Adult Roleplaying encounters, and how to handle them 'in character'.

[Daguy]

So, I need some help from fellow roleplayers.

 

I play lots of characters, some normal, some heroines, but i've never been to sure how to deal with situations like Crassius Curio insisting she strip and kiss him as payment for political support, as the two coincided in my game. She had to go through with it as the fate of the world relied on her. But i'm still not sure how a girl/woman of Tamriel would be affected by such an event. It one of those things that 'tests' a roleplayer, and i'd like to get some thoughts on it. And on possible future events. I try to keep things interesting. If an NPC flirts i'll deal with it in-character rather than just ingnore random NPC #344.

How would you tastefully, in ways to enhance the story, deal with adult encounters? With the character being around so long and being an in-depth roleplay, they do factor in. But things like rape really do cause issues, because frankly during [insert crisis] here, there is no time for dealing with mental trauma. Fear of pregnancy. Or actual pregnancy if I roll a dice for it. There are only so many times her armor can 'break' in a bandit/cultist/minotaur/ect camp, or her end up disarmed and paraylised, and I can realistically feel i've roleplayed her having a lucky escape. I just don't know how to approach it, and if I did how it would shape her as a character.

 

As i've noted in the past I use the adult mods as roleplaying tools. Even setting things on minimum settings, eventually the game says ' your heroine is beign raped' and I need to accept it, as I choose to use the mods to amke the world more realistic. I'm just having problems with the after effects on a characters pyche, especially one expected to save the world.

 

I made a topic much like this in the past, but we have a lot of new members, and more, so i'd like to get some fresh perspective.

[Rin (romeman)]

I know the feeling, dealing with rape and mental trauma can be tough for a role-player, I'll tell you how i had it. First a little into my character, she was a smart yet cocky rouge type dark elf named Kami who could hold a grudge. I had installed both Sex-Addicts and Sanguine's Debauchery, i had SA set to low, so i rarely got raped, almost never because i was a stealth character and didn't fight in open combat. At the time it was the first time Kami got raped. I was stealthy taking out some bandits in a cave, when i was discovered by a redguard bandit using a two-handed, and with skyredone installed, it kind of took most of my health. I used a couple of potions but the second hit did it, the redguard pushed me down and starting raping me. While i was down, more bandits came even the chief came along.

After the rape, and i staggered back up, the chief took a couple of swings and then Sanguine smiled upon me. The chief raped me and collared me. The chief lead me outside where we started wandering to talos knows where. I somehow escape and ran, I ran back to the cave, where i "borrowed" some gear from a dead bandit. I waited in secret in that cave, after waiting for almost a day they came back, there was about 4-5 of them. I waited in secret for them. It was about night when i struck. I killed the ones who went to sleep with a dagger through the neck. I sneaked behind that one red guard who started it all and i stab him, even after he was dead i stabbed him, it helps to have enhanced blood textures. All that was left was the chief, he was wandering in his room. Here is where i got a little sadistic, i took the bodies and placed around, in an "interesting" place, i piled the bodies right outside of his room, so if he walked out, he would see the bodies of his men. I then waited in the shadows with a bow i "borrowed", waiting for him to move. After an while he came out of his room and right when the eye opened i shot an arrow into his head. Thus winning the battle. After getting my stuff i said i didn't have enough, and with a grin i striped the bodies of everything, piled their armor into a fire and then piled into beds, chairs, whatever i could find. I placed the chief in the center of the main room. In short i made a completely nude still-life painting out of bloody bandit bodies. Afterwards come made i way back to the closest town, where i drunk more nord mead then Ysgramor.

And that's how i had Kami handle her first rape and enslavement.

