Brothels

A young man is in love with one of the whores and keeps coming to see her, but she's only interested in a professional relationship.

One of her colleagues has the hots for him though.

If ever there's a bigger watering hole and rumor mill than the tavern, it's the brothel. People more important than you realize can make a trip there to relieve stress. If they're smart, they would have girls ferryed to their estate to enjoy there. Either way, clients tend to talk, and whores can be good listeners. That's even if you don't consider the politics of the brothel itself, like in .

People can talk to whores for all sorts of reasons, like growing anxiety over a major business deal they're in charge of, or a police case that's going nowhere. You have whore who can be police informants or even undercover officers themselves trying to sting someone in particular (if they are, the madam is usually in on it). You can have the madam send the party on missions on behalf of the brothel - a popular one is "Some scumbag cut up one of my best girls; hunt him down and make him pay." Each hook can feed into each other hook, as brothels are relatively tight-knit and can serve as a nexus for points of interest in a plotline. If you're really in good with the whores somehow, you can hire them for assistance, like running interference on a patrol or hunting for particular tidbits of info.

Yes to everything you said. But I said "tends" as in "The stupid fucks I DM for"

In a way, a brothel can be a slightly more reliable source of first- or second-hand info on a topic than a tavern, as you have a better chance of getting close to the source itself.

Haven't we read this story like fifteen times by now?

I mean, it's a nice fetish and a good segue for a tragedy, but still. At least fifteen.

The brothel is a good place to follow up on a rumor you heard in the tavern.

The demi-god lich from the next town over comes with a group of female slaves and good beer every other week.

Surprisingly the lich dings as neutral, even when naked and in an antimagic circle despite having slaves, something fishy is going on.

the girls are succubi and the beer is spiked to dispel negative levels

We posting doujin plotlines now?
>An unwilling client (dragged along as part of a group) gets some action with one of the top girls. The girl tries to keep it professional but realizes with each subsequent visit that she can't, especially when one of the other girls gets a piece of him and she realizes her feelings.

Didn't CIA own a brothel for the purposes of intel?

That still raises a whole lot of questions. Namely, why does he bother?

There’s rumors of a haunting or creatures in the walls but it turns out it’s just a regular John creeping around and watching the transactions to indulge his cuckhold fetish for free.

It’s how he pays them.

He’s bored.

He makes his money selling porn mags on wizard.net so he goes to get ideas.

All of the above.

Big Girls 4 U

>some faggot trying to get off
Ok
>for free
2spooky, 10/10 brothel horror story

Honestly a lot of them are victims. It's a sad, sad situation.

Not everything is an attack on your gender, user. You are being needlessly defensive.

It's an issue to do with the taboo nature of the sex trade.

In an ideal world, an accepted, properly regulated sex industry would be a place for people who were comfortable in their sexuality and using it for a profit, doing so entirely for their own reasons and without shame or stigma.

Sadly, the reality is that people view sex work of all sorts in a strongly negative light, and attempts to overregulate or stamp down on it for perceived moral failings just creates situations where people can be exploited and abused.

>Honestly a lot of them are victims.
But it isn't.

You as a woman has found a way to exploit stupid horny men from their purses by the simple tasks of

1) Being decent looking
2) Pandering to them by laughing at their dumb jokes and listening to their ramblings
3) Fucking them

Getting your body dicked is hardly worse than being a peasant tilling your fields for 12 hours a day and having the local lord (pimp) come to you and take half the shit you grew because in your poor uneducated mind this is just how shit works.

The idea of exploited women in brothels is a problem of the modern world where living standards have upgraded and people have gained freedom to pursue many of their interests. In fantasy medieval world brothels should not be a problem.

Is your fantasy world an enlightened realm with relatively few taboos and no cultural stigma towards sex work?

Congratulations! Everything works the way you hope it will.

Apart from that, sadly, there's no avoiding the dark side of the sex trade.

Counterpoint: many ancient societies taxed brothels and thus they were legitimate businesses.

