D and BDSM

This page is an on-going repository of useful links for our forthcoming D&D-podcast-meets-BDSM video shoot.

Setting and background handout

D&D 5th Edition SRD – the open game licence system we will be using

Online interactive character sheet for Elf Thief character

Costume reference pics

We’ll use the top half of this armour, pair with a skirt and some slippers or soft boots to make it look more thief-y and less warrior-y than the mail skirt and leggings shown here. Add “elvish” circlet and accessorise.

Makeup mood board

(pics are not my copyright, will remove if anyone is unhappy with us posting them as inspiration)

Sketch Map of Ducky of Falcondale



Sketch Map of City of Falconstone



Gazetteer of Falconstone City

This is mostly for the DM – I generated a random city full of businesses, buildings and people. No-one really knows what is in every one of these buildings, certainly not the Duke and very definitely not a newcomer to the city. Nonetheless, if you walk into a random building in the city there’s a fair chance that its purpose is not a million miles from what is marked on the list, and at least one or two of the people listed might be there. So it’s a good a jumping-off point for inspiration.

Go to the list here.

Casting: BDSM Dungeons and Dragons

Hi Everyone,

This is a model casting for an idea I’ve wanted to shoot for 30 years: a BDSM tabletop roleplaying Dungeons and Dragons session.

I’m looking to shoot it with a model who’s a keen role-player and a good improvisor who is happy to work with me to describe some pretty dark, intense and hardcore things happening to her character in the game.

It will be a two-day shoot.

Day one will be us playing a session of Dungeons and Dragons (well, a not-quite-D&D old school clone, please don’t sue us Mr. Hasbro), me as the DM, you as the solo player. I’ll have a written fantasy scenario in a stock D&D fantasy world to play through, but the idea is that the character is going to get into a lot of scrapes in which BDSM and sex happens. A LOT.

We’ll describe together what happens to the character. I’m quite shy and not great at “dirty talk” in any situation, but I’ll try to man up and let some of the darker stuff out to play. I figure if there’s anything which ought to loosen my introvert inhibitions it is describing whats happening to a fictional fantasy character in a high-magic world, where anything can be fixed with a trip to a temple for the right healing spell! I’ve got 30+ years experience as a DM and 20+ years experience as a BDSM photographer (and performer when I must) and this is something I’ve wanted to try ever since I first bought my copy of Basic D&D.

The finished product of that will be a video of us playing D&D, describing what happens to the character in the manner of a Twitch stream or high-end podcast. Only with whips, chains, dungeons, damsels and very possibly orcs raping the elf princess. I’ll edit it for pace and good sense and obviously we’ll call cut and rewind if the story is going a way we’re not happy with.

On day two we will shoot as many cut-aways, still photos and short segments of video as we can featuring you in a fantasy costume (examples at the bottom of the post) as your character getting into and out of these scrapes. We can hint at stuff we can’t film (the aforementioned orc and elf princess scene for example) with a combination of POV, dramatically posed stills, black screen and sound effects, etc..

For normal shoots I think it is important that we don’t make any statement about whether the model is kinky or not- if you are a good actress you can do the job. And that might be true here but to be honest it would be a much better fit to someone who’s at into both tabletop roleplaying and BDSM and is happy with the idea of doing uninhibited “dirty talk” around the events happening to a fictional character in a D&D session.

Please drop me a line to webmaster@RestrainedElegance.com or by DM on Twitter (@RElegance) if you are interested. Pay rates as usual for an RE shoot. The shoot will be in the UK.

Cheers, Hywel Phillips

Location shoot awesomeness!

Hi Everyone!

We just got back from an EPIC location shoot with Ariel Anderssen, Faye Taylor, Natalia Forrest, Temptress Kate, Sophia Smith, ColFet Media, Steve and Merlin (and me).

We hired a big old party house for four nights and decided to concentrate just on shooting stills… and here are a few behind the scenes shots to show you what we got up to! We shot 88 sets in total which is unbelievable!

I’ll put the full behind-the-scenes set up as a bonus soon. First full sets from the shoot will be on the sites (we shot both RE and Silk Soles) in a few weeks!

Hywel

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Burnout recovery plan

Hi Everyone,

Thank you to everyone for your kind responses to my last post, announcing that I’m suffering from work-related burnout and not enjoying or even being able to think about BDSM and bondage at the moment. The post is here if you missed it: https://www.elegancestudios.com/wordpress/?p=28084.

