Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Focused Examination: Intimate Choreography with Small-sized Characters

So, let's start with the considerations for the position that everyone always starts with, in these sorts of discussions – Missionary.


Missionary positions and their variants may be considered bland or dull positions, but in that mundanity they also make up the most flexible category of sex positions in terms of scene choreography and atmosphere. They can find a suitable place in any of the major types of scene – romantic, passionate or overt. Minor changes in the pose can dramatically shape the tone and feeling of what is being conveyed, making it far more versatile than many wilder or more interesting positions, which is why variations of the pose have long remained a staple of intimate choreography. In romantic scenes, the pose hearkens to the more emotional and connected elements of sex – these scenes generally involve few camera changes, relatively speaking, and make use of longer pans that emphasise the closeness of the bodies participating, and a focus on interconnection and eye contact. These types of scenes benefit from a slower, gentler pace in the rhythm and the shooting, and they generally employ more fully parallel variations on the position, with a large degree of full body contact. The focus should almost never be on the individual in this type of scene – you can't show eye contact or close connection with a single face close-up – close-ups should almost always involve both partners. The angles and shots used should show closeness, without showing any obvious or crude details; implication and allusion are the tools to use in these scenes.

Passionate scenes share many of the same focal points, but the rhythm and pace becomes much more aggressive; faster, harsher movements become key, and the scenes involve few slow pans, and instead pick individual fixed shots that can better convey the heated pace of the activity. Physical interconnection that was soft and gentle in a romantic scene should be more desperate here – hands clutched and interlocked tightly, harsh grips, and while eye contact remains a valuable element, it should give way more often to fixation on sensation – kisses that roam, holds that squeeze tight; where the eyes may have shut softly in a romantic scene, here they squeeze tight with passion instead. This is the realm of heads thrown back in ecstasy, or craned down in lustful need. Here, we should see more of the lovers' bodies, and we can discard allusion and implication for clear, but tactful shots that show as much of the participants as they can, while still avoiding overt details. The missionary versions and variants used tend towards slightly more body separation than before, to allow for harsher angles to suggest themselves in the scene. The actual mechanics of the act itself are secondary to the passion and lust that these scenes seek to convey. A slow, intimate or romantic scene can, and often does, evolve into a raw, hungry, passionate scene – but when you do this, the atmospheric shift should be clear (even if it is gradual), and your choreography should change to accompany it as the scene evolves from one to the other.

When shooting an overtly sexual scene, designed specifically to titillate a viewing audience, most of the elements can easily resemble passionate scene shooting, however the variations of the position used, and the camera angles chosen, are made to give the best view of the action itself – here, the view no longer shies away from the clear mechanics of the act; it's lustful and sexual, and the camera is positioned to make this clear. This kind of shooting gives very little focus to the heads and faces of the lovers and it rarely uses close-ups, or any kind of allusion or tactful implication. Of the three main types, missionary struggles with this type of shooting the most, as even variations on the position that allow the giver to remain more upright, to show off what's happening, only provide a few really good angles to work with. It bears repeating from the previous thread, as well, but in game terms, we absolutely need 'complete' character models in order to do this kind of scene shooting justice.

With that all in mind, some summarised key points about the position: with two medium sized models, the penetrating partner can support themselves comfortably and still maintain eye contact without craning their neck, if desired. The receiving partner can easily lock their legs as a show of closeness, high desire or an eagerness to set the rhythm, and generally still has the reach to touch their partner's neck, face and head, even if the giving partner remains raised (as mentioned, for scenes shot purely to be watched by others, this is often considered a necessity). In sequences that are more purely romantic or emotive in nature, the giving partner can lie down more closely, creating more body contact and allowing for kissing, and making it easier to more smoothly disguise the pure mechanics of the act itself without detracting from the scene.

So, we can choreograph a lovely erotic and arousing sexual encounter in this position that involves many of these lovely features... but then, we have to consider small size characters, and suddenly several of these elements break down or need to be considered and adjusted – more than simply realigning the groins!

Suppose we have a small-sized receiver, first of all.


The first thing to consider is that with a smaller receiver, the penetration point is going to be closer to the ground, unless you compensate for it – it may not seem like much difference (I know, it really doesn't), but if the giver is doing all the work of repositioning here, they're either going to have to stretch out more, or else end up having to spread their knees to an impractical extent. Stretching out fully, however...