In fact that's where the slutty barmaid trope comes from - many were or did side work as prostitute's and used their status as a "bar maid" to evade whore taxes

And? Many countries tax brothels today. That they're legitimate businesses doesn't stop there being a severe social stigma for sex workers.

I'm not denying the role of sex work throughout history. I'm just saying that, in cultures with taboos about sexuality and sex work, it's inevitably going to gain associations with criminality, and you will see cases of people being forced into it rather than doing it entirely by choice. It's just another reason puritan morality and the taboo nature of sexuality is a harmful relic doing no good to anyone.

>Is your fantasy world an enlightened realm with relatively few taboos and no cultural stigma towards sex work?
That's not how history worked. In both western and eastern history, brothels were common things, even in "muh Christian superior society." Especially in Asian history women gained significant power by working in brothels and having a person of nobility or royalty want your ass so much you become their wife/concubine.

Your culture doesn't have to be some fedora tipping enlightened society to not view brothels as some den of evil, nor should all the women there be exploited weak-willed sad people with tragic sob stories.

Why do you leap to such extreme examples? I'm not saying it's impossible for a brothel to exist without being a den of inquity and vice, or that prostitutes re always victims, but denying that either of those is a factor is just lunacy.

Brothels being common does nothing to make people have less of a stigma towards sex workers, it just makes people hypocrites- An incredibly common thing throughout history. For every lovely story of a courtesan or concubine winning big, there's a dozen more whores who didn't want to be there, or concubines who were discarded before they managed to establish themselves.

You can tell artful, romantic and elegant stories involving a brothel. But to try and claim that the darker stories associated with it are any less valid lis lunacy, unless you're playing in a setting like the one I described before.

>Especially in Asian history women gained significant power by working in brothels and having a person of nobility or royalty want your ass so much you become their wife/concubine.
For real, being a prostitute in old Japan was a legit career path.

Geisha rarely fucked for money. They were more like rent-a-girlfriends who wouldn't judge you for being open (unlike many of your peers) and only wealthy, long term regulars got the opportunity to actually get some fuk.

The brothel is how you enter the black market or some underground cult (pull on the book about taxes in the only room with a bookshelf or something).

It's genius really; going to a brothel in broad daylight is so indiscreet that nobody would suspect this.

Could be a cool thing. Imagine, you go and ask the madam for one happy hour with Nina. Only that there is no Nina and everyone who asks for this is led to a room on the ground floor that leads you to X.

>putting your players near brothels
>ever

..how did he get out of that predicament? I've seen this hundreds of times, but never heard if it was followed up.

> Half of the city's patricians visit this place. Each has his dirty fetish.
> High priest of local church of Divine Pristine Chastity likes to lick female prostitutes' legs while a cute boy sucks his dick, but cannot orgasm unless something large is inserted in his anus
> Hilda the dwarf makes the most money - even more than the elf sluts do. Nobody knows her secret.
> There is a torture chamber in the basement
> There is a weird magical machine kept in the attic. It has a chair with cuffs, and it looks like a lightning elemental is kept in a tank connected to it by copper rods.

Give them meaningfully different choices and convey to them how they are meaningfully different.

> High priest of local church of Divine Pristine Chastity likes to lick female prostitutes' legs while a cute boy sucks his dick, but cannot orgasm unless something large is inserted in his anus
That's awfully specific.

Monks not only go regularly to brothels, they own them.

Bob the Lich who draws hentai.

The very same priest was the first to fuck the swamp hag brought to the brothel as a specialty of the season. Actually, she was fucked by only two guys before she was sold: the high priest and some huge shady guy who didn't even put off his black robe.

>In an ideal world, an accepted, properly regulated sex industry would be a place for people who were comfortable in their sexuality and using it for a profit

That is NOT an ideal world, that is sad caricature of the ideal world. You whore.

In an ideal world would people not need sex trade to satisfy their desires?

Geisha aren't really prostitutes user. They basically just entertained you with a talk and drinks, plus tricks and stuff.

