RPGPundit Reviews: Courtesans

This is a review of Ian Warner's Courtesans, published by Postmortem studios.  Its the print edition, 276 pages long, signed by the author (Ian Warner is pretty much the only guy who sends me signed review copies; I'm not entirely sure why, but I'll choose to see it as just a friendly gesture). Anyways, it has a full-colour "PG" rated cover (some racy women, but showing less skin than many fantasy RPG covers, frankly), and black and white interior illustrations, which feature occasional nudity.  The author clarifies in the first couple of pages that this is an "18+" game.

Ok, I'm just going to say it: Ian Warner has some serious issues.  When I had noted that every RPG of his I've ever reviewed seemed to include sexual references and references to mechanics surrounding sex acts, it seemed likely to me that there were issues there.  Now, he's dropped all pretense and sent me an RPG about whores.

Mind you, its not Vince Baker-levels of degnerate-sex-acts issues; nor does it have the whole pretense that Storygames have of pretending to be "art" or something "deep".  No, its just a game about whores. Inasmuch as he dresses up the game at all with a pretense of having some reason to be played other than to roleplay about sex acts, he does so in the context of an historical game, about the "demi monde" of English courtesans from the Restoration to the very early 20th century.

He tries some additional justification by attempting to provide an answer to the question of "who the fuck would want to play an RPG about whores"?  He comes up with:
-History Buffs (I'm a history buff, I don't want to play this game),
-Feminists (somehow, I doubt that too; he argues that Courtesans were "powerful, independent women", but I really don't think most feminists will be agreeing that this is a work that represents them),
-Sex Workers (because I'm sure that modern-day prostitutes would just love to spend their free time playing an RPG about prostitutes),
-Moralists (because he argues that this game is actually very "moral", and yet somehow I'm unconvinced that the Mormon Decency League is going to be jumping to play this game)

And then he gets to the two actually credible categories of his potential target market: Perverts, and the Socially Challenged.  Even of the two of these, I can't help but imagine that actually full-blown perverts would really just make better use of their pervert-time by checking out this hot new invention known as the Internet, where they have a chance to get their "dirty fun" (as the author puts it) without having to print out a character sheet; so what we're really left with is the socially challenged.
In that latter category, the author apparently places himself, making a public declaration that he has Asperger's Syndrome, and that RPGs have really helped him to "understand the human condition".  Apparently, it hasn't quite helped him enough to figure out that putting sex-rules in all your games and then writing a game about whores comes off as somewhat creepy.

I'd potentially add another category to his list: pseudo-gamers that want to be "edgy".  But as I mentioned above, even in this, Courtesans really doesn't quite cut it.  It might just be interesting enough for some of the more "vanilla" Storygaming Swine to buy it, I'm not sure.  Maybe four years ago, it would have been a gigantic hit among that crowd; but they've moved on since then to games that by comparison make Courtesans look like a completely wholesome game of moral purity without a hint of creepiness.  So I think that this game is in the unfortunate position of being far too tame for the "we think we're  hip because our characters neck-rape a cabin boy" crowd, and yet way too weird for actual regular Roleplayers.

I mean seriously, what the fuck?!  There's nothing particularly disgusting about most of the people I game with but I would seriously never even fucking consider wanting to sit around a room with a bunch of middle-age-or-getting-there guys and pretend to be victorian sex workers with each other.  Without actually veering into the misery-porn or "I'm an extreme degenerate but its ok because I took a comparative-literature class in college" Story Swine territory, its about as far as what I could conceive of as a fun way to spend time gaming. I have no interest in playing, as the author wrote, "a strong minded independant woman with a flexible moral code who is willing to exploit her sexuality for wealth and power"; and just about the only thing I would have even less interest in doing than that is having to watch while an overweight balding police clerk tried to do the same from across my living room.

Now, can I say anything at all good about this game? Well, I have to credit that Warner is pretty thorough with his history, its not just a facade, he actually goes into serious effort to try to put historical context into the game. Not just in a "history of sex" kind of way but in things like how he discusses archaic British currency,  the history of British Monarchy from Charles II to Edward VII, a virtual lexicon of historically-significant terms, and even details on things like common diseases and maladies of the time period.  This is the kind of stuff that, if it had not been wasted on a game about hookers, would have made the hallmarks of historical RPG excellence.

