Fanservice in Game

How does Veeky Forums handle fanservice in game?

Whether that means innocent romance with lady knights, buxom mages or rogue traps, simple lewd reveals or full on balls deep Draenei erotica?

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youtube.com/watch?v=twQlpFrm5iM
youtube.com/watch?v=hle2-bGDh10
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I just stick to the tone of the game. if it's Conan S&S then all the non-hag babes have sculpted bodies and it's a soft friendly game then it's lewd hand holding and if it's Shadowrun like yesterday then they are thick, super surgeried elvish booth babes with back breaking proportions thank you Horizon.

We never go beyond "fade to black" and occasional panty-shots.

We're not running ERP. Characters can get laid (if they can) but it's not happening "on screen."

I usually don't describe character's appearances if they matter to the character's personality or the actions of others. As such, there is the occasional 'very attractive' character, but given that everyone has a different idea what that looks like I think it's better to leave it vague.

>unless they matter
not if

Hmm, it's a bit weighty, but nothing too out there. I'll list what comes to mind.

> Some human pirate lords keep harems of captured elf concubines, though the practice is heavily frowned upon by the more traditional tribes
> Human tribes often trade their females when they come of age off to other tribes in exchange for supplies and/or other females to keep the gene-pool from getting shallow
> Orc culture lacks sexual monogamy as a concept and the idea of having a single mate extends only to one's preferred sexual partner
> Dwarven females are thickset and fiercely monogamous homemakers who not only expect but demand to produce a family with their husband
> Elves are attractive by human standards and given their flesh-warping magic, have few reservations toward sleeping around in their youth, though it's frowned upon not to settle
> Drow, (fire magician desert nomads, not spider-obsessed cavern dwellers) are extremely insular, and require at minimum, months of subtle courting to amorously engage
> Ogres are very large, very strong, and possess an incredible appetite for food and the finer things in life, and some tribes raid outlying settlements to indulge themselves
> Trolls were once human, but were afflicted with a vile curse that turns their descendents more monstrous with each generation, and to prevent this, they must thin their blood by interbreeding with other races
> An elf bard once wrote a very popular humorous treatise on seducing and lovemaking each of the sapient races of the world but was mysteriously murdered soon after its completion

That's about it.

I clicked on this thread expecting idiocy, and was pleasantly surprised that the initial replies were extremely reasonable.

I tend to agree with the rest. Depends on the tone of the game, some groups I'll do nothing, other times I'll throw in a slightly saucy bit of description if it fits the setting. All assuming a group who is okay with it, of course. Some people don't want anything like that, and I always respect their wishes.

Sauce?

I kill it. If the DAM is gonna waste time waxing poetic about a busty bimbo bar wench or giggling lesbian princess than I'm gonna waste the goddamn character.

I run a lot of Exalted and Shadowrun, so I see no reason not to use it practically whenever the fuck I want. I never linger that long on anything, but my runner team's primary fixer is a madame at a sex club, so every time they need to meet her (at least three times a run), the scene usually opens with an obviously biosculpted chick in at most a bikini serving them booze in the madame's private lounge.

Nobody in my group plays for this type of thing.

At least post the full thing

S-sauce...?

I think it's the newest Fairy Tail movie.

I've never run a game with fan service before.

Then again I've only run 2 games so far.

It's only come up once, and that was using official module material.

what module was that?

she never actually belly dances in this whole scene. but she sells her performance well enough that only a dancer or someone who knows dance could tell she was probably an adventurer or some other person faking it.

Good stuff. I'll keep that kind of thing in mind in the future.

Pathfinder, Rise of the Runelords.

how did it go?

My Brawler learned that there were no rats in the basement, and made a very quick dash out of the door. He had an image to keep up, or he may well have accepted.

We dont do ERP at our table, and any attempt to start it is frowned upon. Sex isnt a problem, but dont try and detail that to everyone.

>rogue traps
A fellow fan of Jewel, eh?

I've seen more racing and drifting fanservice in games than anything else.

My players aren't undersexed neckbeards, so they don't need fanservice in the form of cheap titillation.

I'm lucky that my players are all relatively mature adults and don't get their panties in a twist. I explained to them early on that the game could get dark or horrific or adult, and have a certain tone, so there is what I imagine the appropriate amounts of fanservice.

Since the game is more old school, one has to consider what old school means. They're not playing heroes, they aren't there to save the world. Back in the day adventurers were there to make money by hook or by crook, raid tombs, collect bounties, and get back to town to live it up feasting, drinking, and blowing their coin on hookers and blow.

I don't hold back descriptions of things that exist in sword & sorcery or low fantasy. There will certainly be a similar level of T&A and nudity as your typical 80s action fantasy film. Basically anything goes except ERP.

