Japanese vs Western "weirdness" in games

[Avoraciopoctules]

Didn't someone post someone's Pathfinder play sessions?

I liked the cut of that one drow's gib.

You talking about this youtube channel?
http://www.youtube.com/user/OppaiMiya/videos

[OgreBattle]

Then don't look at my Pixiv favorites...

The bee people one for Pixiv fantasia, right? Can you send me a link? I saved it long ago on a now defunct computer.

[Username17]

Since people insist on ranting about rape stats, I guess there should be some context.

First, yes the age of consent in Japan is 13. However, that is a national minimum, not a national maximum. Individual prefectures can and do set their own age of consent as long as they do not fall below the national minimum of 13. In much of the country, the age of consent is 18. Similarly how in the United States, age of consent is set by state and there are places where there are exemptions for marrying teenagers because reasons.

Anyway, rape statistics are without a doubt the most unreliable statistics in the world. In fact, rape is so under-reported that areas having a low reported rape rate actually almost certainly have a higher actual rape rate while a higher reported rape rate usually correlates with a low actual rape rate. The highest reported rape rates are in Scandinavia where barriers to rape reporting are very low, and the lowest reported rape rates are in Islamic countries where the barriers to reporting rape is very high (under Shariah you need at least two women or one man as witnesses to accuse a man of any crime, which neatly decriminalizes rape in most instances). India and South Africa, which have really severe rape problems have lower rates of reported rape than the United States by a factor of nearly twenty.

Japan has reported rape levels roughly that of India, which either means that crime is super low there, or that their society is as closed and fucked up as India when it comes to women's rights. More likely, it's a little from column A and a little from column B. Nevertheless, if we take a representative sample of all the reported rapes committed by US servicemen in Okinawa and compare that to the population of our military base there, we find an even lower rate of rape by US military personnel than the national average for Japan. Meaning that Japanese people are so offended at being touched by foreigners that they literally march in the street to protest against being raped less often if there is a greater chance that said rapes will be performed by foreigners.


These people are protesting against a region with a lower than national average level of reported rape. Seriously. Statistically, if the base were closed and an equal number of Japanese people moved in, rapes in the area would increase - albeit not be very much.

-Username17

[Lago PARANOIA]

Personally, I along with other DFHs like Kevin Drum and Sam Wang blame Japan's overall low, low crime rate on the fact that lead-based combustion or construction never really gained a foothold in that country.

Meaning that certain parts of South America are in for a murder and rape epidemic in a few years. Oh, joy.

[infected slut princess]

Puke

[Atmo]

Then don't look at my Pixiv favorites...

The bee people one for Pixiv fantasia, right? Can you send me a link? I saved it long ago on a now defunct computer.

No, i was talking about monster rape, 'cause a large number of people don't seem to like them. Well, i can't blame them, took to me a good time to familiarize with those images and scenes (3 to 6 days).

[Dogbert]

Play session chronicles are a felony, or they should be at least. Of all the fiction I've edited for friends and amateur writer communities, none are worse than play session chronicles.

Plenty of players ignore that the only reason why Record of the Lodoss War was any good was because that campaign was only 10 percent game and 90 percent narrative experiment, and because everyone at the table were writers themselves.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Plenty of players ignore that the only reason why Record of the Lodoss War was any good was because that campaign was only 10 percent game and 90 percent narrative experiment, and because everyone at the table were writers themselves.

All that means is that you have in-house staff whose primary job it is to generate and write play session stories. I really don't think most people care if just three or even one table is generating all of the stories, as long as the writing's good and there's sufficient variety and/or continuity. So the primary campaign would be a team of mid-level ragtag anime misfits going on suspiciously well-written and scenic adventures. Occasionally they'd switch things up with things like an all-monster party or a Sigil Union political maneuvering campaign.

If crowd-sourcing turns up something usable, then awesome. If it doesn't, then c'est la vie. The important thing is that unless you're at the scale of WotC or Paizo and can seriously offer things like $500 prizes for the best-written 100-page campaign story every two months to your audience of hundreds of thousands, you mostly have paid staff working on it.

