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Be advised that in accordance with its "adult" subject matter, Book of Erotic Fantasy has many instances of nudity, profanity and descriptions of unorthodox sex acts, and so this review will contain all these things. Except the nudity.
The photo illustrations were in fact meant as one of the main selling points of the book (to the extent that it sold). There are of course all sorts of nude pictures of various body types (although very little full frontal nudity) and while the fantasy costumes are really good on a cosplay level, the pictures use a lot of fake looking elf ears and strange body paints to suggest being non-human. The fact that they don't look natural has a lot to do with the fact that the pictures use hardly any natural light. The photos are mostly black or in extremely dark settings and the ones that aren't are overlaid with bright and entirely unnatural colors. The overall effect is like Bob Guccione doing a Disney flick. It doesn't really work. It just reminds me that attempts to blend the "real world" of film with the fantasy aesthetic are generally too awkward to jell, for much the same reason that "real" superhero costumes rarely work. In fact it reminds me that the only truly successful attempt to translate the look of fantasy to film was the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy. But that makes me think of Liv Tyler posing for the Book of Erotic Fantasy. And then I feel better.
In the Introduction, the authors state that "we have made every effort to provide something useful and entertaining for every taste... we did our best to include the broadest possible array of sexual choices, including celibacy, in this book. At times, we found it a challenge to keep our own preconceived ideas from creeping in." My impression being that the preconceived viewpoint is a "liberal" tolerance of alternate sexualities and premarital acts, standing against a "conservative" desire to keep sexuality in a narrow range for the sake of society. But as the first few chapters demonstrate, sex does have broad implications in a society, and the authors do bring up how it impacts a setting at large.
Chapter 1: Love, Sex, & Roleplaying reviews why an RPG would want or need rules for sex in the first place. In its words: "Sex in the game is a means of advancing a plot, rounding out a character, creating memorable NPCs and now as a means for increasing the power of your character. If you and your players have decided that spelling out sexual acts is cool, then do so with as much or as little description as you want."
The book also points out that a particular campaign's emphasis (or lack of emphasis) on sex will affect character design, mainly in terms of whether characters need to use sex-oriented rules and perks like the ones in the following chapters. Considering the level of detail that the book goes into with regard to sex spells, character classes, etc. it's probably best to start a campaign setting with all of these elements in place rather than just "transitioning" a standard D&D campaign. In this regard, a sidebar lists campaign types in terms of American movie ratings, with non-explicit games being G or PG, the material in this book being a default of R, and XXX describing a game where sexual activity is the focus of the campaign.
More broadly, game concepts like alignment can intersect with both law and social expectations about sexuality, with Lawful characters being more inclined to take both marriage vows and personal commitments seriously, although neither alignment nor religion dictates behavior in these areas. It's pointed out that one Chaotic Evil character might actually be devoted to her mate, while a Lawful Good character might have a wandering eye. Unfortunately the book also uses behavior descriptions by alignment which are fairly stereotype - the Lawful Evil example is a dominatrix and the Chaotic Evil perspective on sex is merely described as "Fuck You! No, Fuck You! Fuck You All!" Although that might be the best description of Chaotic Evil alignment I've ever seen.
Likewise descriptions of each race's sexual culture are a bit predictable: Dwarves are loyal and straight, Elves are adventurous and bisexual, Gnomes are "kinky" and Half-Orcs are violent. Half-Elves are "awkward" in that they age much more quickly than Elves but more slowly than Humans, so they reach sexual maturity outside the range of their peers. There are also brief descriptions of sexuality among the monster types, from Aberrations to Vermin, including details on pregnancy and childbirth. Even though the book is quite concerned with non-procreative sex, including homosexuality, it does emphasize that the core purpose of sexual activity is to reproduce the species. And with all the races available in a fantasy game, it's quite possible for various cross-species partnerships and hybrids to occur, which leads to the details of Chapter 2.
Chapter 2: Rules, Skills, & Feats gives us the meat (so to speak) of rules for sex and reproduction in a D&D setting. While descriptions of the act are of course optional, some of the concepts described here imply certain talents that require the use of rules. For one thing the book introduces an Appearance attribute (essentially bringing back Comeliness from the Unearthed Arcana days) which makes Disguise an Appearance-based skill and certain other skills like Gather Information usable with Appearance or the original stat, whichever is preferable. In most cases characters are assumed to have -2 Appearance versus other species, except (of course) Elves and fey races.
There are also rules for "sustaining sex" (requiring a Constitution check for sessions of 20 minutes or more) and extrapolations of existing skills for Craft with sex toys and Perform skill with sex (and as with other versions of Perform, allows the character to make money from high-level 'performances'). There are also rules for STDs based on existing 3rd Edition rules for diseases, but forgoing real diseases in favor of stuff like "Azure Balls" and "Whore's Delight," which causes the genitals to release a paralytic poison.
As for reproduction itself, there's an extensive table for which species are capable of cross-breeding, a brief set of penalties inflicted on a pregnant female during the three stages of pregnancy (divided for convenience, since not every race has a 9-month gestation period), and the usual chances for conception within a species (20% for Human, and 100% indicating a 'species' like Celestial or Fiend that can control whether or not it conceives or causes pregnancy). There is also a table for the efficacy of certain birth control methods above the natural likelihood of conception.
The Feats include a "Sexual" feat category which applies to the various rules in this book and is also a category usable by the book's sex-oriented classes, much as 3rd Edition Fighters specialized in certain combat feats.
