Like Greg Costikyan uh, in his book, uncertainty in Games, argues that uncertainty is the heart of every game. Different kinds of uncertainty, not just randomness. They're not the same thing, but different kinds of uncertainty. And in this case, it is fun to be like. Do I seduce the barbarian queen? Nope. Whoops.
Alex: Whoa, what happens as a
result?
Sharang: yeah. Or the d like there's an only one in 20 chance that you do so. Right. If you roll one to 20 on your D hundred, you can seduce everything else is fail, that is really fun because if you get that small, like critical hit or whatever, you can then be like, yay, we match to you. This is so ridiculous. Let's go for it. Right?
The as I forget who wrote who quoted this, but there's, I think Brenda, I don't remember, but one of the famous games I just wrote once, quote, the dice are delicious, end quote. Right? 'cause that's delicious. That comes out, right?
So it is easy to make fun of that, but you can see what comes from and also. I think people don't often talk about some of the many positives that, that the Book of Erotic Fantasy has right.
Alex: Yeah, it's kind of a good read in a lot of ways. I mean, it's a very contradictory text. It will absolutely, is clearly kind of a multivocal thing that seems to say one thing at one side and then another thing at another. But like, I don't know, even just the fact that it's talking about pregnancy and childbirth as a certain kind of consequence of a certain kind of sex, like, I don't know. It's nice to just know that that exists and like to be thinking about that.
I think a lot of the things it has to say about consent and particularly player consent feel kind of ahead of its time. Like kind of feel like what a lot of folks contemporarily would say. And it's also like the photography in it and examples like, there's sometimes it's very heteronormative or it feels kind of old fashioned in certain ways, but it's actually a pretty diverse set of, of
Sharang: there are very few illustrations, all photographs in
Alex: it's a lot of photographs and it's very, very kinky. And I think that this book is not just concerned with, okay, how do we sort of like model sex in this environment, but actually gets to ask questions like, Hey, what counts as a kink in an imaginary world? Because an imaginary world implies imaginary norms. And so then what are the norms that you can be deviating from?
And also, what can a kink be in a fantasy world where there are literally different substances, right? Like maybe your world has latex and leather, but like the example they used is, like, what about miri and scales? Right? Like, could someone have you know, a kink for, materials like that? So I think it is actually a very like, expansive look.
And can I use an example actually? Because one of the things that's in here is a bunch of like classes that you can take that are like specific to sex and they have right next to each other are Divine Celibate, which is a class that you can take and there is absolutely a number filled uh, table of which kinds of bonuses to which kinds of saved and which base attack bonus you get at different levels of this class and the feats that you write at a second level Divine Celibate gets virtuous mind which is a plus two bonus on will saves against enchantment spells or effects.
But then right next to that is the Dominator. And so you can take Dominator like as a class that also comes with its own. Bonuses to attack and save and whatever, but also has feats like aura of authority. And there's a special like ability that they have which is like to dominate someone, which can influence their alignment to be more lawful? Which like there's so much going on there.
So again, like I think this book actually like is very silly at sometimes, but it does speak to a real desire that people had. It is filling in some serious blanks that were obviously in people's other 3.5
edition
Sharang: and I would bet that the authors didn't start by listing every kink and sexy thing and then model it. I would bet that a lot of it was like, oh, these mechanics exist in D&D. Huh? Can we apply this to our ideas of sex? And I think it was a very, I, I would bet that an interdependent relationship and thus the drive to quantify, made them think about sexuality more because, well, how does alignment figure into this? Do alignment correlate with the will to be kinky? Like lawful means you want to be a dom, like you were just saying.
So I think this drive to quantification brought up interesting thought. And, and I, and I would recommend people who are interested in games and sexuality. Just to take a look at this book, it's an archive.org. Um, Take a look and see what does it say about that.
So with that, I would say let's move on. We, we, we talk all about the predictive power of quantification. Which pillar would you like to go to next? Alex?
Alex: Can we talk in maybe greater detail about understanding, right. We quantify things to understand them and mark them visible because you had some wonderful examples of
Sharang: Yes. So I think this idea of understanding is powerful in role playing games because you are portraying a different character and. like, we use stats and numbers to understand our character, right? Rather than say, well, I don't know, would my character behave this way? You can say, my character has a high wisdom score, so I think they would think really hard about this, right?