[cornbreadtm]

I honestly can't role-play adult encounters with Skyrim, it's too much of a "kiddie" game. Sexual activity is never addressed or visited in the vanilla game and no character show any interest in characters save for wanting to "woo" them and marry them. Any adult mods I have, I use out of character for the most part. FONV is the game to play for sexual content though, the game doesn't feel half as immersive without the sexout mods in place. Most of the game people are referencing sexual activity and you can perform some in the vanilla game, so adding to that doesn't seem like a foreign addition like with Skyrim. Characters are too bland, the marriage system is weak, ect to many glaring faults in the games core game play and story telling. You end up roleplaying for the entire cast instead of feeling like "yeah, that character would have sex with my character in this situation" you feel like "I guess he could have sex with them right now." Honestly even with Oblivion's wide selection on sex mods it still felt out of place. TES is probably one of the least sexualized series around, only thing sexual about it I can remember is the woman on the cover of Arena.

 

I tried roleplaying with sex mods but it's just so out of place... for FONV, I kinda think Mad Max for my sexual encounter immersion which fits well. For TES, I kinda think Conan which works but even then it needs to have consequences for the actions made or its just "random sex stuff" happening.

 

FONV has you given stat debuffs after being raped like "Brutally raped: confidence -40" which is from brutal rapers and you legs can get damaged from the experience, characters use slave collars to over power your character. Skyrim would need similar debuffs, visual effects, and a solid reason that your character didn't just kill the person like any other bandit. For Conan I always like the think about geas which wizards use on people to compel them to perform tasks. If mysticism was still around It would be easy to say "drain willpower" for Skyrim you're going out of lore to make sexual domination fit. For vampires its easy to just say enthrallment but that's a very small group of enemies.

 

I honestly just wish Bethesda made Skyrim a bit more fleshed out. A lot of the characters from the Immersive NPCs mod do comment on characters sexuality and its a fun mod doesn't feel out of place until you go and talk to said character and they could easily be replaced by a barrel with a note inside.

[GrimReaper]

Imo your best bet would be to just reload if your character gets raped. Treat it like you would've died. The problem lies in the very core of how the guys over at Bethesda make their games, the character you create and play is simply just a deus ex machina and in no way a real part of the world. It's hard to roleplay in Skyrim just because your character is nothing more than a means to an end, you are there for exploring, looting, killing and solving quests. You can't really talk to most NPCs because they just say the same few sentences over and over again, even when you marry them. You can't go to someone in the game and talk about how you don't like all that killing or that you don't want to be the hero that has to save the world. You can go as far as being the knight in shining armor, rescuing and helping people left and right and then you go kill some random innocent person because you started the Dark Brotherhood questline, all without any NPC having problems with that or the possibility that your character feels bad about, you know, just killing people for money. There is just nothing you can do in Skyrim to express how you think your character feels about stuff.

 

That's just the basics. Trying to roleplay complex things like a post traumatic stress disorder is neigh impossible because your character is just a soulless husk that serves the only purpose of being the interface that the player uses to interact with the game world. And there is nothing you can really do about it, sadly.

[Daguy]

I know the feeling, dealing with rape and mental trauma can be tough for a role-player, I'll tell you how i had it. First a little into my character, she was a smart yet cocky rouge type dark elf named Kami who could hold a grudge. I had installed both Sex-Addicts and Sanguine's Debauchery, i had SA set to low, so i rarely got raped, almost never because i was a stealth character and didn't fight in open combat. At the time it was the first time Kami got raped. I was stealthy taking out some bandits in a cave, when i was discovered by a redguard bandit using a two-handed, and with skyredone installed, it kind of took most of my health. I used a couple of potions but the second hit did it, the redguard pushed me down and starting raping me. While i was down, more bandits came even the chief came along.