>peasant tilling your fields for 12 hours a day and having the local lord (pimp) come to you and take half the shit you grew because in your poor uneducated mind this is just how shit work
And here we have uneducated person that doesn't know shit about how peasants lived and that more than half a year was a holy day. All she knows are some myths. And that is to be expected of person that think being whore should be perfectly acceptable

Why?

I find it hard to imagine a world where this is the case, even in the realms of high magic fantasy or super futuristic sci-fi. I suppose if you could summon/simulate partners to satisfy every desire, but there would still be people who wanted a real person, and there will still be people who, for whatever reason, can't find a partner who is interested without there being something in it for them. I think there'll always be a transactional element to sex acts, to some degree.

Go back to tumblr. Actual sex workers hate people like you.

>b-brothels are immoral!
>being a whore is completely wrong!

Never knew Veeky Forums was a den of virgin neckbeards with SJW sensibilties.

Wait...

Because everyone knows that monogamy between a gentleman and a lady is the ideal state for humanity.

What I believe aside, I really have no issues with openly sexual areas.

I believe people can be idiots if they aren’t hurting anyone, and I will stick with that belief.

But I’m not him, so don’t quote me on that.

Do explain how the average peasant of medieval and ancient times had a higher quality of life than a prostitue.

I'm not sure anyone is saying that?

>Because everyone knows that monogamy between a gentleman and a lady is the ideal state for humanity.

>monogamy between a gentleman and a lady

omg go back to /pol/

>What sort of scenarios, rumors, plothooks, and other points of interest could I stick in there to spice up the place?
Two girls at the same time

>Someone working as a whore to feed her daughter or sick parents, or simply people doing so because they have nowhere else to know
Don't do this. It's cliché, Eurocentric, and historically inaccurate. Plenty of cultures had shit like holy temple prostitutes, or geisha-esque figures who were meant to give a good conversation first and a good lay second. And even in the west, historically and today, the motivation for being a prostitue was the fact that it's much more lucrative and much less taxing than peasantry/fruitless labour.
Not everything is a sob story.

Please stop, user. If you're argue a point, argue well. Otherwise, you come across looking like a fucking faggot and end up doing the opposite of what you hoped to achieve.

Cliches are cliches for a reason, and generally we're talking about the context of european fantasy settings. It seems like it's entirely appropriate. Can you argue it's overused? Sure. But that's just a reason to be sure to use it rightly.

I'm fully aware of the existence of temple prostitutes and geisha, but neither of them, as far as I'm aware, actually operated out of a brothel, especially given the differences pointed out earlier in the thread.

You know what's also endemic in the modern western world? Sex slavery. In Europe, the police are dealing with record amounts of human trafficking, girls from poor parts of the world lured overseas with promises of a good job, ending up being forced to be sex workers with threat of violence or intimidation.

I am entirely aware, and accept, that there are many prostitutes who knowingly choose their job, enjoy it and make a good living doing it. But, as mentioned above, those stories are a lot less implicitly than the ones with more drama and tension to them.

A girl desperately wants to become a worker, but her father doesn’t want her to be.

>"We're talking about european fantasy settings. Temple prostitutes and geisha aren't relevant to the conversation."
>"But modern sex slavery is."
wew

>stories with more drama and tension to them.
You meant the stories where the poor innocent prostitute is just a victim without any impetus or agency, but the PCs come through like knights in shining armour and save the day? You're right: this shit is cliche for a reason.

You were the person who brought up the modern day. I just pointed out viewing that in such an idealistic light is untrue.

And, no? What you describe sounds like doing the cliche badly. But that it's possible to do it badly doesn't mean that it's impossible to do it right.

The sex slaves are also more common in a modern and historical sense. A free girl you have to give a cut, have to look after and can leave any time she wants. A slave needs no oay, and bare minimum upkeep, and what's more can produce her replacement for when she eventually dies.

>even when naked
Are liches suppose to be more evil while naked?