Or let's say we're playing lasers and feelings. My character has a very low feelings and very high lasers. Which go ahead in hand is this one number. And so I'd be like, so my character would not understand that the robot is trying to make a heartfelt plea towards me. I think the robot's trying to be cold in calculating, right.
We use numbers about our characters to understand things. And I think romance and sexuality, because they are more fraught or more complex topics, we can use quantification to try and understand that about our characters. Right?
Blue Beard's Bride is a, is a brilliant role playing game about recreating the folk tale of Blue Beard. a horror game. It's all about feminine horror. It's written by three women who talk about, like, this game is trying to talk about the horrors that women go through the modern world.
And as you go, as you play this game, you go through these various rooms in the house that your new husband Bluebeard has, and they're filled with horrible monsters and torturous things and freakish stuff. And every time you can either rationalize it and say, no, no, of course we saw the ghost of the woman gouging out her own piece of her own stomach because yes, a woman must look beautiful for her husband, she was doing the right thing. Or, oh my God, lube the dick. Why would he do that? Right.
And there the reason you do the third, the reason you do the second, but either way, you collect tokens of faithfulness or you collect tokens of disloyalty. And the very act of taking a token and seeing on your sheet, oh wow. I have two outta three tokens of faithfulness. And we took them because they help us heal. However we have two outta the three tokens of faithfulness. What does that say about our charact and how faithful they are to this monster? Right? That is a powerful thing, right?
Having this quantification tells us things, helps us understand our character, and I have argued, hopefully eloquently in both talks and magazine articles, that Bluebeard's Bride is a game that represents cycles of domestic violence and how people might rationalize the violence perpetrated against them in intimate relationships. And so I think the quantification here is a powerful tool in the game's argument about why intimate partner violence can be perpetuated and has cyclical qualities. Right?
Alex: Mm-hmm.
Sharang: I think that's a really cool thing. I'll have another example if you want me to talk about another one. I think about the board game Fog of Love. It's a board game, but actually a very roleplaying e-board game. The game makes you role play a lot. It's, it's really lovely. I do recommend the two Play board game published by Floodgate Games.
It is designed by Jacob Jaskov. And it's like a romcom simulator, like two people are trying to form a relationship, and you get tokens that mark your personality, right? So you can get tokens to match your discipline. On one end are you organized, diligent, and hardworking, or are you disorganized, reckless, lazy, or it can mark your extroversion? Are you extroverted, sociable, and assertive, or are you introverted, shy and reserved? Right?
And interestingly the binary opposition isn't super binary. You can get tokens in both sides. You can be both extroverted and introverted, right? Because humans are like that. They can exhibit multiplicities, right? And so this game then at the end tells you, well, you're this kind of person, this partner looking for this kind of person, right?
So the game quantifies and allows you to in your head form a complex individual. Because actually coming up and imagining a complex individual is very hard, right? People get Nobel Prizes for doing this. It is a very hard thing, right? Like Nobel Prize literature all about complex characters, right? So having this quantification while it's simplifi, we'll talk about simplifying as well. It does allow gamers to understand and see and create a picture of a kind of fantasy character that they want to create, right?
Alex: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. It makes something like we were talking about visible, but it also leads you to other conclusions, like you were saying in Blue Beard's Bride, and. It makes something kind of concrete in a way. Right?
Strings are the other, I think, great piece of quantified understanding. I know we talked a lot about Monster Hearts last time. We'll probably keep talking about Monster Hearts in this show. But this idea of when you do certain things, you gain a string on someone, then your, your relationship with them has a certain number of strings. And I think really importantly in Monster Hearts, those strings are not shared. It's not like we have some strings between us. It's I have strings on you. And so it's kind of making a statement that all relationships are power relationships to some degree, right?
Sharang: And I think that is the theme of Monster Hearts, right?
Relationships and power.
Alex: exactly. And it Forefronts the power dynamic. It says, okay, when you think about your relationship with this person, what I want you to think about for this game and its purposes are what's the power of you have over that person or that they have over you?