After the rape, and i staggered back up, the chief took a couple of swings and then Sanguine smiled upon me. The chief raped me and collared me. The chief lead me outside where we started wandering to talos knows where. I somehow escape and ran, I ran back to the cave, where i "borrowed" some gear from a dead bandit. I waited in secret in that cave, after waiting for almost a day they came back, there was about 4-5 of them. I waited in secret for them. It was about night when i struck. I killed the ones who went to sleep with a dagger through the neck. I sneaked behind that one red guard who started it all and i stab him, even after he was dead i stabbed him, it helps to have enhanced blood textures. All that was left was the chief, he was wandering in his room. Here is where i got a little sadistic, i took the bodies and placed around, in an "interesting" place, i piled the bodies right outside of his room, so if he walked out, he would see the bodies of his men. I then waited in the shadows with a bow i "borrowed", waiting for him to move. After an while he came out of his room and right when the eye opened i shot an arrow into his head. Thus winning the battle. After getting my stuff i said i didn't have enough, and with a grin i striped the bodies of everything, piled their armor into a fire and then piled into beds, chairs, whatever i could find. I placed the chief in the center of the main room. In short i made a completely nude still-life painting out of bloody bandit bodies. Afterwards come made i way back to the closest town, where i drunk more nord mead then Ysgramor.

And that's how i had Kami handle her first rape and enslavement.

 

Interesting, and potentially do-able. Have her turn the trauma into seething rage, and then internalize it.

 

 

I honestly can't role-play adult encounters with Skyrim, it's too much of a "kiddie" game. Sexual activity is never addressed or visited in the vanilla game and no character show any interest in characters save for wanting to "woo" them and marry them. Any adult mods I have, I use out of character for the most part. FONV is the game to play for sexual content though, the game doesn't feel half as immersive without the sexout mods in place. Most of the game people are referencing sexual activity and you can perform some in the vanilla game, so adding to that doesn't seem like a foreign addition like with Skyrim. Characters are too bland, the marriage system is weak, ect to many glaring faults in the games core game play and story telling. You end up roleplaying for the entire cast instead of feeling like "yeah, that character would have sex with my character in this situation" you feel like "I guess he could have sex with them right now." Honestly even with Oblivion's wide selection on sex mods it still felt out of place. TES is probably one of the least sexualized series around, only thing sexual about it I can remember is the woman on the cover of Arena.

 

I tried roleplaying with sex mods but it's just so out of place... for FONV, I kinda think Mad Max for my sexual encounter immersion which fits well. For TES, I kinda think Conan which works but even then it needs to have consequences for the actions made or its just "random sex stuff" happening.

 

FONV has you given stat debuffs after being raped like "Brutally raped: confidence -40" which is from brutal rapers and you legs can get damaged from the experience, characters use slave collars to over power your character. Skyrim would need similar debuffs, visual effects, and a solid reason that your character didn't just kill the person like any other bandit. For Conan I always like the think about geas which wizards use on people to compel them to perform tasks. If mysticism was still around It would be easy to say "drain willpower" for Skyrim you're going out of lore to make sexual domination fit. For vampires its easy to just say enthrallment but that's a very small group of enemies.

 

I honestly just wish Bethesda made Skyrim a bit more fleshed out. A lot of the characters from the Immersive NPCs mod do comment on characters sexuality and its a fun mod doesn't feel out of place until you go and talk to said character and they could easily be replaced by a barrel with a note inside.

 

 

Imo your best bet would be to just reload if your character gets raped. Treat it like you would've died. The problem lies in the very core of how the guys over at Bethesda make their games, the character you create and play is simply just a deus ex machina and in no way a real part of the world. It's hard to roleplay in Skyrim just because your character is nothing more than a means to an end, you are there for exploring, looting, killing and solving quests. You can't really talk to most NPCs because they just say the same few sentences over and over again, even when you marry them. You can't go to someone in the game and talk about how you don't like all that killing or that you don't want to be the hero that has to save the world. You can go as far as being the knight in shining armor, rescuing and helping people left and right and then you go kill some random innocent person because you started the Dark Brotherhood questline, all without any NPC having problems with that or the possibility that your character feels bad about, you know, just killing people for money. There is just nothing you can do in Skyrim to express how you think your character feels about stuff.