What do you do in Courtesans?
Well, first you choose a name, appearance, age (the default starting age being, mercifully, 18), and you choose an origin from lists of possible backgrounds like Actress, "Professional" (whore, that is), "Fallen Lady", Schemer, Goldenheart (as in, "a hooker with a heart of gold"), or Upstarts.  Your stats are Manners, Charm, Wits, Spite, Performance, and Prowess (as in, prowess in bed). Finally, you get resources, which the author claims the point of the Courtesan game is to obtain more of; these are "Legend", "reputation", "wealth", and "influence".

In the game, you spend your time engaging in four broad categories of actions: Procurement (to try to obtain new "admirers"), Pleasing (to try to "service" said admirers), Intrigue (to try to undermine the other prostitute PCs) and Aiding (to try to help a fellow prostitute PC).  The mechanic of the game involves rolling a single d6 and adding attribute values versus a set difficulty or similar opposing roll. A considerable amount of detail is given into descriptions, difficulty ratings, etc. of the different possible actions. For example, for "pleasing" you can engage in polite conversation, flirting, dancing, a private show, a "tough sell" (making demands of your "admirer"), playing a game, massage, or a sex act, as well as pillow talk.
Thankfully, the author doesn't actually provide detailed descriptions of said sex acts.

The actions are taken in a fairly abstracted and stratified order of turn-taking known as "The Season", meant to refer to the season of social activities in the demi-monde.

Attempting different actions allow you to potentially gain or lose resource points.  There's also a "scandal point" mechanic that can come into play if certain "scandalous" behaviour comes to light.  Resources can end up being negative values, which cause penalties, and if any resource hits -20 the character is "retired" in a grizzly way, depending on which resource it is. There are other special rules, for "Kept women", for designing a variety of male admirers, for pregnancy and childbirth, health risks, retainers, ways to invest or spend resources, aging, death and other ways a character can retire.

I don't want to bother going into too much mechanical detail because frankly it doesn't matter. Everyone reading this will have already made up their minds about this game one way or the other, and there's nothing in the system as such that would really end up making it anything other than what it is: an RPG about prostitutes. The system has nothing wrong with it mechanically, but nothing about it that would make any sane person say "holy shit, I had no interest whatsoever in playing an RPG about whores, and yet the system is so great that now I'd want to!".

The appendix of the game suggests playing the game in alternate time periods, LARPing (god help us!), and even play by post. There's also a five page afterward which reads like something of a manifesto of the author seriously trying to justify himself, to explain why he made the game (he leaves me no clearer than when he started), why this would be an acceptable game to play (his argument failed with me), and then proceeds to jump off into a diatribe about the author's personal take on "issues", including the author's personal opinions on prostitution (ok, that's relevant at least, and in case you were wondering he unsurprisingly doesn't see anything wrong with prostitution), marriage (which he considers naive and unrealistic), family (he says he's "never really seen the benefit" of it), homosexuality (he thinks its fine), and God (he thinks God exists and for some reason felt it was important to let the reader of an RPG know about that). He closes the manifesto by claiming that neither he nor his publisher have any agenda.

The whole book is just a bizarre case of an author writing an RPG that was really only made for his own interests, taken to the absolute extreme.