It felt pretty shitty to write it, but feels much better HAVING written it. Admitting to it in public rather than pretending everything is normal and OK is hopefully the first step in forcing me to take some time out and recover. It’s allowed me to put together a recovery plan, and I’m posting that publicly as well to try to ensure that:

  1. I stick to it
  2. Everyone who has supported and continues to support Restrained Elegance knows what’s happening, when and why, so you won’t be surprised by me being absent or unresponsive to emails over the summer

I have shoot commitments through the end of May, including custom videos, a mega stills location shoot with multiple models and multiple photographer friends coming to help out, a studio shoot away from home and a trip to BoundCon Munich where I’ll be working with a couple of models I don’t usually get to work with because of geography.

I believe I can get through those shoots because I’d already noticed that things were not right and had planned accordingly. Shooting in a hotel room doesn’t require or allow great rambling storylines, so I’ll concentrate on one nice lighting set-up and some elegant bondage. The studio has lots of bondage equipment in it, so will do something more documetary-style there to try it out. The custom shoot will be hard work but we have some good friends who are very creative there so I’ll get them to shoulder the burden of improv while I concentrate on a technically-competent recording of the scene. And the big location shoot I was planning on being a producer/facilitator/lighting consultant more than the originator of big ideas to shoot anyway.

Ariel and I have got a long way ahead processing stills and video working through our Ireland trip. I need to write the stories and add all of this to the site scheduling system and the shopping cart, which I will try to do during May. That will take the sites up to the end of September and maybe a bit further.

The stories and set descriptions will be more terse than usual, as I find that side of the job quite demanding at the best of times, and borderline impossible at the moment. It’s not especially relevant even on the members’ site as I know only a minority of people even read the stories, but it’s quite important for shopping cart stuff as it’s sometimes the only way to know the full content of a set if I can only post a single thumbnail. But I’ll just have to do my best.

Then come June I have pretty much an empty diary for two months, a little bit to get through at end of July, then again clear through August and first couple of weeks in September until the other big location shoot of the year.

After that, if need be, I have enough material on disk not to need to shoot again until January if I need to take the time. I will need to edit some more stuff but we have enough on disk, and will have PLENTY after the two big location shoots assuming they go OK. So I’m not planning to book any more shoots this year, but I will revist that after a summer holiday and see how I’m doing.

I will also take the advice of a couple of very-long-time members and literally start re-using ideas from shoot plans from the first decade of the site – some of which we didn’t even get around to shooting, but all of which can totally stand revisiting with new models anyway. I’ve probably been too hard on myself for needing to find new ideas anyway. Plenty of sites shoot essentially the same storyline/setting/idea with every model they work with, and I when I join those sites I don’t mind that at all.

What I am going to be firm with myself about is being as far away from the site as possible during June, July and August. I really think my best bet for a reset, recovery and return to an efficient working pattern is just to go and do something else for a good long summer holiday sabbatical, so my brain can get its kinky mojo back.

I will be setting everything up so the automated site management systems continue to do their thing, so the only difference you should notice is that I will not be on twitter/kinky elephant/the site forum/email etc..

I will be checking my email no more often than once per week during June/July/August, probably on a Friday, so please bear with me during that time. Try Surfnet customer support- I know they aren’t always the most helpful or most polite but they do manage to keep the site up and running and free of hackers for 99.9% of the time, which is the only reason I can contemplate taking a summer holiday.

I intend to spend most of my time out and about in the mountains, with a camera just for fun if I want to take one, getting some sunshine and exercise and trying to get back to enjoying stuff like reading and going to the movies without feeling guilty about it.

I’ve already asked Alexander Lightspear to do another run of shoots for me, which he started with Delta and Cheryl last weekend. If my burnout looks set to continue I will be relying on our other kind collaborators coming to help me with future shoots; several people have already volunteered, thank you everyone!

The one thing that will change on the site is that we won’t be featuring any new models (apart from a couple Alexander Lightspear shot for us already) for the next few months. Shoots with new models are by far the most stressful for Ariel and me for various reasons, and since I don’t have any in the calendar already we will not be booking any until I’m recovered. If that starts looking like it is going to be a very long time, I will work with collaborative photographers to shoot a few new faces.

We have plenty of variety of the existing models including many fan faves so I’m sure you’ll enjoy the forthcoming updates with Sophia Smith, Hannah Claydon, Ariel, Natalia Forrest, Zoe Page, Ayla Rose, Aerlise, Aisha, Alicia, Angel Price, Anita, Bad Dolly, Cheryl, Delta, Chloe Toy, Czech Beauty, Faye, Hannah Clare, Irene, Lauren Louise, Lucy Lauren, Mille Fenton, Nicky Phillips, Penny Lee, Rachel Adams, Scarlett Foxett, Stephanie Bonham Carter, Kate, Tillie, and more. They should keep us happy for a few months at least, I hope 🙂

With best regards,

Hywel