There are slaves, there are drugs, there are street prostitutes, and if you go to the tavern you can expect the wenches to do what they can to get tips and extra cash, and it goes without saying what's in the brothel.

I realize that my game isn't for everyone, and that's ok. The point is that as long as everyone knows what to expect, the group will have fun.

I'm gay, so talking about boobies doesn't make my pee-pee hard, so I don't deliberately insert fanservice.

You couldn't possibly want sauce for such a mundane picture.

But, if say a GM was trying to make his table welcoming to both/all preferences. How would one do male fanservice justice?

Personally, I try to mix in as many non-gender conforming roles into my games and put an emphasis on describing every NPC with the same sorts of detail (ie not only describing females with additional attractiveness details, going into more detail on how people look, etc).

I've seen games designed specifically for women, and they do a lot of 'casting' the NPCs to aid in description "this guy looks a lot like Joe Manganelo" etc sort of things.

Im not going to tell people how to imagine my or their characters but the second they try to turn this shit into an ERP then they get shit.

I don't give a fuck about romance or sexual shit outside of the privacy of my own bedroom and if it does come up, it's usually "fade to black" or some sort because a) I'm not going to play out a sexual encounter with another dude, especially if they're someone I don't know and b) I generally don't like spending time on any one particular person/group because I run short campaigns and I want everyone to feel as involved as possible.

Don't know the title of the image source but the artist is "nishimaki tohru"

Idk about other fags, but I like a man's man type (like a Chris Pratt). So chiseled abs, confident look & smile, strong but gentle, rough exterior but not afraid to talk about his feelings, doesn't try and hit on you immediately but you warm up to him over time.

Like the gentle giant archetype, but not like a literal giant.

I just meant like, men are visual based, so fanservice works on them. What would be appropriate 'man'service if it were to be introduced. Like male serving wenches, prostitutes, etc? Or would it be better to befriend like fledgling adventurers who seem down on their luck, etc?

I have a player who is also gay and while I try and make Male NPCs get along with him, I feel woefully unprepared to provide the same 'low hanging' opportunities that straight people might find enjoyable

Wenches and prostitutes are a big turnoff for me, unless your friend is a bug chaser or something like that then that's just kinda weird.

It also depends on who your friends type is, there's a difference between people who are attracted to bears vs those who are attracted to femboys or traps.

When I think of a low hanging fruit situation I think of something like how ancient warriors used to strip naked and oil themselves up so enemy scouts could see and be afraid of who'd they have to fight. So basically a spin on a shower scene, naked dudes in a situation that makes sense for them to be naked in (and I guess bonus points if the warriors offer to also oil up the adventurers). So easy fanservice is a situation like "it's not gay in context, but it's totally gay out of context and the dudes doing it are definitely ok with that"

Here's one of the gayest music videos I've seen which will probably help with the visuals you want to implement.
youtube.com/watch?v=twQlpFrm5iM

I go about as far as my players are comfortable with, which just so happens to be mildly detailed descriptions of what may be children being nearly or actually split in half by numerous phallus symbols and actual phalluses.

Choose your preferred penis/penises from the bucket

never done fan service in a game.

Any advice on when it's appropriate and what benefits it provides to the story and game?

youtube.com/watch?v=hle2-bGDh10

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I don't include fanservice in my games unless players show they would like to have some.

God damn Erza is T H I C C

It depends on the group and the tone of the game.

I am translating Zettai Reido (So I am like the 9th or 21st attempt at it) and I'll run it full-on erp style with certain people. With my D&D group then it's just PG-13 stuffs instead.

I have a setting inspired by pulpy planetary romance novels. Most cultures there just happen to favor revealing clothes, females of an alien race just happen to be attractive by human standards, and space humans wear leotards and skin-tight costumes. I don't usually describe all this, it's just a given, and character art is all like that.

>Be me
>Slayer of Thots
>Somehow a performance like this looks really fun to attend
>Not erotic per se, just fun
Remember when kebabs used to be fun?

Back when they all didn't command their women to dress in trash bags? Yes.

Oh, I remember one time I used fanservice featured in an official module
> Barbarians of Lemuria
> That module where you are askeed to help bring back the Ceruleans' idol
> When you finish it, the tribe leader presents you with some gold and jewels, and an excusive right to marry any woman from the tribe.
> Ceruleans are a tribe of blue-skinneed giants, on average one and a half times taller than humans.
> One player whose character was a warrior and farmer, first he asked: "Can I have children with them?" I replied "Yes, they will be a bit taller and bluer than you but healthy and fertile"
> Then he said: "I pick the largest giantess. Cuz I'm a farmer, and I'll need my wife to be strong to work with me on that farm and raise our children".
> I gave extra XP for that module to him

We don't really have fan service in our games although our magus and our witch got drubk on return after claiming a massive bounty, and the magus hooked up with our elven Archer NPC who was the captain of the elven lords royal guard and the witch picked up a random girl, we both woke up with hangovers and excused ourselves politely before getting breakfast, not so much fanservice as it is but more just what would happen if a couple wealthy adventurers started drinking the tavern down

> excusive
Freudean kek! Exclusive, I meant

>Then he said: "I pick the largest giantess. Cuz I'm a farmer, and I'll need my wife to be strong to work with me on that farm and raise our children".
Good lad.