 

That's just the basics. Trying to roleplay complex things like a post traumatic stress disorder is neigh impossible because your character is just a soulless husk that serves the only purpose of being the interface that the player uses to interact with the game world. And there is nothing you can really do about it, sadly.

 

I don't know. Fallout as a setting may fit it better, but TES isn't too far behind being a dark fantasy world full of bandits and monsters. A

minotaur at the least has a better explination for rape than a Deathclaw, being that their mythlogy deals heavily with it, and as do

Trolls and the like occasonally. Both games have effectively the same approach to NPCs and interaction too. NV does a little better, with the

discussion you can have with companions, but that you have to ration if you want it to last. Other than that Vegas has things like gambling,

survival, and so forth. Skyrim has odd jobs, brawling, hunting and exploring.

 

Thankfully the way  roleplay doesn't use a great many of the ingame systems, its done through facial expressions, screenshots, and an out of game journal. And sadly, reloading is a no-no, as taking what you get is part of roleplaying in these games. Doing table top you will rarely find a GM who will let you turn back time because something bad happened. Perhaps on death, as unlike a table-top you can't just 're-roll' your character fromt he same point, but even then it leaves a bad taste.

[cornbreadtm]

But still, even there, Just talking about minotaurs and the mythology behind them is going out of the lore and you start stretching which breaks immersion and hurts the roleplay. Skyrim doesn't have minotaurs nor does it suggest that trolls even have sex or reproduce and minotaur mythology, isn't the TES minotaur mythology. FONV you have an alpha male deathclaw and and a mother deathclaw so yeah its obvious and apparent that they reproduce sexually just from that also you have to retrieve some of their eggs so you know they give birth. I'm not saying that you can't roleplay adult TES. I'm just saying that its pretty far into the "making a brand new campaign area."

 

Going into what Grim said; in FONV if the courier dies the world goes on; maybe the legion wins maybe the NCR, courier just helps but doesn't decide the fate of the world. In Skyrim if the Dragonborn dies the world ends there is no room for "got captured by bandits and lived out the rest of her life as a sow." You're gods gift to the world LITERALLY and you have to defeat Alduin the world eater. So Grims right roleplaying a divine work is just a pain.

 

Since Skyrim unlike every damn game before it doesn't place you in first person POV when you speak to someone unless your already in FP (almost as though they didn't want you to notice emotions) along with FONV has about 3 times the amount of facial expression. I'm not sure what you're talking about with that. Characters are stiff and can barely show sadness or happiness most expressions are set in stone as well. Skyrim is like playing a table top with no GM; just you, alone, with your character and saying stuff happens.

[Daguy]

Oh agreed, its generally why I avoid roleplaying the beasts as rapists, thought Trolls not always. They do breed, they capture humans even if only eating them is mentioned, and can come to undertstand humans and be tamed - we know this from Dawnguard. I agree with you in general though, and would venture all we really need are humans involved either way. As for Minotaurs, yeah, however even though this is in the Skyrim section I intended it as a general TES topic. And I suppose now you mention it Fallout could fit into my problem too.

 

Going along with my point that  can just as easily be talking about Morrowind or Oblivion, and not everyone roleplays AS the Dragonborn, I don't think that point stands. The way the games are made, Fallout included, the world either waits for them or they are vague about who actually accomplishes what. But following your thinking, it does match up with my problem of 'no time for trauma, I was on the way to pressing business'.

 

Seriously though, you don't have to keep trying to sell me on New Vegas, lol. I pre-ordered the CE. I keep up with Sexout.

 

The questions I have I would still like answers beyond 'not feasable' as I do manage in all other regards, such as being a mass murderer, and other such moral issues, and so forth. Its also not really a matter of game, as it can apply to ANY game that such a thing can happen to your character, even ones such as table top games. Hell, its an issue authors have to deal with for their books, with important female characters. Daenarys is basically sold as a sex slave to Drogo intially in GoT, and she is arguably the most important figure of the series mythically. So if we could just seperate it from the TES vs Fallout debate for a moment...?

