Over on the Knife Fight, Kleenstar called me out

I want Meg to write a two-player game which explicitly encourages the players to engage with each other sexually, in a way that explores and educates and, yes, arouses.

[Simon R] -The fifteen minute GenCon demos might get a bit tiring after a while.
[Meguey]-*LAUGHS* Dude, I swear I find that more of a challenge! It'd be like "quick! find out how this person likes to be touched! work out communication issues around sensuality and sexuality! give each other respect and intimacy! allow yourself to be aroused as you aim to arouse them! and lastly, keep all your clothes on! Yeah!"

I must say, this is something I have been looking for since I joined the Forge community. Really hope this comes to fruition.

Anyways, I don't think I have much more to say, not until I know more about the game you have in mind and how you intend it to be played. But I find the idea of using hands for a resolution system to be really cool, I just wonder how you will handle the problems that will propably arise from it.

Well, without more focusing detail, I'm mostly reflecting that on a design I have on my own shelf for a sexual tabletop roleplaying game, with the working title "Blindfold Tryst". Except my game is really a "sexual roleplaying" game, not a roleplaying game about sex, so it's probably not that applicable. Actually, it's quite the reverse: my game presumes a sexual relationship of trust, trying to inject it with a shared imagined space, while you're obviously trying to do the exact opposite.

Another impression is that I quite like the reincarnation theme. That, the hand-position thing, thirty risque movies from Asia and France combined, and you pretty much have the game down. Writes itself, almost.

A question that comes up for me is whether the fiction in your game is more about personas or situations. Is it about finding fictional situations that would make it natural and believable for these people to get involved with each other, or about finding the fictional personas for whom involvement would be natural? Or both?

I can't wait to see this.  I am fascinated by the "hands-touching" mechanic!  How  beautiful is that!  I know you want concrete ideas...I'm just excited right now!

Meg,

I love the ambitiousness of this. In my mind's eye, here's the play your post has me envisioning:

It is a two player game that begins when players first touch by each placing their palms and fingers flat against those of the other, fingers naturally spaced just slightly apart. Dropping a specific finger between the fingers of the other player to rest your fingertip against the back of their hand represents opening yourself to certain creative content. The other player is not obligated to reciprocate. More fingers represents more trust of the other player. Your character may hear how the other character feels about you, about themself, about their failings and regrets, about their hopes and dreams, about their experiences from before you knew each other, and from when you were separated in time. Your character might hear uncomfortable feedback about his decisions. You might work through disagreements. At any time you can return your hand to the starting position, which represents the most protection from various types of content. Probably this also represents not meeting again in this time and place. Arriving at fully clasped hands means something pretty intimate. Sexual content. Or maybe a life promise.

Paul

Osmo - I hope I don't disappoint :)

Eero- Got a list of thirty Asian and French movies for me? I'd love it to write itself. Also, yes, I do not intend to assume a sexual relationship, so you're right on, there. As to the personas vs fiction question, that's on my mind, too. I suspect there's a multi-layered character creation process, where you make the lovers in public, and then you make the current incarnation in private after agreeing on a place and time (so as to avoid the 14th c. knight falling for the 20th c. journalist. Unless time travel's on the table, which hmmmmmm.)

Chris - Thanks! I'll get my notes scratched out as soon as I can grab time *and* the notebook at the same time.

Paul, that's really cool - I had been thinking in terms of palm-up, palm-down on the table. This gives a whole new (and blindingly obvious) option. I really want to allow the players hands to move against each other's, not just be static. In the 'arouse and be aroused' part, the interplay of hands moving together is pretty key.

For character creation, you sit touching knee-to-knee facing each other or thigh-to-thigh beside each other. You make the original lovers and agree on the time and place of the next life. Then you turn back-to-back to make the current incarnation, then you turn back and [somehow your hands touch - details when they show up] to start play.

Oh! You can explicitly switch gender between lives, so the original lovers may have been any two people and they may now be any two people.

Meg,

Have you read Memories, by Mike McQuay? (You should.)

Paul

I wanted to say that this is an amazing idea, and I'm psyched that you're doing it Meg!