Chapter 3: Base and Prestige Classes is a list of character roles. The "base" classes have their own progression from levels 1 to 20 while the prestige classes of course have certain prerequisites that have to be taken first. The base classes include: The imagist, who has the "spontaneous" spellcasting of the Bard or Sorcerer but uses divine spells and has Appearance as the prime spellcasting characteristic; the kundala, who like a Monk uses monastic discipline to gain powers of the mind and body but who also includes sex as a tool in that discipline along with meditation and martial arts, and the tantrist, an arcane spellcaster who can only "recharge" his spellcasting ability by having sex for one hour. Since the rules assume that most humans cannot keep it up that long, a tantrist usually requires the suite of sexual performance feats from Chapter 2.
But while the prestige classes include intriguing things like the Divine Celibate and the Frenzied Disciple (somewhat like the maenads of Greece) there are also stereotypes like the Dominator (strangely, Submissive isn't considered worth a prestige class) and the Voyeuristic Seer ('profoundly visionary or merely prurient'). There's also a Harem Protector prestige class, one of the features being that the character not only needs to have Base Attack Bonus +5 and the Sterile feat in advance but must have their genitals removed. That doesn't sound like something worth waiting five levels for.
Chapter 4: Magic deals with the use of magic in sexually-oriented campaigns. This includes not only existing spells but new spells available in this chapter, or new clerical domains available with the prestige classes in Chapter 3. Most (though actually not all) of the spells are designed for sex (Block the Seed, which acts as birth control) or related matters (Analyze Ancestry, which detects a target's true bloodline over ten generations). Some of these spells actually have very useful applications outside of sex, like Pleasant Dreams, which protects against nightmare attacks by hags and the like. After descriptions of the new domains and the new spells, the book reviews existing spells with regard to sexual matters, in particular polymorph/shapechanging effects, which can change a target's gender and/or cause complications in a pregnant target.
Chapter 5: Items refers not only to magic items but certain bits of "mundane" equipment that are used as sexual aids. The latter also have prices and encumbrance values. "Items" in this context also refers to the prices for professional sexual services, and these are described here. Interestingly there's an actual Book of Erotic Fantasy, which resembles the special librams in previous editions of D&D, except that study allows the reader to go up one level and gain one Sexual feat, while a chaste or "asexual" character takes 5d4 points of damage and is compelled to have sex as soon as possible.
Chapter 6: Gods & Monsters starts by discussing the role of deities in a fantasy world, since as in the old stories they often tend to get sexually involved with mortals. And they also serve important cultural roles with regard to human institutions like marriage. Thus you have the Lawful deities of marriage and chastity, the Goblin goddess of fertility, the hermaphrodite deity of free love, and the Chaotic Evil god of rape. These are effectively part of the same pantheon, but it's obviously not a complete pantheon and the gods are apparently intended to be inserted into existing campaigns. After the deity descriptions the chapter reviews "Creatures of Passion" who are in many cases templates applied to a character or monster with a certain exotic ancestry from crossbreeding with a fey, outsider or whatever. Some of these templates can be applied to PC races, with appropriate level adjustments, and some of the "signature characters" in the book are built on these lines.
Chapter 7: Adventures & Organizations starts with a d100 chart of possible adventure ideas. Some of these are fairly interesting on a roleplaying level (like 'Halfling nomads have entered a town and begin celebrating a fertility rite' or 'The mayor of a large city has recently announced that he is gay') while others are more predictable but still classic ('A tyrannical cloud giant demands that virgins be brought to its mountaintop lair' or 'The women of a war-torn country refuse sex with their partners until the fighting ceases').
The Organizations part includes a high-class brothel (with a layout of the premises) and two "secret societies" of pleasure-seekers, whose quests for sensation can lead to interesting adventures in themselves and also make them fairly extensive contact networks.
Then there's a few appendices for the Challenge Rating of creatures in the book, the Appearance rating of existing 3rd Edition monsters, and an Index. And finally, there's a cute surprise.
SUMMARY
There is a difference between roleplaying games (involving dice and computers) and "roleplaying games" between sexual partners. RPGs don't require sex, and sex doesn't really require roleplaying. So when you introduce sex in an RPG, or roleplaying scenarios in sex, in both cases, you have to ask "How seriously are we supposed to take this?" The concept needs to be taken seriously if it's going to work at all but taking it TOO seriously makes the whole thing goofy if not creepy.
Book of Erotic Fantasy therefore has to walk a line, and it doesn't always succeed. Again, the visual style is a big reason for this; there are serious discussions of sexual issues, and the book does imply that in a game universe that actually uses Satyrs, Succubi, Vampires and the like, it doesn't make sense to ignore their obvious sexual elements, or the details of character romance, or how a fantasy world deals with homosexuality or other preferences outside the "conservative" American norm. But when much of the art looks like bondage porn, it tends to undermine the more serious stuff.
It's a fun book, but it's best judged in terms of it's own question: "Why didn't I take Sexual Training (feat) instead of Power Attack?" At the end of the day (or the morning after) the Book of Erotic Fantasy still doesn't give enough reason to pick the former.
Style: 3
The fact that this book has a distinct style is undermined by the fact that the style can be a bit off-putting.
Substance: 3
Book of Erotic Fantasy gives a lot of detail to its subject. Whether it needs that level of detail is questionable.