 

I'd say you share the GMing with the game, radiant system, random encounters, ect. There is a lot to work with that the game throws at you. Such as a dragon at the wrong time. Or one massacres a village. You find an NPC dead on the road, after a random Legion/Raider attack. A companion dies. You run out of water, and have to venture into a nearby building/cave in search of more. Its all RP fodder. I also view it more like building up, if not writing, a story or taking part in a table top RPG. I can direct it, and maybe know the general plot, but things are going to happen I have no control in. I also see my characters as an author would, and try to give them character arcs.

 

 

 

[cornbreadtm]

I just use FONV cause it's close to Skyrim in release and is also featured on this site. I almost never RP as the Dragonborn just avoid the quest most of the time only did the main quest once and it was boring. Personally when I think of Roleplaying I usually use actual rpgs like NWN, fallout and such. TES has gotten away from the rpg format and Skyrim is an action adventure. Doesn't mean its not fun to roleplay its its harder to do it since there is very little "campaign" format just new dungeons to kill baddies in.

 

Expansion and campaign wise. NWN was a new world, new events, new characters, everything could change with a new campaign. Fallout is new situations that you character can get in and have to get out with the stat based skills that they have. Skyrim is kill the guy over there or do that animal puzzle. My personal favorite NWN 2 campaigns were the Conan series you get a lot of freedom to mess around with how your character gets through the situations and the puzzles where great.

 

If you had the freedom to kill everyone and had tons of restrictions on advancement like Morrowind, I'd say that Skyrim was roleplayable but since you can't easily break quest lines with senseless killing or are restricted from becoming archmage with your heavy armor warrior orc. All your roleplaying becomes what you "want" to do instead of what you can do based on the actions you perform. Like if you had to have a specific amount of magicka to be an adept mage at the college (similiar to Morrowind) and needed it for a quest, then a sex mod could let you give your body for advancement in the college. Which could make people in the college like you less for being a slag instead of respecting you for working towards your advancement.

 

But since Skyrim is not done in a cause and effect format then when you add adult mods it ends up becoming a situation where your character has been raped because you wanted them too not because they are in a situation where they would be. So ignoring everything else I'm going to try to explain what I mean.

 

I'm going to give an example: A bandit camp in skyrim has about a 2/3 male population and 1/3 female population so you know that sex isn't a problem now you have to add in races because humans and elves won't touch beasts and vise versa along with some humans aren't attracted to elves and vise versa. So your character walks into a bandit camp fights off about half of the bandits before falling in combat and the rape mod kicks in.

Now I ask you this, would your character be raped? She just killed off half of their men and women and has lots of nice stuff. So I'd say there is a 95% chance that they would kill her in that situation because she is too great a threat she killed several of their people alone. If she is dragonborn and can shout there is a 150% chance that they would never rape her and kill her right away. Why? because going through the game you hear how everyone is afraid of Ulfric's thaum and the greybeards, you hear how the high king was "torn to shreds" by the thaum from everyone. So everyone is afraid of the thaum and the dragonborn besides. So no matter how you spin the rape it doesn't quite make sense. You have to account for sexual need which bandit camps don't have, you have to account for race and sexual orientation, then you have to account for threat level. So personally I could never see my character being raped on Skyrim, all I can see happening is the scene from final fantasy 7 and crisis core once Zack Flair killed off hundreds of grunt soldiers single handedly and the last 3 lit him up like a Christmas tree while he laid dying. Why? cause he was able to survives a hundred automatic weapons worth of fire power and still survived that last 3 guys shooting him in the face for a good 5 minutes.

 

I'm not saying that our characters won't get raped in Skyrim; I'm just saying that it would be super rare and probably break the suspension of belief. If your character started off as a bandit using the live another life mod, then yeah she would probably be raped. I've done that one myself but for most people they use the combat rape mods and they wouldn't produce believable situations. I'd like the Idea of trauma from rape but... it's hard to roleplay that when it's hard to believe that you'd be raped at all.