[Atmo]

Plenty of players ignore that the only reason why Record of the Lodoss War was any good was because that campaign was only 10 percent game and 90 percent narrative experiment, and because everyone at the table were writers themselves.

All that means is that you have in-house staff whose primary job it is to generate and write play session stories. I really don't think most people care if just three or even one table is generating all of the stories, as long as the writing's good and there's sufficient variety and/or continuity. So the primary campaign would be a team of mid-level ragtag anime misfits going on suspiciously well-written and scenic adventures. Occasionally they'd switch things up with things like an all-monster party or a Sigil Union political maneuvering campaign.

If crowd-sourcing turns up something usable, then awesome. If it doesn't, then c'est la vie. The important thing is that unless you're at the scale of WotC or Paizo and can seriously offer things like $500 prizes for the best-written 100-page campaign story every two months to your audience of hundreds of thousands, you mostly have paid staff working on it.

I would like to know how japanese editors do that with their Replays: do they buy those sessions, request from players or any other option?

[Drolyt]

Also, it's totally ok to stereotype a culture.

No it fucking isn't.

What the actual fuck, Drolyt.

Are you a troll or do you actually think this? Discussing evidence is basically the opposite of stereotyping.

As a side note, as usual everything Frank said is true, except for the part where anyone was discussing rape statistics. The fact is there is a lot of unhealthy sexual repression in Japan.This is obvious to anyone remotely familiar with the country and backed up by the data. It is no more controversial than pointing out that unhealthy sexual repression is a problem in the deep south of the US, but I doubt anyone would have objected if I said that.

[OgreBattle]

Then don't look at my Pixiv favorites...

The bee people one for Pixiv fantasia, right? Can you send me a link? I saved it long ago on a now defunct computer.

No, i was talking about monster rape, 'cause a large number of people don't seem to like them. Well, i can't blame them, took to me a good time to familiarize with those images and scenes (3 to 6 days).

Damn, well I've been trying to find that monster_girl image again, because they were really well designed and rather creepy.

*Ah great! I found it! It was part of the "Forest of PIXIV" challenge, where people contributed to a fantasy forest setting. This one was bee people:



Life cycle:

mandibles-as-bangs is a cute touch

Visiting a Giraffe:

Artist is 'Jon Henry Nam' on pixiv

[Atmo]

The bee people one for Pixiv fantasia, right? Can you send me a link? I saved it long ago on a now defunct computer.

No, i was talking about monster rape, 'cause a large number of people don't seem to like them. Well, i can't blame them, took to me a good time to familiarize with those images and scenes (3 to 6 days).

Damn, well I've been trying to find that monster_girl image again, because they were really well designed and rather creepy.

*Ah great! I found it! It was part of the "Forest of PIXIV" challenge, where people contributed to a fantasy forest setting. This one was bee people:



Life cycle:

mandibles-as-bangs is a cute touch

Visiting a Giraffe:

Artist is 'Jon Henry Nam' on pixiv

When posting Booru images, leave PAGE link, not the IMAGE, or it will break.

[Whipstitch]

I mentioned statistics, but only because I already knew that such things are notoriously underreported, which I think renders Drolyt's one man pissing contest kinda gauche.

[Drolyt]

I mentioned statistics, but only because I already knew that such things are notoriously underreported, which I think renders Drolyt's one man pissing contest kinda gauche.

Except that isn't what I was talking about. Look, rape and sexual violence is a very important real world issue, but no country has a monopoly on that and it really has nothing to do with the OP, which was asking about Maid the RPG. I suggested that one issue that helped to explain the otaku culture that produces games like that was the sexual repression that is common among Japanese youth. The weird thing is this isn't even a contentious claim, its a known problem the Japanese government is even trying to fix, not something I pulled out of my ass. Google hasn't been very helpful, mostly it just brings up a bunch of other forums discussing the issue (at least proving I didn't make it up) and one sketchy looking academic paper, but whatever. I'm not at all sure why people are so strongly opposing me on this one.