I'm having trouble even trying to formulate a final conclusion for this review. I can't really say anything that would recommend this game to anyone; inasmuch as I think that if you actually want to play this game, you probably aren't someone I want to be giving recommendations to anyways. But it isn't even a degenerate game; anyone looking for x-rated lasciviousness out of the game would be disappointed.  I was certainly creeped out by the game and mainly by the implications of imagining pretty much any gamer I know (even the many female gamers I know) actually playing this thing, but I wasn't disgusted by anything in the game itself.  No, oddly enough, the only other personal reaction I can give aside from "creeped out" with regard to this game is that it made me feel kind of sad.  I'm sure Ian Warner doesn't feel like he wants or needs my pity, but I just can't help feeling there is something pitiable about this game, which in turn makes me feel guilty for writing about that sensation.  Anyone who reads my writing regularly knows that I love nothing more than to skewer pretentious shit-heads who are tremendously deserving of getting the fuck kicked out of them verbally or otherwise; but I take no joy in kicking puppies, there's no fun in tearing a new one in someone isn't actually trying to be pretentious, smug or intentionally despicable, and I really don't think Ian Warner is.
At the same time, we really don't need shit like this in the gaming hobby. Encouraging the promotion of this sort of game, or even just tolerating it, is only an invitation for even more dysfunctional people to come along and think the gaming hobby is an OK place for doing this kind of stuff, and that's not something that'd be good for us.  Its not a trend I want to see increase.

So I'm sorry if this review ends up hurting Ian Warner's feelings; I can't even take any pleasure in that, because I think that Courtesans is a somewhat sad game in the sense that its written by someone who I think honestly doesn't quite get that no matter how much he attempts to justify it, the public exposure of his obsessions makes him look more, and not less, socially dysfunctional; because he doesn't seem to even understand what's inappropriate or unappealing about this kind of game.

Long story short: I can't recommend this game, period.

RPGPundit

Currently Smoking: Lorenzetti volcano + H&H's Beverwyck

Your compassion does you credit.

Fair points and I'm not too shaken up about it.

I'm moving away from the adult themes in my games and trying something different with things in the future.

I quite like Courtesans and other reviewers have thumbed it up but it's nice to have Pundit's view even if it is so negative.

Oh and I'll fully admit I am creepy. Hence why I'm trying to ween myself off it

This comes across as a setting variant of En Garde.

For me the only use I could see for this game would be to bolt on ideas and options for a Vodacce campaign within 7th Sea.

Well that's the reason I wrote a Settings Book so the system can be applied elsewhere.

If you had not included any of that "manifesto/justifications" crap (I mean really. REALLY ?) and perhaps expanded the whole demimonde aspect, this could have been an interesting game. An interesting Swine ! game but interesting nonetheless, IMO.

Regards,
David R

Well you can blame offence culture for that.

Moving away from Afterwords now I don't have anything profound to say so I'll shut up

I'm not going to comment on Ian's comments on this thread, because they are about the only thing that creep me out.

Thanks for the review Pundit, but if anything I see here a massive disconnect between whatever culture you're from (US or Canadian expat living in Uruguay?) and Ian's.

The first time I really grokked what Ian is going for is when I watched the Gentleman's Gamer review of Wizkid: the Cheapening. (WATCH it if you haven't yet!)

Ian's games, all of them, are social parodies of contemporary Britain. The gentleman gamer realizes that what Ian does with Wizkids is that he looks to the origin of the Harry Potter craze, which is British boarding schools, and then takes that to 11. A huge part in that is the understated, repressed sexuality at British boarding school, the nervosity of teen sex, the giggling, embarassment, and what not, that J K Rowlings herself goes out of her length to never write about and yet manages to have that ooze over her pages by book 5 (4, depending on your threshold).

But here's the key thing, and the disconnect to US readers. For one to do a social parody on this disaster of hilarity, you don't indulge in explicit acts per se, or imagine teen sex (god knows what else). No, you make a parody of how it's talked about. That's the target of social parody. Hence Ian's examples of play in Wizkid which has Hermione jerking off Ron. The scene, taken by itself, is utterly pointless - you could even say, tasteless, if you think they're under age (which they probably are).

What IS hilarious is that things like that are skirted around in the original Rowlings book as much as in public and even peer discourse in Britain today. It's a sexually inhibited society, and as a Viennese friend of mine put it once well, if the Brits weren't notorious drunkards, they'd never muster the bravery (or inclination) to reproduce. They are so NOT interested in sex. But in talking about it - loosely. There's more ways to NOT talk about sex, and yet talk about it, in the Queen's English than in all other languages on earth, combined.