[Daguy]

(Just as a side note, this Conan themed module for NWN2, was there gener-options and adult situatons? Or did you just play as Conan? And what was its name? Depending on the answers it sounds interesting )

 

This is fun. You have to remember that rape is just as much about power and domination as it is sex, more so sometimes. In that way the fact there are female bandits around isn't quite as large an issue as you are making it seem. Thats without even factoring in that most bandits are visibly filthy, whereas PCs tend to be clean and beautiful. And further that in TES people seem to be very easy going about gender, so a woman might have just as much to fear from another woman, due to lack fo fear of pregnancy. Not outright disagreeing with you, just noting that its not so unrealistic as you make out. Same would also go for Fallout, as raiders have similair compositions to bandits.

 

Also, keeping the Dragonborn alive also has benefits a more intelligent bandit may consider, such as the likely bounty on their head in some circles. As a hostage they might go for a great deal too. They also may just want to make the Dragonborn pay for killing allt heir friends, and perhaps their favorite female bandit at that. And as we noted, we arn't even really talking about the Dragonborn, and a lot of this still applies to any import character.

 

I agree it should be super rare. I just disagree that its as unlikely as you seem to think. Escape from Sidha Mine alone is ripe for it as a female character. Damn. Not only are there no other females, there are no guards on watch, everyone is free to roam, might makes right, and luxuries are a form of currency. Even in normal prisons the weakest guys get made into bitches, let alone a female adventuress in a mining prison. Disarmed, unless Dragonborn and/or Mage and fast on the spells, most would be helpless. You might be able to 'brawl' one, but not two or all of the desperate guys.

 

All this aside though, I never really asked about the likelihood. As far as i'm concerned, i'll know when an event happens that fits it, or where i'm copping out. I want advice on how a character should mentally and physically deal with it, and how I should portray it from a roleplaying front.

 

Rin's post is an example of the sort of things i'm going for, but more the mental side aswell as physical.

 

 

[cornbreadtm]

(You don't play as Conan at all its just the world its set in. There isn't any real sex sex just Conan style skimpy outfits and suggestive material. There are 3 campaigns all together with add up to like 5 days worth of content the guy who made it is amazing the lore is perfect and the story is so much fun that I was sad when it ended. The first campaign has a solid Conan vibe beginning to end. http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=nwn2modulesenglish.detail&id=319)

(If you want a highly sexual, fun and funny as hell campaign I suggest 16 Cygni Honestly it's probably the funniest campaign I ever played along with the dirtiest. It's 3 campaigns long as well. It's like a combo of the first star ocean games mixed with the tv show Lexx. http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=Nwn2modulesinternational.Detail&id=57) (Edit: You probably want the English version : http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=nwn2modulesenglish.Detail&id=436)

 

Well back on the topic of you original post:

It's hard with Skyrim since it's so "basic" with Fallout you have the effects screen, visible effects, then traits and perks. and the effects can alter your characters mental stability (int, charisma, luck) where in Skyrim it's all about combat and you have no mental ability. Having something effect magicka in a mental capacity wont effects warrior style characters so there wouldn't be a balance going that direction. Sexoutrapers adds some traits like "soulless sub" if you've been raped enough where your character doesn't feel as much pain from rape and gets some pleasure from just being in a sexual situation. So you can see in various areas that your character is mentally becoming unraveled by her experiences. It's hard to transfer that to Skyrim since messing with most of the perks and stats causes conflicts and can break your stats permanently (and since your stats are health, magick, and stamina/regens it doesn't to much to play with them realistically anyway). Along with there is no real visual ques that your character has just been raped since they can't limp or do the crouching in fear animation from Fallout or even change their facial expression from the even (yet). In about 2 years a lot of this may change but Skyrim is a hard women to tame.