[Whipstitch]

Because you also went "America, a hurr da durr" on us. Which, is rather gauche, even if our abortion laws are more permissive.

[Drolyt]

Because you also went "America, a hurr da durr" on us. Which, is rather gauche, even if our abortion laws are more permissive.

Quote me please.

[OgreBattle]

No, i was talking about monster rape, 'cause a large number of people don't seem to like them. Well, i can't blame them, took to me a good time to familiarize with those images and scenes (3 to 6 days).

Damn, well I've been trying to find that monster_girl image again, because they were really well designed and rather creepy.

*Ah great! I found it! It was part of the "Forest of PIXIV" challenge, where people contributed to a fantasy forest setting. This one was bee people:



Life cycle:

mandibles-as-bangs is a cute touch

Visiting a Giraffe:

Artist is 'Jon Henry Nam' on pixiv

When posting Booru images, leave PAGE link, not the IMAGE, or it will break.

Here ya go:
http://www.donmai.us/data/sample/sample ... 773256.jpg

[Whipstitch]

This entire thread's premise is basically a setup for a pissing contest, but mostly the bit where you said the following irked me:

If you think that could actually happen in the US on a similar scale you are determined to see flaws in the US whether they exist or not, which is a shame because there are plenty of reasons to be mad at the US that aren't bullshit.

In short, I don't believe that it's unthinkable. The numbers that get thrown around on this kind of stuff are all over the place, because of reasons, and the USA hasn't embraced mass transit to the same degree Japan has in any case, which further muddies comparisons of the chikan issue. However, we have enough problems with sexual assault, violent crime and exploitation--Japan and the USA are both pretty bad as far as relative poverty goes--that I get the impression that you're coming on rather strong.

[Koumei]

I thought sankakucomplex had, in their totally unbiased facts, said that the US had more sexual assaults than Japan? Or was that specifically a greater number without taking population sizes into account, specifically to make the US seem worse so as to make their "You know nothing, keep your opinions to yourself and let us have our rape porn!" position seem to have more credibility?

[OgreBattle]

Have a Japanese woman's take on the issue:

http://www.quora.com/Are-a-lot-of-Japan ... -If-so-why

The thing is, in recent years the "weird Japan" "wacky Japan" theme has been an extremely easy, and lazy, hook for the media to hang their Japan related stories on. Since most of the Western mainstream media has decided that Japan is no longer that relevant as a major economic power/rival to the United States (role taken over by China in Asia, let's slot that in in our neat little hierarchy) most Japan stories focus on the wierd/wacky and 'cool' stuff. There are also some resident expats in Japan who profit, literally or figuratively, by continuing to promote the idea that Japan is just a wacky, perverted place - even if much of the behavior that is supposed to be widely practised is just a fringe thing.

I believe that the truth is that Japanese people are no more or less perverted than people anywhere else. There is less, or rather different, censorship applied to literature and media in Japan - it is not a country bound by Judeo-Christian-Muslin mores and morality. One thing that a lot of westerners have a problem with is that nudity of any kind is not the total, absolute, gasp-worthy taboo it seems to be in some societies in the west. (I've seen people complain about the bath scene in the movie My Neighbor Totoro where the father takes a bath with his two daughters. He's not a pedophile, that's a common and much approved 'family thing' to do in Japan.)

There are censorship and morality laws in Japan, but you just don't hear about them. (Ironically, in Japan western pornography has been seen as being much more explicit than Japanese pornography, because genitalia is typically shown a lot more clearly - though not being a porn consumer I don't know if that still holds true.) Young children are rarely if ever exposed to pornographic images and such. In any case, for the most part crime of all kinds, including sex crimes, are a lot lower in Japan than most other 'advanced' countries - that's probably an important fact. And public lewd behavior is just different from say, such behavior in the US. In the US a group of men might make rude gestures and comments at an attractive woman, or even get grabbed at and felt up in a bar or something. In Japan she might get groped in a crowded place. (But again, it's not like every other Japan man is a pervert, just as the vast majority of American men aren't either.)