Frequent but never the main focus
Also as lewd as the players want

>unless players show they would like to have some.

Has that happened? How did they let you know and how did you handle it?

So TNG uniforms not DS9?

How did the new couple get along?

The game just ended a few sessions later, so we'll never know.
Another case of fanservice in my games was when a witch stole a chainmail bikini and claimed that another player - who was a cat by backstory - was her familiar. So we had a scantily clad witch bossing around a sapient cat archer.

>sapient cat archer.
How does a cat with no thumbs use a bow and arrows?

>feasting, drinking, and blowing their coin on hookers and blow.

Magic. Also, by his stats he was an elf.

>I explained to them early on that the game could get dark or horrific or adult, and have a certain tone, so there is what I imagine the appropriate amounts of fanservice.

How did you do that?
Was the group online or IRL?
Did anyone politely or not so politely decline after you told them what you were intending to run?

some cats have thumbs via polydactyly

...

using actors as descriptions of how people look tends to bother me cause I rarely know who they are talking about. I can see it being a useful shorthand though.

>thank you Horizon.

Don't you mean, Disney?

Not all do. When at fault, blame the fucking Sauds and their missionaries. All of this ultraconservative idiocy? Saudi-sponsored.

This, basically. We can talk about the war on terror all we want, but as long as the Saudis are funding it all we'll never win. And even mighty Trump won't stop sucking Saudi dick for three seconds.

Isn't Horizon from Shadowrun?

>How did you do that?
I talked to them? I knew most of them for years but not as ttrpg players, it was only a mutual acquaintance running a short and successful postapoc gonzo campaign (with 10! people sitting in at certain points) that most of us played in that got everyone's interests in a game going. When that ended, there was clear demand for another game.

After some time I made my pitch, I was going to run a far more serious oldschool fantasy game in a system I never played, but several of them were very new to rpgs so I suppose it didn't really matter.

The game is on roll20 for several reasons, one of which is convenience. The sessions are longer and consistent. It's been going for about 45 sessions and still going strong.

Several people wanted the same gonzo postapoc game as before, but I knew that so I didn't offer it to them. One declined due to the pacing of the game (I was very fresh and a little clueless as a GM when I started and it showed), and one due to the level of crunch of the system. Nobody declined due to the tone or themes.

Depends on the game.
In one, fanservice might be having an appealing NPC around who's interested in a dinner date. If anything grts intimate it fades to black or maybe a private channel.
In the other game I run... well it's an ERP and gets plenty explicit. Lots less seducing cute NPCs and more monster stuff since the balance of players tipped to mostly women too.

thanks for answering.

>similar level of T&A and nudity as your typical 80s action fantasy film
That's still a lot less than modern tv when shows like Spartacus and Game of Thrones exist.

Maybe it's just me, but I liked how Spartacus handled the sex better than Game of Thrones.

Why is that?

I felt they were rather similar.
What are the important differences you noticed in your assessment of the two?

This thread is a lot better than I thought it would be.

There's really no way to do "fanservice" in a TRPG that's not cringe and awful, because you're just a bunch of fat dudes in a basement getting weird about imaginary tits.

I think Rome has a much more gratuitous feeling to it. Worshiping gods of partying and lust and stuff like that. Throwing slaves to the gladiators, or using them as less than people.

In game of thrones, there was enough established monotheistic influence to make that feel less comfortable, and while situationally it was fine, it felt more like something you wouldn't blatantly parade around. More of a taboo, etc.

GoT was pretty polytheistic.

Everything is "by the new gods and the old"

Also

"The Lord of Light wants his enemies burnt. The Drowned God wants his enemies drowned. Why are all the gods such vicious cunts? Where is the god of tits and wine?"

Tyrian was then informed that there is a goddess with 16 boobs

True, there are a lot of gods, and in some regions, like the Dothraki places there was a lot more 'freedom' with open sexuality, but pretty much anywhere in the main kingdom, it was written to feel like middle ages europe where the concepts of 'sin' and morality were held to a standard. Sure, there are brothels and people flashing each other left and right, but there is a sense of taboo and immorality to it.

In Rome/Spartacus times, people wouldn't have thought twice about naked servants wandering the street in masks or what have you. It was just sort of background, and made for a good coliseum after party mixer with the senate or what have you.