Sharang: I think that's really good observation, Alex, because the idea of power and relationship, be it a friend relationship or a romantic relationship, or a just a sex sexual relationship. That is a very complicated human social thing, right? And so using strings as this abstract mechanic to track that I think allows us to grapple with that in simplified way, right?
And I think this strings a great bridge into our third pillar of simplification, right? Because it is very challenging to role play sexual political power relationship, right? It's a hard thing. And lots of Nordic LARPers pride themselves in doing that in these complex LARPs, right? And so Avery Alder, bringing in strings into Monster Art is a way to quantify and simplify this kind of thing.
And, and like we said, our final pillar that we're gonna talk about is this idea that quantifying things helps us simplify and simplifying can help us both engage with it at all because it's really hard to engage with these things if we don't simplify a bit.
Because there are some things that are just hard to think about, right? There's this concept in anthropology, I think called hyper object or things that are really hard to even conceive of. Climate change, a hard thing to even conceive of without breaking into parts. Right? It can be, allows to grapple with it all and then it allows us to also examine models and understand all of these are linked, understanding, simplifying are linked. Right?
Um, And, and like the problem of course is that sometimes simplification can be too much, right? Alex, you had an example from the book of erotic fantasy about the Over simplification of appearances,
Alex: Yes. Yeah, I'm looking here at the appearance scores. And again, what's interesting about this book is that all of this is, prefaced by saying, oh, we have a bunch of rules for sex and attraction, but also you can ignore them. And, you know, there will be times it says, when your characters engaged in sex without, rolling dice about it in the same way that
Sharang: which. I'm gonna interrupt you. I'm gonna interrupt you there because that ethos in D&D of you can ignore them, is very different across editions, right? I believe Gary Ax was very into know the DM is the rule keeper, and it is a challenge for the players. This game is like an escape room. The players are challenged, right?
The newest. 5.5 edition, right? The what? 2024 edition of D&D fifth edition that more explicitly says sometimes the DM just, forget about the rules. The rules are there as a guide. They're not meant to be physics simulation. So the fact that D&D players want to adhere to the rules is not always true. Right? D&D itself has said different things about this.
But in this three point fifth edition, I think there was slightly more on the side of rules, rules, rules. So
Alex: Yeah,
Sharang: like, do whatever is kind of cool.
Alex: and it's so D&D player. This book is so D&D player because I think, again, you can tell people here are the rules. You have to follow them. Or you can tell people, here are the rules. You don't have to follow them. Players are still gonna do what players do. But it's very funny that this immediately we're talking about over oversimplification, like immediately gets followed by like appearance scores.
And so different creatures have different average appearance scores, which also, of course there's a modifier, right? Like for every skill. And so literally like a zombie has an average appearance of one, but an elf has an average appearance of between 14 and 15. Orcs are between eight and nine. And then there's also like
Sharang: that a squid has an appearance score. but like, what am I doing? Like I can see, you're like, okay, I can seduce a, a vampire. Sure, but
Alex: Yeah.
Yeah.
Sharang: the squid?
Alex: Yeah. It also makes, I think truly, I mean, we talk about how games make statements. This supplement asserts that Copper dragons are hotter than Red Dragons sound off in the comments. Like that is a controversial statement.
And, and it's also funny because like we know how attraction actually works. It's pretty subjective and I mean, I feel like I know people personally who would be like, how is an elf hotter than an orc? How dare you?
Sharang: right, Because then that's like saying twinks are harder than bears is literally what that's
saying.
Alex: right. That there is just kind of an objective attractiveness that things have
Sharang: that the divine mind has decreed, right? Because the book, like we talk about it being self contradictory, the book also says, however, people are more likely to be attracted to their own species. And yet there's a table that says Dwarves of a plus zero while elves of a plus something else, right?
So who is decided? What is the baseline? Who is it being compared to? Who is being attracted to these dwarves and elves? God, right?
Alex: Yeah,
Sharang: Gods, I guess. Right. So, so simplification can bring problems, right?