...will press the medium-sized giver's pelvis and waist directly over and on top of the small-sized receiver's – and this forces the receiver into an extremely uncomfortable, likely strain inducing, position – as well as running the concern of squishing them and functionally removing their input from the act as a whole.

A more practical adjustment here is that the receiver will want to raise their hips up, off the ground, instead. This means either you need to account for a supporting object in the scene (a bedroll, not a rock, please...), or else the giver will have to support the position – this means taking one of their hands away from whatever else it was doing when you wrote the scene for mediums, and reassigning it to supporting the hips. If the scene designer were to just raise the hips up with no other consideration, it would end up looking 'floaty' or otherwise a bit uncanny.

This also leads to the receiver having a tangible shift in their body position and angle, putting more weight back on the shoulders, which needs to be accounted for as well.



Regardless of how you correct the pose, however, the medium-sized giver is going to have to curl their back to some extent in order to maintain comfortable eye contact with their partner – keeping a straight back, whether in an upright direction or a horizontal one, will prevent any kind of meaningful visual contact between the participants. For the same reason, kissing from this position is more or less impossible – so if the scene choreography for medium sized characters contains kissing, that needs to either necessitate a change of position (doable if it's at the end of the scene, or at a point when penetration has concluded anyway), or else it will need to be replaced with something else. Many other types of intimate contact can fill this gap, in this position, but in particular intimate touches around the hair and face are good surrogates when kissing isn't feasible.

Other points to note here – a small-sized receiver is generally not going to be able to leg-lock a medium-sized giver in the same way a medium-sized character could, so they shouldn't be trying to – a pose that is comfortable for the legs that allows them to apply pressure with the thighs or calves, rather than trying for an ankle lock, is a good adjustment.

On the flip side, the scene that was designed for two medium-sized characters is also going to need a different set of adjustments for a small-sized giver – a direct realignment won't cut it here either.



Well, it Sort of does... but even if you take the effort to realigning all of the limbs to the same rough contact points, you still end up with a number of problems – not the least of which is the small-sized giver not actually having a decent centre of balance or support like this, short of simply supporting the majority of their weight on their partner, which in turn would make it difficult to put any real action into the, er, action. Trying to ankle lock with a smaller sized partner from the same basic missionary position would also be largely impractical. In short, though you could make a direct conversion work in this case, it's not a position that a small-sized giver and medium-sized receiver would realistically adopt.



So what do we do...?

The most prominent correction needed to make this pose work in a comfortable, believable way that still manages to be intimate, is that the small-sized giver cannot really lie out flat in true missionary sense – they are going to need to kneel up to some degree. The receiver will not be able to properly leg lock their partner and if the original scene was written that way, that also needs to be changed to a more stable leg pose for this size pairing.



As before, there's no practical way to make kissing work in a missionary pose – so if the original scene has a kiss choreographed into it, then it would necessitate an entire position change, or else a replacement here. Clear eye contact during intimacy is a good substitute where a kiss is infeasible for the scene – missionary in particular is all about eye contact, so taking moments to emphasise that is never a bad thing (even in an overtly sexual scene, staring into your partner's eyes as they, er, act upon you, is still a potent element to make use of).

As well has having the receiver adopt a more stable leg pose, they will also need to prop themselves up slightly if they wish to maintain a sense of contentedness or intimacy in the act. This means that one arm will most likely be required to support the upper body, unless they are able to be shot leaning on a support that the 'original' missionary scene didn't need. The other hand should be free to fulfil other roles, but intimate contact to the cheek, hair or chest are good candidates, as would be using the arm to stand in for a leg-lock that is no longer feasible – doing this allows the receiver to participate along with their partner in directing or controlling the pace and rhythm of the intimacy.

The giver, rather than using one hand to support their partner in a way they can't really reach as a smaller partner, can instead use the hand to grip underneath one of their legs – this fills a dual role of being an intimate contact that offers support, but it also gives the smaller sized partner an extra point of stability for moving against their partner – something to push against comfortably when moving back or away, which as a smaller partner, they need; this helps the pose look more believable and real.

The giver won't be able to comfortably reach their partner's head from this position, but intimate chest contact is a good stand in, in this situation – whether their partner happens to be in possession of breasts or not.

Those are the main considerations that come up when adapting missionary poses for smaller partners, so let's move on, next up, the world's most popular position...