Good game, that was.

Lacking magical items basically.

Naked skeletons really can’t hide things.

He could be wearing a ring and still counts as naked.

>selling sex
yes. it is wrong, user.
anyone who holds any value system or anything sacred, generally agrees that sex is sacred and should be reserved. Selling it, commodifiying it in general, and otherwise considering it cheaply as a mere form of sensual gratification are all wrong and sinful.

Yea, but completely naked.

General reminder to not reply to obvious trolls or bait, like the post above.

...
>when just advocating for loving monogamy is now considered politically incorrect
what? how?
Have people really become so degenerate that even the idea of monogamy is repulsive or taboo?
Sometimes I think I really am living in Brave New World.

I'm pretty sure the post you're replying to was an obvious joke.

There's nothing wrong with heterosexual monogamy or people who indulge in it. The only issue is when people try to assert in on others despite their wishes.

"it can be good" doesn't mean "it won't be bad." If you follow the common paths, you're gonna fall into the common pitfalls. One glaring pitfall is that there is no satisfying way to "save" a prostitute from being a prostitute, and if the character's schtick is that she doesn't want to a prostitute, "saving" her is literally the only conclusion that plot thread can go.

If you want to make the prostitute sympathetic, don't do it in a cliche way. Maybe she's in debt to a loan shark and he's coming to collect, or her daughter's ill and none of the healers know why. You know, the kinds of things that can be resolved without the PCs acting like literal and figurative white knights.

But what you're asserting isn't true at all, and isn't implicit to the point originally made. You're just making up an example to prove yourself correct.

You're not talking about what's good or bad storytelling, you're just talking about the kind of storytelling you enjoy.

Seeing Veeky Forums get offended by this post is pretty sad. There's nothing wrong with crtitiquing 's suggestions as too bleak.
Probably the fact that you only gave negative reasons for why someone would be a prostitute. Stop acting so surprised when someone took your words for what they were.

>The Dean of the local mage college is a very stern and hard woman who doesn't take it easy on her students,resulting in the hardest to pass college in the land, more than half the classes regularly drop out.
>The party finds out she sneaks out to the brothel and pays one of the girls to let her sleep on her lap, cuddle her and just talk
>Despite the completely platonic act, the Deans worst fear is to have this be made public knowledge, meaning the party now has a powerful piece of blackmail if they wanna use it, or earn her trust by protecting her secret.

Well, the positive ones were mostly wrapped up in the first half of the post, people with ambition looking to play politics or leverage favours to get a better lot in life.

I didn't mention the ordinary working girl doing it for a living, but I didn't mention her because, without some other force of driving change in her life, she isn't particularly interesting. It's the people whose lives are full of drama, intrigue or tragedy who make interesting additions to games. A GM doesn't need suggestions for ordinary people to include, that generally comes quite easily.

How would a lawful good pimp behave?

>Party finds out the king/duke/highest noble ect's little sister is a prostitute at the brothel. She isn't forced or threatened to do it, she just nastay like that and it's her way to get away from the bullshit of the noble life.
>If the party keeps her identity a secret, not only do they have an in to all the rumors and knowledge a prostitute picks up, but also a direct line to the nobles and their business.

You forgot they also have access to a high class prostitute.

>bard of a god of love
>matchmaker
>tries to get people into wholesome relationships
>changes horrible people into upstanding citizens with the power of love

Looks like Fabio

AHAHAHAHAHAHA.

OH GOD.

AHAHAHAHAHA.

I want you to answer this truthfully: how many relationships have you been in?

Don't reply to obvious bait

Well I thought that went without saying.

Firstly, fucking read your own post, user. You literally said that it's "doing the cliche badly." All I'm saying is that, no, there is no doing that cliche well and the only way it can play out is badly.
Why should I instead be arguing that it's bad storytelling when, both of us already agree that it's bad storytelling?

