The Gaming Den

I quite enjoy "X isn't overpowered because it's each players responsibility to make sure he doesn't overshadow the other players."

I quite enjoy "X isn't overpowered because it's each players responsibility to make sure he doesn't overshadow the other players."

I've had to be that player. D: But because I was afraid polymorphing into an ice hydra and breaking the battle in half would get my wizard stealth nerfed. By one of my best friends, no less.
She knows i *can* do "stuff", but our group seriously has a sorceror that was (originally) built with charisma as his dump stat... So i quietly play the "GOD!" role along with my wife (cleric).

I'm playing an artificer and, after looking up some crafting optimization, found that I could make pretty much any item I wanted by saying "Yeah, I mimic the spell as cast by a (Ur Priest/Sublime Chord) with (Mage Slayer, Pierce Magical Concealment, Pierce Magical Protection)" to a DM who only forbids the absolutely most broken shit like making a mirror of opposition and a Dominate Person spelltrap to make my craft reserve infinite. The only person who objected to "Oh, yeah, gimme a day or two and we can have a scroll of gate" was the guy who's playing a fighter as a challenge. So I sandbagged myself to only what a "Artificer Level+2" level caster could pull off.

Archmage Joda wrote:Oh, I got one: How about the one where it's ok if a rule is shitty or doesn't work or whatever, because you can just houserule it anyway?

There's a guy on the Paizo boards who is a fanatic for claiming that all Paizo adventures are awesome because a GM can magically change any shitty adventure into an awesome adventure.

"Your social system is broken because it allows characters to seduce other characters, so it means it allows characters to get other characters to have sex with them, so it's a rape system and your whole game is now a game about rape, and you're on horrible person because you had this idea".

Blade wrote:"Your social system is broken because it allows characters to seduce other characters, so it means it allows characters to get other characters to have sex with them, so it's a rape system and your whole game is now a game about rape, and you're on horrible person because you had this idea".

Those people actually exist? I thought they were made up by 4chan greentext writers and were as fictional as pork sliders...

That slope is a bit too slippery, but that doesn't mean the writers of Exalted social charms aren't horrible people.

This is an interesting topic. I see that people tend to condemn things like sex and rape in the tabletop environment, while killing and murders are commonplace. Why is that ? Why should sex (???) and rape be more "herectic" than the others ?

Not that I tend to touch on these subjects while playing, mind you, it's just that I find it amusing the kind of hysteria that these subjects tend to evoke on most rpg circles.

This is not only the case in rpg circles.
Many action movies have a lot of killing (including killing done by heroes), but having a rape scene will at least raise a few eyebrows (especially today, it was much less the case in the 80s and early 90s where such scenes were common to depict bad guys).

But it's not that absurd.

Imagine a torture scene that would have someone rip someone's fingernails off. Why the hell would you want to have something like this, unless you're going for a gore horror film? If you want to show that the bad guy is bad, or that the character's torture is horrible, you can just suggest it by showing the setup and leaving the viewer draw the conclusion. Including the actual fingernail ripping is just something a sadist would do.

Seeing someone's nails ripped off makes you uncomfortable the way seeing someone getting shot doesn't because you can relate far more easily with the first than with the second.

And while getting one's fingernail ripped off is something that rarely happens, and something that's unlikely to happen to many people, rape is actually something that happens every day.

This video is non-stop stupid apologetics. tl;dr: "alignment matters because it's in the book and I want to justify making 9 videos explaining it."

Warning: he's a preening douche who talks down to his audience like they're all 6 year-olds. However, the video is illuminating if you want to delve into that kind of mind.

Unless you're currently trapped in an eroge it's a pretty safe bet that you're not going to run into a situation where fucking someone into submission is a reasonable way of defending yourself or others whereas other forms of violence can often be plausibly justified and even presented as heroic instead of just being fucking awful.