I do feel rather sorry for Japanese men - they are so often pigeonholed as 'perverts', nerds, socially inept, or weaklings. Japanese men are as varied as people anywhere else, really.

[Drolyt]

This entire thread's premise is basically a setup for a pissing contest, but mostly the bit where you said the following irked me:

If you think that could actually happen in the US on a similar scale you are determined to see flaws in the US whether they exist or not, which is a shame because there are plenty of reasons to be mad at the US that aren't bullshit.

In short, I don't believe that it's unthinkable. The numbers that get thrown around on this kind of stuff are all over the place, because of reasons, and the USA hasn't embraced mass transit to the same degree Japan has in any case, which further muddies comparisons of the chikan issue. However, we have enough problems with sexual assault, violent crime and exploitation--Japan and the USA are both pretty bad as far as relative poverty goes--that I get the impression that you're coming on rather strong.

Fair enough, that was a bad example. Look, sexual violence against women is a huge problem all around the world and I don't want to trivialize it. If I came off as suggesting that it isn't a problem in the US, or that Japan is especially bad about it, I apologize. I only wanted to talk about how modern Japanese culture discourages healthy expressions of sexuality and how that leads to fringe movements like the stranger part of the otaku culture which produces TTRPGs about French maids. There is in fact a large literature on the issue, and several different theories have been put forth, from the fact that Japanese youth have so much pressure put on them compared to other countries that they simply feel they don't have time for relationships to the lack of space making it difficult even if you have one to traditional Japanese values discouraging them from seeking help when they begin to withdraw from society and social life.

[Wulf]

Besides having different norms and values, Japanese have more of a "cute" culture then "sex" culture. Girls get a cutey-makeover in japan, while in the western parts of the world, girls get sexualized.

In the West, the harry potter girls get bigger boobs on posters thanks to photoshop. In japan, they get a cute dress with lace.

In the west, backstage dancers dress slutty, with clothing that try to be as short and tight as possible (especially in the rap scene and such) and dance in sexualized ways. While in Japan, they wear cute idol dresses and dance in a more energetic girlish style.

I have seen some western and japanese porn (vanilla, not fetish). And I can tell you, I prefer the japanese porn a lot more, even with their censor. The girls are more cute, act more cute and look clean while they dont act like a cheap crack whore like in western porn. Non-fetish japanese porn is a lot more tasteful then western porn. (I can't say anything about fetish porn however).

[Korwin]

Even though I'm guilty of this hypocrisy as anyone else, can we take the cultural stuff to another thread? I want to discuss Japanese TTRPGs.

So let's discuss! I've found this: https://plus.google.com/u/0/communities ... 0724285675

This post/link may have been buried/missed...

[OgreBattle]

Besides having different norms and values, Japanese have more of a "cute" culture then "sex" culture. Girls get a cutey-makeover in japan, while in the western parts of the world, girls get sexualized.

In the West, the harry potter girls get bigger boobs on posters thanks to photoshop. In japan, they get a cute dress with lace.

In the west, backstage dancers dress slutty, with clothing that try to be as short and tight as possible (especially in the rap scene and such) and dance in sexualized ways. While in Japan, they wear cute idol dresses and dance in a more energetic girlish style.

I have seen some western and japanese porn (vanilla, not fetish). And I can tell you, I prefer the japanese porn a lot more, even with their censor. The girls are more cute, act more cute and look clean while they dont act like a cheap crack whore like in western porn. Non-fetish japanese porn is a lot more tasteful then western porn. (I can't say anything about fetish porn however).

They even form pop singing groups

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypvf7FOua10

[Atmo]

Even though I'm guilty of this hypocrisy as anyone else, can we take the cultural stuff to another thread? I want to discuss Japanese TTRPGs.

So let's discuss! I've found this: https://plus.google.com/u/0/communities ... 0724285675

This post/link may have been buried/missed...