Camwhores

A Game About Hot Chicks Making Poor Choices
Modern (adult)
Two Scooters Press
2011
Complexity: 1

So this is a game that I’m a bit… hesitant about reviewing. Not because I’m uncomfortable with sexual content, quite the contrary, I think sexual content is great. I do however have issues with anti-sexual content, and for some reason I feel like Camwhores: A Game About Hot Chicks Making Poor Choices might not be the most sex-positive game. But hey maybe I’m wrong, maybe the title and subtitle are just satirical jabs at society’s aggressively-negative views on sex and sex workers. Yeah, I’m sure that’s the case and this won’t be something I immediately regret getting myself into.
[This review deals with sexual topics, but does not use any sexually-explicit language]


Character Creation: 3/5
Characters in Camwhores have 5 attributes--Body, Confidence, Empathy, Stability, and Greed. Attributes are modified by selecting a descriptor from three lists. The first list grants a +1 bonus to one attribute and contains general descriptors like “Buxom,” or “Sweet.” The second is somewhat of a character’s current role--things like “college student” or “barista”--and gives a +1 bonus to one attribute and a −1 penalty to another. The final list is flaws which give a −1 penalty, things like “who cuts herself” and “with daddy issues”--okay at this point I think we can officially abandon the possibility that this is a satirical examination of anti-sex-positivity. So if our character were a “flirty barista who feels guilty about doing this” we’d get +1 Confidence, +1 Stability, and −2 Greed. Players then choose a name and “internet handle”--because that’s totally a term that is regularly used post 2001. Players then select ten items for their Amazon wishlist, five of which will help with camming and grant an attribute bonus, and five of which are related to your offline goals, things like passing school, making your daddy love you--actual example from the book--or overcoming your self-destructive addiction to reviewing horrible role-playing games.

Mechanics: 2/5
Camwhores is divided into ‘whore scenes’ and ‘angel scenes.’ The general goal of whore scenes is to... *sigh* get ‘marks’ to buy you things off your Amazon wishlist, ideally without actually ‘putting out.’ This is done via a card mechanic where each suit is tied to one of the character’s attributes--excluding Greed, which is tied to male face cards--and a related topic or action. The GM plays a card, and the player must play a higher card of the same suit, this goes back and forth as the mark tries to pressure the character into revealing personal information, showing her body, or doing something spicy--my word choice, not theirs. Whereas the character tries to convince the mark that they’ll do whatever it is ‘next time’... if they buy her something off her amazon wishlist. In order to play a card higher than their associated attribute, the player needs to actually ‘put out’ and do the thing, if they can’t--or don’t want to--the conversation moves to the topic of the next suit. The suites have a one-way advancement--diamonds > hearts > spades > clubs > male face cards. The scene ends when either player or GM run out of cards--with the mark agreeing to buy something off her Amazon wishlist or just logging off without doing so respectively.The male face cards can only be played under specific conditions,  and essentially function as if running out of cards. The GM can only play one after the player puts out, and the player can more or less play one any time, but only a total number of times per game equal to their character’s Greed attribute.
As simple as the system is, it is also amazingly flawed--like for mechanical reasons, not ethical ones. There’s no specification that a scene has to start with diamonds--just the GM’s lowest card--and it is specified that the player can voluntarily advance to or skip the next suit. Given that the suits can only be advanced in one direction, that makes it incredibly likely that you’ll end up in a situation where player and GM both have hands full of cards that they can’t play. And there is no explanation about what is to be done in this situation. Which is an issue since it seems like something that is more likely to occur than not.
Oh wow, all that and I haven’t even gotten to the “angel scenes,” where here it is. The angel scenes are those that take place outside of the character’s camming experience where they try to achieve their previously-defined goals. When such a moment occurs, the player draws a number of cards equal to their ‘Respect’--not like self-respect or anything, just the respect of the people who don’t know about your horrible existence as a sexual entity--gaining a bonus card if they have the related item from their Amazon wishlist. They then play one of those cards, then the GM draws a single card and if it’s lower than the player’s card they succeed in their goal and gain 1 Respect, if the GM’s card is higher they fail and lose 1 respect.
The game ends when the player gains 10 Respect--at which point they retire from camming and “chalk it up as a youthful indescretion [sic].”--achieve all their goals without reaching 10 Respect--at which point they retire from camming out of fear that their family is close to discovering their secret--or lose all Respect--at which point their family finds out and they disappear from the internet in shame. Oddly there isn’t an option to continue camming because your comfortable expressing your sexuality online and getting paid to do so… I guess they ran out of room.

Writing: 2/3 [•]
As demeaning as some of the text is, there’s really nothing technically wrong with it. Some of the rule descriptions are a little less than optimally worded, but a couple read throughs are enough to figure it out.

Presentation: 1/5
The layout is overall kinda meh, just blocks of text and lists separated by blank lines and centered headings. It really comes across as a bare minimum amount of effort, the first two lists are led with hyphens--as opposed to bullets, in fact there’s no special characters or specially-formatted text used outside of headings--and it seems like they just kinda forgot about it after that. They’re good about not having content break weirdly across pages, but achieved this by just leaving big gaps at the bottom of pages--except for one page where the gap is just awkwardly between two paragraphs. There’s one piece of bad stock art used, but I’m pretty sure it’s just there to hide the fact that the author couldn’t be bothered to fit two half-page sections into one page.

Final Remarks
The big question I have about this game is “did the author think it was satire?” Because after their credit it stats ”who still feels mildly guilty about it.” Which really seems to be some kind of “Yeah it’s really derogatory, but I acknowledge that it is so it’s okay, lol” statement. Kinda like telling racist jokes ‘ironically.’ When you get right down to it, this game depicts cam models as being driven to it out of desperation--as no decent person would want to be a cam model--and doing so with the ultimate goal of getting away from it. It even quantifies respect as value that can only be gained or maintained by keeping your horrible cam model job secret, because obviously anybody who is a known sex worker is automatically excluded from being respected.
So yeah, I am overall not a fan of this game. If it’s supposed to be a joke, it’s not a very good one, and if it’s actually reflective of the author’s views.. well, then it’s a slightly better one. Unfortunately, as much as I may take issue with this game, I can’t deny that it is competently put together. Although a guess that is literally the whole point of my rating system.

Base Points: 6
Character Creation: 3/5, Mechanics: 2/5, Presentation: 1/5
Adjustments: +6
Setting: N/A, Writing: +0 Content: N/A

Overall Score: 40% (6/15 Points)
I’m really sick of typing “Amazon wishlist.”