Even in a game like Crusader Kings, where having sex furthers your goal of taking over Europe through multiple generations, there's things keeping it from becoming the RaHoWa of rape. For one, you can't cast Charm Person. In addition, the ideal mates often have similar political leverage to yourself, so interactions happen often enough on an even playing field.

Thulsa Doom casts Charm Person on the daughters of politically powerful families, and it makes him a bad man. He also kills beyond the need for self-defense or defense of his people. A necromancer who enjoys cackling and playing with skulls is a valid PC concept, but in the end, PCs are expected to play the protagonist, for the sake of the fun of everyone at the table.

EDIT3: I guess I really did have everything wrong about CK. I won't push it like that long thread about Dishonored tho. Sorry.

EDIT2: Given subsequent silva replies, one apology isn't enough.

Sakuya Izayoi wrote:Even in a game like Crusader Kings, where having sex furthers your goal of taking over Europe through multiple generations, there's things keeping it from becoming the RaHoWa of rape. For one, you can't cast Charm Person. In addition, the ideal mates often have similar political leverage to yourself, so interactions happen often enough on an even playing field.

Your argument is that because taking politically powerless concubines or forcing a subject with limited political standing to become your mate is infrequent in the games that you play then it's relatively okay to do what you think is morally equivalent to rape? There are so many things wrong with that I'm not sure where to start. How about this: play as a non-Christian in the game and come back with how many times "an even playing field" was even an option. Or maybe "your experiences do not determine reality" and other arguments against subjective reasoning.

American society is relatively comfortable with violence but taboos sexuality (which is part of why we're so obsessed with it), while European society (to the degree there is such a thing) is comfortable with sex but taboos violence.

It's just a matter of temporary social mores.

Sakuya Izayoi wrote:Even in a game like Crusader Kings, where..

... where as a Norse chieftain you can take any female in your dungeon and force her into your concubine, which is the way the game says "rape" for you. I understand you never played the Pagan Gods expansion ?

I don't know, I can't see much difference between murdering, torturing or raping myself, speaking about games. I think the key is how you treat those - if you take a zoom-in and depict the act slowly and meticulously, any of those tend to be pretty disgusting. But if you take a zoom-out/medium zoom and just say you gonna rape that hot bitch witch who been cursing your clan before slitting her throat, to what the GM reacts by asking for a willpower roll because the witch shakes her ass so good that you may end up in love and wanting to marry her instead, what's the problem really ?

And after all, it's fiction. Engaging these things in fictional form doesn't mean you will go out and murder/rape/torture people in real life.

Occluded Sun wrote:American society is relatively comfortable with violence but taboos sexuality (which is part of why we're so obsessed with it), while European society (to the degree there is such a thing) is comfortable with sex but taboos violence.

It's just a matter of temporary social mores.

This seems a more coherent take on the matter.

silva wrote:just say you gonna rape that hot bitch witch who been cursing your clan before slitting her throat, to what the GM reacts by asking for a willpower roll because the witch shakes her ass so good that you may end up in love and wanting to marry her instead, what's the problem really ?

Oh look. Silva saw an opportunity to troll and derail even THIS thread, REALLY hard.

How? Apparently by keeping it classy. REAL classy.

Wow Silva has sunk to a new low. Of course given he's a bear world fan it's not that big a surprise that he's a creepy pervert.

Also I'd like to nominate Zaks original bout of dunning-kruger for the thread. A.K.A. the "I don't need your rules man because my on the spot asspulls are more transparent internally consistent than any set of rules that could possibly be written" argument.

I found it funny that the first example features a scenario where a character gets murdered, tortured or raped and his second example features a DM defusing the scenario by turning things into a farce where it's unclear if anyone actually ends up raped. If that's your criteria for acceptable rape roleplay, then you're basically admitting that rape roleplay isn't actually acceptable in about the most round about way possible.

