Steve wrote:In order go into a dungeon, slay the dragon, steal the treasure, gain a magic item, go back to the ale house, and tell grand stories of the adventure.
I RP for character interactions. Friendships, rivalries, enemies, romance. Watching characters react to moments of great joy, or moments of absolute terror. Seeing how they develop over months and years from their many interactions with other people and the events of the region. Immersing deeply into the characters, and living their lives fully. Sometimes, those interactions lead into intimate encounters. Because characters are people, and so have all the desires and needs that real people do.
Do I also need to add to that knocking boots with the house serving wench
If it's just the 'house serving wench', then no, I don't see any point in engaging in RPing an actual sexual encounter. There's no relations between the two characters, there's unlikely to be lasting or significant development from the encounter, there's probably limited character interaction. There's no
reason to play it out. It's something that is best left in the background, FtB'ed, because it doesn't advance the story in any way. But then, I'd also say the same thing for randomly going out to a dungeon and slaying some monsters, when there's no good IC reason for the characters to go there.
But if it's two characters who have been pursuing each other for many months, who have steadily grown into friends, and then lovers, and eventually, finally, have an encounter that happens to turn physical (unplanned, typically)? Then I can see merit in RPing the encounter out rather than jarringly stopping it halfway through.
The Whistler wrote:Sex in nwn2 does exist in vacuum from my experience. I've seen servers devolve into online brothels due to a dearth of DM plots. Players do get online just to 'get it on', then log immediately after. I know, because I've been guilty of it. Also, I do not feel that ERP is an essential constituent of romantic roleplay. If you feel it enriches your roleplay experience, you can always do it over skype like Steve suggested.
When it is like that, it is a fault of the players. I never said that all ERP everywhere is good. You're right, a lot of it isn't. Hell, most of it isn't. I can't stand servers that seem explicitly built for that purpose, or the fact that every MMO has a Darknest channel. But I see it as a case just like any kind of RP: it can be handled right or it can be handled wrong. "Players getting online just to 'get it on' and then log immediately after" is certainly handling it wrong. My belief though, is that the players who are inclined to do that, aren't going to be
any better in any
other RP they do.
When I think of appropriate ERP, I think of the occasional physical encounter coming from a longterm romance between two characters for whom 99% of their RP is of a non-sexual nature. Where an intimate encounter might happen once or twice a year and happen entirely unplanned with no OOC prompting. In that, an OOC rule often harms the character development, and breaks immersion.
Ultimately, immersion is what I care about. While I've done ERP in the past in other RP communities, it's not something I have done very often or am even really interested in. Most of my characters aren't even all that interested in (or good at) romance. But I'm an immersionist RPer. I want to get immersed in my character, and immersed in the world. I dislike things that exist solely to pull me out of the experience. Any rule that tells people they cannot RP something because of a purely out-of-character reason is anathema to me, personally.
Opening the door to potentially dozens of other players who ERP solely for self-gratification isn't worth a revision of the rules, at least in my opinion.
This is an argument I see and can agree with. I personally don't like the rule. But I can see the purpose for it, and what it is trying to prevent, and I agree with that. It's the usual way of things, that some bad apples ruin things for everyone else. When most people here think of R-rated content, they probably think of mature stories where events are gritty and realistic and are improved because of it. But because there's some people who would turn it into Pornhub, rules are put into place to restrict it. I've personally no desire to campaign for a rule change. I'm just being a devils-advocate here, since the topic has been raised.