Because historically we have these in the Western world, there are certain standards of beauty that, in the modern era favor light skinned thin slash muscular proportionate certain cheek, well like certain ideals. Right? And that's not everyone's attraction model. That isn't even every Western press attraction model. That's this weird nebulous thing that we say is what should be attractive. But then not everyone is even into that.
Alex: Yeah.
And we can also talk about the different functions of attractiveness, right? Like that there is in fact social ideal, but also what that has to do with sexual attraction is like, hmm, that's not a one-to-one.
Sharang: Right. But then their tone, the simplification is very, very useful. I mean, we talked about it a little bit already, but like Monster Hearts again has a hot score, right? A hot can is actually kind of a broader thing than just how hot are you? But one of the things that is, is how hot are you. Right?
But in Monster Heart, I think it works differently because in, The D&D third edition. There is a drive to simulate a lot. Let's see how granular we can get. How granular can we get? They're like a million skill, right? If, if you haven't played D&D third edition, move silently and hide are two different skills, right? Listen and spot are two different skills, persuade, diplomacy lie all of these are different charisma skills, right?
And so making something granular. D&D is a very different argument than in Monsterheartsa, which is like, yeah, we're gonna just hand wave that because especially 'cause Montserrat is a game about people seducing each other in a fucked up high school full of monsters, right? And. The arguments about hot and not are part of the arguments about how teenagers view themselves and talk about each other, right?
So there is a different resonance when Monster Hot is a score for how hot you are versus when Third edition D&D, which is super simulationist, has score how hot you are, right? They do different things.
Again, this comes into the idea that games cannot only be rationalized. Right? Pettuccini says there's a, inherent computability when it comes to games, but they are also art objects and we do interpret art objects, right? And so simplify sometimes can be great and sometimes can be a bit more problematic in that way, right?
Alex: Mm-hmm. And then we could ask the question of, can we ever actually relinquish our subjectivity, right? Like, no matter how much we quantify or say like, well, this is what the rules say, or this is what the numbers say, or this is, you know, that's the dice roll. Do we ever really stop interpreting that I wonder?
Sharang: And I think the beauty of role playing games is we lean on that, that we lean on, that we don't stop interpreting. Right.
So interestingly I'm gonna move us on to another example. If you've played Numenera or the Cipher System, Monte Cooke Games is flagship system. There, it's a fairly crunchy system, right?
All of numbers stuff. However, they do have a cool supplement called Sex in the Ninth love and Sex in the Ninth World. And that's quite interesting because unlike a book of ERO fantasy which came out in like 2003 and Numenera, which I think came out closer to 2013. Right.
love says The Ninth World Book is more of a world building book. It talks about what does love and sex mean in the nu world. nuera world is earth, but 1 billion years in the future, IE an unimaginable amount of time in the future. Again, you cannot imagine it's very hard to imagine billion, right?
that's why we don't like billionaires. 'cause they have more money than we can ever even imagine. Why would they need that? Moving on.
But what does sex and love mean in this kind of world? It's, it's a really cool book. It is a really interesting piece of world building, and only mechanical things are about items and diseases because games love to quantify diseases. I think so funny how games are like, this disease does this. I'm not saying it's bad, it's just funny.
So that's quite interesting, right? Shanna Germain, I think was the main author of that book, very much is like, you know, love and sex, leave it more up to the gm.
Which of course is an argument, right? Saying that leaving this up to the GM of the group is not necess, like a lot of, I am gonna say non nuanced thinkers think that this is the only way we should have sex and romance, right? We can never have numbers, whatever. And we've talked about this idea of why quantification is useful, right?
And leaving everything at the GM. The group sometimes, or very often, the group will be like. Well, there are no rules for it. We're just not gonna engage with it because we are not equipped to engage with it. Right? And so then the game will end up not having any relationship mechanics or relationship anything.
And, and, and that's a shame because we, I we, like we said last episode in our intro, we think there should be more more exploration of romance, sex relationships in games, right? And so while does a really good job of not. Falling into silly traps, like attractiveness scores. Does it not talk enough about mechanics of that?
That's something that is a debate. Right?
Alex: Yeah. Yeah. I think, that's worth asking about. And Shanna Germain of course, also a very accomplished erotica
Sharang: right? right. right. So we can't say that Shanna Germain was thoughtless about this, right.