Don't believe me? Here, take this example: the infamous Austin Power clips which display hidden nudity on the screen. Because the greatest British stud alive, that champion of virility 'Bond - James - Bond' can't once in 20+ films have actual sex in the screenplay. It may only be suggested. There you have it again - Brits obsessed with suggesting, hinting at, talking about sex, but not ever doing it. It's at the core of their very odd, very funny, and fundamentally inhibited mentality.

And the same is at work in Ian's RPGs. Take Courtesan, an RPG I have not read. Give it an American reader like the Pundit, and he'll instantly jump to the conclusion this must be a RPG about a bunch of women who's only purpose in life is to bang strangers for money. Yes, of course. But the RPG is not going to focus on the scenes which cover that profession's core element. The RPG is going to be about such women who move about in the society of the time, the most uptight society there ever was - even for British history a high, a time and society which will do everything to skirt around their very existence, and yet move them centre stage.

Basically, Courtesans is about everything in Victorian England except the sexual act itself. Grok that and you've grokked Britain.

Sorry Pundit, but on this occasion I think you've missed the boat.

And good god, what the fuck is Ian doing confirming you on this? Is this a desperate money grab to attract US audiences with their fucked up sense of sexual decency? Go go Ian, write us another set of satirical RPGs and inhibited cultures, where even prostitution of OVER age women is "creepy".

Quote from: David R;490173If you had not included any of that "manifesto/justifications" crap (I mean really. REALLY ?) and perhaps expanded the whole demimonde aspect, this could have been an interesting game. An interesting Swine ! game but interesting nonetheless, IMO.

Regards,
David R

To be fair, he does go into quite a bit of accurate detail and attention to the demi-monde aspect, albeit just as it applies to whores.

RPGPundit

Well I didn't really want to give Admirers too much attention. They're not the real stars of the show.

Thanks for the hillarious defence Windjammer.

I remember describing Tough Justice as "Carry On Garrow" I suppose Courtesans is "Carry On Demi Monde"

Just like the Carry On films it seems the weekest ones are the ones ACTUALLY about sex...

Doxy has overt sexual themes but also brings in the option to engage in actual crime which is a bit more varied.

So, according to the Windjammer theory as I understand it, Ian has moved from "social commentary in explicit parody form" to "social commentary as historical farce".  Is "social commentary as cinematic blockbuster" next?  (I confess I kinda hope so).  

This whole thing is a little hard for me to wrap my head around.  I mean, essentially Windjammer is saying that Ian - who, with the aforementioned Asperger's thing going on, would be stereotyped as socially 'out of it' - is actually a shrewd social commentator whose natural inclination for analysis and systemization has transformed what could have been quirky narrow-focus rpgs into some kind of deconstructive commentary?

But here's the thing.  Let's take as granted than any author's views/biases/commentary will come across in a written work (to varying degrees).  The question is, Ian, do you set out to write 'social commentary as rpg' or are you just writing rpgs with settings you find fascinating?  Second (overlapping) question - do you, Ian, think that the setups of your last several games ("the historicals" - talking about you like you're Shakespeare now, pal) are a natural outgrowth from where you started as a parodist, because the historical settings are ones you find inherently twisted and funny?

Btw, this marks the second mention of the 'Carry On' films in as many days for me, I suppose I have to track one down now.  Preferably 'Khyber', as that's the one that was specifically recommended to me by a UK colleague.  Sadly I don't think they're on Netflix streaming.

I guess they are a bit of both. I like to raise a serious issue once in a while but I've never left comedy. Everything I do has a less than serious tone.

Quote from: VectorSigma;490300So, according to the Windjammer theory as I understand it, Ian has moved from "social commentary in explicit parody form" to "social commentary as historical farce".  Is "social commentary as cinematic blockbuster" next?  (I confess I kinda hope so).  

This whole thing is a little hard for me to wrap my head around.  I mean, essentially Windjammer is saying that Ian - who, with the aforementioned Asperger's thing going on, would be stereotyped as socially 'out of it' - is actually a shrewd social commentator whose natural inclination for analysis and systemization has transformed what could have been quirky narrow-focus rpgs into some kind of deconstructive commentary?