Secondly, the original point is suggesting plot hooks for OP. Yes, I'm gonna make examples for this. No, I'm not gonna be suggesting cliches because, if he wanted to use cliches he already knew, OP wouldn't have made this thread.
Unless, of course, this thread was just a sneaky way to post semi-lewds without mods throwing a fit. Which now that I think about it is a brilliant idea and I'm upset I didn't think of it first.

I said pimp not the glorify host of a matchmaker show.

Good lord, all of you just stop posting, holy shit, there should not be this much concentrated stupidity in one thread.

>Pays his girls handsomely, gives them reasonable schedules, even paid holidays or vacations if they request
>Doesn't work out of alley, has a clean establishment with high quality furnishings and plenty of options to keep his girls safe and healthy whole not impairing the customers experience.
>Provides a safe, secure, welcoming environment that any class or citizen can come to without worry of bring judged or exposed.
>Cracks down hard on any customers who try to abuse or attack his girls
>Pays for education for the girls who desire it, if they want to move on to other career paths.

Because you're asserting your own preconceptions and refusing to look past them. It's perfectly possible to do the cliche well. A prostitute in an unfortunate position does not always need to be 'Saved', and if she is assisted it doesn't need to be by a white knight. That you can't see beyond it is a failure of creativity on your part, nothing more.

>Fabio is watching his crystal ball
>sees that succubi sell for a bunch
>LG cannot stand this
>goes outside
>uses vast magical powers
>starts a succubus selling business
>secretly all the succubi are angels in disguise
>goes around selling angels to warlords and changing alignments.

It's great that no one has actually replied to this with with anything but outrage or ridicule. Keep spreading the good word and keep 'em cucked, user.

I suspect that this pic is a case of correlation, not causation. Care to share the rest of the article?

The prostitutes in question are slaves, rather than free-but-lowly women. The slave owner who runs the place, despite being situated in a less fashionable part of town, is making his establishment increasingly upscale, trying to cater to wealthy elites and the patricians. He buys the most beautiful and exotic girls from all over the Empire. He has recently purchased a beautiful half-celestial maiden, who has been "reserved" by a notoriously cruel general who comes to claim her in just a few days.

But just next door lives an old town magistrate and his family. His son saw the aasimar girl as she was taken to the brothel, and fell madly in love with her. The magistrate's slave, always scheming to get his freedom, sees an opportunity and makes the lad swear that he will release him if he can secure the girl for him. Scraping together what money the master won't miss, he approaches your party with a plan.

Another neighbor is an old man whose children were taken by pirates or whatever. Something for everyone.

That brothel would attract the best business but have the worst stories on grounds of the fact that would be none. All bad customers would be blacklisted, all girls wouldn't come from shady sources or have bad behaviour, or be so unwilling to be there that she'd create an interesting plot point, and there'd be a crackdown on all illegal activities such as laundering and drugs. The girls would have standards to adhere to, and discretion would be high up on that list. I guess maybe some petty, drab drama between girls for popularity would arise, but the lawful good pimp would crack down on that too.

Suddenly I see Fabio as the chaotic good Chad trickster that’s always meddling with the LE overlord’s plans.

socialpathology.blogspot.com/2010/09/sexual-partner-divorce-risk.html
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3000053/
The article quoted is " Premarital Sex, Premarital Cohabitation, and the Risk of Subsequent. Marital Dissolution Among Women" by Jay Teachman. Not sure where you could find it for free.
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1741-3737.2003.00444.x/abstract

>omg

>>>/tumblr/

>fake infographic courtesy of r/incels

>fake
So you didn't read the article I posted?

I like that last point; I was writing a very smutty Magical Realm about these high class escorts that operate out of a lavishly furbished theater, but one thing I definitely included was the fact that the girls would be amongst other things given education there.

Like, the theater sourced the best girls from the town/kingdom/land and brought them in, groomed them and educated them so that after their tenure/contract/youth they had avenues.

But that infographic isn't from the actual paper, it's from someone else combining data from two studies together without any clarity as to why that's of any value.