Shana Jma, is it very thoughtful about these topics?
Alex: Mm-hmm. Exactly. And so you end up with this very, like a lot of qualitative information, right. A lot of like, here's what you could play with. But yeah, you're right that there's an argument to be made that, okay, you can tell me lots of cool things about this world, but are you giving me anything mechanically to grapple with?
Right? Like, games are kind of about what their mechanics are about to, you know, whatever. That's its own argument that
Sharang: That's no argument. Yeah. Yeah. And you could argue role playing games, straddle that, blah, blah, blah. Right? But talk about this idea of mechanics now. There's a model that's used a lot in video games, and so that gets used a lot in other kinds of games. As we said, they're kind of interdependent art forms.
This idea of that Michelle Clue very eloquently in a GDC talk and in her book passion and Play, a Guide to Designing Sexual Content Game, I think we referenced in the last episode talks about she talked about the idea of kindness coins, right?
Think of your Mass Effect game or your Dragon Age game where you have these companions if you're nice to them enough times in essence you're giving them quote, kindness coins, end quote. So not, they're not explicitly called that, but that's what they are kindness coins. And every time you're nice to them, your relationship goes up until you hit a threshold. And that threshold means you can now have a love scene with them, whether it's a heartfelt I love you, or it's like a put your dick in me daddy, or whatever.
I don't think anyone ever says that in dragon age, but you know what I mean.
Alex: They're lost.
Sharang: Right. But this idea of like be nice to companions enough times and then they love you,
right?
Alex: it's a vending machine, right? Is the, is the metaphor, like the little snack, the little treat will come out if you put the right number of coins in.
Sharang: And clue argues that this is very simplistic because it doesn't take into account the varied ways humans are attracted to people, right? The reasons that humans liked you, like they could, like you because you're a bully to them. They could like you because you show kind. They could like you because you share the same religion as them.
Dragon age three does a good job. Soulless will only date you if you are an elf. Because Solace is like an elf supremacist sort of. Well, they, it's more complicated than that if you play dragon age four, but whatever, right? People can be attracted to you for a variety of reasons.
And often these kind of coins don't take that into account. Right. And Michelle Klu posits, suggest another model that she calls chemistry casino. And she focuses on video game. But Alex, you have a really good example that illustrates this idea of player chemistry a bit more, right?
Alex: Yeah. Yeah. That, there's still numbers involved, but that it has more to do with chemistry rather than sort of Right. Action. Right. You're not earning sex with this person. But so I contributed recently to the How to GM romance Guide that Metal Weave Games is putting out.
And, Sebastian Yue is constructing this like romance system for that that is really informed by dating sims. And that's, those are the subjects of the kindness coins critique, right? Is that you just have to do the right thing, get your stats to a certain point, and give the right gifts or whatever, and then you will sort of obtain sex from the NPC.
But I think Sebastian Yue like is translating the dating sim model, to role playing games which involve human beings at a table really well. So basically if there's a romance NPC, then the GM is tracking an approval score. And that can be from zero, which is like completely neutral to like negative a hundred hostile or positive 100, totally enamored.
And obviously, romance is much easier when they're incredibly enamored with you when their approval score is high, and it's gonna be much more challenging if it's low. But how you increase your approval score is by embodying the NPCs values, siding with the npc, and an important conflict or sympathizing with the NPC, like doing things or expressing or enacting values that align with the NPCs values, right.
And so I think it's interesting because obviously the approval score does that making visible thing that we were talking about, that it offers this understanding, okay, how can I actually look at and make objective how much this person like is into me or approves of me. But at no point is it like this score now equals you get this thing from them. It's just a way to have something that is both objective but is still subjectively interpreted. And so they are more likely to connect with you or do things that you're into or side with you or show interest if you have been doing these things that increase approval score.
But it says quite explicitly that like that doesn't mean that you need a certain approval score in order to get sex from this NPC. And in fact, I think there's a really interesting question about like, what does, what does sex with an NPC look like when you have a really, really low approval score? Like that's something that happens in real life. People don't necessarily like each other if they're really into each other and they don't necessarily the other way around.
