Holden_Shearer wrote:So let me lay my cards on the table, as a gamer and artist, so you know who you're talking to and where I'm coming from.
There's something Gene Siskel said during a film review he was doing with Roger Ebert-- I think it was that shitpile North. Ebert was going on about how the very concept of the film was mean-spirited and disgusting and without redeeming value. Siskel chimed in to opine that any topic can have merit and be done well-- it's entirely in the execution. (He then agreed that North had been executed as an abominable pile of shit.)
As an artist, I agree with Siskel. I think the darkest elements of the human experience have a place in art, and that one of the big jobs of art is to give us a way to grapple with difficult or uncomfortable concepts. And I do believe that roleplaying games are, or at least can be, art, at the same time that they're games. Exalted is definitely a game that strives to be both things, and to do both well. (Historically, it's had mixed success, particularly with the latter; but in First Edition I think it had a pretty damn good track record with e former.)
However, the heavier the material you're handling, the more of a deft hand you need to use, and the more skill is required, and the higher the bar goes for "you need to know what the hell you're doing, and whether the context is appropriate."
Some of you probably don't agree with me on this, but I think it's a topic on which reasonable people can agree to disagree.
That said--
For most of my gaming career, which spans the better part of three decades, I have been the GM. As a GM, I don't employ sexual violence in my games. It's within the comfort zone of my regular players, but I don't like it, it's not my idea of a fun evening of gaming, and I've never been taken by a need to explore sexual abuse through the medium of an RPG. Mostly, I find the subject upsetting and depressing. On those rare, blessed occasions when I actually get to play rather than running a game, I don't generally play evil characters (though antiheroes are a lot of fun). I don't, as a general rule, care to play in games where someone else in the party is rolling up an evil character, and I definitely do not want to be at the table during a rape scene.
tl;dr: I would never, ever use vast majority of the Lover's cascade in a game I ran or played. I also wouldn't play in a Dark Reflection: Spectres game, I would not care to play a Black Spiral Dancer or Nephandi, or indeed play a loyalist Abyssal at all-- I've always done independents and renegades.
But those are my tastes, and they're not everybody's. I own Charnel Houses of Europe and I think it's a magnificent book; I also own the other Black Dog books it was written to stand against, and I enjoyed them as well, even though there's a lot of material in there I wouldn't use at my table. I think there's a place for dark, nasty stuff at the gaming table. I know there are more than a few people who make use of the stuff, and who appreciate its inclusion.
But the darker you go, the more you have to think about what you're doing, and where, and why, and in a game designed to entertain, a light touch is usually a good idea; and with most art, there's a limit before even the best execution just becomes inappropriate (see: Late-90s Super Dark Angsty Spider-Man, or Greg Rucka's Wolverine; but by contrast, I enjoyed Garth Ennis's Punisher Max).
This is particularly tricky where Exalted is concerned. Exalted's putative heroes are pretty nasty customers-- murder, pillage, slavery, and genocide are common activities for the Solar, Lunar, and Terrestrial Exalted. We generally try not to sugar-coat the awful realities of the Age of Sorrows; we also try not to grind your face in it. Maintaining this sort of tone becomes tricky as you move toward the nominal antagonist splats of the game-- particularly the Abyssals and their Deathlord mentors, who are supposed to be really nasty customers in a setting where the 'good guys' are already nasty customers a lot of the time.
Here's what I don't want: I don't want the relentlessly bleak, horror-saturated Abyssals the game put forward in 2e. I don't want the guys where each Charm is more nihilistic, life-denying, and existentially cruel than the last. I don't want a meditation on hideousness and nihilism that's so dark it's not fun to play.
What I do want is a stylistic return to the guys from the Storyteller's Companion-- the unearthly warrior-poets of the Underworld, riding forth to speak the good news of the grave from their rose-petal lips, dining in the halls of ghosts and building great dark citadels to house their mortal lovers.
Those dudes were dangerous as hell, and also sexy as hell, and also deadly as hell; and if they're going to be represented by a huge sprawling 300+ Charm set, I have trouble imagining them credibly executed without some overt seduction magic (probably amounting to half-a-dozen or so Charms). Particularly if there are branches of the set being informed by the Lover.
The truth of the matter is that I'd rather not give you guys promises about what we're going to do when we get there, because what's going to happen is that in a few days I'm going to put Abyssals in a drawer at the back of my brain, and they're going to pop back out at odd moments when something causes me to think about them, or when I just want to polish them up to keep them fresh in my imagination; but mostly will sit there for several years until it's time to do their book. During that time our grasp of Charm design will mature and evolve as we get more and more experience working the system, and the style dynamics of the various playable types may shift a bit, and we'll definitely work out a feel for what the EX3 audience responds to and what the tone of the game needs to be. All I can tell you and be certain I am being completely honest about it, is that I am listening to what you're saying and taking it seriously, and it'll continue to inform my thoughts about the best way to do the Abyssals as the years roll by and their book creeps up.
I think Abyssals need to get pretty dark at times; but I want Exalted players to feel like they're able to roll up a deathknight and have fun, without navigating around super-nasty land mines. I don't want Abyssals to be a niche only for people who like black, sadistic roleplaying.
It's possible that explicit sex as a mechanical key may be too much, insofar as that it hurts the game more than it enriches it. I think it's something that can be done, and done well; that doesn't necessarily mean this is the right place to try to do it, or the right way, but--
Well, I'm frankly punch-drunk from managing this damn Kickstarter all month, running on a couple hours sleep per night, and trying to stick the landing on a gigantic complicated corebook. I am not really in a position where I can give the topic of "how far should Abyssals really push the seduction angle in their Charm mechanics" the kind of attention it deserves, not enough to declare an answer and set it in stone. I would prefer the answer not be "not at all," because it's a major element of their style, but if it ultimately seems like that's what's best for the game, then so be it.
Anyway, those are my general feelings and thoughts on the top of dicey topics in gaming, and the needs of Abyssals. Can we have a civilized discussion, going from there?