Whipstitch wrote:I found it funny that the first example features a scenario where a character gets murdered, tortured or raped and his second example features a DM defusing the scenario by turning things into a farce where it's unclear if anyone actually ends up raped. If that's your criteria for acceptable rape roleplay, then you're basically admitting that rape roleplay isn't actually acceptable in about the most round about way possible.

I guess that is one way to see the second thing he said, but I see it as the logical extension of "just lie back and enjoy it" in the context, and god fuck damn if I wanted any rape roleplay at all, I sure as fuck wouldn't want that.

Count Arioch the 28th wrote:Those people actually exist? I thought they were made up by 4chan greentext writers and were as fictional as pork sliders...

I'm pretty sure Blade's poking fun at Frank Trollman.

At this point, I would almost suggest Silva play FATAL, as apparently it's his perfect game as far as tone goes. It seems way too crunchy for him, though.

Whipstitch wrote:I found it funny that the first example features a scenario where a character gets murdered, tortured or raped and his second example features a DM defusing the scenario by turning things into a farce where it's unclear if anyone actually ends up raped. If that's your criteria for acceptable rape roleplay, then you're basically admitting that rape roleplay isn't actually acceptable in about the most round about way possible.

You didnt got my point, or I didnt express myself well. If its the second case, I apologize. What I meant for the second scenario is that its continue to be raping, but in this case the victim tries to seduce the raper to continue living somehow. Perhaps that wasnt clear in the text ?

Anyway, consider the second scenario as straight rape before sliting the throat of the witch if you wish.

I think when considering the nature of your rp content, it's important to note that it's significantly more likely that one or more of your players has been raped than that one or more of your players has been murdered.

Less flippantly, it's worth noting that if you stick to the approximate proportions of emphasis that the rulebooks give (in most of the ones I've seen, for instance, there's far more about murder than about even consensual sex - and that includes Vampire), you're providing what your players (who have presumably at least skimmed the rules) are expecting. If you're gonna use D&D 3.5 to run Orc Rape Dungeon Supreme, you, uh, should probably mention that before the first session so people can bow out.

Also I haven't fleshed this thought out but I think it's a lot less personal to imagine stabbing your friend who happens to be the MC than it is to imagine fucking him, consensually or no, which puts it a lot closer to most people's squick line.

8d8 wrote:

Sakuya Izayoi wrote:Even in a game like Crusader Kings, where having sex furthers your goal of taking over Europe through multiple generations, there's things keeping it from becoming the RaHoWa of rape. For one, you can't cast Charm Person. In addition, the ideal mates often have similar political leverage to yourself, so interactions happen often enough on an even playing field.

Your argument is that because taking politically powerless concubines or forcing a subject with limited political standing to become your mate is infrequent in the games that you play then it's relatively okay to do what you think is morally equivalent to rape? There are so many things wrong with that I'm not sure where to start. How about this: play as a non-Christian in the game and come back with how many times "an even playing field" was even an option. Or maybe "your experiences do not determine reality" and other arguments against subjective reasoning.

I would argue that participating in an arrange marriage or taking a concubine in Crusader Kings II isn't morally equivilant to rape because they aren't real.

And there's absolutely nothing immoral about raping the NPC elf princess. On the other hand, it is totally wrong to ear-rape your fellow players. And that's the issue. If you are playing out sex-fantasies at the gaming table, then you are playing out sex fantasies at the gaming table. And that can make people uncomfortable.

Heck, I had the displeasure of witnessing a game where that actually happened. Two guys, one of whom was playing a female character, had their players start a sexual relationship, which was okay up until they actually verbally RPed a hardcore sex scene. A romantic hardcore sex scene, but still. I had the great pleasure of not being an active player in that game, so I could just ignore it and metaphorically walk away (it was an internet game, so there wasn't much actual walking on my part). Others were no so lucky.


And so here's the thing, bringing your sex fantasies into a game, consensual or not, is very uncomfortable to the people who did not consent to listen to your sex fantasies.