So it has that flavor of something in a harvest moon, you know, or a classic dating sim and your toki meki memorials and so on. But it actually invites you to have this score that is now like plain, it's there, it's quantified. But that then still requires you to do that subjective interpretation at the end to say, how is this scene gonna go if this NPC has an approval score of, 20 or of 90 with me?
Sharang: And, and a powerful thing I think is that this does not actually preclude the role to seduce mechanic, right? Because all of these approval things could be like modifiers, right? They could say you are more likely.
Because Michelle Klu actually makes a very interesting point in her chemistry discussion, is that even if you meet all the requirements that someone has and a partner, there could still be no spark. And Michelle Klu likes this idea of a little bit of randomness to be like sometimes there is a spark. 'cause if it doesn't, and that's, that's powerful for clue in that romance isn't super predictable, right?
We talk about quantifying as predicting, but is that oversimplified? Right? Like sometimes you just don't spark with someone, right? I have been with so many guys where I'm like, you, I find you attractive. We have the same kinks. We like things, but then we have sex. I'm like I didn't think that had a spark.
Like it wasn't bad. But like, I don't think I'll pursue that again because I don't think we had a spark. I have no idea why.
Alex: Right there is this magic, there is this unknowable thing, right? You're, it's like I really liked their profile on the dating app, but then we meet and it's just, there's something, right? There's chemistry, and so we've kind of been talking like, okay, roll to seduce as like not a great thing. Right. I, I feel like my default assumption about that is that, you know, it implies certain weird coercive things, but like actually introducing the element of randomness feels resonant. It feels like that is actually how sex works.
Sharang: And the final example I want bring up is an unusual, and I think it's very strange it is from D and D'S Strixhaven, A Curriculum of Chaos. So it is the D&D version of the Magic, the Gathering Set, Strixhaven, which is set in a magic university. It's a. Lovely setting. I wrote a little bit for the magic, the gathering side of it. So oh, disclaimer, I guess I wrote for it. It's, it's actually really fun, but I also love magic schools.
And the D&D side of it, you're college students. So of course friends and romances have come into play and the, all these like student NPCs that you can meet all of whose portraits you can actually find on different magic cards.
Alex: Mm-hmm.
Sharang: But the, it's interesting because. What you can, when you meet these people, you can hang out with them and book says quote, when a character interacts with student n pc, that character's player decides which to follow: friendly response or rival risk response. End quote. And then it goes on to say, if it's a friendly response, you get a plus one relationship point. If it's rival risk, you get a minus one.
So here I, as a player, tell the DM I am going to do a friendly response and get a plus one. Right. This is very different from the way D&D normally goes. Right? And I think they were doing this because they're like, oh, we want people to feel comfortable about romances and not uncomfortable.
But that, again, takes away any humanity from those play, right? What am I doing? What if, like, look at these characters. Behi, Rampart, Sovi in my game and around this game was kind of a prick. And he would only like you if you showed prickish tendency because he respected that. Right. If instead the player gets to say, no, it is friendly and it would be a plus one, then that takes away the idea that be Rampart sovi has his own preferences. Right. Even though it, it helps in allowing the players to decide upon the fantasy which player they want to romance, because they get to say plus one minus one. Right.
But then the other thing that the spotlights, and this is not the only thing that in fact most games do this is when you have a certain level of friendship with them they give you boons. And if you become beloved with them, which could be romantic, it could be platonic, it doesn't have to be romantic, which is I think a really good move that the book made, you get special inspiration. Beloved inspiration, right?
And this means in essence that the point of having friendship and relationships is to mind them for relationship, for power, right? You get boons and you get inspiration, right? which is common in video games, right?
Alex: Yes. Yeah. The idea that if you wanna be nice to people, it is to get something from them,
Sharang: Right. And it might be the sex cut scene, which is hot, hot, hot, whatever. But more often than not in many video games, once you get a certain level relationship with them you get a bonus or they get a bonus. Right.
And so I think that's an interesting question. Like, like what is the point of romance and sex, and why are we quantifying it and mechanizing it in this game? Right. That's, that's a really interesting question.