That's not what I meant, because it's far too complicated. What you're groping for is what some people tried to read into Hackmaster (not Basic, but '4th') by construing the game as either an elaborate (and thus, overlabored and ultimately not-funny-anymore) joke - a sneering commentary on AD&D - or as the first "post modern RPG" in which people play, not D&D characters, but dysfunctional D&D players.

While either interpretation of Hackmaster (and an analogous one for Courtesan) is interesting in its own right, this is already much too convoluted.

Take again the reference point of the Gentleman Gamer on Wizkid. I take it, Wizkid worked as a game for them because they a) invented funny teen characters (each with a 'sthick' like: having a lisp, your hair never keeps down, you have difficulty behaving around the other sex) and b) then took these characters to play a scenario (whatever) to take the piss of Harry Potter for shits and laughs. This is why the Gentleman Gamer says: this game works well if you like Harry Potter - and especially if you don't. And god knows most grown ups will have plenty of abuse to go round about these films and books. The same I imagine for Bloodsucker: the Angst, if you take it as an opportunity to take the piss of Twilight by playing an actual campaign about it.

So that's how one of Ian's games would work as a game.  And that's the type of social satire I'm writing about - it's both in the book (particular lines) but it's also a vehicle for players to indulge in it.

Similarly for Chav: the Knifing. It's a creative (and dare I say: a teeny weensy bit intellectual and enlightened) way to take the piss of particular social phenomena in contemporary British society. A phenomena that doesn't just pertain to how these teens perceive themselves, but how the conservative media and govt. officials look at them. (I've recently been at a lecture which was just as funny, and portrayed just how remote from reality government initiatives against 'hoodies' are in the UK. British government is social comedy in action.)

I mean, you could also play Chav straight. You could. But then I would raise an eye brow and think some suppressed anger issues abound in the players. Contrast: players taking the piss of teens (and the discourse surrounding teens) with repressed anger issues by playing such characters to the hilt. Again, the spirit of Enfield abounds (warning: no actual or ficticious chavs portrayed in vid; just a gag about UK adolescence more generally).

Same with Hackmaster, to return to that comparison I started out on. Read that review. It gives the lie to these convoluted 'postmodern' interpretations of it, or the dismissals of the game as an elaborate (and thus, overlabored and ultimately not-funny-anymore) joke. Here's the key passage for me:

QuoteWe built up and demolished every fantasy trope we could find. We took zombie movies and based an adventure around a cursed blue cheese that turned cheese-eaters into brain-hungry psychopaths. We cannibalised our own campaigns. We featured ludicrous villains and bards based on rock stars. We started adventures with old men holding maps in taverns. We, may Euripides forgive us, took a 2500 year old Greek tragedy about the cult of Dionysus and turned it into a slaughter fest called “The Whacky Bacchae” featuring herb smoking druids.

This is indulging in taking the piss re: AD&D, but not from a remote cultural POV (where you sneer at it and say 'oooh, look, it's such a cretinous RPG'), but where you actually enjoy it for what it is, and turn it to 11. That's why Hackmaster is neither an elaborate joke nor a sneering commentary on AD&D, nor an exercise in "postmodern roleplaying" (whatever that is). It's a satire of AD&D, but one that's meant to be played - the satire emerges from play a lot more than from reading. (Incidentally, that's for me the only sane way to enjoy D&D 4th edition too, what with its pinnacles of nonsense like Keep on the Shadowfell. )

To emphasize: I haven't read Courtesan, but from the first line in Pundit's review I got the gist of it (and after all, Pundit reviews very little else in that game). My own guess as to which devil rode Ian to write this 270 page beast is a lot more innocent. I imagine it could have gone like this:

"Boah, man, look at that random table! I bet I could run a whole campaign around that - starting with char gen. That Gygax, what a creep. "

Quote from: RPGPundit;490292To be fair, he does go into quite a bit of accurate detail and attention to the demi-monde aspect, albeit just as it applies to whores.

RPGPundit

Yeah, that's what I thought.

What do you think of Windjammer's comments? (I have not read the book, but know exactly where he (WJ) is coming from)

Edit to add: I don't really know what this game takes the piss out off, though...

Regards,
David R

Class, double standards, society, marriage, religion take your pick...