Yoon-Suin: Brothels of the Hundred Kingdoms

On the very first session of my 5E Yoon-Suin game, my players visited a brothel, more because they needed a place to stay than anything else (I forgot to mention the caravanserai outside the city); but since we're running gold-as-experience, one of my players wanted his character to pay for two courtesans to accompany him.

The campaign's character development will require the PCs to spend a lot of money, so I'm in the process of writing a table to randomly generate food, tea, opium, accommodation, bactrian camels, palanquin bearers, crab-man slaves, etc. of varying quality. This is also a good opportunity to introduce the setting's flavour - slavery is a part of everyday life, people sit on cushions instead of stools, drink tea instead of ale, wield tulwars instead of longswords, etc.

I don't want to stray into Book of Erotic Fantasy territory (stick that in a search engine at your own risk), but equally I don't want to just ignore anyone who is willing to act like an adult at the table and talk about adult things in an adult manner; nobody is prepared to narrate the specifics but since I'd normally describe a tavern's ale as "dry" or "fruity" or "bitter" then I thought I should do something similar for brothels in Yoon-Suin.

You roll different dice on the Brothel Experience Table depending on the quality of the brothel. The more expensive the brothel the more likely your character is to enjoy themselves and avoid any complications.

Brothel Quality	Dice
Pathetic Den	d6
Humble Parlour	2d6
Successful Academy	3d6
Exclusive House	3d6 + 2

Note: Temples that offer sacred prostitution should probably not be of the lowest quality except in special circumstances.

Brothel Experience Table

Dice Roll	Experience
1 - 2	Awful - roll on the Brothel Mishap Table
3 - 4	Disappointing
5 - 9	Pleasing
10 - 13	Skilled courtesan
14 - 15	Tremendously skilled courtesan
16 - 17	Pleasures undreamed of
18+	Spiritual experience

Brothel Mishap Table

Sometimes pleasure turns into pain. Roll on the following table to determine the outcome of a bad experience at a brothel.

D6	Result
1	Roll twice, ignoring duplicates
2	Disease
3	Injury
4	Robbed
5	Humiliated
6	Expelled

Injury: A courtesan, a eunuch bodyguard, a rival client, an accident, or some creative detail of the tryst inflicts one level of Exhaustion.

Disease: Make a DC 14 Constitution save or develop spots, lesions, or a rash. Roll a d6 to determine the visibility of the disease: on a 1, 2, or 3 the disease is clearly visible to any who socially interact with you (sores on the hands or face, growth on the tongue that causes speech impediment, a specific odour, etc.); on a 4, 5, or 6 the disease is only visible to those who become physically intimate with you.

Anyone who notices the symptoms will react accordingly, usually imposing a -4 penalty to all Charisma-based checks; some people will laugh at you, others will refuse to deal with you, whereas some will not care so long as you keep your distance.

Diseases such as these can be cured with the lesser restoration spell, by an apothecary or herbalist's concoction (costing 3d6×10 shekels, half if a PC herbalist or apothecary can make a DC 16 check to find the appropriate reagents themselves over the course of at least one day), or by succeeding a DC 20 Constitution save during a long rest three times.

Robbed: Lose double the cost of the brothel visit in coins or equipment (e.g. items of clothing), with little chance of recovering what was lost.

Humiliated: You are mocked or ridiculed, restrained and abandoned, discovered in a compromising situation, or otherwise publicly humiliated; you leave the brothel with less dignity than you entered with, embarrassed and frustrated. 

Expelled: You are thrown out of the brothel and will not be admitted again. Your reputation in local brothels suffers as news spreads; you may find yourself barred from other establishments in the area.

Players are free to interpret their rolls however they please within the confines of the rules and situation. You could expand this with hijra, different races, restrictions (participants must imbibe a specific kind of opium or chant a certain mantra, a priest of a fertility god must curse or disapprove of the act, participants must never learn each other's names, the brothel's madam must perform a thorough examination of the client beforehand, etc.), and other background flavour if you really wanted, but I'm only going into as much detail as I would for ale, tea, or rooms at an inn.