(Humor Us is a weekly series, published every Friday.)
Make sure to thank Matt M. Casey of the Clever Move blog for pointing this one out.
Or you may end up blaming him…
Glamour magazine must still be ticked at Cosmopolitan for stealing its mojo a few decades back. Ever since then, their writers have been competing with Cosmo in penning the most banal sex columns possible.
Along comes one Gena Kaufman – in whose bio you’ll actually find the phrase “when your love life hands you lemons…” – with an article entitled “How to Make Playing Board Games Sexier.”
You don’t need to jump to the end to find out how this all ends. I’ll tell you now. This girl never talked to anyone who plays board games with any frequency.
Now, if she had asked me…… Well, you see where I’m going with this….
Gena’s first suggestion:
Play the “strip” version … (for example) Lose a piece of clothing every time you pass Go in Monopoly.
Follow her advice and you’ll lose a piece of your sanity every time you
haul this ancient piece of cardboard out of the closet.
You want a “strip” version you’ll really enjoy? I’ve got three words for you: Strip Love Letter…
The writer doesn’t quit there. In fact, she ups the ante:
Or, just play naked. … It’s uncertain how long the game will last this way…
Okay, on an practical level, I think this could work with an RPG like Dungeons & Dragons.
Dungeon Master to Explorers: “Tiny flesh-eating maggots crawl under your armor. You must quickly strip off all your clothing or be consumed alive!”
Gena was wrong on this count: it’s pretty certain how long the game would last this way… Oh, and if any players retch at the sight of their fellow adventurers naked, dock them 10 Hit Points….
The naive naif’s next suggestion:
Make sexy stakes. First person to 200 points gets a massage. Every time you score a point, the other person has to give you a kiss.
Um…let’s say you’re playing a typical Stefan Feld “point salad” game, like Trajan. Play will be stopped for a couple massages before you’re halfway through the game. And thanks to Feld, your lips will likely be chapped raw before the 2nd round.
Play an actual dirty game. Google “sexy board games” and about a zillion come up.
Okay, I did look up “sexy games” on Board Game Geek, and this Geeklist came up, “Big Flashy Sexy Games.”
I looked down the page…. Star Wars: The Queen’s Gambit; War of the Ring Collector’s Edition; Tzolk’in: The Mayan Calendar. I was getting positively tumescent just reading that list….
Well, Gena was right about that one….
Or, invent a dirty version of a regular game. Scrabble with only sexy words…
Okay, you sit a typical hormone-fueled young couple around a table and they’ll barely be focused enough to spell C-A-T or D-O-G.
Now, when experienced Scrabble players get frisky, a ‘sexy word’ to them is anything they can score with both an X and a Y…
Get physical. Play a game that involves a little movement. … Jenga for example, can involve a lot of bending over (not to mention adrenaline-pumping tension)…
Give me a moment…. I’m trying to picture this. …. I see Aunt Beatrice bending over in her powder blue stretch pants…. uuuuggggggghhhhhhhhhh…..
This mental image didn’t pump any adrenaline, but it did pump my stomach….
Now, I’m going to give courting couples one simple suggestion for a sexy Board Game Date: Invite a geek to chaperone you. And while he’s spending 45 minutes pondering his next turn in Dominant Species, the two of you can get hot and heavy without him ever noticing….
Do you have any other ideas for making tabletop gaming sexier? Serious or silly, we’d love to hear them!