You could clasp forearms, hold the other player's clasped hands between yours when their character inevitably dies, place a hand on shoulder for comfort, or lots of other interesting, intimate touches that denote closeness. Hands on hands just seems too isolated somehow, though doubtless hands should be the medium by which the game is sensed. I'm not being too clear here, but I'm sure you gather my meaning.

I see hands up, fingertips lightly touching as a starting position. Don't know why. When I consider what playing this game would be like with a close friend but not someone you are physically intimate with, it seems very interesting - the first touch hesitant and shaky, then becoming comfortable... it sounds amazingly sweet and just groundbreaking in my mind.

I really, really, really want to play this. Like yesterday.

In my imagination, this game involves no written material at all.  I think nothing should distract from hand and eye contact.  Hand positions can "remember" any important information.

The joy I would find in a game like this is in exploring sexual and emotional fantasies without the explicit requirement that they be what you personally find arousing/appealing.  Like, sometimes when talking about fantasies there's a hesitance to talk about things beyond what's your current practice in life, like "Oh, if I talk about same-sex relationships, does that mean I'm interested in exploring that in real life?" or "If I describe a fantasy which involves this specific sex act, does that mean I want to do that? Will my partner feel pressure to do that?" 

I can see how a game in which the content is explicitly sexual and emotionally vulnerable could allow you to explore this kind of material in a way where the focus is not "I am aroused by this", but rather "This idea is interesting, let's explore it!"

To get a nice supplemental view on using hands in a system of intimacy, everyone who hasn't should definitely read the article Rules of Engagement. The system discussed there is originally for (Nordic) larp use and very unformalistic, but is well suited also for intimate tabletop play. There are also a multitude of personal accounts that speak of how the method at the same time manages to be both intense and non-threatening.

Holy crap, Meg. This is intense. Are you and Emily in a competition to interest and frighten me?

I'm surprised at how contrastingly I dislike this. I'm pretty sure it's not prudishness - I think the reason is that this is rather like learning how to wisely spend two hundred bucks by having a roleplay game where...you literally spend two hundred bucks in real life. That's not learning about spending, it's flat out spending money. I feel the same way about forming intimacy as it's appears used here - it's not learning about it, it's just doing it. There's no distance to grant perspective on the matter.

As much as I open up with dislikes, at a working level I think distance is a mechanical issue involved with this. Worth considering in design terms.

Aww hell, I'll rant once more - I also get the constricted feeling from this like I've gotten in some roleplay sessions where social cues were the system and came thick and fast. Ie, don't do anything that'll make someone unhappy. Setting up intimacy sets up the same situation - suppressing what I am in case of making someone unhappy. What's the point of inviting me if I'm supressing myself? Really I think I feel more intimate with someone in a system like chess or similar, where taking down their pieces and making them 'unhappy' is expected by them, so were really connecting, while being totally myself in the moves I make.

I know I'm ranting, but at its heart it's a human resource management issue - what I've said has various human resources in it, illustrating some that conflict with each other. These are my own estimates, of course - might be of use, might not.

I am not sure if you (all of you) are imaging playing this with someone you would like to have sex with or not.

I am just saying, I am not sure I would like to play this with someone, whom I wouldn't, at some level, want to have sex with.

This comes from the fact that I am not sure I want to arouse someone, that I don't want to have sex with. Am I being a prude?

For me, that basically means that I would maybe not want to play it with men and any female members of my family. I am pretty sure my girlfriend would not want me to play with any of her (female) friends.

So I am just wondering, with the focus on arousal, what two persons are you imaging saying:  lets play a game of Intertwined.?

Callan wrote:
I'm surprised at how contrastingly I dislike this. I'm pretty sure it's not prudishness - I think the reason is that this is rather like learning how to wisely spend two hundred bucks by having a roleplay game where...you literally spend two hundred bucks in real life. That's not learning about spending, it's flat out spending money. I feel the same way about forming intimacy as it's appears used here - it's not learning about it, it's just doing it. There's no distance to grant perspective on the matter.