Alex: Mm-hmm. Why am I rolling to Seduce? Is it because there's something interesting that I want to happen, like Am I putting out this vulnerability, right? Rolling implies the possibility of failure. Am I putting out this vulnerability in the hopes of having a meaningful experience or connecting with someone or in some sense offering them something, right? Or is it because I want something, whether it be the sex or the plus one that I'm gonna get at the end of it?
Sharang: Right. Perini talk or writes quote, interpersonal relationships are regularly instrumentalized. The other exists only as a function of the player, right. Does the romance exist only to make you feel better. Like the D&D thing kind of does. If I can decide. Yes, I'm the romancey. You have no say in it. It exists only to fulfill my fantasy of having a college romance, which is not a bad thing.
So that is a function of a role playing game that is very valid to simulate a college romance. But it does mean that the NPCs here are instrumental to the player. And rather than having a, I don't know if you want a rich world that a player could fail in and explore and grow from a character, sorry, could fail in explore and grow from. Right,
Alex: Yes. That question of gratification
Sharang: right,
Alex: we land.
Sharang: So yeah. So next time you roll to seduce, or roll to turn on, or role with persuasion or whatever. Hopefully you'll think about what this idea of quantification is actually doing.
Alex: Yeah. What am I actually rolling for?
Oh my gosh.
Sharang: Thank you for listening to us again, and then thank you again to Sam for hosting us. Alex, do you wanna tell us about yourself or tell the readers about yourself?
Alex: Sure.
Again, I'm. They can read if they want to. They can read between the lines. I'm Alex Roberts. You can find most of my stuff at hello alex roberts.card.co. You can go hang out with me on patreon patreon.com/hello Alex Roberts. That's where I tend to post thoughts about role playing games.
And I'm probably on blue sky as well, probably under that same thing. How about you Ong? How
can people get in touch
Sharang: tell the listeners one project of yours that, that you
Alex: okay. Right, yes. Oh my gosh. I forget
everything that's happening.
Sharang: to Star Crust.
Alex: Thank you. Okay. And one thing that I would love if people checked out is star crossed Love Letters just got nominated for the Origins Award for best supplement rung wrote for it.
So, you know, it is a premium, the cream of the crop. It is basically just a bunch of like, characters, different ways of playing the game Star crossed. So if you've ever wanted that game to be online or without a tower or. Three player or one player. Check out star cross love letters. How about you, Sharon?
Can you please mention some cool stuff that you're
Sharang: Yeah. So I'm Sha Biwa. I'm a game designer writer in rec, arts and professor in New York City. Well, currently New York City. Who knows if I move on, and you can find me on blue Sky at Sharin Biwa or Instagram, which I use less as Sharin Biwa. You can find me on Itch as astro lingus.itch.io.
And I am, my editor would love it if I keep talking about my book, my new book that came out this year which is called The Iron Below Remembers. It is published by Neon Hemlock Press. It is a sci-fi fantasy ish book. It is very gay. It is a novella. It is not that long. And it's been getting some good reviews, like people saying good things about it.
It is very gay, and it is, I, I, like, I talk about complex relationships between gay men one of whom happens to be a superhero and the other one who happens to be an archeologist. But and it features giant ancient Indian meccas and how they influenced the course of history and made India colonize the world.
Yay. Um, so thank you for listening again. We have an interesting third episode coming and in the meantime, listen to more of the Lauda podcast because they have some really insightful speakers. And Sam is a very intelligent interviewer and also hopefully Sam will add some homework to this episode because he loves adding
homework and there's some really clever thought provoking homework pieces that he does.
So.
Alex: Mm-hmm. If there's homework, do the homework. All right. Thanks for joining us, everyone.
Bye.
Sharang: Okay. And.
Sam: Thanks again to cohost for being here then I'll replug the co-host stuff. Then I'll plug my own stuff. social media, blue sky, specifically. If I've written a blog post about the episode, I'll plug that.
Our logo is designed by Sporgory. Our theme song is Sunset Bridge by Purely Gray. And our producer ameritas is Sam Dunnewold. And if there was ads in the episode, our ad music is by Travis Or by Sam's boi Travis Tessmer. And thanks to you for listening. See you next time. I'll add silly voices to some of the stuff in there that is. Repeated too if you want as a treat.